Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, :o11 DOI: 10.1163/156798911X581261ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,;ARIESwww.brill.nl/arieFrulein Sprengel andthe Origins of the Golden Dawn:A Surprising DiscoveryChristopher McIntoshUniversity of ExeterAbstractDieserBeitragberichtet bereineneuerlicheberprfungvonBriefen, dieangeblichin den spten 188oer Jahren an den englischen Esoteriker Dr. William Wynn Westcottgesandt wurden. Absender soll ein gewisses Frulein Sprengel gewesen sein, eine angeblichedeutsche Rosenkreuzermeisterinmit demmagischenPseudonymSapiens DominabiturAstris. Diese Briefe enthielten den Auftrag zur Grndung des Hermetic Order of the GoldenDawn. In der Erforschung der Ursprnge des Golden Dawn werden diese Briefe generellals Flschungen betrachtet. Man geht davon aus, dass der Text von Westcott mit dem Zieleiner Autorittsanmaung selbst entworfen wurde und anschlieend ins Deutsche bertra-gen wurde. Der Autor des vorliegenden Artikels hat die im Freimaurermuseum in Londonaufbewahrten Originalbriefe berprft und darin Anhaltspunkte gefunden, die die Identittvon Sapiens Dominabitur Astris in neuem und berraschendem Licht erscheinen lassen.KeywordsGolden Dawn; Wynn Westcott; Frulein Sprengel; Sapiens Dominabitur AstrisOf all the mysteries connected with the origins of the Hermetic Order of theGolden Dawn, none is more teasing than the riddle of the so-called FruleinSprengel letters. For readers less familiar with the Golden Dawns inceptionsit may be helpful to recapitulate the basic facts as we know them. Te storygoes that in 188; Dr. William Wynn Westcott (1881,:), a London coro-ner and Freemason with strong esoteric leanings, came into possession of amanuscript, written in a cipher based on the Polygraphiae libri sex (118) ofthe Benedictine Abbot Johannes Trithemius (1o:11o). When deciphered,the manuscript was found to contain skeleton descriptions of rituals, written inEnglish, apparently stemming from an order with a grade structure similar tothe Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and the German 18th-century Gold- und:o Christopher McIntosh / ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,;Rosenkreuzer (Golden and Rosy Cross) order. Te manuscript also containedelements of esoteric lore including references from the Kabbalah, astrology,alchemy and the Tarot. Much has been written about this cipher manuscript,and there are still many unanswered questions surrounding it, but I shall notdwell on the manuscript, except to add that between its pages was a slip ofpaper, with a short message, also in cipher but in a dierent hand from themain manuscript. As Ellic Howe reports, this message, when translated, read:Sapiens dom ast is a chief among the members of the goldene dammerung[i.e., Golden Dawn] she is a famous soror her name is frulein sprengel let-ters reach her at herr j enger hotel marquardt stuttgart she is ; = [gures inHebrew characters] or a chief adept.1Te abbreviated motto is Sapiens Dom-inabitur Astris, meaning the wise person will rule the stars. In later referencesshe is referred to as A. Sprengel or Anna Sprengel.2Howe then goes on to say: Soror SDA provided an ideal solution to West-cotts problem. By locating her in Germany he made her inaccessible, and byinvesting her with an exalted rank in a suitably mysterious German occult orderhe made her a credible source of authority.3Te Hotel Marquardt existed, asis proved by a lunch bill on headed paper, dated 1 December 188;, which ispreserved among the Sprengel letters in the Library and Museum of Freema-sonry in London.4Te letters were, according to the rst one, written for Sapi-ens Dominabitur Astris by her secretary, who called himself Frater In UtroqueFidelis (faithful in both). Westcott, as he claimed, wrote to S.D.A. at thisaccommodation address, and there ensued an exchange of letters, using thetranslation services of a certain Albert Essinger, evidently a German living inLondon. Howes account, however, is rather dierent:1)Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, 1:.2)With regard to the name Sprengel, see Henrik Bogdan, Women and the Hermetic Orderof the Golden Dawn: Nineteenth Century Occultist Initiation from a Gender Perspective,:8. Here it is explained that in the German masonic context the term Sprengel-Recht,refers to the area where a Grand Lodge is allowed to found lodges. See also Marcel Rogge-mans, Geschiedenis van de occulte en mystieke broederschappen, :: Een andere hypothesezegt dat Frulein Sprengel een codeword zou kunnen zijn van het Duitse woord spren-gelrecht. Dit betekent territoriale jurisdictie.3)Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, 1:.4)Te Collection, kept in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, oo Great Queen Street,London WC:E AZ, is labelled Te Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and RelatedBodies. Te material referred tohereisinSub fonds1, Series 1/, Sprengel Letters:originals, translations and related material.Christopher McIntosh / ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,; :1In order to play the Soror S.D.A. game properly it was necessary for Westcott toappear to write to her and for a potential witness to know about the correspondence.However, Westcotts letters, duly translated by Mr Essinger, would never have beenposted WestcottnextdraftedSoror S.D.A.s repliesinEnglish. Anunidentiedpersongraphological evidence suggests it was not Mr Essingerthen made painfully literaltranslations into what he supposed was German. As and when Soror S.D.A.s lettersarrived, Westcott gave them to Mr Essinger for translation back into English.5Howe addsthat the letters from S.D.A. are so full of linguistic errors andanglicisms that they could not have been written by a German.For over a century these letters have been the object of debate. Were theygenuineoraforgery?DidFruleinSprengel existorwassheinventedbyWestcott? While Howe and the equally well-known historian of the GoldenDawn, R.A. Gilbert,6have little doubt that the correspondence was forged byWestcott, apologists for the Golden Dawn are inclined to give Westcott thebenet of the doubt.I might have been content to let sleeping dogs lie, had I not had occasionto revisit Ellic Howes book Te Magicians of the Golden Dawn, which containsa photograph of the rst Sprengel letter as well as the English translationthat Howe claims was probably in fact Westcotts original draft for the bogusGerman letter.Te letter reproduced by Howe is, like all the others, written in GermanGothichandwriting, which was the normal script used in Germany up toabout the Second World War. Tis is a dicult script for a foreigner to read letalone write. And this handwriting is uent and condent, suggesting that thewriteror at least the amanuensiswas either (a) a native German speaker or(b) a non-German who had lived in Germany for some years. It is true thatthe letter contains some striking grammatical mistakes, which would tend toargue for (b)I shall return to this question later.Te German text begins:Lieber Bruder Sapere AudeIch habe schon lngere Zeit die Wohnung verlassen, wohin Sie meinen Brief sandtenaber ich erhielt endlich nach lngerer Zeit Ihren Brief. Ich war sehr erfreut die Mit-theilung zu erhalten, da die geheimen Papiere welche Sie beschreiben sind wieder5)Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, 1.6)See Gilbert, Te Golden Dawn, :8.:: Christopher McIntosh / ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,;einmal zum Vorschein gekommen. Dieselben wurden durch den lieben Abb Con-stant vor Jahren verloren & kamen dann in den Hnden von zwei Englnder, welcheum die Erlaubni einkamen dieselben zu benutzen.7And the English translation made for Westcott reads:Dear Brother,I have long left the address to which you sent a letter but it has safely reached me atlast. I am very glad to hear that the private papers which you describe have been foundonce more, they were lost by poor Abb Constant years ago and then came into thehands of two Englishmen who applied for leave to use them.8Comparing the German letter with the English translation, I was struck by thefact that the latter contained a number of mistakes, indicating that the text hadbeen translatedrather badlyfrom German into English and not vice versa.Tere are certain words in it that give the game away. One is the word geheim,which normally means secret although in some contexts it can mean private.In the context of an occult order it would almost certainly be intended to meansecret, but here it has been translated as private. Ten again, Abb Constant(alias Eliphas Lvi) is referred to in the German as den lieben Abb Constant (thedear Abb Constant), whereas the translator has writtenpoor Abb Constant.Tese mistakes could have been due to an imperfect knowledge of German orlack of familiarity with the script. At any rate, it is clear that Howe was wrongto suppose that Westcott had written the English text and had it translated intoGerman to masquerade as a letter from S.D.A. It is true that Westcott couldhave made an earlier draft or perhaps dictated the letter, but then he wouldhave ended up with a translation dierent from his draft.Tese ndings led me to wonder whether Howe had been mistaken on otherpoints as well, so I decided to go to the Library and Museum of Freemasonryin London and consult the original letters in the Golden Dawn Collection.InstincttoldmethatIwouldndsomethingimportantthere, butIwasunprepared for what would prove to be a staggering discovery.In order to make clear what I found out, it will be necessary to explainsomethingabout Germanfor thosereadersunfamiliarwiththelanguage.Whereas in English a letter can easily be written giving no indication of the sexof the writer other than his or her rst name, in German the sex immediately7)Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, Plate III.8)Ibid., 1.Christopher McIntosh / ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,; :becomes apparent when the correspondent uses an adjective to refer to himselfor herself. Tis is because the ending of an adjective has to agree with the genderof the noun it qualies.Now when I came to the second letter from S.D.A.,9I was astonished tosee that the writer signed o as Ihr ganz ergebener (your devoted), the pointbeing that both the possessive pronoun Ihr and the adjective ergebener weremasculine. At rst I thought this might, by a long stretch of the imagination,be asliponthe part ofthe amanuensis, but when Iread onthroughtheletters I foundthat whenever an adjective or possessivepronounwas usedto refer to the writer the ending was always masculine. Ten came the nalletter, written in August 18,o by a dierent correspondent with the mottoEx Uno Disce Omnes (From One Learn All), in which the death of S.D.A.was reported (again in incorrect German) as follows: Es ist mir sehr leid, daich Euch anzeigen mus den Sterbefall unseres gelehrten Freundes S.D.A. (I amsorry to inform you of the death of our learned friend S.D.A). Here againthe genitive ending of unseres (of our learned) is masculine, as is the nounFreundes. So now there was no shadow of doubt: S.D.A.whether real orinventedwas a man! Frulein Sprengel either never existed or was someoneelse entirely.As soon as I had made this astonishing discovery, other questions begancrowding into my mind. First of all, why had this escaped notice up to now?Admittedly the papers had for many decades been held in a private collectionbefore being deposited at Freemasons Hall, but Ellic Howe for one had beenable to gain access to them. Why had he, with his knowledge of German, notspotted what I had spotted? Perhaps he was not as familiar with the scriptas he was with German typography, in which he was known as an expert,or perhaps he simply did not read the letters carefully enough. But what ofOskar Schlag, the Zrich graphologist to whomEllic Howe showed the letters?Schlag immediately spotted the many linguistic errors in the letters but not theobvious matter of the writers gender, perhaps because it was simply not whathe was looking for. Since then it appears that no one with a knowledge ofGerman, and able to read the script, had looked at the letters before me. Or, ifthey had, they had not noticed what I had.More important, however, are the questions of substance which the discov-ery raises. If S.D.A. was a man, why did Westcott think or pretend that hewas corresponding with a woman? How did the confusion come about? Was9)Golden Dawn Collection, Series 1/. All letters quoted are from the same series.: Christopher McIntosh / ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,;S.D.A. a real person or not? If he existed, who might he have been? And whatare the implications for the question of fraud or not fraud?I would like to attempt two scenariosone assuming that the letters werea forgery, the other assuming that S.D.A. really existed.In the rst scenario we have to account for the fact that Westcott presentedS.D.A. as a woman, while the letters clearly showed the correspondent as aman. Tis scenario presupposes that Westcott used two translatorsEssingerand one otherotherwise there would only have been one English version ofeach S.D.A. letter, namely Westcotts draft (and, as I have shown, the naltranslation must have diered from the draft). Ellic Howe also suspected twotranslators on the basis of graphological evidence. Tis would make sense ifWestcott was using Essinger for appearances sake, to show that the letters hadindeed been translated from the German. So the scenario is this: Westcottwrites a pretend letter to S.D.A. and drafts a pretend reply, which he givesto someone he knows in England who has some (but imperfect) knowledgeof German and can write Gothic script. Let us call this person Translator X.Westcott omits to tell Translator X that the correspondent is supposed to bewoman, and X assumes that S.D.A. is male and writes the letters accordingly.Te German text of each letter is then given to Essinger, who simply translatesthem into English, not commenting on the genderperhaps he also does notknow that Westcotts correspondent is supposed to be female. As the Englishtranslation does not indicate the gender, Westcott never nds out about thediscrepancy. And so the misunderstanding continues right through the nalletter announcing S.D.A.s death.Te second scenario is as follows: Starting with the slip of paper found withthe cipher manuscript, giving information about S.D.A., let us suppose that thewriter of this note has mistakenly conated two dierent people: S.D.A. andFrulein Sprengel. Westcott then duly writes care of Herr Enger at the HotelMarquardt in Stuttgart, enclosing a letter to S.D.A. and using the motto ratherthan the name Frulein Sprengel. In due course he receives the rst reply. Hehas it translated by Essinger and reports with delight to his friends MacGregorMathers, W.R. Woodman and possibly others involved in the founding of theGolden Dawn, that he has been contacted by the great German Rosicrucianadept Frulein Sprengel. Westcott then writes again to S.D.A. and receives asecond reply. At this point, or conceivably a little later in the correspondence,Essinger spots the gender of the writer and tells Westcott. Now Westcott is in adilemma. He cannot reveal the discovery without making a fool of himself. Onthe other hand, he cannot abandon the correspondence because S.D.A. is nowvital to his plans for the Golden Dawn. So he continues the correspondence,Christopher McIntosh / ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,; :swearing Essinger to secrecy and pretending to the others that he is dealingwith Soror S.D.A., alias Frulein Sprengel, and not Frater S.D.A. Tis wouldexplain why he remained silent and refused to produce contrary evidence whenMathers later accused him of forging the correspondence.Which of these two scenarios is the most probable? What speaks in favourof thelettersbeingfraudulentisthattheysocloselytthestereotypeofthe ctitious lineage that esoteric groups so often construct in order to givethemselves legitimacy. Another thing that makes them suspect is the way inwhich they conveniently arrived at the moment when the Golden Dawn wasbeing planned, and equally conveniently nominated Westcott, Mathers andWoodman as the three chiefs. And there is S.D.A.s timely death in 18,o whenshe/he was no longer needed. Furthermore, it is suspicious that the letters weresupposedly not entrusted to the post, as indicated in the rst letter from S.D.A.Tis looks like a device to account for the absence of postmarked envelopesfrom Germany. Tere is also the faulty German in which they are written,although if S.D.A was not Frulein Sprengel, as I have shown, then there isnothing to say that he was a native German, only someone who appeared tobe living in Germany.Against the forgery theory one could argue that a forger would surely havegone to the trouble of procuring an impeccably correct German text. A forgerwould also surely have made the letters look as impressive as possible, withan imposing letter head, copperplate writing and possibly a wax seal. Insteadthe letters are on small sheets of paper and rather untidily written in an oftenspidery hand.Whatsortofpersonmightthe writeroftheGermanletters havebeen(whether Translator X or S.D.A.?) Although he uses some idiomatic Germanexpressions, he makes many spelling and grammatical mistakes and he scattershis letters with anglicisms (Secretary instead the Sekretr, Lodge instead ofLoge, etc.) and the occasional French term(Couvert for sealed letter and in oneplace Secretaire for secretary). Such a person could have been an Englishmanwho had spent time in Germany or a person of Anglo-German backgroundwhose German was imperfect. Alternatively, he might have been someone fromone of the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as Hungary orBohemia, where German was common currency in addition to the nationallanguage. Onepossiblecandidate, whohas beensuggestedtomebyDr.R.A. Gilbert, is Julius Kohn, apparently a Jewish immigrant and author onalchemical subjects, who was in contact with some of the Golden Dawn gures.In the collection of letters of the Golden Dawn member W.A. Ayton, editedby Ellic Howe, there are a number of references to Kohn. For example, on:o Christopher McIntosh / ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,; April 18, Ayton wrote to his fellow Golden Dawn member F.L. Gardner:I have told you I have a Jewish learned friend who was very advanced thohe never would belong to any order or society.10Ellic Howe comments asfollows:It has not been possible to discover anything about Kohns life, but in the Introductionto histranslationof Te Prophecies of Paracelsus:Magic Figures andPrognostications(1,), he mentioned that his studies in the Occult have now extended over fortyyears, which suggests that he was born c. 18o In his Hermetic catalogue No. :(Summer 1,81) Mr Gilbert [i.e., R.A. Gilbert] described Kohn as an Austrian emigr.11Of course Kohn is only one possible candidate, and pending further evidencethe identity of Translator X must remain a mystery.As I see it, there are now four main explanations for the correspondence:(a) S.D.A. was a ction created by Westcott, and the gender discrepancy cameabout in the manner I have outlined in the rst scenario.(b) He was a ction created by someone other than Westcott.(c) He was an impostor posing as a Rosicrucian adept.(d) He was what he claimed to be: a member of a German esoteric lodge,willing to confer authority on Westcott, Mathers and Woodman to foundan English oshoot.While I would argue that the weight of the evidence points to (a)i.e. the oldforgery theory with a new twistone cannot be sure. However, one thing wecan say with certainty is that S.D.A. was not Frulein Sprengel. So we can bidfarewell to Soror S.D.A. Vale Soror! Ave Frater!AcknowledgementsTe author is most grateful to Dr. Donate McIntosh for a key insight andfor advice on a number of linguistic points, as well as to Dr. R.A. Gilbert forsharing his expertise on the Golden Dawn and the gures connected with it.Tanks are also due to the sta of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry inLondon for their kind assistance and to Dr. Peter Forshaw, Editor-in-Chief ofAries, for ne tuning.10)Howe (ed.), Te Alchemist of the Golden Dawn, ;o.11)Ibid., ;;.Christopher McIntosh / ARIES 11.: (:v11) :,,:,; :;BibliographyManuscript SourcesManuscript collection Te Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and RelatedBodies, Sub fonds 1, Series 1/, Sprengel Letters: originals, translations andrelated material, in the Library and Museumof Freemasonry, oo Great QueenStreet, London WC:E AZ.Printed SourcesBogdan, Henrik, WomenandtheHermeticOrderof theGoldenDawn: NineteenthCentury Occultist Initiation from a Gender Perspective, in Alexandra Heidle and JanA.M. Snoek (eds.), Womens Agency and Ritual in Mixed and Female Masonic Orders,Leiden: Brill :oo8, pp. ::o.Gilbert, R.A., Te Golden Dawn: Twilight of the Magicians, Wellingborough: Aquarian Press1,8., Te Golden Dawn Companion, Wellingborough: Aquarian Press 1,8o., Provenance Unknown: a tentative solution to the riddle of the cipher manuscriptsof the Golden Dawn, in: Albrecht Gtz von Olenhusen (ed.), Wege und Abwege. Beitrgezur europischen Geschichte der Neuzeit. Festschrift fur Ellic Howe zum :v. September 1,,v.Freiburg im Breisgau: Hochschul Verlag 1,,o., Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esoteri-cism, Vol. II, Leiden: Brill :oo, pp. o.Howe, Ellic, Te Magicians of the Golden Dawn, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1,;:.(ed.), TeAlchemist of theGoldenDawn: TeLetters of theRevdW.A. AytontoF.L. Gardner and Others 11,v,, Wellingborough: Aquarian Press 1,8.Kntz, Darcy (ed.), Te Complete Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscript, Edmonds, WA: Holmes1,,. Contains an important introduction by R.A. Gilbert., Te Golden Dawn Source Book, Edmonds, WA: Holmes, 1,,o. Introduction byR.A. Gilbert with updated ndings. Also contains Gerald Susters essay Modern Schol-arship and the Origins of the Golden Dawn, which discusses the Frulein Sprengelletters.Regardie, Israel, What You Should Know about the Golden Dawn, Phoenix, Arizona: FalconPress 1,8 (rst published 1,)., TeCompleteGoldenDawnSystemof Magic, othedition, St. Paul, Minnesota:Llewellyn Publications :oo: (rst published in volumes, Chicago: Aries Press, 1,;1,o).Roggemans, Marcel, Geschiedenis vandeocculteenmystiekebroederschappen, Mechelen:Marcel Roggemans :oo8.Copyright of Aries is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed tomultiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, usersmay print, download, or email articles for individual use.