Margaret Bain and her teaching by Colin Low

Margaret Bain: a photo taken in 1985

Introduction by Cherry Gilchrist

Margaret Bain was a member of the Soho Group of Cabbalists from the earliest days (see Lines of Work ). She was married to Alan Bain for a number of years, and she was also a long-term associate of Glyn Davies, appearing regularly in his kitchen for chats. I first met her in the mid-1970s, the period in which Margaret met astrologer and psychic Douglas Donleavy, and worked in partnership with him for a while.

Meeting Colin Low - In the mid-1970s, my former husband Chris Gilchrist and I held Kabbalah meetings at our house in Cambridge. These followed on from the Kabbalah group run by Glyn Davies in London, where we had first studied the Tree of Life. Our group ran for several years, and took various forms. Some regular members of the Cambridge group, such as Rod Thorn and Bernard Carr have remained colleagues ever since. Others came and went, or else were older and are no longer with us, such as Vida da Silva and John Ryder. Among those who attended for a short while before striking off into a different Kabbalistic path was Colin Low, author of this article. He became a student of Margaret Bain’s, whose teaching he describes here. Recently, Rod and I made contact with Colin again, and as editors of ‘Soho Tree’, asked if he would be willing to write about his work with Margaret Bain.

For an overview of her work and life, please see the article in Historical Sketches in Esoteric Britain  and a close-up of her personal story (also written by Colin Low, who is pictured below). Colin's account now follows:

 I was asked if I might comment on Margaret Bain’s teaching as I experienced it first-hand in the late 70s and 80s. For reasons I will explain below, I am required to be circumspect. Details will be slight. In light of this constraint, I will outline the antecedents to her approach some hundred years earlier in the latter half of the 19th. century.

There was a brief period around the year 1875 when H. P. Blavatsky was the most famous person in the world. The extraordinary phenomena of parlour spiritualism - levitation, apports, ectoplasm, flying trumpets -  and the popular occult novels of Bulwer-Lytton [note 1], had primed the public of Europe and America to accept extraordinary claims, and when Blavatsky claimed that there was a secret occult science that far transcended the material sciences of the day, her assertion was widely accepted at all levels of society. She claimed to be in direct communication with individuals whose capabilities exceeded those of normal human beings. They sent her letters by mysterious means. In her own person she was the source of many remarkable anecdotes.

Blavatsky’s claim of secret masters coincided with an underground belief already current in Europe: that there was a mysterious cadre of spiritually advanced human beings who possessed the power to cure diseases and prolong life. This belief had surfaced in the early 17th. century with the publication of the Rosicrucian Manifestos, and had become pervasive in the esoteric offshoots of Freemasonry.

It was in this climate of belief that many people began to look for a source of advanced spiritual teaching. The time was ripe for new occult fraternities. A number of working groups hived-off from Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society to meet the need for spiritual advancement.

The belief that base human nature can be rectified and transcended was core to such groups. Margaret Bain would refer to this work of self-transcendence as The Great Work. She was passionately committed to the Great Work.

She did not invent the term. Alchemists and hermeticists had used it centuries earlier. The influential French occultist Eliphas Levi defined it as: “The Great Work is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will.” 

Margaret would have added that we do not exist in isolation, and The Great Work is a collective endeavour. The first part is the work we do upon ourselves; the second part is an obligation to assist others along the same path.

The organisation with the greatest relevance to Margaret’s teaching was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (G.D.). Founded in 1887, it was a confluence of the occult currents of the time: Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism, Freemasonry, Egypt-mania, Eurasian mystery cults, Tarot, Kabbalah, Renaissance occult philosophy [note 2].

Its leaders claimed to possess a charter from Secret Chiefs who possessed superhuman powers. One of its leaders, S. L. Mathers, claimed to have met them. The G.D. quickly formed temples in several British cities, and although it did not endure, it left behind a legacy of mystical theatre, performance, ritual, and teaching that continued in various forms until WW2.

WW2 marks an important moment in time. Aside from the social disruption caused by total war, it ended the epoch of the original G.D. Almost all of the important figures from the original G.D. were dead. The poet W. B. Yeats died in 1939. Dion Fortune (who was taught by Moina Mathers in one of the last surviving G.D. temples) died in 1946. Aleister Crowley, who despite his tabloid reputation, was one of the most devoted and confirmed of G.D. members, died in 1947. A. E. Waite (of Tarot fame) died in 1942. His collaborator on the Tarot, Pamela Colman Smith, died in 1951 [note 3]. The original contributors to the G.D current left this plane, the collective memory of the group was fractured, and the lamp went out.

There is something that happens to esoteric groups when the lamp goes out. People run around with matches and candles trying to bring the light back. There are lots of transient glimmers. There is a sense of denial. Some will claim that the lamp never failed - not so much as one flicker - but stasis sets in.

One senses the lamp is failing when old forms choke novelty, and new growth occurs elsewhere. A point comes that resembles autumn, when annual plants wither and die. They go into the ground and they fertilise the new growth during spring of the following year.

WW2 was that winter. During the 1950s and 1960s a new generation of occultists began to find their feet. This generation was not the upper middle class of the G.D. They had probably experienced the hardships of war and the rigours of post-war rationing and poverty. They no longer felt bound to the exact forms and beliefs of the late 19th century.

There was a distillation of ideas. Some part of the form and force of the G.D. was boiled off, condensed, and preserved, and a quantity of bombastic dross was left in the flask and discarded. The Kabbalistic framework used by the G.D. for initiation, teaching and meditation was enhanced. Lengthy Masonic-style initiation ceremonies were trimmed. Theurgy was substituted for performance. This last observation requires explanation.

Theourgia is a term that appears in late antiquity, and is associated with followers of Plato, the so-called Neoplatonists - Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus. It is often translated as “god-work”. The term is contrasted with theologia, or god-talk, the more acceptable process of arriving at an understanding of the divine through endless and fractious discussion. The theologist is social. He wants to talk about God. He wants to arrive at God by an exercise of reason. The theurgist wants to encounter the gods and shake their hands: “Good evening Hekate, so pleased to meet you!”.

The base assumption, the motivation for theurgic work, is that human comprehension has been debased by immersion in matter. Incarnation skews our understanding. If comprehension is debased, it is unlikely that a debased reasoning will redeem it. However, the soul can be awakened and raised up by direct contact with the gods.

Theurgy is physical, not intellectual. It involves the whole body, and all of the senses. The theurgist uses ancient occult sympathies to draw down influences from other realms of being, and in doing so creates a physical environment conducive both to earthly and spiritual beings.

Theurgy can also be found in the Spanish Kabbalah of the late 13th. century. A detailed and influential treatise on the subject is Gikatilla’s Gates of Light, which was translated into Latin by Paolo Riccio in 1517 as de Portae Lucis.

My (broad-brush) explanation of the Gates of Light is that Gikatilla views the various names of God used in the Bible as indicators of God’s activity in the world. They represent the phenomena of God. He illustrates this by numerous examples. He scours the Bible for occasions on which a particular name of God is associated with some activity. He groups the activities of God under ten headings (which he terms Gates) and these Gates correspond to the ten sephirot of the Tree of Life.

The names of God have agency; they are performative. When they are invoked in the correct manner, they bring the corresponding energy into the soul, or into the world [note 4].

Let us now return to the post-WW2 restructuring of the Golden Dawn tradition and material. When I said above that theurgy was substituted for performance, I meant that some parts of the Golden Dawn initiatory rituals resemble the ceremonial theatre of Freemasonry (which is unsurprising given that the founders were senior Freemasons) but other parts -  where divine powers are summoned and embodied - are theurgy.

Now I will provide some personal history. From my earliest days I was convinced that the Cosmos was alive. I felt a deep connection to the living world. Before the age of five I had routinely encountered kindly and protective spirits in my dreams. It seemed to me that every form of life I encountered was marked by a particular narrowness of cognition and comprehension. This was true of insects, it was true of animals, it was true of people, and I was sure it was true of myself. I felt sure there were beings with a less narrow focus and comprehension, and I might encounter them if I was prepared to make the effort. I was prepared to make the effort.

I had a Christian education in decent Christian schools, but even before the age of ten I had rejected it. If God was omniscient and omnipresent then I did not need intermediaries. I was not interested in pious vicars and moralistic sermons.

I drew wrong conclusions from the ministry of Jesus. I knew without being told that there was another way of looking at the life of Jesus, something I discovered much later in Morton Smith’s Jesus the Magician. I’m not saying Morton Smith was correct, only that I had powerful feelings throughout adolescence that there was a path that I wanted to be on. It was a sketchy path, and difficult to discover.

My first encounter with the tradition was Eliphas Levi’s History of Magic and his Transcendental Magic, which I discovered in 1970. One cannot fail to be impressed by Levi’s undiscriminating and overblown enthusiasm for the subject matter. I progressed immediately to Crowley’s self-styled autohagiography, the Confessions. It contains a wealth of information about his time in the Golden Dawn. By 1971 (I was 20) I had purchased the four-volume edition of the Golden Dawn teaching and initiatory material, published by Israel Regardie in a beautiful golden slip-case [note 5].

I encountered Margaret Bain in 1978, and became her pupil. Margaret accepted pupils under conditions. The first, and most important, was to participate in the Great Work. The second was to Keep Silent: her teaching was to be communicated only under the conditions in which it was received. There was a boundary, and everything within that boundary was incommunicado. There would not be idle chatter, drop-in friends, bowdlerised or condensed versions, or social ego trips. The teachings were serious and not for frivolous dissemination. Students were encouraged to take on pupils, but only by adopting the same constraints.

Margaret was similarly strict in the division between the profane and the sacred. Her approach resembled the army. Off-duty, you could do as you pleased. On-duty, everything was done by the book. Beds were neatly made, sheets precisely folded, buttons and boots polished, and not a speck of dust anywhere. This diligence, this precise boundary-setting, was an important part of what I learned from Margaret.

She was relaxed about people, in all their varieties. Although she loved to argue, she didn’t care about your opinions (so long as they weren’t harming anyone). What mattered to her was devotion to the Work.

How she arrived at her system I do not know. I do not know whether it developed organically through many encounters in the esoteric scene, or whether it was given [note 6]. The influence of the G.D. is apparent but skeletal. I do know Margaret was strongly influenced by Dion Fortune, and would usually recommend The Mystical Qabalah for introductory reading.

After many years of research and personal work I remain impressed by the depth of her understanding. I often felt that the sefirot were living powers within her, that she had no need of books or authorities or references, that she had called upon the Holy Names so many times, they had taken up residence.

Postscript: I have not disclosed specific details of Margaret’s teaching, and I have explained the reasons why. Nevertheless, after a lifetime of my own work I felt there were many things I could say. I published these as The Hermetic Kabbalah in 2015. This book was not intended as a beginner text. It is a memorial and testament to Margaret Bain.

Notes:
Note 1: Zanoni and The Coming Race.
Note 2: Specifically Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy. The breadth and depth of this work continues to excite my wonder.
Note 3: Pamela Colman Smith was a peripheral member of the G.D., but a close friend of the Yeats family, and she left an enduring legacy in her famous Tarot card designs.
Note 4: Jewish popular tales provide many instances of wonder-working rabbis, or Baal Shem - Masters of the Name. One such, R. Jacob Falk, lived in London in the 18th century, and many tales were told of his powers. There is also a belief in the mysterious Lamed Vav or Tzadikim Nistarim, 36 individuals so pious and righteous that God continues to uphold the world on their behalf.
Note 5: It was stolen from me the following year. It was the only thing of value I possessed.
Note 6: The reader may look doubtfully at the word “given”, but I can assure the reader that some things are given, whole and entire. Obviously, every element of human culture is given at some point, but sometimes whole dollops arrive at once. You expect someone on a bicycle, and an entire train pulls into the station.

Resources

Colin Low Author’s page:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Colin-A-Low/author/B01MG2EZD6)

Books by Colin Low:

The Hermetic Kabbalah (Digital Brilliance 2015)
Playing the Fool: an Exposition of Tarot and a Tale of Folly (Digital Brilliance 2017)
Liber Sphaerae: A Dialogue Concerning the Spheres (Digital Brilliance 2022)

The Rockwax Foundation was created in 2011 by students of Margaret Bain as a public face to preserve and promote the traditions and teaching. The name “Rockwax” is taken from the name of Margaret’s personal stone, and was chosen to honour her memory and teaching.