Astral Masters in the Golden Dawn

Members of the Golden Dawn and its successor, the Stella Matutina, described the “Astral Masters” or “Secret Chiefs” in very different ways, depending on their own experiences and beliefs. Some initiates, such as S.L. MacGregor Mathers, insisted that the Secret Chiefs were real, living adepts who existed in physical bodies but remained hidden from the world. Mathers claimed to have received direct instructions from them, which gave him authority to lead the order. For him, they were not simply visions but actual human beings who safeguarded occult wisdom.

Others, including William Butler Yeats, leaned toward a more visionary interpretation. Yeats wrote of encounters with spiritual beings during astral work and believed the Secret Chiefs were intelligences on higher planes of existence. In this view, they were not ordinary humans but archetypal guides accessible through ritual and meditation.

Later members of the Stella Matutina often described the Astral Masters as inner‑plane contacts, beings encountered during astral projection or magical vision work. They were seen as guardians of the tradition, transmitting teachings through inspiration rather than physical meetings. This interpretation made them more like spiritual archetypes than hidden adepts.

A striking example of this shift is Dr. Robert Felkin’s concept of the Sun Masters. Felkin believed that the Golden Dawn’s Secret Chiefs were not only hidden adepts but also accessible through visionary contact. In his interpretation, the Sun Masters were a particular class of inner‑plane teachers—radiant figures associated with the solar principle. They were guardians of light, transmitting inspiration and guidance to initiates advanced enough in magical training to perceive them. The solar symbolism was deliberate: the Sun represented illumination, life, and the central ordering force of the cosmos, so the Sun Masters embodied the highest form of astral guidance. Felkin’s Sun Masters were unique in that they were said to answer questions directly, as Ellic Howe noted in Magicians of the Golden Dawn. For Felkin, this gave the Stella Matutina continuity and legitimacy: its teachings were not merely human inventions but transmissions from higher intelligences aligned with cosmic order.

Felkin himself was described by Hope Hughes, Chief of the Bristol temple in the 1930s, as “all things to all people.” He believed Christian Rosenkreutz was a real figure and an avatar, and he held firm faith in the Sun Masters as astral entities. Felkin also considered that he had met a master both in the astral and in the flesh, in the person of Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, Solicitor General of Ceylon. When Ramanathan traveled to England, he was celebrated as a living master, or as close as one could come to one, not so much for his direct teaching as for his inspirational presence. Notably, Farr, Bennett, and Crowley journeyed to Ceylon to study with him, regarding him as the highest form of teacher.

After Felkin’s death, his wife continued the visionary tradition. In the late 1920s she reported an astral contact who foretold that a master would come to New Zealand to teach. Acting on this, she established the Tauhara Trust, acquiring a large parcel of land on the shores of Lake Taupo in the center of New Zealand’s North Island. Around 1936, Charles McDowell, a theosophist from Australia, received the same message and traveled to New Zealand to assist. Decades later, after the sale of Whare Ra in 1978, the proceeds were transferred to the Tauhara Trust, which became a conference center. The belief in the coming master remained strong among Whare Ra members well into the 1980s, even though no tangible evidence of such a figure ever appeared. Considerable money and effort went into preparing for the arrival of a Secret Chief in New Zealand, but to this day no master has manifested. The Tauhara Trust is now maintained by custodians whose beliefs differ from those of Whare Ra, and the original reason for its establishment has largely faded from memory.

Within the esoteric framework of the Golden Dawn and Stella Matutina, however, the Astral Masters and Secret Chiefs were profoundly real. For some, they were literal hidden adepts; for others, they were visionary guides encountered in altered states. The diversity of descriptions shows that the Astral Masters functioned as a mythic source of authority and inspiration, giving the orders legitimacy and a sense of connection to a timeless, invisible hierarchy of wisdom.