Imagination · “Feel It Real”
The Sphere Working
Through sustained group (or solo) visualisation, build a shared inner ‘sphere’ bearing the Tree of Life, position oneself in relation to it, and draw a current of light through it — to harmonise the participants, focus a collective intention, and develop disciplined astral imagination.
Sphere working: Company of twelve (each a Zodiac sign) around a central seer — or solo.
(1) Build a shared luminous sphere/egg in imagination.
(2) Project the Tree of Life onto it.
(3) Each holds their station, linking the single image.
(4) Draw a current of light through the Tree toward the aim.
(5) Seer receives; (6) close and ground. Know the Tree cold; hold the image steady, not forced.
What it is
Florence Farr — actress, writer, and one of the most accomplished practical magicians of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn — led a secret inner circle of skilled scryers she called the Sphere Group in the mid-1890s.
Its signature practice was a disciplined feat of coordinated astral visualisation: a ring of trained members would each, in imagination, take a fixed place around a great luminous sphere, upon which was projected the Tree of Life, and together build, hold, and energise that shared inner image — drawing a current of light through it toward a chosen spiritual aim.
It is one of the clearest historical examples of group creative visualisation in the Western tradition, and (adapted for one person) a powerful exercise in sustained, structured astral imagination using the Qabalistic Tree as its frame.
The Method
Reconstructed from the Sphere Group’s instructions as preserved in the Golden Dawn papers and described by historians:
- Set the company and the centre. Classically the group numbered twelve members, each assigned one sign of the Zodiac, arranged in their zodiacal order, with a thirteenth member acting as the seer (the receptive centre). (Solo: you hold all the positions in turn, or simply take the seer’s place.)
- Build the sphere in imagination. Each member visualises, vividly and in agreement, a great white/luminous sphere or egg suspended in the midst of the group — the shared astral “body” they will all inhabit and energise.
- Project the Tree of Life onto the sphere. Upon that sphere is imaged the Tree of Life — its ten Sephiroth and connecting paths — as the structuring pattern, so that the sphere becomes a living map of the Qabalistic cosmos.
- Take your station and link. Each member holds their assigned position (zodiacal point) steadily, seeing themselves placed around the sphere, and links their visualisation to the others’ so the single image is built up and sustained collectively rather than as twelve private pictures.
- Draw the light through. With concentrated, harmonised will and attention, the group draws a current of light down/through the Tree on the sphere — vivifying it and directing it toward the working’s purpose (healing, harmonising the Order, a specific magical aim, or simply strengthening the shared inner contact).
- The seer receives. The central seer remains receptive, reporting impressions or guiding the vision, while the ring sustains and feeds the image.
- Close and disperse. The sphere is consciously closed, the current grounded, and each member returns ordinary awareness — a clear ending to seal the working. (Sourcing note: a faithful summary of the Sphere Group’s known structure — twelve zodiacal members, a seer, a sphere bearing the Tree of Life, a drawn current of light. Exact wordings of the original papers are not reproduced; this is the reconstructed method.)
Source & Lineage
The practice was devised by Florence Farr (1860-1917) for the Sphere Group, an élite scrying circle she formed within the Golden Dawn’s Second Order in the mid-1890s.
Farr was the Order’s most active practical worker under Mathers, deeply versed in Egyptian godform work (she identified a personal “Ka” via a mummy-case in the British Museum) and in colour, symbol and astral practice; the Sphere Group also performed the famous evocation of the Mercurial spirit Taphthartharath.
The group’s instructions survive in the Golden Dawn / Stella Matutina papers and are detailed in modern scholarship (notably Mary K. Greer’s Women of the Golden Dawn, 1995). → (Florence Farr node); related.
Common refinements
Private pictures instead of a shared image. The core skill is agreeing on one image and building it together; twelve disconnected visualisations are not the Sphere working.
- No memorised Tree. The scaffold must be known cold — fumbling for where Tiphereth sits breaks the absorption. Learn the Tree first.
- Straining the image. Like all scrying, it works through relaxed, steady holding, not white-knuckled forcing.
- Skipping the close. A working this immersive needs a deliberate ending and grounding; leaving it “open” is destabilising.
- Solo overreach. Adapted for one person it is still advanced; build up from simpler Tree-of-Life meditation and pathworking first.
- Refinement: rehearse the sphere-and-Tree image in short solo sessions before attempting the full group current.