Florence Farr's Assumption of the Godform

Farr describes the formula (identification with the god) rather than a numbered drill; the steps below render her method faithfully and practicably, in the Golden Dawn manner she taught.

1. Choose the godform and know it. Select one deity that personifies the quality you seek (Farr’s central example is Osiris, the “Perfected One,” for regeneration and mastery; others embody wisdom, protection, etc.). Study its image, colours, posture, emblems, and myth first — Farr spent days with the Book of the Dead and museum sources precisely so the form would be exact. Accuracy of the image matters. 2. Still and centre yourself. Quiet room, settled breath, a few minutes of silence to clear the ordinary self, as in her vision work.
3. Build the form around you in imagination. See the deity’s figure — its crown, colours, stance, regalia — vividly, life-size, coinciding with your own body. Farr’s principle: the ritualist’s most potent act is “the identification of the Ritualist with the God whose power he was invoking.” You are not looking at the god; you are putting it on.
4. Take the posture and the attributes. Physically adopt the god’s stance and gesture. Feel its qualities flow into and as you — its bearing, power, serenity, authority. Let your felt sense shift from “me imagining a god” to “I am this form.”
5. Declare the identification. In the Egyptian manner Farr cites, affirm the union — e.g. the Book of the Dead formula “I am Osiris…” — claiming the god’s nature and powers as your own for the working. (Farr: the magician can thus “see, speak, act and command as the gods themselves.”)
6. Hold the state and do the work. While fully in the assumed form, perform the meditation, invocation, contemplation, or vision the rite is for — acting from the god’s standpoint rather than your everyday self.
7. Divest the form and return. This step is essential and explicit in Golden Dawn practice: deliberately let the godform dissolve, withdraw the identification, and re-affirm your ordinary self. Ground thoroughly. You borrow the form; you do not keep it. (Sourcing note: the formula of identification, “I am Osiris,” “awaken and cultivate the dormant faculties of human nature,” “the Perfected One,” and “see, speak, act and command as the gods” reflect Farr’s Egyptian Magic and the Book of the Dead she drew on. The divestment/grounding step is standard Golden Dawn godform practice; numbering is a faithful operationalisation of her formula, not a verbatim list.)

Florence Farr (1860–1917), Soror S.S.D.D., Golden Dawn Praemonstratrix, published Egyptian Magic in 1896 in Westcott’s Collectanea Hermetica series; it grew directly out of her Golden Dawn ritual work and her study of E.

A. Wallis Budge’s Book of the Dead translation in the British Museum. → (Golden Dawn / occultists). The technique is the Order’s core assumption of godforms, with deep roots in Egyptian funerary theurgy (the deceased identifying with Osiris) and Neoplatonic theurgy (henosis / union with the divine).

It carries forward into all later ceremonial magic (Crowley’s “I am” identifications, modern Pagan “drawing down,” deity yoga’s structural cousin in the East) and, in secular form, into “act as if you already are” embodiment work.

Golden Dawn / Thelemic godform assumption — the direct lineage; assume the form, declare identity, do the work, divest.

• Tibetan deity yoga (sadhana) — generating oneself as the deity with divine pride, then dissolving the form; a striking structural parallel (build → identify → dissolve).
• Neville Goddard “I AM” / assuming the state — assuming the feeling of being the wished-for self; secular-mystical cousin.
• Method acting / embodied role — inhabiting a character until their state becomes felt; Farr was herself a celebrated actress.
• Drawing down the moon (modern Pagan) — invoking and embodying a deity within the practitioner.

Skipping the study. A vague godform yields a vague state. Farr’s whole approach was precise images from real sources — build the form accurately.

• Forgetting to divest. The single most important refinement. Carrying the godform out of the working invites inflation (“I am a god”) or disorientation. Always dissolve it and re-affirm the ordinary self.
• Confusing the god’s voice with literal command. Insight gained “as the god” is your own deeper material in costume — weigh it with ordinary judgement afterward.
• Forcing intensity. Let the identification deepen naturally through posture, image and feeling; straining produces self-consciousness, not state-change.
• Choosing a form whose qualities you can’t hold. Start with a benign, integrative figure (Osiris/regeneration, a calm sovereign form), not anything wrathful or destabilising.
• No grounding after. Eat, move, re-orient. Don’t drive or make big decisions straight out of deep assumption.