Bennett, Allan

Allan Bennett

Allan Bennett: Occultist, Golden Dawn Adept, and Teacher of Aleister Crowley

Allan Bennett (1872–1923) was an English occultist and one of the principal members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Among his peers, Bennett was regarded as a man of exceptional magical skill, and he became an early teacher of Aleister Crowley.

Bennett’s father died when he was young, and he was raised in the Catholic faith by his widowed mother. He suffered from asthma throughout his life, trained as an analytical chemist, and worked as an electrical engineer. Drawn to occultism and magic, Bennett joined the Golden Dawn and rose to the rank of Adeptus Minor by the age of twenty-three.

His magical motto was Yehi Auor, meaning “Let there be light.” Charismatic and intense, Bennett was said to radiate spiritual energy and power. He became renowned for his skill in ceremonial magic, especially the evocation of the spirit Taphthartharath to visible form, a ritual said to have involved the use of a pickled snake’s head in a “hell broth” of ingredients.

Bennett also possessed a Blasting Rod, a glass rod taken from a chandelier and consecrated with magical power. The rod was mounted in a wooden handle painted with words of power, which Bennett changed according to the purpose of his magical operations.

A Theosophist acquaintance once ridiculed the idea of a blasting rod and reportedly found himself paralysed for fourteen hours, an apparent lesson from Bennett. Bennett also helped Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one of the founding chiefs of the Golden Dawn, organise the order’s materials, some of which were later published by Crowley as Liber 777.

In the spring of 1899, Bennett met Aleister Crowley when Crowley was brought to a Golden Dawn meeting by C. G. Jones. Both men were impressed with one another. Bennett believed Crowley to be under black magical psychic attack from a jealous William Butler Yeats, and together they devised a magical defence.

This friendship led to Bennett moving into Crowley’s London flat on Chancery Lane. While living there, Bennett taught Crowley magical skills and shared Golden Dawn material with him. This was technically a violation of Bennett’s initiation oath, as Crowley had not yet reached the grade of Adeptus Minor. It is possible, however, that Mathers may have given Bennett his tacit permission.

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Toward the end of 1899, Crowley said that Bennett would die of his asthma unless he moved to a warmer climate. Crowley had enough money to pay for such a move, but Bennett refused, believing that magical knowledge should be given as a gift and not purchased. Instead, Crowley evoked the demon Buer, whose powers were reputed to include healing “all distempers in man.” Crowley was assisted in the ritual by Jones.

Buer appeared, but only as a helmeted head and a leg. The ritual failed to improve Bennett’s health. Crowley then persuaded one of his former mistresses to give Bennett the money he needed. Bennett turned to Buddhism and left England to study in the East. He gave up all his possessions and joined a Sangha, a spiritual community, taking the spiritual names Swami Maitrananda and later Ananda Metteyya.

He travelled to Burma. Years later, he returned to England as a Buddhist missionary and founded a Buddhist lodge. Eventually, Bennett tired of Buddhism and returned to Western occultism. He retired to a small room, unfurnished except for a table, his blasting rod, a few books, and machinery with which he hoped to establish communication with the astral plane.

Living again in England proved disastrous for Bennett’s health. His asthma worsened, aggravated by his austere and impoverished lifestyle. He travelled to Liverpool and sought passage on a ship bound for a warmer climate, but the captain refused him because of the severity of his condition.

Bennett was sent into a fatal decline of asthmatic spasms and convulsions. In his final days, he resigned from his Buddhist lodge. He died in 1923, leaving the locations of his manuscripts and other writings known only to a few close friends and associates.

Allan Bennett remains one of the most fascinating figures of the Golden Dawn: a magician, mystic, teacher, Buddhist missionary, and occult experimenter whose life moved between ceremonial magic, Eastern spirituality, astral work, and the hidden search for light.