Social Victorians/People/Frederick Gardner

Also Known As

• Frederick Leigh Gardner
• Golden Dawn Inner Order motto: De Profundis Ad Lucem (D.P.A.L.) — "From the depths to the light" (Alastor; Küntz 190)
• Golden Dawn motto: Credo Experto (C.E.) — "Believe one who has had experience" (Alastor; Howe 151; Küntz 190)
• VIAF ID: 79157716 (Personal)

Demographics

• Nationality:

Family

• Frederick Leigh Gardner (31 March 1857 – 1930)
• Possibly Miriam Emma Gardner ("Divorce")

Acquaintances, Friends and Enemies

Friends

• Helena Blavatsky
• The Rev. W. A. Ayton, who officiated at Gardner's wedding (Harper 74 101)
• Annie Horniman
• Florence Farr
• Allan Bennett
• Charles Rosher
• W. Wynn Westcott
• MacGregor Mathers

Organizations

• London Stock Exchange
• Freemason
• Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), became librarian, Secretary General (11 October 1900–14 October 1904)
• The Isis-Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn, both the Outer and the Inner Order, and then later the Horus Temple.
• The Golden Dawn, the Sphere Group
• The Golden Dawn, the Alchemy Group

Timeline

1884, Gardner joined the Theosophical Society and married about this time, possibly to somebody he met there.

1889 May 29, "Gardner and his wife had just returned from a trip to Paris" (Howe 62).

1890, Gardner became a member of the Blavatsky Lodge.

1894 March 20, Gardner was initiated into the Golden Dawn, Isis-Urania Temple (Küntz 190).

1895 April 2, Gardner was initiated into the Inner Order of the Golden Dawn (Küntz 190).

1896 January 27, MacGregor Mathers wrote "a long letter" to Florence Farr, as she put it, "in reply to a letter of mine sending a charged drawing of the Egyptian and asking him if I were not grossly deceived by her claiming to be equal in rank to an 8-3 of our Order at the same time giving me numbers which I afterwards calculated to be correct for that grade. I still [on 17 January 1901] possess his letter approving altogether of my working with her, and saying it was necessary to make offerings & then all would be well -- &c &c" (Harper 74 221).

1896 May 13, 8:32 p.m. to 9:16 p.m., Farr, "with the assistance of Alan Bennett [sic], Charles Rosher and Frederick Leigh Gardner evoked the mercurial spirit Taphtharthareth to visible appearance — or so the four of them believed" (King 89 52; Howe 106). Farr, Rosher and Bennett were all sick — as Bennett put it, "afflicted with grim and horrible diseases"; Bennett wrote this "Ritual for the Evocation unto Visible Appearance of the Great Spirit Taphthartharath," or Mercury (Howe 106).

1896 November 23, Annie Horniman wrote Gardner: "Care 'Daffodil'" -- "What a time of it you must give S.S.D.D. [Farr]. She wants me to study Egyptian too, but I find one new language enough at a time and am hard at work at Italian" (Harper 74 225).

1897 March, Wynn Westcott wrote Frederick Gardner, telling him to ask Florence Farr to "choose a gentleman adept friend" to act as intermediary -- but not W. A. Ayton (Howe 169).

1897 September, Gardner was a member of the Horus Temple.

1898 sometime, Gardner financed the publication of MacGregor Mathers's translation of The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, as delivered by Abraham the Jew unto his son Lamech, A.D. 1458. (See Howe.) Picking up at least to some degree funding what Annie Horniman no longer would.

1900, Gardner took part in a Golden Dawn subgroup that practiced alchemy.

1901 January 17, Farr wrote to John Brodie-Innes:

• On Jan 27th 1896 I received a long letter from DDCF. [MacGregor Mathers] in reply to a letter of mine sending a charged drawing of the Egyptian and asking him if I were not grossly deceived by her claiming to be equal in rank to an 8-3 of our Order at the same time giving me numbers which I afterwards calculated to be correct for that grade. I still possess his letter approving altogether of my working with her, and saying it was necessary to make offerings & then all would be well - &c &c. I soon found there was a considerable prejudice against Egyptian Symbolism amongst the members of the Order and I began to hold my tongue after having recommended the various clearly marked groups of thinkers (such as Indian, Christian and so on) to work steadily and regularly by themselves each under some more advanced person. To you and to those who were not antipathetic I spoke more freely. When the splits in the Order itself became more and more pronounced my work with 3 others having become extremely interesting we resolved to carry out a plan suggested by an Egyptian for the holding together of a strong nucleus on purely Order lines. (Harper 74 221)
• One of the prejudiced ones was Gardner? In the 23 November 1896 "Care 'Daffodil'" letter, Horniman says, "What a time of it you must give S.S.D.D. [Farr]. She wants me to study Egyptian too, but I find one new language enough at a time and am hard at work at Italian" (Harper 74 225).

1903, Gardner retired from membership in the Stock Exchange.

1911, a Frederick Leigh Gardner petitioned for divorce from his wife, Miriam Emma Gardner, listing as co-respondent Frank W. D'Evelyn (Divorce Court File: 1544).

Bibliography

• Alastor
• "Divorce Court File: 1544. [1911] The National Archives. Reference: J 77/1040/1544. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8004819 (accessed July 2020).
• "Frederick Leigh Gardner." Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Leigh_Gardner (accessed July 2020).
• Harper 1974
• Howe
• Küntz

Frederick Gardner's Works

• Gardner, Frederick Leigh. Catalogue Raisonnè of Works on the Occult Sciences. 1912.