In short, very, but perhaps more so.
It is true that under the early Stella Matutina a review of the Outer Order ceremonies did take place, resulting in some changes to the Golden Dawn originals. These revised rituals were used at Whare Ra.
In hindsight I might consider them relatively new to the Order, but the senior adepti that assisted the review none-the-less had actually been working the system for as long as the Order had been going (less than 10 years for the R.R. et A.C.), and thus had at least relevant experience to do so. Some speeches were modified, some added, but essentially they amounted to just ‘fiddling around the edges’. The ceremonies remain unmistakably Golden Dawn, even if the Order had changed its name.
Meakin supposedly penned the Portal, and an excellent job was done of it. Some I know view it as the jewel in the crown. This can’t be said of the original. The Adeptus Minor ceremony remained unchanged, but new ceremonies were developed for the grades above Adeptus Minor as the Order flourished and grew.
I do not know if the Golden Dawn developed the god forms for the rituals above Neophyte, and the Stella Matutina simply adopted them like so many, many other practices; or if the S.M. turned up the dial and activated the ceremonies magically by overlaying them with god forms as a natural development. The whole approach, however, is uniquely Golden Dawn.
Grade meditations, daily rhythms, and the allocutions (from Waite) were all additions to the Stella Matutina modus operandi, and did not exist in the G.D.
As for the instructional material, which is the vast bulk of the Golden Dawn corpus, a great many are almost entirely verbatim from the Golden Dawn era. For instance, I transcribed my copy of the Z2 from Fiat Lux dated 1954, from Finem Respice dated 1897.
How to intone the prayer to the Lord of the Universe; what pose the Kerux stands in at the Mystic repast; where the Sentinel places their sword at the Equinox; these teachings and methods have not been recorded anywhere – only demonstrated through practice and observation. Are they Golden Dawn, or Stella Matutina, or Smaragdum Thalasses? We may never know. But being ritual, and ritual being precise and repetitive, these practices have likely remained unchanged from the original. It certainly feels this way to me.
Considering the 66 years of working with the “Golden Dawn” system, Whare Ra was, in some ways, more Golden Dawn than the Golden Dawn itself. In ritual at least, I doubt that Frank Salt would have felt out of place in the Isis Urania Temple, nor Florence Farr at Whare Ra.
Mainstream history records that the Golden Dawn had its demise in 1900. To the members of Whare Ra it was still active and very much alive.
Kasmillos
Note that the accompanying image is from Westcott’s diary, which is housed in the Masonic Library in London. You can see that he mentions for January 17 1916 “I received from Felkin his German Grade 7=4. This agreed to my notes on the Continental Rosicrucians in my Data.”. Felkin had maintained regular contact with Westcott, and Frank Salt understood that Westcott had assisted Felkin with the designs for the Tarot deck issued to each Adept. It would seem that Felkin and the Stella Matutina had the tacit support of one of the original Golden Dawn Chiefs.
