In Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn‘s Neophyte ritual, this is the name of the guardian of the West. The role played by the Hiereus in the Neophyte ceremony of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Hiereus guards the pathway into the darkness in the West. The initiate is challenged on the point of a sword to admit the Hiereus’ name and the Hegemon answers on behalf of the initiate’s own soul:
“Darkness is thy Name, thou Great One of the Path of the Shades”
Later in the same ritual, the West is referred to as the place where there is the Guardian against the multitudes that sleep during the light and awaken at twilight. This is probably the same guardian.
I am often left with the impression that this writing has a connection to Florence Farr or that it felt powerful to her and filled her visions. In her own writing, she often used words like “the Great One of” and used adjectives as nouns, but most of the order’s initiation rituals should have been written before she joined since she was around the 88th member. Originally however this ritual would have been written by Mathers or Westcott most likely the former. The modern ritual however is taken from the Stella Matutina which might have been slightly different.
I cannot explain why but my own intuition leads me to feel that these were some of the guardians that the women who wrote so little of the orders notes were able to communicate with in their visionary states. This guardian guarded the Western path where the initiate might be able to access their inner unknown, once they had elucidated their ego. Crossing beforehand seems as if the initiate would go from darkness to darker darkness and not know what they were missing. But by commanding both guardians in the same ritual opens the path to the light and the door in the opposite directions so there is darkness to be elucidated by the light. Perhaps the doorway to the light is not enough alone and the light needs somewhere to go. Please understand however this is mostly speculation.
Why would they need to open the pathway to darkness?
The majority of Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn rituals occurs within the Ruakh or the breath of the spirit. I think this is more noticeable because the officers all have names beginning of with H the most breathy of all letters. This is essentially energy that can be manipulated just like the prana of yoga which is also has a name associated with the breath. Ruakh not only has a sound like breathing but it means breath or wind. A bit off topic, when I was young my grandma used to call me by the Arabic equivalent. “RoHi” my soul or soul of my soul. It took has associations of breath.
Any way in yoga it is quite common to connect the prana with the apana and the upana. Like connecting up the high and lower souls. I believe that this ritual might be designed to take place in the Ruakh and not only must the Ruakh need connecting to the Neshamah (or high soul), in order to experience the divine light on a more dark level it should be similarly connected to the Nephesh the more fleshly and solid part of the soul. I think that darker side of the soul is through the West door guarded by Darkness: the great one of the path of shade.
The opposite guardian is that of the East, Light dawning in Darkness, the Light of a Golden Day.