The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: The Secret School That Shaped Modern Magic
On March 1, 1888, three Freemasons — William Wynn Westcott , William Robert Woodman , and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers — founded a magical order in London that would prove to be the most consequential single institution in the history of Western esotericism. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn lasted in its original form barely fifteen years before imploding in scandal and factional warfare. Yet the system it developed — a complete synthesis of Kabbalah, astrology, Tarot, alchemy, geomancy, ceremonial magic, Enochian magic, Egyptian religion, and Christian mysticism — became the framework on which virtually all subsequent Western magical practice has been built. Its members included a Nobel Prize-winning poet. A pioneering feminist novelist. A revolutionary occultist who shook the 20th century. A detective fiction writer. Several actors, artists, and intellectuals. And through the publication of its secrets by one disenchanted initiate, it gave the general public access to a ...