The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

This is only a brief introduction to the long and complex history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was first created in 1888. The driving force behind the creation was Dr William Wynn Westcott, Master Mason and Secretary General of the Sociatas Rosicruciana in Anglia or the Rosicrucian Society in England. Westcott had the help of two other colleagues; Dr. William Robert Woodman, a retired physician and leading member of the Sociatas Rosicruciana in Anglia; and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, 'the true magician of the Golden Dawn, S.L. MacGregor Mathers, was an accomplished ritualist..... Mathers was the one most responsible for making the Golden Dawn a truly magical and initiatory Order'.

Dr. William Wynn Westcott S.L. MacGregor Mathers Dr. William Robert Woodman

The rituals and knowledge of the Golden Dawn are heavily influenced by the cipher manuscript. The cipher, decoded by Westcott, proved to be a series of rituals of an occult order. Westcott 'fleshed out' the outlines to create full rituals.

In 1891, an 'inner order' was created by Mathers after the death of Woodman. This inner order was the Ordo Roseae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis (a.k.a the R.R et A.C), or the “Order of the Rose of Ruby and the Cross of Gold.” This second order is where magickal rituals were put into practice, unlike the first order which was more theoretical and made little use of magick, save the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. The work of the R.R et A.C was extensive. Many members couldn't complete the training, where as those who did ended up with a full education in Western Hermetic magick.

The Golden Dawn had many members in it's time, including the poet W.B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, , Constance Wilde, and the infamous Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley became deadly enemies with MacGregor, eventually leading to his expulsion from the Golden Dawn, and the creation of his own order, called the Ordo Astrum Argentinum (O.A.A), or Order of the Silver Star. When Mather's died in 1918, many of his friends believed that Crowley had placed a death spell upon him. The Golden Dawn then became littered with problems, scandal, and broken relationships. There were feuds, scandals, and conspiracies, and many members left. The future of the order looked bleak.

Israel Regardie

In the 1930's, a man names Israel Regardie, the secretary of Aleister Crowley, published the works of the Golden Dawn which gave the order a new life, ending the need to hand copy all of their material. Many of the order were thankful, a small minority objected to the publication. The publication of the rituals and traditions of the Golden Dawn had a great influence on many magickal orders to come. Regardi is hailed as the preserver of the traditions of the Golden Dawn.

Sources :

The pictures also came from the Hermetic Golden Dawn website.

Some other snippets of information came from the books "The Devil and all his Works" by Dennis Wheatley(1971) and "Mind and Magic : Am Illustrated Encyclopedia f the Mysterious and Unexplained" by Francis X King (1991).

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