Today is the anniversary of the founding of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was chartered on this day in 1888.
Golden Dawn was a nineteenth century Masonic-styled initiatory group dedicated to “Hermetic” magical practice- that is, occult theurgical magick. The group consisted of two orders, patterned after the Kabbalistic Tree of Life- one outer “occult society” represented by the lower sephiroth, and an inner order of adepts, represented by the upper.
The magick of the Golden Dawn was based on the work of medieval and Elizabethan era kabbalah, ritual magic, and spiritual alchemy, with an emphasis on the Enochian workings of John Dee and Edward Kelly. The initial teachings of the order were based on a document known as the “Cipher Manuscript,” a coded series of lectures on magick, Tarot, and Kabbalistic gematria.
Members of the Golden Dawn included founders Wynn Westcott, MacGregor Mathers, and William Woodman, Poet WB Yeats, actress Florence Farr, author Arthur Machen, as well as prominent occultists Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley, Arthur Edward Waite, and Israel Regardie.
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