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112 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
whole magical tradition and became familiar with
Barrett’s The Magus. Under the pen name Eliphas
Levi, Constant published Dogma and Ritual of
High Magic, History of Magic, and Key of the Great
Mysteries in the 1850s. Levi over the next decades
became the teacher of members of such diverse
groups as Rosicrucians, ritual magicians, and
witches. In mid-nineteenth century England,
Spiritualism and what was to become Theosophy
were having a major cultural impact. Members of
these groups said they received messages from the
world of the spirits. By 1855, the Yorkshire
Spiritual Telegraph, England’s first spiritualist
newspaper, was being published. This helped to
stir popular interest in the supernatural. Around
this time, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia
(SRIA) was formed in England in 1865 by Robert
Wentworth Little. It was based on eighteenthcentury
Rosicrucian texts. Among its members
were Kenneth R. H. MacKenzie, Dr. Wynn
Westcott, and W. R. Woodman. Members of the
Societas were required to be Masons prior to
beginning their work. The magical writings of
Levi, the existence of the Societas Rosicruciana in
Anglia, and the continuing impact of speculative
Freemasonry provided fertile soil in which new
magical orders could grow. In 1885, the Reverend
A. F. A. Woodford inherited the magical manuscripts
owned by psychic Fred Hockley, upon
which the Order of the Golden Dawn (OGD)
would be built. SRIA member Dr. Wynn Westcott
decoded the manuscripts and S. L. MacGregor
Mathers (1854–1917), also an SRIA member,
systematized them into a useful form. The material
also contained the Nuremberg address of
Anna Sprengel, a Rosicrucian of high degree.
Mathers wrote to her and received voluminous
materials and the charter for the Isis-Urania
Temple. In 1888, the Isis-Urania Temple of the
Golden Dawn, the first temple representative of
the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, was
opened. Other temples were soon founded in
Edinburgh, Weston-super-Mare, Bradford, and
Paris. In 1887, Westcott left the Order of the
Golden Dawn and S. L. MacGregor Mathers took
complete control. Mathers had already gained a
wide reputation for his occult scholarship. He had
reworked Francis Barrett’s texts and translated and
edited the works of Abramelin the Mage
(1362–1460) to produce a clear and practical
magical text. He also published a book on the
cabala. An Egyptian Mass invoking Isis was
performed in Mathers’s home, which was
appointed like an Egyptian temple.
By 1892, Mathers had moved to Paris and was
conducting the OGD from there. Under Mathers’s
leadership, the order developed a ritual and worldview
from which other groups would create variations.
OGD’s system was called Western magic.
The basic idea was the Hermetic principle of the
correspondence of the microcosm (the human
being) and the macrocosm (the universe). Any
principle that exists in the universe also exists in
man. Standard practices include invocation and
evocation. Invocation is the calling down into the
self of a cosmic force with a purely psychological
result. Evocation is the calling up of that same
force from the depths of the self, and it may result
in objective physical phenomena. A second belief
is in the power of the will, which can be trained to
do anything. Central to magic is the will, its training
and activity.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn also
looked to other planes of existence, usually
referred to as astral planes. These planes are inhabited
by entities other than human beings who were
called secret chiefs. Mathers himself claimed to
have contacted the secret chiefs in 1892. The
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn adopted a
cabalistic initiation system wherein each grade was
given a numerical symbol related to the Tree of
Life. It is divided into the first order, with four
levels for neophytes and beginners; the second
order, with three advanced levels for humans; and
the third order, the order of the secret chiefs. Each
of these levels had its own rituals. To attain each
degree, the candidate had to prove he had
acquired competence in magical works, such as
invocation, evocation, crystal-reading, making
symbolic talismans, and astrology. Fraulein
Sprengel conferred all of the founders of the OGD
with the degree of Adeptus Exemptus, the highest
degree that human beings could attain.
The most famous member of the OGD was
Aleister Crowley, whose magical thought has come
to dominate modern magical practice. Reared in