8 – Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
If our previous secret societies were based on political and societal goals, then we must take something of a departure to discuss our next group. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn took cues from the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians – indeed their three founders were members of both the Masons and the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, the English wing of the Rosicrucians – but where they went with them is quite unlike any of the other societies previously discussed.
We’ve come across the idea of hermetics before, but the manner in which the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn went about furthering the unity of origin of all existing religions bears little resemblance what Christian Rosenkreutz et al had in mind. In fact, it might be better to think of the Golden Dawn as the progenitor to many modern religions, particularly those based on the occult, as they provide the origin of many of the symbols, rituals and practices that now mark the Wicca movement and modern occultism.
The origin of the Golden Dawn might have come from three Rosicrucian Masons, but their interests were very much based on the supernatural rather than the traditionally religious. Founders William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Lidell MacGregor Mathers were brought together by a fascination with magic, esotericism (the study of mysticism) and the pagan traditions of Western Europe. They placed a strong focus on studying the so-called Cypher Manuscripts, in which it was said was written spells by which one could learn to understand the four elements as well as alchemy, astronomy, tarot and other magical skills.
From the founding of the First Temple in London in 1888, the movement grew quickly and became something of a fad in late-Victorian Britain. Women were admitted alongside men and would go on to be some of the most famous and influential members, anathema to the patriarchal order of the time. Within a decade of foundation, the Golden Dawn could boast temples in Edinburgh and Paris as well as plenty of English towns, while membership included notables of the time such as future Nobel Prize-winning poet William Butler Yeats, Dracula creator Bram Stoker and Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle as well as Aleister Crowley, one of the most famous occultists of all time.
The Golden Dawn would collapse almost as quickly as it had risen. The founders gradually left: Westcott ceded control to Mathers in 1896 after his colleagues discovered his membership, while Mathers himself was marginalized as other members thought he had become too close to Crowley, who was considered strange even within a group of committed occultists. Yeats expressed his dissatisfaction with the direction of the order in 1901 and resigned, leaving Mathers flying the flag for the Golden Dawn into the 20th Century.
The organization would limp on – there is still a group in existence to this day – but it would never regain the power and status that it held at the turn of the 20th century.