(full name: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn)
Major Hermetic magick lodge of the Victorian era, founded in 1888 by William Woodman, William Wynn Westcott and S.L. MacGregor Mathers. Its members included such luminaries as W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne, Aleister Crowley, A.E. Waite, and Florence Farr.
The Golden Dawn drew inspiration primarily from Qabalism, Egyptian/Masonic imagery, and Rosicrucianism to create the Western ceremonial/Hermetic framework that was picked up by later organizations such as the O.T.O., A∴A∴, and more recent groups. It also drew some inspiration from Spiritualism and its offshoot, Theosophy.
Aspects of the Golden Dawn’s system of hermetic magick were incorporated into early Gardnerian Wicca. Though some elements were later removed (after the initiation of Doreen Valiente), many aspects remained, and have worked their way into much of eclectic Paganism.
The Golden Dawn essentially originated the structures of modern Western ceremonial magick as we know them today. By its height, around 1895, it had nine lodges in cities from London to Edinburgh to Paris to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, with a total membership above 100 members.
From 1895 until 1900, the seeds of the group’s own demise were sown within it, owing largely to personailty conflicts between the ever-irascible Mathers and the other leaders of the order. Mathers’ friendship with Crowley and sponsorhip of his accession to the inner order – often cited as the reason for the group’s disintegration – was really only the spark that set off the powder-keg. From 1900 to 1903, the group underwent an agonizing and spectacular self-destruction, complete with resignations, forced expulsions, betrayals, curses, and public scandal. Amid these problems, Mathers revealed that the group’s supposed “mandate for creation by the Secret Chiefs” was a complete sham, based on forged documents. By 1903 a final schism occurred, splintering the Golden Dawn into various groups such as the Stella Matutina, the A.O. (Alpha et Omega), and A.O. spinoffs such as Dion Fortune’s Fraternity of Inner Light and Paul Foster Case’s Builders of the Adytum.
In 1937, Stella Matutina member Israel Regardie, deciding that organization was moribund and withering, published the complete corpus of Golden Dawn materials (at least those available to him, certainly a significant portion of the whole). The extant Golden-Dawn-based organizations, accustomed to certain levels of secrecy and hierarchy, couldn’t survive the shock of suddenly having their rituals open-sourced. However, Regardie’s action ensured that the knowledge and the core of the tradition and system survived, even at the expense of individual groups.
Various groups currently in existence use the words “Golden Dawn” in their names, but these are generally taken to mean that the groups practice “Golden-Dawn-style” systems, not that they claim to actually be the original Golden Dawn. Indeed, most are quite up-front about neither being that organization, nor even tracing any sort of direct lineage to it.
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