The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

The first full-length narrative history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the esoteric society at the centre of the 19th- and 20th-century rise of the occult.

Occultism has long been associated with the visual and literary arts, the wild and the avant-garde, and nowhere was this more embodied than in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Founded in London in the 1880s by Freemasons, it was the world’s most famous secret society. In this fresh, bracing narrative history, Felix John Taylor recounts its rise and fall through the men and women for whom the Order represented both an alternative to traditional Victorian religious values and a space for imaginative exploration.

Devoted to the study of ceremonial magic, the Order attracted a long list of eminent writers, actors and visual artists to its ranks. It looked towards a ‘golden age’ of spiritual enlightenment, with progressive ideals – class and gender were no barriers to entry – and teachings from tarot to alchemy and astral projection that were gradually unveiled as members ascended ten ‘grades’.

While its temples were formally spaces to practice magic, Taylor finds that the Golden Dawn was at various points more an arts club or society of writers. Political schisms and sex scandals ensured that it was short-lived, yet for many members its occult practices came to shape their work and influence the wider culture over a much longer period.

The Golden Dawn, with its role in the foundation of Wicca and modern developments in magic, is a vital thread connecting Victorian esotericism to the present-day occult revival. This visually arresting, meticulously researched literary history teases out these connections, while offering a compelling account of the Order and its members.

Review

'A fascinating tour of the explosion of ritual magic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the extraordinary associated flowering of creativity and imagination that shaped the way we think about the occult today. Esoteric symbolism, solemn costumed ceremonies, sex scandals, occultist infighting, astral projection sessions in the London suburbs and alchemist laboratories hidden in country vicarages ... this vivid and enthralling history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn summons it all back to life with a true medium's art' - Fiona Robertson, author of 'Stonelands'

'A lucid and useful study of the relationship between the modern ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn tradition and the literary arts, showing the manner in which the former stimulated and transmuted into the latter' - Ronald Hutton, author of 'Pagan Britain'

About the Author

Felix John Taylor is a librarian at The Queen’s College, Oxford. He completed his PhD at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, on Welsh mythology and folklore in twentieth-century literature, and while there oversaw a reading group devoted to the occult in literature. He has previously held positions at the Bodleian Modern Languages and Arts & Archaeology libraries, and currently writes for the Literary Review.