"The Golden Dawn is thought to have been formed about 1880 when a member of the hermetic Rosicrucians discovered some cipher documents of magical importance in either a Freemason or a Rosicrucian library."
     -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion

"A friend, Dr. Woodman, showed [S. L. Mathers] certain ritual texts he had come across in some old books. At Mather's suggestion Woodman, himself the leader of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, showed the texts to Rosicrucian colleagues in Nuremberg where they were recognized as genuine documents pertaining to a German branch of Rosicrucianism called the L... L... L... (Licht, Liebe und Leben)."
     - David Conway, Ritual Magic

"These documents were translated from their arcane language into English by Dr. William Westcott [a Freemason] and MacGregor Mathers..."
     -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion

"While leafing through the manuscripts, Westcott supposedly found a letter, written in German, advising anyone who desired further information to contact Sapiens Dominabitur Astris - Latin for 'the wise one will be ruled by the stars' - and subsequently known in Golden Dawn circles as SDA. The letter said SDA could be reached through a certain Fraulein Anna Sprengel, for whom a German address was thoughtfully provided."
     - Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects

"The Imperatrix of the German Order, one Anna Sprengel, authorized the Englishmen to set up a British Chapter to be known as the Golden Dawn."
     - David Conway, Ritual Magic

"Evidence strongly suggests, however, that the cipher manuscripts, far from being rooted in antiquity, were written sometime after 1870, probably by Westcott himself."
"There seems little doubt that SDA and Fraulein Sprengel were fictional characters and that their communications were Westcott forgeries; once the Golden Dawn was fairly well started, Westcott announced the sad demise of Anna Sprengel, and Sapiens Dominabitur Astiris disappeared along with her."
     - Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects

There is evidence, however, that Westcott DID have links to a secretive Qabalist group in Germany:
"In a book by the noted Jewish Qabalist Gersholm Scholem entitled, From Berlin to Jerusalem, Gerald Suster discovered and pointed out that there existed a Frankfurt Jewish Masonic lodge that was involved in Qabalistic studies called 'Chabrath Zereh Boqer Aour'. In English, it translates to: 'Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn'.
"This is too similar to the name of the Order given by Westcott in the history lecture of the Order as:'Chabrath Zerek Aour Bokhr'. This translates into 'Society of the Shining Light of the Dawn'. This is slightly different to the name given in the Cipher Manuscripts as 'Chbrth ZRCh AVR BDQ'.
     - "The Truth About the Cipher Manuscripts"

This Jewish Masonic lodge practiced the "Rite of Strict Observance" by Baron Von Hund which teaches about the 'Secret Chiefs' - a mystic line of transmitters of secret knowledge reaching back into antiquity.

"In 1817, a lodge was formed in London...under the auspices of the Duke of Sussex. He was the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England. This lodge was also a Jewish Masonic and Qabalistic lodge. It was directly connected with the mother lodge in Frankfurt. "
     - "The Truth About the Cipher Manuscripts"

"In 1850 the very old Rosicrucian lodge at Frankfurt and Main fell into abeyance; in this lodge the first Lord Lytton was received into Adeptship and became imbued with ideas he displayed in his novel Zanoni."
     - Dr. William Westcott

"As to the connection of the Golden Dawn founded in 1887 and the early lodge in London formed in 1817, the founders of the Golden Dawn stated that the Order did indeed have a lodge in London around 1810. It is extremely possible that the lodge worked more as a study group from 1810 to 1817, before it became a formal lodge."
"The leader of the lodge formed in London around 1810 was an obscure individual named Faulk. In actuality, he was the son of Rabbi de Falk or Cain Chenuel Falk who was a practicing Qabalist and Magician."

"...Soror S.D.A., Fraulein Sprengel; was she real or a code word derived from the German Masonic word 'sprengelrecht?' This word basically means 'territonal jurisdiction'. If Westcott and Mathers were actually given a direct charter, then it is possible they would have been exposed to the word 'sprengelrecht'."
     - "The Truth About the Cipher Manuscripts"

The Short History of the Order

"Chosen around 1888 by fellow occultists Westcott and Woodman to develop the Golden Dawn's secret rituals, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers emerged as the sect's most prominent leader. Mathers claimed contact with Secret Chiefs, who instructed him in ritual magic."
"He said they communicated with him by clairvoyance, by devices similar in principle to Ouija boards, by 'Direct Voice audible to my external ears and those of Vestigia', and by showing him old books to copy."
     - Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects

"The Golden Dawn rituals that derived from the Rosicrucian documents, plus others added later by Golden Dawn members, drew upon a vast range of mystical and religious tradition. Hebrew Kabbalism played a very important role as did elements of Babylonian, Greek, Egyptian, Hindu, and Buddhist mythology. There were also certain strong influences of Christian mysticism.
"The Society was organized into ten grades or levels of magical attainment, beginning with the Neophyte and progressing upward to the Ipsissimus, whose knowledge surpassed human understanding. Presiding of the Golden Dawn was a Grand Master who was directly responsible to the Secret Chiefs, although it is unclear whether this latter title represented human or superhuman agencies."
     -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion

The Order of the Golden Dawn's "members included Annie Horniman, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machin and A.E. Waite. The rituals set out in the ancient documents formed the basis of the ceremonial used by the Golden Dawn in their Isis-Urania Temple, but there is evidence that Mathers contributed much from his own head and his private researches in the British Museum."
     - David Conway, Ritual Magic

"In 1892, Mathers relocated to Paris and, purportedly under the guidance of the Secret Chiefs, found a second, or inner, order of the Golden Dawn."
"The rituals of the new core order were marvelous Mathers creations. For example, in the initiation rite of the RR et AC [Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aurea Crucis], the candidate entered an eight-foot-high, seven-sided vault of the adepts, its walls covered with Cabalistic symbols in colors of occult significance. The vault accommodated at least four persons, along with an altar - and a coffin in which reposed the body of Christian Rosenkreutz, usually portrayed by Mathers or Westcott....The dramatic climax to the initiation rite was a terrible vow of secrecy, the violation of which would result in 'a deadly and hostile current of will set in motion by the Secret Chiefs of this Order, by which I might fall slain and paralyzed'."
     - Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects

"Aleister Crowley, already learned in occult science, joined the Golden Dawn in 1898 and quickly rose to prominence within the order."
     -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion

"Crowley's behavior, however, was too outrageous for most of the London members, who disapproved of his blatant sexual activities. In January of 1900, the Isis-Urania Temple refused to obey an instruction from Mathers to initiate Crowley into the second order, the RR et AC. Mathers was livid. He invited Crowley to Paris and initiated him in that city."
The Golden Dawn officers in London rebelled. Mathers "threatened to smite the insurgents with a Punitive Current' generated by the Hidden and Secret Chiefs. Then he dispatched none other than Aleister Crowley to suppress the rebellion."
In the "Battle of Blythe Road", Crowley was ejected by a constable after he broke into the Order's London quarters (located at 36 Blyth Road). "On April 19, Crowley reappeared in Blyth Road...He was clad in a Highland dress, wearing a black mask of Osiris over his face, and carried a dagger. The rebels got rid of him by again calling the police. Crowley returned to Paris, where he found Mathers shaking some dried peas in a sieve and calling upon the demons Beelzebub and Typhon-Set to work their malevolent might against those who opposed him "
     - Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects

These attempts at black magic failed and the Londoners expelled Mathers.

"One of Mathers' greatest accomplishments as a magician-scholar was his translation of a reputedly ancient Hebrew grimoire called The Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage. This book is a unified magical system whose preparations and rituals take about a year to complete. After Mathers translated it, he tried it out. But, supposedly, Mathers was already in disfavor with the Secret Chiefs, and this, along with his lack of spiritual readiness, not only prevented him from successfully gaining magical knowledge from the Abra-Melin operation but also caused him to fall into dissolution. He turned to drink, began forcing his wife to model in the nude for Paris artists, and eventually lost his effectiveness as a magical leader."
     -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion

"After about two years, the temple split along factional lines: Members whose main orientation was mysticism kept control of the temple under the leadership of A. E. Waite, while Yeats and others who were interested mostly in magic realigned themselves as a splinter sect called the Stella Matutina, or Morning Star. Meanwhile, several temples that remained loyal to the departed Mathers took to calling themselves the Alpha and Omega, a GD spin-off that proved to be short-lived.
"The Stella Matutina limped along into the 1930s, although Yeats himself, fed up with nonstop bickering in the faltering organization, withdrew from an active role in 1923."
     - Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects

"You have made the darkness our enemy. We - we exchange civilities with the world beyond."
     - William Butler Yeates

"Crowley brought out the Golden Dawn documents in ten beautifully bound and printed magazines called The Equinox, which began publication in the first decade of the century, was interrupted by World War I, and resumed for a short time thereafter."
In 1937 "another Golden Dawn member named Israel Regardie undertook a massive four-volume simplification of the rituals" - entitled The Golden Dawn.
     -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion

Other Order of the Golden Dawn Sites

Golden Dawn Resources      A list of WWW and ftp sits from the New Age Web Works The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Int'l.      Information for those interested in joining plus a collection of articles about the Order The Truth About the Cipher Manuscripts      A detailed inquiry into the origin and purpose of the cipher manuscripts

Hyperlinks

·John Dee
·The Great Beast
·Hermes Trismegistus
·Lovecraft's Necronomicon
·Prieure de Sion