WThe Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a secret society devoted to the study and practice of the occult, metaphysics, and paranormal activities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Known as a magical order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was active in Great Britain and focused its practices on theurgy and spiritual development. Many present-day concepts of ritual and magic that are at the centre of contemporary traditions, such as Wicca and Thelema, were inspired by the Golden Dawn, which became one of the largest single influences on 20th century Western occultism.
WCharles "Chic" Cicero is a well-known author in the esoteric community. He was born in Buffalo, New York. He has been a practicing ceremonial magician for the past forty years.
WAleister Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life.
WGérard Anaclet Vincent Encausse, whose esoteric pseudonyms were Papus and Tau Vincent, was a Spanish-born French physician, hypnotist, and popularizer of occultism, who founded the modern Martinist Order.
WFlorence Beatrice Emery was a British West End leading actress, composer and director. She was also a women's rights activist, journalist, educator, singer, novelist, and leader of the occult order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. She was a friend and collaborator of Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats, poet Ezra Pound, playwright Oscar Wilde, artists Aubrey Beardsley and Pamela Colman Smith, Masonic scholar Arthur Edward Waite, theatrical producer Annie Horniman, and many other literati of London's fin de siècle era, and even by their standards she was "the bohemian's bohemian". Though not as well known as some of her contemporaries and successors, Farr was a "first-wave" feminist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; she publicly advocated for suffrage, workplace equality, and equal protection under the law for women, writing a book and many articles in intellectual journals on the rights of "the modern woman".
WDr Robert William Felkin FRSE LRCSE LRCP was a medical missionary and explorer, a ceremonial magician and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a prolific author on Uganda and Central Africa, and early anthropologist, with an interest in ethno-medicine and tropical diseases.
WDion Fortune was a British occultist, ceremonial magician, novelist and author. She was a co-founder of the Fraternity of the Inner Light, an occult organisation that promoted philosophies which she claimed had been taught to her by spiritual entities known as the Ascended Masters. A prolific writer, she produced a large number of articles and books on her occult ideas and also authored seven novels, several of which expound occult themes.
WA Garden of Pomegranates is a 160-page book, written by Israel Regardie in 1931. The first edition was published in 1932. The book was printed four times, with a second edition being published in 1970 by Llewellyn Publications. The title pays homage to Moses ben Jacob Cordovero's Pardes Rimonim, or "Pomegranate Orchard."
WMaud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. Of Anglo-Irish descent, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars. She actively agitated for Home Rule and then for the republic declared in 1916. During the 1930s, as a founding member of the Social Credit Party, she promoted the distributive programme of C. H. Douglas. Gonne was well known for being the muse and long-time love interest of Irish poet W. B. Yeats.
WThe Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Inc. is a 501(c) non-profit organization associated with a modern magical Order of the same name. While bearing the same name as the historical Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888–1908), the modern Order does not have direct descent or institutional lineage from the original Order. According to author Gerald Suster, this Order is notable for having the only working Golden Dawn temple in the United States at the end of the 1970s, making it the oldest continuously operating Golden Dawn offshoot in the U.S.
WAnnie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH was an English theatre patron and manager. She established the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founded the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encouraged the work of new writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and members of what became known as the Manchester School of dramatists.
WPaul Huson is a British author and artist currently living in the United States. In addition to writing several books about occultism and witchcraft he has worked extensively in the film and television industries.
WArthur Machen was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella The Great God Pan has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror, with Stephen King describing it as "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language." He is also well known for "The Bowmen", a short story that was widely read as fact, creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.
WMoina Mathers, born Mina Bergson, was an artist and occultist at the turn of the 20th century. She was the sister of French philosopher Henri Bergson, the first man of Jewish descent to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. She is, however, more known for her marriage to the English occultist, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one of the founders of the organisation Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and, after his death in 1918, for being the head of a successor organisation, called the Rosicrucian Order of the Alpha et Omega.
WSamuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, born Samuel Liddell Mathers, was a British occultist. He is primarily known as one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a ceremonial magic order of which offshoots still exist. He became so synonymous with the order that Golden Dawn scholar Israel Regardie observed in retrospect that "the Golden Dawn was MacGregor Mathers."
WFrancis Israel Regardie was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, and writer who spent much of his life in the United States. He wrote fifteen books on the subject of occultism.
WPamela Colman Smith, also nicknamed Pixie, was a British artist, illustrator, writer, publisher, and occultist. She is best known for illustrating the Rider–Waite tarot deck for Arthur Edward Waite. This tarot deck became the standard among tarot card readers, and remains the most widely used today. Colman also illustrated over 20 books, wrote two collections of Jamaican folklore, edited two magazines, and ran the Green Sheaf Press, a small press focused on women writers.
WIsabelle de Steiger, née Lace, was an English painter, theosophist, occultist and writer. She became a member of several esoteric societies in London, and was a close friend and co-worker of Anna Kingsford.
WTattva vision is a technique developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn to aid with the development of the faculty of astral clairvoyance. They were derived from the elements or tattvas of Hindu philosophy and the Vedantic doctrine of pancikarana, as interpreted by the Golden Dawn.
WEvelyn Underhill was an English Anglo-Catholic writer and pacifist known for her numerous works on religion and spiritual practice, in particular Christian mysticism.
WArthur Edward Waite was an American-born British poet and scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider–Waite tarot deck. As his biographer R. A. Gilbert described him, "Waite's name has survived because he was the first to attempt a systematic study of the history of western occultism—viewed as a spiritual tradition rather than as aspects of proto-science or as the pathology of religion."
WWilliam Wynn Westcott was a coroner, ceremonial magician, theosophist and Freemason born in Leamington, Warwickshire, England. He was a Supreme Magus (chief) of the S.R.I.A and went on to co-found the Golden Dawn.
WDr. William Robert Woodman, one of three co-founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
WWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others.