Index
Traditions
Each entry follows the same structure so they can be compared. New entries are added as research is completed and sources are checked.
The traditions covered on this site are the principal currents of organised Western esotericism over the last four hundred years. The earliest, Rosicrucianism, dates to a set of anonymous German manifestos published in the 1610s. The most recent, chaos magick, emerged from a small-press magical scene in northern England in the late 1970s. Between them sit the major fraternal and initiatic orders — Freemasonry and its rites, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Ordo Templi Orientis — the religious systems they have shaped or that have grown alongside them (Thelema, Theosophy, modern Wicca, traditional witchcraft, Dianic witchcraft, and the Italian-American current of Stregheria), and the twentieth-century Satanic organisations.
Each entry uses the same outline so readers can compare across them: an overview, the documented origins and history, the tradition’s stated beliefs and practices, its recurring symbols, the notable figures associated with it, the controversies that surround it where any are documented, and a list of sources. Where a tradition has distinct sub-bodies, rites, or branches with their own organisational identity, those appear as nested entries.
The traditions are listed below in approximate order of founding, oldest first. Each entry shows a one-paragraph summary and the founding date; click through for the full sourced article. Use the “Founded” column as a chronological orientation rather than as a strict claim about historical antiquity — in several cases (Rosicrucianism, Wicca, traditional witchcraft, Dianic, and Stregheria in particular) the date represents the public emergence of the modern tradition rather than the date of any continuous prior religion. Where the historical record is contested, the controversies section of each entry sets out the dispute and the principal scholarly sources.
-
Freemasonry
1717 (Premier Grand Lodge)A fraternal initiatic system structured into lodges, dating in its modern form to early eighteenth-century Britain, with elaborate ritual, moral instruction, and a global organisational footprint.
-
Ordo Templi Orientis
c. 1895–1906 (Germany)An initiatic order founded in early twentieth-century Germany, restructured by Aleister Crowley as a vehicle for the religious and magical system of Thelema, with which it is now closely identified.
-
Thelema
1904 (reception of The Book of the Law)A religious and philosophical system promulgated by Aleister Crowley after a 1904 episode in Cairo, founded on the maxim “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” It is the doctrinal framework of the modern Ordo Templi Orientis but exists independently of any single organisation.
-
Rosicrucianism
1614 (first manifesto)A current of Western esoteric thought announced by anonymous early-seventeenth-century manifestos describing a secret brotherhood of physician-philosophers, and continued today by several public bodies that claim its lineage.
-
Tarot
15th century (game) / 1781 (occult use)A 78-card deck originating as a fifteenth-century Italian card game and adopted in the late eighteenth century as a divinatory and esoteric instrument. Now used across virtually every Western esoteric current and widely outside any tradition.
-
Theosophical Society
1875 (New York)A late-nineteenth-century esoteric movement that introduced South and East Asian religious vocabulary into Western occultism and shaped almost every subsequent Western esoteric current of the twentieth century.
-
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
1888 (London)A late-Victorian initiatic order that synthesised Hermetic Qabalah, alchemy, Tarot, astrology, and ceremonial magic into the curriculum that has underpinned almost all subsequent Western magical practice.
-
Wicca
1954 (publicly)A modern initiatory religion centred on a goddess and a horned god, an eight-festival ritual year, and a system of three initiatory degrees, publicly emerging in mid-twentieth-century England through the writings of Gerald Gardner.
-
Dianic Witchcraft
1971 (Susan B. Anthony Coven No. 1)A goddess-centred branch of modern witchcraft founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in 1971, distinguished from mainstream Wicca by its monotheistic focus on the Goddess (typically named Diana or Artemis) and, in its original branch, by women-only membership.
-
Traditional Witchcraft
Mid-twentieth century onwardsA loose family of modern witchcraft currents distinct from Wicca, generally darker in tone, less doctrinally fixed, and drawing on folkloric, cunning-craft, and Sabbatic-witchcraft strands rather than on the Gardnerian liturgy.
-
Stregheria
1899 (Leland) / 1990s (Grimassi revival)A modern witchcraft current centred on the Italian goddess Diana and her daughter Aradia, drawing on Charles Godfrey Leland’s 1899 text Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches and developed into a present-day practice principally by Raven Grimassi from the 1980s onward.
-
Church of Satan
1966 (San Francisco)An atheistic religious organisation founded by Anton LaVey in 1966 that uses the figure of Satan as a symbol of carnal nature, individualism, and rejection of conformity. It is not a theistic religion and does not worship a literal devil.
-
Temple of Set
1975 (San Francisco)A theistic left-hand-path order founded by Michael Aquino in 1975 after his break with Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, centred on the Egyptian god Set as a real non-natural entity and on the work of directed self-development its members call Xeper.
-
Chaos Magick
1978 (publicly)A late-twentieth-century approach to magical practice that treats belief itself as a tool, drops the requirement that practitioners commit to any particular cosmology, and freely mixes symbol systems on the basis of what produces results.
Scope and what isn’t yet covered
The current index concentrates on Western esoteric currents organised either as initiatic orders or as religions with a definite founding moment in the documentary record. Several adjacent fields are not yet given individual entries on the site, and are listed here for transparency: the Anthroposophical Society (Steiner’s 1912–13 split from Theosophy); the Liberal Catholic Church and the wider sacramental side of the Theosophical movement; the Martinist orders and the broader French illuminist current of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; pre-Christian European traditions reconstructed by modern Heathenry and Druidry; the African diaspora religions (Vodou, Lukumí / Santería, Candomblé, Quimbanga) and their North American outgrowths; and Western Sufi orders, Kabbalistic groups, and Christian-mystical bodies that fall outside the strict “occult” bracket. Entries on these traditions are planned as research and sourcing permit.
For a fuller account of how entries are researched, what counts as a usable source, and what is excluded, see the methodology page.
