Beliefs & practices

The Golden Dawn system was structured into three orders, themselves divided into ten grades modelled on the sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. The Outer Order (Neophyte through Philosophus) handled foundational knowledge lectures and basic ritual. The Inner Order (the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, R.R. et A.C.) introduced practical magical work. A Third Order, comprising the “Secret Chiefs,” was nominal and inaccessible to incarnate members.

Practice combined banishing rituals (the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram is the best known), Tarot divination, scrying with the Enochian elemental tablets, and ritual invocations of god-forms drawn principally from the Egyptian and Hebrew pantheons.