Notable figures

Notable figures

• Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers 1854–1918
  Co-founder; principal ritual architect

  Scottish occultist and translator who wrote or edited most of the Order’s ritual material. His translations of The Greater Key of Solomon, The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, and The Kabbalah Unveiled remain in circulation. After the 1900 schism he led the Continental and Alpha et Omega remnant from Paris until his death.

• William Wynn Westcott 1848–1925
  Co-founder; provided the Cipher Manuscripts

  London coroner, Freemason, and Rosicrucian (he was Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia) who provided the documents on which the Order’s authority was founded. Withdrew from active leadership in 1897 after pressure from his employers regarding his occult activities.

• A. E. Waite 1857–1942
  Member; later head of a reformed branch

  English mystic, Mason, and prolific occult author who joined in 1891. After the schisms of the early 1900s he led a Christian-mystical reformulation of the Order. With the artist Pamela Colman Smith he produced the Rider–Waite Tarot deck (1909), the most widely used Tarot in the English-speaking world.

• Israel Regardie 1907–1985
  Stella Matutina initiate; published the Order’s material

  British-American occultist and chiropractor, briefly Aleister Crowley’s secretary, who was initiated into the Stella Matutina branch in 1934. His four-volume The Golden Dawn (1937–40) is the principal public source for the Order’s rituals and is the basis of every modern reconstructionist Golden Dawn body.