The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Occultism has long been associated with the visual and literary arts, the wild and the avant-garde, and nowhere was this more embodied than in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Founded in London in the 1880s by Freemasons, it was the world's most famous secret society. In this fresh, bracing narrative history, Felix John Taylor recounts its rise and fall through the men and women for whom the Order represented both an alternative to traditional Victorian religious values and a space for imaginative exploration. Devoted to the study of ceremonial magic, the Order attracted a long list of eminent writers, actors and visual artists to its ranks. It looked towards a 'golden age' of spiritual enlightenment, with progressive ideals - class and gender were no barriers to entry - and teachings from tarot to alchemy and astral projection that were gradually unveiled as members ascended ten 'grades'.