Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn began in 1887, when William Wescott found a cipher manuscript in a bookshop. The manuscript, which contained magical theories based on the Qabala, alchemy,...
View ArticleAleister Crowley
The most notorious member of the Golden Dawn, Crowley has been billed as the greatest magician of the twentieth century. Initiated into the order in 1898, he tried to take control two years later and...
View ArticleRudolf Steiner
Best known as the founder of the Waldorf schools, Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian-born philosopher whose numerous contributions to society included biodynamic agriculture, eurythmy (a form of harmonious...
View ArticleWilhelm Reich
Reich, an Austrian-born psychiatrist, would not have considered himself a magician or occultist. Yet in his work with the life force, which he called orgone, he traversed the same territory and...
View ArticleCarlos Castaneda and the Shamanic Revival
The elusive Castaneda was largely responsible for a revived interest in shamanism during the 1960s, when his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, became a bestseller. This...
View ArticleStarhawk
Among the most respected figures in Wicca and contemporary Earth-based spirituality, Starhawk was born Miriam Simos, to parents of Russian-Jewish descent. She studied film at UCLA and won early...
View ArticleMasaru Emoto
In the late 1980s, Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto began looking at water in a new way. His experiments involved directing words into water (“imprinting” it), then freezing it and viewing the ice...
View ArticleDion Fortune
The magical name of Violet Mary Firth, Dion Fortune (Deo Non Fortuna, which means “by God and not by luck”) figured prominently in the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical movement. From the early part of...
View ArticleThe Rosicrucians
The Rosicrucians date back to the early 1600s, when three short books were published anonymously in Kassel, Germany. The first book in the trilogy, Fama, related the story of Christian Rosenkreuz, who...
View ArticleMadame Blavatsky and the Theosophists
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the enigmatic founder of theosophy, was a Russian-born medium whose followers included many noted individuals, among them Thomas Edison, William Butler Yeats, Annie Besant,...
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