The Masonic Study Society That Hatched the Golden Dawn

The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia is chiefly important for what came out of it rather than for what it is.

A society, not a magical order

Established in England in 1866 or 1867 by Robert Wentworth Little, the SRIA admits only Master Masons who wish to study the material associated with the Rosicrucian tradition, and it is organised as a scholarly and devotional fraternity of nine grades in three orders rather than as a body that practises ritual magic. Its restriction to existing Freemasons is the point: it is an appendant study society, not an independent initiatic path.

The line to the Golden Dawn

Its lasting influence is genealogical. Three of its members, William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and William Robert Woodman, went on in 1888 to found the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the single most influential body in the modern Western magical revival. The SRIA supplied the men, the grade structure and much of the Rosicrucian framing that the Golden Dawn then turned into an operative system of ritual magic.