Practice · Orders · Evolution
Evolution
Read downwards: this is two and a half centuries in the order they happened, not a family tree read from a root. Each body is shown with what it came out of and how — and every one of those lines carries the source that put it there, because in this database a descent is a claim with a citation and cannot be recorded any other way.
Five ways one body comes out of another
They are not equivalent, and collapsing them is how a chain of inheritance gets manufactured out of a chain of resemblances. The weakest is also the commonest.
- took its form from
- Copied the machinery — lodges, grades, an obligation — with nothing passed on by anybody. This is how Freemasonry reaches almost everything below it.
- founded by members of
- The people who started it had belonged to the earlier body. A fact about biographies, not about authority.
- split from
- One body became two, usually in a quarrel, usually with both halves keeping the claim.
- reorganised from
- The same body, rebuilt hard enough that what came out shares little but the name.
- claims succession from
- The body itself asserts the line. Recorded as its claim, marked as its claim, and never upgraded.
The descent, in order
-
1717
The Premier Grand Lodge of England
Nothing in this study is recorded as standing behind it.
Out of it: Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia.
-
1866–1867
Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia
took its form from The Premier Grand Lodge of England joined up by this study
Not a descent anybody passed on — a rule of membership. The S.R.I.A. admits only Master Masons, so it sits on top of the Masonic system by its own constitution rather than by inheritance from it.
The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283
Out of it: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
-
1875
The Theosophical Society
Nothing in this study is recorded as standing behind it.
-
1888
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
founded by members of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia
All three founders were members of the S.R.I.A., and the Golden Dawn's grade ladder is the S.R.I.A.'s. It admitted women on the same terms as men, which the S.R.I.A. did not.
The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283
Out of it: Stella Matutina, Alpha et Omega, A∴A∴.
-
c. 1903
Stella Matutina
split from The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283
-
between 1903 and 1913
Alpha et Omega
split from The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283
Out of it: The Society of the Inner Light, Builders of the Adytum.
-
1906, on its earliest constitution
Ordo Templi Orientis
Nothing in this study is recorded as standing behind it.
-
1907
A∴A∴
founded by members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1898 and quarrelled with its leadership; the A∴A∴ keeps its grade ladder and its outer-and-inner structure.
The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283
-
1922
Builders of the Adytum
founded by members of Alpha et Omega joined up by this study contested
Case had been a member of Alpha et Omega and left it. The body's own history page does not mention that order at all, which is why this is recorded as contested: the descent is asserted from outside and not claimed from inside.
The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283
-
1924
The Society of the Inner Light
founded by members of Alpha et Omega joined up by this study
Fortune was a member of Alpha et Omega and left it. This study has joined those two facts; no source it consulted states the descent in one sentence.
The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283
Out of it: Servants of the Light.
-
1964 as the Helios course; Servants of the Light from 1973
Servants of the Light
claims succession from The Society of the Inner Light
The school states the chain itself, in one sentence: Butler was trained in Dion Fortune's Fraternity of the Inner Light, which came out of the Golden Dawn. That is a claim of training rather than of charter, and it is the form nearly every modern lineage claim takes.
World Religions and Spirituality Project, the school's own About page, read 21 September 2026
-
1966
The Church of Satan
Nothing in this study is recorded as standing behind it.
Out of it: The Temple of Set.
-
1975
The Temple of Set
split from The Church of Satan
Aquino and others left the Church of Satan in 1975 over the sale of priesthoods and over whether Satan was a symbol or a being.
World Religions and Spirituality Project, ‘Temple of Set’, 8 October 2016
What the shape shows
Two things, neither of them what the orders themselves would emphasise.
The first is how short the chain is. The Golden Dawn, which is the source of most of what the twentieth century called Western occultism, was founded in 1888 by three men who had met in a Masonic Rosicrucian society, and had effectively broken up by 1903. Everything downstream of it — the A∴A∴, Alpha et Omega, the Stella Matutina, and through them the Society of the Inner Light, the Builders of the Adytum and the Servants of the Light — descends from about fifteen years of one London order.
The second is that the lines thin as they go. The early ones are schisms and foundings that historians state outright; the later ones are claims of training, made by the body itself, in a sentence on its own website. Nothing about that makes them false. It does mean that a reader who wants to know whether a present-day school is what it says it is has, in most cases, exactly one source, and that source is the school.