The orders

Masonic and Rosicrucian

17 books on the shelf, 12 with a free edition this study has checked.

• 1717 – 1813

  The Premier Grand Lodge of England

  Four London lodges met at a tavern and constituted a Grand Lodge. Not an occult body and not trying to be one — but the shape every body below inherited was settled here: a lodge, a set of degrees taken in order, an initiation, an obligation of secrecy, and a printed constitution saying who may belong.

  What can be gleaned Its constitution, printed in 1723, is the earliest document in this section and still the most consequential. Read it for the form rather than the content: the machinery it describes is what the Rosicrucian, Theosophical and Thelemic bodies all borrowed, usually without borrowing anything else.

  Ended It did not fail; it merged. In 1813 it joined with the rival Antients Grand Lodge to form the United Grand Lodge of England, which is still working. This is the only clean ending on the page, and it is clean because a corporate merger leaves paperwork.

• 1866–1867

  Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia S.R.I.A.

  A Rosicrucian society open only to Master Masons, working nine grades. Its rituals came from manuscripts Robert Wentworth Little found at Freemasons' Hall. It matters here for one reason: three of its members founded the Golden Dawn and gave it the grade structure.

  What can be gleaned The grade ladder. Zelator, Theoricus, Practicus, Philosophus, Adeptus Minor, Adeptus Major, Adeptus Exemptus, Magister, Magus — if that sequence looks familiar from the Golden Dawn, it is because the Golden Dawn took it from here.

  Working, on its own word only A body of this name publishes a current officer list and a history of itself. No source outside it was found that reports on it independently, so it stands here on its own word — which for a society that has never been in a name dispute is a reasonable thing to stand on.

  Its own account of itself: sria.uk.com, read 21 September 2026.

Theosophical

27 books on the shelf, 15 with a free edition this study has checked.

• 1875

  The Theosophical Society

  Founded in New York by Blavatsky, Olcott and others, and later run from Adyar in India. It is the first of these bodies to be genuinely international, and the first to publish its aims and let anybody join who was in sympathy with them.

  What can be gleaned More than any other body here. Its objects are printed, its founder wrote a plain question-and-answer book explaining what membership meant, and both are free to read. It is also the clearest case of the two-layer arrangement that runs through this whole section: an open society with published aims, and an Esoteric Section inside it that is not open.

  The name is in use, and contested Several bodies descend from the Society and more than one uses the name. The American Section declared autonomy in 1895 and there have been further divisions since. This study does not say which is the Society; it says there was one, in 1875, and that it divided.

The Golden Dawn and its descendants

19 books on the shelf, 10 with a free edition this study has checked.

• 1888 – 1903

  The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

  The most influential of them all, and one of the shortest-lived. Founded by three Freemasons on the authority of a cipher manuscript and a German correspondent whose existence has never been established, it built a curriculum binding Qabalah, astrology, Tarot, Enochian and ceremonial magic into one course of study — and then tore itself apart in about three years.

  What can be gleaned Nearly all of it, and not by the order's choice. Crowley printed its rituals in The Equinox from 1909 and Regardie printed the curriculum in 1937. Most of what this study says about the Tree of Life, the pentagram ritual and the Tarot trumps reaches it through that material. Its own warrant is the one thing that did not survive examination.

  The name is in use, and contested The original order broke up between 1900 and 1903 and its temples continued under other names. Bodies working today use the name; at least two of them have sued each other over it in a United States federal court. This study takes no view on which is entitled to it, and records that the question has been asked in the only forum that produces a public answer.

• c. 1903 – 1972 at the latest

  Stella Matutina

  The larger of the two bodies the Golden Dawn became, under Robert Felkin. It kept working the Golden Dawn's grades for decades after the order that made them had gone.

  What can be gleaned This is the body whose papers Israel Regardie was initiated into and later published. When a modern reader works 'the Golden Dawn system', it is very largely the Stella Matutina's recension of it, at one date, in one temple.

  Ended Its Bristol temple is generally given as closing in 1972 and no body of the name has been found working since. Stated as an ending because nothing was found continuing, which is a weaker thing than a documented close and is why the date is given as a latest rather than a date.

• between 1903 and 1913

  Alpha et Omega

  The branch that stayed loyal to Mathers after the 1900 revolt, renamed. Moina Mathers ran it after his death in 1918.

  What can be gleaned Two of the most productive people in modern occultism left it within months of each other in 1922 — Paul Foster Case and Dion Fortune — and each founded a body that is still teaching. Its importance is almost entirely in what walked out of it.

  The name is in use, and contested The original body is not known to have survived the Second World War. The name is in use again today. This study has not established a connection between the two and does not assert one.

• 1922

  Builders of the Adytum B.O.T.A.

  Paul Foster Case's school, begun in the year he left Alpha et Omega. It teaches by correspondence course rather than by temple attendance, which made it the first of these bodies a person could belong to without knowing anybody in it.

  What can be gleaned Its Tarot deck, which Case designed on Golden Dawn attributions and which is still in print, and the fact that its teaching was posted to members as lessons. Worth noticing what its own history page does NOT say: it names Case and his successor and does not mention the order he came out of.

  Working, on its own word only A body of this name publishes a current correspondence course from Los Angeles and says it has been running for over a hundred years. It stands here on its own word.

  Its own account of itself: www.bota.org, read 21 September 2026.

• 1924

  The Society of the Inner Light

  Dion Fortune's body. She and Charles Loveday established a formal group in 1924; her break with Alpha et Omega came afterwards, not before it, and the names the body is known by are later still. Her books — which are the usual English introduction to the Tree of Life — were written from inside it and were how its teaching reached people who never joined.

  What can be gleaned The books, which is the point: Fortune chose to teach in print what her order taught in private, and said so. The Society is also the clearest published example of a body refusing the use of its own founder's name — it states that it has no affiliates and endorses no other organisation claiming to continue her work.

  Working, on its own word only A body of this name publishes as a registered charity in England and describes itself as working. No independent source was consulted for its present activity, so it stands on its own word.

  Its own account of itself: www.innerlight.org.uk, read 21 September 2026.

• 1964 as the Helios course; Servants of the Light from 1973

  Servants of the Light S.O.L.

  A correspondence school founded when Gareth Knight and John Hall appointed W. E. Butler its Director of Studies. Butler had been trained in Dion Fortune's Fraternity of the Inner Light.

  What can be gleaned A worked example of how a descent is actually claimed. Its own page states the chain — Butler trained under Fortune, Fortune's fraternity came out of the Golden Dawn — in one sentence, which is both the most common form these claims take and exactly as much evidence as a body's own website can be.

  Working, on its own word only A body of this name teaches online and names its current Director of Studies. It stands here on its own word.

  Its own account of itself: www.servantsofthelight.org, read 21 September 2026.

Thelemic

13 books on the shelf, 3 with a free edition this study has checked.

• 1906, on its earliest constitution

  Ordo Templi Orientis O.T.O.

  A German initiatory order of the early 1900s that Crowley was given charge of in Britain in 1912 and rebuilt around Thelema. It is the body that held Crowley's copyrights, which is why its succession ended up in court rather than only in argument.

  What can be gleaned Its constitution is printed in full and quoted on these pages. It is also the one body here whose succession can be followed in public documents from beginning to end — not because it was more open, but because it owned something worth litigating.

  The name is in use, and contested Bodies of this name have been in dispute since 1962 and the dispute has twice reached the United States federal courts. One body holds a judgment in its favour. That judgment decides who may use a name and hold copyrights in the United States; it is not, and does not claim to be, a finding about who inherited an initiation.

• 1907

  A∴A∴

  Crowley and George Cecil Jones' order, founded after Crowley's quarrel with the Golden Dawn. It keeps the Golden Dawn's grades and its structure of an outer and inner order, and replaces the group ceremony with a relation between one student and one teacher.

  What can be gleaned Its whole syllabus is printed, numbered and free to read — The Equinox was the order's own publication and was meant to be read by outsiders. It also supplies the single most useful admission in this section: its account of itself announces, in its own headnote, that it is a rewrite of somebody else's book from 1802.

  The name is in use, and contested More than one body uses the name and they do not recognise one another. No court has been asked. The order's own doctrine makes the question unanswerable in principle: the real order is held to be an invisible one that no visible body can be checked against.

Later twentieth century

• 1966

  The Church of Satan

  Anton LaVey's church, founded in San Francisco. It belongs in this section because of its form rather than its doctrine: a named founder, published scripture, degrees, and a deliberate use of ceremony — the Golden Dawn's machinery pointed somewhere else entirely.

  What can be gleaned That an initiatory body can be built in public, with its founder giving interviews, and still work as one. It is the first body here that never claimed a hidden warrant from anybody — which is why nothing about its origin is in dispute.

  Working, and independently attested Reported as continuing by the World Religions and Spirituality Project, which is not the body itself.

• 1975

  The Temple of Set

  Founded by Michael Aquino and others who left the Church of Satan. Six degrees, local groups called Pylons, and specialist Orders within it.

  What can be gleaned Very little, and the refusal is itself the finding: the Temple states as a matter of policy that it does not publish its membership figures. It is the plainest instance on this page of the thing a reader most wants and cannot have — how many people are in one of these.

  Working, and independently attested Reported as continuing by the World Religions and Spirituality Project.

What is not on this list

A great many bodies. Some are missing because this study could not find a source for them that was not the body itself and could not therefore say anything about them that was worth saying — the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, AMORC, the Fraternitas Saturni, the Illuminates of Thanateros. Others are missing because they are traditions rather than orders: Gardnerian witchcraft has covens and initiations and no governing body, and a list shaped like this one would misdescribe it.

The Typhonian Order is left out for a third reason, and it is the most interesting one: its claim is precisely that succession does not pass by charter, so a listing built around who-came-out-of-what has no honest row to put it in.