Practice · Orders · Masonic and Rosicrucian

Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia

1866–1867 · England

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.

Is anything of the name working now?

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 is at https://sria.uk.com/history/, read on 21 September 2026. What a body publishes about itself is evidence of what it says; this study records it as that.

What can be gleaned from it

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.

Founding

  • Founded 1866–1867

    The society's own history page. The two years are its own: members were admitted in 1866 and the body was constituted in 1867, and different accounts pick different ends of that.

    • World Religions and Spirituality Project, not covered by WRSP; see the society's own history page — World Religions and Spirituality Project in copyright — cited by locator, not quoted Recorded so the gap is visible: this study found no independent scholarly account of the S.R.I.A. to set beside its own.

What it came out of, and what came out of it

  • Came out of model this study's reading

    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 in copyright — cited by locator, not quoted

Bodies this study records as coming out of it: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

A descent is a claim in this database and never a column, so every line above and below carries a source. See Evolution for the whole chain and for what the five kinds of descent mean.