The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Alpha et Omega
An initiatory order in the Hermetic, Rosicrucian, and Golden Dawn traditions — lineage, curriculum, and the work of initiation.
Who We Are
A working initiatory Order
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Alpha et Omega is an initiatory order in the Hermetic, Rosicrucian, and Golden Dawn traditions. It exists for one purpose: the transmission of a complete system of esoteric training — by initiation, by a graded curriculum, and by personal work undertaken with the guidance of experienced members.
We are plain about what we are. We are not a religion, and membership does not require leaving one. We are not a social club or a stage for costume. We make no promises of wealth, power, or hidden advantage. We offer a defined course of work — study, practice, examination, and initiation — within a tradition that has been carried, taught, and reformed for well over a century.
Admission is deliberate. Members advance through the traditional grades at the pace of their own work, examined and guided by tutors. What can be said publicly about the Order is on this page; what belongs to the grades remains in the grades.
Lineage
Descent, stated plainly
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in London in 1888 by William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, and William Robert Woodman, with the chartering of Isis-Urania Temple No. 3. Its rituals were developed from the Cipher Manuscripts, which reached the founders through the English adept Kenneth MacKenzie, whose own initiation derived from the continental Rosicrucian lodges of the nineteenth century — among them the Frankfurt lodge Loge zur Aufgehenden Morgenröthe, “the Rising Dawn,” counted in our tradition as the Golden Dawn’s first temple.
In 1891, Mathers established contact in Paris with a representative of the continental order from which the tradition descends, and upon the material received the Second Order was constituted in 1892. In 1906, Mathers gave the original order its mature name: the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega. The Alpha et Omega was not a splinter or a successor body — it was the founding order itself, continued without interruption under Mathers and, after his death in 1918, under Moina Mathers.
The system was preserved through the twentieth century by the temples that kept it working. Israel Regardie, initiated at Hermes Temple in Bristol in 1933, consecrated a Vault of the Adepts in the United States in 1982 and initiated Cris Monnastre; under her guidance David Griffin entered the Order in 1992 and was made an Adept in Regardie’s Vault in 1994. In 1997, in Paris — through the revived Ahathoor Temple No. 7, Mathers’ own mother temple of the Alpha Omega, and the adepts Jean-Pascal Ruggiu and Nicholas Tereschenko — the surviving European lineages of the Alpha et Omega were united with the American line, and David Griffin received the grade of Adeptus Exemptus, the traditional authority to govern temples within the tradition.
David Griffin serves as Imperator of the Order. In 2002, one hundred and eleven years after Mathers’ meeting of 1891, the chiefs of the Order renewed contact in Paris with the continental source of the tradition. We state our history plainly and do not embellish it; a fuller documented account, with sources, is being prepared for publication on this site.
- 1888
- The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn founded in London; Isis-Urania Temple No. 3 chartered.
- 1891–92
- Contact in Paris; the Second Order constituted.
- 1906
- The founding order takes its mature name: Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega.
- 1982
- Israel Regardie consecrates a Vault of the Adepts in the United States.
- 1994
- David Griffin made an Adept in Regardie’s Vault.
- 1997
- European and American lineages united in Paris; Ahathoor Temple No. 7.
- 1999
- The Reformation: the curriculum of the Order reorganized.
- 2002
- Contact with the continental source of the tradition renewed in Paris.
The Reformation
Why this Order is different
Rosicrucian orders do not treat their constitutions as fixed for all time. The tradition provides for periodic general reformation — historically at intervals of one hundred and eleven years. The German Rosicrucians reformed their order in 1777; the Golden Dawn itself was founded in the reformation year of 1888; and in 1999 the Alpha et Omega undertook the reformation of its own era.
The Reformation of 1999 is the defining difference of this Order. Its effect was a deliberate reorganization of the initiatory material: teachings long reserved to the Third Order were placed in the Second Order, and the magical material of the Second Order was brought forward into the Golden Dawn in the Outer, where it was merged with the traditional Theoretical Knowledge Lectures. The Outer Order of the Alpha et Omega thereby became a complete magical training in its own right — rather than a course of theory rewarded with practice only after years of waiting.
That is the high-level account, and it is all that belongs on a public page. The contents of the reorganized grades are oath-bound, as they have always been. An applicant learns them the way they have always been learned: by grade, in order, by doing the work.
Curriculum
The grades of the work
The curriculum is structured through the traditional grades of the Golden Dawn:
- 0=0Neophyteentrance into the Order and its current of initiation
- 1=10Zelatorthe grade of Earth
- 2=9Theoricusthe grade of Air
- 3=8Practicusthe grade of Water
- 4=7Philosophusthe grade of Fire
- PortalThe Portalthe threshold of the Second Order
What distinguishes the Alpha et Omega is what the grades contain. By the Reformation of 1999, Third Order material was moved into the Second Order, and Second Order material into the Golden Dawn in the Outer, merged with the existing Theoretical Knowledge Lectures. Practical magical training therefore begins early: the Greater Invocation Rituals are taken up in the grade of Zelator, 1=10 — work that older arrangements of the system withheld until well into the Second Order.
Each grade joins study to practice: Knowledge Lectures to be mastered and examined, ritual work appropriate to the grade, and the guidance of a tutor. The ritual corpus of the Order is printed in The Ritual Magick Manual by David Griffin; the graded instruction that surrounds it is given to members within the grades.
Application
Apply for Consideration
One must first apply. If accepted, the applicant will be sent information on actually joining.
Every application is read and decided by a person — nothing here is automatic. Applying costs nothing and creates no obligation. Your application is held in confidence, is read only by the officers who review admissions, and is never shared or sold.