Some of the areas of study included ritual magic, tarot, Egyptian god-forms, Enochian magic, Kabala, and Astrology. Among the original Golden Dawn members were MacGregor Mathers, W.B.Yates, Aleister Crowley, A.E.Waite, Dion Fortune, Dr. R.W. Felkin, Arthur Machen, Paul Foster Case, and Dr. Israel Regardie. Regardie, who died in 1985, was the last great representative of the original Order. To achieve this attainment the Golden Dawn brought the aspirant through a calculated series of techniques, experiences or mental exercises. These exercises brought about progressively higher states of consciousness.
Initiation occurs when a person passes into a higher state of consciousness.
Man is only potentially immortal. Immortality is acquired when the purely human part of himself becomes allied to that spiritual essence which was never created, was never born, and shall never die. It is to effect this spiritual bond with the highest that the Golden Dawn owes its ritual and practical magical work. The following chart describes the succession back to Mathers' original Golden Dawn temple in England. Our temple is greatly honored to be working directly with Thoth Hermes Temple as a conduit for the passage of material from the New Zealand temples and from the Stella Matutina.