Modern ceremonial magic, with its pentagram rituals, its correspondences between Kabbalah, tarot and astrology, and its initiatory grades, owes a great deal to a man of difficult character and immense learning: Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. He co-founded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, wrote most of its rituals and translated into English some of the most influential grimoires of the Western tradition. His translations are still in print; his figure remains controversial.
A young Londoner
Mathers was born in London in 1854. His father died when he was still a child and he grew up with his mother in Bournemouth. He did not go to university, but taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and some Coptic. He was passionate about military history, chess and everything to do with Scotland: he added "MacGregor" to his name, claiming descent from the Scottish clan, and later also styled himself Count of Glenstrae.
In 1877 he became a Freemason and shortly afterwards joined the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, a study society restricted to Masons, where he met William Wynn Westcott and William Robert Woodman.
The Kabbalah Unveiled
In 1887 he published The Kabbalah Unveiled, an English translation of part of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth's Kabbala denudata, the great seventeenth-century Latin collection of texts from the Zohar. The book, dedicated to Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, authors of The Perfect Way, made available to the English public for the first time some Zoharic treatises on the structure of the divine countenance. Mathers added an introduction presenting Kabbalah as the key to the whole Western tradition.
The Golden Dawn
In 1888 Westcott, Woodman and Mathers founded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London. The starting point was the so-called "Cipher Manuscripts", sheets written in a secret alphabet containing outlines of five initiation rituals. Their origin is still debated; what is certain is that it was Mathers who turned those outlines into complete rituals.
The order was divided into grades corresponding to the sefirot of the Tree of Life. In 1892 Mathers created an inner order, the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, in which adepts moved from theoretical study to magical practice proper. Its members included the poet William Butler Yeats, the actress Florence Farr, Arthur Edward Waite and, later, Aleister Crowley.
The great translations
Alongside his work in the order, Mathers spent long periods in the libraries of London and Paris, translating texts that circulated only in manuscript:
| English title | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The Key of Solomon the King | 1889 | Manuscripts of the Clavicula Salomonis in the British Museum |
| The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage | 1898 | A French manuscript in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris |
| The Goetia | 1904 | First part of the Lemegeton, published by Crowley with the translation credited to Mathers |
The Book of Abramelin, which describes a long preparatory retreat to obtain the "knowledge and conversation" of the guardian angel, had an enormous influence on all twentieth-century magic. We now know that the Paris manuscript was a late and incomplete version of a German text, but Mathers's translation fixed its image for a century.
Paris, Moina and the crisis of 1900
In 1890 Mathers married Mina Bergson, sister of the philosopher Henri Bergson, a painter trained at the Slade School of Art, who took the name Moina. In 1892 the couple moved to Paris, from where Mathers continued to direct the order by correspondence. In Paris they also staged public performances of the "Rites of Isis".
Leadership from a distance and Mathers's authoritarian character caused growing tension with the London members. In 1900 the crisis broke: Mathers claimed that the founding manuscripts had been forged by Westcott, the London adepts deposed him, and Crowley, taking his side, tried to seize the order's premises in an episode known as the "Battle of Blythe Road". The Golden Dawn split into several branches. Mathers led his own, called Alpha et Omega.
The last years
Mathers died in Paris in 1918, probably as a result of that year's influenza epidemic. Moina continued to lead the Alpha et Omega until her death.
An assessment
Mathers was a brilliant organiser and a tireless translator, but also a man prone to authoritarianism and to unverifiable claims, such as his contacts with "Secret Chiefs" who had supposedly authorised him to lead the order. Separating his philological work from his personal pretensions is essential to appreciating his real contribution: having given modern ceremonial magic a body of texts and a coherent ritual structure.
In short
- Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854-1918) co-founded the Golden Dawn in 1888 and wrote its rituals.
- He translated the Kabbala denudata, the Key of Solomon and the Book of Abramelin.
- With Moina Bergson he led the order from Paris, until the crisis of 1900 and the schism.
- His philological contribution must be distinguished from his unverifiable claims about the Secret Chiefs.
