Description: A full--length narrative history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the esoteric society at the center of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century rise of the occult.
Brief description: Felix John Taylor is a librarian at The Queen's College, Oxford and writes for the Literary Review. He has a PhD from St Hugh's College, Oxford on Welsh mythology and folklore in twentieth--century literature, and previously held positions at the Bodleian Modern Languages and Arts & Archaeology libraries.
Review Quotes: A fascinating tour of the explosion of ritual magic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the extraordinary associated flowering of creativity and imagination that shaped the way we think about the occult today. Esoteric symbolism, solemn costumed ceremonies, sex scandals, occultist infighting, astral projection sessions in the London suburbs, and alchemist laboratories hidden in country vicarages . . . this vivid and enthralling history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn summons it all back to life with a true medium's art.--Fiona Robertson, author of "Stone Lands"