The Golden Dawn, for aspirant-practitioners of the occult arts, was founded around a complex body of occult teaching and ritual magical practice which wove together Kabbalistic cosmology, Rosicrucian initiation, ritual magic, Egyptology, astrology, tarot, and various other strands to form a single, all-embracing metaphysical and ritual system. Its impact was so considerable that it is still felt today; indeed, after H P Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, founded in 1875, the Golden Dawn was a major forerunner of contemporary Western esotericism.
Occultism was in the air in England at that time; in June 1878 the first branch of the TS was formed in London. It was called the London Lodge and counted Edward Maitland and the noted occultist, Anna Kingsford, amongst its members. However, the Hermetic teachings and philosophy which Mrs Kingsford was ‘bringing through’ via her inspirations and visions did not harmonise well with the Eastern philosophy of HPB and the Masters of Wisdom, so the Hermetic Lodge TS was created; this lasted only a short time, and in 1884 Kingsford and Maitland founded the independent Hermetic Society. In 1887, the same year that Helena Blavatsky settled in London, Dr William Wynn Westcott (1848-1925), a London coroner and a Rosicrucian, obtained from Reverend A F A Woodford, a Mason, part of a manuscript that was written in brown-ink cipher. Westcott, also a member of the Theosophical Society, was the initial driving force behind the establishment of the Golden Dawn. With his Hermetic knowledge he deciphered the manuscript and discovered it contained fragments of mystical rituals of the "Golden Dawn", an unknown organization which admitted both men and women. Westcott approached his occultist friend Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854- 1918) who is pictured above, and asked him to transform the ritual fragments into expanded and systematized rituals. It is said that among the papers within the manuscript was a slip of paper with the name of Fraulein Anna Sprengel, a Rosicrucian adept living in Germany, and that through correspondence, Westcott obtained her permission to organize the English branch of the occult society, Die Goldene Dammerung (The Golden Dawn).
The structured hierarchy of the Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn established in 1888 was based on the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah: there were ten grades or degrees corresponding to the ten sephiroth, with an eleventh degree for neophytes. The degrees were divided into the Outer, Second, and Third orders. Westcott, Mathers and Dr. W. R. Woodman, Supreme Magus of the Rosicrucian Society of Anglia, were the three Chiefs Second Order, said to be under the direction of the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order, who were entities on the astral plane.
From 1888-1896, the Golden Dawn received 315 aspiring initiates, mostly drawn from the educated middle classes and including a large number of professional people, especially physicians, chemists, ministers and writers, many of whom were Rosicrucians and/or Masons; many also rose to social and political prominence in the Victorian era. Indeed, the Golden Dawn included some of the most distinguished and talented personalities of the times, especially in the arts community, such as the Irish poet and playwright W B Yeats; Irish revolutionary, and renowned beauty Maud Gonne (W B Yeats' companion, with whom he founded the Irish Mystery School, the Castle of Heroes); the Art Nouveau artist Aubrey Beardsley; Moina Bergson (sister of French philosopher Henri Bergson, she married Mathers); heiress Annie Horniman (who sponsored the Abbey Theatre, Dublin and other theatres in Ireland and England and whose money later financed the Golden Dawn); the actress Florence Farr (mistress of George Bernard Shaw - Shaw was also a friend of Annie Besant; Farr was later head of a women’s college); Algernon Blackwood; occult historian A E Waite; Aleister Crowley; his secretary Israel Regardie; and later, Dion Fortune.
Westcott soon withdrew, and Mathers’ authoritarian tendencies led to conflict and schisms. However, things really deteriorated in 1898 when Aleister Crowley was initiated and progressed rapidly through the degrees. The next year, 1899, he went to Paris and compelled Mathers to initiate him into the Second Order. The London Lodge, under Farr, rejected this initiation. Crowley returned to England as Mathers' "Envoy Extraordinary" in 1900 and, wearing a black mask, Highland dress and gilt dagger, attempted to seize control but was rebuffed. Eventually both Crowley and Mathers were thrown out of the order and, it is said, this led to magical warfare between the two men. Mathers sent an astral vampire to attack Crowley. Crowley then counterattacked with an army of demons led by Beelzebub. After this, the London Lodge expelled both men. Mathers received no compensation for his co-founding efforts, and Crowley retaliated by publishing some of the Golden Dawn’s secrets in his magazine, The Equinox.
W B Yeats, who had played a prominent part in the expulsion of Crowley and Mathers, assumed control of the Second Order. He took charge of the Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis and also became the Imperator of the Isis-Urania Temple Outer Order. With all the splintering within the Golden Dawn it was not long until various groups were forming. Followers of Mathers formed the Alpha et Omega Temple. In 1903 A E Waite left with others to form a society retaining the Golden Dawn name but with more emphasis on mysticism than magic. In 1905 another splinter group formed known as the Stella Matutina, or Order of the Companions of the Rising Light in the Morning. This was the end of the Isis- Urania Temple. It was resurrected in 1917 as the Merlin Temple of the Stella Matutina which lasted until the 1940s when it went into decline following the publication of its secret rituals by former member Israel Regardie, who had been Crowley's one-time secretary. Some offshoots of the Golden Dawn are still practising.
During its heyday, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn possessed one of the greatest repositories of Western magical knowledge but its rise and fall exemplifies the history of many occult groups. They attract members of high intellectual and mystical calibre, but eventually suffer internal dissensions because, without yogic or religious systems which purify and protect initiates, they are easily corrupted by leaders who are inflated with personal and temporal power. As Helena Blavatsky wrote: "True Occultism is the Great Renunciation of self."

Sources:
Wikipedia
The Real H P Blavatsky by William Kingsland
The Mahatma Letters to A P Sinnett
H P B Teaches, edited by Michael Gomes

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