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Social Victorians/Golden Dawn/Alchemy Group

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Alchemy Group

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Logistics

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Alchemy in the Golden Dawn

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The Alchemy group developed at the very beginning of the order, led by the Reverend William Alexander Ayton, who was 72 in 1888, when the Golden Dawn began, and whose advancing age may have affected how influential it was: "In the original Golden Dawn there had been a small group that had practiced alchemy under the guidance of the Rev. W. A. Ayton, but this type of work seems to have fallen into abeyance shortly after 1900" (King 89 169). It is also true, however, that by 1900 conflicts about groups in the Golden Dawn as well as other kinds of conflicts had damaged the organization seriously. Ayton's "influence upon the modern revival of practical alchemy ... was immense and ... [is] yet to be fully appreciated" (Gilbert 83 56).

Alchemy was part of the curriculum of the Golden Dawn, part of the examinations members took as they attempted higher grades, and so it was not alien to the order and specializing in it would not seem heretical or destabilizing in any way. The members of the Alchemy group were leaders in the order, and because one member of their group (Frederick Leigh Gardner) saved his papers about the Golden Dawn, the Alchemy Group was reasonably well documented. The group was limited to members of the Golden Dawn, and they seem to have used their G. D. mottos in their work. Not all of the people interested in alchemy, however, were in the Alchemy group, in part possibly because Ayton, who died at 93 in 1909, was not very active in the order itself. Also he did not live in London, another factor that might have limited how influential this group was in the order.

A document called "The Historic Lecture for Neophytes," which was given to new members to read (and Howe thinks was written by Westcott), explicitly includes alchemy in the theology of the Golden Dawn, associating it with the original Rosicrucians. The early adepti

received, indeed, and have handed down to us this Doctrine and System of Theosophy and Hermetic Science, and the Highest Alchemy from a long series of practical investigators, whose origin is traced to the Fratres Rosae Crucis of Germany, which association was founded by one Christian Rosenkreuz about the year 1398. (Howe 23)

Leader

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Members

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Golden Dawn Members Interested in Alchemy But Not in This Group

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Timeline

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1888, an Alchemy Group developed led by W. A. Ayton.

1900, the Alchemy Group seems to have stopped meeting and working.

Questions and Notes

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Bibliography

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  • Gilbert 1983
  • Howe
  • King 1989
  • Küntz
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