How did the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn come into being?
What would eventually become the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn began in 1850, when Kenneth MacKenzie was initiated by Hungarian Count Apponyi in Austria into a Rosicrucian lineage and was given a collection of 60 folios, called Cypher Manuscripts, containing the structural outline of a series of magical initiation rituals that eventually became the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. MacKenzie was additionally granted a warrant with which to found a branch of this Continental Rosicrucian society in Britain. MacKenzie exercised this warrant by founding two temples in Britain (Hermanoubis Temple N 2 was in Bristol under F.G. Irwin), but that waited in vain for the rituals which were never completed. Following MacKenzies death, W. Wynn Wescott obtained copies of these Cypher Manuscripts from his widow, which Wescott, together with fellow freemasons Dr. William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers used to found the Usis-Urania temple no. 3 of the H
