What is the lineage of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn?
The question of the lineage of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn when it was founded in 1888, hinges upon the source of origin of documents known as the Cypher Manuscripts. The Cypher Manuscripts are a collection of 60 folios containing the structural outline of a series of magical initiation rituals that in 1888 became the first order of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (comprising the Neophyte (0-0), Zelator (1=10), Theroricus (2=9), Practicus (3=8) and Philosophus (4=7) grades). Wynn Wescott claimed to have obtained these manuscripts from A.F.A. Woodford, who had found them in a secondhand bookstall on Wellington Road in London, and who gave them to his friend Westcott to be decoded. Wescott claimed to have found among these folios the name and address of a certain Anna Sprengel of Germany, a member of a Rosicrucian order in which she was known as Soror S.d.A. Wescott allegedly wrote to her and obtained charter for Isis-Urania temple no. 3 of the Hermetic Order of the Golde
