RoseCroix

Kenneth Mackenzie, author of the “Royal Masonic Cyclopediae,” is credited with finding a folio of
56 “cipher” documents and founding the first lodge of the “inner” Order (originally called the
“Society of 8,” later the “Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis”) within “the Golden Dawn.”
In 1887, William Wynn Westcott (1848 - 1925) decoded the “cipher” documents, which were
written using the encryption methods of Trithemius, the 15th century monk and cryptologist.
These 56 “cipher” documents laid out, in detailed short-hand notation and fastidiously encoded, a
complex system of rituals that would go on to form the curriculum of the Golden Dawn proper.
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854 - 1918), Mason and member of the Societas Rosicruciana
in Anglia (an appendent Masonic body) and renknowned translator of countless, invaluable
Medieval Grimoires, is credited with being the primary founder and worker on the Golden Dawn.
Dr. William Robert Woodman (1828 - 1891), with Reverand A.F.A. Woodward, fellow members of
the Masonic S.R.I.A., contributed some assistance as well, and in 1888, the “Isis-Urania” Temple
of the Argentum Astrum (A thus A thus), the outer-most Order of the Golden Dawn, opened to all.