Golden Dawn

Golden Dawn (黄金夜明 (S∴M∴) ) or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was once the largest magic cabal in the United Kingdom, supposedly founded by a woman named Anna Sprengel, though exact details are not known. This magic cabal was known as the world's most powerful magic cabal 50 years ago when Aleister Crowley faked his death and escaped from England and the forces of Christianity, and was involved in hunting him down.

The initials pinpoint that the proper way to pronounce the name of the golden cabal is "Stella Matutina".

Principles
One of the roles within the Golden Dawn was that of the Secret Chief, a role supposedly carried out by Anna Sprengel.

As a group from, the Golden Dawn was affected by a common thinking among European magicians, who after running into dead ends in their research and exhausting the resources available to them in Europe, believed the answers lay elsewhere and sought them in foreign parts, such as the large, diverse and geographically convenient 'Dark Continent',.

Within the cabal, one's stock of knowledge was directly linked to their power.

Golden-style Magic
The Golden Dawn and Golden-style cabals specialize in constructing sanctuaries and harnessing large amounts of Telesma to conduct large-scale powerful magic.

GD Tarot
The Golden-style has a variation of Tarot associated with it which are used in ceremonies, known as the GD Tarot (GDタロット). In the standard Golden-style Tarot, the Major Arcana tells the story of the Son of God, from birth to execution and resurrection, in order to draw on a portion of his power. Connected to the 22 paths on the Sephirot tree, they are meant to acquire a technique of entering the realm of god with a human body, miracles which can be explained by Christianity. The four suits of the Minor Arcana are associated with the four elements and the cards can activate a spell associated with their suit's element, though they are generally intended to be used in large-scale ceremonies rather than battle.

The GD Tarot is also described as a reinterpretation using the secrets of Kabbalah in attempt to remove the original sin people are born with. Though they are intended to be used with arrangements based on the Sephiroth, it is also possible to perform a Telesma-level summoning using an alternative arrangement based on the Qliphoth, as demonstrated by Aleister Crowley.

Astrology
Another part of Golden-style magic involves the observation and use of stars and mysterious lights in the night sky. As well as reading the future from the stars, magicians can seal their light into talismans and amulets, and draw their power out when they see fit.

Certain Golden-style spells involving the zodiac involve the invocation of angels associated with the individual signs. The only example seen so far was used by Karasuma Fran, involving Virgo (乙女座) and activated with the following chant; ''“Virgo. Heh, Heh, Vau, Yod. Guide the light of the 6th Sign that has already been lost due to precession, oh angel with an 8-letter divine name. Drive out the approaching calamity!!”''. A light with color corresponding to Virgo began to build but the effects weren't seen as the Karma-bearing chain beast she was fighting interfered and caused Aries (おひつじ座) to activate instead, disrupting the spell.

Attributes associated with the zodiac in Golden-style magic include the following:

Establishment
One of the figures who supposedly helped in the foundation of the Golden Dawn was a woman called Anna Sprengel, who was said to have had the role of Secret Chief and as a point of contact, an existence of the type that Aleister Crowley would become. However, it is dubious as to whether she actually existed.

The cabal was official founded during the 19th Century by William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and William Robert Woodman. After the retirement of Woodman during an unknown time between the establishment of the cabal and 1900, the Golden Dawn eventually flourished under the leadership of Mathers and Westcott. However, due to the continuous black propaganda received by magic-side organizations funded by the Roman Catholic Church during the time, the cabal remained a secret meeting place, with its members, as well as the cabal in general, still vulnerable to financial difficulty. Two of the most notable meeting places for members of the Golden Dawn were the Isis-Urania Temple in London, and another located in 36 Blythe Road, the latter of which held much of the cabal's magical artifacts.

Immediately, it became apparent that Westcott and Mathers had clashing views on the path the Golden Dawn must take. Westcott, a coroner by trade, believed that the cabal must exist while making certain compromises. On the other hand, Mathers wanted to see constant progress in the cabal as a magical society and thus, began spearheading several activities like performing ceremonies that involved the use of material extracted from living things—a taboo amongst magical societies at that time—as well as the development of a work kit that would grant flexibility in the way magic is created. This disparity would only intensify upon the arrival of an aspiring newcomer to the cabal, a young man named Aleister Crowley.

Despite being a relatively new member in the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley developed countless spells and spiritual items during his time in the cabal. Some of his ideas, such as the Aeons, were extreme even within the cabal and as such there were a number of people who didn't support them.

Downfall
By 1900, the Golden Dawn was already split between the Westcott and Mathers factions. Crowley, who had decided to dismantle the cabal from within as part of his plan to save his future daughter Lilith from an untimely death (which was foreseen by his mentor Allan Bennett), provoked the two factions into fighting each other in a conflict that would later be known as the Battle of Blythe Road. The bloody onslaught cost the cabal many lives, with the casualties including both of the remaining founders, along with an unknown number of magicians from both factions. Additionally, an artifact, in the form of an arrow fashioned out of a shriveled, disembodied hand, was lost in the battle. Aleister would later disassociate himself from the Golden Dawn at the aftermath of the Battle of Blythe Road.

After the destruction of the Golden Dawn, the splinter groups had developed on their own from the Golden Dawn's legacy and progressed, still existing to this day while continuing to chaotically break apart. The cabals produced by that were known as Golden-style cabals (黄金系結社).

Despite the fall of the cabal, the Golden-style of magic, which had its heyday at the start of the 20th century, continued and is standard in the present day.

Return to England Arc
Though the members of the Golden Dawn were believed to be long dead, when Aleister Crowley went to the graveyard of Westminster Abbey in order to find Mathers' remains to use against Coronzon, he was confronted by the man himself, who was apparently alive, leading the other members of the Golden Dawn, even Mathers' former rival Westcott, against Aleister.

List of Golden-style cabals

 * Dawn-Colored Sunlight
 * New Light
 * Exit of the Evening Dusk
 * Dawn that Wipes Away Darkness
 * The Daybreak (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
 * The Noon (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
 * The Blazing Sun (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
 * The Sunset (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
 * The Dusk (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
 * The Pole Star (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
 * The Eclipse (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
 * The Sunspot (abbreviation, proper name unknown)

Trivia

 * The individuals described as members of the Golden Dawn in the Toaru series were all either affiliated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, or one of its successor organizations or members in real-life, though circumstances differ between the two:
 * Though unnamed in the Toaru series, the third co-founder of the Golden Dawn was, a surgeon, occultist and horticulturalist whose real-life counterpart died in 1891, before the creation of the Golden Dawn's Second Order.
 * , commonly known as W.B. Yeats, was a famous Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner who joined the Golden Dawn due to his interest in the occult. He was involved in the power struggles within the organization, including the Battle of Blythe Road where he went up against Crowley.
 * was an American occultist and an author on various books on occult Tarot and Qabalah. He joined one of the Golden Dawn's successor organizations, Alpha et Omega, but left due to a controversy with Moina Mathers.
 * was a member of the Golden Dawn. Initially affiliated with Waite's faction during the early stages of the organization's splintering, he split away during a schism, co-founding and leading the successor organization.
 * was an occultist who was Aleister Crowley's biographer and later a member of Stella Matutina.
 * The recreated Mina Mathers refers at one point to her friend Annie (アニー) whom she begged for living expenses. This is likely, who was a sponsor to the Mathers as well as a fellow member of the Golden Dawn in real life.