In 1887, a London coroner, Freemason and Rosicrucian named William Wynn Westcott decoded a mysterious manuscript comprising sixty folios written in black ink. The unknown author had used a simple substitution cipher, replacing each letter with a different symbol: a cross on top of a circle, perhaps, or two interlocking zigzags. The cipher itself was taken from Polygraphia, a 16th-century cryptographic work by Johannes Trithemius. Westcott found that the document contained the basic outlines in English for a series of initiation rituals. Within its pages he also discovered a handwritten note, giving the address of a residence in Stuttgart, Germany. Westcott wrote to this address in November 1887 and received a reply from one ‘Fräulein Sprengel’, who authorised Westcott – along with two other Masons of his choosing – to establish an English branch of what became known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The Golden Dawn was a group whose members met to study a curriculum of occult science. Writers, poets, theosophists, chemists, clergymen and medical doctors were initiated in elaborate and theatrical ceremonies, and symbolically blindfolded as they swore oaths of secrecy and purity. They wore robes in colours according to their