(continued from last post)
One firebrand of a budding magickian named Edward Crowley joined the
order in the 1880s. He prefered his middle name of Alistair, which
he later transformed into the more familiar Aleister. He took the name
Frater Perdurabo, meaning "I Endure", and ascended meteorically through
the ranks of the organization. By the time he received his 6th Degree
initiation, he began to question the assertion that MacGregor Mathers
made that he was the only one to communicate with the "Secret Chiefs",
and even the existence of such a group of people. He demanded that he
be allowed to study for the 7th degree, the highest attainable within
the order. MacGregor refused, and a power struggle ensued.

The power struggle gutted the order, with several defecting to a
rival order that Crowley had created called the Astrum .'.
Argentum .'. . The AA's rituals were more chaotic, involved experiments
in Tantric Sex and Psychedelic drugs like Psilocybin, Hashish and
Datura stramonium, and had a far more Dionysian flavor than the
Apollonian GD. In the grand tradition of one-upmanship within
Freemasonry and Neo-freemasonry, the AA had not just 7 degrees
accessible to initiates, but 10.  The remainder of the Golden Dawn,
including Dion Fortune and the beleaguered MacGregor Mathers,
reorganized as the Stellar Matutina, which persisted until the 1930s
and had ties to Theosophy.

The AA later merged with a German order called the Ordo Templi
Orientis that held similar interests in sex magick and the use of
mind-expanding drugs. The OTO persisted even after the death of Crowley
in 1940, and is presently experiencing a renaissance of sorts, despite
an undeserved bad reputation of a similar sort to that which remains
around Crowley. The old use of mind-expanding drugs and sex is down-
played as optional, and the group now sees itself as an alternative
religion based on a single commandment...to find one's destiny, or True
Will, and follow it. This is the best rendering of the cryptic motto
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law; Love is the law, love
under Will."

The various offshoots of the Golden Dawn were not the only Magickal
orders to emerge in the Gilded Age. There were several orders that
identified themselves as "Rosicrucian", with the most durable being the
Ancient Mystic Order of the Rose Cross, which is based in San Jose,
California and is well-known for their ads in magazines for their
"Mastery of Life" brochure. They are also remarkable for one of the
finest collections of Egyptian relics outside of the British Museum and
museums in Egypt itself. They, however, are just as innocuous as the
local Masonic Lodge, with more of a mystic bent.  The Theosophical
Society of Yelena Petrovna Blavatskaya got its start in the 1880s,
along with other organizations that were to one extent or another
syncretes of Hinduism. Hinduism attracted many esoteric explorers
especially from Britain, since India was a part of the great Victorian
expanse of the British Empire, an empire that the sun never set on
until well into the 20th Century. Offshoots of Theosophy exist even to
this day, and Theosophy's concepts are very influential to much of the
"New Age".