Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic
At the turn of the 20th century, the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn (“widely acknowledged as the key source of the
modern magical revival”) was in full swing, and it is with this
magical fraternity that Drury begins his history in depth.  The
Golden Dawn evolved during the 19th-century magical revival in
Europe, and the history of this occult fraternity is fodder
enough alone to fill several history books (which, in fact, it
has).  The importance of the Golden Dawn’s synthesis of myriad
practices and philosophies into a single, comprehensive magical
system cannot be overstated, a magical equivalent to what J. G.
Frazer accomplished with world myth and religion in The Golden
Bough.  Drury identifies the two dominant post-Golden Dawn
magical philosophies as those of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema and,
later, Wicca and Goddess worship.  Aleister Crowley—possibly
modern magic(k)’s most reviled and misunderstood, but most
influential, pioneer—was an ini