Westcott, William Wynn (1848-1925)

Prominent British occultist and one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He was born in December 1848 at Leamington, Warwickshire, England. He lost both parents before the age of ten and was adopted by Richard West-cott Martyn, an uncle who was a surgeon by profession. Westcott was educated at the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School at Kingston-upon-Thames, London, and studied medicine at University College, London.

He qualified as a physician in 1871 and became a partner in his uncle's practice in Somerset. He also joined a Masonic lodge in Crewkerne. After 1879, he moved to Hendon, where he pursued studies in occultism for two years. About 1880, he became a leading member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (Rosicrucian Society of England), an occult society open only to master masons. A year later he was appointed deputy coroner and later coroner for northeast London, and he wrote a number of articles for the Medical Directory. During this period, his occultism remained a closely guarded secret.

In 1887, he acquired an old manuscript written in code, said to have been bought from a bookstall in Farringdon Road, London. In the pages of the manuscript was a sheet of paper with the name and address of a Fraulein Sprengel, a Rosicrucian adept living in Germany. Westcott deciphered the manuscript, which contained fragments of mystical rituals.

These rituals were expanded by Westcott's occultist friend S. L. MacGregor Mathers, also a member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Westcott thereupon corresponded with Sprengel, who authorized him to found an English branch of the German occult society Die Goldene Dämmerung. Westcott, Mathers, and W. R. Woodman thereupon founded the Isis-Urania temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888. Westcott's occult motto in the order was Sapere Aude (Dare to Be Wise).

This is the official story of the foundation of the famous Golden Dawn order, but there is strong reason to suppose that the manuscript may have been the invention of Westcott or his associates and that Sprengel never existed. Correspondence with her has been produced, but many students of occultism doubt its genuineness. For all that, the Golden Dawn attracted some of the most eminent talents of its day, including poet William Butler Yeats, until it eventually degenerated into undignified squabbles, expulsions, resignations, and complex fragmentation.

Westcott had retired from the Golden Dawn by around 1897, possibly because of pressure relating to his official status as a coroner. He continued to be a member of the Rosicrucian Society, and, after the death of Woodman in 1891, he became supreme magus. Through the 1890s he published a number of books and pamphlets. In his later years, he moved to Durban, South Africa, where he became vice president of two Theosophical Society lodges. He died June 30, 1925.

Westcott is not only known for his work with the Golden Dawn, he wrote books on the Kabbalah and translated work of Eliphas Levi.

Sources:

Gilbert, R. A., ed. The Magical Mason: Forgotten Hermetic Writings of William Wynn Westcott. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian Press, 1983.

Howe, Ellie. The Magicians of the Golden Dawn. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.

King, Francis. The Rites of Modern Occult Magic. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

Westcott, Wynn. Aesch Mezareph, or Purifying Fire. N.p.,1894.

——. The Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895.

——. Egyptian Magic. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1896.

——. Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtue. 1890. Reprint, London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1911.

——. The Pymander of Hermes. N.p., 1894.

——. Rosicrucians, Their History and Aims. N.p., 1894.

——. The Science of Alchymy. N.p., 1893.

——. Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation. London, Theosophical Publishing Society, 1893. Rev. ed. Gillette, N.J.: Heptangle Books, 1987.

——. Somnium Scipionis. N.p., 1894.