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Hello everyone. This is my first post. I'm glad to be here, and I'm hoping that I chose the proper forum to place this. If not, I trust that any moderators will bear with me and move this to the proper area. If that becomes necessary, thanks in advance!

I'm trying to expand my personal knowledge, and I know that this area is my next step of pursuit. Firstly, though, I need to have an understanding of how all of these beliefs tie together -- how they started, what the foundational tenets of these beliefs are, how they relate to each other, what their current presence is like, and so on. What are they about? Does this all fall under the Kabbalah umbrella? Specifically, I'm talking about the Rosicrucian Order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Ordo Templi Orientis, the Gnostics, and so on. Before I begin delving, I first need to wrap my head around this whole area of knowledge.

If anyone could provide a working summary, or even point me in the direction of a book or website, that would be great! Yes, I've already gone to the OTO and Golden Dawn websites, and I've read plenty of FAQs and introductory documents, but they're all written with the assumption that the reader has pre-existing knowledge. I do not.

The bigger picture: I am attempting to learn more about the old mysteries, and the magic that came out of them.

I appreciate anything that any of you could provide!

All of these traditions share some very similar beliefs and practices.

For example, Gnosticism teaches about emanations of the Divine known as Aeons. These can also be found in the Qabalah in the Sephiroth. The Qabalah was directly influenced by Gnosticism and Platonism (itself an influence on Gnosticism) via the Lurianic tradition, which is where modern Hermeticists get a lot of Qabalistic teachings from.

Rosicrucianism is incredibly Gnostic, as it is an esoteric Christian tradition that teaches many similar things.

Enochian Magic is also incredibly Gnostic, as argued by many authors (including myself in my upcoming book Enochian Magic In Theory - you'll also be able to read my Gnostic Enochian arguments in a paper in The Gnostic journal in November).

The Golden Dawn employs the Qabalah, Enochian, and Rosicrucianism, making it a very Gnostic tradition. The OTO employed a lot from the GD and added its EGC, further emphasising Gnostic beliefs and practices (albeit within a Thelemic context).

At the heart of it all is Gnosis, experiential knowledge of the divine. That is employed in most magical traditions we use, but it's all the other stuff that makes these specific traditions more Gnostic than others.

Y.