W. Wynn (William Wynn) Westcott

Born in 1848, William Wynn Westcott was an English physician, coroner, and occult writer. Alongside Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and William Robert Woodman, he is widely associated with founding the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London in 1888, a society that became one of the most influential organizations in modern ceremonial magic.

Westcott was also active in Freemasonry and related esoteric societies, and he published and translated a range of occult and Hermetic texts. That mix of practical professional life and intense esoteric study gives him a distinctive place in late Victorian culture.

He died in 1925, but his legacy continued through the Golden Dawn’s teachings and the many later traditions that drew on them. Readers interested in the history of magic, secret societies, and the occult revival of the nineteenth century will often find his name near the center of the story.