Albert Pike (December 29, 1809–April 2, 1891) was an attorney, soldier, writer, and Freemason. Pike is the only Confederate military officer or figure to be honored with an outdoor statue in Washington, D.C. (in Judiciary Square). He first joined the Independent order of Odd Fellows in 1840 then had in the interim joined a Masonic Lodge and become extremely active in the affairs of the organization, being elected Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction in 1859. He remained Sovereign Grand Commander for the remainder of his life (a total of thirty-two years). Notably, he published a book called Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in 1871, of which there were several subsequent editions. (via wikipedia)

Lévi was the son of a shoemaker in Paris; he attended a seminary and began to study to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood. However, while at the seminary he fell in love, and left without being ordained. He wrote a number of minor religious works: Des Moeurs et des Doctrines du Rationalisme en France ("Of the Moral Customs and Doctrines of Rationalism in France", 1839) was a tract within the cultural stream of the Counter-Enlightenment. La Mère de Dieu ("The Mother of God", 1844) followed and, after leaving the seminary, two radical tracts, L'Evangile du Peuple ("The Gospel of the People," 1840), and Le Testament de la Liberté ("The Testament of Liberty"), published in the year of revolutions, 1848, led to two brief prison sentences. Baphomet, in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie 1855 In 1853, Lévi visited England, where he met the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who was interested in Rosicrucianism as a literary theme and was the president of a minor Rosicrucian order.[2] Levi's first treatise on magic appeared in 1854 under the title Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, and was translated into English by Arthur Edward Waite as Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual. Its famous opening lines present the single essential theme of Occultism and gives some of the flavor of its atmosphere: Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. (Introduction) In 1861, he published a sequel, La Clef des Grands Mystères (The Key to the Great Mysteries). Further magical works by Lévi include Fables et Symboles (Stories and Images), 1862, and La Science des Esprits (The Science of Spirits), 1865. In 1868, he wrote Le Grand Arcane, ou l'Occultisme Dévoilé (The Great Secret, or Occultism Unveiled); this, however, was only published posthumously in 1898. Lévi's version of magic became a great success, especially after his death. That Spiritualism was popular on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1850s contributed to this success. His magical teachings were free from obvious fanaticisms, even if they remained rather murky; he had nothing to sell, and did not pretend to be the inititate of some ancient or fictitious secret society. He incorporated the Tarot cards into his magical system, and as a result the Tarot has been an important part of the paraphernalia of Western magicians. He had a deep impact on the magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and later on the ex-Golden Dawn member Aleister Crowley. It was largely through the occultists inspired by him that Lévi is remembered as one of the key founders of the twentieth century revival of magic. In Crowley's autobiography The Confessions of Aleister Crowley — published as non-fiction but now recognized as containing many fabrications — Crowley claimed to be the reincarnation of Eliphas Lévi and offered as evidence the statement that Crowley was born shortly after Lévi died. Crowley was born October 12, 1875, slightly less than six months after Lévi's death, meaning he was in the womb when Lévi died.

Godfrey Higgins (January 30, 1772 in Owston, Yorkshire, England – August 9, 1833), was an archaeologist, Freemason and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, humanist, social reformer, and author of various now-esoteric and rare books. He was remembered by his parish as a "political radical, reforming county magistrate and idiosyncratic historian of religions". (via wikipedia)

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535) had two very different and contradictory identities. He was the author of the most comprehensive and most widely known book on magic and all occult arts, De occulta philosophia libri tres / Three Books of Occult Philosophy (henceforth cited as OP, followed by book and chapter number), but also the author of a sweeping attack on every field of human learning (including magic and the occult arts), De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum et artium, atque excellentia Verbi Dei, declamatio invectiva / On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Arts and Sciences: An Invective Declamation (1530; henceforth cited as De vanitate, followed by chapter number). In his own century, both books were widely known, frequently reprinted, and often denounced as dangerous and heretical. They were translated from Latin into many vernacular languages, especially De vanitate. Students of the more recondite (and least respectable) branches of natural philosophy and occult sciences pored over De occulta philosophia, some of them seeking alternatives to the Aristotelian natural philosophy taught in the universities, others seeking less conventional goals, such as success in alchemical operations or the ability to use magical secrets in order to control both the natural world and the world of spirits. Readers of De vanitate regarded it variously as a skeptical or at least anti-rationalistic attack on human learning and the ability of the human mind to gain truth, or as a denunciation of religious hypocrisy and corruption and of social injustice, or (as the French translator suggested in the title of his edition 1582) simply as an amusing satire that would please readers who wanted to shock people by saying things contrary to conventional opinion. Those who proclaimed themselves to be pious, led by the friars and theologians of the universities, denounced both books and also their author – regarded by some as a sorcerer and associate of demons, detested by others as an irreverent mocker and subverter of religion and good morals.

Joseph Fort Newton (1876-1950) was an American author. His books include Some Living Masters of the Pulpit (1923), The Men's House (1923), and Preaching in New York (1924). "Fourteen years ago the writer of this volume entered the temple of Freemasonry, and that date stands out in memory as one of the most significant days in his life. There was a little spread on the night of his raising, and, as is the custom, the candidate was asked to give his impressions of the Order. Among other things, he made request to know if there was any little book which would tell a young man the things he would most like to know about Masonry-what it was, whence it came, what it teaches, and what it is trying to do in the world? No one knew of such a book at that time, nor has any been found to meet a need which many must have felt before and since. By an odd coincidence, it has fallen to the lot of the author to write the little book for which he made request fourteen years ago.

Edith Starr Miller, Lady Queensborough (b. 1887 - d. January 16, 1933) was a New York socialite who in 1921 became the second wife of the Almeric Hugh Paget, 1st Baron Queenborough (1861-1949). Miller was born in 1887, the daughter of William Starr Miller, New York industrialist and real estate operator, and Edith Caroline (Warren) Miller. She was a granddaughter of George H. Warren, one of the founders of the Metropolitan Opera, a niece of George Henry Warren, Whitney Warren, Lloyd Warren and Mrs. Robert Goelet, and a cousin of Robert Walton Goelet. Before her marriage to Paget, she published in 1918 a book titled "Common Sense in the Kitchen." Edith's theories were outlined in her posthumously published "Occult Theocrasy." (via wikipedia)

Manly Palmer Hall (March 18, 1901 - August 29, 1990) was a Canadian-born author and mystic. He is perhaps most famous for his work The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, published in 1928 when he was 27 years old. It is claimed that Hall was made a knight patron of the Masonic Research Group of San Francisco in 1953, although he was not raised as a Mason until 22 November 1954 into Jewel Lodge No. 374 , San Francisco. He later received his 32° in the Valley of San Francisco AASR (SJ). In 1973 (47 years after writing The Secret Teachings of All Ages), Hall was recognized as a 33º Mason (the highest honor conferred by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite), at a ceremony held at PRS on December 8,1973.). Interestingly, the definitive Manly Palmer Hall Archive states that Hall received the 33º, "despite never being initiated into the physical craft." In his over 70-year career, Hall delivered approximately 8,000 lectures in the United States and abroad, authored over 150 books and essays, and wrote countless magazine articles. (via wikipedia)

Max Heindel - born Carl Louis von Grasshoff in Aarhus, Denmark on July 23, 1865 - was a Christian occultist, astrologer, and mystic. He died on January 6, 1919 at Oceanside, California, United States. Heindel left home at the age of sixteen to learn engineering at the ship-yards of Glasgow, Scotland. As Chief Engineer of a trading steamer, he traveled extensively, and eventually found himself working on one of the large passenger steamers of the Cunard Line plying between the America and Europe. From 1895 to 1901, he was a consulting engineer in New York City. In 1903, Max Heindel moved to Los Angeles, California, seeking work. After attending lectures by the theosophist C.W. Leadbeater, he joined the Theosophical Society of Los Angeles, of which he became vice-president in 1904 and 1905. He also became a vegetarian, and began the study of astrology. From 1906 to 1907 he started a lecture tour, in order to spread his occult knowledge. He began in San Francisco and then went to Seattle. In the fall of 1907, during a most successful period of lectures in Minnesota, he traveled to Berlin with his friend Dr. Alma Von Brandis. Heindel returned to America in the summer of 1908 where he at once started to formulate the Rosicrucian teachings, the Western Wisdom Teachings, which he had received from the Elder Brothers, published as a book entitled The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception in 1909. It is a reference work in the Christian mysticism practice and in the Occult study literature, containing the fundamentals of Esoteric Christianity from a Rosicrucian perspective. The Cosmo contains a comprehensive outline of the evolutionary processes of man and the universe, correlating science with religion. (via wikipedia)