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The Royal Theosophical Society
Based out of Edinburgh, Scotland, the Royal Theosophical Society is an agency created by Queen Victoria. The society collects information on supernatural dealins across the British Empire, and functions as the repository of English magic. The society is a semi-secret organization. It is known to exist and it's membership is somewhat known. However, the members are much more commonly known as hoax busters, fraud hunters, and otherwise debunkers of the supernatural. In a steampunk age of science and progress there isn't room for witches and curses and such. Except, there is.
The predominant branches of the RTS deal with Druidic and Nordic magics and their use of runes, Jewish Qabbalism and numerology, the Egyptian and Coptic mystery schools, and the magic of the ancient world, such as Crete, Greece, and Persia.
There Continental Theosophical Society, located in North America is not connected to the Royal Society and is much more involved with seances, scrying, and other mystic traditions. The two societies do not see eye to eye.
The Restored Order of the Temple
Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, also known as the Knights Templar were disbanded and disgraced in the 14th century. The Order was restored quietly in the late 1700s. The Restored Order of the Temple began as a group of Prussian Junkers (landowners) interested in restoring the glory of the Arms Militant in the face of the steam industrial revolution. The new Knights collected what religious relics they could, and scrolls of theurgical magic. Being men of intelligence and resources, these new Knights found themselves the bearers of great and sometimes terrible secrets.
These Neo-Templars are the bearers of a new phase of the Faith, bearing literal relics and thaumaturgical magics and miracle working. They like their ancestors, weild impressive financial and political power, but they do so in a behind the scenes manner. The Order of the Restored Temple is known, but it is viewed as a Prussian only branch of the Freemasons. The Neo-Templars have nothing to do with the Freemasons, and in truth, membership in one is mutually exclusive to the other.
September 29, 2011, 10:45
September 29, 2011, 11:37