Star of the Magi.
An Exponent of Occult Science, Art, and Philosophy.
Filled with Genuine Occultism
1899-1903 Monthly
Chicago, IL. Editor: News E. Wood, A.M., M.D., publisher and editor; Dr. Thomas J. Betiero, associate editor.
1/1, November 1899-December 1903. 24 pp., 9 x 12. $1.00 a year.

The journal's advertisements promised: "Secret Sciences, Transcendentalism, Astrology, Astronomy, Religion, Romance, Occultism, Orientalism, Freemasonry-Facts, Theosophy-Telepathy, Health and Hygiene, Events and their Aspects, Magic, Mysticism, Alchemy, Adeptship, Geometry, Geomancy, Initiation, Intuition." In fact, despite its claims to being the preeminent journal of occultism for an international audience, the journal was mainly given over to reprints of long works (Edward Dwight Walker's Reincarnation) and the serialization of Betiero's Nedoure, Priestess of the Magi, supplemented by astrological articles by Willis F. Whitehead and fillers from the popular press and Wood's medical advice.

In its initial issues, the journal was the organ of the Order of Oriental Magi with Wood as Supreme Grand Magus, Betiero as Supreme Grand Preceptor, and Whitehead as Supreme Grand Vizier. See S.C. Gould's "Resume of Arcane Fraternities", Notes and Queries (October 1896): 273. This was a collection of minor scoundrals if there ever was one, and one in which Reuben Swinburne Clymer also participated. On Betiero see The Philomathian. Wood and Whithead (at least) had been students of the Order of the Magi of Olney Hawkins Richmond (1844-1920), an order said to have begun in Atlantis. See the notes under The Progressive Thinker. Richmond was a homeopathic pharmacist and renowned checker player. His Religion of the Stars taught the exoteric "religion" of the order, but the inner secrets were communicated in degrees in the Order of the Magi. He taught a Tarot system based on a regular poker deck of cards, and is said to have thought that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. S.C. Gould says that Richmond's order was a "true Secret Order in the fullest fullest sense of the word" whatever that might mean. Wood and Whitehead, while still recognizing the numerological and astrological worth of Richmond's system, came to see him as a confidence man and crook, and the Oriental Magi were started as a consequence. The Oriental Magi seem to have come to naught (though Clymer continued their work) and been replaced by the Society/Order of Oriental Mystics with Betiero's Oriental Mysteries as its organ. In 1901 the Star of the Magi became the organ of Margaret B. Peeke's Martinist Order, and published extensive articles by her (and by Papus, Gérard Encausse) on Martinism and occultism. LOC; Northwestern University.

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