[1][2] The Alpha et Omega was one of four daughter organisations into which the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn fragmented, the others being the Stella Matutina; the Isis-Urania Temple led by A. E. Waite and others; and Aleister Crowley's A∴A∴.
[8] In 1900, the hegemony of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was disturbed by a letter sent from Samuel Mathers, who was living in Paris, to his representative in London, Florence Farr.
In the letter he claimed that his co-founder Wynn Westcott forged communications between himself and the Secret Chiefs, who had given him the authority for the Order to exist.
This was quickly followed, in 1901, by the Horos scandal (see Ann O'Delia Diss Debar), in which two con artists used Golden Dawn materials obtained from Mathers to cover a sex scam.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers subsequently dissolved the Order of the Golden Dawn in 1906 and founded the Alpha et Omega in Paris.
Two or three former Golden Dawn temples in the United States, including Thoth-Hermes in Chicago, remained loyal to Mathers during the schism and became part of the Alpha et Omega as well.
[5] Elsa Barker, a poet and author who traveled frequently between Europe and the USA, became Mathers’ emissary to the American temples of the A.O.
[11] After Moina's death in St Mary Abbots Hospital on 25 July 1928,[12] Isabel Morgan Boyd, her daughter Isme, and Edward John Langford-Garstin took over the London temple.
[12] According to Langford-Garstin's cousin Ithell Colquhoun, the AO "survived until the outbreak of [World War II] in 1939"[13] when it was "officially closed" [14] and its temple-furniture destroyed "at the instance of the Secret Chiefs.
[21][22] Two famous members of the Alpha et Omega were Dion Fortune (pen name of Violet Firth) and Paul Foster Case.
King, became concerned about Dion Fortune's increasing skill with astral travel and reception of "trance messages from Masters of the Western Tradition" (see Secret Chiefs).
[32] In 1966 a box with some magical tools of the Order of A+O was found on the beach after the cliff gave way dropping them into the sea; a photograph was published in the Daily Telegraph with a notation that they had belonged to a witch.