Moina Mathers

Moina Mathers, born Mina Bergson (28 February 1865 – 25 July 1928), was an artist and occultist at the turn of the 20th century. She was the sister of French philosopher Henri Bergson, the first man of Jewish descent to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. She is, however, more known for her marriage to the English occultist, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one of the founders of the organisation Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and, after his death in 1918, for being the head of a successor organisation, called the Rosicrucian Order of the Alpha et Omega.

Moina, then named Mina, or Minna, was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to a talented and influential Jewish family of Polish from father's and English and Irish from mother's sides, moving to Paris, when she was but two years of age. Her father, Michel Bergson, achieved some musical success in composing the operas Louisa de Montfort and Salvator Rosa, he was a native of Warsaw and member of the influential Bereksohn family. Moina Mathers' grandfather, Jacob Levison (born c. 1799) was a surgeon and a dentist. Her grandmother was Katherine Levison, born in London in c. 1800. Her maternal aunt was Minna Preuss, born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1835, and her mother, Kate, née Levison, was also born in Yorkshire. Her eldest brother, Henri Bergson, 1859–1941, joined the faculty of the College of France and is best known for authoring the philosophical work Creative Evolution. He was also the president of the British Society for Psychical Research.

Moina was a talented artist and joined the Slade School of Art, at the age of fifteen. The Slade was known for encouraging young women in the Arts, at the turn of the nineteenth century. Moina was awarded a scholarship and four merit certificates for drawing at the School. She became friends with Beatrice Offor, with whom she shared a studio. It was also at the Slade in 1882, that Moina met her future friend Annie Horniman, who would become the major financial sponsor for the Matherses, as struggling artists and occultists, in backing the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

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