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 Alpha et Omega.

Biography

Moina, then named Mina, or Minna, was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to an influential Polish-Jewish family from father's and English and Irish from mother's sides, moving to Paris, when she was 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, was later Nobel Prize winner 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.