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. Moina was a talented artist and enrolled at 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. Moina met her husband,
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, in 1887, while studying at the
British Museum, where Samuel was a frequent patron. A year later, her future husband founded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, one of the most influential organisations in the
Western Mystery Tradition. Moina was the first initiate of this Order in March, 1888. Her chosen motto in the Golden Dawn was
Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum, meaning "Prudence never retraces its steps." A year later in 1890, she married S. L. Mathers and Mina Bergson became Moina Mathers. In their occult partnership, her husband was described as the "evoker of spirits" and Moina as the clairvoyant "seeress", who often illustrated, as an artist, what her husband "evoked". In March 1899, they performed the rites of the Egyptian goddess
Isis, on the stage of the
Théâtre La Bodinière in
Paris. In 1918, when her husband died, Moina took over the
Alpha et Omega, a successor organisation to the Golden Dawn, as its Imperatrix. She died in 1928 in London. ==See also==