Alternative spiritual movements have flourished throughout New Zealand’s post-contact history, from little-known UFO cults and the exotic Order of the Golden Dawn to the popular and more widespread Spiritualism and Theosophy. Islands of the Dawn explores the history of these and other spiritual traditions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This intriguing work, the first book-length treatment of the subject, raises a fundamental question: Why have unconventional spiritual movements flourished in nineteenth-century British settler communities? New Zealand typifies such a community with its immigration experience, the do it yourself” spirit of pioneer society