It is no exaggeration to say that Netflix's forthcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman has generated a lot of excitement among fans. The first trailer for the series was recently released and seems to perfectly recreate scenes from the comic's debut issue.

The protagonist, Dream, is ruler of the Dreaming. He is also one of seven immortal beings known as the Endless. The trailer shows how Dream was imprisoned by an occult secret society using ceremonial magic. This group is the Order of Ancient Mysteries and they are the first villains depicted in both the comic and (apparently) the forthcoming Netflix series.

Like many characters in The Sandman, the Order of Ancient Mysteries' makes just a few appearances, yet their presence is continually felt throughout the series. Debuting in The Sandman #1 (by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg), the Order was an occult secret society founded by Roderick Burgess in Wychcross, England at the start of the 20th Century. During World War I, the group persuaded Dr. John Hathaway, the senior curator of the Royal Museum, to provide them with a rare tome of magic, the Magdalene Grimoire. Hathaway's son had been killed that morning and Burgess exploited his grief. Together, they and the rest of the Order of Ancient Mysteries performed a magic ritual to imprison Death, hoping to end the mass slaughter caused by the Great War.

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The Sandman #1. The Order if Ancient Mysteries

However, they failed, instead capturing Death's younger brother, Dream. The Order stole the objects of Dream's office and kept him locked away. They also blackmailed Hathaway, coercing him to give them more rare artifacts from the Royal Museum. After his thefts were discovered, Hathaway killed himself, penning a suicide note that explained his actions and that exposed the Order. However, the note was destroyed by magic.

In the following decades, the Order of Ancient Mysteries turned on itself. A few members fled, stealing the artifacts that had belonged to Dream. Eventually, Roderick Burgess died of old age, and his son, Alex Burgess, replaced him as head of the Order, running it with his lover Paul as his second-in-command. Throughout the 60s, the two exploited the New Age movement, teaching basic mysticism to young hippies who they used for sex and money. During this time, Dream escaped his imprisonment, condemning Alex to spend the rest of his life trapped in never-ending nightmares.

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The Sandman #1

The Order went into decline after that, but it appeared in other DC comics. In Green Arrow: Quiver (by Keven Smith, Phil Hester and Ande Parks), the villain Stanley Dover studies magic from the Order of Ancient Mysteries. He steals a grimoire from them, summoning a hellish entity known as the Beast with No Name.

In Sandman Presents: The Dreaming (by Si Spurrier and Bilquis Evely), it is revealed that the remnants of the Order worked with a tech CEO named Hyperion Keter, using a perverse misappropriation of Kabbalah and sympathetic magic to tattoo Dream with a sigil that weakened him. Keter also created an AI that eventually took over the Dreaming, threatening reality itself.  Eventually, Dream was once again restored to power, but by then, countless lives had been destroyed by the AI's influence on the collective subconscious.

It is unlikely that the first season of Netflix's The Sandman will depict the Order of Ancient Mysteries beyond the pilot episode. However, the group remains one of the most formidable villains in the entire comic book series, and their members are the only humans to have ever used magic to imprison Dream.

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