traditional impudence, publicly threaten America, with its 500,000
Masons, and 34,000,000 Protestants, with a union of Church and
State under the direction of Rome! The danger which threatens the
free institutions of this republic, we are told, will come from
“the principles of Protestantism logically developed.” The present
Secretary of the Navy--the Hon. R. W. Thompson, of Indiana, having
actually dared, in his own free Protestant country, to publish a book
recently on _Papacy and the Civil Power_, in which his language is as
moderate as it is gentlemanly and fair, a Roman Catholic priest, at
Washington, D. C.--the very seat of Government--denounces him with
violence. What is better, a representative member of the Society
of Jesus, Father F. X. Weninger, D.D., pours upon his devoted head
a vial of wrath that seems to have been brought direct from the
Vatican cellars. “The assertions,” he says, “which Mr. Thompson
makes on the necessary antagonism between the Catholic Church and
free institutions, are characterized by pitiful ignorance and blind
audacity. He is reckless of logic, of history, of common sense,
of charity; and presents himself before the loyal American people
as a narrow-minded bigot. No scholar would venture to repeat the
stale calumnies which have so often been refuted.... In answer to
his accusations against the Church as the enemy of liberty, I tell
him that, if ever this country should become a Catholic country,
that is, if Catholics should ever be in the majority, and _have the
control of political power_, then he would see the principles of our
Constitution carried out to the fullest extent; he would see that
these States would be in very deed _United_. He would behold a people
living in peace and harmony; joined in the bonds of one faith, their
hearts beating in unison with love of their fatherland, with charity
and forbearance toward all, and respecting the rights and consciences
even of their slanderers.”
In behalf of this “Society of Jesus,” he advises Mr. Thompson to
send his book to the Czar, Alexander II., and to Frederick William,
Emperor of Germany. He may expect from them, as a token of their
sympathy, the orders of St. Andrew and of the Black Eagle. “From
clear-minded, self-thinking, patriotic Americans, he cannot expect
anything but the _decoration_ of their contempt. As long as American
hearts _will_ beat in American bosoms, and the blood of their fathers
_shall_ flow in their veins, such efforts as Thompson’s _shall_ not
succeed. True, genuine Americans will protect the Catholic Church in
this country and _will finally join it_.” After that, having thus,
as he seems to think, left the corpse of his impious antagonist
upon the field, he marches off emptying the dregs of his exhausted
bottle after the following fashion: “We leave the volume, whose
argument we have killed, as a carcass to be devoured by those Texan
buzzards--those stinking birds--we mean that kind of men who love to
feed on corruption, calumnies, and lies, and are attracted by the
stench of them.”
This last sentence is worthy to be added as an appendix to the
_Discorsi del Somma Pontifice Pio IX._, by Don Pasquale di
Franciscis, immortalized in the contempt of Mr. Gladstone.--_Tel
maître tel Valet!_
Moral: This will teach fair-minded, sober, and gentlemanly writers
that even so well-bred an antagonist as Mr. Thompson has shown
himself in his book, cannot hope to escape the only available weapon
in the Catholic armory--Billingsgate. The whole argument of the
author shows that while forcible, he intends to be fair; but he
might as well have attacked with a Tertullianistic violence, for his
treatment would not have been worse. It will doubtless afford him
some consolation to be placed in the same category with schismatic
and infidel emperors and kings.
While Americans, including Masons, are now warned to prepare
themselves to join the Holy Apostolic and Roman Catholic Church,
we are glad to know that there are some as loyal and respected as
any in Masonry who support our views. Conspicuous among them is our
venerable friend, Mr. Leon Hyneman, P. M., and a member of the Grand
Lodge of Pennsylvania. For eight or nine years he was editor of
the _Masonic Mirror and Keystone_, and is an author of repute. He
assures us personally that for over thirty years he has combated the
design to erect into a Masonic dogma, belief in a _personal_ God. In
his work, _Ancient York and London Grand Lodges_, he says (p. 169):
“Masonry, instead of unfolding professionally with the intellectual
advancement of scientific knowledge and general intelligence, has
departed from the original aims of the fraternity, and is apparently
inclining towards a sectarian society. That is plainly to be seen
... in the persistent determination not to expunge the sectarian
innovations interpolated in the Ritual.... It would appear that the
Masonic fraternity of this country are as indifferent to ancient
landmarks and usages of Masonry, as the Masons of the past century,
under the London Grand Lodge were.” It was this conviction which
prompted him, in 1856, when Jacques Etienne Marconis de Nègre, Grand
Hierophant of the Rite of Memphis, came to America and tendered
him the Grand Mastership of the Rite in the United States, and the
Ancient and Accepted Rite offered him an Honorary 33d--to refuse both.
The Temple was the last European secret organization which, as a
body, had in its possession some of the mysteries of the East. True,
there were in the past century (and perhaps still are) isolated
“Brothers” faithfully and secretly working under the direction of
Eastern Brotherhoods. But these, when they did belong to European
societies, invariably joined them for objects unknown to the
Fraternity, though at the same time for the benefit of the latter. It
is through them that modern Masons have all they know of importance;
and the similarity now found between the Speculative Rites of
antiquity, the mysteries of the Essenes, Gnostics, and the Hindus,
and the highest and oldest of the Masonic degrees well prove the
fact. If these mysterious brothers became possessed of the secrets of
the societies, they could never reciprocate the confidence, though in
their hands these secrets were safer, perhaps, than in the keeping
of European Masons. When certain of the latter were found worthy of
becoming affiliates of the Orient, they were secretly instructed and
initiated, but the others were none the wiser for that.
No one could ever lay hands on the Rosicrucians, and notwithstanding
the alleged discoveries of “secret chambers,” _vellums_ called
“T,” and of fossil knights with ever-burning lamps, this ancient
association and its true aims are to this day a mystery. Pretended
Templars and sham Rose-Croix, with a few genuine kabalists, were
occasionally burned, and some unlucky Theosophists and alchemists
sought and put to the torture; delusive confessions even were wrung
from them by the most ferocious means, but yet, the true Society
remains to-day as it has ever been, unknown to all, especially to its
cruelest enemy--the Church.
As to the modern Knights Templar and those Masonic Lodges which now
claim a direct descent from the ancient Templars, their persecution
by the Church was a farce from the beginning. They have not, nor
have they ever had any secrets, dangerous to the Church. Quite the
contrary; for we find J. G. Findel saying that the Scottish degrees,
or the Templar system, only dates from 1735-1740, and “_following its
Catholic tendency, took up its chief residence in the Jesuit College
of Clermont, in Paris_, and hence was called the Clermont system.”
The present Swedish system has also something of the Templar element
in it, but free from Jesuits and interference with politics; however,
it asserts that it has Molay’s Testament in the original, for a
Count Beaujeu, a nephew of Molay, _never heard of elsewhere_--says
Findel--transplanted Templarism into Freemasonry, and thus procured
for his uncle’s ashes a mysterious sepulchre. It is sufficient to
prove this a Masonic fable that on this pretended monument the day
of Molay’s funeral is represented as March 11, 1313, while the day
of his death was March 19, 1313. This spurious production, which is
neither genuine Templarism, nor genuine Freemasonry, has never taken
firm root in Germany. But the case is otherwise in France.
Writing upon this subject, we must hear what Wilcke has to say of
these pretensions:
“The present Knight Templars of Paris will have it, that they are
direct descendants from the ancient Knights, and endeavor to prove
this by documents, interior regulations, and secret doctrines.
Foraisse says the Fraternity of Freemasons was founded in Egypt,
Moses communicating the secret teaching to the Israelites, Jesus to
the Apostles, and thence it found its way to the Knight Templars.
Such inventions are necessary ... to the assertion that the
Parisian Templars are the offspring of the ancient order. All these
asseverations, unsupported by history, were fabricated _in the
High Chapter of Clermont_ (Jesuits), and preserved by the Parisian
Templars as a legacy left them by those political revolutionists, the
Stuarts and the Jesuits.” Hence we find the Bishops Gregoire[790] and
Münter[791] supporting them.
Connecting the modern with the ancient Templars, we can at best,
therefore, allow them an adoption of certain rites and ceremonies
of purely _ecclesiastical_ character after they had been cunningly
inoculated into that grand and antique Order by the clergy. Since
this desecration, it gradually lost its primitive and simple
character, and went fast to its final ruin. Founded in 1118 by the
Knights Hugh de Payens and Geoffrey de St. Omer, nominally for the
protection of the pilgrims, its true aim was the restoration of the
primitive secret worship. The true version of the history of Jesus,
and the early Christianity was imparted to Hugh de Payens, by the
Grand-Pontiff of the Order of the Temple (of the Nazarene or Johanite
sect), one named Theocletes, after which it was learned by some
Knights in Palestine, from the higher and more intellectual members
of the St. John sect, who were initiated into its mysteries.[792]
Freedom of intellectual thought and the restoration of one and
universal religion was their secret object. Sworn to the vow of
obedience, poverty, and chastity, they were at first the true Knights
of John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness and living on wild
honey and locusts. Such is the tradition and the true kabalistic
version.
It is a mistake to state that the Order became only later
anti-Catholic. It was so from the beginning, and the red cross on the
white mantle, the vestment of the Order, had the same significance
as with the initiates in every other country. It pointed to the four
quarters of the compass, and was the emblem of the universe.[793]
When, later, the Brotherhood was transformed into a Lodge, the
Templars had, in order to avoid persecution, to perform their own
ceremonies in the greatest secresy, generally in the hall of the
chapter, more frequently in isolated caves or country houses built
amidst woods, while the ecclesiastical form of worship was carried on
publicly in the chapels belonging to the Order.
Though of the accusations brought against them by order of Philip
IV., many were infamously false, the main charges were certainly
correct, from the stand-point of what is considered by the Church,
_heresy_. The present-day Templars, adhering strictly as they do to
the _Bible_, can hardly claim descent from those who did not believe
in Christ, as God-man, or as the Saviour of the world; who rejected
the miracle of his birth, and those performed by himself; who did not
believe in transubstantiation, the saints, holy relics, purgatory,
etc. The Christ Jesus was, in their opinion, a false prophet, but
the man Jesus a Brother. They regarded John the Baptist as their
patron, but never viewed him in the light in which he is presented in
the _Bible_. They reverenced the doctrines of alchemy, astrology,
magic, kabalistic talismans, and adhered to the secret teachings of
their chiefs in the East. “In the last century,” says Findel, “when
Freemasonry erroneously supposed herself the daughter of Templarism,
great pains were taken to regard the Order of Knights-Templars
as innocent.... For this purpose not only legends and unrecorded
events were fabricated, but pains were taken to repress the truth.
The Masonic admirers of the Knights-Templars bought up the whole of
the documents of the lawsuit published by Moldenwaher, because they
proved the culpability of the Order.”[794]
This culpability consisted in their “heresy” against the Roman
Catholic Church. While the real “Brothers” died an ignominious death,
the spurious Order which tried to step into their shoes became
exclusively a branch of the Jesuits under the immediate tutelage of
the latter. True-hearted, honest Masons, ought to reject with horror
any connection, let alone descent from these.
“The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem,” writes Commander
Gourdin,[795] “sometimes called the Knights Hospitallers, and the
Knights of Malta, were not Freemasons. On the contrary, they seem
to have been inimical to Freemasonry, for in 1740, the Grand Master
of the Order of Malta caused the Bull of Pope Clement XII. to be
published in that island, and forbade the meetings of the Freemasons.
On this occasion several Knights and many citizens left the island;
and in 1741, the Inquisition persecuted the Freemasons at Malta. The
Grand Master proscribed their assemblies under severe penalties, and
six Knights were banished from the island in perpetuity for having
assisted at a meeting. In fact, unlike the Templars, they had not
even a secret form of reception. Reghellini says that he was unable
to procure a copy of the secret Ritual of the Knights of Malta. The
reason is obvious--there was none!”
And yet American Templarism comprises three degrees. 1, Knight of
the Red Cross; 2, Knight Templar; and 3, Knight of Malta. It was
introduced from France into the United States, in 1808, and the first
_Grand Encampment General_ was organized on June 20, 1816, with
Governor De Witt Clinton, of New York, as Grand Master.
This inheritance of the Jesuits should hardly be boasted of. If the
Knights Templar desire to make good their claims, they must choose
between a descent from the “heretical,” anti-Christian, kabalistic,
primitive Templars, or connect themselves with the Jesuits,
and nail their tesselated carpets directly on the platform of
ultra-Catholicism! Otherwise, their claims become a mere pretense.
So impossible does it become for the originators of the _ecclesiastical_
pseudo-order of Templars, invented, according to Dupuy, in France, by
the adherents of the Stuarts, to avoid being considered a branch of
the Order of the Jesuits, that we are not surprised to see an
anonymous author, rightly suspected of belonging to the Jesuit Chapter
at Clermont, publishing a work in 1751, in Brussels, on the lawsuit of
the Knights Templar. In this volume, in sundry mutilated notes,
additions, and commentaries, he represents the _innocence_ of the
Templars of the accusation of “heresy,” thus robbing them of the
greatest title to respect and admiration that these early
free-thinkers and martyrs have won!
This last pseudo-order was constituted at Paris, on the 4th of
November, 1804, by virtue of a _forged Constitution_, and ever
since it has “contaminated genuine Freemasonry,” as the highest
Masons themselves tell us. _La Charte de transmission_ (tabula aurea
Larmenii) presents the outward appearance of such extreme antiquity
“that Gregoire confesses that if all the other relics of the Parisian
treasury of the Order had not silenced his doubts as to their ancient
descent, the sight of this charter would at the very first glance
have persuaded him.”[796] The first Grand Master of this spurious
Order was a physician of Paris, Dr. Fahre-Palaprat, who assumed the
name of Bernard Raymond.
Count Ramsay, a Jesuit, was the first to start the idea of the
Templars being joined to the Knights of Malta. Therefore, we read
from his pen the following:
“Our forefathers (!!!), the Crusaders, assembled in the Holy Land
from all Christendom, wished to unite in a fraternity embracing
all nations, that when bound together, heart and soul, for mutual
improvement, they might, in the course of time, represent one single
intellectual people.”
This is why the Templars are made to join the St. John’s Knights, and
the latter got into the craft of Masonry known as St. John’s Masons.
In the _Sceau Rompu_, in 1745, we find, therefore, the following most
impudent falsehood, worthy of the Sons of Loyola: “The lodges were
dedicated to St. John, because _the Knights_-Masons had in the holy
wars in Palestine joined the Knights of St. John.”
In 1743, the Kadosh degree was invented at Lyons (so writes Thory,
at least), and “it represents the _revenge of the Templars_.” And
here we find Findel saying that “the Order of Knights Templars had
been abolished in 1311, and to that epoch they were obliged to have
recourse when, after the banishment of several Knights from Malta,
in 1740, because they were Freemasons, it was no longer possible to
keep up a connection with the Order of St. John, or Knights of Malta,
then in the plenitude of their power _under the sovereignty of the
Pope_.”
Turning to Clavel, one of the best Masonic authorities, we read:
“It is clear that the erection of the French Order of the Knight
Templars is not more ancient than the year 1804, and that it cannot
lay any legitimate claim to being the continuation of the so-called
society of ‘la petite Resurrection des Templiers,’ nor this latter,
either, extend back to the ancient Order of the Knights Templars.”
Therefore, we see these pseudo-Templars, under the guidance of the
worthy Father Jesuits, forging in Paris, 1806, the famous charter of
Larmenius. Twenty years later, this nefast and subterranean body,
guiding the hand of assassins, directed it toward one of the best and
greatest princes in Europe, whose mysterious death, unfortunately for
the interests of truth and justice, has never been--for political
reasons--investigated and proclaimed to the world as it ought to
have been. It is this prince, a Freemason himself, who was the last
depository of the secrets of the true Knights Templar. For long
centuries these had remained unknown and unsuspected. Holding their
meetings once every _thirteen_ years, at Malta, and their Grand
Master advising the European brothers of the place of _rendezvous_
but a few hours in advance, these representatives of the once
mightiest and most glorious body of Knights assembled on the fixed
day, from various points of the earth. _Thirteen_ in number, in
commemoration of the year of the death of Jacques Molay (1313), the
now Eastern brothers, among whom were crowned heads, planned together
the future religious and political fate of the nations; while the
Popish Knights, their murderous and bastard successors, slept soundly
in their beds, without a dream disturbing their guilty consciences.
“And yet,” says Rebold, “notwithstanding the confusion they had
created (1736-72), the Jesuits had accomplished but one of their
designs, viz.: _denaturalyzing and bringing into disrepute the
Masonic Institution_. Having succeeded, as they believed, in
destroying it in one form, they were determined to use it in another.
With this determination, they arranged the systems styled ‘Clerkship
of the Templars,’ an amalgamation of the different histories, events,
and characteristics of the crusades mixed with the reveries of the
alchemists. _In this combination Catholicism governed all, and the
whole fabrication moved upon wheels, representing the great object
for which the Society of Jesus was organized._”[797]
Hence, the rites and symbols of Masonry which though “Pagan” in
origin, are all applied to and all flavor of Christianity. A Mason
has to declare his belief in a _personal_ God, Jehovah, and in the
Encampment degrees also in Christ, before he can be accepted in
the Lodge, while the Johanite Templars believed in the unknown and
invisible Principle, whence proceeded the Creative Powers misnamed
_gods_, and held to the Nazarene version of Ben-Panther being the
sinful father of Jesus, who thus proclaimed himself “the son of god
and of humanity.”[798] This also accounts for the fearful oaths of
the Masons taken _on the Bible_, and for their lectures servilely
agreeing with the Patriarcho-Biblical Chronology. In the American
Order of Rose Croix, for instance, when the neophyte approaches
the altar, the “Sir Knights are called to order, and the captain
of the guard makes his proclamation.” “To the glory of the sublime
architect of the universe (Jehovah-Binah?), under the auspices of the
Sovereign Sanctuary of _Ancient_ and _Primitive_ Freemasonry,” etc.,
etc. Then the Knight Orator strikes 1 and tells the neophyte that
the antique legends of Masonry date back FORTY centuries; claiming
no greater antiquity for the oldest of them than 622 A.M., at which
time he says Noah was born. Under the circumstances this will be
regarded as a liberal concession to chronological preferences. After
that Masons[799] are apprised that it was about the year 2188 B.C.,
that Mizraim led colonies into Egypt, and laid the foundation of the
Kingdom of Egypt, which kingdom lasted 1,663 years (!!!). Strange
chronology, which, if it piously conforms with that of the _Bible_,
disagrees entirely with that of history. The mythical nine names of
the Deity, imported into Egypt, according to the Masons, only in the
twenty-second century B.C., are found on monuments reckoned twice as
old by the best Egyptologists. Nevertheless we must take at the same
time into consideration, that the Masons are themselves ignorant of
these names.
The simple truth is that modern Masonry is a sadly different thing
from what the once universal secret fraternity was in the days when
the Brahma-worshippers of the AUM, exchanged grips and passwords with
the devotees of TUM, and the adepts of every country under the sun
were “Brothers.”
What was then that mysterious name, that mighty “word” through whose
potency the Hindu as well as the Chaldean and Egyptian initiate
performed his wonders? In chapter cxv. of the Egyptian _Funeral
Ritual_, entitled “The chapter of coming out to the Heaven ... and
of knowing the Spirits of An” (Heliopolis), Horus says: “I knew the
Spirits of An. The greatly glorious does not pass over it ... unless
the gods give me the WORD.” In another hymn the soul, transformed,
exclaims: “Make road for me to Rusta. I am the Great One, dressed
as the Great One. I have come! I have come! Delicious to me are the
kings of Osiris. I am creating the water (through the power of the
_Word_).... Have I not seen the hidden secrets ... I have given truth
to the Sun. I am clear. I am adored for my purity” (cxvii.-cxix. The
chapters of the going into and coming out from the Rusta). In another
place the mummy’s roll expresses the following: “I am the Great God
(spirit) existing of myself, the creator of _His Name_.... I know the
name of this Great God that is there.”
Jesus is accused by his enemies of having wrought miracles, and shown
by his own apostles to have expelled _demons_ by the power of the
INEFFABLE NAME. The former firmly believed that he had stolen it
in the Sanctuary. “And he cast the spirits with his _word_ ... and
healed all that were sick” (_Matthew_ xviii. 16). When the Jewish
rulers ask Peter (_Acts_ iv. 7): “By what power, or by what _name_,
have ye done this?” Peter replies, “By the NAME of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth.” But does this mean the name of Christ, as the interpreters
would make us believe; or does it signify, “by the NAME which was
in the possession of Jesus of Nazareth,” the initiate, who was
accused by the Jews to have learned it but who had it really through
initiation? Besides, he states repeatedly that all that he does he
does in “_His Father’s Name_,” not in his own.
But who of the modern Masons has ever heard it pronounced? In their
own _Ritual_, they confess that they never have. The “Sir Orator”
tells the “Sir Knight,” that the passwords which he received in
the preceding degrees are all “so many corruptions” of the true
name of God engraved on the triangle; and that therefore they have
adopted a “substitute” for it. Such also is the case in the Blue
Lodge, where the Master, representing King Solomon, agrees with King
Hiram that the Word * * * “shall be used as a _substitute_ for the
Master’s word, until wiser ages shall discover the true one. What
Senior Deacon, of all the thousands who have assisted in bringing
candidates from darkness to light; or what Master who has whispered
this mystic “word” into the ears of supposititious Hiram Abiffs,
while holding them on the five points of fellowship, has suspected
the real meaning of even this substitute, which they impart “at low
breath?” How few new-made Master Masons but go away imagining that
it has some occult connection with the “marrow in the bone.” What
do they know of that mystical personage known to some adepts as the
“venerable MAH,” or of the mysterious Eastern Brothers who obey him,
whose name is abbreviated in the first syllable of the three which
compose the Masonic substitute--The MAH, who lives at this very day
in a spot unknown to all but initiates, and the approaches to which
are through trackless wildernesses, untrodden by Jesuit or missionary
foot, for it is beset by dangers fit to appall the most courageous
explorers? And yet, for generations this meaningless jingle of vowels
and consonants has been repeated in noviciate ears, as though it
possessed even so much potency as would deflect from its course a
thistle-down floating in the air! Like Christianity, Freemasonry is a
corpse from which the spirit long ago fled.
In this connection, place may well be given to a letter from Mr.
Charles Sotheran, Corresponding Secretary of the New York Liberal
Club, which was received by us on the day after the date it bears.
Mr. Sotheran is known as a writer and lecturer on antiquarian,
mystical, and other subjects. In Masonry, he has taken so many of the
degrees as to be a competent authority as regards the Craft. He is 32
∴ A. and P. R., 94 ∴ Memphis, K. R✠, K. Kadosh, M. M. 104, Eng., etc.
He is also an initiate of the modern English Brotherhood of the Rosie
Cross and other secret societies, and Masonic editor of the _New York
Advocate_. Following is the letter, which we place before the Masons
as we desire that they should see what one of their own number has to
say:
“NEW YORK PRESS CLUB, January 11th, 1877.
“In response to your letter, I willingly furnish the
information desired with respect to the antiquity and
present condition of Freemasonry. This I do the more
cheerfully since we belong to the same secret societies,
and you can thus better appreciate the necessity for the
reserve which at times I shall be obliged to exhibit. You
rightly refer to the fact that Freemasonry, no less than
the effete theologies of the day, has its fabulous history
to narrate. Clogged up as the Order has been by the rubbish
and drift of absurd biblical legends, it is no wonder
that its usefulness has been impaired and its work as a
civilizer hampered. Fortunately the great anti-Masonic
excitement that raged in the United States during a portion
of this century, forced a considerable band of workers to
delve into the true origin of the Craft, and bring about
a healthier state of things. The agitation in America
also spread to Europe and the literary efforts of Masonic
authors on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Rebold,
Findel, Hyneman, Mitchell, Mackenzie, Hughan, Yarker and
others well-known to the fraternity, is now a matter of
history. One effect of their labors has been, in a great
measure, to bring the history of Masonry into an open
daylight, where even its teachings, jurisprudence, and
ritual are no longer secret from those of the ‘profane,’
who have the wit to read as they run.
“You are correct in saying that the _Bible_ is the ‘great
light’ of European and American Masonry. In consequence
of this the theistic conception of God and the biblical
cosmogony have been ever considered two of its great
corner-stones. Its chronology seems also to have been based
upon the same pseudo-revelation. Thus Dr. Dalcho, in one of
his treatises asserts that the principles of the Masonic
Order were presented at and coëval with the creation. It
is therefore not astonishing that such a pundit should
go on to state that God was the first Grand Master, Adam
the second, and the last named initiated Eve into the
Great Mystery, as I suppose many a Priestess of Cybelè
and ‘Lady’ Kadosh were afterward. The Rev. Dr. Oliver,
another Masonic authority, gravely records what may be
termed the minutes of a Lodge where Moses presided as Grand
Master, Joshua as Deputy Grand Master, and Aholiab and
Bezaleel as Grand Wardens! The temple at Jerusalem, which
recent archæologists have shown to be a structure with
nothing like the pretended antiquity of its erection, and
incorrectly called after a monarch whose name proves his
mystical character, Sol-Om-On (the name of the sun in three
languages), plays, as you correctly observe, a considerable
share in Masonic mystery. Such fables as these, and the
traditional Masonic colonization of ancient Egypt, have
given the Craft the credit of an illustrious origin to
which it has no right, and before whose forty centuries
of legendary history, the mythologies of Greece and Rome
fade into insignificance. The Egyptian, Chaldean, and other
theories necessary to each fabricator of ‘high degrees’
have also each had their short period of prominence. The
last ‘axe to grind’ has consecutively been the fruitful
mother of unproductiveness.
“We both agree that all the ancient priesthoods had their
esoteric doctrines and secret ceremonies. From the Essenic
brotherhood, an evolution of the Hindu Gymnosophists,
doubtless proceeded the Solidarities of Greece and Rome as
described by so-called ‘Pagan’ writers. Founded on these
and copying them in the matter of ritual, signs, grips,
passwords, etc., were developed the mediæval guilds.
Like the present livery companies of London, the relics
of the English trade-guilds, the operative Masons were
but a guild of workmen with higher pretensions. From the
French name ‘Maçon,’ derived from ‘Mas,’ an old Norman
noun meaning ‘a house,’ comes our English ‘Mason,’ a house
builder. As the London companies alluded to present now
and again the Freedom of the ‘_Liveries_’ to outsiders, so
we find the trade-guilds of Masons doing the same. Thus
the founder of the Ashmolean Museum was made free of the
Masons at Warrington, in Lancashire, England, on the 16th
October, 1646. The entrance of such men as Elias Ashmole
into the Operative Fraternity paved the way for the great
‘Masonic Revolution of 1717,’ when SPECULATIVE Masonry
came into existence. The Constitutions of 1723 and 1738,
by the Masonic impostor Anderson, were written up for the
newly-fledged and first Grand Lodge of ‘Free and Accepted
Masons’ of England, from which body all others over the
world hail to-day.
“These bogus constitutions, written by Anderson, were
compiled about then, and in order to palm off his miserable
rubbish yclept history, on the Craft, he had the audacity
to state that nearly all the documents relating to Masonry
in England had been destroyed by the 1717 reformers.
Happily, in the British Museum, Bodleian Library, and
other public institutions, Rebold, Hughan and others
have discovered sufficient evidence in the shape of old
Operative Masonic charges to disprove this statement.
“The same writers, I think, have conclusively upset the
tenability of two other documents palmed upon Masonry,
namely, the spurious charter of Cologne of 1535, and
the forged questions, supposed to have been written by
Leylande, the antiquary, from a MS. of King Henry VI. of
England. In the last named, Pythagoras is referred to as
having--‘formed a great lodge, at Crotona, and made many
Masons, some of whom travelled into France, and there made
many, from whence, in process of time, the art passed
into England.’ Sir Christopher Wren, architect of St.
Paul’s Cathedral, London, often called the ‘Grand Master
of Freemasons,’ was simply the Master or President of the
London Operative Masons Company. If such a tissue of fable
could interweave itself into the history of the Grand
Lodges which now have charge of the first three symbolical
degrees, it is hardly astonishing that the same fate
should befall nearly all of the High Masonic Degrees which
have been aptly termed ‘an incoherent medley of opposite
principles.’
“It is curious to note too that most of the bodies which
work these, such as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite,
the Rite of Avignon, the Order of the Temple, Fessler’s
Rite, the ‘Grand Council of the Emperors of the East and
West--Sovereign Prince Masons,’ etc., etc., are nearly all
the offspring of the sons of Ignatius Loyola. The Baron
Hundt, Chevalier Ramsay, Tschoudy, Zinnendorf, and numerous
others who founded the grades in these rites, worked under
instructions from the General of the Jesuits. The nest
where these high degrees were hatched, and no Masonic rite
is free from their baleful influence more or less, was the
Jesuit College of Clermont at Paris.
“That bastard foundling of Freemasonry, the ‘Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite,’ which is unrecognized by the Blue
Lodges was the enunciation, primarily, of the brain of the
Jesuit Chevalier Ramsay. It was brought by him to England
in 1736-38, to aid the cause of the Catholic Stuarts.
The rite in its present form of thirty-three degrees
was reorganized at the end of the eighteenth century by
some half dozen Masonic adventurers at Charleston, South
Carolina. Two of these, Pirlet a tailor, and a dancing
master named Lacorne, were fitting predecessors for a
later resuscitation by a gentleman of the name of Gourgas,
employed in the aristocratic occupation of a ship’s
clerk, on a boat trading between New York and Liverpool.
Dr. Crucefix, _alias_ Goss, the _inventor_ of certain
patent medicines of an objectionable character, ran the
institution in England. The powers under which these
worthies acted was a document claimed to have been signed
by Frederick the Great at Berlin, on May 1st, 1786, and by
which were revised the Masonic Constitution and Status of
the High Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Rite. This
paper was an impudent forgery and necessitated the issuing
of a protocol by the Grand Lodges of the Three Globes of
Berlin, which conclusively proved the whole arrangement to
be false in every particular. On claims supported by this
supposititious document, the Ancient and Accepted Rite
have swindled their confiding brothers in the Americas
and Europe out of thousands of dollars, to the shame and
discredit of humanity.
“The modern Templars, whom you refer to in your letter,
are but mere magpies in peacock’s plumes. The aim of
the Masonic Templars is the sectarianization, or rather
the Christianizing of Masonry, a fraternity which is
supposed to admit the Jew, Parsee, Mahometan, Buddhist,
in fact every religionist within its portals who accepts
the doctrine of a personal god, and spirit-immortality.
According to the belief of a section, if not all the
Israelites, belonging to the Craft in America--Templarism
is Jesuitism.
“It seems strange, now that the belief in a personal God
is becoming extinct, and that even the theologian has
transformed his deity into an indescribable nondescript,
that there are those who stand in the way of the general
acceptation of the sublime pantheism of the primeval
Orientals, of Jacob Boehme, of Spinoza. Often in the
Grand Lodge and subordinate lodges of this and other
jurisdictions, the old doxology is sung, with its ‘Praise
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’ to the disgust of Israelites
and free-thinking brethren, who are thus unnecessarily
insulted. This could never occur in India, where the great
light in a lodge may be the _Koran_, the _Zend-Avesta_,
or one of the _Vedas_. The sectarian Christian spirit
in Masonry must be put down. To-day there are German
Grand Lodges which will not allow Jews to be initiated,
or Israelites from foreign countries to be accepted as
brethren within their jurisdiction. The French Masons
have, however, revolted against this tyranny, and the
Grand Orient of France does now permit the atheist and
materialist to fellowship in the Craft. A standing rebuke
upon the claimed universality of Masonry is the fact that
the French brethren are now repudiated.
“Notwithstanding its many faults--and speculative
Masonry is but human, and therefore fallible--there is
no institution that has done so much, and is yet capable
of such great undertakings in the future, for human,
religious, and political improvement. In the last century
the Illuminati taught, ‘peace with the cottage, war with
the palace,’ throughout the length and breadth of Europe.
In the last century the United States was freed from the
tyranny of the mother country by the action of the Secret
Societies more than is commonly imagined. Washington,
Lafayette, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, were Masons. And
in the nineteenth century it was Grand Master Garibaldi,
33, who unified Italy, working in accordance with the
spirit of the faithful brotherhood, as the Masonic, or
rather carbonari, principles of ‘liberty, equality,
humanity, independence, unity,’ taught for years by brother
Joseph Mazzini.
“Speculative Masonry has much, too, within its ranks to
do. One is to accept woman as a co-worker of man in the
struggle of life, as the Hungarian Masons have done lately
by initiating the Countess Haideck. Another important
thing is also to recognize practically the brotherhood of
all humanity by refusing none on account of color, race,
position, or creed. The dark-skinned should not be only
theoretically the brother of the light. The colored Masons
who have been duly and regularly raised stand at every
lodge-door in America craving admission, and they are
refused. And there is South America to be conquered to a
participation in the duties of humanity.
“If Masonry be, as claimed, a progressive science and a
school of pure religion, it should ever be found in the
advance guard of civilization, not in the rear. If it
be but an empirical effort, a crude attempt of humanity
to solve some of the deepest problems of the race, and
no more, then it must give place to fitter successors,
perchance one of those that you and I know of, one that may
have acted the prompter at the side of the chiefs of the
Order, during its greatest triumphs, whispering to them as
the dæmon did in the ear of Socrates.
“Yours most Sincerely,
“CHARLES SOTHERAN.”
Thus falls to ruins the grand epic poem of Masons, sung by so many
mysterious Knights as another revealed gospel. As we see, the
Temple of Solomon is being undermined and brought to the ground by
its own chief “Master Masons,” of this century. But if, following
the ingenious exoteric description of the _Bible_, there are yet
Masons who persist in regarding it as once an actual structure,
who, of the students of the esoteric doctrine will ever consider
this mythic temple otherwise than an allegory, embodying the secret
science? Whether or not there ever was a real temple of that name,
we may well leave to archæologists to decide; but that the detailed
description thereof in _1 Kings_ is purely allegorical, no serious
scholar, proficient in the ancient as well as mediæval jargon of the
kabalists and alchemists, can doubt. The building of the Temple of
Solomon is the symbolical representation of the gradual acquirement
of the _secret_ wisdom, or magic; the erection and development of
the spiritual from the earthly; the manifestation of the power and
splendor of the spirit in the physical world, through the wisdom and
genius of the builder. The latter, when he has become an adept, is a
mightier king than Solomon himself, the emblem of the sun or _Light_
himself--the light of the real subjective world, shining in the
darkness of the objective universe. This is the “Temple” which can be
reared _without the sound of the hammer, or any tool of iron being
heard in the house while it is “in building.”_
In the East, this science is called, in some places, the
“seven-storied,” in others, the “nine-storied” Temple; every story
answers allegorically to a degree of knowledge acquired. Throughout
the countries of the Orient, wherever magic and the wisdom-religion
are studied, its practitioners and students are known among their
craft as Builders--for they build the temple of knowledge, of secret
science. Those of the adepts who are active, are styled practical or
_operative_ Builders, while the students, or neophytes are classed
as _speculative_ or theoretical. The former exemplify in works their
control over the forces of inanimate as well as animate nature; the
latter are but perfecting themselves in the rudiments of the sacred
science. These terms were evidently borrowed at the beginning by the
unknown founders of the first Masonic guilds.
In the now popular jargon, “Operative Masons” are understood to be
the bricklayers and the handicraftsmen, who composed the Craft down
to Sir Christopher Wren’s time; and “Speculative Masons,” all members
of the Order, as now understood. The sentence attributed to Jesus,
“Thou art Peter ... upon this rock I will build my church; and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” disfigured, as it is,
by mistranslation and misinterpretation, plainly indicates its real
meaning. We have shown the signification of _Pater_ and _Petra_, with
the hierophants--the interpretation traced on the tables of stone
of the final initiation, was handed by the initiator to the chosen
future interpreter. Having acquainted himself with its mysterious
contents, which revealed to him the mysteries of creation, the
initiated became a _builder_ himself, for he was made acquainted
with the _dodecahedron_, or the geometrical figure on which the
universe was built. To what he had learned in previous initiations
of the use of the rule and of architectural principles, was added a
cross, the perpendicular and horizontal lines of which were supposed
to form the foundation of the spiritual temple, by placing them
across the junction, or central primordial point, the element of
all existences,[800] representing the first concrete idea of deity.
Henceforth he could, as a Master builder (see _1 Corinthians_, iii.
10), erect a temple of wisdom on that rock of _Petra_, for himself;
and having laid a sure foundation, let “another build thereon.”
The Egyptian hierophant was given a square head-dress, which he
had to wear always, and a square (see Mason’s marks), without
which he could never go abroad. The perfect _Tau_ formed of the
perpendicular (descending male ray, or spirit) a horizontal line
(or matter, female ray), and the mundane circle was an attribute of
Isis, and, it is but at his death that the Egyptian cross was laid
on the breast of his mummy. These square hats are worn unto this
day by the Armenian priests. The claim that the cross is purely a
Christian symbol introduced after our era, is strange indeed, when
we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the men of Judah, who
feared the Lord (_Ezekiel_ ix. 4), with the _signa Thau_, as it is
translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew this sign was formed
thus [Illustration] but in the original Egyptian hieroglyphics as a
perfect Christian cross [Illustration]. In the _Revelation_, also,
the “Alpha and Omega” (spirit and matter), the first and the last,
stamps the name of his Father in the foreheads of the _elect_.
And if our statements are wrong, if Jesus was not an initiate, a
Master-builder, or Master-Mason as it is now called, how comes it,
that on the most ancient cathedrals we find his figure with Mason’s
marks about his person? In the Cathedral of Santa Croce, Florence,
over the main portal can be seen the figure of Christ holding a
perfect square in his hand.
The surviving “Master-builders” of the _operative_ craft of the true
Temple, may go literally _half-naked_ and wander _slipshod_ for
ever--now not for the sake of a puerile ceremony, but because, like
the “Son of man,” they have not where to lay their heads--and yet be
the only surviving possessors of the “Word.” Their “cable-tow” is
the sacred triple cord of certain Brahman-Sannyâsi, or the string on
which certain lamas hang their _yu-stone_; but with these apparently
valueless talismans, not one of them would part for all the wealth of
Solomon and Sheba. The seven-knotted bamboo stick of the fakir can
become as powerful as the rod of Moses “which was created between
the evenings, and on which was engraven and set forth the great and
glorious NAME, with which he was to do the wonders in Mizraim.”
But these “operative workmen” have no fear that their secrets will
be disclosed by treacherous ex-high priests of chapters, though
their generation may have received them through others than “Moses,
Solomon, and Zerubbabel.” Had Moses Michael Hayes, the Israelite
Brother who introduced Royal Arch Masonry into this country (in
December. 1778),[801] had a prophetic presentiment of future
treasons, he might have instituted more efficacious obligations than
he has.
Truly, the grand omnific Royal Arch word, “_long lost but now
found_,” has fulfilled its prophetic promise. The password of that
degree is no more “I AM THAT I AM.” It is now simply “I was but am no
more!”
[Illustration]
That we may not be accused of vain boasting, we shall give the
keys to several of the secret ciphers of the most exclusive and
important of the so-called higher Masonic degrees. If we mistake
not, these have never before been revealed to the outside world
(except that of the Royal Arch Masons, in 1830), but have been most
jealously guarded within the various Orders. We are under neither
promise, obligation, nor oath, and therefore violate no confidence.
Our purpose is not to gratify an idle curiosity; we wish merely to
show Masons and the affiliates of all other Western societies--the
Company of Jesus included--that it is impossible for them to be
secure in the possession of any secrets that it is worth an Eastern
Brotherhood’s while to discover. Inferentially, it may also show them
that if the latter can lift the masks of European societies, they are
nevertheless successful in wearing their own visors; for, if any one
thing is universally acknowledged, it is that the real secrets of
not a single surviving ancient brotherhood are in possession of the
profane.
Some of these ciphers were used by the Jesuits in their secret
correspondence at the time of the Jacobin conspiracy, and when
Masonry (the alleged successor to the Temple) was employed by the
Church for political purposes.
Findel says (see his _History of Freemasonry_, p. 253) that in the
eighteenth century, “besides the modern Knights Templar, we see the
Jesuits ... disfiguring the fair face of Freemasonry. Many Masonic
authors, who were fully cognizant of the period, and knew exactly
all the incidents occurring, positively assert that then and still
later the Jesuits exercised a pernicious influence, or at least
endeavored to do so, upon the fraternity.” Of the Rosicrucian Order
he remarks, upon the authority of Prof. Woog, that its “aim at first
... was nothing less than the support and advancement of Catholicism.
_When this religion manifested a determination entirely to repress
liberty of thought_ ... the Rosicrucians enlarged their designs
likewise to check, if possible, the progress of this widely-spreading
enlightenment.”
In the _Sincerus Renatus_ (the truly converted) of S. Richter, of
Berlin (1714), we note that laws were communicated for the government
of the “Golden Rosicrucians,” which “bear unmistakable evidences of
Jesuitical intervention.”
We will begin with the cryptographs of the “Sovereign Princes Rose
Croix,” also styled _Knights of St. Andrew, Knights of the Eagle and
Pelican, Heredom, Rosæ Crucis, Rosy Cross, Triple Cross, Perfect
Brother, Prince Mason, and so on_. The “Heredom Rosy Cross” also
claims a Templar origin, in 1314.[802]
CIPHER OF THE
S ∴ P ∴ R ∴ C ∴
[Illustration]
a b c d e f g h ij k l m n
[Illustration]
o p q r s t uv x y z &.
CIPHER OF THE KNIGHT ROSE CROIX OF HEREDOM
(of Kilwining).
_0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17_
a b c d e f g h i j ba (or) k kb kc kd ke kf kg kh
_600 700 800 900 1000_
gl hl il jl m
CIPHER OF THE KNIGHTS KADOSH.
(Also White and Black Eagle and Grand Elected Knight Templar.)
_70 2 3 12 15 20 30 33 38 9 10 40_
a b c d e f g h i k l m
_60 80 81 82 83 48 85 86 90 91 94 95_
n o p q r s t u v x y z
The Knights Kadosh have another cipher--or rather hieroglyph--which,
in this case, is taken from the Hebrew, possibly to be the more in
keeping with the _Bible_ Kadeshim of the Temple.[803]
[Illustration: HIEROGLYPH OF THE K ∴ KAD ∴]
As for the Royal Arch cipher, it has been exposed before now, but we
may well present it slightly amplified.
The cipher consists of certain combinations of right angles, with or
without points or dots. Following is the basis of its
[Illustration: _Formation._]
Now, the alphabet consists of twenty-six letters, and these two signs
being dissected, form thirteen distinct characters, thus:
[Illustration:
_1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13_]
A point placed within each gives thirteen more, thus:
[Illustration:
_1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13_]
Making a total of twenty-six, equal to the number of letters in the
English alphabet.
There are two ways, at least, of combining and using these characters
for the purposes of secret correspondence. One method is to call the
first sign, [In-line illustration] a; the same, with a point, ⟓ b,
etc. Another is to apply them, in their regular course, to the first
half of the alphabet, [In-line illustration] a, ⊓ b, and so on, to m;
after which, repeat them with a dot, beginning with ⟓ n, [In-line
illustration] o, etc., to ⋖ z.
The alphabet, according to the first method, stands thus:
[Illustration:]
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
[Illustration:]
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
According to the second method, thus:
[Illustration:]
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
[Illustration:]
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Besides these signs, the French Masons, evidently under the tuition
of their accomplished masters--the Jesuits, have perfected this
cipher in all its details. So they have signs even for commas,
diphthongs, accents, dots, etc., and these are
[Illustration:]
&c æ œ w ç ´ ` ^ - . , ; : ∴ ?
Let this suffice. We might, if we chose, give the cipher alphabets
with their keys, of another method of the Royal Arch Masons, strongly
resembling a certain Hindu character; of the G ∴ El ∴ of the Mystic
City; of a well-known form of the Devanagari script of the (French)
Sages of the Pyramids; and of the Sublime Master of the Great Work,
and others. But we refrain; only, be it understood, for the reason
that some of these alone of all the side branches of the original
Blue Lodge Freemasonry, contain the promise of a useful future. As
for the rest, they may and will go to the ash-heap of time. High
Masons will understand what we mean.
We must now give some proofs of what we have stated, and demonstrate
that the word Jehovah, if Masonry adheres to it, will ever remain as
a substitute, never be identical with the lost mirific name. This
is so well known to the kabalists, that in their careful etymology
of the יהוה they show it beyond doubt to be only one of the many
substitutes for the real name, and composed of the two-fold name of
the first androgyne--Adam and Eve, Jod (or Yodh), Vau and He-Va--the
female serpent as a symbol of Divine Intelligence proceeding from the
ONE-Generative or _Creative_ Spirit.[804] Thus, Jehovah is not the
sacred name at all. Had Moses given to Pharaoh the _true_ “name,” the
latter would not have answered as he did, for the Egyptian
King-Initiates knew it as well as Moses, who had learned it with them.
_The_ “name” was at that time the common property of the adepts of all
the nations in the world, and Pharaoh knew certainly the “name” of the
Highest God mentioned in the _Book of the Dead_. But instead of that,
Moses (if we accept the allegory of _Exodus_ literally), gives Pharaoh
the name of _Yeva_, the expression or form of the Divine name used by
all the _Targums_ as passed by Moses. Hence Pharaoh’s reply: “And who
is that _Yeva_[805] that I should obey his voice?”
“Jehovah” dates only from the Masoretic innovation. When the Rabbis,
for fear that they should lose the keys to their own doctrines, then
written exclusively in consonants, began to insert their vowel-points
in their manuscripts, they were utterly ignorant of the true
pronunciation of the NAME. Hence, they gave it the sound of _Adonah_,
and made it read _Ja-ho-vah_. Thus the latter is simply a fancy, a
perversion of the Holy Name. And how could they know it? Alone, out
of all their nation the high priests had it in their possession, and
respectively passed it to their successors, as the Hindu Brahmaâtma
does before his death. Once a year only, on the day of atonement,
the high priest was allowed to pronounce it in a whisper. Passing
behind the veil into the inner chamber of the sanctuary, the Holy
of Holies, with trembling lips and downcast eyes he called upon the
dreaded NAME. The bitter persecution of the kabalists, who received
the precious syllables after deserving the favor by a whole life of
sanctity, was due to a suspicion that they misused it. At the opening
of this chapter we have told the story of Simeon Ben-Iochaï, one
of the victims to this priceless knowledge, and see how little he
deserved his cruel treatment.
The _Book of Jasher_, a work--as we are told by a very learned Hebrew
divine, of New York--composed in Spain in the twelfth century as
“a popular tale,” and that had not “the sanction of the Rabbinical
College of Venice,” is full of kabalistical, alchemical, and magical
allegories. Admitting so much, it must still be said that there are
few popular tales but are based on historical truths. The _Norsemen
in Iceland_, by Dr. G. W. Dasent, is also a collection of popular
tales, but they contain the key to the primitive religious worship
of that people. So with the _Book of Jasher_. It contains the whole
of the _Old Testament_ in a condensed form, and as the Samaritans
held, _i.e._, the five _Books of Moses_, without the Prophets.
Although rejected by the orthodox Rabbis, we cannot help thinking
that, as in the case of the apocryphal _Gospels_, which were written
earlier than the canonical ones, the _Book of Jasher_ is the true
original from which the subsequent _Bible_ was in part composed. Both
the apocryphal _Gospels_ and _Jasher_, are a series of religious
tales, in which miracle is heaped upon miracle, and which narrate
the popular legends as they first originated, without any regard
to either chronology or dogma. Still both are corner-stones of the
Mosaic and Christian religions. That there was a _Book of Jasher_
prior to the Mosaic _Pentateuch_ is clear, for it is mentioned in
_Joshua_, _Isaiah_, and _2 Samuel_.
Nowhere is the difference between the Elohists and Jehovists so
clearly shown as in _Jasher_. Jehovah is here spoken of as the
Ophites held him to be, a Son of Ilda-Baoth, or Saturn. In this
Book, the Egyptian Magi, when asked by Pharaoh “Who is he, of whom
Moses speaks as the _I am_?” reply that the God of Moses “we have
learned, is the Son of the Wise, the Son of ancient kings” (ch.
lxxix. 45).[806] Now, those who assert that _Jasher_ is a forgery of
the twelfth century--and we readily believe it--should nevertheless
explain the curious fact that, while the above text is _not_ to be
found in the _Bible_, the answer to it _is_, and is, moreover,
couched in unequivocal terms. At _Isaiah_ xix. 11, the “Lord God”
complains of it very wrathfully to the prophet, and says: “Surely
the princes of Zoan _are fools_, the counsel of the wise counsellors
of Pharaoh is become brutish; how say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the
Son of the Wise, the Son of ancient kings?” which is evidently a
reply to the above. At _Joshua_ x. 13, _Jasher_ is referred to in
corroboration of the outrageous assertion that the sun stood still,
and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves. “Is
not this written in the _Book of Jasher_?” says the text. And at 2
_Samuel_, i. 19, the same book is again quoted. “Behold,” it says,
“it is written in the _Book of Jasher_.” Clearly, _Jasher_ must have
existed; it must have been regarded as authority; must have been
older than Joshua; and, since the verse in _Isaiah_ unerringly points
to the passage above quoted, we have at least as much reason to
accept the current edition of _Jasher_ as a transcription, excerpt,
or compilation of the original work, as we have to revere the
Septuagint _Pentateuch_, as the primitive Hebraic sacred records.
At all events, Jehovah is not the ancient of the ancient, or “aged
of the aged,” of the _Sohar_; for we find him, in this book,
counselling with God the Father as to the creation of the world. “The
work-master spoke to the Lord. Let us make man after our image”
(_Sohar_ i., fol. 25). Jehovah is but the Metatron, and perhaps, not
even the highest, but only one of the Æons; for he whom Onkelos calls
_Memro_, the “Word,” is not the _exoteric_ Jehovah of the _Bible_,
nor is he Jahve יַהְוֶה the Existing One.
It was the secresy of the early kabalists, who were anxious to
screen the real Mystery name of the “Eternal” from profanation, and
later the prudence which the mediæval alchemists and occultists were
compelled to adopt to save their lives, that caused the inextricable
confusion of divine names. This is what led the people to accept
the Jehovah of the _Bible_ as the name of the “One living God.”
Every Jewish elder, prophet, and other man of any importance knew
the difference; but as the difference lay in the vocalization of
the “name,” and its right pronunciation led to death, the common
people were ignorant of it, for no initiate would risk his life by
teaching it to them. Thus the Sinaitic deity came gradually to be
regarded as identical with “Him whose name is known but to the wise.”
When Capellus translates: “Whosoever shall pronounce the name of
Jehovah, shall suffer death,” he makes two mistakes. The first is in
adding the final letter _h_ to the name, if he wants this deity to
be considered either male or androgynous, for the letter makes the
name feminine, as it really should be, considering it is one of the
names of Binah, the third emanation; his second error is in asserting
that the word _nokeb_ means only to pronounce _distinctly_. It means
to pronounce _correctly_. Therefore, the biblical name Jehovah may
be considered simply a _substitute_, which, as belonging to one of
the “powers” got to be viewed as that of the “Eternal.” There is
an evident mistake (one of the very many), in one of the texts in
_Leviticus_, which has been corrected by Cahen, and which proves that
the interdiction did not at all concern the name of the exoteric
Jehovah, whose numerous other names could also be pronounced without
any penalty being incurred.[807] In the vicious English version, the
translation runs thus: “And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord,
shall surely be put to death,” _Levit._ xxiv. 16. Cahen renders it
far more correctly, thus: “And he that blasphemeth the name of the
_Eternal_ shall die,” etc. The “Eternal” being something higher than
the exoteric and personal “Lord.”[808]
As with the Gentile nations, the symbols of the Israelites were ever
bearing, directly or indirectly, upon sun-worship. The exoteric
Jehovah of the _Bible_ is a _dual_ god, like all the other gods;
and the fact that David--who is entirely ignorant of Moses--praises
his “Lord,” and assures him that the “Lord _is_ a great God, and a
great King above all gods,” may be of a very great importance to the
descendants of Jacob and David, but their national God concerns us in
no wise. We are quite ready to show the “Lord God” of Israel the same
respect as we do to Brahma, Zeus, or any other secondary deity. But
we decline, most emphatically, to recognize in him either the Deity
worshipped by Moses, or the “Father” of Jesus, or yet the “Ineffable
Name” of the kabalists. Jehovah is, perhaps, one of the _Elohim_,
who was concerned in the _formation_ (which is not creation) of the
universe, one of the architects who built from pre-existing matter,
but he never was the “Unknowable” Cause that created “bara,” in the
night of the Eternity. These Elohim first form and bless; then they
_curse_ and _destroy_; as one of these Powers, Jehovah is therefore
by turns beneficent and malevolent; at one moment he punishes and
then repents. He is the antitype of several of the patriarchs--of
Esau and of Jacob, the allegorical twins, emblems of the ever
manifest dual principle in nature. So Jacob, who is Israel, is the
left pillar--the feminine principle of Esau, who is the right pillar
and the male principle. When he wrestles with Malach-Iho, the Lord,
it is the latter who becomes the _right_ pillar, and Jacob-Israel
names God; although the _Bible_-interpreters have endeavored to
transform him into a mere “angel of the Lord” (_Genesis_ xxxii.),
Jacob conquers him--as matter will but too often conquer spirit--but
his _thigh_ is put out of joint in the fight.
The name of Israel has its derivation from Isaral or Asar, the
Sun-God, who is known as Suryal, Surya, and Sur. Isra-el means
“striving with God.” The “sun rising upon Jacob-Israel,” is the
_Sun_-God Isaral, fecundating _matter_ or earth, represented by the
_female_-Jacob. As usual, the allegory has more than one hidden
meaning in the _Kabala_. Esau, Æsaou, Asu, is also the sun. Like the
“Lord,” Esau fights with Jacob and prevails not. The God-_Sun_ first
strives against, and then rises on him in covenant.
“And as he passed over Penuel, _the sun rose upon him_, and he
(Jacob) _halted upon his thigh_” (Genesis xxxii. 31). _Israel_ Jacob,
opposed by his brother Esau, is _Samael_, and “the names of Samael
are Azazel and _Satan_” (the opposer).
If it will be argued that Moses was unacquainted with the Hindu
philosophy and, therefore, could not have taken Siva, the regenerator
and the destroyer, as his model for Jehovah, then we must admit that
there was some miraculous international intuition which prompted
every nation to choose for its exoteric national deity the dual
type we find in the “Lord God” of Israel. All these fables speak
for themselves. Siva, Jehovah, Osiris, are all the symbols of the
active principle in nature _par excellence_. They are the forces
which preside at the formation or _regeneration_ of matter and its
destruction. They are the types of Life and Death, ever fecundating
and decomposing under the never-ceasing influx of the _anima mundi_,
the Universal intellectual Soul, the invisible but ever-present
spirit which is behind the correlation of the blind forces. This
spirit alone is immutable, and therefore the forces of the universe,
cause and effect, are ever in perfect harmony with this one great
Immutable Law. Spiritual Life is the one primordial principle
_above_; Physical Life is the primordial principle _below_, but
they are one under their dual aspect. When the Spirit is completely
untrammelled from the fetters of correlation, and its essence has
become so purified as to be re-united with its CAUSE, it may--and yet
who can tell whether it really will--have a glimpse of the Eternal
Truth. Till then, let us not build ourselves idols in our own image,
and accept the shadows for the Eternal Light.
The greatest mistake of the age was to attempt a comparison of the
relative merits of all the ancient religions, and scoff at the
doctrines of the _Kabala_ and other superstitions.
But truth is stranger than fiction; and this world-old adage finds
its application in the case in hand. The “wisdom” of the archaic
ages or the “secret doctrine” embodied in the _Oriental Kabala_, of
which, as we have said, the Rabbinical is but an abridgment, did
not die out with the Philoletheans of the last Eclectic school.
The _Gnosis_ lingers still on earth, and its votaries are many,
albeit unknown. Such secret brotherhoods have been mentioned before
Mackenzie’s time, by more than one great author. If they have been
regarded as mere fictions of the novelist, that fact has only helped
the “brother-adepts” to keep their incognito the more easily. We
have personally known several of them who, to their great merriment
had had the story of their lodges, the communities in which they
lived, and the wondrous powers which they had exercised for many
long years, laughed at and denied by unsuspecting skeptics to their
very faces. Some of these brothers belong to the small groups of
“travellers.” Until the close of the happy Louis-Philippian reign,
they were pompously termed by the Parisian garçon and trader, the
_nobles étrangers_, and as innocently believed to be “Boyards,”
Valachian “Gospodars,” Indian “Nabobs,” and Hungarian “Margraves,”
who had gathered at the capital of the civilized world to admire
its monuments and partake of its dissipations. There are, however,
some _insane_ enough to connect the presence of certain of these
mysterious guests in Paris with the great political events that
subsequently took place. Such recall at least as very remarkable
coincidences, the breaking out of the Revolution of ‘93, and the
earlier explosion of the South Sea Bubble, soon after the appearance
of “noble foreigners,” who had convulsed all Paris for more or less
longer periods, by either their mystical doctrines or “supernatural
gifts.” The St. Germains and Cagliostros of this century, having
learned bitter lessons from the vilifications and persecutions of the
past, pursue different tactics now-a-days.
But there are numbers of these mystic brotherhoods which have
naught to do with “civilized” countries; and it is in their unknown
communities that are concealed the skeletons of the past. These
“adepts” could, if they chose, lay claim to strange ancestry, and
exhibit verifiable documents that would explain many a mysterious
page in both sacred and profane history. Had the keys to the hieratic
writings and the secret of Egyptian and Hindu symbolism been known to
the Christian Fathers, they would not have allowed a single monument
of old to stand unmutilated. And yet, if we are well informed--and
we think we are--there was not one such in all Egypt, but the secret
records of its hieroglyphics were carefully registered by the
sacerdotal caste. These records still exist, though “not extant” for
the general public, though perhaps the monuments may have passed away
for ever out of human sight.
Of forty-seven tombs of the kings, near Gornore, recorded by the
Egyptian priests on their sacred registers, only seventeen were known
to the public, according to Diodorus Siculus, who visited the place
about sixty years B.C. Notwithstanding this _historical_ evidence,
we assert that the whole number exist to this day, and the royal
tomb discovered by Belzoni among the sandstone mountains of Biban
el-Melook (Melech?) is but a feeble specimen of the rest. We will
add, furthermore, that the Arab-Christians, the monks, scattered
around in their poor, desolate convents on the borderland of the
great Lybian Desert, know of the existence of such unbetrayed relics.
But they are Copts, sole remnants of the true Egyptian race, and the
Copt predominating over the Christian monk in their natures, they
keep silent; for what reason it is not for us to tell. There are some
who believe that their monkish attire is but a blind, and that they
have chosen these desolate homes among arid deserts and surrounded
by Mahometan tribes, for some ulterior purposes of their own. Be
it as it may, they are held in great esteem by the Greek monks of
Palestine; and there is a rumor current among the Christian pilgrims
of Jerusalem, who throng the Holy Sepulchre at every Easter, that
the holy fire from heaven will never descend so _miraculously_ as
when these monks of the desert are present to draw it down by their
prayers.[809]
“The kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it
by force.” Many are the candidates at the doors of those who are
supposed to know the path that leads to the secret brotherhoods.
The great majority are refused admittance, and these turn away
interpreting the refusal as an evidence of the non-existence of
any such secret society. Of the minority accepted, more than
two-thirds fail upon trial. The seventh rule of the ancient
Rosicrucian brotherhoods, which is universal among all true secret
societies: “the Rosy-Crux becomes and is not _made_,” is more than
the generality of men can bear to have applied to them. But let no
one suppose that of the candidates who fail, any will divulge to
the world even the trifle they may have learned, as some Masons do.
None know better than themselves how unlikely it is that a neophyte
should ever talk of what was imparted to him. Thus these societies
will go on and hear themselves denied without uttering a word until
the day shall come for them to throw off their reserve and show how
completely they are masters of the situation.