in the minds of the Protestant members, and they began to cry out
against mysteries of foreign origin and against the dictation of unknown
Superiors. This discontent found expression in the convention held at
Brunswick in 1775. There Hund was questioned as to the legitimacy of his
appointment as a Master of the Host and the Clerics as to the
authenticity of their mysteries. Hund was deposed from office; the
following year he died of a broken heart, and, clothed in the regalia of
Master of the Host, was interred in the church at Melrichsstadt in front
of the altar. The seat of the Grandmaster was fixed permanently at
Brunswick.
Thus the machinations of the Jesuits seemed to have come to naught. But
now they sent forth a new apostle, a man who was an enigma, whose place
of birth and of death are unknown, and who himself admitted to his
confidants that he was an agent of the Jesuits. Gugomos—such was his
name—styled baron and professor of art, and as a member of the Strict
Observance Knight of the Triumphant Swan, in 1776, in his capacity as
dignitary of the order of Templars with a long string of titles, invited
the Grandmaster, the Directorate, and the Prior of the Clerics to attend
a convention at Wiesbaden, in order, as he said, to instruct them in the
genuine Templarism. And many “Knights” obeyed this singular invitation,
among them several princes. Gugomos made loud boasts of the great number
of mysteries into which he had been initiated, and in telling of them
used phrases and terms that remind us strongly of the “Exercitia
Spiritualia;” he exhibited his insignia and the commission of a “Most
Holy See” in Cyprus; and declared that the Order to which he belonged,
and of which the ancient order of Templars was only an offshoot, was
founded by Moses, whose successors in the office of Grandmaster had been
Egyptian, Judean, and other kings, Grecian philosophers, Christ himself
and his apostles, finally popes. The Templar succession, he said, had
been perpetuated in Cyprus (not in Scotland, then), and the archbishops
of Cyprus were the successors of the Grandmasters. The degrees of
Freemasonry (thus he driveled on) were a later innovation on the
original clerical and knightly system, which in its organization was, he
said, exactly the same as the Jesuit order. The one thing needed in
order to instruct men in the occult sciences was a holy temple. On the
completion of such a temple the “natural fire” would fall from heaven,
etc. Many persons recognized the fraud; others walked into the trap, and
were initiated. But seeing how little confidence was placed in him,
Gugomos absconded, and that was the end of Jesuit Freemasonry.
But the farce of Templarism lived a few years yet, though people were
growing tired of it. Some of the members went back to the old-fashioned
masonry; others turned to new lights of mysticism that had for some time
been looming on the horizon—the Swedish Rite and the New Rosicrucianism.
5. THE SWEDISH RITE.
Swedish Freemasons, as early as the middle of the 18th century, had
found the genuine English masonry too simple and inornate: they longed
for more glitter and pomp, mysteries and degrees. King Gustavus III.
attempted to satisfy this want by concocting a new system, the
ingredients being genuine freemasonry, the Strict Observance, and the
system then known at “Rosicrucianism,” and in largest proportion the
Clermont system: the doctrines of the famous mystic and seer,
Swedenborg, may also have given a flavor to the compound. In founding
the Swedish Rite or System, Gustavus counted on obtaining the help of
the members in his effort to rid himself of the party of the nobles. The
Swedish Rite has ten degrees. It is founded on two stories, one that
certain secrets have descended to it from Christ through the Apostles,
the clerical Templars, and the Freemasons; the other, that a nephew of
the Grandmaster Beaulieu, a predecessor of Molay, visited Molay in
prison, and, at the suggestion of Molay, went down into his uncle’s
sepulchre, where, in a casket, he found the insignia and the records of
the order; that from Paris he took these into Scotland, and thence into
Sweden. The symbols of the higher degrees refer to Templarism and
Catholicism. The ceremonies of the highest degree are said closely to
resemble the mass. Other alleged usages are, the wearing of the red
cross of the Templars on the breast, reciting every night Saint
Bernard’s prayer to the Lamb of God, fasting on Good Friday till
sundown, then eating three slices of bread, with oil and salt. The title
of the head of the System is Vicar of Solomon. Several distinguished
members of the Swedish System, among them the celebrated poet J. H.
Voss, have characterized its ceremonies as “vain, useless and
ridiculous.”
6. THE NEW ROSICRUCIANISM AND ALLIED SYSTEMS.
The New Rosicrucianism had its rise in Southern Germany about the year
1760, while Rosa and Johnson were busy with their systems. Its
originators had no connection with Freemasonry, and of its nine degrees
not even the first three were named after the masonic degrees. Several
discontented members of the Strict Observance joined the new order. The
members assumed fanciful names, as Foebron, Ormesus, Cedrinus; the
lodges were called “Circles.” Unquestioning obedience was to be rendered
to the Superiors. The members learned only the mysteries of their own
particular circle. The motto was: “May God and His Word be with us.”
They claimed to possess a cryptic Book containing a sacred history of
events prior to the creation of the world, especially of the Fall of the
Angels.
Their specialty was a mystical, kabbalistic, and totally absurd
interpretation of the Bible, and of other alleged sacred or occult
writings, whence they deduced an explanation of the universe. For
example, they taught that the planets and the other heavenly bodies
reflect back on the sun the light they receive from him, thus conserving
his might and his splendor. They also practiced necromancy,
exorcization, alchemy, the art of making gold, of preparing the elixir
of life: they studied such problems as the production of the noble
metals from rain water, urine, and other bodies, and even of evolving
human beings by chemical processes. In their assemblies the members wore
white and black scarfs, but those of the higher degrees wore priestly
vestments, with crosses of silver or gold. At the initiation the
candidates swore fearful oaths. Aspirants to the ninth degree were
assured that once they should attain that eminence they would understand
all nature’s secrets and possess supreme control of angels, devils, and
men. The first prophet of the New Rosicrucianism was John George
Schrepfer, coffeehouse keeper in Leipsic. In 1777 he founded in his own
shop a lodge of the Scottish Rite, to afford his customers a better
style of masonry than was found in the ordinary lodges. The Duke of
Courland, protector of one of the masonic lodges, had the man publicly
bastinadoed: but Schrepfer shortly afterward inspired both him and the
Duke of Brunswick with a curiosity to be instructed in the mysteries,
and visited them at Dresden and at Brunswick. In his lodge he gave
demonstrations of his supernatural powers as a magician and a
necromancer: for example, he would summon up spirits of the dead. Puffed
up by success, Schrepfer indulged in all manner of debauchery, and at
last was reduced to penury. He died by his own hand, aged 35 years.
But Rosicrucianism was yet to reach its highest point, which it did in
the person of John Christopher Woellner (born at Spandau, 1732, ordained
preacher 1759, a councilor in the Prussian service in 1766, and Minister
of State 1788; deceased 1800), and John Rudolf Bischofswerder (born in
Thuringia 1741, chamberlain to the Elector of Saxony; major in the
Prussian army 1772; minister at war 1768; deceased 1803). Not content
with the honor of being Knight of the Griffin in the Strict Observance,
Bischofswerder went in search of an order that practiced the magic art,
and was so fortunate as to find it in the New Rosicrucianism. He was
initiated into the mysteries by Schrepfer, and it was he who converted
the Duke of Courland from an enemy into a friend of the coffeehouse
Rosicrucian. After the death of Schrepfer, whose most zealous supporter
he had been, Bischofswerder obtained promotion in the Prussian service
through the favor of the crown prince Frederic William, nephew of
Frederic the Great, and shared his good fortune with Woellner, Knight of
the Cube, who like himself had seceded from Templarism. The pair won the
crown prince over to Rosicrucianism, and enjoyed his confidence both
then and after his accession to the throne of Prussia in 1786, as
William II. At last, as ministers of state, they succeeded in
substituting obscurantism and state religionism in the place of the
illuminism and toleration that had prevailed under old Fritz. It was
they that dictated the odious Edict of Religion of 1788, which was
expected to prove a deathblow to illuminism and free thought: but the
death of the King upset all their calculations. That was the end of the
New Rosicrucianism.
Simultaneously with the order of the Rosicrucians arose two variant
forms of the same, the society of the Asiatic Brethren, and that of
the African Buildingmasters (Asiatische Brueder, Afrikanische
Bauherren). The Asiatic Brethren’s order was founded in Vienna by
Baron Hans Henry von Eckhofen, an ex-Rosicrucian: it admitted only
Freemasons, but did not exclude Jews, and its aims were the same as
those of the Rosicrucians. Its chief seat was at Vienna, called by
them Thessalonica, for they gave a foreign name to every place. Its
head officers were styled Inquisitors. There were five degrees, viz.,
two probationary—those of Seekers and of Sufferers—and three superior
degrees. The members in the two lower degrees wore round black hats
with distinctive feathers for each degree, black mantles, and white or
black ribbons, broidered with different emblems; those in the higher
degrees wore red hats and mantles; the attire of those in the highest
degree was all rosy-red. Ten members constituted a Mastership, ten
masterships a Decade, and so on. The order became shockingly corrupt
in Austria.
The African society, founded by War Councilor Koeppen in Berlin, had
rather higher aims than the Rosicrucians and the Asiatic Brethren: they
studied the history of Freemasonry, admitted to their order only
scholars and artists, conducted their business in Latin, and offered
prizes for scientific researches: but they indulged in farfetched and
absurd symbolism, kabbalism, magic, and mysticism. Their degrees were
five inferior or preparatory, and five higher or esoteric. The order
lived for a few years only.
There were many other societies, instituted mostly for the purpose of
fraud and moneymaking: of these we give no account here. But there still
remains one society which is worthy of mention—that of the Brethren of
the Cross (Kreuzbrueder) or Devotees of the Cross (Kreuzfromme), founded
by Count Christian von Haugwitz (1752–1832), who was at one time Knight
of the Holy Mount in the Strict Observance, afterward belonged to a
German imitation of the Swedish rite, and at last founded a society
which was described by a contemporary as “a conspiracy of despotism
against liberty, of vice against virtue, of stupidity against talent, of
darkness against enlightenment.” The Devotees of the Cross observed the
strictest secrecy, corresponded in cipher, inveigled princes, in order
to rule in their stead (after the manner of Bischofswerder and Woellner)
and practiced all manner of superstitions to make an end of science.
They had no connection whatever with Freemasonry.
Unfortunately this multiplication of mystical orders was not without
effect on the fortunes of the masonic body, in that it has led to a
vicious growth of “high degrees.” It was a French adventurer, Stephen
Morin, who, in 1761, introduced into the United States the 33 degrees:
they entered France again in 1803, and were regarded as a novelty,
having been forgotten during the Revolution. The titles of these degrees
are at once bombastic and unmeaning: Grand Scots, Knights of the East,
High Princes of Jerusalem, Princes of Grace, Grand Inquisitors, Princes
of the Royal Secret, etc., and in some of the variations of these
ridiculous degrees we have Knights of the Ape, and of the Lion, and
Emperor of East and West.
_PART ELEVENTH._
_The Illuminati and Their Era._
1. THE ILLUMINATI.
By the suppression of the Jesuit order by Clement XIV., the results of
two centuries of painful toil in the interest of a universal
ecclesiastical dominion were undone. Then it was that an ingenious mind
conceived the thought of employing on behalf of enlightenment such
instrumentality as the Jesuits had employed against it. It was a pupil
of the Jesuits to whom this thought first occurred: their mechanical,
soul-stifling method of education had made him their enemy; but besides
he had learned the artifices and the secrets of the Jesuits, and hoped
that by imitating them in a Catholic country likely to be influenced by
such arts, he might thereby promote the very opposite interests. Adam
Weishaupt was born in 1748, and when only 25 years of age was professor
of canon law and jurisprudence in the university of Ingolstadt, and also
lecturer on history and philosophy, being the first in that institute to
deliver lectures in the German language, and in consonance with the more
enlightened spirit of the age. The intrigues of the ousted Fathers
against their successor in a professorial chair which they had held for
nearly a century forced to maturity the thought which he had cherished
from his student days: and the founding in the neighboring village of
Burghausen of a lodge of Rosicrucians, who were trying to attract to
themselves his students, decided him to carry his idea into execution.
On May 1, 1776, he founded the Order of Perfectibilists to which he
afterward gave the name Illuminists (Illuminati). To propagate this
institution and to strengthen it he adopted measures which, in the
circumstances of the time, seemed not unpractical. First, he adopted
entire the hierarchic system of government existing among the
Jesuits—despotic rule from top to bottom; secondly, he employed
Freemasonry to promote the ends of his order, just as the Jesuits had
attempted to do. Accordingly Weishaupt, who was full of vanity,
ambition, and desire of revenge, but knew nothing of the true
Freemasonry, only of its perversions, obtained admission to the order in
a lodge in Munich. Hence it is not true that the Freemasons founded the
league of the Illuminati, but rather than an order that arose outside of
the lodge simply made use of Freemasonry: and so to the defeated
reactionary movement against Freemasonry now succeeded an unmasonic
revolutionary movement. In executing his plan Weishaupt was assisted
mainly by Francis Xavier von Zwackh, of Landshut, councilor to the
government of the Bavarian Palatinate, a man initiated in the highest
degrees of masonry. Several years after its foundation the order of the
Illuminati was still confined to South Germany, or even to Bavaria; but
as Weishaupt desired that the north also, and Protestants no less than
Catholics, should take an interest in his institute, he sent the Marquis
Costanzo von Costanza, Bavarian chamberlain, to Frankfort-on-the-Main in
1779 to win over to the order the lodges in that city. Costanzo himself
had little success, the rich merchants of Frankfort being averse to
anything that would unsettle the peace of the world; but a young man
whose acquaintance he made was destined to be, after Weishaupt, the most
effective promoter of the new society. This was Baron Adolf von Knigge,
well known for his much-read book. “Ueber den Umgang mit Menschen.” He
was born in 1752, and from his youth up had been an amateur of spiritism
(ghostseership). He was already an Initiate of the higher degrees of the
Strict Observance; but, dissatisfied with that order, he adopted the
idea of Illuminism enthusiastically, and brought into the system a
number of men who became its apostles; for example, Bode, the
translator; Francis von Ditfurth, associate justice, of Weimar. With
these two Knigge attended the Conventus of Wilhelmsbad, and there
championed the cause of Illuminism stoutly, and helped to give the
deathblow to Templarism. And now as Knigge, who supposed the order to be
an ancient one, entered into a correspondence with Weishaupt, he was not
a little astonished on learning from him that the society was as yet no
more than an embryo: in fact, it had only the degree of the minor
Illuminates (Kleine Illuminaten). Nothing disheartened, however, he
journeyed to Bavaria, and was admitted to the order in splendid style.
But his lively fancy led him to develop the order further; and the
sober-minded Weishaupt, whose gifts were those of the thinker rather
than of the contriver of forms, left to Knigge the elaboration of the
several degrees and their Lessons, in which both were agreed that
allusions to the fireworship and lightworship of the Persians should be
employed, as typical of the spiritual fire and spiritual light of
Illuminism.
The groundwork of the polity of the Illuminati was as follows: A supreme
president ruled the whole, having next below him two officers, each of
whom again had two others under him, and so on, so that the first could
most conveniently govern all. The doings of the order were kept most
strictly secret. Each member took the name of some historic or mythic
personage of distinction: Weishaupt was Spartacus; Zwackh, Cato;
Costanzo, Diomede; Knigge, Philo; Ditfurth, Minos; Nicolai, Lucian, and
so on. Countries and cities also had pseudonyms: Munich was Athens;
Frankfort, Edessa; Austria, Egypt; Franconia, Illyria, and so forth. In
correspondence the members used a secret cipher, numbers taking the
place of letters; in reckoning time they followed the calendar of the
ancient Persians with the Persian names of months and the Persian aera.
The number of degrees and their designations were never definitely
fixed, hence they are different in different localities. But all the
accounts agree that there were three principal degrees. The first of
these, the School of Plants (Pflanzschule) was designed to receive
youths approaching adult age. The candidate for admission was at first a
Novice, and, except the one who indoctrinated him, knew no member of the
order. He was required, by submitting a detailed account of his life,
with full particulars as to all his doings, and by keeping a journal, to
prove himself a fit subject for admission, and one likely to be of
service to the order. From the grade of Novice he passed to that of
Minerval. The members of the Minerval class formed a sort of learned
society, which occupied itself with answering questions in the domain of
morals. The Minervals, furthermore, were required to make known what
they thought of the order, and what they expected of it, and they
assumed the obligation of obedience. They were under the eye of their
superior officers, read and wrote whatever superiors required of them,
and spied on each other, and reported one another’s faults to superiors
as in the Jesuit system. The leaders of the Minervals were called Minor
Illuminati; were taken by surprise at the meetings of their degree and
nominated to that dignity—a method that wonderfully stimulated ambition;
they were instructed in the management and oversight of their subjects,
and practiced themselves in that art; they were besides required to
report their experiences. The second principal degree was Freemasonry,
through the three original degrees of which and the two so-called
Scottish degrees the Illuminati passed; and strenuous effort was made to
have the masonic lodges adopt a system agreeable to the ideas of the
Illuminati, so that the membership of the order might be steadily
increased. The three original degrees of masonry were imparted to the
regular Illuminati without ceremonies. The members of the two Scottish
degrees were called Greater Illuminati, and the task of these was to
study the characters of their fellowmembers; and Dirigent Illuminati,
who presided over the several divisions of the illuministic masonry. The
third and highest degree was that of the Mysteries, comprising the four
stages of Priest, Regent, Magus and King (rex). This principal degree
was elaborated only in part, and was not brought into use. In these four
divisions of the third degree the ends of the order were, according to
Knigge’s plan, to be explained. The supreme heads of the several
divisions of the order were called Areopagites, but their functions were
never fully defined. It was proposed also to add a department for women.
The aims of this organization of the Illuminati remind us forcibly of
those of the Pythagorean League. They contemplated, not a sudden and
violent but a gradual and peaceful revolution, in which the Illuminism
of the 18th century should gain the victory. This revolution was to be
effected by winning for the order all the considerable intellectual
forces of the time, though the new associates were only little by little
to learn what the aims of the order were. And inasmuch as the members,
when they should have among their number all those forces, must
everywhere attain the highest places in government, the triumph of their
enlightened principles could not be for long delayed. In the superior
degrees the members were to be taught as a grand secret of the order
that the means whereby the redemption of mankind was one day to be
accomplished was Secret Schools of Wisdom. These would lift man out of
his fallen estate: these would, without violence, sweep Princes and
National boundaries from the face of the earth, and constitute the human
race one family, every housefather a priest and lord of his own, and
Reason the one lawcode of mankind. To imbue the minds of men with these
principles, illuminist books were prescribed to the members for their
reading. In sharp contrast to the masonic systems in which Jesuits had
had a hand, the Illuminati avoided all forms which might suggest
obedience to any religion or church, and welcomed whatever favored the
dominance of reason and the overthrow of revelation.
In the very short period of its existence the order of the Illuminati
attained a membership of 2,000, a result very materially promoted by the
rule that any member possessing authority from the superiors could admit
a candidate. Among the members were many men eminent, both socially and
in science, as the dukes of Saxe-Gotha (Ernest), Brunswick (Ferdinand),
of Saxe-Weimar (Charles Augustus, while yet only heir of the ducal
crown); Dalberg, who was afterward prince-bishop; Montgilas, afterward
minister of state; President Count Geinsheim; the celebrated philosopher
Baader; Professors Semmer of Ingolstadt, Moldenhauer of Kiel, Feder of
Goettingen; the educator Leuchsenring of Darmstadt; the Catholic
cathedral prebendaries Schroeckenstein of Eichstadt and Schmelzer of
Mayence; Haefelin, bishop of Munich; the authors Bahrdt, Biester,
Gedike, Bode, Nicolai, etc. Goethe, Herder, and probably Pestalozzi also
belonged to the order. The league in “Wilhelm Meister” reminds us
strongly of the Illuminati.
The order was not yet spread abroad beyond the German borders, though a
few Frenchmen had been admitted while visiting Germany; but its plans
were already reaching out farther. And now the head of the whole
organization was to be the General (as among the Jesuits); under him
there was to be in each country a head officer, the National; in each
principal division of a country a Provincial; in subdivisions of
provinces a Prefect, and so on.