thirty years of age when he entered upon this career of intrigue and
mystification. From his childhood he had been educated in strictly
Roman Catholic schools, and everything was done by his pious parents
and teachers to render him sound in the faith. Long before arriving at
man's estate he had thrown off these influences and cast in his lot
with unbelievers, although he continued to go to mass, confession,
and communion. While a pupil in the Catholic College of St. Louis,
at Marseilles, he was strongly attracted to the political views of
the radical party as set forth in Rochefort's _Lanterne_, and soon
began to write for the press; in 1871 he joined the editorial staff
of _Egalité_, and published for two years a humoristic journal--_La
Marotte_ (Fool's Bauble). It is not necessary to give a detailed
sketch of this man's life. Suffice it to say that he was violently
anticlerical, and was repeatedly fined and imprisoned for articles
insulting to the Church and to ecclesiastical dignitaries. On December
29, 1881, at Montpellier, he was condemned to pay a fine of sixty-five
thousand francs for publishing a book entitled The Secret Amours of
Pius IX. He appealed from this decision, and, after repeated efforts,
succeeded in having the indictment quashed. A new edition appeared in
1885, and was announced by large placards, in the center of which was
a medallion of the Pope's head, encircled with the heads of a bevy of
beautiful women, forming, according to the author, a fitting halo for
his Holiness. We may add that the sensational revelations contained
in this book, as well as in the Scandalous History of the Orléans and
similar works, are for the most part mere figments of the imagination
recorded as facts, for the purpose of mystifying a credulous public. In
1880 he founded a "Society of Freethinkers," which, with its numerous
branches, numbered in a few years about seventeen thousand members. The
remarkable success of this movement was due in a great measure to the
energy with which he advocated it in the columns of the _République
Anti-Clericale_, of which he was the editor.
Perhaps the most comical episode in his strange career is his pretended
repentance, resulting in the return of this black sheep to the fold of
the Catholic Church. In his Confessions the arrant renegade relates
how, on April 3, 1885 (April 1st would have been a more appropriate
date), while engaged in writing a book on Joan of Arc designed to
excite animosity against the clergy, his fell purpose was suddenly
shaken by strong compunctions, and soon a fearful agitation convulsed
his whole being. His description of his contrition and self-reproaches
is quite sensational and thrilling, and shows rare talent as an
actor, if we only bear in mind that the whole thing was a farce. "I
burst into sobs. 'Pardon me, O God!' I cried out in a voice choked
with tears. 'Pardon my many blasphemies! Pardon all the evil I have
wrought!' I passed the night in prayer, and resolved on the next day
to seek absolution for my sins." He retired from the editorship of
the _République Anti-Clericale_, and handed in his resignation at a
meeting of the "Anti-Clerical League," of which he was the founder
and hitherto the most active member, when he had the satisfaction of
being denounced by the presiding officer as a comedian and scoundrel.
No one of his former colleagues believed in his sincerity, and yet
every one was puzzled to understand the strategic purpose of this
retrograde movement. The general impression was that he had been
bribed. "You can't fool us by your abjuration!" they exclaimed. "The
fact is, you have received a large sum of money from the Vatican." He
does not seem to have attempted to refute these charges, nor did he
permit them to divert him from the execution of his deep-laid plot.
With hypocritical humility, he made full confession to the papal
nuncio in Paris, Monsignore Di Rende, who, after subjecting him to
several days' penance, embraced him with joy and released him from all
excommunications and ecclesiastical censures.
Taxil now began to issue his Complete Revelations concerning
Freemasonry, in four volumes, the ostensible object of which was to
expose the secret and sacrilegious rites of this order as an organized
system of devil-worship, thus confirming by the testimony of an
eyewitness the assertions of the Popes, and proving that their decrees
and decisions on this point had been bulls in the ecclesiastical and
not in the Irish sense of the term. This work, although a mere tissue
of fabrications, was greeted by the Catholic press and priesthood
with exultation, as an authentic narration containing positive and
irrefutable proofs of the diabolic character of the Masonic mysteries.
The members of this fraternity, says Taxil, regard the God of the
Catholics as an evil principle--a crafty, jealous, and cruel genius,
a supernal tyrant, and archenemy of human happiness. Opposed to him
is Lucifer, the good genius, the perennial source of virtue and
wisdom, the spirit of freedom, and the friend of mankind. For this
reason, in the high-grade lodges Lucifer, the reputed father of Cain,
Canaan, and Hiram, is adored, under different names indicative of the
Supreme Being, as the God of Nature, and the great architect of the
universe. In short, while modern freethinking is atheistic and begets
a skepticism which, even when not denying God, does not care for him,
Freemasonry is essentially a Satanic cult. These words give the sum
and substance of the supposititious disclosures which excited such
intense joy in the clerical camp. In 1887, when Taxil was received
in solemn audience by Leo XIII, "My son," asked the Pope, "what dost
thou desire?" "Holy Father, to die this moment at thy feet were for
me the highest bliss," replied the kneeling penitent. "Not so," was
the benignant response of the successor of St. Peter; "thy life is
still very useful in combats for the faith." His Holiness then pointed
to Taxil's writings on the shelves of his library, declaring that he
had read them all through with extreme satisfaction, and encouraged
him to continue his exposures of these satellites of Satan and their
abominations. Taxil left the Vatican with the papal benediction and
with the firm conviction that he could devise no better means of
currying favor with the Apostolic See than by inventing tales about the
homage paid by the Freemasons to the devil, and determined to work this
rich vein to its utmost capacity. He also came to the conclusion that
he could imagine nothing so absurd that it would not be received in
Catholic circles as authentic and indorsed by infallible authority.
His work had an immense pecuniary success, and thus attained the
chief object which he had in view. More than one hundred thousand
copies of the original French edition were sold, and it was translated
into English, German, Italian, and Spanish. This result is not so
surprising, if we remember that nearly all the bishops and other clergy
of the Catholic Church acted as voluntary and extremely zealous agents
for the diffusion of these Revelations, which they seemed to regard
as a new apocalypse designed to unveil the mysteries of Babylon and
disclose the present doings of Satan and dominion of antichrist. Of the
utterly apocryphal character of the Revelations they do not appear to
have entertained the slightest suspicion, although the hoax was clearly
perceptible to every unprejudiced mind. The German translation by the
Jesuit Father Gruber, which appeared at Freiburg, in Switzerland, and
at Paderborn, in Westphalia, omitted the volume entitled The Masonic
Sisters, on account of the indecency of its contents, although accepted
as true and deemed especially damaging to the Masonic fraternity.
However desirable it might be to tear away the mask of philanthropy
from the face of Freemasonry and let the world see its devilish
features, it was thought best not to outrage the moral sense of the
community by uncovering "the filthiness of the hellish crew."
In 1892 Taxil's coadjutor, Dr. Bataille (a pseudonym of Dr. Karl Hacks,
a German from the Rhineland), began to issue a serial publication,
entitled The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, purporting to embody
the results of his observations as ship's surgeon during his travels
in various countries, and especially in the Orient, where he had
opportunities of studying Satanism in its diverse manifestations. He
begins by referring to the encyclical letter _Humanum genus_, already
cited, in which Leo XIII divides the human race into worshipers of God
and worshipers of Satan, and then proceeds to adduce facts proving the
correctness of this classification. It is, in reality, a bold burlesque
of the papal circular, as, indeed, it was intended to be, and would
doubtless have been laughed at for a time as a clever persiflage, if
the dignitaries of the Church had not taken it seriously, as they were
expected to do. Dr. Hacks confessed to an "interviewer," in 1897, that
no sooner had he read the pontifical circular in question than he saw
in it "a rare opportunity to coin money out of the crass credulity and
boundless stupidity of the Catholics. It needed only a Jules Verne to
clothe these extravagant fancies in an attractive garb. I resolved to
play the part of this Jules Verne. Strangely enough, the same idea
occurred to others. I therefore joined forces with Leo Taxil and a few
friends, and began to publish The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, the
success of which is well known.... I had traversed many lands and got
up marvelous stories, the scenes of which were laid in remote regions,
which I was sure no one would visit in order to test the truth of my
assertions." Besides, he counted on the silliness of the persons with
whom he had to deal, and felt certain that if he should tell them he
had been fooling them they would not believe him, but would remain
convinced that all his inventions were strictly true. He could not
conceive of a body of ecclesiastics as ready to discard a belief which
served their turn, however evident its absurdity might be to other
minds. "Sometimes I fabricated the most incredible stories, as, for
example, that of the serpent inditing prophecies with its tail on the
back of Sophia Walder, or that of the demon, who, in order to marry a
Freemason, transformed himself into a young lady, and played the piano
evenings in the form of a crocodile. My colleagues were aghast, and
exclaimed, 'You'll spoil the whole joke with your nonsense.' 'Bah!' I
replied. 'Let me be, and you will see!'" And they did see how eagerly
such gross falsehoods were accepted as positive facts. Protestants
without exception are denounced as godless apostates. Every Lutheran
is a Luciferian in disguise. Singapore, he says, like every British
colony, is settled by knaves, footpads, and all sorts of criminals. The
Protestant Englishman is, at the bottom, an embodiment of scoundrelism
coupled with Satanism. There is a strangely infernal element in the
social life at Singapore. "The British matrons and even the maidens are
incarnations of vice and godlessness. The young English woman dedicates
all her charms and intelligence to the service of Satan, whose apostle
and agent she is; cursed by God, she is the dearly beloved paramour of
Lucifer; a woman only in name, she is in fact absolutely infernal--an
actual deviless." Hacks asserts that in a Presbyterian church at
Singapore he discovered a secret tabernacle for the worship of Satan.
The pastor opened the door, and there was a Baphomet, with all the
Palladistic (Satanic) apparatus--goblet, host, and dagger--standing
before his eyes.
Albert Pike, Grand Master of the Freemasons in Charleston, S. C., is
called the "Satanic Pope," and is said to have a telephone invented and
operated by devils, whereby instantaneous communication is possible
between the seven principal directorates at Charleston, Rome, Berlin,
Washington, Montevideo, Naples, and Calcutta. He has also a magic
bracelet, by means of which he can summon Lucifer at any moment. "One
day Satan took Pike gently in his arms and made a trip with him to
Sirius, traversing the whole distance in a few minutes. After exploring
the fixed star, he was brought back safe and sound to his room in
Washington." Whether he found the star as hot and scorching as its name
implies is not stated. Hacks discovered, under the cliffs of Gibraltar,
mysterious caverns with laboratories in which devils prepared microbes
for generating and diffusing epidemics. He was politely received by
Tubal-Cain, the director of the establishment, who addressed him in
pure Parisian French, from which we may infer that this is the language
of the lower regions. On his departure Hacks was presented with a small
vial, the contents of which would suffice to produce a fearful epidemic
of cholera. No less an authority than Professor Bautz, of the Prussian
Academy at Münster, tells us that the volcanoes are the flues of hell,
and it was probably this contribution to the topography of Tartarus
that led Hacks to look for the devil's workshop in the cavities of
mountains, which, however, being used for infernal purposes, would
hardly be what Milton calls "umbrageous grots and caves of cool
recess."[8]
The following may be cited as a specimen of the manner in which
historical events were perverted by Hacks to subserve his purpose:
Before the capture of Rome by the Italian troops in 1870, a secret
meeting of Freemasons was held in Milan, at which Riboli, Cucchi, and
General Cadorna were present, and the revolutionary deliberations
were rendered piquant by dreadful blasphemies. Thus General Cadorna, a
renegade priest, parodied the consecration of the host with a piece of
bread, which he finally threw into the fire with the words, "In honor
of Lucifer!" Thereupon Lucifer rose up in person through the floor,
gazed benignantly for a moment on his faithful followers, and said,
"The moment is come for firing the third salvo of cannon." A month
later General Cadorna entered Rome through the breach of the Porta
Via. In Luciferian lingo, the first salvo was the Reformation and the
second the French Revolution, while the third victory of Satan was the
overthrow of the Pope's temporal power.
Hacks relates that in Freiburg, Switzerland, there was a Masonic
temple of Satan hewn in a rock and provided with altars and all the
paraphernalia of this cult. There men and women assembled in the
costume worn by our first parents before the fall. Attached to the
lodge was a brothel, the scene of the most disgusting debaucheries. One
altar, in the form of a triangle with an image of the demon Baphomet,
was used for stabbing the body of Christ, in the form of consecrated
wafers, with a dagger. At this altar, too, was said the so-called
"black mass," an invention of the Grand Master Holebrook and Albert
Pike, of Charleston. During this service hymns were sung to Satan. The
consecrated wafers were procured by Miss Lucia Claraz, of Freiburg,
who stole them while pretending to partake of the communion, and
passed the night before committing the theft in the wildest orgies.
This incredibly foolish story was published in the _Moniteur de Rome_,
against which Miss Claraz, a lady "piously inclined and morally
irreproachable," according to the testimony of the Bishop of Freiburg,
brought suit for defamation. The court sentenced the editor, Monsignore
Vöglin, to a fine of twenty-five thousand lire and four years'
imprisonment.
These examples suffice to show the wretched stuff which Hacks hashed
up for the edification of the clerical and the entertainment of the
carnal-minded public. Even the silly statement that he saw a gigantic
tree bow down before Sophia Walder, the predestined great-grandmother
of antichrist, and present her with a bouquet, did not shake the faith
of the true believers. The editor of the _Revue Mensuelle_ declared, in
1894, that Dr. Bataille had really made all these discoveries on his
travels, and that his honesty and sincerity were beyond question. This
was the attitude of the whole clerical press almost without exception,
as well as of abbots, bishops, cardinals, and the highest dignitaries
of the Church. Even as late as July, 1897, when the imposture had been
exposed and confessed, a Parisian Catholic journal continued to regard
"the mystification as more apparent than actual, and the documents
adduced as chiefly authentic"; so difficult is it for minds thus
constituted, with the rational faculties dwarfed and stunted by being
constantly kept in the leading strings of credulity, to recognize the
falsity of what they wish or are told to believe.
Another of Taxil's confederates was Domenico Margiotta, according to
his own account a native of Palmi, in southern Italy, and professor of
literature and philosophy. His principal work, Adriano Lemmi, Supreme
Head of the Freemasons, published in French in 1894, gives a long
list of his titles, designed to impress the public by indicating his
high position in the Masonic order. Hacks calls him a "Member of the
Sovereign Sanctuary of the Oriental Rite of Memphis and Mizraim," a
purely fictitious designation. This cunning device was also crowned
with complete success, and caused the fabricated disclosures to be
hailed with enthusiasm. Here, exclaimed the clerical journals, we
have "not an apprentice or novice like Taxil, but one of the highest
dignitaries of universal Freemasonry and Luciferianism, who is
initiated and instructed in all its mysteries and occult observances,"
being apparently ignorant of the fact that Taxil was in the main the
real author of the book.
One of the most common accusations brought against the Freemasons is
that of desecrating the host by stabbing it with a dagger. A German
Catholic journal, The Pelican,[9] affirms that not only Masonic devil
worshipers, but also Jews, infidels, and heretics in general commit
this sacrilege in order to show their deadly hatred of Christianity.
In proof of this charge, the following "historical fact" is published
in the number for July, 1897: Several consecrated wafers were once
stolen by Jews from a church at Langenses, in Silesia, and, after being
pierced through with knives, were hidden in the forest. They were
discovered by a Polish nobleman, whose four horses, as he was driving
by, suddenly kneeled down and refused to go on, although he beat them
with his whip. He then descended from the carriage, and soon found the
wafers covered with blood. They were carried back with solemn ceremony
to the church, which became a place of pilgrimage with a wonder-working
pyx. What a hardened and hopeless skeptic a man must be, who is not
convinced by conclusive evidence of this kind, when even horses bear
witness to the truth by their genuflections!
Still more sensational was the part played in this spicy comedy
by Miss Diana Vaughan, whom Taxil introduced to the public as a
descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Oxford professor Thomas
Vaughan, and who was said to have in her possession a copy of the
written pact with Satan, signed by her ancestor on March 25, 1645.
The young lady claimed to have been born in Paris on February 29,
1874. The fact that there was no February 29th in the year 1874 would
make this date an impossible natal day for ordinary mortals, but a
person with Luciferian blood in her veins would naturally take no
note of the divisions of time as recorded in human calendars; for,
according to Taxil, her forbear was the goddess Astarte, who appeared
to Thomas Vaughan on a summer night in 1646, while he was sojourning
among the American Indians, in all her marvelous beauty, bringing
with her a bed surrounded with flames and attended by little demons
bearing flowers. She approached Vaughan and put a wedding ring on his
finger, and eleven days later gave birth to a daughter named Diana,
from whom the Miss Diana Vaughan in question traced her descent.
Several instances of similar commerce with incarnate demons are said
to have occurred in the history of her family, so that she inherited
a strong Satanic taint; even her own mother was guilty of the same
criminal conduct. Her inherited qualities were carefully fostered by
education, inasmuch as she was brought up by her father and uncle on
strictly Luciferian principles. One day, when her instructors were
praising Cain and Judas as ideals of excellence, she expressed some
doubt of the superior worthiness of the fratricide and venal traitor.
This dangerous unbelief was attributed to angelical possession, and
it was soon ascertained that the archangel Raphael was the cause of
the lapse from Luciferianism. Recourse was had to exorcism, the whole
process of which, as described by Taxil, is a clever travesty of the
ceremonial prescribed by the Romish Church for the expulsion of evil
spirits. The dance performed by the father and uncle on this occasion
consisted of the same saltatory movements that are executed by the
"procession of jumpers" every year at the grave of St. Willibord, in
Echternach, Luxemburg.[10] Devil's ointment took the place of holy oil,
and the exorcism ended with the sacrifice of a black hen; thereupon
"Raphael" went out of her, and simultaneously with his exit all the
panes of glass in the house were broken into fragments and fell to the
ground with a tremendous crash. The marvel is that bishops and priests
accepted this ridiculous story as an authentic and edifying narration,
instead of rejecting it with horror and disgust as a palpable burlesque
of their own approved methods of casting out demons, and particularly
of the _Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_, composed by Leo
XIII and issued by him November 19, 1890. It is evident that Taxil had
this document in his eye, and intended to hold it up to derision; to
calm the fears of the simple-minded, who were puzzled and perplexed by
the striking resemblance of diabolic orgies to divine ordinances, he
explained it on the general principle that "Satan is the ape of God."
After being freed from the influence of Raphael, Diana was placed under
the tutelage of Asmodeus, who, as her guardian devil, watched over her,
shielding her from bodily harm and helping her to resist the wiles of
angels. One day when she was wandering in the woods she was attacked
by negroes, but Asmodeus came to her rescue, and bore her safely
to her home through the air. Another time he caught her mettlesome
courser by the bridle as he was running away, and when the chief of
Garibaldi's staff, Bordone, insulted her, Asmodeus twisted his neck so
that his face looked backward. For three weeks he was obliged to take a
retrospective view of life and of his own conduct, when Diana, in the
kindness of her heart, set his head right again. On these occasions the
tutelar demon usually appeared in the form of a fine young gentleman,
and emitted an aroma of balsam, which seems to have been as inseparable
from him as is the scent of musk from a modern dude or modish dame.
He spoke of her as his bride, and often took her on pleasure trips
to paradise, purgatory, and other remote regions; once when she was
greatly depressed, because her Luciferian rival, Sophia Walder, had got
the better of her, he consoled her by making an excursion with her to
Mars, where they rode on Schiaparelli's canals, sailed on the Sea of
the Sirens, and strolled like pygmies among the gigantic inhabitants of
that planet.
[_To be concluded._]
Contrary to the common supposition that the astronomy of the ancients
was based exclusively on the geocentric hypothesis, Mr. G. H. Bryan
says in Nature: "Schiaparelli has shown that Heraclitus Ponticus,
a disciple of Plato, had already accepted the theory that the sun
is the center of the orbit of the planets, while the earth is the
center of the universe and of the lunar and solar rotations--a theory
substantially that of Tycho."
"RIBBON LIGHTNING."
BY ORANGE COOK.
In the summer of 1898, W. H. Osborne, of Chardon, Ohio, an amateur
photographer of some experience, secured the accompanying photograph
of a lightning flash which seemed to us to show certain peculiarities
that entitle it to a public notice and a permanent record. The picture
shows three flashes, of which the distant and faint one at the right
and the bright one at the left were simultaneous, while the center one
occurred a few seconds earlier. Nothing about the thunder that followed
the last and bright flash suggested that it was specially near, but
an examination of the picture when developed and a comparison with
the features of the landscape showed that it had come to earth about
fifteen rods from the place where Mr. Osborne stood with his camera.
Mr. Osborne and myself carefully searched the locality indicated, but
failed to find even the slightest mark caused by the discharge upon any
object or in the earth.
[Illustration]