PART I

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SECRET SOCIETIES and SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS

by

NESTA H. WEBSTER

CHRISTIAN BOOK CLUB OF AMERICA

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

_The Chevalier de Boufflers_

_The French Revolution_

_World Revolution_

_The Socialist Network_

_The Surrender of an Empire_

_Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette: Before the Revolution_

_Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette: During the Revolution_

_Spacious Days_

* * * * *

"There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House ... I

mean the secret societies.... It is useless to deny, because it is

impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe--the whole of Italy

and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other

countries--is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as

the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And

what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not

want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated

institutions ... they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out

the present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiastical

establishments. Some of them may go further...." (DISRAELI in the House

of Commons, July 14, 1856.)

PREFACE

It is a matter of some regret to me that I have been so far unable to

continue the series of studies on the French Revolution of which _The

Chevalier de Boufflers_ and _The French Revolution, a Study in

Democracy_ formed the first two volumes. But the state of the world at

the end of the Great War seemed to demand an enquiry into the present

phase of the revolutionary movement, hence my attempt to follow its

course up to modern times in _World Revolution_. And now before

returning to that first cataclysm I have felt impelled to devote one

more book to the Revolution as a whole by going this time further back

into the past and attempting to trace its origins from the first century

of the Christian era. For it is only by taking a general survey of the

movement that it is possible to understand the causes of any particular

phase of its existence. The French Revolution did not arise merely out

of conditions or ideas peculiar to the eighteenth century, nor the

Bolshevist Revolution out of political and social conditions in Russia

or the teaching of Karl Marx. Both these explosions were produced by

forces which, making use of popular suffering and discontent, had long

been gathering strength for an onslaught not only on Christianity, but

on all social and moral order.

It is of immense significance to notice with what resentment this point

of view is met in certain quarters. When I first began to write on

revolution a well-known London publisher said to me, "Remember that if

you take an anti-revolutionary line you will have the whole literary

world against you." This appeared to me extraordinary. Why should the

literary world sympathize with a movement which from the French

Revolution onwards has always been directed against literature, art, and

science, and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workers

over the intelligentsia? "Writers must be proscribed as the most

dangerous enemies of the people," said Robespierre; his colleague Dumas

said all clever men should be guillotined. "The system of persecution

against men of talents was organized.... They cried out in the sections

of Paris, 'Beware of that man for he has written a book!'"[1] Precisely

the same policy has been followed in Russia. Under Moderate Socialism in

Germany the professors, not the "people," are starving in garrets. Yet

the whole press of our country is permeated with subversive influences.

Not merely in partisan works, but in manuals of history or literature

for use in Schools, Burke is reproached for warning us against the

French Revolution and Carlyle's panegyric is applauded. And whilst every

slip on the part of an anti-revolutionary writer is seized on by the

critics and held up as an example of the whole, the most glaring errors

not only of conclusions but of facts pass unchallenged if they happen to

be committed by a partisan of the movement. The principle laid down by

Collot d'Herbois still holds good: "Tout est permis pour quiconque agit

dans le sens de la révolution."

All this was unknown to me when I first embarked on my work. I knew that

French writers of the past had distorted facts to suit their own

political views, that a conspiracy of history is still directed by

certain influences in the masonic lodges and the Sorbonne; I did not

know that this conspiracy was being carried on in this country.

Therefore the publisher's warning did not daunt me. If I was wrong

either in my conclusions or facts I was prepared to be challenged.

Should not years of laborious historical research meet either with

recognition or with reasoned and scholarly refutation? But although my

book received a great many generous and appreciative reviews in the

press, criticisms which were hostile took a form which I had never

anticipated. Not a single honest attempt was made to refute either my

_French Revolution_ or _World Revolution_ by the usual methods of

controversy; statements founded on documentary evidence were met with

flat contradiction unsupported by a shred of counter evidence. In

general the plan adopted was not to disprove, but to discredit by means

of flagrant misquotations, by attributing to me views I had never

expressed, or even by means of offensive personalities. It will surely

be admitted that this method of attack is unparalleled in any other

sphere of literary controversy.

It is interesting to notice that precisely the same line was adopted a

hundred years ago with regard to Professor Robison and the Abbé Barruel,

whose works on the secret causes of the French Revolution created an

immense sensation in their day. The legitimate criticisms that might

have been made on their work find no place in the diatribes levelled

against them; their enemies content themselves merely with calumnies and

abuse. A contemporary American writer, Seth Payson, thus describes the

methods employed to discredit them:

The testimony of Professor Robison and Abbé Barruel would doubtless

have been considered as ample in any case which did not interest

the prejudices and passions of men against them. The scurrility and

odium with which they have been loaded is perfectly natural, and

what the nature of their testimony would have led one to expect.

Men will endeavour to invalidate that evidence which tends to

unveil their dark designs: and it cannot be expected that those who

believe that "the end sanctifies the means" will be very scrupulous

as to their measures. Certainly he was not who invented the

following character and arbitrarily applied it to Dr. Robison,

which might have been applied with as much propriety to any other

person in Europe or America. The character here referred to, is

taken from the American _Mercury_, printed at Hartford, September

26, 1799, by E. Babcock. In this paper, on the pretended authority

of Professor Ebeling, we are told "that Robison had lived too fast

for his income, and to supply deficiencies had undertaken to alter

a bank bill, that he was detected and fled to France; that having

been expelled the Lodge in Edinburgh, he applied in France for the

second grade, but was refused; that he made the same attempt in

Germany and afterwards in Russia, but never succeeded; and from

this entertained the bitterest hatred to masonry; and after

wandering about Europe for two years, by writing to Secretary

Dundas, and presenting a copy of his book, which, it was judged,

would answer certain purposes of the ministry, the prosecution

against him was stopped, the Professor returned in triumph to his

country, and now lives upon a handsome pension, instead of

suffering the fate of his predecessor Dodd."[2]

Payson goes on to quote a writer in _The National Intelligencer_ of

January 1801, who styles himself a "friend to truth" and speaks of

Professor Robison as "a man distinguished by abject dependence on a

party, by the base crimes of forgery and adultery, and by frequent

paroxysms of insanity." Mounier goes further still, and in his pamphlet

_De l'influence attribuée aux Philosophes, ... Francs-maçons et ...

Illuminés_, etc., inspired by the Illuminatus Bode, quotes a story that

Robison suffered from a form of insanity which consisted in his

believing that the posterior portion of his body was made of glass![3]

In support of all this farrago of nonsense there is of course no

foundation of truth; Robison was a well-known savant who lived sane and

respected to the end of his days. On his death Watt wrote of him: "He

was a man of the clearest head and the most science of anybody I have

ever known."[4] John Playfair, in a paper read before the Royal Society

of Edinburgh in 1815, whilst criticizing his _Proofs of a

Conspiracy_--though at the same time admitting he had himself never had

access to the documents Robison had consulted!--paid the following

tribute to his character and erudition:

His range in science was most extensive; he was familiar with the

whole circle of the accurate sciences.... Nothing can add to the

esteem which they [i.e. "those who were personally acquainted with

him"] felt for his talents and worth or to the respect in which

they now hold his memory.[5]

Nevertheless, the lies circulated against both Robison and Barruel were

not without effect. Thirteen years later we find another American, this

time a Freemason, confessing "with shame and grief and indignation" that

he had been carried away by "the flood of vituperation poured upon

Barruel and Robison during the past thirty years," that the title pages

of their works "were fearful to him," and that although "wishing calmly

and candidly to investigate the character of Freemasonry he refused for

months to open their books." Yet when in 1827 he read them for the first

time he was astonished to find that they showed "a manifest tendency

towards Freemasonry." Both Barruel and Robison, he now realized, were

"learned men, candid men, lovers of their country, who had a reverence

for truth and religion. They give the reasons for their opinions, they

quote their authorities, naming the author and page, like honest people;

they both had a wish to rescue British Masonry from the condemnation and

fellowship of continental Masonry and appear to be sincerely actuated by

the desire of doing good by giving their labours to the public."[6]

That the author was right here in his description of Barruel's attitude

to Freemasonry is shown by Barruel's own words on the subject:

England above all is full of those upright men, excellent citizens,

men of every kind and in every condition of life, who count it an

honour to be masons, and who are distinguished from other men only

by ties which seem to strengthen those of benevolence and fraternal

charity. It is not the fear of offending a nation amongst which I

have found a refuge which prompts me to make this exception.

Gratitude would prevail with me over all such terrors and I should

say in the midst of London: "England is lost, she will not escape

the French Revolution if the masonic lodges resemble those I have

to unveil. I would even say more: government and all Christianity

would long ago have been lost in England if one could suppose its

Freemasons to be initiated into the last mysteries of the sect."[7]

In another passage Barruel observes that Masonry in England is "a

society composed of good citizens in general whose chief object is to

help each other by principles of equality which for them is nothing else

but universal fraternity."[8] And again: "Let us admire it [the wisdom

of England] for having known how to make a real source of benefit to the

State out of those same mysteries which elsewhere conceal a profound

conspiracy against the State and religion."[9]

The only criticism British Freemasons may make on this verdict is that

Barruel regards Masonry as a system which originally contained an

element of danger that has been eliminated in England whilst they regard

it as a system originally innocuous into which a dangerous element was

inserted on the Continent. Thus according to the former conception

Freemasonry might be compared to one of the brass shell-cases brought

back from the battle-fields of France and converted into a flower-pot

holder, whilst according to the latter it resembles an innocent brass

flower-pot holder which has been used as a receptacle for explosives. The

fact is that, as I shall endeavour to show in the course of this book,

Freemasonry being a composite system there is some justification for

both these theories. In either case it will be seen that Continental

Masonry alone stands condemned.

The plan of representing Robison and Barruel as the enemies of British

Masonry can therefore only be regarded as a method for discrediting them

in the eyes of British Freemasons, and consequently for bringing the

latter over to the side of their antagonists. Exactly the same method of

attack has been directed against those of us who during the last few

years have attempted to warn the world of the secret forces working to

destroy civilization; in my own case even the plan of accusing me of

having attacked British Masonry has been adopted without the shadow of a

foundation. From the beginning I have always differentiated between

British and Grand Orient Masonry, and have numbered high British Masons

amongst my friends.

But what is the main charge brought against us? Like Robison and

Barruel, we are accused of raising a false alarm, of creating a bogey,

or of being the victims of an obsession. Up to a point this is

comprehensible. Whilst on the Continent the importance of secret

societies is taken as a matter of course and the libraries of foreign

capitals teem with books on the question, people in this country really

imagine that secret societies are things of the past--articles to this

effect appeared quite recently in two leading London newspapers--whilst

practically nothing of any value has been written about them in our

language during the last hundred years. Hence ideas that are

commonplaces on the Continent here appear sensational and extravagant.

The mind of the Englishman does not readily accept anything he cannot

see or even sometimes anything he can see which is unprecedented in his

experience, so that like the West American farmer, confronted for the

first time by the sight of a giraffe, his impulse is to cry out angrily:

"I don't believe it!"

But whilst making all allowance for honest ignorance and incredulity, it

is impossible not to recognize a certain method in the manner in which

the cry of "obsession" or "bogey" is raised. For it will be noticed that

people who specialize on other subjects are not described as "obsessed."

We did not hear, for example, that the late Professor Einstein had

Relativity "on the brain" because he wrote and lectured exclusively on

this question, nor do we hear it suggested that Mr. Howard Carter is

obsessed with the idea of Tutankhamen and that it would be well if he

were to set out for the South Pole by way of a change. Again, all those

who warn the world concerning eventualities they conceive to be a danger

are not accused of creating bogeys. Thus although Lord Roberts was

denounced as a scaremonger for urging the country to prepare for

defence against a design openly avowed by Germany both in speech and

print, and in 1921 the Duke of Northumberland was declared the victim of

a delusion for believing in the existence of a plot against the British

Empire which had been proclaimed in a thousand revolutionary harangues

and pamphlets. People who, without bothering to produce a shred of

documentary evidence, had sounded the alarm on the menace of "French

Imperialism" and asserted that our former Allies were engaged in

building a vast fleet of aeroplanes in order to attack our coasts. They

were not held to be either scaremongers or insane. On the contrary,

although some of these same people were proved by events to have been

completely wrong in their prognostications at the beginning of the Great

War, they are still regarded as oracles and sometimes even described as

"thinking for half Europe."

Another instance of this kind may be cited in the case of Mr. John

Spargo, author of a small book entitled _The Jew and American Ideals_.

On page 37 of this work Mr. Spargo in refuting the accusations brought

against the Jews observes:

Belief in widespread conspiracies directed against individuals or

the state is probably the commonest form assumed by the human mind

when it loses its balance and its sense of proportion.

Yet on page 6 Mr. Spargo declares that when visiting this country in

September and October 1920:

I found in England great nation-wide organizations, obviously well

financed, devoted to the sinister purpose of creating anti-Jewish

feeling and sentiment. I found special articles in influential

newspapers devoted to the same evil purpose. I found at at least

one journal, obviously well financed again, exclusively devoted to

the fostering of suspicion, fear, and hatred against the Jew ...

and in the bookstores I discovered a whole library of books devoted

to the same end.

It will be seen then that a belief in widespread conspiracies is not

always to be regarded as a sign of loss of mental balance, even when

these conspiracies remain completely invisible to the general public.

For those of us who were in London during the period of Mr. Spargo's

visit saw nothing of the things he here describes. Where, we ask, were

these "great nation-wide organizations" striving to create anti-Jewish

sentiments? What were their names? By whom were they led? It is true,

however, that there were nation-wide organizations in existence here at

this date instituted for the purpose of combating Bolshevism. Is

anti-Bolshevism then synonymous with "anti-Semitism"?[10] This is the

conclusion to which one is inevitably led. For it will be noticed that

anyone who attempts to expose the secret forces behind the revolutionary

movement, whether he mentions Jews in this connexion or even if he goes

out of his way to exonerate them, will incur the hostility of the Jews

and their friends and will still be described as "anti-Semite." The

realization of this fact has led me particularly to include the Jews in

the study of secret societies.

The object of the present book is therefore to carry further the enquiry

I began in _World Revolution_, by tracing the course of revolutionary

ideas through secret societies from the earliest times, indicating the

rôle of the Jews only where it is to be clearly detected, but not

seeking to implicate them where good evidence is not forthcoming. For

this reason I shall not base assertions on merely "anti-Semite" works,

but principally on the writings of the Jews themselves. In the same way

with regard to secret societies I shall rely as far as possible on the

documents and admissions of their members, on which point I have been

able to collect a great deal of fresh data entirely corroborating my

former thesis. It should be understood that I do not propose to give a

complete history of secret societies, but only of secret societies in

their relation to the revolutionary movement. I shall therefore not

attempt to describe the theories of occultism nor to enquire into the

secrets of Freemasonry, but simply to relate the history of these

systems in order to show the manner in which they have been utilized for

a subversive purpose. If I then fail to convince the incredulous that

secret forces of revolution exist, it will not be for want of evidence.

Nesta H. Webster.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART I _THE PAST_

I. THE ANCIENT SECRET TRADITION

II. THE REVOLT AGAINST ISLAM

III. THE TEMPLARS

IV. THREE CENTURIES OF OCCULTISM

V. THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY

VI. THE GRAND LODGE ERA

VII. GERMAN TEMPLARISM AND FRENCH ILLUMINISM

VIII. THE JEWISH CABALISTS

IX. THE BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI

X. THE CLIMAX

PART II _THE PRESENT_

XI. MODERN FREEMASONRY

XII. SECRET SOCIETIES IN ENGLAND

XIII. OPEN SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS

XIV. PAN-GERMANISM

XV. THE REAL JEWISH PERIL

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX:

I. JEWISH EVIDENCE ON THE TALMUD

II. THE "PROTOCOLS" OF THE ELDERS OF ZION

INDEX

PART I

_THE PAST_

1

THE ANCIENT SECRET TRADITION

The East is the cradle of secret societies. For whatever end they may

have been employed, the inspiration and methods of most of those

mysterious associations which have played so important a part behind the

scenes of the world's history will be found to have emanated from the

lands where the first recorded acts of the great human drama were played

out--Egypt, Babylon, Syria, and Persia. On the one hand Eastern

mysticism, on the other Oriental love of intrigue, framed the systems

later on to be transported to the West with results so tremendous and

far-reaching.

In the study of secret societies we have then a double line to

follow--the course of associations enveloping themselves in secrecy for

the pursuit of esoteric knowledge, and those using mystery and secrecy

for an ulterior and, usually, a political purpose.

But esotericism again presents a dual aspect. Here, as in every phase of

earthly life, there is the _revers de la médaille_--white and black,

light and darkness, the Heaven and Hell of the human mind. The quest for

hidden knowledge may end with initiation into divine truths or into dark

and abominable cults. Who knows with what forces he may be brought in

contact beyond the veil? Initiation which leads to making use of

spiritual forces, whether good or evil, is therefore capable of raising

man to greater heights or of degrading him to lower depths than he could

ever have reached by remaining on the purely physical plane. And when

men thus unite themselves in associations, a collective force is

generated which may exercise immense influence over the world around.

Hence the importance of secret societies.

Let it be said once and for all, secret societies have not always been

formed for evil purposes. On the contrary, many have arisen from the

highest aspirations of the human mind--the desire for a knowledge of

eternal verities. The evil arising from such systems has usually

consisted in the perversion of principles that once were pure and holy.

If I do not insist further on this point, it is because a vast

literature has already been devoted to the subject, so that it need only

be touched on briefly here.

Now, from the earliest times groups of Initiates or "Wise Men" have

existed, claiming to be in possession of esoteric doctrines known as the

"Mysteries," incapable of apprehension by the vulgar, and relating to

the origin and end of man, the life of the soul after death, and the

nature of God or the gods. It is this exclusive attitude which

constitutes the essential difference between the Initiates of the

ancient world and the great Teachers of religion with whom modern

occultists seek to confound them. For whilst religious leaders such as

Buddha and Mohammed sought for divine knowledge in order that they might

impart it to the world, the Initiates believed that sacred mysteries

should not be revealed to the profane but should remain exclusively in

their own keeping, although the desire for initiation might spring from

the highest aspiration, the gratification, whether real or imaginary, of

this desire often led to spiritual arrogance and abominable tyranny,

resulting in the fearful trials, the tortures physical and mental,

ending even at times in death, to which the neophyte was subjected by

his superiors.

The Mysteries

According to a theory current in occult and masonic circles, certain

ideas were common to all the more important "Mysteries," thus forming a

continuous tradition handed down through succeeding groups of Initiates

of different ages and countries. Amongst these ideas is said to have

been the conception of the unity of God. Whilst to the multitude it was

deemed advisable to preach polytheism, since only in this manner could

the plural aspects of the Divine be apprehended by the multitude, the

Initiates themselves believed in the existence of one Supreme Being, the

Creator of the Universe, pervading and governing all things, Le

Plongeon, whose object is to show an affinity between the sacred

Mysteries of the Mayas and of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks,

asserts that "The idea of a sole and omnipotent Deity, who created all

things, seems to have been the universal belief in early ages, amongst

all the nations that had reached a high degree of civilization. This was

the doctrine of the Egyptian priests."[11] The same writer goes on to

say that the "doctrine of a Supreme Deity composed of three parts

distinct from each other, yet forming one, was universally prevalent

among the civilized nations of America, Asia, and the Egyptians," and

that the priests and learned men of Egypt, Chaldea, India, or China

"...kept it a profound secret and imparted it only to a few select among

those initiated in the sacred mysteries."[12] This view has been

expressed by many other writers, yet lacks historical proof.

That monotheism existed in Egypt before the days of Moses is, however,

certain. Adolf Erman asserts that "even in early times the educated

class" believed all the deities of the Egyptian religion to be identical

and that "the priests did not shut their eyes to this doctrine, but

strove to grasp the idea of the one God, divided into different persons

by poesy and myth.... The priesthood, however, had not the courage to

take the final step, to do away with those distinctions which they

declared to be immaterial, and to adore the one God under the one

name."[13] It was left to Amenhotep IV, later known as Ikhnaton, to

proclaim this doctrine openly to the people. Professor Breasted has

described the hymns of praise to the Sun God which Ikhnaton himself

wrote on the walls of the Amarna tomb-chapels:

They show us the simplicity and beauty of the young king's faith in

the sole God. He had gained the belief that one God created not

only all the lower creatures but also all races of men, both

Egyptians and foreigners. Moreover, the king saw in his God a

kindly Father, who maintained all his creatures by his goodness....

In all the progress of men which we have followed through thousands

of years, no one had ever before caught such a vision of the great

Father of all.[14]

May not the reason why Ikhnaton was later described as a "heretic" be

that he violated the code of the priestly hierarchy by revealing this

secret doctrine to the profane? Hence, too, perhaps the necessity in

which the King found himself of suppressing the priesthood, which by

persisting in its exclusive attitude kept what he perceived to be the

truth from the minds of the people.

The earliest European centre of the Mysteries appears to have been

Greece, where the Eleusinian Mysteries existed at a very early date.

Pythagoras, who was born in Samos about 582 B.C., spent some years in

Egypt, where he was initiated into the Mysteries of Isis. After his

return to Greece, Pythagoras is said to have been initiated into the

Eleusinian Mysteries and attempted to found a secret society in Samos;

but this proving unsuccessful, he journeyed on to Crotona in Italy,

where he collected around him a great number of disciples and finally

established his sect. This was divided into two classes of

Initiates--the first admitted only into the exoteric doctrines of the

master, with whom they were not allowed to speak until after a period of

five years' probation; the second consisting of the real Initiates, to

whom all the mysteries of the esoteric doctrines of Pythagoras were

unfolded. This course of instruction, given, after the manner of the

Egyptians, by means of images and symbols, began with geometrical

science, in which Pythagoras during his stay in Egypt had become an

adept, and led up finally to abstruse speculations concerning the

transmigration of the soul and the nature of God, who was represented

under the conception of a Universal Mind diffused through all things. It

is, however, as the precursor of secret societies formed later in the

West of Europe that the sect of Pythagoras enters into the scope of this

book. Early masonic tradition traces Freemasonry partly to Pythagoras,

who is said to have travelled in England, and there is certainly some

reason to believe that his geometrical ideas entered into the system of

the operative guilds of masons.

The Jewish Cabala[15]

According to Fabre d'Olivet, Moses, who "was learned in all the wisdom

of the Egyptians," drew from the Egyptian Mysteries a part of the oral

tradition which was handed down through the leaders of the

Israelites.[16] That such an oral tradition, distinct from the written

word embodied in the Pentateuch, did descend from Moses and that it was

later committed to writing in the Talmud and the Cabala is the opinion

of many Jewish writers.[17]

The first form of the Talmud, called the Mischna, appeared in about the

second or third century A.D.; a little later a commentary was added

under the name of the Gemara. These two works compose the Jerusalem

Talmud, which was revised in the third to the fifth centry[A]. This

later edition was named the Babylonian Talmud and is the one now in use.

The Talmud relates mainly to the affairs of everyday life--the laws of

buying and selling, of making contracts--also to external religious

observances, on all of which the most meticulous details are given. As a

Jewish writer has expressed it:

... the oddest rabbinical conceits are elaborated through many

volumes with the finest dialectic, and the most absurd questions

are discussed with the highest efforts of intellectual power; for

example, how many white hairs may a red cow have, and yet remain a

_red_ cow; what sort of scabs require this or that purification;

whether a louse or a flea may be killed on the Sabbath--the first

being allowed, while the second is a deadly sin; whether the

slaughter of an animal ought to be executed at the neck or the

tail; whether the high priest put on his shirt or his hose first;

whether the _Jabam_, that is, the brother of a man who died

childless, being required by law to marry the widow, is relieved

from his obligation if he falls off a roof and sticks in the

mire.[18]

But it is in the Cabala, a Hebrew word signifying "reception," that is

to say "a doctrine orally received," that the speculative and

philosophical or rather the theosophical doctrines of Israel are to be

found. These are contained in two books, the _Sepher Yetzirah_ and the

_Zohar_.

The _Sepher Yetzirah_, or Book of the Creation, is described by

Edersheim as "a monologue on the part of Abraham, in which, by the

contemplation of all that is around him, he ultimately arrives at the

conclusion of the unity of God"[19]; but since this process is

accomplished by an arrangement of the Divine Emanations under the name

of the Ten Sephiroths, and in the permutation of numerals and of the

letters of the Hebrew alphabet, it would certainly convey no such

idea--nor probably indeed any idea at all--to the mind uninitiated into

Cabalistic systems. The Sepher Yetzirah is in fact admittedly a work of

extraordinary obscurity[20] and almost certainly of extreme antiquity.

Monsieur Paul Vulliaud, in his exhaustive work on the Cabala recently

published,[21] says that its date has been placed as early as the sixth

century before Christ and as late as the tenth century A.D., but that it

is at any rate older than the Talmud is shown by the fact that in the

Talmud the Rabbis are described as studying it for magical purposes.[22]

The Sepher Yetzirah is also said to be the work referred to in the Koran

under the name of the "Book of Abraham."[23]

The immense compilation known as the _Sepher-Ha-Zohar_, or Book of

Light, is, however, of greater importance to the study of Cabalistic

philosophy. According to the Zohar itself, the "Mysteries of Wisdom"

were imparted to Adam by God whilst he was still in the Garden of Eden,

in the form of a book delivered by the angel Razael. From Adam the book

passed on to Seth, then to Enoch, to Noah, to Abraham, and later to

Moses, one of its principal exponents.[24] Other Jewish writers declare,

however, that Moses received it for the first time on Mount Sinai and

communicated it to the Seventy Elders, by whom it was handed down to

David and Solomon, then to Ezra and Nehemiah, and finally to the Rabbis

of the early Christian era.[25]

Until this date the Zohar had remained a purely oral tradition, but now

for the first time it is said to have been written down by the disciples

of Simon ben Jochai. The Talmud relates that for twelve years the Rabbi

Simon and his son Eliezer concealed themselves in a cavern, where,

sitting in the sand up to their necks, they meditated on the sacred law

and were frequently visited by the prophet Elias.[26] In this way,

Jewish legend adds, the great book of the Zohar was composed and

committed to writing by the Rabbi's son Eliezer and his secretary the

Rabbi Abba.[27]

The first date at which the Zohar is definitely known to have appeared

is the end of the thirteenth century, when it was committed to writing

by a Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon, who, according to Dr. Ginsburg, said he

had discovered and reproduced the original document of Simon ben Jochai;

his wife and daughter, however, declared that he had composed it all

himself.[28] Which is the truth? Jewish opinion is strongly divided on

this question, one body maintaining that the Zohar is the comparatively

modern work of Moses de Leon, the other declaring it to be of extreme

antiquity. M. Vulliaud, who has collated all these views in the course

of some fifty pages, shows that although the name Zohar might have

originated with Moses de Leon, the ideas it embodied were far older than

the thirteenth century. How, he asks pertinently, would it have been

possible for the Rabbis of the Middle Ages to have been deceived into

accepting as an ancient document a work that was of completely modern

origin?[29] Obviously the Zohar was not the composition of Moses de

Leon, but a compilation made by him from various documents dating from

very early times. Moreover, as M. Vulliaud goes on to explain, those who

deny its antiquity are the anti-Cabalists, headed by Graetz, whose

object is to prove the Cabala to be at variance with orthodox Judaism.

Theodore Reinach goes so far as to declare the Cabala to be "a subtle

poison which enters into the veins of Judaism and wholly infests it";

Salomon Reinach calls it "one of the worst aberrations of the human

mind."[30] This view, many a student of the Cabala will hardly dispute,

but to say that it is foreign to Judaism is another matter. The fact is

that the main ideas of the Zohar find confirmation in the Talmud. As the

_Jewish Encyclopædia_ observes, "the Cabala is not really in opposition

to the Talmud," and "many Talmudic Jews have supported and contributed

to it."[31] Adolphe Franck does not hesitate to describe it as "the

heart and life of Judaism."[32] "The greater number of the most eminent

Rabbis of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries believed firmly in

the sacredness of the Zohar and the infallibility of its teaching."[33]

The question of the antiquity of the Cabala is therefore in reality

largely a matter of names. That a mystical tradition existed amongst the

Jews from remote antiquity will hardly be denied by anyone[34]; it is

therefore, as M. Vulliaud observes, "only a matter of knowing at what

moment Jewish mysticism took the name of Cabala."[35] Edersheim asserts

that--

It is undeniable that, already at the time of Jesus Christ, there

existed an assemblage of doctrines and speculations that were

carefully concealed from the multitude. They were not even revealed

to ordinary scholars, for fear of leading them towards heretical

ideas. This kind bore the name of Kabbalah, and as the term (of

Kabbalah, to receive, transmit) indicates, it represented the

spiritual traditions transmitted from the earliest ages, although

mingled in the course of time with impure or foreign elements.[36]

Is the Cabala, then, as Gougenot des Mousseaux asserts, older than the

Jewish race, a legacy handed down from the first patriarchs of the

world?[37] We must admit this hypothesis to be incapable of proof, yet

it is one that has found so much favour with students of occult

traditions that it cannot be ignored. The Jewish Cabala itself supports

it by tracing its descent from the patriarchs--Adam, Noah, Enoch, and

Abraham--who lived before the Jews as a separate race came into

existence. Eliphas Lévi accepts this genealogy, and relates that "the

Holy Cabala" was the tradition of the children of Seth carried out of

Chaldea by Abraham, who was "the inheritor of the secrets of Enoch and

the father of initiation in Israel."[38]

According to this theory, which we find again propounded by the American

Freemason, Dr. Mackey,[39] there was, besides the divine Cabala of the

children of Seth, the magical Cabala of the children of Cain, which

descended to the Sabeists, or star-worshippers, of Chaldea, adepts in

astrology and necromancy. Sorcery, as we know, had been practised by the

Canaanites before the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites; Egypt

India, and Greece also had their soothsayers and diviners. In spite of

the imprecations against sorcery contained in the law of Moses, the

Jews, disregarding these warnings, caught the contagion and mingled the

sacred tradition they had inherited with magical ideas partly borrowed

from other races and partly of their own devising. At the same time the

speculative side of the Jewish Cabala borrowed from the philosophy of

the Persian Magi, of the Neo-Platonists,[40] and of the

Neo-Pythagoreans. There is, then, some justification for the

anti-Cabalists' contention that what we know to-day as the Cabala is not

of purely Jewish origin.

Gougenot des Mousseaux, who had made a profound study of occultism,

asserts that there were therefore two Cabalas: the ancient sacred

tradition handed down from the first patriarchs of the human race; and

the evil Cabala, wherein this sacred tradition was mingled by the Rabbis

with barbaric superstitions, combined with their own imaginings and

henceforth marked with their seal.[41] This view also finds expression

in the remarkable work of the converted Jew Drach, who refers to--

The ancient and true Cabala, which ... we distinguish from the

modern Cabala, false, condemnable, and condemned by the Holy See,

the work of the Rabbis, who have also falsified and perverted the

Talmudic tradition. The doctors of the Synagogue trace it back to

Moses, whilst at the same time admitting that the principal truths

it contains were those known by revelation to the first patriarchs

of the world.[42]

Further on Drach quotes the statement of Sixtus of Sienna, another

converted Jew and a Dominican, protected by Pius V:

Since by the decree of the Holy Roman Inquisition all books

appertaining to the Cabala have lately been condemned, one must

know that the Cabala is double; that one is true, the other false.

The true and pious one is that which ... elucidates the secret

mysteries of the holy law according to the principle of anagogy

(i.e. figurative interpretation). This Cabala therefore the Church

has never condemned. The false and impious Cabala is a certain

mendacious kind of Jewish tradition, full of innumerable vanities

and falsehoods, differing but little from necromancy. This kind of

superstition, therefore, improperly called Cabala, the Church

within the last few years has deservedly condemned.[43]

The modern Jewish Cabala presents a dual aspect--theoretical and

practical; the former concerned with theosophical speculations, the

latter with magical practices. It would be impossible here to give an

idea of Cabalistic theosophy with its extraordinary imaginings on the

Sephiroths, the attributes and functions of good and bad angels,

dissertations on the nature of demons, and minute details on the

appearance of God under the name of the Ancient of Ancients, from whose

head 400,000 worlds receive the light. "The length of this face from the

top of the head is three hundred and seventy times ten thousand worlds.

It is called the 'Long Face,' for such is the name of the Ancient of

Ancients."[44] The description of the hair and beard alone belonging to

this gigantic countenance occupies a large place in the Zoharic

treatise, Idra Raba.[45]

According to the Cabala, every letter in the Scriptures contains a

mystery only to be solved by the initiated.[46] By means of this system

of interpretation passages of the Old Testament are shown to bear

meanings totally unapparent to the ordinary reader. Thus the Zohar

explains that Noah was lamed for life by the bite of a lion whilst he

was in the ark,[47] the adventures of Jonah inside the whale are related

with an extraordinary wealth of imagination,[48] whilst the beautiful

story of Elisha and the Shunnamite woman is travestied in the most

grotesque manner.[49]

In the practical Cabala this method of "decoding" is reduced to a

theurgic or magical system in which the healing of diseases plays an

important part and is effected by means of the mystical arrangement of

numbers and letters, by the pronunciation of the Ineffable Name, by the

use of amulets and talismans, or by compounds supposed to contain

certain occult properties.

All these ideas derived from very ancient cults; even the art of working

miracles by the use of the Divine Name, which after the appropriation of

the Cabala by the Jews became the particular practice of Jewish

miracle-workers, appears to have originated in Chaldea.[50] Nor can the

insistence on the Chosen People theory, which forms the basis of all

Talmudic and Cabalistic writings, be regarded as of purely Jewish

origin; the ancient Egyptians likewise believed themselves to be "the

peculiar people specially loved by the gods."[51] But in the hands of

the Jews this belief became a pretension to the exclusive enjoyment of

divine favour. According to the Zohar, "all Israelites will have a part

in the future world,"[52] and on arrival there will not be handed over

like the _goyim_ (or non-Jewish races) to the hands of the angel Douma

and sent down to Hell.[53] Indeed the _goyim_ are even denied human

attributes. Thus the Zohar again explains that the words of the

Scripture "Jehovah Elohim made man" mean that He made Israel.[54] The

seventeenth-century Rabbinical treatise Emek ha Melek observes: "Our

Rabbis of blessed memory have said: 'Ye Jews are men because of the soul

ye have from the Supreme Man (i.e. God). But the nations of the world

are not styled men because they have not, from the Holy and Supreme Man,

the Neschama (or glorious soul), but they have the Nephesch (soul) from

Adam Belial, that is the malicious and unnecessary man, called Sammael,

the Supreme Devil.'"[55]

In conformity with this exclusive attitude towards the rest of the human

race, the Messianic idea which forms the dominating theme of the Cabala

is made to serve purely Jewish interests. Yet in its origins this idea

was possibly not Jewish. It is said by believers in an ancient secret

tradition common to other races besides the Jews, that a part of this

tradition related to a past Golden Age when man was free from care and

evil non-existent, to the subsequent fall of Man and the loss of this

primitive felicity, and finally to a revelation received from Heaven

foretelling the reparation of this loss and the coming of a Redeemer who

should save the world and restore the Golden Age. According to Drach:

The tradition of a Man-God who should present Himself as the

teacher and liberator of the fallen human race was constantly

taught amongst all the enlightened nations of the globe. _Vetus et

constans opinio_, as Suetonius says. It is of all times and of all

places.[56]

And Drach goes on to quote the evidence of Volney, who had travelled in

the East and declared that--

The sacred and mythological traditions of earlier times had spread

throughout all Asia the belief in a great Mediator who was to come,

of a future Saviour, King, God, Conqueror, and Legislator who would

bring back the Golden Age to earth and deliver men from the empire

of evil.[57]

All that can be said with any degree of certainty with regard to this

belief is that it did exist amongst the Zoroastrians of Persia as well

as amongst the Jews. D'Herbelot, quoting Abulfaraj, shows that five

hundred years before Christ, Zerdascht, the leader of the Zoroastrians,

predicted the coming of the Messiah, at whose birth a star would appear.

He also told his disciples that the Messiah would be born of a virgin,

that they would be the first to hear of Him, and that they should bring

Him gifts.[58]

Drach believes that this tradition was taught in the ancient

synagogue,[59] thus explaining the words of St. Paul that unto the Jews

"were committed the oracles of God"[60]:

This oral doctrine, which is the Cabala, had for its object the

most sublime truths of the Faith which it brought back incessantly

to the promised Redeemer, the foundation of the whole system of the

ancient tradition.[61]

Drach further asserts that the doctrine of the Trinity formed a part of

this tradition:

Whoever has familiarized himself with that which was taught by the

ancient doctors of the Synagogue, particularly those who lived

before the coming of the Saviour, knows that the Trinity in one God

was a truth admitted amongst them from the earliest times.[62]

M. Vulliaud points out that Graetz admits the existence of this idea in

the Zohar: "It even taught certain doctrines which appeared favourable

to the Christian dogma of the Trinity!" And again: "It is incontestable

that the Zohar makes allusions to the beliefs in the Trinity and the

Incarnation."[63] M. Vulliaud adds: "The idea of the Trinity must

therefore play an important part in the Cabala, since it has been

possible to affirm that 'the characteristic of the Zohar and its

particular conception is its attachment to the principle of the

Trinity,'"[64] and further quotes Edersheim as saying that "a great

part of the explanation given in the writings of the Cabalists resembles

in a surprising manner the highest truths of Christianity."[65] It

would appear, then, that certain remnants of the ancient secret

tradition lingered on in the Cabala. The _Jewish Encyclopædia_, perhaps

unintentionally, endorses this opinion, since in deriding the

sixteenth-century Christian Cabalists for asserting that the Cabala

contained traces of Christianity, it goes on to say that what appears to

be Christian in the Cabala is only ancient esoteric doctrine.[66] Here,

then, we have it on the authority of modern Jewish scholars that the

ancient secret tradition was in harmony with Christian teaching. But in

the teaching of the later synagogue the philosophy of the earlier sages

was narrowed down to suit the exclusive system of the Jewish hierarchy,

and the ancient hope of a Redeemer who should restore Man to the state

of felicity he had lost at the Fall was transformed into the idea of

salvation for the Jews alone[67] under the ægis of a triumphant and even

an avenging Messiah.[68] It is this Messianic dream perpetuated in the

modern Cabala which nineteen hundred years ago the advent of Christ on

earth came to disturb.

The Coming of the Redeemer

The fact that many Christian doctrines, such as the conception of a

Trinity, the miraculous birth and murder of a Deity, had found a place

in earlier religions has frequently been used as an argument to show

that the story of Christ was merely a new version of various ancient

legends, those of Attis, Adonis, or of Osiris, and that consequently the

Christian religion is founded on a myth. The answer to this is that the

existence of Christ on earth is an historic fact which no serious

authority has ever denied. The attempts of such writers as Drews and

J.M. Robertson to establish the theory of the "Christ-Myth," which find

an echo in the utterances of Socialist orators,[69] have been met with

so much able criticism as to need no further refutation. Sir James

Frazer, who will certainly not be accused of bigoted orthodoxy, observes

in this connexion:

The doubts which have been cast on the historical reality of Jesus

are, in my judgement, unworthy of serious attention.... To dissolve

the founder of Christianity into a myth, as some would do, is

hardly less absurd than it would be to do the same for Mohammed,

Luther, and Calvin.[70]

May not the fact that certain circumstances in the life of Christ were

foreshadowed by earlier religions indicate, as Eliphas Lévi observes,

that the ancients had an intuition of Christian mysteries?[71]

To those therefore who had adhered to the ancient tradition, Christ

appeared as the fulfilment of a prophecy as old as the world. Thus the

wise men came from afar to worship the Babe of Bethlehem, and when they

saw His star in the East they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. In

Christ they hailed not only Him who was born King of the Jews, but the

Saviour of the whole human race.[72]

In the light of this great hope, that wondrous night in Bethlehem is

seen in all its sublimity. Throughout the ages the seers had looked for

the coming of the Redeemer, and lo! He was here; but it was not to the

mighty in Israel, to the High Priests and the Scribes, that His birth

was announced, but to humble shepherds watching their flocks by night.

And these men of simple faith, hearing from the angels "the good tidings

of great joy" that a Saviour, "Christ the Lord" was born, went with

haste to see the babe lying in the manger, and returned "glorifying and

praising God." So also to the devout in Israel, to Simeon and to Anna

the prophetess, the great event appeared in its universal significance,

and Simeon, departing in peace, knew that his eyes had seen the

salvation that was to be "a light to lighten the Gentiles" as well as

the glory of the people of Israel.

But to the Jews, in whose hands the ancient tradition had been turned to

the exclusive advantage of the Jewish race, to the Rabbis, who had,

moreover, constituted themselves the sole guardians within this nation

of the said tradition, the manner of its fulfilment was necessarily

abhorrent. Instead of a resplendent Messiah who should be presented by

them to the people, a Saviour was born amongst the people themselves and

brought to Jerusalem to be presented to the Lord; a Saviour moreover

who, as time went on, imparted His divine message to the poor and humble

and declared that His Kingdom was not of this world. This was clearly

what Mary meant when she said that God had "scattered the proud in the

imagination of their hearts," that He had "put down the mighty from

their seats, and exalted them of low degree." Christ was therefore

doubly hateful to the Jewish hierarchy in that He attacked the

privilege of the race to which they belonged by throwing open the door

to all mankind, and the privilege of the caste to which they belonged by

revealing sacred doctrines to the profane and destroying their claim to

exclusive knowledge.

Unless viewed from this aspect, neither the antagonism displayed by the

Scribes and Pharisees towards our Lord nor the denunciations He uttered

against them can be properly understood. "Woe unto you, Lawyers! for ye

have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and

them that were entering in ye hindered.... Woe unto you, Scribes and

Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men:

tor ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are

entering to go in." What did Christ mean by the key of knowledge?

Clearly the sacred tradition which, as Drach explains, foreshadowed the

doctrines of Christianity.[73] It was the Rabbis who perverted that

tradition, and thus "the guilt of these perfidious Doctors consisted in

their concealing from the people the traditional explanation of the

sacred books by means of which they would have been able to recognize

the Messiah in the person of Jesus Christ."[74] Many of the people,

however, did recognize Him; indeed, the multitude acclaimed Him,

spreading their garments before Him and crying, "Hosanna to the Son of

David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" Writers who

have cited the choice of Barabbas in the place of Christ as an instance

of misguided popular judgement, overlook the fact that this choice was

not spontaneous; it was the Chief Priests who delivered Christ "from

envy" and who "moved the people that Pilate should rather release unto

them Barabbas." _Then_ the people obediently cried out, "Crucify Him!"

So also it was the Rabbis who, after hiding from the people the meaning

of the sacred tradition at the moment of its fulfilment, afterwards

poisoned that same stream for future generations. Abominable calumnies

on Christ and Christianity occur not only in the Cabala but in the

earlier editions of the Talmud. In these, says Barclay--

Our Lord and Saviour is "that one," "such a one," "a fool," "the

leper," "the deceiver of Israel," etc. Efforts are made to prove

that He is the son of Joseph Pandira before his marriage with Mary.

His miracles are attributed to sorcery, the secret of which He

brought in a slit in His flesh out of Egypt. He is said to have

been first stoned and then hanged on the eve of the Passover. His

disciples are called heretics and opprobrious names. They are

accused of immoral practices, and the New Testament is called a

sinful book. The references to these subjects manifest the most

bitter aversion and hatred.[75]

One might look in vain for passages such as these in English or French

translations of the Talmud, for the reason that no complete translation

exists in these languages. This fact is of great significance. Whilst

the sacred books of every other important religion have been rendered

into our own tongue and are open to everyone to study, the book that

forms the foundation of modern Judaism is closed to the general public.

We can read English translations of the Koran, of the Dhammapada, of the

Sutta Nipata, of the Zend Avesta, of the Shu King, of the Laws of Manu,

of the Bhagavadgita, but we cannot read the Talmud. In the long series

of Sacred Books of the East the Talmud finds no place. All that is

accessible to the ordinary reader consists, on one hand, in expurgated

versions or judicious selections by Jewish and pro-Jewish compilers,

and, on the other hand, in "anti-Semitic" publications on which it would

be dangerous to place reliance. The principal English translation by

Rodkinson is very incomplete, and the folios are nowhere indicated, so

that it is impossible to look up a passage.[76] The French translation

by Jean de Pauly[B] professes to present the entire text of the Venetian

Talmud of 1520, but it does nothing of the kind.[77] The translator, in

the Preface, in fact admits that he has left out "sterile discussions"

and has throughout attempted to tone down "the brutality of certain

expressions which offend our ears." This of course affords him infinite

latitude, so that all passages likely to prove displeasing to the

"Hébraisants," to whom his work is particularly dedicated, are

discreetly expunged. Jean de Pauly's translation of the Cabala appears,

however, to be complete.[78] But a fair and honest rendering of the

whole Talmud into English or French still remains to be made.

Moreover, even the Hebrew scholar is obliged to exercise some

discrimination if he desires to consult the Talmud in its original

form. For by the sixteenth century, when the study of Hebrew became

general amongst Christians, the antisocial and anti-Christian tendencies

of the Talmud attracted the attention of the Censor, and in the Bâle

Talmud of 1581 the most obnoxious passages and the entire treatise

Abodah Zara were suppressed.[79]

In the Cracow edition of 1604 that followed, these passages were

restored by the Jews, a proceeding which aroused so much indignation

amongst Christian students of Hebrew that the Jews became alarmed.

Accordingly a Jewish synod, assembled in Poland in 1631, ordered the

offending passages to be expunged again, but--according to Drach--to be

replaced by circles which the Rabbis were to fill in orally when giving

instruction to young Jews.[80] After that date the Talmud was for a time

carefully bowdlerized, so that in order to discover its original form it

is advisable to go back to the Venetian Talmud of 1520 before any

omissions were made, or to consult a modern edition. For now that the

Jews no longer fear the Christians, these passages are all said to have

been replaced and no attempt is made, as in the Middle Ages, to prove

that they do not refer to the Founder of Christianity.[81]

Thus the _Jewish Encyclopædia_ admits that Jewish legends concerning

Jesus are found in the Talmud and Midrash and in "the life of Jesus

(Toledot Yeshu) that originated in the Middle Ages. It is the tendency

of all these sources to belittle the person of Jesus by ascribing to Him

illegitimate birth, magic, and a shameful death."[82]

The last work mentioned, the _Toledot Yeshu_, or the _Sepher Toldos

Jeschu_, described here as originating in the Middle Ages, probably

belongs in reality to a much earlier period. Eliphas Lévi asserts that

"the Sepher Toldos, to which the Jews attribute a great antiquity and

which they hid from the Christians with such precautions that this book

was for a long while unfindable, is quoted for the first time by

Raymond Martin of the Order of the Preaching Brothers towards the end

of the thirteenth century.... This book was evidently written by a Rabbi

initiated into the mysteries of the Cabala."[83] Whether then the

Toledot Yeshu had existed for many centuries before it was first brought

to light or whether it was a collection of Jewish traditions woven into

a coherent narrative by a thirteenth-century Rabbi, the ideas it

contains can be traced back at least as far as the second century of the

Christian era. Origen, who in the middle of the third century wrote his

reply to the attack of Celsus on Christianity, refers to a scandalous

story closely resembling the Toledot Yeshu, which Celsus, who lived

towards the end of the second century, had quoted on the authority of a

Jew.[84] It is evident, therefore, that the legend it contains had long

been current in Jewish circles, but the book itself did not come into

the hands of Christians until it was translated into Latin by Raymond

Martin. Later on Luther summarized it in German under the name of _Schem

Hamphorasch_; Wagenseil in 1681 and Huldrich in 1705 published Latin

translations.[85] It is also to be found in French in Gustave Brunei's

_Evangiles Apocryphes_.

However repugnant it is to transcribe any portion of this blasphemous

work, its main outline must be given here in order to trace the

subsequent course of the anti-Christian secret tradition in which, as we

shall see, it has been perpetuated up to our own day. Briefly, then, the

Toledot Yeshu relates with the most indecent details that Miriam, a

hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan,

was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to

a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic

authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, Jeschu was taken during his

boyhood to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of

the priests, and on his return to Palestine gave himself up to the

practice of magic.[87] The Toledot Yeshu, however, goes on to say that

on reaching manhood Jeschu learnt the secret of his illegitimacy, on

account of which he was driven out of the Synagogue and took refuge for

a time in Galilee. Now, there was in the Temple a stone on which was

engraved the Tetragrammaton or Schem Hamphorasch, that is to say, the

Ineffable Name of God; this stone had been found by King David when the

foundations of the Temple were being prepared and was deposited by him

in the Holy of Holies. Jeschu, knowing this, came from Galilee and,

penetrating into the Holy of Holies, read the Ineffable Name, which he

transcribed on to a piece of parchment and concealed in an incision

under his skin. By this means he was able to work miracles and to

persuade the people that he was the son of God foretold by Isaiah. With

the aid of Judas, the Sages of the Synagogue succeeded in capturing

Jeschu, who was then led before the Great and Little Sanhedrim, by whom

he was condemned to be stoned to death and finally hanged.

Such is the story of Christ according to the Jewish Cabalists, which

should be compared not only with the Christian tradition but with that

of the Moslems. It is perhaps not sufficiently known that the Koran,

whilst denying the divinity of Christ and also the fact of His

crucifixion,[88] nevertheless indignantly denounces the infamous legends

concerning Him perpetuated by the Jews, and confirms in beautiful

language the story of the Annunciation and the doctrine of the

Miraculous Conception.[89] "Remember when the angels said, 'O Mary!

verily hath God chosen thee and purified thee, and chosen thee above the

women of the worlds.' ... Remember when the angels said, 'O Mary! verily

God announceth to thee the Word from Him: His name shall be Messiah,

Jesus the son of Mary, illustrious in this world, and in the next, and

one of those who have near access to God.'"

The Mother of Jesus is shown to have been pure and to have "kept her

maidenhood"[90]; it was the Jews who spoke against Mary "a grievous

calumny."[91] Jesus Himself is described as "strengthened with the Holy

Spirit," and the Jews are reproached for rejecting "the Apostle of

God,"[92] to whom was given "the Evangel with its guidance and light

confirmatory of the preceding Law."[93]

Thus during the centuries that saw the birth of Christianity, although

other non-Christian forces arrayed themselves against the new faith, it

was left to the Jews to inaugurate a campaign of vilification against

the person of its Founder, whom Moslems to this day revere as one of the

great teachers of the world.[94]

The Essenes

A subtler device for discrediting Christianity and undermining belief in

the divine character of our Lord has been adopted by modern writers,

principally Jewish, who set out to prove that He belonged to the sect of

the Essenes, a community of ascetics holding all goods in common, which

had existed in Palestine before the birth of Christ. Thus the Jewish

historian Graetz declares that Jesus simply appropriated to himself the

essential features of Essenism, and that primitive Christianity was

"nothing but an offshoot of Essenism."[95] The Christian Jew Dr.

Ginsburg partially endorses this view in a small pamphlet[96] containing

most of the evidence that has been brought forward on the subject, and

himself expresses the opinion that "it will hardly be doubted that our

Saviour Himself belonged to this holy brotherhood."[97] So after

representing Christ as a magician in the Toledot Yeshu and the Talmud,

Jewish tradition seeks to explain His miraculous works as those of a

mere healer--an idea that we shall find descending right through the

secret societies to this day. Of course if this were true, if the

miracles of Christ were simply due to a knowledge of natural laws and

His doctrines were the outcome of a sect, the whole theory of His divine

power and mission falls to the ground. This is why it is essential to

expose the fallacies and even the bad faith on which the attempt to

identify Him with the Essenes is based.

Now, we have only to study the Gospels carefully in order to realize

that the teachings of Christ were totally different from those peculiar

to the Essenes.[98] Christ did not live in a fraternity, but, as Dr.

Ginsburg himself points out, associated with publicans and sinners. The

Essenes did not frequent the Temple and Christ was there frequently. The

Essenes disapproved of wine and marriage, whilst Christ sanctioned

marriage by His presence at the wedding of Cana in Galilee and there

turned water into wine. A further point, the most conclusive of all, Dr.

Ginsburg ignores, namely, that one of the principal traits of the

Essenes which distinguished them from the other Jewish sects of their

day was their disapproval of ointment, which they regarded as defiling,

whilst Christ not only commended the woman who brought the precious jar

of ointment, but reproached Simon for the omission: "My head with oil

thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed My feet with

ointment." It is obvious that if Christ had been an Essene but had

departed from His usual custom on this occasion out of deference to the

woman's feelings, he would have understood why Simon had not offered Him

the same attention, and at any rate Simon would have excused himself on

these grounds. Further, if His disciples had been Essenes, would they

not have protested against this violation of their principles, instead

of merely objecting that the ointment was of too costly a kind?

But it is in attributing to Christ the Communistic doctrines of the

Essenes that Dr. Ginsburg's conclusions are the most misleading--a point

of particular importance in view of the fact that it is on this false

hypothesis that so-called "Christian Socialism" has been built up. "The

Essenes," he writes, "had all things in common, and appointed one of the

brethren as steward to manage the common bag; so the primitive

Christians (Acts ii. 44, 45, iv. 32-4; John xii. 6, xiii. 29)." It is

perfectly true that, as the first reference to the Acts testifies, some

of the primitive Christians after the death of Christ formed themselves

into a body having all things in common, but there is not the slightest

evidence that Christ and His disciples followed this principle. The

solitary passages in the Gospel of St. John, which are all that Dr.

Ginsburg can quote in support of this contention, may have referred to

an alms-bag or a fund for certain expenses, not to a common pool of all

monetary wealth. Still less is there any evidence that Christ advocated

Communism to the world in general. When the young man having great

possessions asked what he should do to inherit eternal life, Christ told

him to follow the commandments, but on the young man asking what more he

could do, answered: "If thou wilt be perfect go and sell that thou hast

and give to the poor." Renunciation--but not the pooling--of all wealth

was thus a counsel of perfection for the few who desired to devote their

lives to God, as monks and nuns have always done, and bore no relation

to the Communistic system of the Essenes.

Dr. Ginsburg goes on to say: "Essenism put all its members on the same

level, forbidding the exercise of authority of one over the other and

enjoining mutual service; so Christ (Matt. xx. 25-8; Mark ix. 35-7, x.

42-5). Essenism commanded its disciples to call no man master upon the

earth; so Christ (Matt. xxiii. 8-10)." As a matter of fact, Christ

strongly upheld the exercise of authority, not only in the oft-quoted

passage, "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," but in His

approval of the Centurion's speech: "I am a man under authority, having

soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to

another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth

it." Everywhere Christ commends the faithful servant and enjoins

obedience to masters. If we look up the reference to the Gospel of St.

Matthew where Dr. Ginsburg says that Christ commanded His disciples to

call no man master on earth, we shall find that he has not only

perverted the sense of the passage but reversed the order of the words,

which, following on a denunciation of the Jewish Rabbis, runs thus: "But

be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your master, even Christ, and all ye

are brethren.... Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master,

even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant."

The apostles were therefore, never ordered to call no man master, but

not to be called master themselves. Moreover, if we refer to the Greek

text, we shall see that this was meant in a spiritual and not a social

sense. The word for "master" here given is in the first verse διδάσκαλος,

i.e. teacher, in the second, καθηγητὴς literally

guide, and the word is servant is διακὸνοσ. When masters and

servants in the social sense are referred to in the Gospels, the word

employed for master is κύριος and for servant δοῦλος.

Dr. Ginsburg should have been aware of this distinction and that the

passage in question had therefore no bearing on his argument. As a

matter of fact it would appear that some of the apostles kept servants,

since Christ commends them for exacting strict attention to duty:

Which of you, having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle, will

say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit

down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready

wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have

eaten and drunken; and afterwards thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he

thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded to

him? I trow not.[99]

This passage would alone suffice to show that Christ and His apostles

did not inhabit communities where all were equal, but followed the usual

practices of the social system under which they lived, though adopting

certain rules, such as taking only one garment and carrying no money

when they went on journeys. Those resemblances between the teaching of

the Essenes and the Sermon on the Mount which Dr. Ginsburg indicates

refer not to the customs of a sect, but to general precepts for human

conduct--humility, meekness, charity, and so forth.

At the same time it is clear that if the Essenes in general conformed to

some of the principles laid down by Christ, certain of their doctrines

were completely at variance with those of Christ and of primitive

Christians, in particular their custom of praying to the rising sun and

their disbelief in the resurrection of the body.[100] St. Paul denounces

asceticism, the cardinal doctrine of the Essenes, in unmeasured terms,

warning the brethren that "in the latter times some shall depart from

the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils, ...

forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God

hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and

know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be

refused, if it be received with thanksgiving ... If thou put the

brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister

of Jesus Christ."

This would suggest that certain Essenean ideas had crept into Christian

communities and were regarded by those who remembered Christ's true

teaching as a dangerous perversion.

The Essenes were therefore not Christians, but a secret society,

practising four degrees of initiation, and bound by terrible oaths not

to divulge the sacred mysteries confided to them. And what were those

mysteries but those of the Jewish secret tradition which we now know as

the Cabala? Dr. Ginsburg throws an important light on Essenism when, in

one passage alone, he refers to the obligation of the Essenes "not to

divulge the secret doctrines to anyone, ... carefully to preserve the

books belonging to their sect and the names of the angels or the

mysteries connected with the Tetragrammaton and the other names of God

and the angels, comprised in the theosophy as well as with the cosmogony

which also played so important a part among the Jewish mystics and the

Kabbalists."[101] The truth is clearly that the Essenes were Cabalists,

though doubtless Cabalists of a superior kind. The Cabal they possessed

very possibly descended from pre-Christian times and had remained

uncontaminated by the anti-Christian strain introduced into it by the

Rabbis after the death of Christ.[102]

The Essenes are of importance to the subject of this book as the first

of the secret societies from which a direct line of tradition can be

traced up to the present day. But if in this peaceful community no

actually anti-Christian influence is to be discerned, the same cannot be

said of the succeeding pseudo-Christian sects which, whilst professing

Christianity, mingled with Christian doctrines the poison of the

perverted Cabala, main source of the errors which henceforth rent the

Christian Church in twain.

The Gnostics

The first school of thought to create a schism in Christianity was the

collection of sects known under the generic name of Gnosticism. In its

purer forms Gnosticism aimed at supplementing faith by knowledge of

eternal verities and at giving a wider meaning to Christianity by

linking it up with earlier faiths. "The belief that the divinity had

been manifested in the religious institutions of all nations"[103] thus

led to the conception of a sort of universal religion containing the

divine elements of all.

Gnosticism, however, as the _Jewish Encyclopædia_ points out, "was

Jewish in character long before it became Christian."[104] M. Matter

indicates Syria and Palestine as its cradle and Alexandria as the centre

by which it was influenced at the time of its alliance with

Christianity. This influence again was predominantly Jewish. Philo and

Aristobulus, the leading Jewish philosophers of Alexandria, "wholly

attached to the ancient religion of their fathers, both resolved to

adorn it with the spoils of other systems and to open to Judaism the way

to immense conquests."[105] This method of borrowing from other races

and religions those ideas useful for their purpose has always been the

custom of the Jews. The Cabala, as we have seen, was made up of these

heterogeneous elements. And it is here we find the principal progenitor

of Gnosticism. The Freemason Ragon gives the clue in the words: "The

Cabala is the key of the occult sciences. The Gnostics were born of the

Cabalists."[106]

For the Cabala was much older than the Gnostics. Modern historians who

date it merely from the publication of the Zohar by Moses de Leon in the

thirteenth century or from the school of Luria in the sixteenth century

obscure this most important fact which Jewish savants have always

clearly, recognized.[107] The _Jewish Encyclopædia_, whilst denying the

certainty of connexion between Gnosticism and the Cabala, nevertheless

admits that the investigations of the anti-Cabalist Graetz "must be

resumed on a new basis," and it goes on to show that "it was Alexandria

of the first century, or earlier, with her strange commingling of

Egyptian, Chaldean, Judean, and Greek culture which furnished soil and

seeds for that mystic philosophy."[108] But since Alexandria was at the

same period the home of Gnosticism, which was formed from the same

elements enumerated here, the connexion between the two systems is

clearly evident. M. Matter is therefore right in saying that Gnosticism

was not a defection from Christianity, but a combination of systems into

which a few Christian elements were introduced. The result of Gnosticism

was thus not to christianize the Cabala, but to cabalize Christianity by

mingling its pure and simple teaching with theosophy and even magic. The

_Jewish Encyclopædia_ quotes the opinion that "the central doctrine of

Gnosticism--a movement closely connected with Jewish mysticism--was

nothing else than the attempt to liberate the soul and unite it with

God"; but as this was apparently to be effected "through the employment

of mysteries, incantations, names of angels," etc., it will be seen how

widely even this phase of Gnosticism differs from Christianity and

identifies itself with the magical Cabala of the Jews.

Indeed, the man generally recognized as the founder of Gnosticism, a Jew

commonly known as Simon Magus, was not only a Cabalist mystic but

avowedly a magician, who with a band of Jews, including his master

Dositheus and his disciples Menander and Cerinthus, instituted a

priesthood of the Mysteries and practised occult arts and

exorcisms.[109] It was this Simon of whom we read in the Acts of the

Apostles that he "bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that

himself was some great one: to whom they all gave heed from the least to

the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God," and who

sought to purchase the power of the laying on of hands with money.

Simon, indeed, crazed by his incantations and ecstasies, developed

megalomania in an acute form, arrogating to himself divine honours and

aspiring to the adoration of the whole world. According to a

contemporary legend, he eventually became sorcerer to Nero and ended his

life in Rome.[110]

The prevalence of sorcery amongst the Jews during the first century of

the Christian era is shown by other passages in the Acts of the

Apostles; in Paphos the "false prophet," a Jew, whose surname was

Bar-Jesus, otherwise known as "Elymas the sorcerer," opposed the

teaching of St. Paul and brought on himself the imprecation: "O full of

all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of

all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the

Lord?"

Perversion is the keynote of all the debased forms of Gnosticism.

According to Eliphas Lévi, certain of the Gnostics introduced into their

rites that profanation of Christian mysteries which was to form the

basis of black magic in the Middle Ages.[111] The glorification of evil,

which plays so important a part in the modern revolutionary movement,

constituted the creed of the Ophites, who worshipped the Serpent

(ὅφις) because he had revolted against Jehovah, to whom they

referred under the Cabalistic term of the "demiurgus,"[112] and still

more of the Cainites, so-called from their cult of Cain, whom, with

Dathan and Abiram, the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and finally

Judas Iscariot, they regarded as noble victims of the demiurgus.[113]

Animated by hatred of all social and moral order, the Cainites "called

upon all men to destroy the works of God and to commit every kind of

infamy."[114]

These men were therefore not only the enemies of Christianity but of

orthodox Judaism, since it was against the Jehovah of the Jews that

their hatred was particularly directed. Another Gnostic sect, the

Carpocratians, followers of Carpocrates of Alexandria and his son

Epiphanus--who died from his debaucheries and was venerated as a

god[115]--likewise regarded all written laws, Christian or Mosaic, with

contempt and recognized only the γνῶσις or knowledge given to

the great men of every nation--Plato and Pythagoras, Moses and

Christ--which "frees one from all that the vulgar call religion" and

"makes man equal to God."[116]

So in the Carpocratians of the second century we find already the

tendency towards that _deification of humanity_ which forms the supreme

doctrine of the secret societies and of the visionary Socialists of our

day. The war now begins between the two contending principles: the

Christian conception of man reaching up to God and the secret society

conception of man as God, needing no revelation from on high and no

guidance but the law of his own nature. And since that nature is in

itself divine, all that springs from it is praiseworthy, and those acts

usually regarded as sins are not to be condemned. By this line of

reasoning the Carpocratians arrived at much the same conclusions as

modern Communists with regard to the ideal social system. Thus

Epiphanus held that since Nature herself reveals the principle of the

community and the unity of all things, human laws which are contrary to

this law of Nature are so many culpable infractions of the legitimate

order of things. Before these laws were imposed on humanity everything

was in common--land, goods, and women. According to certain

contemporaries, the Carpocratians returned to this primitive system by

instituting the community of women and indulging in every kind of

licence.

The further Gnostic sect of Antitacts, following this same cult of human

nature, taught revolt against all positive religion and laws and the

necessity for gratifying the flesh; the Adamites of North Africa, going

a step further in the return to Nature, cast off all clothing at their

religious services so as to represent the primitive innocence of the

garden of Eden--a precedent followed by the Adamites of Germany in the

fifteenth century.[117]

These Gnostics, says Eliphas Lévi, under the pretext of "spiritualizing

matter, materialized the spirit in the most revolting ways.... Rebels to

the hierarchic order, ... they wished to substitute the mystical licence

of sensual passions to wise Christian sobriety and obedience to laws....

Enemies of the family, they wished to produce sterility by increasing

debauchery."[118]

By way of systematically perverting the doctrines of the Christian faith

the Gnostics claimed to possess the true versions of the Gospels, and

professed belief in these to the exclusion of all the others.[119] Thus

the Ebionites had their own corrupted version of the Gospel of St.

Matthew founded on the "Gospel of the Hebrews," known earlier to the

Jewish Christians; the Marcosians had their version of St. Luke, the

Cainites their own "Gospel of Judas," and the Valentinians their "Gospel

of St. John." As we shall see later, the Gospel of St. John is the one

that throughout the war on Christianity has been specially chosen for

the purpose of perversion.

Of course this spirit of perversion was nothing new; many centuries

earlier the prophet Isaiah had denounced it in the words: "Woe unto them

that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and

light for darkness!" But the role of the Gnostics was to reduce

perversion to a system by binding men together into sects working under

the guise of enlightenment in order to obscure all recognized ideas of

morality and religion. It is this which constitutes their importance in

the history of secret societies.

Whether the Gnostics themselves can be described as a secret society, or

rather as a ramification of secret societies, is open to question. M.

Matter, quoting a number of third-century writers, shows the possibility

that they had mysteries and initiations; the Church Fathers definitely

asserted this to be the case.[120] According to Tertullian, the

Valentinians continued, or rather perverted, the mysteries of Eleusis,

out of which they made a "sanctuary of prostitution."[121]

The Valentinians are known to have divided their members into three

classes--the Pneumatics, the Psychics, and the Hylics (i.e.

materialists); the Basilideans are also said to have possessed secret

doctrines known to hardly one in a thousand of the sect. From all this

M. Matter concludes that:

1. The Gnostics professed to hold by means of tradition a secret

doctrine superior to that contained in the public writings of the

apostles.

2. That they did not communicate this doctrine to everyone....

3. That they communicated it by means of emblems and symbols, as

the Diagram of the Ophites proves.

4. That in these communications they imitated the rites and trials

of the mysteries of Eleusis.[122]

This claim to the possession of a secret oral tradition, whether known

under the name of γνῶσις or of Cabala, confirms the conception

of the Gnostics as Cabalists and shows how far they had departed from

Christian teaching. For if only in this idea of "one doctrine for the

ignorant and another for the initiated," the Gnostics had restored the

very system which Christianity had come to destroy.[123]

Manicheism

Whilst we have seen the Gnostic sects working for more or less

subversive purposes under the guise of esoteric doctrines, we find in

the Manicheans of Persia, who followed a century later, a sect

embodying the same tendencies and approaching still nearer to secret

society organization.

Cubricus or Corbicius, the founder of Manicheism, was born in Babylonia

about the year A.D. 216. Whilst still a child he is said to have been

bought as a slave by a rich widow of Ctesiphon, who liberated him and on

her death left him great wealth. According to another story--for the

whole history of Manes rests on legends--he inherited from a rich old

woman the books of a Saracen named Scythianus on the wisdom of the

Egyptians. Combining the doctrines these books contained with ideas

borrowed from Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Christianity, and also

with certain additions of his own, he elaborated a philosophic system

which he proceeded to teach. Cubricus then changed his name to Mani or

Manes and proclaimed himself the Paraclete promised by Jesus Christ. His

followers were divided into two classes--the outer circle of hearers or

combatants, and the inner circle of teachers or ascetics described as

the Elect. As evidence of their resemblance with Freemasons, it has been

said that the Manicheans made use of secret signs, grips, and passwords,

that owing to the circumstances of their master's adoption they called

Manes "the son of the widow" and themselves "the children of the widow,"

but this is not clearly proved. One of their customs is, however,

interesting in this connexion. According to legend, Manes undertook to

cure the son of the King of Persia who had fallen ill, but the prince

died, whereupon Manes was flayed alive by order of the king and his

corpse hanged up at the city gate. Every year after this, on Good

Friday, the Manicheans carried out a mourning ceremony known as the Bema

around the catafalque of Manes, whose real sufferings they were wont to

contrast with the unreal sufferings of Christ.

The fundamental doctrine of Manicheism is Dualism--that is to say, the

existence of two opposing principles in the world, light and darkness,

good and evil--founded, however, not on the Christian conception of this

idea, but on the Zoroastrian conception of Ormuzd and Ahriman, and so

perverted and mingled with Cabalistic superstitions that it met with as

vehement denunciation by Persian priests as by Christian Fathers. Thus,

according to the doctrine of Manes, all matter is absolute evil, the

principle of evil is eternal, humanity itself is of Satanic origin, and

the first human beings, Adam and Eve, are represented as the offspring

of devils.[124] Much the same idea may be found in the Jewish Cabala,

where it is said that Adam, after other abominable practices, cohabited

with female devils whilst Eve consoled herself with male devils, so that

whole races of demons were born into the world. Eve is also accused of

cohabiting with the Serpent.[125] In the Yalkut Shimoni it is also

related that during the 130 years that Adam lived apart from Eve, "he

begat a generation of devils, spirits, and hobgoblins."[126] Manichean

demonology thus paved the way for the placation of the powers of

darkness practised by the Euchites at the end of the fourth century and

later by the Paulicians, the Bogomils, and the Luciferians.

So it is in Gnosticism and Manicheism that we find evidence of the first

attempts to pervert Christianity. The very fact that all such have been

condemned by the Church as "heresies" has tended to enlist sympathy in

their favour, yet even Eliphas Lévi recognizes that here the action of

the Church was right, for the "monstrous gnosis of Manes" was a

desecration not only of Christian doctrines but of pre-Christian sacred

traditions.

2

THE REVOLT AGAINST ISLAM[127]

We have followed the efforts of subversive sects hitherto directed

against Christianity and orthodox Judaism; we shall now see this

attempt, reduced by gradual stages to a working system of extraordinary

efficiency, organized for the purpose of undermining all moral and

religious beliefs in the minds of Moslems. In the middle of the seventh

century an immense schism was created in Islam by the rival advocates of

successors to the Prophet, the orthodox Islamites known by the name of

Sunnis adhering to the elected Khalifas Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman,

whilst the party of revolt, known as the Shiahs, claimed the Khalifate

for the descendants of Mohammed through Ali, son of Abu-Talib and

husband of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. This division ended in open

warfare; Ali was finally assassinated, his elder son Hason was poisoned

in Medina, his younger son Husain fell at the battle of Kerbela fighting

against the supporters of Othman. The deaths of Hasan and Husain are

still mourned yearly by the Shiahs at the Moharram.

The Ismailis

The Shiahs themselves split again over the question of Ali's successors

into four factions, the fourth of which divided again into two further

sects. Both of these retained their allegiance to the descendants of Ali

as far as Jafar-as-Sadik, but whilst one party, known as the Imamias or

Isna-Asharias (i.e. the Twelvers), supported the succession through his

younger son Musa to the twelfth Iman Mohammed, son of Askeri, the

Ismailis (or Seveners) adhered to Ismail, the elder son of

Jafar-as-Sadik.

[Illustration:

Choice of SUNNIS

Abu Bakr (1st Khalifa) 632

Omar 634

Othman 644

Ali

Choice of SHIAHS

Abd-ul-Muttalib

Abdullah

MOHAMMED A.D. 570-632

Fatima married Ali

Abu Tälib

ALI (4th Sunni and 1st Shiah Khalifa murdered in Kufa)

(2) Hasan poisoned A.D. 680

(3) Husain killed at battle of Kerbela A.D. 680

(4) Ali II

(5) Mohammed

(6) Jafar-as-Sadik

Choice of ISMAILIS

(7) Ismail

Mohammed disappeared circ. 770

Choice of IMAMIAS or ISNA-ASHARIAS

(7) Abu'I Hasan Musa

(8) Ali III

(9) Abu Jafar Mohammed

(10) Ali

(11) Abu Mohammed al Askari

(12) Mohammed al Mahdi

SHIAHS

ISMAILIS circ. A.D. 770

BATINIS (founded by Abdullah ibn Maymūn) circ. A.D. 872

FATIMITES (under Ubeidallah 1st Fatimite Khalifa) A.D. 909

Fatimite Khalifas of Egypt A.D. 977

HAKIM 6th Fatimite Khalifa A.D. 996

Founds Dar-ul-Hikmat A.D. 1004

ASSASSINS (under Hasan Saba) A.D. 1090

DRUSES (under Hazza) circ. A.D. 1021

KARMATHITES (under Hamdan Karmath) A.D. 896

THE SUCCESSORS OF THE PROPHET

The above table shows the rival lines of Khalifas--on the left the

elected successors, choice of the Sunnis; on the right the lineal

descendants, choice of the Shiahs. The figure at the side of each

name indicates the number in succession of the Khalifa mentioned.

The table inset shows the sects to which the disputes over the

succession gave birth.

]

So far, however, in spite of divisions, no body of Shiahs had ever

deviated from the fundamental doctrines of Islamism, but merely claimed

that these had been handed down through a different line from that

recognized by the Sunnis. The earliest Ismailis, who formed themselves

into a party at about the time of the death of Mohammed, son of Ismail

(i.e. circ. A.D. 770), still remained believers, declaring only that the

true teaching of the Prophet had descended to Mohammed, who was not dead

but would return in the fullness of time and that he was the Mahdi whom

Moslems must await. But in about A.D. 873 an intriguer of extraordinary

subtlety succeeded in capturing the movement, which, hitherto merely

schismatic, now became definitely subversive, not only of Islamism, but

of all religious belief.

This man, Abdullah ibn Maymūn, the son of a learned and free-thinking

doctor in Southern Persia, brought up in the doctrines of Gnostic

Dualism and profoundly versed in all religions, was in reality, like his

father, a pure materialist. By professing adherence to the creed of

orthodox Shi-ism, and proclaiming a knowledge of the mystic doctrines

which the Ismailis believed to have descended through Ismail to his son

Mohammed, Abdullah succeeded in placing himself at the head of the

Ismailis.

His advocacy of Ismail was thus merely a mask, his real aim being

materialism, which he now proceeded to make into a system by founding a

sect known as the Batinis with seven degrees of initiation. Dozy has

given the following description of this amazing project:

To link together into one body the vanquished and the conquerors;

to unite in the form of a vast secret society with many degrees of

initiation free-thinkers--who regarded religion only as a curb for

the people--and bigots of all sects; to make tools of believers in

order to give power to sceptics; to induce conquerors to overturn

the empires they had founded; to build up a party, numerous,

compact, and disciplined, which in due time would give the throne,

if not to himself, at least to his descendants, such was Abdullah

ibn Maymūn's general aim--an extraordinary conception which he

worked out with marvellous tact, incomparable skill, and a profound

knowledge of the human heart. The means which he adopted were

devised with diabolical cunning....

It was ... not among the Shi-ites that he sought his true

supporters, but among the Ghebers, the Manicheans, the pagans of

Harran, and the students of Greek philosophy; on the last alone

could he rely, to them alone could he gradually unfold the final

mystery, and reveal that Imams, religions, and morality were

nothing but an imposture and an absurdity. The rest of mankind--the

"asses," as Abdullah called them--were incapable of understanding

such doctrines. But to gain his end he by no means disdained their

aid; on the contrary, he solicited it, but he took care to initiate

devout and lowly souls only in the first grades of the sect. His

missionaries, who were inculcated with the idea that their first

duty was to conceal their true sentiments and adapt themselves to

the views of their auditors, appeared in many guises, and spoke, as

it were, in a different language to each class. They won over the

ignorant vulgar by feats of legerdemain which passed for miracles,

or excited their curiosity by enigmatical discourse. In the

presence of the devout they assumed the mask of virtue and piety.

With mystics they were mystical, and unfolded the inner meanings of

phenomena, or explained allegories and the figurative sense of the

allegories themselves....

By means such as these the extraordinary result was brought about

that a multitude of men of diverse beliefs were all working

together for an object known only to a few of them....[128]

I quote this passage at length because it is of immense importance in

throwing a light on the organization of modern secret societies. It does

not matter what the end may be, whether political, social, or religious,

the system remains the same--the setting in motion of a vast number of

people and making them work in a cause unknown to them. That this was

the method adopted by Weishaupt in organizing the Illuminati and that it

came to him from the East will be shown later on. We shall now see how

the system of the philosopher Abdullah paved the way for bloodshed by

the most terrible sect the world had ever seen.

The Karmathites

The first open acts of violence resulting from the doctrines of Abdullah

were carried out by the Karmathites, a new development of the Ismailis.

Amongst the many Dais sent out by the leader--which included his son

Ahmed and Ahmed's son--was the Dai Hosein Ahwazi, Abdullah's envoy to

Irak in Persia, who initiated a certain Hamdan surnamed Karmath into the

secrets of the sect. Karmath, who was a born intriguer and believed in

nothing, became the leader of the Karmathites in Arabia, where a number

of Arabs were soon enlisted in the society. With extraordinary skill he

succeeded in persuading these dupes to make over all their money to him,

first by means of small contributions, later by larger sums, until at

last he convinced them of the advantages of abolishing all private

property and establishing the system of the community of goods and

wives. This principle was enforced by the passage of the Koran:

"Remember the grace of God in that whilst you were enemies, He has

united your hearts, so that by His grace you have become brothers...."

De Sacy thus trans-scribes the methods employed as given by the

historian Nowairi:

When Karmath had succeeded in establishing all this, and everyone

had agreed to conform to it, he ordered the Dais to assemble all

the women on a certain night so that they should mingle

promiscuously with all the men. This, he said, was perfection and

the last degree of friendship and fraternal union. Often a husband

led his wife and presented her himself to one of his brothers when

that gave him pleasure. When he (Karmath) saw that he had become

absolute master of their minds, had assured himself of their

obedience, and found out the degree of their intelligence and

discernment, he began to lead them quite astray. He put before them

arguments borrowed from the doctrines of the Dualists. They fell in

easily with all that he proposed, and then he took away from them

all religion and released them from all those duties of piety,

devotion, and the fear of God that he prescribed for them in the

beginning. He permitted them pillage, and every sort of immoral

licence, and taught them to throw off the yoke of prayer, fasting,

and other precepts. He taught them that they were held by no

obligations, and that they could pillage the goods and shed the

blood of their adversaries with impunity, that the knowledge of the

master of truth to whom he had called them took the place of

everything else, and that with this knowledge they need no longer

fear sin or punishment.

As the result of these teachings the Karmathites rapidly became a band

of brigands, pillaging and massacring all those who opposed them and

spreading terror throughout all the surrounding districts.

Peaceful fraternity was thus turned into a wild lust for conquest; the

Karmathites succeeded in dominating a great part of Arabia and the mouth

of the Euphrates, and in A.D. 920 extended their ravages westwards. They

took possession of the holy city of Mecca, in the defence of which

30,000 Moslems fell. "For a whole century," says von Hammer, "the

pernicious doctrines of Karmath raged with fire and sword in the very

bosom of Islamism, until the widespread conflagration was extinguished

in blood."

But in proclaiming themselves revolutionaries the Karmathites had

departed from the plan laid down by the originator of their creed,

Abdullah ibn Maymūn, which had consisted not in acts of open violence

but in a secret doctrine which should lead to the gradual undermining of

all religious faith and a condition of mental anarchy rather than of

material chaos. For violence, as always, had produced counter-violence,

and it was thus that while the Karmathites were rushing to their own

destruction through a series of bloody conflicts, another branch of the

Ismailis were quietly reorganizing their forces more in conformity with

the original method of their founder. These were the Fatimites,

so-called from their professed belief that the doctrine of the Prophet

had descended from Ali, husband of Fatima, Mohammed's daughter. Whilst

less extreme than the Karmathites, or than their predecessor Abdullah

ibn Maymūn, the Fatimites, according to the historian Makrizi,

adopted the method of instilling doubts into the minds of believers and

aimed at the substitution of a natural for a revealed religion. Indeed,

after the establishment of their power in Egypt, it is difficult to

distinguish any appreciable degree of difference in the character of

their teaching from the anarchic code of Abdullah and his more violent

exponent Karmath.

The Fatimites

The founder of the Fatimite dynasty of the Khalifas was one Ubeidallah,

known as the Mahdi, accused of Jewish ancestry by his adversaries the

Abbasides, who declared--apparently without truth--that he was the son

or grandson of Ahmed, son of Adbullah ibn Maymūn, by a Jewess. Under

the fourth Fatimite Khalifa Egypt fell into the power of the dynasty,

and, before long, bi-weekly assemblages of both men and women known as

"societies of wisdom" were instituted in Cairo. In 1004 these acquired a

greater importance by the establishment of the Dar ul Hikmat, or the

House of Knowledge, by the sixth Khalifa Hakim, who was raised to a

deity after his death and is worshipped to this day by the Druses. Under

the direction of the Dar ul Hikmat or Grand Lodge of Cairo, the

Fatimites continued the plan of Abdullah ibn Maymūn's secret society

with the addition of two more degrees, making nine in all. Their method

of enlisting proselytes and system of initiation--which, as Claudio

Jannet points out, "are absolutely those which Weishaupt, the founder of

the _Illuminati_, prescribed to the 'Insinuating Brothers'"[129]--were

transcribed by the fourteenth-century historian Nowairi in a description

that may be briefly summarized thus[130]:

The proselytes were broadly divided into two classes, the learned and

the ignorant. The Dai was to agree with the former, applauding his

wisdom, and to impress the latter with his own knowledge by asking him

perplexing questions on the Koran. Thus in initiating him into the first

degree the Dai assumed an air of profundity and explained that religious

doctrines were too abstruse for the ordinary mind, but must be

interpreted by men who, like the Dais, had a special knowledge of this

science. The initiate was bound to absolute secrecy concerning the

truths to be revealed to him and obliged to pay in advance for these

revelations. In order to pique his curiosity, the Dai would suddenly

stop short in the middle of a discourse, and should the novice finally

decline to pay the required sum, he was left in a state of bewilderment

which inspired him with the desire to know more.

In the second degree the initiate was persuaded that all his former

teachers were wrong and that he must place his confidence solely in

those Imams endowed with authority from God; in the third he learnt that

these Imams were those of the Ismailis, seven in number ending with

Mohammed, son of Ismail, in contradistinction to the twelve Imams of the

Imamias who supported the claims of Ismail's brother Musa; in the fourth

he was told that the prophets preceding the Imams descending from Ali

were also seven in number--namely Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, the

first Mohammed, and finally Mohammed son of Ismail.

So far, then, nothing was said to the initiate in contradiction to the

broad tenets of orthodox Islamism. But with the fifth degree the process

of undermining his religion began, he was now told to reject tradition

and to disregard the precepts of Mohammed; in the sixth he was taught

that all religious observances--prayer, fasting, etc.--were only

emblematic, that in fact all these things were devices to keep the

common herd of men in subordination; in the seventh the doctrines of

Dualism, of a greater and a lesser deity, were introduced and the unity

of God--fundamental doctrine of Islamism--was destroyed; in the eighth a

great vagueness was expressed on the attributes of the first and

greatest of these deities, and it was pointed out that real prophets

were those who concerned themselves with practical matters--political

institutions and good forms of government; finally, in the ninth, the

adept was shown that all religious teaching was allegorical and that

religious precepts need only be observed in so far as it is necessary to

maintain order, but the man who understands the truth may disregard all

such doctrines. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the other prophets were

therefore only teachers who had profited by the lessons of philosophy.

All belief in revealed religion was thus destroyed. It will be seen then

that in the last degrees the whole teaching of the first five was

reversed and therefore shown to be a fraud. Fraud in fact constituted

the system of the society; in the instructions to the Dais every

artifice is described for enlisting proselytes by misrepresentation:

Jews were to be won by speaking ill of Christians, Christians by

speaking ill of Jews and Moslems alike, Sunnis by referring with respect

to the orthodox Khalifas Abu Bakr and Omar and criticizing Ali and his

descendants. Above all, care was to be taken not to put before

proselytes doctrines that might revolt them, but to make them advance

step by step. By these means they would be ready to obey any commands.

As the instructions express it:

If you were to give the order to whoever it might be to take from

him all that he holds most precious, above all his money, he would

oppose none of your orders, and if death surprised him he would

leave you all that he possesses in his will and make you his heir.

He will think that in the whole world he cannot find a man more

worthy than you.

Such was the great secret society which was to form the model for the

Illuminati of the eighteenth century, to whom the summary of von Hammer

might with equal truth apply:

To believe nothing and to dare all was, in two words, the sum of

this system, which annihilated every principle of religion and

morality, and had no other object than to execute ambitious designs

with suitable ministers, who, daring all and knowing nothing, since

they consider everything a cheat and nothing forbidden, are the

best tools of an infernal policy. A system which, with no other aim

than the gratification of an insatiable lust for domination,

instead of seeking the highest of human objects, precipitates

itself into the abyss, and mangling itself, is buried amidst the

ruins of thrones and altars, the wreck of national happiness, and

the universal execration of mankind.[131]

The Druses

The terrible Grand Lodge of Cairo before long became the centre of a new

and extraordinary cult. Hakim sixth Fatimite Khalifa and founder of the

Dar ul Hikmat--a monster of tyranny and crime whose reign can only be

compared to that of Caligula or Nero--was now raised to the place of a

divinity by one Ismail Darazi, a Turk who in 1016 announced in a mosque

in Cairo that the Khalifa should be made an object of worship. Hakim,

who "believed that divine reason was incarnate in him," four years later

proclaimed himself a deity, and the cult was finally established by one

of his viziers, the Persian mystic Hamza ibn Ali. Hakim's cruelties,

however, had so outraged the people of Egypt that a year later he was

murdered by a band of malcontents, led, it is said, by his sister, who

afterwards concealed his body--a circumstance which gave his followers

the opportunity to declare that the divinity had merely vanished in

order to test the faith of believers, but would reappear in time and

punish apostates. This belief became the doctrine of the Druses of

Lebanon, whom Darazi had won over to the worship of Hakim.

It is unnecessary to enter into the details of this strange religion,

which still persists to-day in the range of Lebanon; suffice it to say

that, although the outcome of the Ismailis, the Druses do not appear to

have embraced the materialism of Abdullah ibn Maymūn, but to have

grafted on a primitive form of Nature-worship and of Sabeism the avowed

belief of the Ismailis in the dynasty of Ali and his successors, and

beyond this an abstruse, esoteric creed concerning the nature of the

Supreme Deity. God they declare to be "Universal Reason," who manifests

Himself by a series of "avatars." Hakim was the last of the divine

embodiments, and "when evil and misery have increased to the predestined

height he will again appear, to conquer the world and to make his

religion supreme."

It is, however, as a secret society that the Druses enter into the scope

of this book, for their organization presents several analogies with

that which we now know as "masonic." Instead of the nine degrees

instituted by the Lodge of Cairo, the Druses are divided into only

three--Profanes, Aspirants, and Wise--to whom their doctrines are

gradually unfolded under seal of the strictest secrecy, to ensure which

signs and passwords are employed after the manner of Freemasonry. A

certain degree of duplicity appears to enter into their scheme, much

resembling that enjoined to the Ismaili Dais when enlisting proselytes

belonging to other religions: thus in talking to Mohammedans, the Druses

profess to be followers of the Prophet; with Christians, they pretend to

hold the doctrines of Christianity, an attitude they defend on the score

that it is unlawful to reveal the secret dogmas of their creed to a

"Black," or unbeliever.

The Druses are in the habit of holding meetings where, as in the Dar ul

Hikmat, both men and women assemble and religious and political

questions are discussed; the uninitiated, however, are allowed to

exercise no influence on decisions, which are reached by the inner

circle, to which only the "Wise" are admitted. The resemblance between

this organization and that of Grand Orient Freemasonry is clearly

apparent. The Druses also have modes of recognition which are common to

Freemasonry, and M. Achille Laurent has observed: "The formula or

catechism of the Druses resembles that of the Freemasons; one can learn

it only from the _Akals_ (or Akels = Intelligent, a small group of

higher initiates), who only reveal its mysteries after having subjected

one to tests and made one take terrible oaths."

I shall refer again later in this book to the affinity between the

Druses and Freemasons of the Grand Orient.

The Assassins

It will be seen that the Druses, distinguishing themselves from other

Ismaili sects by their worship of Hakim, yet retaining genuine religious

beliefs, had not carried on the atheistical tradition of Abdullah ibn

Maymūn and of the Grand Lodge of Cairo. But this tradition was to

find in 1090 an exponent in the Persian Hasan Saba, a native of

Khorasan, the son of Ali, a strict Shiah, who, finding himself suspected

of heretical ideas, ended by declaring himself a Sunni. Hasan, brought

up in this atmosphere of duplicity, was therefore well fitted to play

the Machiavellian rôle of an Ismaili Dai.

Von Hammer regards Hasan as a mighty genius, one of a splendid triad,

of which the two others were his schoolfellows the poet Omar Khayyám and

Nizam ul Mulk, Grand Vizier under the Seljuk Sultan, Malik Shah. Hasan,

having through the protection of Nizam ul Mulk secured titles and

revenues and finally risen to office at the Court of the Sultan,

attempted to supplant his benefactor and eventually retired in disgrace,

vowing vengeance against the Sultan and vizier. At this juncture he

encountered several Ismailis, one of whom, a Dai named Mumin, finally

converted him to the principles of his sect, and Hasan, declaring

himself now to be a convinced adherent of the Fatimite Khalifas, journed

to Cairo, where he was received with honour by the Dar ul Hikmat and

also by the Khalifa Mustansir, to whom he became counsellor. But his

intrigues once more involving him in disgrace, he fled to Aleppo and

laid the foundations of his new sect. After enlisting proselytes in

Bagdad, Ispahan, Khusistan, and Damaghan, he succeeded in obtaining by

strategy the fortress of Alamut in Persia on the Caspian Sea, where he

completed the plans for his great secret society which was to become for

ever infamous under the name of the Hashishiyīn, or _Assassins_.

Under the pretence of belief in the doctrines of Islam and also of

adherence to the Ismaili line of succession from the Prophet, Hasan Saba

now set out to pave his way to power, and in order to achieve this end

adopted the same method as Abdullah ibn Maymūn. But the terrible

efficiency of Hasan's society consisted in the fact that a system of

physical force was now organized in a manner undreamt of by his

predecessor. As von Hammer has observed in an admirable passage:

Opinions are powerless, so long as they only confuse the brain,

without arming the hand. Scepticism and free-thinking, as long as

they occupied only the minds of the indolent and philosophical,

have caused the ruin of no throne, for which purpose religious and

political fanaticism are the strongest levers in the hands of

nations. It is nothing to the ambitious man what people believe,

but it is everything to know how he may turn them for the execution

of his projects.[132]

Thus, as in the case of the French Revolution, "whose first movers," von

Hammer also observes, "were the tools or leaders of secret societies,"

it was not mere theory but the method of enlisting numerous dupes and

placing weapons in their hands that brought about the "Terror" of the

Assassins six centuries before that of their spiritual descendants, the

Jacobins of 1793.

Taking as his groundwork the organization of the Grand Lodge of Cairo,

Hasan reduced the nine degrees to their original number of seven, but

these now received a definite nomenclature, and included not only real

initiates but active agents.

Descending downwards, the degrees of the Assassins were thus as follows:

first, the Grand Master, known as the Shaikh-al-Jabal or "Old Man of the

Mountain"--owing to the fact that the Order always possessed itself of

castles in mountainous regions; second, the Dail Kebir or Grand Priors;

third, the fully initiated Dais, religious nuncios and political

emissaries; fourth, the Rafiqs or associates, in training for the higher

degrees; fifth, the Fadais or "devoted," who undertook to deliver the

secret blow on which their superiors had decided; sixth, the Lasiqus, or

law brothers; and lastly the "common people," who were to be simply

blind instruments. If the equivalents to the words "Dai," "Rafiqs," and

"Fadais" given by von Hammer and Dr. Bussell as "Master Masons," "Fellow

Crafts," and "Entered Apprentices" are accepted, an interesting analogy

with the degrees of Freemasonry is provided.

Designs against religion were, of course, not admitted by the Order;

"strict uniformity to Islam was demanded from all the lower rank of

uninitiated, but the _adept_ was taught to see through the deception of

'faith and works.' He believed in nothing and recognized that all acts

or means were indifferent and the (secular) end alone to be

considered."[133]

Thus the final object was domination by a few men consumed with the lust

of power "under the cloak of religion and piety," and the method by

which this was to be established was the wholesale assassination of

those who opposed them.

In order to stimulate the energy of the Fadais, who were required to

carry out these crimes, the superiors of the Order had recourse to an

ingenious system of delusion. Throughout the territory occupied by the

Assassins were exquisite gardens with fruit trees, bowers of roses, and

sparkling streams. Here were arranged luxurious resting-places with

Persian carpets and soft divans, around which hovered black-eyed

"houris" bearing wine in gold and silver drinking-vessels, whilst soft

music mingled with the murmuring water and the song of birds. The young

man whom the Assassins desired to train for a career of crime was

introduced to the Grand Master of the Order and intoxicated with

haschisch--hence the name "Hashishiyīn" applied to the sect, from

which the word assassin is derived. Under the brief spell of

unconsciousness induced by this seductive drug the prospective Fadai was

then carried into the garden, where on awaking he believed himself to be

in Paradise. After enjoying all its delights he was given a fresh dose

of the opiate, and, once more unconscious, was transported back to the

presence of the Grand Master, who assured him that he had never left his

side but had merely experienced a foretaste of the Paradise that awaited

him if he obeyed the orders of his chiefs. The neophyte, thus spurred on

by the belief that he was carrying out the commands of the Prophet, who

would reward him with eternal bliss, eagerly entered into the schemes

laid down for him and devoted his life to murder. Thus by the lure of

Paradise the Assassins enlisted instruments for their criminal work and

established a system of organized murder on a basis of religious

fervour. "'Nothing is true and all is allowed' was the ground of their

secret doctrine, which, however, being imparted but to few and concealed

under the veil of the most austere religionism and piety, restrained the

mind under the yoke of blind obedience."[134] To the outside world all

this remained a profound mystery; fidelity to Islam was proclaimed as

the fundamental doctrine of the sect, and when the envoy of Sultan Sajar

was sent to collect information on the religious beliefs of the Order he

was met with the assurance: "We believe in the unity of God, and

consider that only as true wisdom which accords with His word and the

commands of the prophet."

Von Hammer, answering the possible contention that, as in the case of

the Templars and the Bavarian Illuminati, these methods of deception

might be declared a calumny on the Order, points out that in the case of

the Assassins no possible doubt existed, for their secret doctrines were

eventually revealed by the leaders themselves, first by Hasan II, the

third successor of Hasan Saba, and later by Jalal-ud-din Hasan, who

publicly anathematized the founders of the sect and ordered the burning

of the books that contained their designs against religion--a proceeding

which, however, appears to have been a strategical manoeuvre for

restoring confidence in the Order and enabling him to continue the work

of subversion and crime. A veritable Reign of Terror was thus

established throughout the East; the Rafiqs and Fadais "spread

themselves in troops over the whole of Asia and darkened the face of the

earth"; and "in the annals of the Assassins is found the chronological

enumeration of celebrated men of all nations who have fallen the victims

of the Ismailis, to the joy of their murderers and the sorrow of the

world."[135]

Inevitably this long and systematic indulgence in blood-lust recoiled on

the heads of the leaders, and the Assassins, like the Terrorists of

France, ended by turning on each other. The Old Man of the Mountain

himself was murdered by his brother-in-law and his son Mohammed;

Mohammed, in his turn, whilst "aiming at the life of his son

Jalal-ud-din, was anticipated by him with poison, which murder was again

avenged by poison," so that from "Hasan the Illuminator" down to the

last of his line the Grand Masters fell by the hands of their

next-of-kin, and "poison and the dagger prepared the grave which the

Order had opened for so many."[136] Finally in 1250 the conquering

hordes of the Mongol Mangu Khan swept away the dynasty of the Assassins.

But, although as reigning powers the Assassins and Fatimites ceased to

exist, the sects from which they derived have continued up to the

present day; still every year at the celebration of the Moharram the

Shiahs beat their breasts and besprinkle themselves with blood, calling

aloud on the martyred heroes Hasan and Husain; the Druses of the Lebanon

still await the return of Hakim, and in that inscrutable East, the

cradle of all the mysteries, the profoundest European adept of secret

society intrigue may find himself outdistanced by pastmasters in the art

in which he believed himself proficient.

The sect of Hasan Saba was the supreme model on which all systems of

organized murder working through fanaticism, such as the Carbonari and

the Irish Republican Brotherhood, were based, and the signs, the

symbols, the initiations, of the Grand Lodge of Cairo formed the

groundwork for the great secret societies of Europe.

How came this system to be transported to the West? By what channel did

the ideas of these succeeding Eastern sects penetrate to the Christian

world? In order to answer this question we must turn to the history of

the Crusades.

3

THE TEMPLERS

In the year 1118--nineteen years after the first crusade had ended with

the defeat of the Moslems, the capture of Antioch and Jerusalem, and the

instalment of Godefroi de Bouillon as king of the latter city--a band of

nine French _gentilshommes_, led by Hugues de Payens and Godefroi de

Saint-Omer, formed themselves into an Order for the protection of

pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre. Baldwin II, who at this moment succeeded

to the throne of Jerusalem, presented them with a house near the site of

the Temple of Solomon--hence the name of Knights Templar under which

they were to become famous. In 1128 the Order was sanctioned by the

Council of Troyes and by the Pope, and a rule was drawn up by St.

Bernard under which the Knights Templar were bound by the vows of

poverty, chastity, and obedience.

But although the Templars distinguished themselves by many deeds of

valour, the regulation that they were to live solely on alms led to

donations so enormous that, abandoning their vow of poverty, they spread

themselves over Europe, and by the end of the twelfth century had become

a rich and powerful body. The motto that the Order had inscribed upon

its banner, "_Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam_," was

likewise forgotten, for, their faith waxing cold, they gave themselves

up to pride and ostentation. Thus, as an eighteenth-century masonic

writer has expressed it:

The war, which for the greater number of warriors of good faith

proved the source of weariness, of losses and misfortunes, became

for them (the Templars) only the opportunity for booty and

aggrandizement, and if they distinguished themselves by a few

brilliant actions, their motive soon ceased to be a matter of doubt

when they were seen to enrich themselves even with the spoils of

the confederates, to increase their credit by the extent of the new

possessions they had acquired, to carry arrogance to the point of

rivalling crowned princes in pomp and grandeur, to refuse their aid

against the enemies of the faith, as the history of Saladin

testifies, and finally to ally themselves with that horrible and

sanguinary prince named the Old Man of the Mountain, Prince of the

Assassins.[137]

The truth of the last accusation is, however, open to question. For a

time, at any rate, the Templars had been at war with the Assassins. When

in 1152 the Assassins murdered Raymond, Comte de Tripoli, the Templars

entered their territory and forced them to sign a treaty by which they

were to pay a yearly tribute of 12,000 gold pieces in expiation of the

crime. Some years later the Old Man of the Mountain sent an ambassador

to Amaury, King of Jerusalem, to tell him privately that if the Templars

would forgo the payment of this tribute he and his followers would

embrace the Christian faith. Amaury accepted, offering at the same time

to compensate the Templars, but some of the Knights assassinated the

ambassador before he could return to his master. When asked for

reparations the Grand Master threw the blame on an evil one-eyed Knight

named Gautier de Maisnil.[138]

It is evident, therefore, that the relations between the Templars and

the Assassins were at first far from amicable; nevertheless, it appears

probable that later on an understanding was brought about between them.

Both on this charge and on that of treachery towards the Christian

armies, Dr. Bussell's impartial view of the question may be quoted:

When in 1149 the Emperor Conrad III failed before Damascus, the

Templars were believed to have a secret understanding with the

garrison of that city; ... in 1154 they were said to have sold, for

60,000 gold pieces, a prince of Egypt who had wished to become a

Christian; he was taken home to suffer certain death at the hands

of his fanatical family. In 1166 Amaury, King of Jerusalem, hanged

twelve members of the Order for betraying a fortress to Nureddin.

And Dr. Bussell goes on to say that it cannot be disputed that they had

"long and important dealings" with the Assassins "and were therefore

suspected (not unfairly) of imbibing their precepts and following their

principles."[139]

By the end of the thirteenth century the Templars had become suspect,

not only in the eyes of the clergy, but of the general public. "Amongst

the common people," one of their latest apologists admits, "vague

rumours circulated. They talked of the covetousness and want of scruple

of the Knights, of their passion for aggrandizement and their rapacity.

Their haughty insolence was proverbial. Drinking habits were attributed

to them; the saying was already in use 'to drink like a Templar.' The

old German word _Tempelhaus_ indicated a house of ill-fame."[140]

The same rumours had reached Clement V even before his accession to the

papal throne in 1305,[141] and in this same year he summoned the Grand

Master of the Order, Jacques du Molay, to return to France from the

island of Cyprus, where he was assembling fresh forces to avenge the

recent reverses of the Christian armies.

Du Molay arrived in France with sixty other Knights Templar and 150,000

gold florins, as well as a large quantity of silver that the Order had

amassed in the East.[142]

The Pope now set himself to make enquiries concerning the charges of

"unspeakable apostasy against God, detestable idolatry, execrable vice,

and many heresies" that had been "secretly intimated" to him. But, to

quote his own words:

Because it did not seem likely nor credible that men of such

religion who were believed often to shed their blood and frequently

expose their persons to the peril of death for Christ's name, and

who showed such great and many signs of devotion both in divine

offices as well as in fasts, as in other devotional observances,

should be so forgetful of their salvation as to do these things, we

were unwilling ... to give ear to this kind of insinuation ...

(_hujusmodi insinuacioni ac delacioni ipsorum ... aurem noluimus

inclinare_).[143]

The King of France, Philippe le Bel, who had hitherto been the friend of

the Templars, now became alarmed and urged the Pope to take action

against them; but before the Pope was able to find out more about the

matter, the King took the law into his own hands and had all the

Templars in France arrested on October 13, 1307. The following charges

were then brought against them by the Inquisitor for France before whom

they were examined:

1. The ceremony of initiation into their Order was accompanied by

insults to the Cross, the denial of Christ, and gross obscenities.

2. The adoration of an idol which was said to be the image of the

true God.

3. The omission of the words of consecration at Mass.

4. The right that the lay chiefs arrogated to themselves of giving

absolution.

5. The authorization of unnatural vice.

To all these infamies a great number of the Knights, including Jacques

du Molay, confessed in almost precisely the same terms; at their

admission into the Order, they said, they had been shown the cross on

which was the figure of Christ, and had been asked whether they believed

in Him; when they answered yes, they were told in some cases that this

was wrong (_dixit sibi quod male credebat_),[144] because He was not

God, He was a false prophet (_quia falsus propheta erat, nec erat

Deus_).[145] Some added that they were then shown an idol or a bearded

head which they were told to worship[146]; one added that this was of

such "a terrible aspect that it seemed to him to be the face of some

devil, called in French _un maufé_, and that whenever he saw it he was

so overcome with fear that he could hardly look at it without fear and

trembling."[147] All who confessed declared that they had been ordered

to spit on the crucifix, and very many that they had received the

injunction to commit obscenities and to practise unnatural vice. Some

said that on their refusal to carry out these orders they had been

threatened with imprisonment, even perpetual imprisonment; a few said

they had actually been incarcerated[148]; one declared that he had been

terrorized, seized by the throat, and threatened with death.[149]

Since, however, a number of these confessions were made under torture,

it is more important to consider the evidence provided by the trial of

the Knights at the hands of the Pope, where this method was not

employed.

Now, at the time the Templars were arrested, Clement V., deeply

resenting the King's interference with an Order which existed entirely

under papal jurisdiction, wrote in the strongest terms of remonstrance

to Philippe le Bel urging their release, and even after their trial,

neither the confessions of the Knights nor the angry expostulations of

the King could persuade him to believe in their guilt.[150] But as the

scandal concerning the Templars was increasing, he consented to receive

in private audience "a certain Knight of the Order, of great nobility

and held by the said Order in no slight esteem," who testified to the

abominations that took place on the reception of the Brethren, the

spitting on the cross, and other things which were not lawful nor,

humanly speaking, decent.[151]

The Pope then decided to hold an examination of seventy-two French

Knights at Poictiers in order to discover whether the confessions made

by them before the Inquisitor at Paris could be substantiated, and at

this examination, conducted without torture or pressure of any kind in

the presence of the Pope himself, the witnesses declared on oath that

they would tell "the full and pure truth." They then made confessions

which were committed to writing in their presence, and these being

afterwards read aloud to them, they expressly and willingly approved

them (_perseverantes in illis eas expresse et sponte, prout recitate

fuerunt approbarunt_).[152]

Besides this, an examination of the Grand Master, Jacques du Molay, and

the Preceptors of the Order was held in the presence of "three Cardinals

and four public notaries and many other good men." These witnesses, says

the official report, "having sworn with their hands on the Gospel of

God" (_ad sancta dei evangelia ab iis corporaliter tacta_) that--

they would on all the aforesaid things speak the pure and full

truth, they, separately, freely, and spontaneously, without any

coercion and fear, deposed and confessed among other things, the

denial of Christ and spitting upon the cross when they were

received into the Order of the Temple. And some of them (deposed

and confessed) that under the same form, namely, with denial of

Christ and spitting on the cross, they had received many Brothers

into the Order. Some of them too confessed certain other horrible

and disgusting things on which we are silent.... Besides this, they

said and confessed that those things which are contained in the

confessions and depositions of heretical depravity which they made

lately before the Inquisitor (of Paris) were true.

Their confessions, being again committed to writing, were approved by

the witnesses, who then with bended knees and many tears asked for and

obtained absolution.[153]

The Pope, however, still refused to take action against the whole Order

merely because the Master and Brethren around him had "gravely sinned,"

and it was decided to hold a papal commission in Paris. The first

sitting took place in November 1309, when the Grand Master and 231

Knights were summoned before the pontifical commissioners. "This

enquiry," says Michelet, "was conducted slowly, with much consideration

and gentleness (_avec beaucoup de ménagement et de douceur_) by high

ecclesiastical dignitaries, an archbishop, several bishops, etc."[154]

But although a number of the Knights, including the Grand Master, now

retracted their admissions, some damning confessions were again

forthcoming.

It is impossible within the scope of this book to follow the many trials

of the Templars that took place in different countries--in Italy, at

Ravenna, Pisa, Bologna, and Florence, where torture was not employed and

blasphemies were admitted,[155] or in Germany, where torture was

employed but no confessions were made and a verdict was given in favour

of the Order. A few details concerning the trial in England may,

however, be of interest.

It has generally been held that torture was not applied in England owing

to the humanity of Edward II, who at first absolutely refused to listen

to any accusations against the Order.[156] On December 10, 1307, he had

written to the Pope in these terms:

And because the said Master or Brethren constant in the purity of

the Catholic faith have been frequently commended by us, and by all

our kingdom, both in their life and morals, we are unable to

believe in suspicious stories of this kind until we know with

greater certainty about these things.

We, therefore, pity from our souls the suffering and losses of the

Sd. Master and brethren, which they suffer in consequence of such

infamy, and we supplicate most affectionately your Sanctity if it

please you, that considering with favour suited to the good

character of the Master and brethren, you may deem fit to meet with

more indulgence the detractions, calumnies and charges by certain

envious and evil disposed persons, who endeavour to turn their good

deeds into works of perverseness opposed to divine teaching; until

the said charges attributed to them shall have been brought legally

before you or your representatives here and more fully proved.[157]

Edward II also wrote in the same terms to the Kings of Portugal,

Castile, Aragon, and Sicily. But two years later, after Clement V had

himself heard the confessions of the Order, and a Papal Bull had been

issued declaring that "the unspeakable wickednesses and abominable

crimes of notorious heresy" had now "come to the knowledge of almost

everyone," Edward II was persuaded to arrest the Templars and order

their examination. According to Mr. Castle, whose interesting treatise

we quote here, the King would not allow torture to be employed, with the

result that the Knights denied all charges; but later, it is said, he

allowed himself to be overpersuaded, and "torture appears to have been

applied on one or two occasions,"[158] with the result that three

Knights confessed to all and were given absolution.[159] At Southwark,

however, "a considerable number of brethren" admitted that "they had

been strongly accused of the crimes of negation and spitting, they did

not say they were guilty but that they could not purge themselves ...

and therefore they abjured these and all other heresies."[160] Evidence

was also given against the Order by outside witnesses, and the same

stories of intimidation at the ceremony of reception were told.[161] At

any rate, the result of the investigation was not altogether

satisfactory, and the Templars were finally suppressed in England as

elsewhere by the Council of Vienne in 1312.