THE VENDETTA OF SIGNOR MARGIOTTA
To Signor Domenico Margiotta we owe the most explicit account of the
great compact between Mazzini and Albert Pike which produced the New and
Reformed Palladium. With this institution he does not attempt to connect
the anterior order founded in 1730; for him the possession of the
Templar Baphomet explains the name which it received, and the passage of
that idol from its original custodians he leaves in the same uncertainty
as Dr Bataille. This difficulty apart, in Signor Margiotta the question
of Lucifer has received a most important witness; he is the most recent,
the most illustrious, and Masonically the most decorated of all. If I
add that he is in one respect to be included among the most virulent, I
do not necessarily detract from his value. So far as one can possibly
be aware, he is a man of unimpeachable integrity, who gives us every
opportunity to identify him, heraldically by his arms and emblazonments,
historically by an account of his family, personally by extracts from
the _Dizionario Biografico_, Masonically by a full enumeration of all
his dignities, including photographs of his most brilliant diplomas and
printed correspondence from Grand Masters and other exalted potentates
of the great Fraternity. It would be difficult, however, in the last
respect, to discover many more exalted than himself, for before his
demission he was Secretary of the Lodge Savonarola of Florence;
Venerable of the Lodge Giordano Bruno of Palmi; Sovereign Grand
Inspector General, 33rd degree, of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite;
Sovereign Prince of the Order (33rd .·., 90th .·., 95th .·.,) of the
Rite of Memphis and Misraïm; Acting Member of the Sovereign Sanctuary of
the Oriental Order of Memphis and Misraïm of Naples; Inspector of the
Misraïm Lodges of the Calabrias and of Sicily; Honorary Member of the
National Grand Orient of Haiti; Acting Member of the Supreme Federal
Council of Naples; Inspector-General of all the Masonic Lodges of the
three Calabrias; Grand Master, _ad vitam_, of the Oriental Masonic Order
of Misraïm or Egypt (90th degree) of Paris; Commander of the Order of
Knights-Defenders of Universal Masonry; Honorary Member, _ad vitam_, of
the Supreme General Council of the Italian Federation of Palermo;
Permanent Inspector and Sovereign Delegate of the Grand Central
Directory of Naples for Europe (Universal High-grade Masonry), and,
according to his latest portrait, Member of the New Reformed Palladium.
That such a luminary could withdraw from the firmament of the Fraternity
and not take after him the third part of the stars of heaven, above all
that the Italian Grand Master could have the effrontery to affirm that
he had never heard of him and had only discovered who he was after some
investigation, are matters for astonishment to the simple.
Professor Margiotta returned to the church of his childhood in the
autumn of 1894, and the news of his conversion is said to have so
overwhelmed the head-quarters of Italian Freemasonry at Rome that the
annual rejoicings upon the 20th of September, when Rome became the
Capital of United Italy and when Universal Freemasonry was instituted in
1870, were incontinently suspended. My readers will not attach a high
degree of accuracy to this statement, for there does not appear in
reality to have been any convulsion of the Order; there was indeed more
rejoicing in Jerusalem than lamentation in the tents of Kedron. Signor
Margiotta was the recipient of flattering congratulations from eminent
prelates; the bishop of Grenoble salutes him as "my dear friend"; the
patriarch of Jerusalem invites him to take courage, for he is doing high
service to humanity, labouring under the scourge of the Masonic plague;
the bishop of Montauban expresses his lively sentiment and entire
devotion; the archbishop of Aix regards the revelations as of great
importance to the Church; the bishop of Limoges praises and blesses the
books of M. Margiotta; the bishop of Mende does likewise, his
enthusiasm taking shape in superlatives; the Cardinal-Archbishop of
Bordeaux applauds the intention and the effort; the bishops of
Tarentaise, of Oran, of Pamiers, of Annecy, take up the chant in turn,
and his Holiness the Pope himself sends his Apostolic Benediction over
the seal of Peter.
Why did Signor Margiotta abandon Palladism and Masonry? It was not
because these institutions were devoted to the cultus of Lucifer, for I
do not gather that he was scandalised by that fact at the time when it
appears to have become known to him. It was not because sacrilege and
public indecency characterised the rituals of initiation in the case of
the Palladian Order, for he does not zealously press this charge. It was
not, so far as can be traced, because he trembled for the safety of his
soul; he does not provide us with a sickly and suspicious narrative of
the sentiments which led to his conversion or the interior raptures
which followed it; he does not mention that he was the recipient of a
special grace or a sudden illustration; he ceased to believe in Lucifer
as the good God because that being had permitted his favoured
Freemasonry to pass under the "supreme direction of a despised personage
who is the last of rogues." In other words, Signor Domenico Margiotta
has a strong loathing for Signor Adriano Lemmi; he has long and
earnestly desired that Freemasonry should "vomit him" from her breast,
but as this has not come to pass, Signor Margiotta decided to vomit
himself. Now, when a man embraces religion, he is supposed to forgive
his enemies, to do good to them that hate him, to avoid the propagation
of scandals, and when he cannot speak well to say nothing; but this is
not the special quality of grace which attaches to the second
_trente-troisième_, who has come out of Freemasonry to expose and revile
the order.
The two narratives which comprise the exposure in question are
respectively entitled, "Adriano Lemmi: Supreme Chief of Freemasonry,"
and "Palladism, the Cultus of Satan-Lucifer." Both these books contain a
violent impeachment of the Italian Grand Master, which, if it concerned
us, would not convince us. Its main points go to show that in the days
of his boyhood, Lemmi was guilty of an embezzlement at Marseilles, for
which he is said to have suffered at the hands of justice; that he led
the life of a Guzman d'Alfarache, in itself sufficiently romantic to
condone an offence which should have been effaced with its penalty,
supposing the allegation to be true; that he subsequently found himself
at Constantinople, where he was thrown among Jews, and is there charged
by his accuser with the commission of a still more terrible crime; he,
in fact, became a proselyte of the gate, and suffered the rite of
circumcision. Later on he is depicted as a political conspirator, an
agent and friend of Mazzini, Kossuth, and the patriots of the
Revolution, in connection with whom he is made responsible for
innumerable villainies which connect him with the apostleship of
dynamite. We may pass lightly over these matters, nor need we delay to
inquire after what manner Adriano Lemmi may have amassed the wealth
which he possesses, nor what questions on the subject of a monopoly in
tobacco may have been raised or dropped in the Italian Parliament. All
these points, including Signor Lemmi himself, are as little known as
they are of little moment in England, and they are wholly outside our
subject, except in so far as they exhibit the methods of his accuser,
which, indeed, are so objectionable in their nature as to go far towards
exonerating their object. Signor Margiotta, at any rate, puts himself so
clearly in the wrong, and is altogether so virulent, as to place the
inference of personal animosity almost in the region of certitude; one
is therefore tempted to accept the explanation offered by the victim,
that the Marseilles scandal turns upon a mistaken identity, and his
explicit denial that he ever underwent the rite of Jewish initiation.
Furthermore, I believe that I shall represent the opinion of tolerant
Englishmen when I say that to insult and abuse a man for adopting
another faith, however opposed to our own, and even ridiculous in
itself, is an odious method in controversy, and for myself I see little
to choose between a proselyte of the gate, a renegade Mason, and a
demitted Roman Catholic.
The true secret of the Margiotta-cum-Lemmi embroilment does not, I
think, transpire in the narratives with which we are concerned; I mean
to say that there is an eluding element which must, however, be assumed,
if we are to account reasonably for the display of such extreme rancour.
An honourable man may object to the jurisdiction of a person whom he
regards as a convicted thief, but he does not usually pursue him with
the violence of personal hatred. Now, in 1888 Signor Margiotta became a
candidate for the Italian Parliament, and he attributes his failure to
the hostility of Lemmi, who, prompted by Gallophobe tendencies, brought
his influence to bear against a person who was friendly to the French
nation. I submit that this assists us to understand the animus of the
converted Mason and the lengths to which it has taken him. In all other
respects Signor Margiotta displays the most perfect frankness, and does
his best upon every occasion to substantiate his statements by
formidable documentary evidence. I repeat therefore, that, much as we
may regret his acrimony, he remains a most important witness to the
existence of Universal Masonry, the existence of the Reformed Palladium,
the transfer of the Masonic Supremacy at the death of Albert Pike to the
Italian Grand Master, and the split in the camp which followed. He
claims also that he is personally acquainted with Miss Diana Vaughan; he
extols her innumerable virtues in pages of eloquent writing; he even
goes so far as to photograph the envelope of a registered letter which
he posted at Palmi, in Calabria, addressed to that lady in London. He
indirectly substantiates the narrative of Carbuccia by a long account of
his personal dealings with Giambattista Pessina, descending into the
most curious particulars; he publishes the secret alphabet of the
Palladium, specimens of litanies addressed to the good god Lucifer, and
hymns of equivocal tendency attributed to Albert Pike. Finally, he fully
admits the Satanic character of perfect Masonic initiation, and
contributes a long chapter to swell our recent knowledge upon the
subject of "Apparitions of Satan."
As regards Universal Masonry, when announcing his demission and
conversion to an officer of the Lodge, Giordano Bruno, at Palmi, Signor
Margiotta reveals to him that he and his brethren are ruled, without
knowing it, by a supreme rite, and that he, Margiotta himself, Venerable
of the Lodge referred to, being a true elect and perfect initiate,
constituted the link of connection between the ordinary Masonry of Palmi
and this central and unsuspected power. On the same occasion he
addressed a long communication to Miss Vaughan, in which he claims that
he has ever acted as an honest Mason, faithful to the orthodoxy thereof,
and having the cause of Charleston at heart. Now, the circumstances
which occasioned these statements, and the good faith which seems to
characterise them, are presumptive testimony to their truth; in the
absence of any evidence, and merely on _à priori_ considerations, it
would be intolerable to suggest that their author, while advertising his
changed views upon a solemn subject, was guilty of wilful deception.
The centralisation of Universal Masonry in an order known as the New
and Reformed Palladium, with Albert Pike at its head, is supported by
the citation of a document dated the 12th of September 1874, and being
an authority from Charleston for the constitution of a secret federation
of Jewish Freemasons, with a centre at Hamburg, under the title of
Sovereign Patriarchal Council. It is not the only document emanating
from the "Dogmatic Directory" which is printed by Signor Margiotta, but
the others are not entirely new, having some of them previously appeared
in the memoirs of Dr Bataille. The Luciferian opinions of Albert Pike
are exhibited plainly in a letter addressed by him to Signor Rapisardi,
famous in all Italy for his poem of "Lucifer," which Signor Margiotta
affirms to have been written at the suggestion of the American Grand
Master.
But possibly the strongest evidence is less of a documentary kind; the
minute account of the warfare waged by Signor Margiotta and other
Italian Masons, in which they were helped by Miss Vaughan, to prevent
the accession of Lemmi to the sovereign pontificate upon the death of
Albert Pike and the transfer of the centre to Rome, seems to bear upon
its surface every reasonable sign that it cannot be an invented
narrative. Indeed, the first impulse upon reading the testimony of this
witness leaps irresistibly to conclude that the denial of the main
allegations is no longer possible. A searching analysis does, however,
reveal sufficient grounds to warrant a different judgment. In the first
place, whereas Signor Margiotta proclaims the supreme power of the
Reformed Palladium, the documents which he cites in his support are, for
the most part, documents of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite, about
the immense jurisdiction of which there is no question. In the second
place, the authority of Albert Pike, as it is seen in most of the
documents, is in virtue, not of the Palladium, but of his position as
Supreme Chief of the Supreme Mother-Council of the Ancient and Accepted
Scotch Rite. What Signor Margiotta terms Universal Freemasonry is not
the Palladium at all, but simply the Scotch Rite; one of his own
diplomas, reproduced at page 120 of "Adriano Lemmi," is proof positive
of this; and in view of the universal diffusion of this rite, no one
would deny it the name. In the third place, the documents of Signor
Margiotta as regards the Palladium are not to be trusted, because in one
instance a gross imposition has been practised provably upon him, and he
may have been deceived in others. Hence, although he may be a member of
a society termed the New and Reformed Palladium, it may not possess the
jurisdiction or the history to which it pretends. In the fourth place I
deny that the Grand Central Directories of which I have given
particulars, derived from Signor Margiotta, in my second chapter, are in
any sense Palladian directories. That of Naples for Europe is said to
have twenty-seven triangular provinces, one of which is Manchester, and
Mr John Yarker is said to be Provincial Grand Master. Now, I have Mr
Yarker's own written testimony that he never heard of the Palladium
until the report of it came over from France. Mr Yarker is a member of
the 33rd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite, and he is also
the Grand Master of the only legitimate body of the Supreme Oriental
Rite of Memphis and Misraïm in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Moreover,
in most Masonic countries of the world he is either Honorary Grand
Master, or Honorary Member in the 95° of Memphis, 90° of Misraïm, and
33° Scottish Rite, the last honorary membership including bodies under
the Pike _régime_ as well as its opponents. He is perfectly well
acquainted with the claim of the Charleston Supreme Council to supreme
power in Masonry, and that it is a usurpation founded on a forgery. In a
letter which he had occasion to address some time since to a Catholic
priest on this very subject, he remarks:--"The late Albert Pike of
Charleston, as an able Mason, was undoubtedly a Masonic Pope, who kept
in leading strings all the Supreme Grand Councils of the world,
including the Supreme Grand Councils of England, Ireland, and Scotland,
the first of which includes the Prince of Wales, Lord Lathom, and other
peers, who were in alliance with him, and in actual submission. Its
introduction into America arose from a temporary schism in France in
1762, when Lacorne, a disreputable panderer to the Prince of Clermont,
issued a patent to a Jew named Stephen Morin. Some time after 1802, a
pretended Constitution was forged and attributed to Frederick the Great
of Prussia. This constitution gives power to members of the 33rd degree
to _elect themselves_ to rule all Masonry, and this custom is
followed.... The good feeling of Masonry has been perpetually destroyed
in every country where the Ancient and Accepted Rite exists, and it must
be so in the very nature of its claims and its laws." Mr Yarker has no
connection with a supreme dogmatic directorate in any other form than
this disputed but perfectly well-known assumption of the Charleston
Supreme Council. The term "Supreme Dogmatic Directorate" was not used by
Pike, and the confidence enjoyed by the American was never extended to
Lemmi, though he may have desired it. Instead, therefore, of all Masonry
being ruled by a central authority unknown to the majority of Masons, we
have simply a bogus claim which has no effect outside the Scottish
Rite, and of which all Masons may know if they will be at the pains to
ascertain. When Signor Margiotta informed the officer of the Giordano
Bruno Lodge that he secretly represented a central and unknown
authority, it is in this sense that we must understand him--that is to
say, he represented the interests of the Charleston Supreme Council.
Hence the revelations concerning "Universal Masonry" are an exaggeration
founded upon a fact, and the Palladian Order, of which Signor Margiotta
tells us that he is a member, is at any rate not what it pretends. It
has doubtless imposed on him by means of forged documents, as also upon
Leo Taxil, and M. Adolphe Ricoux. The writings which it fathers upon
Albert Pike, and quoted by Signor Margiotta, as in other cases, are
stolen from Éliphas Lévi, the so-called alphabet of the Palladium
included. The documentary _pièce de résistance_ upon which our author
relies as evidence for the existence of an international Masonic
organisation is a certain _voûte de Protestation_, on the part of a
so-called Mother-Lodge Lotus of England, secret Temple of Oxford
Street, against the transfer of the Dogmatic Directory from Charleston
to Rome, the "Standing Committee of Protestation" being Alexander
Graveson, Provincial Delegate of Philadelphia, U.S.A., V. F. Palacios,
Provincial Delegate of Mexico, and Diana Vaughan, Provincial Delegate of
New York and Brooklyn. Signor Domenico Margiotta has been grossly
deceived over this document. What he prints as the English original in
guarantee of good faith, side by side with a French translation, is a
clumsy and ridiculous specimen of "English as she is wrote," and the
French is really the original. I append some choice specimens:--"To the
Most Illustrious, Most Puissant, Most _Lightened_ Brothers ...
composing, by right of _Ancient and Members for life_, the Most Serene
Grand College of _Emerited Masons_." Here the underlined passages are a
Frenchman's method of interpreting into English _Très Eclairés Frères, à
titre d'Anciens et de membres à vie_, and _Maçons Emérites_. Again: "The
protesters numbered six-and-twenty, including twenty-five _sovereing_
delegates present at the deed, and one sovereign delegate, who could
not _stand by_ (_ne peut être présent_), but the substitute of _which_
wisely and prudently abstained from the vote _at the first turn_ (_au
premier scrutin_) and threw a blank ticket at the second, _expound_
(verb governed by _protesters_) the _acts and situation thence
disastrously resulting_ for our holy cause."
Once more: "The present protesting vault _aims at the two ballots_
(_vise les deux scrutins_), and _requests to be proceeded_ urgently to
their annulment." Again: "_The Charleston's Brothers_ ... have not acted
in such a manner as to forfeit _the whole Masonry's esteem_.... The
direction ... has _not discontinued to prove foresight_.... It was
_injust_ to transfer," &c., and so on for sixteen printed pages which
certainly deserve to rank among the curiosities of literature. This is
the precious document which appears over the signatures of Alexander
Graveson and Diana Vaughan, after which I submit to my readers that
Signor Domenico Margiotta may be dismissed with all his file of papers,
not as himself deceiving, but as singularly liable to deception, of
which he has otherwise given us several signal instances. For example he
believes himself to have enjoyed the high privilege of beholding the
Prince of Darkness upon two separate occasions. The first was in 1885 at
Castelnuovo-Garfagnana in a beautiful old walled garden, belonging to a
high-grade Mason named Orestes Cecchi, a fast friend of Margiotta. The
time was the forenoon, and the two Masons were smoking under the shade
of green trees surrounded by floral delights. Margiotta was a
spiritualist and a follower of Allan Kardec; Cecchi had a turn for the
Vedas and the occultism of the Eastern world; they were chatting upon
the possibility of transmigration; the one doubted, the other affirmed;
Cecchi, to convince his companion, informed him that he possessed a
familiar who invariably appeared to him under the form of a goat, but he
had a look in his eye which proved positively that he was the Grand
Architect of the Universe! That there might be no doubt about the matter
Cecchi called his familiar, who appeared suddenly, and joyfully caressed
his master, at whose command he subsequently licked the hand of the
overwhelmed Signor Margiotta, and it became red and painful. Cecchi
playfully chided the apparition for not assuming human form, and hinted
at the propriety of doing so, but the animal knowingly nodded and
incontinently scurried away. Now, I put it to my readers, that Cecchi
was exploiting his friend, that a domesticated animal appeared at the
summons of his owner in a wooded garden, and that Signor Margiotta is
fooling when he pretends to believe that it was the devil.
The second experience was at Naples under the roof of Pessina, about
half-past ten in the evening, after a Lodge meeting of the Misraïm rite.
Then and there, as a matter of cordial good fellowship, the
accommodating Imperial Grand Master evoked a devil to give evidence of
his actuality to Margiotta, who, in spite of the episode of the goat,
still posed as a doubting Thomas. It was managed by means of a
whisky-bottle, out of which, after certain invocations and magical
ceremonies, a vapour rose mysteriously, and resolved itself into a
human figure, wearing a golden crown, with a brilliant star in the
middle. According to the picture which accompanies this delicious
narrative, the apparition had the wings of a bat and a tail of the
bovine class. It was Beffabuc, the familiar of the magician, who begged
him to enlighten the sceptic, but the latter, according to the
apparition, was protected by a higher power and would never be persuaded
to believe in him. Signor Margiotta gives the names of all who were
present at the evocation--twelve members of the 33rd degree, to say
nothing of Misraïm dignities. I submit, however, that the episode of the
bottle would split the rock of Peter, that the absence of Signor Pessina
for twenty minutes previous to the performance, eked out with a little
ventriloquism, and some Pepper accessories would explain much, and that
there is also another hypothesis which I will leave to the discernment
of my readers, and to which I lean personally.
Our witness, in any case, would not be a _persona grata_ to the Society
for Psychical Research. As he is violent in his enmities, so is he
gullible in marvels. His impeachment of Adriano Lemmi must be ruled
completely out of court; his thaumaturgic experiences are paltry
trickeries; his account of Albert Pike is largely borrowed matter; the
magical practices which he attributes to Pessina are derived from the
Little Albert and other well known grimoires; the most that follows from
his narrative is that certain Italian Masons, probably atheists at
heart, pose as partisans of Satan simply to accentuate their derisions
of all religious ideas, much after the manner of Voltaire in some of his
cynical correspondence. It is a continental form of pleasantry, and an
artistic experiment in blasphemy which is taken seriously by the unwise.
I need hardly add that the story of _Aut Diabolus aut Nihil_, which is
accepted literally by Doctor Bataille, is also the subject of
reverential belief on the part of Signor Margiotta, and as an
illustration of his classifying talent, he terms Adriano Lemmi a Mormon
because, having obtained a divorce, he, in the course of time,
contracted another marriage. Furthermore, the very strong testimony
which Signor Margiotta gives to Dr Bataille, directly by eulogium and
indirectly by citation, as also the intimate relations which he
maintained with Diana Vaughan, make his value as a witness of Lucifer
dependent, to a large extent, upon the credibility of these persons,
with consequences which will shortly appear. Lastly, his own personal
credibility seems seriously at stake when he talks of "triangular
provinces." He, and those connected with him, can alone explain what
that means; they have never existed in Masonry. Mr Yarker, who, he says,
is Grand Master of such a province, has never heard the expression. Mr
R. S. Brown, Grand Secretary of the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of
Scotland, also denies all knowledge of the one which, according to
Signor Margiotta, is located at Edinburgh.