Chapter VIII: Part 8

Their specialty was a mystical, kabbalistic, and totally absurd interpretation of the Bible, and of other alleged sacred or occult writings, whence they deduced an explanation of the universe. For example, they taught that the planets and the other heavenly bodies reflect back on the sun the light they receive from him, thus conserving his might and his splendor. They also practiced necromancy, exorcization, alchemy, the art of making gold, of preparing the elixir of life: they studied such problems as the production of the noble metals from rain water, urine, and other bodies, and even of evolving human beings by chemical processes. In their assemblies the members wore white and black scarfs, but those of the higher degrees wore priestly vestments, with crosses of silver or gold. At the initiation the candidates swore fearful oaths. Aspirants to the ninth degree were assured that once they should attain that eminence they would understand all nature’s secrets and possess supreme control of angels, devils, and men. The first prophet of the New Rosicrucianism was John George Schrepfer, coffeehouse keeper in Leipsic. In 1777 he founded in his own shop a lodge of the Scottish Rite, to afford his customers a better style of masonry than was found in the ordinary lodges. The Duke of Courland, protector of one of the masonic lodges, had the man publicly bastinadoed: but Schrepfer shortly afterward inspired both him and the Duke of Brunswick with a curiosity to be instructed in the mysteries, and visited them at Dresden and at Brunswick. In his lodge he gave demonstrations of his supernatural powers as a magician and a necromancer: for example, he would summon up spirits of the dead. Puffed up by success, Schrepfer indulged in all manner of debauchery, and at last was reduced to penury. He died by his own hand, aged 35 years.

But Rosicrucianism was yet to reach its highest point, which it did in the person of John Christopher Woellner (born at Spandau, 1732, ordained preacher 1759, a councilor in the Prussian service in 1766, and Minister of State 1788; deceased 1800), and John Rudolf Bischofswerder (born in Thuringia 1741, chamberlain to the Elector of Saxony; major in the Prussian army 1772; minister at war 1768; deceased 1803). Not content with the honor of being Knight of the Griffin in the Strict Observance, Bischofswerder went in search of an order that practiced the magic art, and was so fortunate as to find it in the New Rosicrucianism. He was initiated into the mysteries by Schrepfer, and it was he who converted the Duke of Courland from an enemy into a friend of the coffeehouse Rosicrucian. After the death of Schrepfer, whose most zealous supporter he had been, Bischofswerder obtained promotion in the Prussian service through the favor of the crown prince Frederic William, nephew of Frederic the Great, and shared his good fortune with Woellner, Knight of the Cube, who like himself had seceded from Templarism. The pair won the crown prince over to Rosicrucianism, and enjoyed his confidence both then and after his accession to the throne of Prussia in 1786, as William II. At last, as ministers of state, they succeeded in substituting obscurantism and state religionism in the place of the illuminism and toleration that had prevailed under old Fritz. It was they that dictated the odious Edict of Religion of 1788, which was expected to prove a deathblow to illuminism and free thought: but the death of the King upset all their calculations. That was the end of the New Rosicrucianism.

Simultaneously with the order of the Rosicrucians arose two variant forms of the same, the society of the Asiatic Brethren, and that of the African Buildingmasters (Asiatische Brueder, Afrikanische Bauherren). The Asiatic Brethren’s order was founded in Vienna by Baron Hans Henry von Eckhofen, an ex-Rosicrucian: it admitted only Freemasons, but did not exclude Jews, and its aims were the same as those of the Rosicrucians. Its chief seat was at Vienna, called by them Thessalonica, for they gave a foreign name to every place. Its head officers were styled Inquisitors. There were five degrees, viz., two probationary—those of Seekers and of Sufferers—and three superior degrees. The members in the two lower degrees wore round black hats with distinctive feathers for each degree, black mantles, and white or black ribbons, broidered with different emblems; those in the higher degrees wore red hats and mantles; the attire of those in the highest degree was all rosy-red. Ten members constituted a Mastership, ten masterships a Decade, and so on. The order became shockingly corrupt in Austria.

The African society, founded by War Councilor Koeppen in Berlin, had rather higher aims than the Rosicrucians and the Asiatic Brethren: they studied the history of Freemasonry, admitted to their order only scholars and artists, conducted their business in Latin, and offered prizes for scientific researches: but they indulged in farfetched and absurd symbolism, kabbalism, magic, and mysticism. Their degrees were five inferior or preparatory, and five higher or esoteric. The order lived for a few years only.

There were many other societies, instituted mostly for the purpose of fraud and moneymaking: of these we give no account here. But there still remains one society which is worthy of mention—that of the Brethren of the Cross (Kreuzbrueder) or Devotees of the Cross (Kreuzfromme), founded by Count Christian von Haugwitz (1752–1832), who was at one time Knight of the Holy Mount in the Strict Observance, afterward belonged to a German imitation of the Swedish rite, and at last founded a society which was described by a contemporary as “a conspiracy of despotism against liberty, of vice against virtue, of stupidity against talent, of darkness against enlightenment.” The Devotees of the Cross observed the strictest secrecy, corresponded in cipher, inveigled princes, in order to rule in their stead (after the manner of Bischofswerder and Woellner) and practiced all manner of superstitions to make an end of science. They had no connection whatever with Freemasonry.

Unfortunately this multiplication of mystical orders was not without effect on the fortunes of the masonic body, in that it has led to a vicious growth of “high degrees.” It was a French adventurer, Stephen Morin, who, in 1761, introduced into the United States the 33 degrees: they entered France again in 1803, and were regarded as a novelty, having been forgotten during the Revolution. The titles of these degrees are at once bombastic and unmeaning: Grand Scots, Knights of the East, High Princes of Jerusalem, Princes of Grace, Grand Inquisitors, Princes of the Royal Secret, etc., and in some of the variations of these ridiculous degrees we have Knights of the Ape, and of the Lion, and Emperor of East and West.

_PART ELEVENTH._
_The Illuminati and Their Era._

1. THE ILLUMINATI.

By the suppression of the Jesuit order by Clement XIV., the results of two centuries of painful toil in the interest of a universal ecclesiastical dominion were undone. Then it was that an ingenious mind conceived the thought of employing on behalf of enlightenment such instrumentality as the Jesuits had employed against it. It was a pupil of the Jesuits to whom this thought first occurred: their mechanical, soul-stifling method of education had made him their enemy; but besides he had learned the artifices and the secrets of the Jesuits, and hoped that by imitating them in a Catholic country likely to be influenced by such arts, he might thereby promote the very opposite interests. Adam Weishaupt was born in 1748, and when only 25 years of age was professor of canon law and jurisprudence in the university of Ingolstadt, and also lecturer on history and philosophy, being the first in that institute to deliver lectures in the German language, and in consonance with the more enlightened spirit of the age. The intrigues of the ousted Fathers against their successor in a professorial chair which they had held for nearly a century forced to maturity the thought which he had cherished from his student days: and the founding in the neighboring village of Burghausen of a lodge of Rosicrucians, who were trying to attract to themselves his students, decided him to carry his idea into execution. On May 1, 1776, he founded the Order of Perfectibilists to which he afterward gave the name Illuminists (Illuminati). To propagate this institution and to strengthen it he adopted measures which, in the circumstances of the time, seemed not unpractical. First, he adopted entire the hierarchic system of government existing among the Jesuits—despotic rule from top to bottom; secondly, he employed Freemasonry to promote the ends of his order, just as the Jesuits had attempted to do. Accordingly Weishaupt, who was full of vanity, ambition, and desire of revenge, but knew nothing of the true Freemasonry, only of its perversions, obtained admission to the order in a lodge in Munich. Hence it is not true that the Freemasons founded the league of the Illuminati, but rather than an order that arose outside of the lodge simply made use of Freemasonry: and so to the defeated reactionary movement against Freemasonry now succeeded an unmasonic revolutionary movement. In executing his plan Weishaupt was assisted mainly by Francis Xavier von Zwackh, of Landshut, councilor to the government of the Bavarian Palatinate, a man initiated in the highest degrees of masonry. Several years after its foundation the order of the Illuminati was still confined to South Germany, or even to Bavaria; but as Weishaupt desired that the north also, and Protestants no less than Catholics, should take an interest in his institute, he sent the Marquis Costanzo von Costanza, Bavarian chamberlain, to Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1779 to win over to the order the lodges in that city. Costanzo himself had little success, the rich merchants of Frankfort being averse to anything that would unsettle the peace of the world; but a young man whose acquaintance he made was destined to be, after Weishaupt, the most effective promoter of the new society. This was Baron Adolf von Knigge, well known for his much-read book. “Ueber den Umgang mit Menschen.” He was born in 1752, and from his youth up had been an amateur of spiritism (ghostseership). He was already an Initiate of the higher degrees of the Strict Observance; but, dissatisfied with that order, he adopted the idea of Illuminism enthusiastically, and brought into the system a number of men who became its apostles; for example, Bode, the translator; Francis von Ditfurth, associate justice, of Weimar. With these two Knigge attended the Conventus of Wilhelmsbad, and there championed the cause of Illuminism stoutly, and helped to give the deathblow to Templarism. And now as Knigge, who supposed the order to be an ancient one, entered into a correspondence with Weishaupt, he was not a little astonished on learning from him that the society was as yet no more than an embryo: in fact, it had only the degree of the minor Illuminates (Kleine Illuminaten). Nothing disheartened, however, he journeyed to Bavaria, and was admitted to the order in splendid style. But his lively fancy led him to develop the order further; and the sober-minded Weishaupt, whose gifts were those of the thinker rather than of the contriver of forms, left to Knigge the elaboration of the several degrees and their Lessons, in which both were agreed that allusions to the fireworship and lightworship of the Persians should be employed, as typical of the spiritual fire and spiritual light of Illuminism.

The groundwork of the polity of the Illuminati was as follows: A supreme president ruled the whole, having next below him two officers, each of whom again had two others under him, and so on, so that the first could most conveniently govern all. The doings of the order were kept most strictly secret. Each member took the name of some historic or mythic personage of distinction: Weishaupt was Spartacus; Zwackh, Cato; Costanzo, Diomede; Knigge, Philo; Ditfurth, Minos; Nicolai, Lucian, and so on. Countries and cities also had pseudonyms: Munich was Athens; Frankfort, Edessa; Austria, Egypt; Franconia, Illyria, and so forth. In correspondence the members used a secret cipher, numbers taking the place of letters; in reckoning time they followed the calendar of the ancient Persians with the Persian names of months and the Persian aera.

The number of degrees and their designations were never definitely fixed, hence they are different in different localities. But all the accounts agree that there were three principal degrees. The first of these, the School of Plants (Pflanzschule) was designed to receive youths approaching adult age. The candidate for admission was at first a Novice, and, except the one who indoctrinated him, knew no member of the order. He was required, by submitting a detailed account of his life, with full particulars as to all his doings, and by keeping a journal, to prove himself a fit subject for admission, and one likely to be of service to the order. From the grade of Novice he passed to that of Minerval. The members of the Minerval class formed a sort of learned society, which occupied itself with answering questions in the domain of morals. The Minervals, furthermore, were required to make known what they thought of the order, and what they expected of it, and they assumed the obligation of obedience. They were under the eye of their superior officers, read and wrote whatever superiors required of them, and spied on each other, and reported one another’s faults to superiors as in the Jesuit system. The leaders of the Minervals were called Minor Illuminati; were taken by surprise at the meetings of their degree and nominated to that dignity—a method that wonderfully stimulated ambition; they were instructed in the management and oversight of their subjects, and practiced themselves in that art; they were besides required to report their experiences. The second principal degree was Freemasonry, through the three original degrees of which and the two so-called Scottish degrees the Illuminati passed; and strenuous effort was made to have the masonic lodges adopt a system agreeable to the ideas of the Illuminati, so that the membership of the order might be steadily increased. The three original degrees of masonry were imparted to the regular Illuminati without ceremonies. The members of the two Scottish degrees were called Greater Illuminati, and the task of these was to study the characters of their fellowmembers; and Dirigent Illuminati, who presided over the several divisions of the illuministic masonry. The third and highest degree was that of the Mysteries, comprising the four stages of Priest, Regent, Magus and King (rex). This principal degree was elaborated only in part, and was not brought into use. In these four divisions of the third degree the ends of the order were, according to Knigge’s plan, to be explained. The supreme heads of the several divisions of the order were called Areopagites, but their functions were never fully defined. It was proposed also to add a department for women. The aims of this organization of the Illuminati remind us forcibly of those of the Pythagorean League. They contemplated, not a sudden and violent but a gradual and peaceful revolution, in which the Illuminism of the 18th century should gain the victory. This revolution was to be effected by winning for the order all the considerable intellectual forces of the time, though the new associates were only little by little to learn what the aims of the order were. And inasmuch as the members, when they should have among their number all those forces, must everywhere attain the highest places in government, the triumph of their enlightened principles could not be for long delayed. In the superior degrees the members were to be taught as a grand secret of the order that the means whereby the redemption of mankind was one day to be accomplished was Secret Schools of Wisdom. These would lift man out of his fallen estate: these would, without violence, sweep Princes and National boundaries from the face of the earth, and constitute the human race one family, every housefather a priest and lord of his own, and Reason the one lawcode of mankind. To imbue the minds of men with these principles, illuminist books were prescribed to the members for their reading. In sharp contrast to the masonic systems in which Jesuits had had a hand, the Illuminati avoided all forms which might suggest obedience to any religion or church, and welcomed whatever favored the dominance of reason and the overthrow of revelation.

In the very short period of its existence the order of the Illuminati attained a membership of 2,000, a result very materially promoted by the rule that any member possessing authority from the superiors could admit a candidate. Among the members were many men eminent, both socially and in science, as the dukes of Saxe-Gotha (Ernest), Brunswick (Ferdinand), of Saxe-Weimar (Charles Augustus, while yet only heir of the ducal crown); Dalberg, who was afterward prince-bishop; Montgilas, afterward minister of state; President Count Geinsheim; the celebrated philosopher Baader; Professors Semmer of Ingolstadt, Moldenhauer of Kiel, Feder of Goettingen; the educator Leuchsenring of Darmstadt; the Catholic cathedral prebendaries Schroeckenstein of Eichstadt and Schmelzer of Mayence; Haefelin, bishop of Munich; the authors Bahrdt, Biester, Gedike, Bode, Nicolai, etc. Goethe, Herder, and probably Pestalozzi also belonged to the order. The league in “Wilhelm Meister” reminds us strongly of the Illuminati.

The order was not yet spread abroad beyond the German borders, though a few Frenchmen had been admitted while visiting Germany; but its plans were already reaching out farther. And now the head of the whole organization was to be the General (as among the Jesuits); under him there was to be in each country a head officer, the National; in each principal division of a country a Provincial; in subdivisions of provinces a Prefect, and so on.

This aping of Jesuit polity and the imprudent admission of objectionable or indifferent characters proved the ruin of the order. Despotic rule and espionage could never promote the cause of liberty and enlightenment—and the founder of the order proposed to make enlightenment the means of attaining liberty.

Then the dissensions ever growing more serious between Weishaupt and Knigge. Whereas Weishaupt cared only for the ends of the society, all else being in his eyes only incidental, mere formalism, Knigge, on the other hand, being a man of the world, shrank in horror from the program of his associate: religion, morality, the State were imperiled. He dreaded Liberalist books, and would have been far better pleased to see the order working on the lines of the Freemasons of that day, though with an elaborate ceremonial and manifold degrees and mysteries, and with some harmless, innocent ideal of human welfare and brotherly love as the object of their endeavors. Weishaupt called Knigge’s pet contrivance tinsel and trumpery and child’s playthings, and the pair of “Areopagites” grew steadily ever more asunder.

This rising storm within boded less ill to the order than the attacks from without growing from day to day more violent. Illuminism was assailed by enemies of all sorts, that sprung up like mushrooms. First there were the masonic systems of the reactionary or superstitious kind, such as the Rosicrucians, the Asiatic Brethren, the African Masterbuilders, the Swedish Rite, the remnant of the Strict Observance, etc.; then such of the Illuminati as thought the hopes of the order had been disappointed, or who expected to profit by a betrayal of the order to the enemies of liberty and light; finally, and above all, there were the sons of Loyola, ever laboring industriously in the dark though their society had been suppressed, and now again, thanks to the licentious, bigoted despotic Elector Charles Theodore, possessing great influence in Bavaria, the country in which the membership of the Order of Illuminati was of longest standing and most numerous. At that court, the seat of corruption, some courtiers, professors, and clergymen who had been members of the order, with the secret pamphleteer, Joseph Utzschneider, at their head, played traitor, charging the order with rebellion, infidelity, and all manner of vices and crimes, and at the same time, without ado, classing with the Illuminati the Freemasons. By a decree of August 2, 1784, the lodges of all secret societies established without government’s approval, including the Illuminati and the Freemasons, were banned. The masonic lodges submitted at once, and closed their doors; but Weishaupt and his associates went on with their work, hoping to change the mind of the Elector by bringing up for public discussion their rules and their usages. Vain Hope. The Elector’s confessor, Father Frank, an ex-Jesuit, who already had labored against Freemasonry, procured on March 2, 1781, a second decree, by which the previous one was confirmed, and all secret organizations that continued to exist in violation of it, and specifically the Order of Illuminati, were forbidden to hold meetings, and all their property was confiscated. The Minister of State, Aloysius Xavier Kreitmayr, distinguished himself by the rigor with which he executed the ukaz. Weishaupt was deposed from his place at Ingolstadt, expelled from that city, and declared incapable of legal defense; he had to flee the country. He first tarried in Ratisbon; but soon, in consequence of the discovery of compromising documents in a search of the houses of Illuminati, very grave charges were brought against the members, and the Elector became alarmed for his throne. Without distinction of class or station a prosecution was entered against all persons accused of membership in the order, or even suspected of sympathy with it, and they were imprisoned, deposed from office, banished, and in the case of persons of the lower classes, punished with stripes. This whole business was managed, without any recourse to the regular tribunals, by a special commission under Court direction. This persecution lasted till after the outbreak of the French Revolution, and a refusal to condemn the French people was taken as evidence of a revolutionary spirit. This system naturally fostered ignorance among the lower classes, but among educated people it tended to spread the principles of Illuminism, and to awaken opposition to monkish rule in the state.

Weishaupt, no longer safe at Ratisbon, the Bavarian government having set a price on his head, fled to Gotha, where Duke Ernest, a member of the order, protected him, and made him Court councilor. Here he lived till 1830, but he failed to resuscitate his order on an improved plan. As for Knigge, he made haste to quit the incriminated order, and in his prim, emasculate “Umgang mit Menschen,” strongly condemned all “secret societies”—he, the old-time Templar, Freemason, and Illuminist. Few were so stout-hearted and firm as Ignatius von Born, the naturalist, a native of Transylvania, who had been a Jesuit, but who, after the suppression of the Society of Jesus, had joined the Illuminati and become a Freemason. After the suppression of the Bavarian lodges, Born, who was then in the service of the Emperor Joseph II. at Vienna, sent back to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences his diploma as member of that body, accompanying it with a letter in which he bluntly declared that he would rather be a Freemason than a member of a body with which he had nothing in common. And thus was the cry of Voltaire, “Ecrasons l’Infame,” taken up by the party against which it was first uttered, and by them given effect in the shape of a most infamous persecution, before men of enlightenment had made the first move toward “stamping out” what to them seemed an “infamy.” For the rest it is said that the suppression of the Illuminati was the result of an understanding with Frederic the Great, whose policy was threatened by the order.

2. IMITATIONS OF ILLUMINISM.

Not long after the break-up of the Order of Illuminati in the South, a similar order sprang up in Northern Germany. It originated in the brain of a man unfortunately at once a zealous Illuminist and a morally depraved vagabond, who made a deplorable misuse of the talents with which nature had endowed him richly. This was Dr. Charles Frederic Bahrdt, Protestant theologian, sometime preacher, professor, or teacher in sundry places, and once even keeper of an eating house at Halle. In 1788 it occurred to him to found an association to promote enlightened views, and his plan was to combine it with the masonic society, of which he had become a member in England. The projected association he called the “German Union of the XXII.” (Deutsche Union der XXII.), for the reason, as he explained in a circular letter, that twenty-two men had formed a union for the ends set forth. The Union was to be organized on the plan of Jesus Christ, whom Bahrdt in a voluminous work portrayed as the founder of a sort of Freemasonry, and of whose miracles he offered a rather forced natural explanation. In accordance with this plan the association was to be a “silent brotherhood” that was to hurl from their throne superstition and fanaticism, and this chiefly by the literary activity of the members. The literary labor was ingeniously organized in such fashion that the Union would by diligent effort in time gain control of the press and the whole book trade, thus acquiring the means of insuring the triumph of enlightenment. Outwardly the Union was to have the appearance of a purely literary association; but inwardly it was to consist of three degrees, of which the lower ones were to be simply reading societies, while the third alone would understand the real purpose of the order, viz., advancement of science, art, commerce, and religion, betterment of education, encouragement of men of talent, remuneration for services, provision for meritorious workers in age and misfortune, also for the widows and orphans of members. But inasmuch as Bahrdt had painted this beautiful picture solely to make money, the Deutsche Union existed only on paper; but it wrought for its projector a protracted term of imprisonment, which he survived but a short time; he died in 1792.

Another imitation of the Order of Illuminati, the League of the Evergetes (Bund der Evergeten, or benefactors, or welldoers) which sprang up at the close of the 18th century, had a longer term of life, though but little expansion. Its activity extended over all the arts and sciences, except positive theology and positive jurisprudence. The members were designated after the manner of the Illuminati; but they acknowledged no unknown superiors. Time was reckoned from the death of Socrates, B. C. 400. The supreme head was called Archiepistat (archiepistates, chief overseer); there were two degrees, of which only the higher one had a political aim, popular representation. Fessler, by his protests against such tendencies, brought about a split in the association, and afterward his adversaries tried to convert it into a sort of moral Femgericht by tracking and branding all offenses. One of the three leaders betrayed the other two, and was with them put in prison, but soon afterward released: that ended the association.

4. FREEMASONRY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

That there was any alliance of the Freemasons, or even of the Illuminists, with the men of the French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, can be affirmed only by those who are ignorant of history or wilfully blind—by men like the Privy Councilor Grolman of Giessen, friend of Stark (significantly named in the Strict Observance, Knight of the Golden Crab), or, like the abbe and canon Augustin Barruel in France, or the ship’s captain and professor, John Robinson, in England: their allegations were received only with ridicule, and passed into oblivion. As we have seen, the Illuminati were to be found only in Germany, where no revolution took place: in fact, they were no longer in existence when the French revolution broke out. As for the Freemasons, we have already shown that they were opposed to the movement; but that movement could have no other ground than the dissatisfaction of the people of France with the shameful Bourbon dynasty, whose mischief could not be repaired by the well-intentioned but narrow-minded Louis XVI. No critical or serious work of history gives any justification of the belief that Freemasonry had a hand in bringing about that Revolution: but a decisive proof of the true relation of Freemasonry to the troubles of those times is had in the fact that the Terror made an end of the Grand Orient of France. All the clubs of the French Revolution were open: the people would not tolerate secret clubs, not even private assemblages, and hence as early as 1791 began to persecute the Freemasons as aristocrats. The Grandmaster then existing, Louis Philip Joseph, Duke of Orleans, gave up his title, as we know, and called himself Citizen Equality, and at last, in 1793, declared that he had given up the “phantom” of equality, found in Masonry, for the reality; that in the Republic there should be no Mysteries; and, therefore, he would no more have anything to do with Freemasonry. That same year his head fell under the guillotine, and his blood sealed the “reality of equality”; and most of the members of the two zealous lodges, those of the “Contrat Social” and of the “Neuf Soeurs” were taught, when they met with a like fate, that “real” equality was a more dreadful “phantom” than those they had pursued in the lodges. Only three lodges continued in existence through the Terror by extreme caution and secrecy, and not till the fall of the Terrorists did Brother Roettiers de Montaleau come forth from the prison in which he had been incarcerated simply because he was a Freemason.

Thus did French Masonry weather the terrible storm of the Revolution; the German lodges in the mean time were busy in reforming and strengthening themselves; for a season they withdrew into retirement, and exerted no longer any influence on public affairs. Superstition and child’s play fell into disrepute: the Rosicrucians, the “Asian” and “African” orders, the Templars, and their like, condemned by public opinion, had to give up their absurdities and return to right reason. The general league of German Freemasons projected in 1790 by Bode of Gotha, failed of realization in consequence of the death soon afterward of that enlightened mason (1793); but its purpose was served, though not in its whole extent, by the sturdy Eclectic League of Masonry (Ekletische Freimaurerbund) founded as early as 1783, with headquarters at Frankfort. This League has ever since rendered notable service to the cause of genuine Freemasonry.

_PART TWELFTH._
_Secret Societies of Various Kinds._

1. SOCIETIES OF WITS.

The Comic has a place everywhere in history: there is no lack of it in secret societies; indeed, in such societies it assumes many different forms. For there be secret societies that would be comic; there be secret societies that are comic without knowing it; and finally there be men and parties that by their action against so-called secret societies make themselves comic without intending it.

While Goethe lived at Weimar, there was formed in that city a satirical Society of Chevaliers. Curiously enough it was suggested by Frederic von Goue, a Knight of the Strict Observance and a strong believer in the descent of Freemasonry from Templarism, but a comical old soul withal, and author of a parody of Goethe’s Werther. The members took knightly names: Goethe, for example, was Goetz von Berlichingen; they spoke in the style of chivalry, and they had four degrees. In sarcastic allusion to the revelations promised (but never communicated) in the high pseudomasonic degrees, the degrees of the Society of Chevaliers were, 1, Transition; 2, Transition’s Transition; 3, Transition’s Transition to Transition; 4, Transition’s Transition to Transition of Transition. Only the initiated understood the profound meaning of the Degrees.

Another society of similar nature was that of the Mad Court Councilors founded at Frankfort-on-the-Main by the physician Ehrmann in 1809. Membership consisted only in the receipt from the founder (in recognition of some humorous piece) of a Diploma written in burlesque style in Latin, and bearing the impress of a broad seal. Among men honored with the diploma were Jean Paul, E. M. Arndt, Goethe, Iffland, Schlosser, Creuzer, Chladny, etc. Goethe earned his diploma by a parody of his own “Westoestlicher Diwan,”—“Occidentalischer Orientalismus.”

Many societies of this sort have since arisen, but those of Vienna are worthy of special mention. One of these was called “Ludlamshoehle,” after a not very successful drama of Oehlenschlager’s. It had many distinguished men in its membership. The members were called Bodies, the candidates Shadows. Though mirth was the only object, the police thought it best to suppress the society in 1826. In 1855 appeared the Green Island, a comic-chivalresque society, though it rendered good service to literature and art. Several writers and actors of note belonged to it. A society, the Allschlaraffia was founded at Prague in the ’fifties, which, in 1885, had eighty-five affiliated societies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other countries. A congress of the leagued societies met at Leipsic in 1876, and another at Prague in 1883. The president of each Schlaraffenreich (or society) was called Uhu, but on festive occasions was Aha, and in condemning offenses against the Allschlaraffia, Oho.

2. IMITATIONS OF THE ANCIENT MYSTIC LEAGUES.

There have been and still are in France secret societies that have thought they could in our time transplant to Europe, under Masonic forms, the Egyptian Mysteries. Once there was a Holy Order of the Sophisians, founded by French military officers who had been with Bonaparte in Egypt. The highest dignitaries were called Isiarchs, and the rest of the officers of the society bore similar titles (mostly fictitious) of Egyptian priests. The lodges were Pyramids, and their aera began 15,000 years before Christ. Two orders which still subsist are those of Misraim and of Memphis, both of which in downright earnest trace their origin back to Egyptian antiquity and regard all the secret associations mentioned in the present volume, except those having political aims, as members of one grand association. The fact is that the Misraim system had its origin in 1805, and was founded by some men of loose morals, who contrived to get themselves received into a Freemasons’ lodge in Milan, but who, because they were not promoted as they had hoped to be, went out and formed a Freemasonry of their own. The order spread first over Italy and in 1814 to France. The system has no fewer than ninety degrees, grouped in seventeen classes, and three series. Only the Grandmaster received the ninetieth degree: the “content” of all the degrees is pure nonsense. The Memphis system was introduced into France in 1814 by a Cairene adventurer. It held its first lodge at Montauban in 1815, but has often since that time been obliged to interrupt its work. The Grand Lodge of Paris was called Osiris, the head of the order was Grandmaster of Light; the hierarchy of officials was complex and showy. The degrees were more than ninety in number, to which were added three supreme degrees, but the total was afterward reduced to thirty. They comprised the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Grecian, Scandinavian, and even the Mexican mythologies and theologies. Only two lodges exist to-day, and these the Grand Orient of France took under its wing some years ago, they having given up their silly ideas, and turned to sensible, beneficent work.

Another anachronism is the ghost of Templarism, which in the present century, as in the last, walks abroad: but its connection with Masonry is now rather loose, or even non-existent. Thus, there is no connection between Freemasonry and the New Templars of Paris, whose traditions do not differ from those of the New Observance. They reckon the years from the founding of the order of Templars (1118), and their “learned men” have imagined a succession of Grandmasters deriving from one Larmenius of Jerusalem, nominated, they say, by Molay as his successor. But Larmenius never existed. Here, then, is a new variant of the story put forth by the Strict Observance, the Royal Arch, etc. A document is shown to prove the nomination of Larmenius, but its Latin is not that of the 14th century; and, besides, only the Conventus of the Templars could name a Grandmaster. After the Revolution the new Templars purchased a splendid property in the Nouvelle France suburb of Paris, and from time to time observed the anniversary of Molay’s death, having a solemn mass of requiem performed. The Grandmaster, Raimond Fabre de Palaprat (1804–1838) had under him four Grand Vicars for Europe, Asia, Africa and America—indeed, the whole earth was parceled out among the members in Grand Priories, Minor Priories, Comptrolleries, etc., and the wearers of these titles were happy. There were Clerical Templars, too, the highest grade being that of Bishop. The rules of the New Templarism permitted none to be admitted to the order save men of noble birth: but many a shopkeeper wore the white mantle with red cross.

There are New Templars also in England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States, almost all of whom have received the so-called higher degrees of Freemasonry. The English Templars are divided into two opposing parties, from one of which came the Irish and the American Templars. No one is competent for admission to any of these Templar societies who does not believe that Christ came on earth to save sinners with his blood, and the members must swear to defend this belief with their swords and with their lives. But no one, alas, has yet heard of their deeds on behalf of those imperiled articles of faith. Their lodges are called Commanderies. They have Swordbearers, Bannerbearers, Prelates.

3. IMITATIONS OF FREEMASONRY.

The resuscitation of the ancient order of Druids is another example of imitation of the secret societies of antiquity. Among the Kelts of Gaul and Britain the Druids were, next after the nobles and the warriors, the highest estate. Religion, art, and science were their exclusive province: hence they were priests, poets, and scholars. Their head was a Chief Druid, and they formed an order with special garb, a special mode of writing, degrees and mysteries. The mysteries were certain theological, philosophical, medical, mathematical, etc., dogmata, and these were conveyed in three-membered sentences (triads). They believed in the immortality of the soul and its transmigration, in one god, creation of the world out of nothing, and its transformation (not destruction) by water and fire. Their assemblies were held in caverns and forests, on mountains, and within circles, ringed round with enormous blocks of stone. The Roman emperors persecuted them as they did Jews and Christians, because the Druidic mysteries seemed to them dangerous to the state. In Britain the Bards, i. e., those of the Druids who cultivated poetry and song, were the most influential division of their order. There were three degrees of the Bards—Probationers, Passed Scholars and Learned Bards.

In 1781 a society was formed in London whose members called themselves Druids, and who practiced rites resembling those of Freemasonry. In 1858 there were twenty-seven mutually independent societies of Druids in Britain, but by consolidation the number is now reduced to fifteen. Druidism was introduced into the United States in 1833. Their local organizations are called Groves, and the central organizations Grand Groves. They have three degrees, to which are appended other higher degrees, each with its own High Arch Chapter. There is no close connection between British and American Druidism. In 1872 Druidism was imported into Germany from the United States: there are in the German empire forty Groves, with about 2,000 members. The order of Odd Fellows is of English origin, but is very strong in the United States. It was founded toward the end of the first half of the 18th century, but appears to have been at first a convivial society of “goodfellows,” or odd fellows, with mutual benefit as a secondary object. It was reorganized in 1812, the feature of conviviality dropped, and the beneficent ends made paramount; this is the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. A rather similar organization, the Ancient Order of Foresters, was founded in England about the same time with the Odd Fellows’ order. Forestry also has been transplanted to the United States. American Oddfellowship severed its connection with the British Grand Lodge in 1842. There were in the United States in 1889 more than 600,000 Oddfellows in 10,000 lodges. A society of American origin is that of the Knights of Pythias, founded in Washington in 1864; its object is to disseminate “the great principles of friendship, charity, and benevolence”: it had in 1885 2,000 separate lodges and 160,000 members. The Order of Red Men (Improved Order of Red Men) is of earlier origin than the preceding: the members in their lodge meetings imitate some of the customs of the American aboriginals, and wear an attire resembling that of the Indians. Besides these there are in the United States very many other secret societies having for their end mutual beneficence, as Knights of Malta, Senate of Sparta, Knights of the Mystic Chain, Legion of the Red Cross, Knights of Friendship, Royal Arcanum. The Grand Army of the Republic was founded soon after the close of the civil war. Its members are veteran soldiers of that war. Its ends are to perpetuate the associations of comrades in arms, to relieve distress of members and provide benefit funds, and to advance the interests of the members in every honorable and lawful way. The badge of membership is a small bronze button worn in the coat lapel.

THE END.

_INDEX._

African buildingmasters, 214

Akkadians, 26

Alexander, a false prophet, 124 sqq.;
his trick serpent, 125;
his wife the moon-goddess, 126;
he claims to be a reincarnation of Pythagoras, 127

Amenhotep IV., reformer of Egyptian religion, 17

Angekoks, 36

Animals and trees as gods, 11

Aphrodite Urania, and Aphrodite Pandemos, 40

Apis, sacred bull of Memphis, 14

Apollonius of Tyana, heathen saint, mystic, and thaumaturge, 117 sqq.;
in Mesopotamia, 119;
India, 120;
Ethiopia, 123;
appears after his death, 124

Areoi among the Society Islanders, 37

Aristeas, mysterious personage, his death and sundry reappearances, 89
sqq.

Asiatic Brethren, 214

Baal, 27

Babylonian religion, 26 sqq.

Bacchanalia in Rome, Livy’s narrative, 62 sqq.

Bible translated into Greek, 93

Book of the Dead, 19, 24

Brahma, soul of the universe, 35

Brahmans, 33

Brethren of the Cross, 215

Buddha, Buddhists, 33 sqq.

Chaldaea, 26;
Chaldee astrology, 28

Chimaera, 40

Christianism an inevitable development of Hellenic mysteries, Hellenic
philosophies, and Jewish religion, 99;
its origin, 107 sqq.;
Paul the Apostle, 109;
the Christian church, how developed, 115

Chuenaten, reformer of Egyptian religion, 17

Clermont Chapter, 202

Comic secret societies, 203 sqq.;
Society of Chevaliers, 231;
Ludlamshoehle, 231;
Allschlaraffia, 231

Cretan mysteries, 59

Cuneiform writing, 28

Cybele or Rhea, her mysteries, 65 sqq.;
antics of her devotees, 67

Daemons, Chaldaean, 27

Dead, realm of the, 18;
judgment of the, 20

Death, existence after, with Osiris, 19

Demeter, 49 sqq.

Demotic writing, 23

Devils unknown to the Hellenes, 40

Diodorus on Egyptian mysteries, 22

Dionysiac mysteries. 60 sqq.;
the Dionysiac or Bacchic cult appealed to sensuality, 60;
the phallus honored, 61;
the Maenades and their orgies, 61

Druids, 234

Duk-Duk, 37

Egypt, 9 sqq.;
Nile, 9;
priests and warriors, 10;
religion grounded on astronomy, 11;
Re, the sun-god, becoming the one god, ib.;
worship of animals and plants, 12;
mysteries, 20

Egyptian gods: Shu, Set, Thot, Nunu, Tum, Horos Re, Isis, Osiris, Neit,
Ptah, Amon, Hathor, Harmachis, 13 sqq.

Eleusinian mysteries, 49 sqq.;
basileus, basilissa, 51;
Eumolpidae, Kerytae, 51;
hierophant, 51;
wars suspended during the solemnities, 52;
the myth underlying the Eleusinia, 53;
lesser and greater Eleusinia, 54;
procession to Eleusis, 55;
mystae, epoptae, 50;
the Mystic House, 56

Essenes, a Palestinian order or sect of puritans, 94 sqq.;
called also Therapeutae, 95;
rites of admission, 96;
Essenism a middle term between the Grecian mysteries and
Christianism, 98

Evergetes, league of, 227

Femgerichte of Westphalia, 147 sqq.;
origin, 148;
femic courts exercise jurisdiction all over the empire, 154;
procedure, 165;
death by the rope, 159;
condemning to death a town’s population, 161;
femic courts superseded, 161

Fire Worship, 33

Foresters, 236

Freemasonry, 178 sqq.;
grew out of the Stonemasons’ organization, 180;
first grand lodge instituted 1717, ib.;
recognizes human brotherhood regardless of race or creed, 181:
institution of the three degrees, 182;
diffusion of the order, 183;
its aims, 184;
signs, ritual, symbols, 186;
grand and particular lodges, 187;
women not admitted to the lodge, 190;
Freemasonry in the French revolution, 228 sqq.

German Union of the XXII, 226

Gods, animals and plants as, 11;
of Egypt, 130 sqq.;
of Babylonia, 27 sqq.;
of India, 33 sqq.

Graces, Fates, Furies, 8

Grecian religion, 38 sqq.;
knew no dogma, 39;
nor devils, 40;
hospitable to foreign gods, 40;
worship, a State function, 41;
ritual and sacrifice, 43;
seership and prophecy, 44;
oracles, ib.;
conjuration, 45

Greek initiates of Egyptian mysteries, 21

Gugomos, a mysterious personage, 209

Heaven and Earth as gods, 7

Hellenic mysteries, 45 sqq.;
an anomaly, 47;
Euripides, his praise of the mysteries, also Cicero’s, 48;
their meaning—purification and expiation, 49;
see “Eleusinian Mysteries.”

Herodotus on the great Labyrinth, 18;
on Egyptian mysteries, 26

Hieroglyphs, 23

Hierophant, 51

“High Degrees,” 195 sqq.;
Royal Arch, 199;
mythic descent from Templarism, 200;
Scottish (or Saint Andrew’s) degrees, 201;
peddling high degrees, 203;
Lernais (Marquis), Rosa (Phil. Sam.), 204;
the new Templarism in Germany, ib.;
Strict Observance, 205 sqq.;
fantastic titles, “Knight of the Cockchafer,” etc., 206;
John Aug. Stark invents clerical Templarism, 207;
Gugomos traces the high degrees back to Moses, 209

Hiram myth, 199, 202, 215

Hund, Baron von, a Don Quixote, 203 sqq.

Iacchos, 50

Illuminati, 216 sqq.

Imitations of ancient mystic leagues, 232 sqq.;
Holy Order of Sophisians, 232;
Order of Misraim, Order of Memphis, ib.

Initiates, 5;
initiation into Egyptian mysteries, 22

Isis, 14

Istar, Chaldaean goddess, her descent into the infernal realm, 31

Jasios, son of Zeus, inventor of husbandry, 90

Jesus, his personality, teaching, pretensions, miracles, 102 sqq.

“Johnson, Baron,” a swindler, 204

Judaism and Hellenism, 91 sqq.;
exchange of ideas between Jews and Hellenes, its effects, 93

Kings and queens, deceased, made gods, 17

Klobbergoll, 37

Knigge, Baron Adolf von, founder of Illuminism, 21;
apostatizes, 225

Knights Templar, 129 sqq.;
origin, 131;
degrees, 133;
wealth and power, 134;
secret aims and cryptic beliefs, 135;
contempt for the cross, 136;
worship of an idol, 138;
accused of heresy and members tried by the Inquisition, 141;
many convicted and burnt to death, the order dissolved, 145

Labyrinth at Crocodilopolis, 18

Lernais, an apostle of fraud, 204

Lodge of Unity at Frankfort faithful to genuine freemasonry, 206

“Lost God,” the, 46

Lycurgus in Egypt, 21

Man rivaling Deity, 2

Mithras worship imported from Persia into Rome, 68;
elaborate symbolism of the initiation, human sacrifices, 69;
Heliogabalus an initiate, 70;
Mithras coupled with Zagreus and Attis, and the compound deity called
Sabazius, 70;
initiation into the Sabazian mysteries, 71

Mysteries, invention of, 3;
of Egypt included Monotheism, 23

Mythology of natural phenomena, 8

Natural forces worshiped, 6

New Testament, 110 sqq.;
Joannine gospel a product of the Alexandrine school, 113

Nile, maker of Egypt, 9

Nirvana, 2

Orpheus in Egypt, 22

Orphic societies, 84 sqq.;
secret schools or clubs, 85;
became nests of mendicants and swindlers, 85

Osiris, mysteries of, 14

Pantheism of Brahmans, 34

Persephone, rape of, 49

Persian religion, 32 sqq.

Philo, Hellenist Jewish philosopher, 94

Plato in Egypt, 22

Plutarch on Egyptian religion, 24

Pluto, 7

Poseidon, 7

Priests, ancient, their oeconomy of religious truths, 8

Priests of Assyria and Babylonia, 28

Pythagoras, 72 sqq.;
his visit to Egypt, 75;
to Babylon, 75;
life in Crotona, 76;
his mathematical science, astronomical knowledge, 77;
philosophical views, 78;
his school and the Pythagorean league, fall of the league, 79 sqq.

Re, Egyptian supreme god, 16

Religious ideas, origin of, 5

Riddle of existence, 2

Rosa, Philip Samuel, promoter of the “High Degrees” fraud, 204

Rosicrucianism, 174 sqq.;
John Valentine Andreae its originator, 175;
the mythical friar Christian Rosenkreuz, ib.;
the order claimed to be an offshoot of the knightly order of the
Hospitalers, 177

Rosicrucianism, the new, 211 sqq.

Sabazius: see “Mithras.”

Sais, image at, 1

Samothrace, mysteries of, 57 sqq.;
Cabiri, ib.;
phallic worship, 58;
the initiation, ib.

Satyrs, 40

Schrepfer, founder of the new Rosicrucianism, 212

Schubart, John Christian, promoter of the “High Degrees” fraud, 206

Secret Leagues among savages, 36

Secret Societies, miscellaneous:
The Woodsplitters, 192;
Order of Hope, 193;
of Saint Jonathan (or Joachim), 194;
the Pilgrims’ Chain, ib.;
Order of Argonauts, ib.;
of the Mustardseed, 195;
of the Leal, of the Ducats, ib.;
of the Rose, 196

Shamanism, 26

Siva, 35

Solomonic Legend, 174, 199;
see “Hiram Myth,” and “High Degrees.”

Solon in Egypt, 22

Sorcery among savages, 36

Sphinxes, 15

Spirit, soul, and body, 18

Stark, promoter of the High Degrees delusion, 207

Stonemasons’ lodges, 166 sqq.;
of Germany, 168 sqq.;
league of lodges organized by Albertus Magnus, 169;
usages, rites, passwords, 170;
hostility to ecclesiasticism, 172;
stonemasons and other craftsmen in France, 173 sqq.;
the Solomonic myth, 174;
rival organizations—Compagnonnages, 175;
English stonemasons, 176 sq.

Strict Observance, 207 sqq.

Stuart, Charles Edward, 207

Sumerians, 26

Sun and moon as gods, 7

Swedish rite, 210

Templarism and Freemasonry, 201, 233;
see “High Degrees.”

Vishnu, 35

Weishaupt, Adam, father of Illuminism, 216 sqq.

Zarathustrotema, 32

Zoroaster, 32 sqq.

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