Part 15 (1/2)
It has frequently been argued that Jews can have played no part in Freemasonry at this period since they themselves were not admitted to the lodges. But this is by no means certain; in the article from _The Gentleman's Magazine_ already quoted it is stated that Jews are admitted; de Luchet further quotes the instance of David Moses Hertz received in a London lodge in 1787; and the author of _Les Franc-Masons ecrases_, published in 1746, states that he has seen three Jews received into a lodge at Amsterdam. In the ”Melchisedeck Lodges” of the Continent non-Christians were openly admitted, and here again the Rose-Croix degree occupies the most important place. The highest degrees of this rite were the Initiated Brothers of Asia, the Masters of the Wise, and the Royal Priests, otherwise known as the degree of Melchisedeck or the true Brothers of the Rose-Croix.
This Order, usually described as the _Asiatic Brethren_, of which the centre was in Vienna and the leader a certain Baron von Eckhoffen, is said to have been a continuation of the ”Brothers of the Golden and Rosy Cross,” a revival of the seventeenth-century Rosicrucians organized in 1710 by a Saxon priest, Samuel Richter, known as Sincerus Renatus. The real origins of the Asiatic Brethren are, however, obscure and little literature on the subject is to be found in this country.[436] Their further t.i.tle of ”the Knights and Brethren of St. John the Evangelist”
suggests Johannite inspiration and was clearly an imposture, since they included Jews, Turks, Persians, and Armenians. De Luchet, who as a contemporary was in a position to acquire first-hand information, thus describes the organization of the Order, which, it will be seen, was entirely Judaic. ”The superior direction is called the small and constant Sanhedrim of Europe. The names of those employed by which they conceal themselves from their inferiors are Hebrew. The signs of the third princ.i.p.al degree (i.e. the Rose-Croix) are Urim and Thummim....
The Order has the true secrets and the explanations, moral and physical, of the hierogyphics of the very venerable Order of Freemasonry.”[437] The initiate had to swear absolute submission and unswerving obedience to the laws of the Order and to follow its laws implicitly to the end of his life, without asking by whom they were given or whence they came.
”Who,” asks de Luchet, ”gave to the Order these so-called secrets? That is the great and insidious question for the secret societies. But the Initiate who remains, and must remain eternally in the Order, never finds this out, he dare not even ask it, he must promise never to ask it. In this way those who partic.i.p.ate in the secrets of the Order remain the Masters.”
Again, as in the _Stricte Observance_, the same system of ”Concealed Superiors”--the same blind obedience to unknown directors!
Under the guidance of these various sects of Illumines a wave of occultism swept over France, and lodges everywhere became centres of instruction on the Cabala, magic, divination, alchemy, and theosophy[438]; masonic rites degenerated into ceremonies for the evocation of spirits--women, who were now admitted to these a.s.semblies, screamed, fainted, fell into convulsions, and lent themselves to experiments of the most horrible kind.[439]
By means of these occult practices the _Illumines_ in time became the third great masonic power in France, and the rival Orders perceived the expediency of joining forces. Accordingly in 1771 an amalgamation of all the masonic groups was effected at the new lodge of the _Amis Reunis_.
The founder of this lodge was Savalette de Langes, Keeper of the Royal Treasury, Grand Officer of the Grand Orient, and a high initiate of Masonry--”versed in all mysteries, in all the lodges, and in all the plots.” In order to unite them he made his lodge a mixture of all sophistic, Martiniste, and masonic systems, ”and as a bait to the aristocracy organized b.a.l.l.s and concerts at which the adepts, male and female, danced and feasted, or sang of the beauties of their liberty and equality, little knowing that above them was a secret committee which was arranging to extend this equality beyond the lodge to rank and fortune, to castles and to cottages, to marquesses and bourgeois”
alike.[440]
A further development of the Amis Reunis was the Rite of the _Philalethes_, compounded by Savalette de Langes in 1773 out of Swedenborgian, Martiniste, and Rosicrucian mysteries, into which the higher initiates of the Amis Reunis--Court de Gebelin, the Prince de Hesse, Condorcet, the Vicomte de Tavannes, Willermoz, and others--were initiated. A modified form of this rite was inst.i.tuted at Narbonne in 1780 under the name of ”Free and Accepted Masons du Rit Primitif,” the English nomenclature being adopted (according to Clavel) in order to make it appear that the rite emanated from England. In reality its founder, the Marquis de Chefdebien d'Armisson, a member of the Grand Orient and of the Amis Reunis, drew his inspiration from certain German Freemasons with whom he maintained throughout close relations and who were presumably members of the Stricte Observance, since Chefdebien was a member of this Order, in which he bore the t.i.tle of ”Eques a Capite Galeato.” The correspondence that pa.s.sed between Chefdebien and Salvalette de Langes, recently discovered and published in France, is one of the most illuminating records of the masonic ramifications in existence before the Revolution ever brought to light.[441] To judge by the tone of these letters, the leaders of the Rit Primitif would appear to have been law-abiding and loyal gentlemen devoted to the Catholic religion, yet in their pa.s.sion for new forms of Masonry and thirst for occult lore ready to a.s.sociate themselves with every kind of adventurer and charlatan who might be able to initiate them into further mysteries.
In the curious notes drawn up by Savalette for the guidance of the Marquis de Chefdebien we catch a glimpse of the power behind the philosophers of the _salons_ and the aristocratic adepts of the lodges--the professional magicians and men of mystery; and behind these again the concealed directors of the secret societies, the _real initiates_.
The Magicians
The part played by magicians during the period preceding the French Revolution is of course a matter of common knowledge and has never been disputed by official history. But like the schools of philosophers this sudden crop of magicians is always represented as a sporadic growth called into being by the idle and curious society of the day. The important point to realize is that just as the philosophers were all Freemasons, the princ.i.p.al magicians were not only Freemasons but members of occult secret societies. It is therefore not as isolated charlatans but as agents of some hidden power that we must regard the men whom we will now pa.s.s in a rapid survey.
One of the first to appear in the field was Schroepfer, a coffee-house keeper of Leipzig, who declared that no one could be a true Freemason without practising magic. Accordingly he proclaimed himself the ”reformer of Freemasonry,” and set up a lodge in his own house with a rite based on the Rose-Croix degree for the purpose of evoking spirits.
The meetings took place at dead of night, when by means of carefully arranged lights, magic mirrors, and possibly of electricity, Schroepfer contrived to produce apparitions which his disciples--under the influence of strong punch--took to be visitors from the other world.[442] In the end Schroepfer, driven crazy by his own incantations, blew out his brains in a garden near Leipzig.
According to Lecouteulx de Canteleu, it was Schroepfer who indoctrinated the famous ”Comte de Saint-Germain”--”The Master” of our modern co-masonic lodges. The ident.i.ty of this mysterious personage has never been established[443]; by some contemporaries he was said to be a natural son of the King of Portugal, by others the son of a Jew and a Polish Princess. The Duc de Choiseul on being asked whether he knew the origin of Saint-Germain replied: ”No doubt we know it, he is the son of a Portuguese Jew who exploits the credulity of the town and Court.”[444]
In 1780 a rumour went round that his father was a Jew of Bordeaux, but according to the _Souvenirs of the Marquise de Crequy_ the Baron de Breteuil discovered from the archives of his Ministry that the pretended Comte de Saint-Germain was the son of a Jewish doctor of Strasburg, that his real name was Daniel Wolf, and that he was born in 1704.[445] The general opinion thus appears to have been in favour of his Jewish ancestry.
Saint-German seems first to have been heard of in Germany about 1740, where his marvellous powers attracted the attention of the Marechal de Belle-Isle, who, always the ready dupe of charlatans, brought him back with him to the Court of France, where he speedily gained the favour of Madame de Pompadour. The Marquise before long presented him to the King, who granted him an apartment at Chambord and, enchanted by his brilliant wit, frequently spent long evenings in conversation with him in the rooms of Madame de Pompadour. Meanwhile his invention of flat-bottomed boats for the invasion of England raised him still higher in the estimation of the Marechal de Belle-Isle. In 1761 we hear of him as living in great splendour in Holland and giving out that he had reached the age of seventy-four, though appearing to be only fifty; if this were so, he must have been ninety-seven at the time of his death in 1784 at Schleswig. But this feat of longevity is far from satisfying his modern admirers, who declare that Saint-Germain did not die in 1784, but is still alive to-day in some corner of Eastern Europe. This is in accordance with the theory, said to have been circulated by Saint-Germain himself, that by the eighteenth century he had pa.s.sed through several incarnations and that the last one had continued for 1,500 years. Barruel, however, explains that Saint-Germain in thus referring to his age spoke in masonic language, in which a man who has taken the first degree is said to be three years old, after the second five, or the third seven, so that by means of the huge increase the higher degrees conferred it might be quite possible for an exalted adept to attain the age of 1,500.
Saint-Germain has been represented by modern writers--not only those who compose his following--as a person of extraordinary attainments, a sort of super-man towering over the minor magicians of his day.
Contemporaries, however, take him less seriously and represent him rather as an expert charlatan whom the wits of the _salons_ made the b.u.t.t of pleasantries. His princ.i.p.al importance to the subject of this book consists, however, in his influence on the secret societies.
According to the _Memoires authentiques pour servir a l'histoire du Comte de Cagliostro_, Saint-Germain was the ”Grand Master of Freemasonry,”[446] and it was he who initiated Cagliostro into the mysteries of Egyptian masonry.
Joseph Balsamo, born in 1743, who a.s.sumed the name of Comte de Cagliostro, as a magician far eclipsed his master. Like Saint-Germain, he was generally reputed to be a Jew--the son of Pietro Balsamo, a Sicilian tradesman of Jewish origin[447]--and he made no secret of his arden admiration for the Jewish race. After the death of his parents he escaped from the monastery in which he had been placed at Palermo and joined himself to a man known as Altotas, said to have been an Armenian, with whom he travelled to Greece and Egypt[448]. Cagliostro's travels later took him to Poland and Germany, where he was initiated into Freemasonry[449], and finally to France; but it was in England that he himself declared that he elaborated his famous ”Egyptian Rite,” which he founded officially in 1782. According to his own account, this rite was derived from a ma.n.u.script by a certain George Cofton--whose ident.i.ty has never been discovered--which he bought by chance in London[450]. Yarker, however, expresses the opinion that ”the rite of Cagliostro was clearly that of Pasqually,” and that if he acquired it from a ma.n.u.script in London it would indicate that Pasquilly had disciples in that city. A far more probable explanation is that Cagliostro derived his Egyptian masonry from the same source as that on which Pasqually had drawn for his Order of Martinistes, namely the Cabala, and that it was not from a single ma.n.u.script but from an eminent Jewish Cabalist in London that he took his instructions. Who this may have been we shall soon see. At any rate, in a contemporary account of Cagliostro we find him described as ”a doctor initiated into Cabalistic art” and a Rose-Croix; but after founding his own rite he acquired the name of Grand Copht, that is to say, Supreme Head of Egyptian Masonry, a new branch that he wished to graft on to old European Freemasonry.[451] We shall return to his further masonic adventures later.
In a superior category to Saint-German and Cagliostro was the famous Swabian doctor Mesmer, who has given his name to an important branch of natural science. In about 1780 Mesmer announced his great discovery of ”animal magnetism, the principle of life in all organized beings, the soul of all that breathes.” But if to-day Mesmerism has come to be regarded as almost synonymous with hypnotism and in no way a branch of occultism, Mesmer himself--stirring the fluid in his magic bucket, around which his disciples wept, slept, fell into trances or convulsions, raved or prophesied[452]--earned not unnaturally the reputation of a charlatan. The Freemasons, eager to discover the secret of the magic bucket, hastened to enrol him in their Order, and Mesmer was received into the Primitive Rite of Free and Accepted Masons in 1785.[453]
s.p.a.ce forbids a description of the minor magicians who flourished at this period--of _Schroeder_, founder in 1776 of a chapter of ”True and Ancient Rose-Croix Masons,” practising certain magical, theosophical, and alchemical degrees; of _Ga.s.sner_, worker of miracles in the neighbourhood of Ratisbonne; of ”the Jew Leon,” one of a band of charlatans who made large sums of money with magic mirrors in which the imaginative were able to see their absent friends, and who was finally banished from France by the police,--all these and many others exploited the credulity and curiosity of the upper cla.s.ses both in France and Germany between the years of 1740 and 1790. De Luchet, writing before the French Revolution, describes the part played in their mysteries by the soul of a Cabalistic Jew named Gablidone who had lived before Christ, and who predicted that ”in the year 1800 there will be, on our globe, a very remarkable revolution, and there will be no other religion but that of the patriarchs.”[454]
How are we to account for this extraordinary wave of Cabalism in Western Europe? By whom was it inspired? If, as Jewish writers a.s.sure us, neither Marlines Pasqually, Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, nor any of the visible occultists or magicians were Jews, the problem only becomes the more insoluble. We cannot believe that Sanhedrims, Hebrew hieroglyphics, the contemplation of the Tetragrammaton, and other Cabalistic rites originated in the brains of French and German aristocrats, philosophers, and Freemasons. Let us turn, then, to events taking place at this moment in the world of Jewry and see whether these may provide some clue.
8