Part 18

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