11. Modern Freemasonry
In the foregoing portion of this book we have followed the history of Freemasonry in the past and the various interpretations that have been placed on its rites and ceremonies. The question now arises: what is the role of Freemasonry to-day?
The fundamental error of most writers on this question, whether Masonic or anti-Masonic, is to represent all Freemasons as holding a common belief and animated by a common purpose. Thus on one hand the panegyrics by Freemasons on their Order as a whole, and on the other hand the sweeping condemnations of the Order by the Catholic Church, are equally at fault.
The truth is that Freemasonry in a generic sense is simply a system of binding men together for any given purpose, since it is obvious that allegories and symbols, like the x and y of algebra, can be interpreted in a hundred different manners. Two pillars may be said to represent strength and stability, or man and woman, or light and darkness, or any other two things we please. A triangle may signify the Trinity, or Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, or any other triad. To say that any of these symbols have an absolute meaning is absurd.
The allegories of Freemasonry are equally capable of various interpretations. The building of the Temple of Solomon may signify the progress of any undertaking and Hiram the victim of its opponents. So also with regard to the "secret tradition" of Freemasonry concerning "a loss which has befallen humanity"[658] and its ultimate recovery. Any body of people working for an object may be said to have experienced a loss and to aim at its recovery.
In the same way the whole organization of Freemasonry, the plan of admitting candidates to successive degrees of initiation, of binding them to secrecy by fearful oaths, is one that can be employed for any purpose, social, political, philanthropic, or religious, for promoting that which is good or for disseminating that which is evil. It may be used to defend a throne or to overthrow it, to protect religion or to destroy it, to maintain law and order or to create anarchy.
Now, there was, as we have seen, from the beginning, besides the written charges, an oral tradition in Masonry, after the manner of the Cabala, on which the guidance of the society depended. The true character of any form of Freemasonry is thus not to be judged only by its printed ritual, but by the oral instruction of the initiates and the interpretations placed on the symbols and ritual. Naturally these interpretations vary in different countries and at different periods. Freemasonry is described in its Ritual as "a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." But what code of morality? In studying the history of the Order we shall find that the same code was by no means common to all masonic bodies, nor is it to-day. Some maintain a very high standard of morals; others appear to possess no standard at all. Mr. Waite observes that "the two doctrines of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul constitute 'the philosophy of Freemasonry.'"[659] But these doctrines are by no means essential to the existence of Freemasonry; the Grand Orient has renounced both, but it still ranks as Freemasonry.
M. Paul Nourrisson is therefore perfectly right in saying: "There are as many Masonries as countries; there is no such thing as universal Masonry."[660] Broadly, however, modern Freemasonry may be divided into two kinds: the variety worked in the British Empire, in America, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, etc., and Grand Orient Masonry, which prevails in Catholic countries and of which the most important centre is the Grand Orient of Paris.
Continental Masonry
The fact that Masonry in Protestant countries is neither revolutionary nor anti-religious is frequently used by Catholic writers to show that Protestantism identifies itself with the aims of Masonry, and by Freemasons to prove that the tyranny of the Church of Rome has driven Masonry into an attitude hostile to Church and State. The point overlooked in both these contentions is the essential difference in the character of the two kinds of Masonry. If the Grand Orient had adhered to the fundamental principle of British Masonry not to concern itself with religion or politics, there is no reason why it should have come into conflict with the Church. But its duplicity on this point is apparent. Thus in one of its earlier manuals it declares, like British Masonry, that it "never interferes with questions of government or of civil and religious legislation, and that whilst making its members participate in the perfecting of all sciences, it positively excepts in the lodges two of the most beautiful, politics and theology, because these two sciences divide men and nations which Masonry constantly tends to unite."[661] But on a further page of the same manual from which this quotation is taken we find it stated that Masonry is simply "the political application of Christianity."[662] Indeed, during the last fifty years the Grand Orient has thrown off the mask and openly declared itself to be political in its aims. In October 1887 the Venerable Bro∴ Blanc said in a discourse which was printed for the lodges:
You recognise with me, my brothers, the necessity for Freemasonry to become a vast and powerful political and social society having a decisive influence on the resolutions of the Republican government.[663]
And in 1890 the Freemason Fernand Maurice declared "that nothing should happen in France without the hidden action of Freemasonry," and "if the Masons choose to organize, in ten years' time no one in France will be able to move outside us (personne ne bougera plus en France en dehors de nous)."[664]
This is the despotic power which the Grand Orient has established in opposition to both Church and Government.
Moreover, Grand Orient masonry is not only political but subversive in its political aims. Instead of the peaceful trilogy of British masonry, "Brotherly love, relief, and truth," it has throughout adhered to the formula which originated in the Masonic lodges of France and became the war-cry of the Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." "It is the law of equality," says Ragon, "that has always endeared Masonry to the French," and "as long as equality really exists only in the lodges, Masonry will be preserved in France."[665] The aim of Grand Orient Masonry is thus to bring about universal equality as formulated by Robespierre and Babeuf. In the matter of liberty we read further that as men are all by nature free--the old fallacy of Rousseau and of the Declaration of the Rights of Man--therefore "no one is necessarily subjected to another nor has the right to rule him."[666] The revolutionary expresses the same idea in the phrase that "no man should have a master." Finally, by fraternity Grand Orient Masonry denotes the abolition of all national feeling.
It is to Masonry [Ragon says again] that we owe the affiliation of all classes of society, it alone could bring about this fusion which from its midst has passed into the life of the peoples. It alone could promulgate that humanitarian law of which the rising activity, tending to a great social uniformity, leads to the fusion of races, of different classes, of morals, codes, customs, languages, fashions, money, and measures. Its virtuous propaganda will become the humanitarian law of all consciences.[667]
The policy of the Grand Orient is thus avowedly International Socialism. Indeed in a further passage Ragon plainly indicates this fact:
Every generous reform, every social benefit derives from it, and if these survive it is because Masonry lends them its support. This phenomenon is due only to the power of its organization. The past belongs to it and the future cannot escape from it. By its immense lever of association it alone is able to realize by a productive communion (communion génératrice) that great and beautiful social unity conceived by Jaurez, Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier. If Masons wish it, the generous conceptions of these philanthropic thinkers will cease to be vain Utopias.[668]
Who are the philanthropic thinkers enumerated here but the men derisively described by Karl Marx as the "Utopian Socialists" of the nineteenth century? Utopian Socialism is thus simply the open and visible expression of Grand Orient Freemasonry. Moreover, these Utopian Socialists were almost without exception Freemasons or members of other secret societies.
The Freemason Clavel confirms the foregoing account by Ragon. Thus, like Ragon, he quotes, the principle expressed in a ritual for the initiation of a Master Mason:
It is expressly forbidden to Masons to discuss amongst themselves, either in the lodge or outside it, religious and political matters, these discussions having usually the effect of creating discord where formerly peace, union, and fraternity reigned. This masonic law admits of no exceptions.[669]
But Clavel also goes on to say:
To efface amongst men the distinctions of colour, rank, creed, opinions, country; to annihilate fanaticism, and ... the scourge of war; in a word, to make of the whole human race one and the same family united by affection, by devotion, by work and knowledge: that, my brother, is the great work which Freemasonry has undertaken, etc.[670]
Up to a point many a British Freemason reading these passages will declare himself completely in accord with the sentiments expressed. Humanitarianism, the obliteration of class distinctions, fraternization between men of all races, conditions, and religious creeds, enter of course largely into the spirit of British Masonry, but form simply the basis on which Masons meet together in the lodges and not a political system to be imposed on the world in general.
British Masonry thus makes no attempt to interfere with the existing social system or form of Government; the essence of its teaching is that each member of the Fraternity should seek to reform himself and not society. In a word, individual regeneration takes the place of the social reorganization advocated by the Grand Orient under the influence of Illuminism. The formula of the "United States of Europe" and of the "Universal Republic" first proclaimed by the Illuminatus, Anacharsis Clootz,[671] has long been the slogan of the French lodges.[672]
In the matter of religion, Grand Orient Masonry has entirely departed from the principle laid down by the British lodges. If the Catholic Church has shown itself hostile to Masonry, it must be remembered that in Catholic countries Masonry has shown itself militantly anti-Catholic. "Freemasonry," one of its modern orators declared, "is the anti-Church, the anti-Catholicism, the Church of Heresy (la contre Eglise, le contre Catholicisme, l'Eglise de l'Hérésie)."[673] The Bulletin of the Grand Orient in 1885 officially declared: "We Freemasons must pursue the definite demolition of Catholicism."
But the Grand Orient goes further than this and attacks all forms of religion. Thus, as has been said, those "ancient landmarks" of British Masonry, belief in the Great Architect of the Universe and in the immortality of the soul, had never formed an integral part of its system, and it was only in 1849 that for the first time "it was distinctly formulated that the basis of Freemasonry is a belief in God and in the immortality of the soul, and the solidarity of Humanity." But in September 1877 the first part of this formula was deleted, all allusions to the Great Architect were omitted, and the statute now reads: "Its basis is absolute liberty of conscience and the solidarity of Humanity."[674] British Freemasonry, which does not admit liberty of conscience in the sense of Atheism, but demands that every Mason should profess belief in some form of religion and which insists that the Volume of the Sacred Law--in England the Bible, in Mohammedan countries the Koran, and so on--should be placed on the table in its lodges, thereupon broke off all relations with the Grand Orient. In March 1878 the following resolution was passed unanimously:
That the Grand Lodge, whilst always anxious to receive in the most fraternal spirit the Brethren of any foreign Grand Lodge whose proceedings are conducted according to the Ancient Landmarks of the Order, of which a belief in T.G.A.O.T.U. is the first and most important, cannot recognize as "true and genuine" Brethren any who have been initiated in lodges which either deny or ignore that belief.[675]
The Grand Orient, says M. Copin Albancelli, not content with renouncing the Great Architect whose glory it had celebrated on every possible occasion and whose praises had been incessantly sung in its lodges, demanded of its initiates that they should declare themselves to be absolutely convinced that the Great Architect was nothing but a myth.[676] More than this, violent anti-religious tirades have been permitted and even applauded in the lodges. Thus in 1902 the Freemason Delpech in his discourse at a masonic banquet uttered these words:
The triumph of the Galilean has lasted twenty centuries; he is dying in his turn. The mysterious voice which once on the mountains of Epirus announced the death of Pan, to-day announces the death of the deceiver God who had promised an era of justice and peace to those who should believe in him. The illusion has lasted very long; the lying God in his turn disappears; he goes to rejoin in the dust of ages the other divinities of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, who saw so many deluded creatures throw themselves at the food of their altars. Freemasons, we are pleased to state that we are not unconcerned with this ruin of false prophets. The Roman Church, founded on the Galilean myth, began to decline rapidly on the day when the masonic association was constituted. From the political point of view Freemasons have often varied. But in all times Freemasonry has stood firm on this principle: war on all superstitions, war on all fanaticism.[677]
How is it possible to reconcile this attitude towards religion in general and Christianity in particular with the fact that the Grand Orient still works the Rose-Croix degree? This degree--which, as we have seen, was first devised (whether in Scotland or in France) to give a Christian meaning to Masonry--was only incorporated into British Freemasonry in 1846 and in our country has retained its original character. Its ritual, centring around a lost word, signifies that the Old Testament dispensation has come to an end with the Crucifixion, and is so strongly Christian that no Jew, Mohammedan, or other non-Christian can be admitted to it. Moreover, since this degree, known as the eighteenth degree, forms in reality the first degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, as worked in this country, non-Christians are excluded from the whole of this Rite and can only take the degrees of Royal Arch, Mark Mason, Royal Ark Mariner, and finally Royal Select and Super-Excellent Master. Consequently the thirty-three Masons of the thirty-third degree who compose the Supreme Council which directs the Ancient and Accepted Rite are necessarily professing Christians. Exactly the opposite is the case in France; the Rose-Croix, worked by professing atheists and Jews, can only be parody of Christian mysteries.
Now, it is essential to realize that in France the anti-masonic camp is divided into two parties. Whilst the majority of Catholic writers regard Freemasonry itself as the source of all evil--"the Synagogue of Satan"--more impartial investigators have pronounced the opinion that it is not Freemasonry even of the Grand Orient variety but something concealed behind Freemasonry which constitutes the principal danger. This view is expressed by M. Copin Albancelli, whose book Le Pouvoir occulte contre la France is of the utmost importance to an understanding of the masonic danger, for here there can be no question of Catholic prejudice or of imaginary accusations made by a stranger to Masonry. M. Copin Albancelli entered the Grand Orient as an agnostic and has never returned to the bosom of the Church; yet as a Frenchman, a patriot, and a believer in law, morality, and Christian ethics he found himself obliged, after six years' experience in the lodges and after attaining the degree of Rose-Croix, to leave Freemasonry and, further, to denounce it. From what he himself heard and observed M. Copin Albancelli declares the Grand Orient to be anti-patriotic, subversive of all morality and religious belief, and an immense danger to France.
But further than this, M. Copin Albancelli declares the Grand Orient to be a system of deception by which members are enlisted in a cause unknown to themselves; even the initiates of the upper degrees are not all aware of the real aim of the Order or of the power behind it. M. Copin Albancelli thus arrives at the conclusion that there are three Freemasonries one above the other: (i) Blue Masonry (i.e. the three Craft Degrees), in which none of the real secrets are revealed to the members and which serves merely as a sorting-ground for selecting likely subjects; (2) the Upper Degrees, in which most of the members, whilst imagining themselves to have been initiated into the whole secret of the Order and "bursting with importance" over their imaginary rôle of leaders, are only admitted to a partial knowledge of the goal to which they are tending; and (3) the inner circle, "the true masters," those who conceal themselves behind high-grade Masonry. Admission to this inner circle may be, moreover, not a matter of degrees. "Whilst in the lower Masonries the adepts are obliged to pass through all the degrees of the established hierarchy, the upper and invisible Freemasonry is certainly recruited not only amongst the thirty-three degrees but in all the groups of upper-degree Masonry, and perhaps even in certain exceptional cases outside these."[678] This inner and invisible Freemasonry is to a large extent international.
The most illuminating passage in the whole of M. Copin Albancelli's book is where he describes an experience that befell him after he had taken the degree of Rose-Croix. It was then that one of his superiors took him aside and addressed him in the following terms:
"You realize the power which Freemasonry has at its disposal. We can say that we hold France. It is not because of our numbers, since there are only 25,000 Freemasons in this country [this was in 1889]. Nor is it because we are the brains, for you have been able to judge of the intellectual mediocrity of the greater number of these 25,000 Freemasons. We hold France because we are organized and the only people who are organized. But above all, we hold France because we have an aim, this aim is unknown; as it is unknown, no obstacle can be put in its way; and finally, as no obstacle is put up, the way is wide open before us. This is logical, is it not?"
"Absolutely."
"Good. But what would you say of an association which instead of consisting of 25,000 nonentities as in Freemasonry, were composed of, say, only a thousand individuals, but a thousand individuals recruited in the manner that I will tell you."
And the Freemason went on to explain the way in which such individuals were selected, the months and years of observation, of supervision, to which they were subjected, so as to form a body of picked men inside Freemasonry capable of directing its operations.
"You can imagine the power at the command of such an association?"
"An association thus selected would do anything it chose. It could possess the world if it pleased."
Thereupon the higher adept, after asking for a further promise of secrecy, declared:
"Well, in exchange for this promise, Brother Copin, I am authorized to let you know that this association exists and that, further, I am authorized to introduce you into it."[679]
It was then that Monsieur Copin Albancelli understood that the point to which the conversation was leading up was not, as he had at first supposed, an invitation to take the next step in Freemasonry--the thirtieth degree of Knight Kadosch--but to enter through a side-door into an association concealed within Freemasonry and for which the visible organization of the latter served merely as a cover. A very curious resemblance will here be noticed between the method of sounding M. Copin Albancelli and that of the Illuminatus Cato in the matter of Savioli, described in a passage already quoted:
Now that he is a Mason I have ... taken up the general plan of our ⊙, and as this pleased him I said that such a thing really existed, whereat he gave me his word that he would enter it.
M. Copin Albancelli, however, did not give his word that he would enter it, but, on the contrary, checked further revelations by declaring that he would leave Freemasonry.
This experience had afforded him a glimpse of "a world existing behind the masonic world, more secret than it, unsuspected by it as by the outside world."[680] Freemasonry, then, "can only be the half-lit antechamber of the real secret society. That is the truth."[681] "There exists then necessarily a permanent directing Power. We cannot see that Power, therefore it is occult."[682]
For some time M. Copin Albancelli concluded this Power to be "the Jewish power," and elaborated the idea in a further work[683]; but the war has led him to develop his theories in yet another book, which will shortly appear.
That the lodges of the Grand Orient are largely controlled by Jews is, however, certain, and that they are centres of political propaganda is equally undeniable. We have only to glance at the following extracts--some of which are reproduced on the opposite page--from the programme of debates in the Bulletin of the Grand Orient for June 5, 1922, to recognize that the ideas they propagate are simply those of International Socialism:
Loge "Union et France": Lecture du Rapport de notre T∴ C∴ F∴ Chardard sur "L'Exploitation des richesses nationales au profit de la collectivité."
Loge "Les Rénovateurs": "Exploitation des Richesses nationales et des grosses Entreprises an profit de la collectivité." Conférence de notre F∴ Goldschmidt, Orat∴ adjoint sur la même question.
[Illustration: News paper clippings]
Loge "Les Zélés Philanthropes": "La Transformation de la Société Actuelle s'impose-t-elle?" Conférence par le T∴ C∴ F∴ Edmond Cottin.
Loge "Paix-Travail-Solidarité": "Rôle de la Franc-Maçonnerie dans la politique actuelle" par le F∴ F∴
Loge "Les Trinitaires": "Le Socialisme Français" par le T∴ Ill. F∴ Elie May.
Ten∴ Collective des L∴ "Emmanuel Arago" & "les Coeurs Unis indivisibles": "Comment propager notre Idéal Maçonnique dans le Monde profane." Conférence par le F∴ Jahia, de la R∴ L∴ Isis Monthyon.
Loge "Isis Monthyon et Conscience et Volonté": "La Terreur et le Péril Fasciste en Italie, le Fascisme et la F∴-Maç∴ Italienne," impressions de notre F∴ Mazzini, de retour, après un séjour prolongé en Italie.
It will be seen by the last of these extracts that Grand Orient Masonry is the enemy of Fascismo, which saved Italy in her hour of peril. Indeed, the Italian Masons passed a resolution which was directly opposed to Fascist views, especially with regard to the religious policy of Mussolini, who has restored the crucifix to the schools and religious teaching to the curriculum. The Fascist Giornale di Roma declared that the principles announced by the Masons in this resolution were those which threatened to submerge the State and nation. Consequently Mussolini declared that Fascisti must either leave their lodges or leave Fascismo.[684]
In Belgium Freemasonry has taken the same political and anti-religious course. In 1856 the directing committee of the Belgian Grand Orient declared: "Not only is it the right but the duty of the lodges to supervise the actions in public life of those amongst its members whom it has placed in political posts, the right to demand explanations...."[685] When in 1866 at a funeral ceremony in honour of the deceased King Leopold I the Grand Orient of Belgium displayed the maxim, "The soul which has emanated from God is immortal," the Freemasons of Louvain entered a violent protest on the ground that "Free-thinking had been admitted by the Belgian lodges in 1864 as its fundamental principle," and that the Grand Orient had therefore violated the convictions of its members.[686]
In Spain and Portugal Freemasonry has played not merely a subversive but an actively revolutionary and sanguinary rôle. The anarchist Ferrer, intimately concerned with a plot to murder the King of Spain, was at the same moment entrusted with negotiations between the Grand Orient of France and the Grand Lodge of Catalonia.[687] These murderous schemes, frustrated in Spain, met, however, in Portugal with complete success. The Portuguese revolutions from 1910 to 1921 were organized under the direction of Freemasonry and the secret society of Carbonarios. The assassination of King Carlos and his elder son had been prepared by the same secret organizations. In 1908 a pamphlet modelled on the libels published against Marie Antoinette was directed against Queen Amélie and her husband. A month later the assassination took place. Amongst the leaders of the new Republic was Magalhaes Lima, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Portugal.[688]
The authorship of these disorders was, in fact, so clearly recognized that honest Freemasons forsook the lodges. An English Mason, unaware of the true character of Portuguese Freemasonry, when in Lisbon in August 1919, made himself known to several moderate Portuguese Masons, who, while glad to welcome him as a brother, refused to take him to a lodge, declaring that they had severed all connection with Masonry since it had passed under the control of assassins. They also added that the assassination of Señor Paes, the President in December 1918, was the work of certain Portuguese lodges. A special meeting had previously been held in Paris in conjunction with the Grand Orient of France, at which it had been decided that Paes was to be removed. This decision reached, the earliest opportunity of putting it into force was sought--with fatal results. The assassin was imprisoned in the Penitentiary but liberated by the revolution of 1921, and no attempt has been made to recapture him. The murder of Dr. Antonio Granjo in October 1921 was traced to the same agency. In the pocket of the murdered man was found a document from the "Lodge of Liberty and Justice"(!) warning him of the decision taken against him for having ordered the police to protect the British tramway company.[689]
The present Portuguese Government, indeed, makes no secret of its masonic character and prints the square and compass on its bank-notes.
But whilst in Spain and Portugal Freemasonry manifested itself in Anarchist outrages, in the east of Europe the lodges, largely under the control of Jews, followed the line of Marxian Socialism. After the fall of the Bela Kun régime in Hungary a raid on the lodges brought to light documents clearly revealing the fact that the ideas of Socialism had been disseminated by the Freemasons. Thus in the minutes of meetings it was recorded that on November 16, 1906, Dr. Kallos had addressed the Gyor Lodge on Socialist ideals. "The ideal world which we call the masonic world," he declared, "will be also a Socialist world and the religion of Freemasonry is that of Socialism as well." Dr. Kallos then proceeded to acquaint the members with the theories of Marx and Engels, showing that no help was to be found in Utopias, as the interests of the proletarians were in absolute conflict with those of other classes, and these differences could only be settled by international class warfare. Nevertheless with that fear of the proletariat which has always characterized the democrats of revolutionary Freemasonry, Dr. Kallos declared later that "the social revolution must take place without bloodshed."[690] The Karolyi régime was the direct outcome of these illusions, and as in all revolutions paved the way for the more violent elements.
Still further east in Europe the lodges, though revolutionary, instead of following the International Socialist line of Hungarian Freemasonry, exhibited a political and nationalist character. The Young Turk movement originated in the masonic lodges of Salonica under the direction of the Grand Orient of Italy, which later contributed to the success of Mustapha Kemal. Moreover, as we approach the Near East, cradle of the masonic system, we find the Semitic influence not only of the Jews but of other Semite races directing the lodges. In Turkey, in Egypt, in Syria now, as a thousand years ago, the same secret societies which inspired the Templars have never ceased to exist, and in this mingling of the East and West it is possible that the Grand Orient may draw reinforcement from those sources whence it drew its system and its name.
Amongst the strange survivals of early Eastern sects are the Druses of Lebanon, who might indeed be described as the Freemasons of the East; their outer organization closely resembles that of the Craft Degrees in Western Masonry, yet such is their power of secrecy that few if any Europeans have ever succeeded in discovering the secret doctrines. That their tendency is largely political admits of little doubt; in fact men intimately acquainted with the Near East have declared that the influence they exercise over the politics of that region is as far-reaching as that of the Grand Orient over the affairs of Europe and that they form the breeding-ground of all political ideas and changes. Though small in numbers this mysterious society is composed of past masters in the game of intrigue, who, whilst playing apparently a minor part at political meetings, secret or otherwise, or even remaining completely silent, contrive to influence decisions with startling results.
British Masonry
We shall now consider the further ways in which British Masonry differs from the Grand Orient.
In the first place, whilst working the same degrees, its rituals, formulas, and ceremonies, as also the interpretation it places on words and symbols, are different in many essential points.
Secondly, British Masonry is essentially an honest institution. Whereas in the Grand Orient the initiate is led through a maze of ceremonies towards a goal unknown to him which he may discover too late to be other than he supposed, the British initiate, although admitted by gradual stages to the mysteries of the Craft, knows nevertheless from the beginning the general aim of the Order.
Thirdly, British Masonry is primarily philanthropic and the sums it devotes to charitable purposes are immense. Since the war the three principal masonic charities have collected annually over £300,000.
But the point to be emphasized here is that British Masonry is strictly non-political, not merely in theory but in practice, and that it enforces this principle on every occasion. Thus before the recent General Election, the Report of the Board of General Purposes, drawn up by Grand Lodge on December 5, 1923, recalled to the notice of the Craft that "'all subjects of a political nature are strictly excluded from discussion in masonic meetings,' this being in accordance with long-established masonic tradition ... it follows from this that Masonry must not be used for any personal or party purpose in connexion with an election." It further emphasized the distinct caution "that any attempt to bring the Craft into the electioneering arena would be treated as a serious masonic offence."
At the same time a fresh injunction was made with regard to the Grand Orient of France:
As recognition was withdrawn from that body by the United Grand Lodge of England in 1878, ... it is considered necessary to warn all members of our lodges that they cannot visit any lodge under the obedience of a jurisdiction unrecognized by the United Grand Lodge of England; and further that under Rule 150 of the Book of Constitutions, they cannot admit visitors therefrom.
For the reasons given at the beginning of this section British Masonry stands rigidly aloof from all attempts to create an international system of Masonry. The idea was first suggested at the Masonic Congress of Paris in 1889, convened to celebrate the centenary of the first French Revolution, but led to nothing very definite until the Congress of Geneva in September 1902, at which the delegates of thirty-four lodges, Grand Lodges, Grand Orients, and Supreme Councils were present, and a proposal was unanimously adopted "tending towards the creation of an International Bureau for Masonic Affairs," to which twenty Powers, mostly Europeans, gave their adherence. Brother Desmons, of the Grand Orient of France, in an after-dinner speech declared it to have been always "the dream of his life" that "all democracies should meet and understand one another in such a way as one day to form the Universal Republic."[691]
According to the official report of the proceedings, "the representatives of Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, England, Spain, Italy, and Switzerland greeted with much feeling the dawn of this new era." The same Report goes on to observe that--
It is altogether a mistake ... to believe that Freemasonry does not attack the defects of such and such a State, and that consequently it remains a stranger to party-strife and the tendencies of the times.
And again:
Freemasonry has imposed upon itself a task--a mission. It is a question of nothing less than the rebuilding of society on an entirely new basis, which shall be more in accordance with the present conditions of the means of communication, of situation, and production, as well as of a reform of right, of a complete renewal of the principle of existence, especially of the principle of community and of the relations of men among one another.
The Report here quoted is, however, inaccurate in one important particular. No English delegates were present at the Geneva Congress or on any other occasion of the kind. There was a delegate from Adelaide who spoke a good deal, but the Chairman specifically mentioned England as taking no part in the movement. Later on, in a Report of the Board of General Purposes to Grand Lodge on March 2, 1921, a letter from Lord Ampthill, pro Grand Master, appears, declining an invitation from the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina to British Freemasons to attend an International Masonic Congress in Geneva and quoting the following letter from the Grand Secretary as an earlier precedent for this refusal:
I am directed to state, in reply to the invitation to attend an International Masonic Conference in Switzerland during the coming autumn, that the United Grand Lodge of England will be unable to send representatives on the occasion. It never participates in a Masonic gathering in which are treated as an open question what it has always held to be ancient and essential Landmarks of the Craft, these being an express belief in the Great Architect of the Universe, and an obligatory recognition of the Volume of the Sacred Law. Its refusal to remain in fraternal association with such Sovereign Jurisdictions as have repudiated or made light of these Landmarks has long been upon record, and its resolve in this regard remains unshaken.
Lord Ampthill then went on to say:
A further consequence of certain happenings of the war is to make more firm our resolve to keep, as far as in us lies, Freemasonry strictly away from participation in politics, either national or international. This attitude of aloofness from necessarily controversial affairs of State, on which Brethren can legitimately and most properly differ, has ever been maintained by our Grand Lodge since it was first convened in 1717. Because of this, it held aloof from such international conferences as were summoned during the war; and never more than now has the necessity for the maintenance of this attitude been felt by British Freemasons.... For these reasons, the invitation to participate in the proposed International Conference of Freemasons at Geneva cannot be accepted. Such an assembly might be termed informal, but inevitably it would be regarded as opening a door to compromise on those things which this Grand Lodge has always held to be essentials. Such a compromise English Freemasonry will never contemplate. On these essentials we take the firm stand we have always done; we cannot detract from full recognition of the Great Architect of the Universe, and we shall continue to forbid the introduction of political discussion into our Lodges.
British Masonry has thus taken a firm stand against the Grand Orient. But it is regrettable that views so admirably expressed should be confined to masonic correspondence and not made more apparent to the world in general. On the Continent, outside masonic circles, the difference between British Masonry and the Grand Orient variety is not sufficiently known, and the reticence of leading British Masons on this subject has not only played into the hands of the intractable anti-Masons, who declare all Masonry to be harmful, but has strengthened the position of the revolutionaries who use Masonry for a subversive purpose. Thus in the Portuguese revolution of 1920 the Masons of that country who were directing the movement sheltered themselves behind the good name of England. "How can you accuse the lodges of being murder clubs," they said to the people, "when Masonry is directed by England and had King Edward for its Grand Master?"
However ludicrous all this may seem to the British public, yet for the honour of our country such accusations should not remain unrefuted. A witness of the disorders that took place in Portugal declared to the present writer that if only Grand Lodge of England would have published a notice in the Continental press disassociating itself from the Grand Orient in general and from Portuguese Freemasonry in particular, the power of the revolutionaries would have been immensely weakened and the anti-British and pro-German propaganda then circulating in the country defeated. But British Freemasonry preferred to maintain an attitude of aloofness, contenting itself with issuing periodical warnings against the Grand Orient privately to the lodges.
This policy has done much to damage not only the good name of England but of British Masonry in the eyes of the outside world, and particularly in those of Roman Catholics, which is the more regrettable since Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic Church are the only two organized bodies in this country which really exercise discipline over their members and forbid them to belong to subversive secret societies; hence they provide the two strongest bulwarks against the occult forces of revolution. For this reason, as we shall see later, they are the two bodies which are the most feared by the recruiting agents of these societies.
But in the case of Freemasonry the fact is unfortunately too little known to the world in general. As a singularly broad-minded Jesuit has recently expressed it:
The anti-clerical and revolutionary activities of Continental Freemasonry did not begin when the Grand Orient finally abolished God. During a century and more these evil forces had been at work. Nevertheless English Masons only shrugged their shoulders and looked another way, though the true character of foreign Masonry was brought to their notice in such books as that of John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe....
No doubt [the same writer says again] there has been at times a deplorable amount of exaggeration among Continental Catholics in attributing all the moral and social evils of the world to the insidious workings of Freemasonry.... But so long as English Freemasons resolutely avert their gaze from the anti-religious and anti-social activities of their Continental brethren there can be no hope of any better understanding.[692]
It is impossible to deny the truth of these strictures. As has already been pointed out in the course of this book, British Freemasons have frequently not only ignored Robison's warning but vilified him as the enemy of Masonry, although he never attacked their Order but only the perverted systems of the Continent; too often also they have exonerated the most dangerous secret societies, notably the Illuminati, because, apparently from a mistaken sense of loyalty, they conceive it their duty to defend any association of a masonic character. This is simply suicidal. British Masonry has no bitterer enemies than the secret societies working for subversion, which, from the Illuminati onwards, have always regarded honest Masonry with contempt and used its doctrines for an ulterior purpose.
It is easy to see how these doctrines may be perverted to an end directly opposed to that which British Masons have in view. Thus, for example, the idea of the brotherhood of man in the sense of love for all humanity is the essence of Christianity--"Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another." In adopting "brotherly love" as a part of their sacred trilogy British Masons adopt an entirely Christian standpoint. But if by the brotherhood of man is meant that men of every race are equally related and that therefore one owes the same duty to foreigners as to one's fellow-countrymen it is obvious that all national feeling must vanish. The British Freemason does not, of course, interpret the theory in this manner; he cannot seriously regard himself as the brother of the Bambute pygmy or the Polynesian cannibal, thus he uses the term merely in a vague and theoretical sense.
What indeed does the word "brother" literally mean? If we consult the dictionary we shall see it defined as "a male born of the same parents; anyone closely united with or resembling one another; associated in common interests, occupation," etc. It is therefore obviously absurd to say that men of such different races as those referred to are brothers; they are not born of the same kind of parents, they are not united in their aims, they do not remotely resemble one another, and they are not associated in common interests and occupations. Though these happen to be extreme cases, there are nevertheless essential differences between men of the same zone and climate. The Englishman and the Frenchman are not brothers because they do not see life from the same point of view, but that is no reason why they should not be close allies.
The brotherhood of man, if taken literally, is therefore a misleading term, nor is such a relationship necessary to the peace of the world. Cain and Abel were not better friends, for being brothers. David and Jonathan, on the other hand, were not brothers but devoted friends. In striving after universal brotherhood in a literal sense, Freemasons are therefore pursuing a chimera.
The most dangerous fallacy to which democracy, under the influence of Illuminized Freemasonry, has succumbed is that peace between nations can be brought about by means of Internationalism, that is to say, by the destruction of national feeling. Yet a man is not more likely to live at peace with his neighbours because he is devoid of natural affection; on the contrary, the good brother, the devoted father, is most likely to become the faithful friend. Permanent peace between nations will probably never be ensured, but the only basis on which such a situation can conceivably be established is the basis of sane Nationalism--an understanding between the patriotic and virile elements in every country which, because they value their own liberties and revere their own traditions, are able to respect those of other nations. Internationalism is an understanding between the decadent elements in each country--the conscientious objectors, the drawing-room Socialists, the visionaries--who shirk the realities of life and, as the Socialist Karl Kautsky in a description of Idealists has admirably expressed it, "see only differences of opinion and misapprehension where there are actually irreconcilable antagonisms." This is why at times of crisis Idealists are of all men the most dangerous and Pacifists the great promoters of wars. Understanding between nations is wholly desirable, but the destruction of the national spirit everywhere can only lead to the weakening of all countries where this process takes place and the triumph of the nations who refuse to accept the same principle.
It will perhaps be answered that Freemasons do not believe in the doctrine of brotherhood between all men, but only between Masons of all races. But this may lead no less to national disintegration if it creates a nation within each nation, an international fraternity independent of the countries to which its members belong. The logical outcome of this may be that a man will refuse to fight for his country against his brother Masons--it is what has happened in France. The Grand Orient was before the recent war the great breeding-ground of anti-patriotism, where all schemes for national defence were discouraged. Before 1870 the same thing took place, and it was in the masonic lodges that Germany found her most valuable allies.
In the same way the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature lends itself to perversion. Nothing could be more desirable than that man should strive after perfection. Did not Christ enjoin His disciples: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect"? Man is therefore acting in accordance with Christian principles in seeking after divine perfection. But when he comes to believe that he has already attained it he makes of himself a god. "If I justify myself," said Job, "mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse." And St. John: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." More than this, if we seek perfection in others we deceive ourselves equally and make gods of men. This is precisely the conclusion at which perverted Freemasonry and the forms of Socialism deriving from it arrive. Human nature, they say, is itself divine; what need then for other divinities? The Catholic Church is consequently quite right in declaring that the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature leads to the deification of humanity in that it puts humanity in the place of God. The Grand Orient, which definitely accepts this doctrine, has therefore logically erased the name of the Great Architect of the Universe from its ritual and has become an association of Freethinkers and Atheists.
Is it necessary to point out the folly as well as the crime of this delusion--the ludicrous inconsequence of men who divinize humanity yet revile what they call "society"? All the evils of the world, they declare, are not to be found in nature but in "man-made laws," in the institutions of "society." Yet what is society but the outcome of human wills, of human aspirations? Society may be, and no doubt is, in need of reformation, but are not its imperfections the creation of imperfect beings? It is true that to-day the world is in a state of chaos, industrial chaos, political chaos, social chaos, religious chaos. Everywhere men are losing faith in the causes they are supposed to represent; authority questions its own right to govern, democracy is rent with divisions, the ruling classes are abdicating in favour of unscrupulous demagogues, the ministers of religion barter their faith for popularity.
And what has brought the world to this pass? Humanity! Humanity, that all-wise, all-virtuous abstraction that needs no light from Heaven. Humanity that was to take the place of God! If ever there was a moment in the history of the world when the futility of this pretension should be apparent it is the present moment. All the ills, all the confusion, what are they but the outcome of human error and of human passions? It is not Capitalism that has failed, nor yet Democracy, nor yet even Socialism as a principle, it is not monarchy that has broken down, nor Republicanism, nor again religion; it is humanity that has broken down. The ills of Capitalism arise from the egoism of individual capitalists; Socialism has failed because, as Robert Owen discovered, the idle, the quarrelsome, the selfish have prevented its success. If men were perfect, Socialism might succeed, but so might any other system. A perfect capitalist would love his employee as himself, just as a perfect Socialist would be willing to work for the common good. It is the imperfections of human nature that prevent, and will always prevent, any system from being perfect. There will never be a Millennium of man's making. Only the application of Christian principles to human conduct can bring about a better order of things.
Grand Orient Masonry, in deifying human nature, thus not only builds upon the sand, but by its rejection of all religion takes away the sole hope of human progress. Meanwhile, by the support it lends to Socialism it encourages the class war instead of the brotherhood between men of all ranks and conditions which it professes to advocate. British Freemasonry, on the other hand, whilst not interpreting brotherhood in a political sense, nevertheless contributes to social peace. At the annual conference of the Labour Party in 1923 a proposal was made by the extreme section that "any person who is a Free mason should be excluded from any kind of office," it being suggested that "in cases where an understanding has been reached between Trade Union leaders and employers, thus preventing or limiting industrial trouble, the secret has been the bond of Freemasonry."[693] Whether this was the case or not, British Masonry, by taking its stand on patriotism and respect for religion, necessarily tends to unite men of all classes and therefore offers a formidable bulwark against the forces of revolution. Any attacks on British Masonry as at present constituted and directed are therefore absolutely opposed to the interests of the country. But at the same time it behoves Masons to beware of the insidious attempts that are being made by irregular secret societies to infiltrate the Craft and pervert its true principles. The present satisfactory condition of Freemasonry in England is owing not only to its established statutes, but to the character of the men who control it--men who are not, as in eighteenth-century France, mere figureheads, but the real directors of the Order. Should the control ever pass into the wrong hands and the agents of secret societies succeed in capturing a number of the lodges, this great stabilizing force might become a gigantic engine of destruction. How insidiously these efforts are being made we shall see in the next chapter.
12. Secret Societies in England
We have seen that from the Illuminati onwards subversive societies have always sought recruits amongst orthodox Freemasons. The reason for this is obvious: not only do the doctrines of Freemasonry lend themselves to perversion, but the training provided in the Lodges makes an admirable preparation for initiation into other secret systems. The man who has learnt to maintain silence even on what may appear to him as trivialities, who is willing to submit to mystification, to ask no questions, and to recognize the authority of superiors whom he is in no way legally obliged to obey, who has, moreover, become imbued with the esprit de corps which binds him to his fellow-members in a common cause, is naturally a better subject for the secret society adept than the free lance who is liable to assert his independence at any moment. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the nature of the masonic oaths. These terrible penalties, which many Freemasons themselves regret as a survival of barbarism and which have in fact been abolished in the higher degrees, have done much to create prejudice against Freemasonry, whilst at the same time they provide an additional incentive to outside intriguers. In the opinion of M. Copin Albancelli, the abolition of the oath would go far to prevent penetration of British Masonry by the secret societies.
Now, by their obligations British Freemasons are forbidden to join these irregular societies, not only because their principles are in conflict with those of orthodox Masonry, but because in most cases they admit women. According to the ruling of Grand Lodge, "any member working under the English Jurisdiction ... violates his Obligation by being present at or assisting in assemblies professing to be Masonic which are attended by women." Warnings to this effect have been frequently given in the Lodges; on September 3, 1919, the Board of General Purposes issued the following report:
The Board's attention is being increasingly drawn to sedulous endeavours which are being made by certain bodies unrecognized as Masonic by the United Grand Lodge of England, to induce Freemasons to join in their assemblies. As all such bodies which admit women to membership are clandestine and irregular, it is necessary to caution Brethren against being inadvertently led to violate their Obligation by becoming members of them or attending their meetings. Grand Lodge, nine years since, approved the action of the Board in suspending from all Masonic rights and privileges two Brethren who had contumaciously failed to explain the grave Masonic irregularity to which attention is now again called; and it is earnestly hoped that no occasion will arise for having again to institute disciplinary proceedings of a like kind.
The idea of women Masons is, of course, not a new one. As early as 1730 lodges for women are said to have existed in France, and towards the end of the century several excellent women, such as the Duchesse de Bourbon and the Princesse de Lamballe, played a leading part in the Order. But this Maçonnerie d'Adoption, as it was called, retained a purely convivial character; a sham ceremonial, with symbols, pass words, and a ritual, was devised as a consolation to the members for their exclusion from the real lodges. These mummeries were, as Ragon observes, "only the pretexts for assemblies; the real objects were the banquet and the ball, which were their inevitable accompaniments."[694]
But this precedent, inaugurated as a society pastime and accompanied by all the frivolity of the age, paved the way for Weishaupt's two classes of women members, who, although never initiated into the secrets of the Order, were to act as useful tools "directed by men without knowing it." For this purpose they were to be divided into two classes, the "virtuous" to play the part of figureheads or decoys, and the "freer-hearted," who were to carry out the real designs of the Order.
The same plan was adopted nearly a hundred years later by Weishaupt's disciple Bakunin, who, however, did admit women as actual initiates into his secret society, the Alliance Sociale Démocratique, but, like Weishaupt, divided them into classes. The sixth category of people to be employed in the work of social revolution is thus described in his programme:
The sixth category is very important. They are the women, who must be divided into three classes: the first, frivolous women, without mind or heart, which we must use in the same manner as the third and fourth categories of men [i.e. by "getting hold of their dirty secrets and making them our slaves">[; the second, the ardent, devoted and capable women, but who are not ours because they have not reached a practical revolutionary understanding, without phrase--we must make use of these like the men of the fifth category [i.e. by "drawing them incessantly into practical and perilous manifestations, which will result in making the majority of them disappear while making some of them genuine revolutionaries">[; finally, the women who are entirely with us, that is to say completely initiated and having accepted our programme in its entirety. We ought to consider them as the most precious of our treasures, without whose help we can do nothing.[695]
The first and only woman to be admitted into real Masonry, if such a term can be applied to so heterogeneous a system, was Maria Deraismes, an ardent French Feminist celebrated for her political speeches and electioneering campaigns in the district of Pontoise and for twenty-five years the acknowledged leader of the anti-clerical and Feminist party.[696] In 1882 Maria Deraismes was initiated into Freemasonry by the members of the Lodge Les Libres Penseurs, deriving from the Grande Loge Symbolique Écossaise and situated at Pecq in the Department of Seine-et-Oise. The proceeding being, however, entirely unconstitutional, Maria Deraismes's initiation was declared by the Grande Loge to be null and void and the Lodge Les Libres Penseurs was disgraced.[697] But some years afterwards Dr. George Martin, an enthusiastic advocate of votes for women, collaborated with Maria Deraismes in founding the Maçonnerie Mixte at the first lodge of the Order named "Le Droit Humain." The Suprême Conseil Universel Mixte was founded in 1899.
The Maçonnerie Mixte was political and in no way theosophical or occult, and its programme, like that of the Grand Orient, was Utopian Socialism, whilst by its insistence on the supremacy of reason it definitely proclaimed its antagonism to all revealed religion. Thus in the involved language of Dr. George Martin himself:
The Ordre Maçonnique Mixte Internationale is the first mixed, philosophic, progressive, and philanthropic Masonic Power to be organized and constituted in the world, placed above all the prooccupations of the philosophical or religious ideas which may be professed by those who ask to become members.... The Order wishes to interest itself principally in the vital interests of the human being on earth; it wishes above all to study in its Temples the means for realizing Peace between all nations and social Justice which will enable all human beings to enjoy during their lives the greatest possible sum of moral felicity and of material well-being.... Claiming no divine revelation and loudly affirming that it is only an emanation of human reason, this fraternal institution is not dogmatic, it is rationalist.[698]
Into this materialist and political club, erected under the guise of Freemasonry, entered Annie Besant with all the strange conglomeration of Eastern doctrines now known as Theosophy.
Theosophy
Before entering on this question it is necessary to make my own position clear. Although I should much prefer not to introduce a personal note into the discussion, I feel that nothing I say will carry any weight if it appears to be an expression of opinion by one who has never considered religious doctrines from anything but the orthodox Christian point of view. I should explain, then, that I have known Theosophists from my early youth, that I have travelled in India, Ceylon, Burma, and Japan and seen much to admire in the great religions of the East. I do not believe that God has revealed Himself to one portion of mankind alone and that during only the last 1,900 years of the world's history; I do not accept the doctrine that all the millions of human beings who have never heard of Christ are plunged in spiritual darkness; I believe that behind all religions founded on a law of righteousness there lies a divine and central truth, that Ikhnaton, Moses and Isaiah, Socrates and Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mohammed were all teachers who interpreted to men the aspect of the divine as it had been vouchsafed to them and which in harmony with the supreme revelation given to man by Jesus Christ.
This conception of an affinity between all great religious faiths was beautifully expressed by an old Mohammedan to a friend of the present writer with whom he stood watching a Hindu procession pass through an Indian village. In answer to the Englishman's enquiry, "What do you think of this?" the Mohammedan replied:
"Ah, sahib, we cannot tell. We know of three roads up the hill of endeavour to the gates of Paradise--the way of Mousa [Moses], the way of Issa [Jesus], and the way of Mahmoud, and there may be other roads of which you and I know nothing. I was born in the way of Mahmoud, and I believe it to be the best and the easiest to follow, and you were born in the way of Issa. And of this I am very sure: that if you will follow your guide on your road and I follow my guide on my road, when we have climbed the hill of endeavour, we shall salute one another again at the gates of Paradise."
If, then, in the following pages I attempt to show the errors of Theosophy, it is not because I do not recognize that there is much that is good and beautiful in the ancient religions from which it professes to derive.
But what is Theosophy? The word, as we have already seen, was used in the eighteenth century to denote the theory of the Martinists; it was known two centuries earlier when Haselmeyer in 1612 wrote of "the laudable Fraternity of the Theosophists of the Rosy Cross." According to Colonel Olcott, who with Madame Blavatsky founded the modern Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, the word was discovered by one of the members "in turning over the leaves of a Dictionary" and forthwith unanimously adopted.[699] Madame Blavatsky had arrived in America two years earlier, before which date she professed to have been initiated into certain esoteric doctrines in Thibet. Monsieur Guénon, who writes with inside knowledge of the movement, indicates, however, the existence of concealed superiors on the Continent of Europe by whom she was in reality directed.
What is very significant ... is that Madame Blavatsky in 1875 wrote this: "I have been sent from Paris to America in order to verify phenomena and their reality and to show the deception of the Spiritualist theory." Sent by whom? Later she will say: by the "Mahatmas"; but then there was no question of them, and besides it was in Paris that she received her mission, and not in India or in Thibet.[700]
Elsewhere Monsieur Guénon observes that it is very doubtful whether Madame Blavatsky was ever in Thibet at all. These obvious attempts at concealment lead Monsieur Guénon therefore to the conclusion that in the background of Theosophy there existed a mysterious centre of direction, that Madame Blavatsky was simply "an instrument in the hands of individuals or occult groups sheltering behind her personality," and that "those who believe she invented everything, that she did everything by herself and on her own initiative, are as much mistaken as those who, on the contrary, believe her affirmations concerning her relations with the pretended Mahatmas."[701]
There is some reason to believe that the people under whom Madame Blavatsky was working at this date in Paris were Serapis Bey and Tuiti Bey, who belonged to "the Egyptian Brothers." This might answer M. Guénon's question: "By whom was she sent to America?" But another passage from Madame Blavatsky's writings, on the person of Christ, that M. Guénon quotes later, indicates a further source of inspiration: "For me, Jesus Christ, that is to say the Man-God of the Christians, copy of the Avatars of all countries, of the Hindu Chrishna as of the Egyptian Horus, was never a historical personage." Hence the story of His life was merely an allegory founded on the existence of "a personage named Jehoshua born at Lud." But elsewhere she asserted that Jesus may have lived during the Christian era or a century earlier "as the Sepher Toldoth Jehoshua indicates" (my italics). And Madame Blavatsky went on to say of the savants who deny the historical value of this legend, that they--
either lie or talk nonsense. It is our Masters who affirm it [my italics]. If the history of Jehoshua or Jesus Ben Pandera is false, then the whole of the Talmud, the whole of the Jewish canon law, is false. It was the disciple of Jehoshua Ben Parachia, the fifth President of the Sanhedrim since Ezra, who re-wrote the Bible.... This story is much truer than that of the New Testament, of which history does not say a word.[702]
Who were the Masters whose authority Madame Blavatsky here invokes? Clearly not the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood to whom she habitually refers by this term, and who can certainly not be suspected of affirming the authenticity of the Toldoth Yeshu. It is evident, then, that there were other "Masters" from whom Madame Blavatsky received this teaching, and that those other masters were Cabalists.
The same Judaic influence appears more strongly in a book published by the Theosophical Society in 1903, where the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu are quoted at great length and the Christians are derided for resenting the attacks on their faith contained in these books, whilst the Jews are represented as innocent, persecuted victims. One passage will suffice to give an idea of the author's point of view:
The Christ [said the mystics] was born "of a virgin"; the unwitting believer in Jesus as the historical Messiah in the exclusive Jewish sense, and in his being the Son of God, nay God Himself, in course of time asserted that Mary was that virgin; whereupon Rabbinical logic, which in this case was simple and common logic, met this extravagance by the natural retort that, seeing that his paternity was unacknowledged, Jesus was therefore illegitimate, a bastard [mamzer].[703]
It is obviously, then, less from Thibetan Mahatmas, Hindu Swamis, Sikh Gurus, or Egyptian Brothers than from Jewish Cabalists that these leaders of Theosophy have borrowed their ideas on Jesus Christ. As the Jewish writer Adolphe Franck has truly observed: "Dès qu'il est question de théosophie, on est sûr de voir apparaître la Kabbale."[704] And he goes on to show the direct influence of Cabalism on the modern Theosophical Society.
Mrs. Besant, without endorsing the worst blasphemies of the Toledot Yeshu, nevertheless reflected this and other Judaic traditions in her book Esoteric Christianity, where she related that Jesus was brought up amongst the Essenes, and that later He went to Egypt, where He became an initiate of the great esoteric lodge--that is to say, the Great White Lodge--from which all great religions derive. It will be seen that this is only a version of the old story of the Talmudists and Cabalists, perpetuated by the Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, and the nineteenth-century Ordre du Temple.[705] But according to one of Mrs. Besant's Theosophical antagonists, her doctrine "rests on a perpetual equivocation," and whilst allowing the English public to believe that when she spoke of the coming Christ she referred to the Christ of the Gospels, she stated to her intimates what Mr. Leadbeater taught in his book The Inner Life, namely, that the Christ of the Gospels never existed, but was an invention of the monks of the second century.[706] It should be understood, however, that in the language of the Theosophists, led by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater, Jesus and "the Christ" are two separate and distinct individualities, and that when they now speak of "the Christ" they refer to someone living in a bungalow in the Himalayas with whom Mr. Leadbeater has interviews to arrange about his approaching advent.[707] Portraits of this person have been distributed amongst the members of "The Star in the East," an Order founded at Benares in 1911 by Mr. Leadbeater and J. Krishnamurti for the purpose of preparing the world for the coming of the Great Teacher.
But it is time to return to the alliance between Theosophy and the Maçonnerie Mixte. Whether Mrs. Besant, who had begun her career as a Freethinker, retained some lingering belief in her earlier creed at the time she entered into relations with the Order, or whether she saw in this materialistic society a valuable concrete organization for the dissemination of her new esoteric theories, it is impossible to know. At any rate, she rose rapidly through the succeeding degrees and became before long Vice President of the Suprême Conseil, which appointed her its national delegate to Great Britain. It was in this capacity that she founded the English branch of the Order under the name of Co-Masonry (that is, admitting both sexes) at the Lodge "Human Duty" in London, which was consecrated on September 26, 1902, and later founded another lodge at Adyar in India, named "The Rising Sun." The number of lodges on the Grand Roll of Co-Masonry, including those abroad, is now said to be no less than 442.
Co-Masonry thus receives a two-fold direction, for whilst remaining in constant correspondence with the Suprême Conseil Universel Mixte, situated at 5 Rue Jules-Breton in Paris and presided over by the Grand Master Piron, with Madame Amélie Gédalje, thirty-third degree, as Grand Secretary-General, it receives further instructions from "the V∴ Ill∴ Bro∴ Annie Besant 33°" at Adyar. In order not to shock the susceptibilities of English adepts who might be repelled by the rationalist tendencies of the Maçonnerie Mixte, Mrs. Besant has, however, borrowed the formulas of British Masonry together with its custom of placing the V.S.L. on the table in the lodges. These conflicting doctrines are blended in an amusing manner on the certificates of the Order, where at the top we find the French motto and initials:
Liberté Égalité Fraternité À∴ L∴ G∴ D∴ L'H∴ (i.e. à la gloire de l'Humanité)
and below, for the benefit of English members, the initials of the British masonic device, that does not of course appear on the diplomas of the French Order, which, like the Grand Orient, has rejected the Great Architect:
T∴ T∴ G∴ O∴ T∴ G∴ A∴ O∴ T∴ U∴ (To the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe).
Our Co-Masons therefore enjoy the advantage of being able to choose whether they shall render glory to God or to Humanity. That the two devices are somewhat incompatible does not appear to strike the English initiates, nor do they probably realize the imposture practised on them by the further wording of the certificate, which, after announcing in imposing capitals "To all Masons dispersed over both Hemispheres, Greeting," goes on to say "We therefore recommend him (or her) as such to all Freemasons of the Globe, requesting them to recognize him (or her) in all the rights and privileges attached to this Degree, as we will do to all presenting themselves under similar circumstances."
Now, any British Mason will see at a glance that all this is a false pretension. No order of Masonry can recommend its members for rights and privileges to "all the Freemasons of the world," for the simple reason that, as has been said, there is no such thing as "Universal Masonry," so that even Grand Lodge of England--the most important Lodge in the world--could not, if it would, accord the right of entry for its members into Continental lodges. As an English Mason recently expressed it:
The impression among non-Masons generally appears to be that a British or Irish member of the Craft is able to enter a masonic lodge in any part of the world and take part in its deliberations and proceedings. To this belief an unqualified denial may at once be given. Nor may a member of a lodge under any Jurisdiction not in communion with the Grand Lodges of the United Kingdom be received as a visitor or as a Joining Member in any subsidiary lodge of the Grand Lodges of England, Ireland, or Scotland.[708]
But for Co-Masonry to make this claim is even more ridiculous, since at the time when the above quoted diploma was drawn up Co-Masonry and its parent, the Maçonnerie Mixte, were not recognized by any other order of Masonry except the "Droit Humain," and it is not only unrecognized but utterly repudiated by Grand Lodge of England. The British Mason, in fact, does not recognize the Co-Mason as a Mason at all, and would violate his obligations by discussing masonic secrets with him or her, so that there is no manner in which the Co-Mason could be accorded masonic rights and privileges by British Masons. In order, further, to keep up the illusion in the minds of its members that they are genuine Masons, Co-Masonry, in its quarterly organ, The Co-Mason, is careful to include masonic news relating to British Masonry as if it formed one and the same order.
With regard to the Grand Orient, an equally tortuous policy was pursued. As we have already seen, the Grande Loge disgraced the lodge that had admitted Maria Deraismes and did not officially recognize the Maçonnerie Mixte. The ritual adopted by the latter Order was, however, not that of British Masonry, and in most Co-Masonic Lodges the ritual employed contains variations derived from the Grand Orient[709]; indeed the Grand Orient character of Co-Masonry has always been generally recognized in masonic circles. This being so, I pointed out in World Revolution that Co-Masonry derives from the Grand Orient, but I received the following protest from a woman Co-Mason:
Are you aware that for twenty years the Grand Orient has refused to recognize it [Co-Masonry] as a legitimate body, just as the English Orthodox Masons do now? Also, we are distinctly told before joining that we shall not be recognized by that body. Also, we have nothing to do with Illuminati, or with Germany. As the Grand Orient have eliminated the Deity, it is rather a dreadful thing to a Mason to be connected in any way with that Order, and I cannot imagine a worse thing could be said about us.
This letter was dated March 6, 1922, and on the 19th of the preceding month of February an alliance between the Grand Orient and Co-Masonry had been finally celebrated at the Grand Temple of the Droit Humain in Paris! We find a report of this ceremony in the Co-Mason for the following April. It is evident, therefore, that members who were likely to be repelled by the idea of connexion with the Grand Orient were assured that no such connexion existed. But when this covert liaison developed into official recognition--although this did not include the right of entry to the lodges of the Grand Orient for women members--the triumphant manner in which the great event was announced in the Co-Mason suggests that the majority of members were likely to feel nothing but satisfaction at association with the Order that "had eliminated the Deity." It is true that a few members protested, and by this time Co-Masonry was too completely under the control of Mrs. Besant for any faction to question her dictates. Moreover, the opposition had been weakened by a schism which took place in the Order in 1908, when a number of members who objected to the introduction of Eastern occultism into Masonry and likewise disapproved of the Grand Orient, formed themselves into a separate body under Mrs. Halsey and Dr. Geikie Cobb, working only the Craft Degrees according to the Grand Lodge of England.
It has been shown by this brief résumé that Co-Masonry is a hybrid system deriving from two conflicting sources--the political and rationalist doctrines of the Maçonnerie Mixte and the Eastern occultism of Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant.
As a professing Buddhist, Madame Blavatsky consistently dissociated herself from any schemes of material welfare. Thus in the early Constitution of the Theosophical Society it is stated:
"The Society repudiates all interference on its behalf with the Governmental relations of any nation or community, confining its attention exclusively to the matters set forth in the present document."[710]
These matters relate to the study of Occult Sciences. Again Madame Blavatsky herself wrote in the Theosophist:
Unconcerned about politics: hostile to the insane dreams of Socialism and Communism, which it abhors--as both are but disguised conspiracies of brutal force and selfishness against honest labour; the Society cares but little about the outward human management of the material world. The whole of its aspirations are directed towards the occult truths of the visible and invisible worlds.[711]
It will be seen that this declaration is diametrically opposed to that of the Maçonnerie Mixte. Nevertheless, Madame Blavatsky so far departed from her purely occult programme after her arrival in India in 1879 as to reconstruct the society on the basis of "Universal Brotherhood." This idea was completely absent from her first scheme; "the Brotherhood plank in the Society's future platform," wrote her coadjutor Colonel Olcott, "was not thought of."[712] It was over this plank, however, that Mrs. Besant was able to walk to the Supreme Council of the Maçonnerie Mixte, and adding Liberty and Equality to the principle of Fraternity to establish Co-Masonry on a definitely political basis as a preparation for the Socialist doctrines her teacher had "abhorred."
In the matter of esoteric doctrines Mrs. Besant again departed from the path laid down by Madame Blavatsky, whose aim had been to rehabilitate Buddhism in India, representing the teachings of Gautama Buddha as an advance on Hinduism.[713] Mrs. Besant, however, came to regard the doctrines of the Brahmins as the purer faith. Yet it was neither Buddhism nor Hinduism in a pure form that she introduced to the Co-Masons of the West, but an occult system of her own devising, wherein Mahatmas, Swamis, and Gurus were incongruously mingled with the charlatans of eighteenth-century France. Thus in the Co-Masonic lodges we find "the King" inscribed over the Grand Master's chair in the East, in the North the empty chair of "the Master"--to which, until recently, all members were required to bow in passing--and over it a picture, veiled in some lodges, of the same mysterious personage. Should the neophyte enquire, "Who is the King?" he may be told that he is the King who is to come from India--whether he is identical with the young Hindu Krishnamurti adopted by Mrs. Besant in 1909 is not clear--whilst the question "Who is the Master?" will probably be met with the reply that he is "the Master of all true Freemasons throughout the world," which the enquirer takes to mean the head of the religion to which he happens to belong--Christ, Mohammed, or another. But in the third degree the astonishing information is confided with an appearance of great secrecy that he is no other than the famous Comte de Saint-Germain, who did not really die in 1784, but is still alive to-day in Hungary under the name of Ragocsky. In yet a higher degree, however, the initiate may be told that the Master is in reality Prince Eugene of Austria.
It would be superfluous to describe in detail the wild nonsense that composes the creed of Co-Masonry, since a long series of articles was recently devoted to the subject in The Patriot and can be consulted by anyone who desires information concerning its ceremonies and the personnel directing it.[714] Suffice it to say here that its course, like that of most secret societies, has been marked by violent dissensions amongst the members--the Blavatsky-ites passionately denouncing the Besantites and the Besantites proclaiming the divine infallibility of their leader--whilst at the same time scandals of a peculiarly unsavoury kind have been brought to light. This fact has indeed created a serious schism in the ranks of the Theosophists, which shows that a number of perfectly harmless people are to be found amongst them. Yet the peculiar recurrence of such scandals in the history of secret societies leads one inevitably to wonder how far these are to be regarded as merely deplorable accidents or as the results of secret-society methods and of occult teaching. That the men against whom charges of sexual perversion were brought were not isolated examples of these tendencies is shown by a curious admission on the part of one of Madame Blavatsky's "chelas," or disciples, who relates:
I was a pupil of H.P.B. before Mrs. Besant joined the T.S. and saw her expel one of her most gifted and valued workers from the Esoteric Section for offences against the occult and moral law, similar to those with which Mr. Leadbeater's name has now been associated for nearly twenty years. H.P.B. was always extremely strict on this particular point, and many [my itals.] would-be aspirants for chelaship were refused on this one ground alone, while others who had been accepted "on probation" failed almost immediately afterwards.[715]
It would appear, then, that these deplorable proclivities are peculiarly prevalent amongst aspirants to Theosophical knowledge.
It is unnecessary to enlarge at length on Mrs. Besant's connexion with the seditious elements in this country and in India, since these have frequently been referred to in the press. It is true that the Theosophical Society, like the Grand Orient, disavows all political intentions and professes to work only for spiritual development, but the leaders appear to consider that a radical change must take place in the existing social system before true spiritual development can be attained. That this change would lie in the direction of Socialism is suggested by the fact that a group of leading Theosophists, including Mrs. Besant, were discovered in 1919 to be holding a large number of shares in the Victoria House Printing Company, which was financing the Daily Herald at that date[716]; indeed, Mrs. Besant in her lectures on Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, at the Queen's Hall in October of the same year, clearly indicated Socialism as the system of the coming New Era.[717] Since then the "Action Lodge" has been founded with the object of carrying "Theosophical ideals and conceptions into all fields of human activity"[718]--from which the political field appears not to be excluded, since this lodge has been known to co-operate with the promoters of a political meeting on the Indian question.[719] It is interesting to notice that a leading member of the "Action Lodge," and also of the "Order of the Star in the East," was recently reported in the press to have been long connected with the Labour Party and to have notified her intention of standing for it in Parliament.
This is, of course, not to say that all Theosophists are Socialists. The Theosophical Society of America, in an admirable series of articles[720] discussing the theory of world-revolution set forth in my books, pointed out that:
The pupils of the powers of evil work ... untiringly to thwart every real advance of the human race, to pull down whatever civilization painfully builds, that makes for light and true development and spiritual growth.... It would not be difficult to suggest reasons why these pupils and co-workers of the powers of darkness choose the chief clauses of their creed: Internationalism, Communism, the destruction of the higher class through the despotic rule of the lowest class, the corruption of family life. The attack on religion hardly needs comment.
It will be seen, then, that Socialism and Internationalism are not an essential part of Theosophical teaching, and that the more enlightened Theosophists recognize the danger of these destructive doctrines. At a Special Convention in England on April 6 of this year, seven Lodges entered a protest against recent departures from the original policy of the Society. Amongst the resolutions put forward was one urging the President (Mrs. Besant) to establish a tribunal "to investigate matters affecting the good name of the Society, and the conduct of certain members"; this was lost by "an overwhelming majority." Another resolution regretted that "the Administration, the Magazine, and the influence of the Society have been used for controversial political ends and sectarian religious propaganda." Unhappily these resolutions were not met in the fraternal spirit that might be expected from a Society setting out to establish Universal Brotherhood and were stigmatized in a proposed amendment as "destructive motions ... at variance with the objects for which the Society stands." This clause in the amendment was lost by a small majority, but a very large majority supported the further clauses in which the Special Convention affirmed "its complete confidence in the administration of the Society and its beloved and revered President Dr. Annie Besant, the chosen leader of whom it is justly proud," and sent "its cordial greetings to Bishop Leadbeater, F.T.S.," thanking him "for his invaluable work and his unswerving devotion to the cause of Theosophy and the service of the Theosophical Society."
There are, then, a certain number of Theosophists in this country who have the courage and public spirit to protest against the use of the Society for political ends and against infractions of the moral code which they believe certain members to have committed. But this party unfortunately constitutes only a small minority; the rest are prepared to render blind and unquestioning obedience to the dictates of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater. In this respect the Theosophical Society follows the usual plan of secret societies. For although not nominally a secret society it is one in effect, being composed of outer and inner circles and absolutely controlled by supreme directors. The inner circle, known as the Esoteric Section, or rather the Eastern School of Theosophy--usually referred to as the E.S.--is in reality a secret society, consisting in its turn of three further circles, the innermost composed of the Mahatmas or Masters of the White Lodge, the second of the Accepted Pupils or Initiates, and the third of the Learners or ordinary members. The E.S. and Co-Masonry thus compose two secret societies within the open order controlled by people who are frequently members of both. Whether even these higher initiates are really in the secret is another question. Dr. Weller van Hook who is said to have been also a Rosicrucian and an important member of the Grand Orient once cryptically observed that "Theosophy is not the hierarchy," implying that it was only part of a world-organization, and darkly hinting that if it did not carry out the work allotted to it, the Rosicrucians would take control. That this is more than probable we shall see later.
The outer ranks of the Theosophical Society seem to be largely composed of harmless enthusiasts who imagine that they are receiving genuine instruction in the religions and occult doctrines of the East. That the teaching of the E.S. would not be taken seriously by any real Orientalist and that they could learn far more by studying the works of recognized authorities on these subjects at a University or at the British Museum does not occur to them for a moment. Nor would this fulfil the purpose of the leaders. For the Theosophical Society is not a study group, but essentially a propagandist society which aims at substituting for the pure and simple teaching of Christianity the amazing compound of Eastern superstition, Cabalism, and eighteenth-century charlatanism which Mrs. Besant and her coadjutors have devised. Yet even were the doctrines of Mrs. Besant those of true Buddhism or of Brahmanism, to what extent are they likely to benefit Western civilization? Setting the question of Christianity aside, experience shows that the attempt to orientalize Occidentals may prove no less disastrous than the attempt to occidentalize Orientals, and that to transport Eastern mysticism to the West is to vulgarize it and to produce a debased form of occultism that frequently ends in moral deterioration or mental derangement.[721] I attribute the scandals that have taken place amongst Theosophists directly to this cause.
But it is time to turn to another society in which this debased occultism plays a still more important part.
Rosicrucianism
At the present time, as in the eighteenth century, the term "Rosicrucianism" is used to cover a number of associations differing in their aims and doctrines.
The first of these societies to be founded in England was the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, founded in 1867 by Robert Wentworth Little on instructions received from abroad. Only Master Masons are admitted--a procedure not condemned by Grand Lodge of England, which regards the S.R.I.A. as a perfectly innocuous body. Although neither polical nor anti-Christian, but, on the contrary, containing distinctly Christian elements and claiming to descend from Christian Rosenkreutz--a claim which must be dismissed as an absurdity--the S.R.I.A. is nevertheless largely Cabalistic,[722] dealing with the forces of Nature, alchemy, etc. If its progenitors are really to be traced further back than the Rosicrucians of the nineteenth century--Ragon, Eliphas Lévi, and Kenneth Mackenzie--they must be sought amongst certain esoteric Masons in Hungary and also amongst the French Martinistes, whose rituals doubtless derived from a kindred source. It will be remembered that Marlines Pasqually bequeathed to his disciples a large number of Jewish manuscripts which were presumably preserved in the archives of the Martiniste Lodge at Lyons. The Order of Martinistes has never ceased to exist, and the President of the Suprême Conseil, Dr. Gérard Encausse, well known as "Papus," an avowed Cabalist, only died in 1916. To these archives another famous Cabalist, the renegade Abbé, Alphonse Louis Constant, who assumed the name of Eliphas Lévi, may well have had access. It is said that one of Eliphas Lévi's most distinguished disciples, the occultist Baron Spedalieri of Marseilles, was a member of the "Grand Lodge of Solitary Brethren of the Mountain," an "Illumined Brother of the Ancient Restored Order of Manicheans," a high member of the Grand Orient, and also a "High Illuminate of the Martinistes." Before his death in 1875 Eliphas Lévi announced that in 1879 a new political and religious "universal Kingdom" would be established, and that it would be possessed by "him who would have the keys of the East." The manuscript containing this prophecy was passed on by Baron Spedalieri to Edward Maitland, who in his turn gave it to a leading member of S.R.I.A., by whom it was published in English.[723]
But, as we have already seen, the principal centre of Cabalism was in Eastern Europe, whilst Germany was the principal home of Rosicrucianism, and it was from these directions that, a few years later, a new Rosicrucian Order in England derived its inspiration. It is curious to notice that the eighties of the last century were marked by a simultaneous recrudescence of secret societies and of Socialist organizations. In 1880 Leopold Engel reorganized Weishaupt's Order of Illuminati, which, according to M. Guénon, played thenceforth "an extremely suspect political rôle," and soon after this in 1884 it is said that a strange incident took place in London. The Rev. A.F.A. Woodford, a F∴ M∴, happened to be turning over the contents of a second-hand bookstall in Farringdon Street when he came upon some cypher MSS., attached to which was a letter in German saying that if the finder were to communicate with Sapiens Dominabatur Astris, c/o Fraulein Anna Sprengel, in Germany, he would receive further interesting information.
This, at any rate, is the story told to initiates of the Order which came to be founded according to the instructions given in the cypher. But when we remember that precisely the same story was told by Cagliostro concerning his discovery of a MS. in London by the mysterious George Cofton on which he had founded his Egyptian rite, we begin to wonder whether the placing of a MS. in a spot where it is certain to be discovered by precisely the people qualified to decipher it forms one of the traditional methods of secret-society adepts for extending their sphere of influence without betraying their identity or revealing the centre of direction.
In this case it certainly succeeded admirably, for by a fortunate coincidence the clergyman who found the cypher MSS. was acquainted with two prominent members of the S.I.R.A., Dr. Wynn Westcott and Dr. Woodman, to whom he took the documents, and by a further fortunate coincidence one of them happened to be the very person to whom Eliphas Lévi's prophecy had been given; These two men who now assumed the pseudonyms of S.A. (Sapere Aude) and M.E.V. (Magnus est Veritas), were able partially to decipher the manuscript; S.A., with the assistance of a German, then wrote to S.D.A. c/o Fraulein Anna Sprengel, saying that he and a friend had finished the deciphering and that they desired further information. In reply they were told to elaborate the notes, and that if diligent they would be allowed to form an elementary branch of the Rosicrucian Order in England. Finally S.D.A. wrote to S.A. authorising him to sign her (or his?) name to any warrant or document necessary for the constitution of an Order, and promising later on further rituals and advanced teachings if the preliminary Order proved successful. S.A. and M.E.V. now called in the aid of a third member of the S.I.R.A., Macgregor Mathers, henceforth known as D.D.C.F. (Deo Duce Comite Ferro), who, having more time at his disposal, was able, by means of long and arduous labour, to elaborate the rituals in Masonic style. On March 8, 1888, a warrant was then drawn up according to the design given in the cypher MSS. and was signed by S.A. for S.D.A., by M.E.V. and D.D.C.F., all three having received the honorary grade of 7-4 from S.D.A. so as to enable them to act as Chief of the New Temple. It is interesting to note that whilst the instructions in the cypher MSS. were in English and German, the name now given to the new Order "The Golden Dawn," was accompanied by its equivalent in Hebrew "Chebreth Zerech aur Bokher" that is to say "The Companions of the Rising Light of the Morning." Amongst the instructions we find: "Avoid Roman Catholics but with pity"; also these directions concerning the Obligation:
The candidate asking for Light is taken to the Altar and forced to take an Obligation to secrecy under penalty of expulsion and death or palsy from hostile current of will.
From the subsequent correspondence of the Order it is seen that this so-called "punitive current" was actually directed by the Chiefs against those who rebelled.
Although the members of the Golden Dawn later became linked up with the "Esoteric Masons" in Germany, neither the organization nor the ritual of the Order are masonic, but rather Martiniste and Cabalistic. For amidst all the confused phraseology of the Order, the phrases and symbols borrowed from Egyptian, Greek, or Hindu mythology, one detects the real basis of the whole system--the Jewish Cabala, in which all the three Chiefs were, or became, experts. Mathers in fact translated the famous book of Abraham the Jew from French into English with explanatory notes, and Wynn Westcott translated the Sepher Yetzirah from Hebrew. Lectures were given to the society on such subjects as the Tarot Cards, Geomantic Talismans, and the Schemhamphorasch or Tetragrammaton.
The Order was at first absolutely governed by the three Chiefs, but after a time--owing to the death of Woodman and the resignation of Wynn Westcott--Mathers became the Sole Chief and professed to have obtained further instructions from the Hidden Chiefs through his wife--a sister of Bergson--by means of clairvoyance and clairaudience. But the real directors of the Order were in Germany and known as the "Hidden and Secret Chiefs of the Third Order." A curious resemblance will here be noted with the "Concealed Superiors" by whom members of the Stricte Observance in the eighteenth century declared themselves to be controlled.
Who these men were at the time the Order was founded remains a mystery not only to the outside world but even to the English initiates themselves. The identity of Sapiens Dominabatur Astris appears never to have been established, nor was anything more heard about the still more mysterious Anna Sprengel until her death in an obscure German village was reported in 1893. Indeed, one of the most active members of the Order, Dr. Robert Felkin, M.D., known as F.R. (Finem Respice), later declared that, although he had visited five temples of the Order in Germany and Austria, he had been unable to get into touch with the Hidden Chiefs, or to discover how the original MSS. came into the hands of the clergyman who handed them to Wynn Westcott and Woodman. According to Felkin's statement, all that he had been able to find out was that the MSS. were the notes of ceremonies made by a man who had been initiated into a Lodge in Germany, and that the temple from which they originated was "a special temple" working on the Cabala tree like the English branch of the Order. Further, he was told that none of the "big Three" who founded the Golden Dawn in England were real Rosicrucians at all.
The confusion of ideas which must inevitably result when, as in secret societies or revolutionary organizations, a number of people are being blindly led by hidden directors, naturally brought about dissensions amongst the members, who mutually accused each other of ignorance of the real aims of the Order. Thus the London Lodge ended by breaking with Mathers, who was in Paris, on account of his arrogance in claiming supreme power through the mystery of the Hidden Chiefs, and after two years of unsettled government, in 1902 elected three new chiefs--Dr. Felkin (F.R. = Finem Respice), Bullock, a solicitor (L.O. = Levavi Oculos) who resigned at the end of the year, and Brodie Innes (S.S.--Sub Spe). But although Mathers had been repudiated, his teachings were retained as emanating from the Hidden Chiefs.
Two years earlier a dramatic incident had occurred. In a very sinister personage, Aleister Crowley, had been introduced into the Order on the recommendation of A. E. Waite (S.R. = Sacramentum Regis) the well-known mystical writer. A man of many aliases, Crowley followed the precedent of the "Comte de Saint-Germain," the "Comte de Cagliostro," and the "Baron von Offenbach" by ennobling himself and masquerading under various titles in turn, such as "Count Svareff," "Lord Boleskine," "Baron Rosenkreutz," but usually known in the Order as "P" for "Perdurabo."
Crowley, who was a Cabalist, had written a book on Goetic Magic and soon after becoming a member of the "Golden Dawn" set to work with another "Frater" on magical experiments, including evocations, the consecration and use of talismans, divination, alchemy, etc. In 1900 Crowley had joined Mathers in Paris where the latter and his wife were living under the assumed names of the "Comte and Comtesse of Glenstrae" and engaged in reviving the mysteries of Isis at the Bodinière Theatre. In this task they were joined by an extraordinary lady, the notorious Madame Horos (alias the Swami) who claimed to be the real and authentic Sapiens Dominabatur Astris. Crowley described her as "a very stout woman and very fair" and "a vampire of remarkable power;" Mathers declared her to be "probably the most powerful medium living," but later, in a letter to another member of the "Golden Dawn" observed: "I believe her and her accomplices to be emissaries of a very powerful secret occult order who have been trying for years to break up other Orders and especially my work." Incidentally this lady, who proved to be a false S.D.A., ended by starting an Order in collaboration with her husband, in which it was said that certain rituals of the Golden Dawn were adapted to an immoral purpose, with the result that the couple were brought to trial and finally condemned to penal servitude.
Whether owing to this disturbing experience, or because, as Crowley declared, he had "imprudently attracted to himself forces of evil too great and terrible for him to withstand, presumably Abramelin demons," Mathers' reason began to totter. This then was the situation at the time of his rupture with the Order, and the dramatic incident referred to was the sudden appearance of Crowley in London, who, whether acting as Mathers' envoy or on his own initiative, broke into the premises of the Order, with a black mask over his face, a plaid shawl thrown over his shoulders, an enormous gold (or gilt) cross on his breast, and a dagger at his side, for the purpose of taking over possession. This attempt was baffled with the prosaic aid of the police and Crowley was expelled from the Order. Eventually, however, he succeeded in obtaining possession of some of the rituals and other documents of the Golden Dawn, which he proceeded to publish in the organ of a new Order of his own. This magazine, containing a mixture of debased Cabalism and vulgar blasphemies, interspersed with panegyrics on haschish--for Crowley combined with sexual perversion an addiction to drugs--which might appear to express only the ravings of a maniac. But eccentricity has often provided the best cloak for dark designs, and the outbreak of war proved that there was a method in the madness of the man whom the authorities persisted in regarding merely as an irresponsible degenerate of a non-political kind. To quote the press report of his exploits after this date:
In November 1914 Crowley went to the United States, where he entered into close relations with the pro-German propagandists. He edited the New York International, a German propagandist paper run by the notorious George Silvester Viereck, and published, among other things, an obscene attack on the King and a glorification of the Kaiser. Crowley ran occultism as a side-line, and seems to have been known as the "Purple Priest." Later on he publicly destroyed his British passport before the Statute of Liberty, declared in favour of the Irish Republican cause, and made a theatrical declaration of "war" on England.... During his stay in America Crowley was associated with a body known as the "Secret Revolutionary Committee" which was working for the establishment of an Irish Republic. He is known also as the writer of a defeatest manifesto circulated in France in 1915.
But to return to the Golden Dawn. In 1903 a split occurred in the Order. A.E. Waite, an early member of it, seceded from it with a number of other members and carried off with him the name of "Golden Dawn," also the vault and other property of the Order. The original Order then took the name of "Stella Matutina," with Dr. Felkin as Chief.
In the preceding year the members of the London Lodge had again believed that they were in touch with the Hidden Third Order and revived their efforts to communicate with the Secret Chiefs in Germany. This state of uncertainty continued till about 1910, when Felkin and Meakin set forth for Germany, where they succeeded in meeting several members of the Third Order, who professed to be "true and genuine Rosicrucians" and to know of Anna Sprengel and the starting of the Order in England. They were not, it was believed, the Secret and Hidden Chiefs, but more probably Esoteric Masons of the Grand Orient. These Fratres, however, told them that in order to form a definite etheric link between themselves and the Order in Great Britain, it would be necessary for a British Frater to be under their instruction for a year. Accordingly Meakin remained in Germany for special training, so that he might act as the "etheric link" between the two countries. After a pilgrimage to the Near East, closely following the itinerary of Christian Rosenkreutz, Meakin returned to Germany, and it appears to have been now that he was able to get into touch with a certain high adept of occult science.
This remarkable personage, Rudolf Steiner, had earlier belonged to the Theosophical Society, and it has been suggested that at some period he may have been connected with the revived Illuminati of Leopold Engel. There is certainly some reason to believe that at one point in his career he came into touch with men who were carrying on the teachings of Weishaupt, the chief of whom was the President of a group of Pan-German secret societies, and it seems not improbable that the mysterious S.D.A., under whose directions the Golden Dawn was founded, might be located in this circle.
A few years before the war, Steiner, whilst still a Theosophist, started a society of his own, the Anthroposophical Society, a name borrowed from the work of the XVIIth century Rosicrucian, Thomas Vaughan, "Anthroposophica Magica." The ostensible leader of Rosicrucianism in Germany was Dr. Franz Hartmann, founder of the "Order of the Esoteric Rose Croix." Although in some way connected with Engel's Illuminati and more definitely with the Theosophical Society, Hartmann was believed to be a genuine Christian mystic. Steiner also made the same profession, and it seems probable that he formed one of the group of mysterious personages, including besides Grand Orient Masons, Baron von Knigge, great grandson of Weishaupt's coadjutor "Philo," who met together in secret conference at Ingoldstadt where the first Lodge of the Illuminati had been founded in 1776, and decided to revive Illuminism on Christian mystic lines used in a very elastic sense amongst occultists. At the same time Steiner introduces into his teaching a strong vein of Gnosticism, Luciferianism, Johannism, and Grand Orient Masonry, whilst reserving Rosicrucianism for his higher initiates. On this last point he is extremely reticent, preferring to call his teaching "occult science," since he recognizes that "real Rosicrucians never proclaim themselves as such"; it is therefore only in the inner circle of his society, on which no information is given to the public and into which members are admitted by much the same forms of initiation as those used by the Grand Orient, that Rosicrucianism is mentioned. Some of Steiner's imitators in The Rosicrucian Fellowship at Oceanside, California, however, openly profess what they call Rosicrucianism and at the same time claim superior knowledge on the subject of Masonry. Thus in a book by the leader of this group we find it solemnly stated that according to Max Heindl, Eve cohabited with serpents in the garden of Eden, that Cain was the offspring of her union with "the Lucifer Spirit Samael," and that from this "divine progenitor" the most virile portion of the human race descended, the rest being merely the "progeny of human parents." Readers of the present work will recognize this as not the legend of Masonry but of the Jewish Cabala which has been already quoted in this context.[724] Whether this also forms part of Steiner's teaching it is impossible to say, since his real doctrines are known only to his inner circle; even some of his admirers amongst the Steiner Matutina, whilst consulting him as an oracle, are not admitted to the secrets of his grades of initiation and have been unable to succeed in obtaining from him a charter. Meanwhile they themselves do not disclose to the neophytes whom they seek to win over that they are members of any secret association. This is quite in accordance with the methods of Weishaupt's "Insinuating Brothers."
The result of what Steiner calls "occult science" is thus described in a striking passage of one of his own works:
"This is the change which the occult student observes coming over himself--that there is no longer a connection between a thought and a feeling or a feeling and a volition, except when he creates the connection himself. No impulse drives him from thought to action if he does not voluntarily harbour it. He can now stand completely without feeling before an object which, before his training, would have filled him with glowing love or violent hatred; he can likewise remain actionless before a thought which heretofore would have spurred him to action as if by itself," etc.
I can imagine no clearer exposé of the dangers of occultism than this. Weishaupt had said: "I cannot use men as I find them; I must form them." Dr. Steiner shows how this transformation can be accomplished. Under the influence of so-called occult training, which is in reality simply powerful suggestion, all a man's native impulses and inhibitive springs of action may be broken; the pupil of the occultist will no longer react to the conceptions of beauty or ugliness, of right or wrong, which, unknown to himself, formed the law of his being. Thus not only his conscious deeds but his sub-conscious processes pass under the control of another. If this is indeed the method employed by Dr. Steiner and his adepts there would certainly seem to be some justification for the verdict of M. Robert Kuentz that "Steiner has devised occult exercises which render the mind incapable (rendent l'esprit anéanti), that he attacks the individual by deranging his faculties (il détraque les facultés)."[725]
What is the real motive power behind such societies as the Stella Matutina and again behind Steiner? This remains a mystery, not only to the outside world but to the "initiates" themselves. The quest of the Hidden Chiefs, undertaken by one intrepid pilgrim after another, seems to have ended only in further meetings with Steiner. Yet hope springs eternal in the breast of the aspirant after occult knowledge, and astral messages spurred the Fratres to further efforts. One of these contained the exhortation: "Go on with Steiner, which is not the ultimate end of search, and we will come into contact with many serious students who will lead us to the real master of the Order, who will be so overpoweringly impressive as to leave no room for doubt."
A curious analogy with Co-Masonry will here be observed. For whilst the veiled picture of the Co-Masonic lodges is said to represent "the Master" in the person of Ragocsky or some other personage in Austria or Hungary, so it is likewise in Austria and Germany that the members of Stella Matutina seek their Hidden Chiefs and the "real Master" of their Order. Moreover, whilst the Co-Masons await the coming of the great "World Teacher," King, or Messiah in 1926, it is also in 1926 that the Stella Matutina expect Christian Rosenkreutz to appear again.[726] There are many other points of resemblance between the phraseology of the two Orders, as, for example, the idea of the "Astral Light," "the Great White Lodge," and also "the GREAT WORK" by which both Orders denote the supreme object of their aspirations--"the union of the East and the West." It is therefore impossible not to suspect that, although the members of Co-Masonry and of the Stella Matutina imagine their respective Orders to be entirely unconnected and indeed appear to be hardly aware of each other's existence, there may be nevertheless some point of junction in the background and even a common centre of direction.
In this connexion it is interesting to notice the political tendencies of the societies in question. Although the outcome of the Maçonnerie Mixte, and nominally under the jurisdiction of headquarters in Paris, Co-Masonry does not appear to be pro-French in its sympathies. On the contrary, the Co-masonic lodges in this country, as also the head lodge in the Rue Jules-Breton, seem to have adopted that form of universal brotherhood which principally redounds to the benefit of Germany.
The Stella Matutina, whilst professing to be solely concerned in occult science and warning its members against Co-Masonry on account of the political tendencies of the latter, is nevertheless still more imbued with German influence, since, as we have seen, it has ever since it first came into existence been secretly under Germany direction. Indeed, during the war this influence became so apparent that certain patriotic members, who had entered the society in all good faith with the idea of studying occult science, raised an energetic protest and a schism took place. Thus, just as in the case of Co-Masonry, the more clear-sighted recognized the imprudence of placing themselves under foreign control. That this was no imaginary danger is shown by a correspondence which had taken place some years earlier and has recently been brought to light. It will be remembered that the great aim of Weishaupt and the Illuminati of the eighteenth century was to obtain control over all existing masonic and occult Orders, This also became the dream of Rudolf Steiner and his allies in other countries, whose plan was to form what they called an "International Bund." The idea of an International Bureau for Masonic Affairs had already, as we have seen, been started in Switzerland; this was the same idea applied to occult groups, so that all such societies as Rosicrucianism, Theosophy with its various ramifications of Co-Masonry, etc., Hermetic Orders, isolated occultists, and so on, were to be placed under German control. The audacity of the proposal seems to have been too much even for some of the most internationally minded members of the Stella Matutina, and in the discussion that took place it was pointed out that admirable as the scheme might be, there was nevertheless some British spirit amongst these Orders to be reckoned with. Even Mrs. Besant's followers, headed by the Co-Masons, described as a group which "attracts a large number of idle women who have leisure to take a little occultism with their afternoon tea," might be liable to ask, "Who are these Germans to interfere?" But the real obstacle to success was held to be British Freemasonry, to which a certain number of students of occult science, including all the members of the S.R.I.A., belonged. "English Masonry," it was remarked, "boasts the Grand Lodge of 1717, the Mother Lodge of the World. They are a proud, jealous, autocratic body. Co-Masonry derives from the Grand Orient of France, an illegitimate body according to English ruling. No English Mason can work with Co-Masons.... If the English Grand Lodge hears of anything called 'Esoteric Masonry' derived from such sources, under chiefs once T.S. [Theosophical Society] members, under a head in Berlin, it will not enquire who Dr. Steiner is or what is the nature of his work, it will simply say, 'No English Masons of the Free and Accepted Masons may join any Society working pseudo-Masonic rites, i.e. no one of ordinary accepted Freemasonry can attend any meetings or attend any grades in this illegitimate body.' Finis!... If a lodge of the Continental Order is to be established in England, Dr. Steiner will be faced with the Masonic difficulty. This is really serious...."[727]
Here then is one of the finest tributes ever paid to British Masonry, for it shows that as at present constituted and controlled it provides the most formidable barrier against the infiltration of this country by alien or subversive secret societies. Thus the Freemasons and the Roman Catholics are recognized as the principal obstacles to success. The Freemasons, however, would do well to realize the attempts that are made to break down this resistance by traitors in the Masonic camp, who, after violating their obligations by belonging to an irregular secret society, act as recruiting agents in the lodges. For the author of these remarks was a British Freemason who, in collusion with a foreign adept, proposed to penetrate Freemasonry by the process known in revolutionary language as "boring from within." To quote his own words, "They must be got at from within, not from without." This was to be accomplished in various ways--by adepts of the Continental Order getting themselves initiated into orthodox Masonry and then spreading their own doctrines in the lodges, or by enlisting recruits amongst orthodox Masons and using them as propagandists among their brother-Masons. It was also suggested that in order not to rouse suspicion it would be better to avoid the name "Esoteric Masonry," to adopt one of the rituals used in England, and to employ as "officers" a "mixed group" drawn from various secret societies. This plan has been carried out with considerable success, and at a recent conference held by a high Continental adept under the most distinguished patronage, it was interesting to notice the various secret societies represented by certain of the promoters, who of course to the general public appeared to be merely isolated individuals interested in philosophical speculation. But it is time to pass on to the question of yet another secret association, for amongst those present at the Conference referred to were members of the group Clarté.
This society, of which the name as well as its avowed aims are singularly reminiscent of Illuminism, was first heard of in France and was led by men who carried on active anti-patriotic propaganda throughout the war. Amongst these was Henri Barbusse, author of Le Feu, a defeatest novel which was received with acclamations from "illuminated" reviewers in the press of this country. Yet although outwardly a French organization, the real inspiration and teaching of Clarté is essentially German-Jewish and a great number of Jews are to be found amongst its members, particularly in Central Europe. At the inaugural meeting of the Austrian group it was stated that 80 per cent. of those present were of the Jewish race. The keynote of Clarté is Internationalism--abolition of nationality, destruction of frontiers, and pacifism or rather the substitution of class warfare for war between nations. For this purpose it is willing to make use of all subversive doctrines, to whatever school of thought they may belong. Hence, although the creed of the leaders is professedly Socialism, they readily co-operate with Syndicalists, Anarchists, or revolutionaries of any brand, carrying on propaganda in Trade Unions and various workers' organizations; some are secretly in the ranks of the Communists. In fact members of Charté have succeeded in penetrating into almost every subversive group, even as far afield as New Zealand, where the society has an agency in Wellington and disseminates the most violent revolutionary teaching and literature.
But whilst thus making use of the "proletariat" to further its ends, the point of view of Clarté is fundamentally undemocratic--for the real grievances of the workers it has no use at all. The plan of this group--who were recently described in the French press as "the finest specimens of cannibals smeared with humanitarianism (les plus beaux spécimens de cannibales barbouillés d'humanitairerie)"--is to constitute a sort of International Hierarchy of Intellectual Socialists, whose influence is to make itself invisibly felt in literary, educational, and artistic circles all over the world. For the members of Clarté are as careful as were the adepts of Weishaupt to preserve their incognito and not to be known as "Illuminati." Thus the public in our own country and elsewhere, reading the diatribes of certain well-known authors against the existing order of society, may vaguely wonder why men living amidst all the amenities of civilization should desire its destruction, but do not dream that all this is not the outcome of an individual brain but propaganda put out by a company which, having largely primed such writers with ideas, is able, owing to the high position of many of its leading members and its influence with the literary world, to ensure the success of any publication that will further its ends.
The organization of Clarté thus approximates more nearly, to the system of Weishaupt than that of the other societies described in this chapter. Although in the strictest sense a secret society, it is in no sense occult and therefore possesses no ritual of its own, but, like the earlier Illuminati, recognizes the utility of working through Freemasonry. Clarté, in fact, forms an adjunct of the Grand Orient and owns a lodge under its jurisdiction in Paris. It would be interesting, however, to know whether the idea of the alliance with the Grand Orient occurred as an afterthought to the Clarté group or whether the original inspiration of Clarté emanated from an inner circle of the Grand Orient. We shall return to the question of this inner circle in a later chapter.
Such, then, are the principal secret societies at work in Great Britain, but amongst minor secret or semi-secret movements may be mentioned the strange sect the Faithists, said to have some affinity with the Druses, inhabiting a singularly unromantic London suburb, whose "Ancient Founder" is the author of a series of tracts urging man not to be misled by false Gods, but to worship "Jehovih the Creator only," and at the same time advocating nationalization as a cure for all social ills; or again The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, led by Gurdjieff and Uspenski which combines esoteric meditation with an extremely meagre diet and strenuous manual labour. It is interesting, by the way, to notice that the art of movement known as Eurhythmy--not to be confounded with the system of M. Dalcroze which is known in England only as Eurhythmics--forms an important part of the curriculum of the last society, as also of Herr Steiner's Order, of the Stella Matutina, and of the Russian Bolsheviks.[728]
The one question that presents itself to the judicial mind after examining all these movements, is inevitably: Are they of any real importance? Can a few hundreds, or even thousands, of men and women, drawn largely by curiosity or want of occupation into societies of which the very names are hardly known to the general public, exercise any influence on the world at large? It would certainly be an error to overestimate the power that each of these societies individually can wield; to do so would be, in fact, to play into the hands of the leaders, whose plan, from Weishaupt onwards, has always been to represent themselves as directing the destinies of the universe. This claim to power is the bait laid for neophytes, who are made to believe that "the Order will one day rule the world." But, whilst recognizing the folly of this pretension, we should be mistaken in underrating their importance, for the reason that they provide evidence of a larger organization in the background. The Stella Matutina may be only an obscure Fraternity, even the Theosophical Society with all its ramifications[729] may not be of great importance in itself, but will anyone with a knowledge of European affairs seriously maintain that the Grand Orient is a small or unimportant organization? And have we not seen that investigations into the smaller secret societies frequently lead back to this greater masonic power? Secret societies are of importance, because they are, moreover, symptomatic, and also because, although the work actually carried out in their lodges or councils may be of a trivial character, they are able by the power of association and the collective force they generate to influence public opinion and to float ideas in the outside world which may have far-reaching consequences.
At any rate, the fact that they exist finally disposes of the contention that secret societies of a subversive and even of an abominable kind are things of the past. These amazing cults, these strange perverted rites which we associate with the dark ages, are going on around us to-day. Illuminism, Cabalism, and even Satanism are still realities. In 1908 Monsieur Copin Albancelli stated that circumstances had afforded him the proof that--
certain Masonic societies exist which are Satanic, not in the sense that the devil comes to preside at their meetings, as that romancer of a Leo Taxil pretended, but in that their initiates profess the cult of Lucifer. They adore him as the true God, and they are animated by an implacable hatred against the Christian God, whom they declare to be an impostor. They have a formula which sums up their state of mind; it is no longer: "To the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe," as in the two lower Masonries; it is G∴ E∴ A∴ A∴ L∴ H∴ H∴ H∴ A∴ D∴ M∴ M∴ M∴, which means "Gloire et Amour à Lucifer! Haine! haine! haine! an Dieu maudit! maudit! maudit!" (Glory and Love for Lucifer! Hatred! hatred! hatred! to God, accursed, accursed, accursed!)
It is professed in these societies that all that the Christian God commands is disagreeable to Lucifer; that all that He forbids is, on the contrary, agreeable to Lucifer; that in consequence one must do all that the Christian God forbids and that one must shun like fire all that He commands. I repeat that with regard to all that, I have the proofs under my hand. I have read and studied hundreds of documents relating to one of these societies, documents that I have not permission to publish and which emanate from the members, men and women, of the group in question.[730]
I do not say that any society in England consciously practices this cult of Satan, but I too have seen dozens of documents relating to occult groups in this country which practise rites and evocations that lead to illness, moral perversion, mental derangement, and even in some cases to death. I have heard from the lips of initiates themselves accounts of the terrible experiences through which they have passed; some have even urged me to bring the matter before the attention of the authorities. But unfortunately no department exists for the investigation of subversive movements. Yet since all these movements are intimately connected with revolutionary agitation they are well worth the attention of Governments that desire to protect law, order, and public morality. The fact is that the very extravagance of their doctrines and practices seems to ensure their immunity. Nevertheless, whether the power at work behind them is of the kind we are accustomed to call "supernatural," or whether it is merely the outcome of the human mind, there can be no doubt of its potency for evil and of its very definite effects in the obliteration of all sense of truth and in sexual perversion.
In the opinion of an initiate who belonged for years to the Stella Matutina, the dynamic force employed known as "Kundalini" is simply an electro-magnetic force, of which the sex-force is a part, on which the adepts know how to play, and "the unseen hand behind all the seeming Spiritism of these Orders is a system of very subtle and cunning hypnotism and suggestion." Further, the aim of this group like that of all subversive Esoteric Orders, is, by means of such processes as eurhythmics, meditations, symbols, ceremonies, and formulas, to awaken this force and produce false "Illumination" for the purpose of obtaining "Spiritual Seership," which is at most clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc. The ceremonies of the Order are hypnotic, and by suggestion create the necessary mental and astral atmosphere, hypnotize and prepare the members to be the willing tools in the hands of the controlling adepts. The same initiate has communicated to me the following conclusions concerning the group in question, with the permission to quote them verbatim:
I have been convinced that we, as an Order, have come under the power of some very evil occult Order, profoundly versed in science both occult and otherwise, though not infallible, their methods being Black Magic, that is to say, electro-magnetic power, hypnotism, and powerful suggestion.
We are convinced that the Order is being controlled by some SUN Order after the nature of the Illuminati, if not by that Order itself.
The reason why they (the leaders of all such Orders) insisted so much upon the Church and Sacrament, especially before the initiation, is, I think, for the same reason as the use of the consecrated Host in Black Magic. The Christian consecration and the use of the sacraments renders the building or person more powerful as a material basis for black magic even as in white magic--"for the Great Good or the Great Evil." When the initiation is accomplished and the domination of the person complete, there is no further need for Church or Sacrament.
We are told at the Initiation: "There is nothing incompatible with your civil, moral, or religious duties in this obligation." We now are convinced that this Order is contrary absolutely to our civil, moral, and religious duties; which being so, our obligations are null and void.
We are told that all that has taken place in Russia and elsewhere is due to these International Occult Forces set in motion by Subversive Esoteric Lodges. Yet it is known that we have several branches of these same Esoteric Masonic Lodges carrying on their deadly work in our midst. England, as well as Europe, seems to be drifting along in a hypnotic sleep, and even our soundest politicians seem paralysed and all that they attempt is turned to foolishness. Is there no one in authority who understands these things and realizes the danger both to the country and to individuals from these forces working for disruption and world revolution?
How in the face of these declarations, coming from those inside the movement, can anyone maintain that Illuminism is dead and that secret societies present no danger to Christian civilization?
13. Open Subversive Movements
Although the sceptical reader who has reached this stage of the present work will perhaps be willing to admit that some connexion may be traced between hidden forces and open subversive movements, the objection he will still raise against the general thesis here set forth will probably be expressed somewhat in the following manner:
"It is quite possible that secret societies and other unseen agencies may have played a part in revolutions, but to attribute the continued revolt against the existing social order to these causes is absurd. Poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing, and above all the inequalities of human life are quite sufficient to produce a revolutionary spirit without the aid of secret instigators. Social revolution is simply a rising of the 'have-nots' against the 'haves,' and requires no further cause to explain it."
Let it be at once admitted that the injustices here enumerated are real. The working classes throughout the nineteenth century had very genuine reasons for complaints. Wages were far too low, the rich sometimes showed themselves indifferent to the sufferings of the poor, employers of labour often made profits out of all proportion to the remuneration paid to the workers. Nor, in spite of the immense reforms introduced during the last hundred years, have all these grievances been redressed. The slums of our great cities still constitute a blot upon our civilization. Profiteering since the beginning of the war has been more flagrant than ever. "Rings" and combines provide fabulous wealth for individuals or groups at the expense of vast numbers of consumers. And in all classes of the community, just as before the French Revolution, people feast and dance whilst others live on the border-line of starvation.
But let us see how far the Socialist movement can be regarded as the spontaneous revolt of the "people" against this condition of things. Dividing the people after the manner of Marx into the non-revolutionary and the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find that the former category, by far the larger, combines with a strong respect for tradition a perfectly reasonable desire for social reform. Briefly it asks for adequate wages, decent housing, and a fair share of the good things of life. For State interference in the affairs of everyday life it feels nothing but abhorrence. The ideal of Communism as formulated by Lenin, wherein "the getting of food and clothing shall be no longer a private affair,"[731] would meet with stronger opposition from working men--and still more from working women, to whom "shopping" is as the breath of life--than from any other section of the population. Even such apparently benign Socialist schemes as "communal dining-rooms" or "communal kitchens" appeal less to the working-class mentality than to the upper-class mind that devises them.
Turning to the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find this individualistic instinct quite as strongly developed. It is not the Socialist idea of placing all wealth and property in the hands of the State, but the Anarchist plan of "expropriation," of plunder on a gigantic scale for the benefit of the revolutionary masses, which really appeals to the disgruntled portion of the proletariat. The Socialist intellectual may write of the beauties of nationalization, of the joy of working for the common good without hope of personal gain; the revolutinary working man sees nothing to attract him in all this. Question him on his ideas of social transformation, and he will generally express himself in favour of some method by which he will acquire something he has not got; he does not want to see the rich man's motor-car socialized by the State--he wants to drive about in it himself. The revolutionary working man is thus in reality not a Socialist but an Anarchist at heart. Nor in some cases is this unnatural. That the man who enjoys none of the good things of life should wish to snatch his share must at least appear comprehensible. What is not comprehensible is that he should wish to renounce all hope of ever possessing anything. Modern Socialist propagandists are very well aware of this attitude of the working classes towards their schemes, and therefore that as long as they explain the real programme they mean to put into operation, which is nothing but the workhouse system on a gigantic scale, they can meet with no success. As a life-long Socialist has frequently observed to me, "Socialism has never been a working-class movement; it was always we of the middle or upper classes who sought to instil the principles of Socialism into the minds of working men." Mr. Hyndman's candid confessions of the failures to enlist the sympathies even of slum-dwellers in his schemes of social regeneration bear out this testimony.
Less honest Socialist orators as the result of long experience have therefore adopted the more effectual policy of appealing to the predatory instincts of the crowd. From Babeuf onwards, Socialism has only been able to make headway by borrowing the language of Anarchy in order to blast its way to power.
Socialism is thus essentially a system of deception devised by middle-class theorists and in no sense a popular creed. Had the revolutionary movement of the past 150 years really proceeded from the people, it would inevitably have followed the line laid down by one of the two sections of the proletariat indicated above, that is to say, it would either have taken the form of a continuous and increasing agitation for social reforms which would have enlisted the sympathy of all right-thinking men and must therefore in the end have proved irresistible, or it would have followed the line of Anarchy, organizing brigandage on a larger and yet larger scale, until, all owners of wealth having been exterminated and their expropriators in their turn exterminated by their fellows, the world would have been reduced to a depopulated desert.
But the world revolution has followed neither of these lines. Always the opponent of sane social reforms which Socialists deride as "melioration" or as futile attempts to shore up an obsolete system, it has consistently disassociated itself from such men as Lord Shaftesbury, who did more to better the conditions of the working classes than anyone who has ever lived. Anarchy, on the other hand, has been used by them merely as a means to an end; for genuine revolutionary sentiment they have no use at all. In Russia the Anarchists became the first objects of Soviet vengeance. The cynical attitude of Socialists towards the revolutionary proletariat was illustrated by Mr. Bernard Shaw, who in December 1919 openly boasted that he had helped to organize the railway strike,[732] and two years later wrote about the miners' strike in the following terms:
A Socialist State would not tolerate such an attack on the community as a strike for a moment. If a Trade Union attempted such a thing, the old Capitalist law against Trade Unions as conspiracies would be re-enacted within twenty-four hours and put ruthlessly into execution. Such a monstrosity as the recent coal strike, during which the coal-miners spent all their savings in damaging their neighbours and wrecking the national industries, would be impossible under Socialism. It was miserably defeated, as it deserved to be.[733]
Now, if this had been written by the Duke of Northumberland in the National Review instead of by Mr. Bernard Shaw in the Labour Monthly, one can imagine the outcry there would have been in the Socialist press. But the leaders of what is called democracy may always use what language they please in speaking of the people. "Our peasants," Maxim Gorky openly declared, "are brutal and debased, hardly human. I hate them."[734] It will be noticed that in descriptions of the French Revolution references to the savageries of the people are never resented by the Liberal or Socialist press; the persons of the leaders alone are sacred. It is clearly not the cause of democracy but of demagogy that these champions of "liberty" are out to defend.
The world-revolution is therefore not a popular movement but a conspiracy to impose on the people a system directly opposed to their real demands and aspirations, a system which, moreover, has proved disastrous every time an attempt has been made to put it into practice.
Russia has provided a further example of its futility. The fact that the more responsible leaders in this country do not advocate violence, does not affect the ultimate issue. Whilst Bolshevism sets out to destroy Capitalism at a blow, Socialism prefers a more gradual process. It is the difference between clubbing a man on the head and bleeding him to death--that is all.
The fact is that all Socialism leads to Communism in the long run[735] and therefore to disaster. The Bolshevist régime brought ruin and misery to Russia not because of the brutality of its methods, but because it was founded on the gigantic economic fallacy that industry can be carried on without private enterprise and personal initiative. The same theory applied by constitutional methods would produce precisely the same results. If the Socialists are ever allowed to carry out their full programme, England may be reduced to the state of Russia without the shedding of a drop of blood.
But how are we to explain the fact that in spite of the failure of Socialism in the past, in spite of the gigantic fiasco presented by Russia, in spite, moreover, of the declaration by the Bolsheviks themselves that Communism had failed and must be replaced by "a new economic policy," that is to say by a return to "Capitalism,"[736] there should still be a large and increasing body of people to proclaim the efficacy of Socialism as the remedy for all social ills? In any other field of human experiment, in medicine or mechanical invention, failure spells oblivion; the prophylactic that does not cure, the machine that cannot be made to work, is speedily relegated to the scrap-heap. What indeed should we say of the bacteriologist, who, after killing innumerable patients with a particular serum, were to advertise it as an unqualified success? Should we not brand such a man as an unscrupulous charlatan or at best as a dangerous visionary? If, moreover, we were to find that large bands of agents backed by unlimited funds, were engaged in pressing his remedy upon the public and carefully avoiding all reference to the fatalities it had caused, should we not further conclude that there was "something behind all this"--some powerful company "running" the concern with a view to advancing its own private interests?
Why should not the same reasoning be applied to Socialism? For not only has Socialism never been known to succeed, but all its past failures are carefully kept dark by its exponents. Who, then, stands to gain by advocating it? And further, who provides the vast sums spent on propaganda? If in reality Socialism is a rising of the "have-nots" against the "haves," how is it that most of the money seems to be on the side of the "have-nots"? For whilst organizations working for law and order are hampered at every turn for funds, no financial considerations ever seem to interfere with the activities of the so-called "Labour movement." Socialism, in fact, appears to be a thoroughly "paying concern," into which a young man enters as he might go into the City, with the reasonable expectation of "doing well." It is only necessary to glance at the history of the past hundred years to realize that "agitation" has provided a pleasant and remunerative career for hundreds of middle-class authors, journalists, speakers, organizers, and dilettantes of all kinds who would otherwise have been condemned to pass their lives on office-stools or at schoolmasters' desks. And when we read the accounts of the delightful treats provided for these "devoted workers" in the cause of the proletariat as given in the records of the First Internationale or the pages of Mrs. Snowden, we begin to understand the attractions of Socialism as a profession.[737]
But again I repeat: Who provides the funds for this vast campaign? Do they come out of the pockets of the workers or from some other mysterious reservoir of wealth? We shall return to this point in a later chapter.
How is it possible at any rate to believe in the sincerity of the exponents of equality who themselves adopt a style of living so different from that of the proletariat whose cause they profess to represent? If the doctrinaires of Socialism formed a band of ascetics who had voluntarily renounced luxury and amusement in order to lead lives of poverty and self-sacrifice--as countless really devoted men and women not calling themselves Socialists have done--we should still doubt the soundness of their economic theories as applied to society in general, but we should respect their disinterestedness. But with very few exceptions Socialist Intellectuals dine and sup, feast and amuse themselves with as few scruples of conscience as any unregenerate Tories.
With people such as these it is obviously as futile to reason, as it would be to attempt to convince the agent of a quack medicine company that the nostrums he presses on the public will not effect a cure. He is very well aware of that already. Hence the efforts of well-meaning people to set forth in long, well-reasoned arguments the "fallacies of Socialism" produce little or no result. All these so-called "fallacies" have been exposed repeatedly by able writers and disproved by all experience, so that if based merely on ignorance or error they would long since have ceased to obtain credence. The truth is that they are not fallacies but lies, deliberately devised and circulated by men who do not believe in them for a moment and who can therefore only be described as unscrupulous charlatans exploiting the credulity of the public.
But if this description may be legitimately applied to the brains behind Socialism and to certain of its leading doctrinaires, there are doubtless thousands of honest visionaries to be found in the movement. A system that professes to cure all the ills of life inevitably appeals to generous minds that feel but do not reason. In reality many of these people, did they but know it, are simply social reformers at heart and not Socialists at all, and their ignorance of what Socialism really means leads them to range themselves under the banner of a party that claims a monopoly of ideals. Others again, particularly amongst the young intelligentsia, take up Socialism in the same spirit as they would adopt a fashion in ties or waistcoats, for fear of being regarded as "reactionaries." That in reality, far from being "advanced," the profession of Socialism is as retrogressive as would be a return to the side-whiskers and plaid trousers of the last century, does not occur to them. The great triumph of Mussolini was to make the youth of Italy realize that to be a Communist was to be a "back number," and that progress consisted in marching forward to new ideas and aspirations. The young men of Cabet's settlement discovered this sixty years ago when they formed themselves into a band of "Progressives" in opposition to the old men who still clung to the obsolete doctrine of Communism.
Socialism at the present moment is in reality less a creed than a cult, founded not on practical experience but on unreal theory. It is here we find a connexion with secret societies. M. Augustin Cochin in his brilliant essays on the French Revolution[738] has described that "World of the Clouds" of which the Grand Orient was the capital, peopled by the precursors of the French Revolution. "Whilst in the real world the criterion of all thought lies in putting it to the test," there in the World of the Clouds the criterion is opinion. "They are there to talk, not to do; all this intellectual agitation, this immense traffic in speeches, writings, correspondence, leads not to the slightest beginning of work, of real effort." We should be wrong to judge them harshly; their theories on the perfectibility of human nature, on the advantages of savagery, which appear to us "dangerous chimeras," were never intended to apply to real life, only to the World of the Clouds, where they present no danger but become, on the contrary, "the most fecund truths."
The revolutionary explosion might well have finally shattered these illusions but for the Grand Orient. We have already seen the identity of theory between French Masonry and French Socialism in the nineteenth century. It was thus that, although in France one experiment after another demonstrated the unreality of Socialist Utopias, the lodges were always there to reconstruct the mirage and lead humanity on again across the burning desert sands towards the same phantom palm-trees and illusory pools of water.
Whatever the manner in which these ideas penetrated to this country--whether through the Radicals of the last century, adorers of the Encyclopædist Masons of France, or through the British disciples of German Social Democrats from the time of the First Internationale onwards--it is impossible to ignore the resemblance between the theories not only of French but of modern British Socialism and the doctrines of illuminized Freemasonry. Thus the idea running through Freemasonry of a Golden Age before the Fall, when man was free and happy, and which through the application of masonic principles is to return once more, finds an exact counterpart in the Socialist conception of a past halcyon era of Liberty and Equality, which is to return not merely in the form of a regenerated social order, but as a complete Millennium from which all the ills of human life have been eliminated. This idea has always haunted the imagination of Socialist writers from Rousseau to William Morris, and leads directly up to the further theory--the necessity for destroying civilization.
I cannot find in Mr. Lothrop Stoddart's conception of the revolutionary movement as the revolt of the "Under Man" against civilization, the origin of this campaign. In reality the leaders of world-revolution have not been "Under Men," victims of oppression or of adverse fate, nor could they be ranged in this category on account of physical or mental inferiority. It is true that most revolutionary agitators have been in some way abnormal and that the revolutionary army has largely been recruited from the unfit, but the real inspirers of the movement have frequently been men in prosperous circumstances and of brilliant intellect who might have distinguished themselves on other lines had they not chosen to devote their talents to subversion. To call Weishaupt, for example, an "Under Man" would be absurd. But let us see what is the idea on which the plan of destroying civilization is ostensibly founded.
It will be remembered that Rousseau like Weishaupt held that the Golden Age of felicity did not end in the garden of Eden, as is popularly supposed, but was prolonged into tribal and nomadic life. Up to this moment Communism was the happy disposition under which the human race existed and which vanished with the introduction of civilization. Civilization is therefore the fons et origo mali and should be done away with. Let no one exclaim that this theory died out either with Rousseau or with Weishaupt; the idea that "civilization is all wrong" runs all through the writings and speeches of our Intellectual Socialists to-day. I have referred elsewhere to Mr. H.G. Wells's prediction that mankind will more and more revert to the nomadic life, and Mr. Snowden has recently referred in tones of evident nostalgia to that productive era when man "lived under a system of tribal Communism."[739] The children who attend the Socialist Schools are also taught in the "Red Catechism" the advantages of savagery, thus:
Question. Do savages starve in the midst of plenty?
Answer. No; when there is plenty of food they all rejoice, feast, and make merry.[740]
That when there is not plenty of food they occasionally eat each other is not mentioned.
Here, then, is the theory on which this yearning for a return to nature is based. For it is quite probable that if a Golden Age ever existed it was Communistic; it is also true that certain primitive tribes have found it possible to continue the same system, for the simple reason that when and where the earth was very thinly populated it brought forth, without the artificial aid of agriculture, more than enough to supply each man's needs. There was therefore no need for laws to protect property, since every man could help himself freely to all that he required. If at the present time a dozen people were shipwrecked on a fertile island some miles in area, the institution of property would be equally superfluous; if, however, several hundred were to share the same fate, it would at once become necessary to institute some system of cultivation which in its turn would necessitate either the institution of property, by which each man would depend on his own plot of land for his existence, or a communal system, by which all would be obliged to work for the common good and force applied to those who refused to do their allotted share.
Peaceful Communism is thus simply a matter of population; the conditions under which men can sit in the sun and enjoy the fruits of the earth with little effort must be transformed with the multiplication of the human species into a system which recognizes private property, or a communal State which enforces compulsory labour by means of overseers with whips. It was perhaps an appreciation of this truth that impelled the practical exponents of Rousseau's doctrines, the Terrorists of 1793, to embark on their "plan of depopulation" by way of establishing Communism on a peaceful basis.
But our Intellectual Socialists deny this necessity on the ground that under the benign régime of Socialism all men would be good and happy and would work joyfully for the welfare of the community. The fact that this has not proved the case even in voluntary Communist settlements does not daunt them, because, as has been said, their creed is founded not on practical experiment, but on theory, and it is here that we again find the inspiration of Grand Orient Freemasonry. The assumption that under an ideal social order all human failings would vanish derives directly from the two masonic doctrines which the Grand Orient, under the influence of Illuminism, has brought to a reductio ad absurdum--the perfectibility of human nature and universal brotherhood. The whole philosophy of Socialism is built upon these false premises.
Indeed the actual phraseology of illuminized Freemasonry has now passed into the language of Socialism; thus the old formulæ of "the United States of Europe" and "the Universal Republic" have been adopted not only by Mrs. Besant and her followers[741] as the last word in modern thought, but have also reappeared as a brilliant inspiration under the pen of Mr. H.G. Wells in the slightly varied form of the "World State." It would be amusing, for anyone who had the time, to discover how many of the ideas of our so-called advanced thinkers might be found almost verbatim in the writings of Weishaupt, the République Universelle of Anacharsis Clootz, and in the speeches of Grand Orient orators during the last century.
Moreover, the world-revolution is not only founded on the doctrines of illuminized Freemasonry, but has adopted the same method of organization. Thus, after the plan of the secret societies, from the Batinis onward, we shall find the forces of revolution divided into successive grades--the lowest consisting of the revolutionary proletariat, the chair a révolution as Marx expressed it, knowing nothing of the theory of Socialism, still less of the real aims of the leaders; above this the semi-initiates, the doctrinaires of Socialism, comprising doubtless many sincere enthusiasts; but above these again further grades leading up to the real initiates, who alone know whither the whole movement is tending.
For the final goal of world-revolution is not Socialism or even Communism, it is not a change in the existing economic system, it is not the destruction of civilization in a material sense; the revolution desired by the leaders is a moral and spiritual revolution, an anarchy of ideas by which all standards set up throughout nineteen centuries shall be reversed, all honoured traditions trampled under foot, and above all the Christian ideal finally obliterated.
It is true that a certain section of the Socialist movement proclaims itself Christian. The Illuminati made the same profession, so have the modern Theosophists and Rosicrucians. But, as in the case of these secret societies, we should ask of so-called Christian Socialists: What do they means by Christ? What do they mean by Christianity? On examination it will be found that their Christ is a being of their own inventing, that their Christianity is a perversion of Christ's real teaching.
The Christ of Socialism invoked in the interests of Pacifism as the opponent of force and in the interests of class warfare as a Socialist, a revolutionary, or even an "agitator," bears no resemblance to the real Christ. Christ was not a Pacifist when He told His disciples to arm themselves with swords, when He made a scourge of cords and drove the money-changers from the Temple. He did not tell men to forgive the enemies of their country or of their religion, but only their private enemies. Christ was not a Socialist when He declared that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth." Socialism teaches that a man must never rest content as long as another man possesses that which he has not. Christ did not believe in equality of payment when He told the parable of the ten talents and the unprofitable servant. Socialism would reduce all labour to the pace of the slowest. Above all, Christ was not a Socialist when He bade the young man who had great possessions sell all that he had and give it to the poor. What School of Socialism has ever issued such a command? On the contrary, Socialists are enjoined by their leaders not to give their money away in charity lest they should help by this means to prolong the existence of the present social system. The truth is that, as I showed in connexion with the fallacy of representing Christ as an Essene, there is no evidence to show that He or His disciples practised even the purest form of Communism. Christ did not advocate any economic or political system; He preached a spirit which if applied to any system would lead to peace among men. It is true that He enjoined His disciples to despise riches and that He denounced many of the rich men with whom He came into contact, but it must not be forgotten that His immediate mission was to a race that had always glorified riches, that had worshipped the golden calf, and by which wealth was regarded as the natural reward of godliness.[742] Christ came to teach men not to look for present reward in the form of increased material welfare, but to do good out of love to God and one's neighbour.
I do not doubt that in the past such men as Kingsley and J.F.D. Maurice sincerely imagined that they were following in the footsteps of the Master by describing themselves as Christian Socialists, but that the present leaders of Socialism in England are Christians at heart is impossible to believe in view of their attitude towards the campaign against Christianity in Russia. Never once have they or their allies, the Quakers, officially denounced the persecution not only of the priests but of all who profess the Christian faith in Russia.[743] Listen to this voice from the abyss of Russia:
We very much ask for prayer for the Church of Russia; it is passing through great tribulation and it is a question whether spiritual or earthly power will triumph. Many are being executed for not denying God.... Those placed by God at the helm need all the prayer and help of Christians all over the earth, because their fate is partly theirs too, for it is a question of faith triumphing over atheism, and it is a tug-of-war between those two principles.[744]
And again:
I look upon the persecution of the Russian Church as an effort to overthrow Christianity in general, for we are governed just now by the power of darkness, and all that we consider sinful seems to get the upper hand and to prosper.[744]
Yet it is for this power that the Socialist Party of Great Britain have for years been demanding recognition. Even the appeals for help from their fellow-Socialists in Russia have left them cold. "We would suggest," ran one such appeal--
1. That the British Labour Party issue an official protest against the Soviet Government's inhuman treatment of its political opponents in general and the political prisoners in particular.
2. That meetings of protest should be organized in the industrial towns of Great Britain.
3. That the British Labour Party make an official representation to the Soviet Government directly, urging the latter to put a stop to the persecutions of the Socialists in Russia.[745]
And it was of this régime that Mr. Lansbury wrote:
Whatever their faults, the Communist leaders of Russia have hitched their wagon to a star--the star of love, brotherhood, comradeship.[746]
The callous indifference displayed by British Socialists, with the honourable exception of the Social Democratic Federation,[747] towards the crimes of the Bolsheviks offers indeed a painful contrast to the attitude of the other Socialists of Europe. At the conference of the Labour and Socialist International at Hamburg in May 1923, a resolution was passed condemning the persecution by the Soviet Government. When the resolution was put to the congress, 196 voted for, 2 against it, and 39, including the 30 British delegates, abstained.
I ask, then: Why should the Socialists of Great Britain be differentiated from the Bolsheviks of Russia? In every question of importance they have always lent them their support. In the great war on Christianity they have acted as the advance guard by the institution of Socialist Sunday-schools, from which all religious teaching is excluded. Socialists are very anxious to disassociate these from the "Proletarian" Sunday-schools which teach atheism. But from ignoring the existence of God to denying it is but a step; moreover, it will be noticed that the Socialists have never issued any protests against the blasphemies of the Proletarian schools. The real attitude of the Socialist Party towards religion may perhaps be gauged by the notice, reproduced on page 341, which once appeared in its official organ the Daily Herald, of which Mr. Lansbury, widely advertised as a fervent Christian, was once editor and is now managing director.
It was to the party controlling this organ that 700 clergymen of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church of Scotland saw fit to offer their congratulations by means of a memorial presented to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald in March 1923. Shall we yet see the scene of Brumaire 1793 repeated and a procession of prelates presenting themselves at Westminster to lay down their rings and crosses and declare that "henceforth there shall be no other worship than that of liberty and holy equality"?
Already the desecration of the churches has begun. The red flag was recently carried into the City Temple by a band of unemployed, although several of their number objected to its presence in the church. An attempt to sing "The Red Flag" was also suppressed by a section of the unemployed
Books We All Pretend to have Read
The Bible is a real book, although during the whole of the nineteenth century the Churches turned a blind eye to the fact that it was a free translation by Jacobean clergymen of a Greek text of doubtful authenticity and of multiple authorship. The Bible is as divinely inspired as Shakespeare, or Milton, or Anatole France. But it is not as "pure" as the texts of these authors, for it is:--
(1) A miscellaneous collection of folk and traditional history bound to and described as the "Old Testament," and
(2) "The New Testament," a collection of Eastern theological doctrines centralized in the figure of a great Syrian mystic religious teacher, Jesus.
Those who will go to the Bible with an unprejudiced mind will discover that it is one of the great books of the world, full of beauty, humour, and aspiration, and disfigured, as great books often are, by occasional brutalities and crudities. --Daily Herald, February 7. 1923.
]
themselves, who had apparently retained some sense ot decency.[748]
Weishaupt's design of enlisting the clergy in the work of world-revolution has been carried out according to plan. Those Catholic priests in Ireland who inflamed popular passions acted as the tools of the International Atheist conspiracy and found at last the movement turning against themselves. The Protestant clergymen who profess "Christian Socialism" are playing the same part. Doubtless without knowing it, they act as the agents of the Continental Illuminati and pave the way, as did the emissaries of Weishaupt, for the open attack on all forms of religion. It is not a mere accident that the blasphemous masquerades of the French Revolution have recently been repeated in Russia. The horrible incidents described in the press[749] were simply the outward manifestation of a continuous conspiracy of which evidence was seen some years ago in Portugal under the influence of the Carbonarios, led by Alfonso Costa, whose utterances at times bore a striking resemblance to those of Anacharsis Clootz. The late Duchess of Bedford thus described the war on religion which inaugurated the new Republic:
One of the most zealous enterprises of this great society [the Carbonarios] is, in their own words, to exterminate "the Christian myth" in the minds of the nation of Portugal. The little children in the schools have badges pinned into their clothes with the words "No God! No religion!" and a British tourist who made a journey throughout the country of Portugal met bands of innocent babes carrying banners, on which the inscription was "We have no need of God."[750]
Is it only a coincidence that last year a Socialist and Communist meeting in Trafalgar Square displayed a red banner bearing the motto: "No King, no God, no Law"?[751]
I repeat: It is not an economic revolution which forms the plan of the real directors of the movement, it is neither the "dictatorship of the proletariat" nor the reorganization of society by the Intelligentsia of "Labour"; it is the destruction of the Christian idea. Socialist orators may inveigh against corrupt aristocracy or "bloated Capitalists," but these are not in reality the people who will suffer most if the aim of the conspiracy is achieved. The world-revolution has always shown itself indulgent towards selfish and corrupt aristocrats, from the Marquis de Sade and the Duc d'Orléans onwards; it is the gentle, the upright, the benevolent, who have fallen victims to revolutionary fury.
Socialism with its hatred of all superiority, of noble virtues--loyalty and patriotism--with its passion for dragging down instead of building up, serves the purpose of the deeper conspiracy. If the Christian Intelligentsia can be destroyed or won over and the nation deprived of all its natural leaders, the world-revolutionaries reckon that they will be able to mould the proletariat according to their desires. This being so, the thing we now call Bolshevism forms only one phase of the movement which is carried on by countless different methods, apparently disconnected but all tending towards the same end. We have only to look around us in the world to-day to see everywhere the same disintegrating power at work--in art, literature, the drama, the daily press--in every sphere that can influence the mind of the public. Just as in the French Revolution a play on the massacre of St. Bartholomew was staged in order to rouse the passions of the people against the monarchy, so our modern cinemas perpetually endeavour to stir up class hatred by scenes and phrases showing "the injustice of kings," "the sufferings of the people," the selfishness of "aristocrats," regardles of whether these enter into the theme of the narrative or not.[752] And in the realms of literature, not merely in works of fiction but in manuals for schools, in histories and books professing to be of serious educative value and receiving a skilfully organized boom throughout the press, everything is done to weaken patriotism, to shake belief in all existing institutions by the systematic perversion of both contemporary and historical facts, whilst novels and plays calculated to undermine all ideas of morality are pressed upon the public as works of genius which, in order to maintain a reputation for intellect, it is essential to admire. I do not believe that all this is accidental; I do not believe that the public asks for the anti-patriotic or demoralizing books and plays placed before it; on the contrary, it invariably responds to an appeal to patriotism and simple healthy emotions. The heart of the people is still sound, but ceaseless efforts are made to corrupt it.
This conspiracy has long been apparent to Continental observers. Some years before the war, Monsieur de Lannoy, a member of an anti-masonic association in France, at a conference on "the influence of judaeo-masonic sects in the theatre, in literature, in the fashions," showed how "orders of things which appear to have no connexion with each other are skilfully bound up together and directed by a single methodical movement towards a common end. This common end is the paganization of the universe, the destruction of all Christianity, the return to the loosest morals of antiquity."[753] Robison saw in the indecent dress of the period of the Directory the result of Weishaupt's teaching, and traces to the same cause the ceremony which took place in Notre Dame when a woman of loose morals was held up to the admiration of the public.[754] The same glorification of vice has found exponents amongst the modern Illuminati in this country. In The Equinox--the Journal of Scientific Illuminism, it is proposed that prostitutes should be placed on the same level as soldiers who have served their country and be honoured and pensioned by the State.[755] The community of women was not an idea that originated with the Russian Bolsheviks, but one that has run through all the revolutionary movements of the past.
The attempt to pervert all conceptions of beauty in the sphere of art serves to pave the way for moral perversion. In the New York Herald two years ago there appeared a circular protesting against the so-called Modernistic cult in art as "world-wide Bolshevist propaganda." The circular went on to declare:
This aims to overthrow and destroy all existing social systems, including that of the arts. This modernistic degenerate cult is simply the Bolshevist philosophy applied in art. The triumph of Bolshevism therefore means the destruction of the present æsthetic system, the transportation of all æsthetic values, and the deification of ugliness.
The whole propaganda of the movement was said to be organized by "a coterie of European art-dealers"--elsewhere described as German--who had flooded the market with the works of artists who began as "a small group of neurotic egomaniacs in Paris styling themselves worshippers of Satan, the God of Ugliness." Some of these men were suffering from the "visual derangement" of the insane, whilst "many of the pictures exhibited another form of mania. The system of this is an incontrollable desire to mutilate the human body." Sadism, as we know, played a prominent part in both the French and Russian revolutions. The most important point in all this is not that degenerates should be found to perpetrate these abominations, but what the circular describes as the "Machiavellian campaign organized for the unloading of these works. Editions de luxe ... were published and sold by the picture dealers; ...every crafty device known to the picture trade was resorted to in order to discredit and destroy the heretofore universally accepted standards of aesthetics."[756]
This process of reversing all accepted standards may also be brought about by subtler methods. We have already seen that occult practices may lead to the obliteration of all sense of truth and of normal sexual instincts. Under the influence of so-called occult science, which is, in reality, simply powerful suggestion or self-hypnotism, all a man's natural impulses and inhibitive springs of action may be broken; he will no longer react to the conceptions of beauty or ugliness, or right or wrong, which, unknown to himself, formed the law of his being. Thus not only his conscious deeds but his subconscious mental processes may pass under the control of another, or become entirely deranged.
Much the same consequences may result from the Freud system of Psycho-Analysis, which, particularly by its insistence on sex, tends to subordinate the will to impulses of a harmful kind. An eminent American neuro-psychiatrist of New York has expressed his opinion on this subject in the following words:
The Freud theory is anti-Christian and subversive of organized society. Christianity teaches that the individual can resist temptation and Freudism teaches that the matter of yielding to or resisting temptation is one for which the individual is not wilfully responsible. Freudism makes of the individual a machine, absolutely controlled by subconscious reflexes.... It would of course be difficult to prove that psycho-analysis has been evolved as a destructive propaganda measure, but in one sense the point is immaterial. Whether conscious or unconscious, it makes for destructive effect.[757]
In general, the art of the conspiracy is not so much to create movements as to capture existing movements, often innocuous and even admirable in themselves, and turn them to a subversive purpose. Thus birth control, which--if combined with the restriction of alien immigration and carried out under proper direction--would provide a solution to the frightful problem of over-population, can without these provisos become a source of national weakness and demoralization. It is easy to see how a limitation of the native population would serve the cause of England's enemies by reducing her fighting forces and by making room for undesirable aliens. That the birth-control campaign may also be used for evil purposes is suggested by the fact that it has not been confined to our own overcrowded island, but has been carried on in France, where under-population has long constituted a tragedy. In 1903 and 1904 the "Ligue de la Régéneration Humaine," founded by Monsieur Paul Robin, in its organ L'Émancipateur issued not only instructions on "the means how to avoid large families," but also pamphlets on "free love and free maternity."[758] The campaign of race-suicide was thus combined with the undermining of morality; legal families were to be limited and illegal births encouraged. This was quite in accord with the doctrines of the Grand Orient, in whose Temples, Monsieur Copin Albancelli points out, the principle of "la libre maternité"--known in this country as "the right to motherhood"--was advocated.
It is curious to notice that the apparently innocent invention of Esperanto receives support from the same quarter. This is not surprising since we know that the idea of a universal language has long haunted the minds of Freemasons. I have myself seen a document emanating from a body of French Masons stating that Esperanto is directly under the control of the three masonic powers of France--the Grand Orient, the Grande Loge Nationale, and the Droit Humain.
That it is largely used for promoting Bolshevism has been frequently stated. In July 1922, M. Bérard, Minister of Education, issued a circular "to the heads of all French Universities, academies, and colleges, calling on them not to help in any way in the teaching of Esperanto on the ground that Bolsheviks use it as one of their dangerous forms of propaganda."[759] A correspondent points out to me that another universal language, Ido, is used for propaganda by the Anarchists, and that several journals distributed by revolutionary societies, written in Ido, are "frankly and baldly Anarchical." The writer adds:
Last week I received a copy of Libereso (Liberty), monthly organ of the Anarchist Section of the "Emancipating Star"--"Cosmopolitan Union of Labour-class Idists." It commands carrying out Anarchistic principles to their extreme limits; commends "La Ruzo" (ruse); is sarcastic regarding Socialism and Democracy.... It contains an appeal for help (in money) for the Anarchists imprisoned in Russia ... written by Alexander Berkmann and signed by him with Emma Goldmann and A. Schapiro.
Here, then, we have a revolutionary movement which is anti-Socialist and even anti-Bolshevist, which tends to prove the opinion I have already expressed, that Bolshevism is only one phase of the world-conspiracy. But if we explain this by the old antagonism between the opposing revolutionary camps of Anarchy and Socialism, how are we to account for the fact that the same destructive purpose animates people who are neither Anarchist nor Socialist, but can only be ranged in the category of extreme reaction? Of this phase of the movement Nietzsche provides the supreme example. In his imprecations against "the Crucified," the advocate of autocracy and militarism rivals the most infuriated of revolutionary Socialists. The whole spirit of perversion is contained in the description of Nietzsche by his friend Georges Brandes: "His thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths: 'This thing passes for a value. Can we not turn it upside-down? This is regarded as good. Is it not rather evil?'" What is this but Satanism? The case of Nietzsche is not to be explained away by the fact that he died raving mad, since a number of apparently sane people still profess for him unbounded admiration, and whilst deriding Socialism and even attacking Bolshevism join in the war against Christian civilization. The conspiracy therefore exists apart from so-called democratic circles.
Not long ago I picked up an Italian novel by an anti-Socialist containing precisely the same diatribes against "Christian-bourgeois society" that are to be found in Anarchist and Bolshevist literature. "The family," says the author, "is the kernel of contemporary society and its base. Whoever would really reform or subvert must begin by reforming and subverting the family.... The family ... is the principal path of all unhappiness, of all vice, of all hypocrisy, of all moral ugliness, ..." and he goes on to show that the two countries which have proved themselves the sanest and the strongest are Germany and America, because they have advanced by long strides towards free love.[760]
The writer of these words may be of no importance, but they should be noted because they are symptomatic and help us to locate certain centres of infection.
It is impossible to observe all these miscellaneous movements going on all around us without being struck by the similarity of aim between them; each seems to form part of a common plan, which, like the separate pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, convey no meaning, but when fitted together make up a perfectly clear design. That there is somewhere in the background a point of contact is suggested by the fact that we find members of the different groups playing a double and a treble rôle, the same name occurring in the list of patrons in a Birth Control paper and in a revolutionary secret society, amongst the exponents of Psycho-Analysis and the members of an Irish Republican Committee.
With the open as with the secret forces the great method of warfare is the capture of public opinion. A hidden influence behind the press contributes powerfully to this end. Some of the subtlest disintegrating propaganda during the last seven years has emanated from the so-called "Capitalist press." The Daily Herald is only the brass band of the Revolution. It is to the journals inspired and patronized by the Intelligentsia that we must turn to find the doctrines of Illuminism set forth with the most persuasive eloquence.[761]
More than eighty years ago a Frenchman endowed with extraordinary prophetic instinct foretold not only the danger that would one day come from Russia, but that the press would facilitate the destruction of civilization:
When our cosmopolitan democracy, bearing its last fruits, shall have made of war a thing odious to whole populations, when the nations calling themselves the most civilized on earth shall have finished enervating themselves in their political debaucheries, ... the floodgates of the North will open on us once again, then we shall undergo a last invasion not of ignorant barbarians but of cunning and enlightened masters, more enlightened than ourselves, for they will have learnt from our own excesses how we can and must be governed.
It is not for nothing that Providence piles up so many inactive forces in the East of Europe. One day the sleeping giant will arise and force will put an end to the reign of words. In vain, then, distracted equality will call the old aristocracy to the help of liberty; the weapon grasped again too late and wielded by hands too long inactive will have become powerless. Society will perish for having trusted to words void of sense or contradictory; then the deceitful echoes of public opinion, the newspapers, wishing at all costs to keep their readers, will push [the world] to ruin if only to have something to relate for a month longer. They will kill society to live upon its corpse.[762]
To-day the newspapers, no longer the echoes of public opinion but its supreme directors, throw open their columns to every form of disintegrating doctrine and close them to arguments that could effectually arrest the forces of destruction.
What is the hidden influence behind the press, behind all the subversive movements going on around us? Are there several Powers at work? Or is there one Power, one invisible group directing all the rest--the circle of the real Initiates?