The art of Frederick the Great, as of his successors on the throne of the Hohenzollerns, was to make use of every movement that could further the design of Prussian supremacy. He used the Freemasons as he used the philosophers and as he used the Jews, to carry out his great scheme--the destruction of the French monarchy and of the alliance between France and Austria. Whilst through his representatives at the Court of France he was able to create discord between Versailles and Vienna and bring discredit on Marie Antoinette, through his allies in the masonic lodges and in the secret societies he was able to reach the people of France. The gold and the printing presses of Frederick the Great were added to those of the Orléanistes for the circulation of seditious literature throughout the provinces.[422]
So as the century advanced the association founded by Royalists and Catholics was turned into an engine of destruction by revolutionary intriguers; the rites and symbols were gradually perverted to an end directly opposed to that for which they had been instituted, and the two degrees of Rose-Croix and Knight Kadosch came to symbolize respectively war on religion and war on the monarchy of France.
It is no orthodox Catholic but an occultist and Rosicrucian who thus describes the rôle of Masonry in the Revolution:
Masonry has not only been profaned but it has been served as a cover and pretext for the plots of anarchy, by the occult influence of the avengers of Jacques du Molay and the continuers of the schismatic work of the Temple. Instead of avenging the death of Hiram, they have avenged his assassins. The anarchists have taken the plumb-line, the square, and the mallet and have written on them liberty, equality, fraternity. That is to say, liberty for envyings, equality in degradation, fraternity for destruction. Those are the men whom the Church has justly condemned and that she will always condemn.[423]
But it is time to turn to another masonic power which meanwhile had entered the lists, the Martinistes or French Illuminés.
French Illuminism
Whilst Frederick the Great, the Freemasons, the Encyclopædists, and the Orléanistes were working on the material plane to undermine the Church and monarchy in France, another cult had arisen which by the middle of the century succeeded in insinuating itself into the lodges. This was a recrudescence of the old craze for occultism, which now spread like wildfire all over Europe from Bordeaux to St. Petersburg. During the reign of Anna of Courland (1730-40) the Russian Court was permeated with superstition, and professional magicians and charlatans of every kind were encouraged. The upper classes of Germany in the eighteenth century proved equally susceptible to the attractions of the supernatural, and princes desirous of long life or greater power eagerly pursued the quest of the Philosopher's Stone, the "Elixir of Life," and evoked spirits under the direction of occultists in their service.
In France occultism, reduced to a system, adopted the outer forms of Masonry as a cover to the propagation of its doctrines. It was in 1754 that Martines de Pasqually (or Paschalis), a Rose-Croix Mason,[424] founded his Order of Élus Cohens (Elected Priests), known later as the Martinistes or the French Illuminés. Although brought up in the Christian faith, Pasqually has been frequently described as a Jew. The Baron de Gleichen, himself a Martiniste and a member of the Amis Réunis,[425] throws an interesting light on the matter in this passage: "Pasqualis was originally Spanish, perhaps of the Jewish race, since his disciples inherited from him a large number of Jewish manuscripts."[426]
It was "this Cabalistic sect,"[427] the Martinistes, which now became the third great masonic power in France.
The rite of the Martinistes was broadly divided into two classes, in the first of which was represented the fall of man and in the second his final restoration--a further variation on the masonic theme of a loss and a recovery. After the first three Craft degrees came the Cohen degrees of the same--Apprentice Cohen, Fellow Craft Cohen, and Master Cohen--then those of Grand Architect, Grand Elect of Zerubbabel or Knight of the East: but above these were concealed degrees leading up to the Rose-Croix, which formed the capstone of the edifice.[428] Pasqually first established his rite at Marseilles, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, then in Paris, and before long Martiniste lodges spread all over France with the centre at Lyons under the direction of Willermoz, a prosperous merchant living there. From this moment other occult Orders sprang up in all directions. In 1760 Dom Pernetti founded his sect of "Illuminés d'Avignon" in that city, declaring himself a high initiate of Freemasonry and teaching the doctrines of Swedenborg. Later a certain Chastanier founded the "Illuminés Théosophes," a modified version of Pernetti's rite; and in 1783 the Marquis de Thomé started a purified variety of Swedenborgianism under the name of "Rite of Swedenborg."