Mysteria

1. MISCELLANEOUS SECRET SOCIETIES.

Conditions in the 18th century were specially favorable to the vogue of secret organizations: illuminism was making headway, but at the same time there remained many a relic of medieval barbarism. The manifest contrasts of opinion naturally inclined men of like mind to come together in secret societies for the advancement of their favorite principles. These societies copied the methods of Freemasonry, and were, in a greater or less degree its rivals. Some of them admitted women to membership.

The societies of both sexes were intended to compensate women for their exclusion from the Freemason lodge. The “Order of Woodsplitters” (fendeurs), founded in 1747 by the Chevalier Beauhaine, a distinguished Freemason, took its symbolism entirely from the work of the woodsplitter or woodchopper; the lodges were yards (i. e., woodyards, chantiers), the members were cousins (cousins, cousines; i. e., male and female cousins), the candidate was a Steel (used to strike fire from a flint), and so forth. The “Order of Hope” (esperance) was founded expressly for the behoof of Freemasons’ wives, and they alone were admitted; but masons of the higher degrees could visit the lodges without initiation. The president was a woman. There were Esperance lodges in several cities of Germany; at Goettingen the university students joined the order for the sake of the refinement of manners got from association with the ladies. There is some doubt as to the true character of the “Order of Saint Jonathan” (afterward of Saint Joachim), qualified as “for True and Perfect Friendship,” or “for the Defense of the Honor of Divine Providence.” Its end would seem to have been to propagate belief in the Trinity, to refrain from the dance (especially the waltz), and from games of chance; also (this for the female members) to nurse their own children. It was founded by some German nobles, and its first grandmaster was Christian Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Though Protestants and Catholics were members of the order, it took on a strongly Catholic character, and in 1785 adopted the style of “the knightly Secular Chapter of the Order of Saint Joachim, the blessed Father of the Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (ritterlich-weltliches ordenskapitel von St. Joachim, etc.) The society passed quietly out of existence. The “Order of the Pilgrims’ Chain” (Kette der Pilgrime), in Germany and Denmark, whose members belonged to the higher classes, had for its motto “Courtesy, Steadfastness, and Silence” (Willfaehrigkeit, Bestaendigkeit, Stillschweigen), and wore in a buttonhole a white ribbon bearing the initial letters of those three words. The members, male and female, were called Favorites (favoriten); to admit a new member was “to add a link to the chain”; and any member could add any “link” whom he might have known for half a year. The symbolism was borrowed from travel. The “Order of Argonauts” was founded in 1772 by Conrad von Rhetz, a Brunswick Freemason. On an islet in a pond leased to him by the state he built a temple in which the members were initiated. They approached the temple in barges and there were entertained by the Grand Admiral, as the founder was styled. There was no fee for admission. The motto was “Long Live Gladness”; the badge of the order was a green-enameled anchor of silver. The officers, besides the Grand Admiral, were the Pilot, the Ship’s Chaplain, and so forth, and the members were Argonauts. After the founder’s death the order went to wreck, and the temple disappeared, leaving no vestige. The renowned Fenelon founded at Douai an order called “the Palladium,” its secret dialect was taken from his romance “Telemasque.”

The “Order of the Mustardseed,” said to have been founded in England in 1708: it spread over Holland and Germany: it assumed the form of a Protestant clerico-knightly order, and concerned itself chiefly with religious affairs: its emblem was a gold cross, with mustard tree in the middle. This society was reputed to be connected with the Herrnhuters (Moravian brethren).

The “Order of the Leal” (Orden der Echten), founded in 1758, at Landeshut, by Bessel, a Prussian military officer, had for its end simply good-fellowship: it labored to win over to Prussia the Silesian nobility.

The “Society of the Ducats” (Dukatensocietat) had for its founder (1746) Count Louis of Neuwied, colonel in the Prussian Army. The members contributed one ducat a month; but when a member induced outsiders to join the society, then for the first outsider his own contribution for the month current was remitted; for the third, fifth and each following odd-numbered new accession procured by him he received a ducat. This vulgar swindle, which was the sole end of the society, worked finely, and the membership grew rapidly: but the Society of the Ducats was suppressed by the government after an existence of two years.

Attempts to establish other fraudulent orders were made by a swindler who understood the foible of his contemporaries for mysteries. Matthew Grossinger, or as he styled himself, Francis Rudolf von Grossing, son of a butcher, born 1752, at Komorn, in Hungary, would seem to have been once a Jesuit. After the suppression of his order, he offered to sell to Frederic the Great some Austrian official documents, but met with a repulse; then he represented himself to Joseph II. as a victim of the reactionary policy of the preceding reign, and in 1784 founded in the interest of his own pocket the “Order of the Rose,” and again in 1788, donning women’s clothes, the “Order of Harmony,” both orders admitting members of either sex. He named “Frau von Rosenwald,” a non-existent personage, as head of the order, with the title Stiftsrose (The Institute’s Rose). The several local societies were known as Roses, and their presiding officers as Rosylords and Rosyladies (Rosenherren, Rosendamen). But in fact Grossing was all in all, and he appropriated to himself the very liberal contributions and all other income: for that end alone were the societies established. He died in wretched circumstances, having always squandered his gains in luxury and extravagance.

2. OBSCURANTIST INFLUENCES.

The daybreak of illuminism in the 18th century gave to the partisans of the ancient despotism of creed and privilege matter of most serious concern. They saw all their contrivances for keeping the people ignorant and submissive baffled. For them, as for the Papacy at the daybreak of the Reformation the question was, To be or Not to be. But theirs was a war with a far more redoubtable foe than Protestantism ever was. Illuminism did not aim merely at separation from the Roman Church: it declared a war of extermination against Rome, it aimed at abolition of all authority that presumed to determine the beliefs of men or to dictate their opinions. To down this hateful spirit of illuminism with one blow—what satisfaction that would afford to the obscurantists of that time! But where should they begin? It was vain to think of silencing the literary champions of illuminism. The age of witch trials and courts of Inquisition was past. The problem was to find an organized institution in which the odious spirit of illuminism was, as it were, incorporated, and that could be no other than the society of the Freemasons. But the experience of the Popes and the Inquisition had shown that Freemasonry was not to be overmastered by persecution, by prisons, or by the stake. Hence, other champions must take the place of the Dominican inquisitors: the Freemasons must be won over to the good cause by flatteries and cajoleries. Among the illuminists of that day the Jesuits were regarded as the agents chosen for carrying out this plan; and though it cannot be demonstrated that they had an actual part in the business, the scheme surely was one quite consonant with the spirit of their order. The plan was shrewdly contrived. It dealt with political considerations affecting England, the native home of freemasonry; and thus the conspiracy aimed, so to speak, at capturing the den of the “dragon” of illuminism. The Stuart dynasty, which had returned to the Catholic fold, was in exile from the end of the 17th century, but, aided by France materially and by Rome intellectually, was ever striving to regain the lost throne. The efforts of kings and kings’ sons in exile possess a poetical and romantic quality. It was possible to win over all sympathetic enthusiasts by exploiting their foibles, the nobles and legitimists (the Tories) by preaching legitimacy, and the whole body of the Catholics by appealing to their loyalty to the Church. Now, the masonic order was a secret society, and as such, of course, was a rallying point for all enthusiasts, mystics, and dreamers. Besides, the nobility was strongly represented in the society: after the first four grandmasters of the Grand Lodge of England, who were all practical masons (architects), all the succeeding grandmasters belonged to the highest nobility of the realm. Among them we find dukes of Montague, Richmond, Norfolk, Chandos, to say nothing of a long series of viscounts, earls, and marquises. As for the Catholic element, it had many things in common with Freemasonry—ceremonies and mysticism, hierarchic degrees, and cosmopolitan extension; hence, with a little Jesuit finesse, the order might gradually and insensibly be made Catholic, as had been done with the Buddhist ceremonial in India: in this way the Society of Saint John might be transformed into a preparatory school for the Society of Jesus. And now, if we consider what a scandal it must have been to the coronetted chiefs of Freemasonry that their order originated among mechanics, we can see how easy it would be, by dishing up a few fables in proof of a nobler origin, to make converts of them for any ends whatever. In the event of success, the stronghold of illuminism would be captured, and with the help of its former champions the most powerful kingdom in Europe, and a great centre of illuminism, would be given back to a Catholic King, and thereby the road to conquest opened for the Church of Rome. Of course, these vast designs could not be carried out all at once. The work had to proceed by stages, as thus: 1. Aristocratic sentiment would be gratified by the institution of higher masonic degrees; 2. These degrees would be connected with the religious orders of knighthood by a chain of fable; 3. Obstinate Protestants would be quieted by the offer of a cryptic Catholicism which apparently would be in accordance with their own beliefs; 4. Persons inaccessible to religious considerations would be influenced by hopes of riches to be acquired through the secret arts of alchemy, and the like; 5. The whole purpose of the order would be directed toward spiritual and Catholic ends; finally, 6. when the process was completed, there would stand forth in all its nakedness the savage fury of the Inquisition.

3. THE “HIGH DEGREES” SWINDLE.

Without any sufficient reason assigned, there arose in England between the years 1741 and 1743 a new degree, Royal Arch, at first as a higher division of the master’s degree afterward as an independent degree. Its content was a hotchpotch of New Testament passages, religious dogmas, and masonic, or, rather, unmasonic fables. Its tradition went back to the building of the second Temple of Jerusalem, after the return from Babylonian captivity; hence the president of a Royal Arch lodge took the name of Zerubbabel, and wore a vesture of scarlet and purple. The meeting was called a “chapter”; the three masonic degrees were dubbed “probationary degrees”; and soon, on the title page of the rules of the degree was represented an ark, with the inscription “Nulla Salus Extra” (no safety outside), whereby we are reminded that according to Catholic doctrine the ark of Noah was a type of the Church. Afterward the Royal Arch degree published a program of its work, in which masonry is divided into Operative and Speculative, and the former subdivided into manual, instrumental, and scientific; the aim of the “order” was defined to be, to gather the human race in one fold under the great Shepherd of souls. For the rest, the work of this degree was childish play.

Even before this fruit was borne in England, there came into circulation in France, how or why nobody knows, a statement that Freemasonry arose in Palestine during the Crusades, and was there consolidated with the Knights of St. John (Hospitalers), wherefore the lodges came to be called Saint John’s lodges; that after the Crusades the order was established in Scotland, was thence afterward introduced into England, and later into other countries. This historic lie was, of course, welcomed by the nobles who were members of the order; as for the many uneducated members who had been admitted into the French lodges, they were easily deluded. Thenceforward there were High Degrees of all sorts in France. And as the fable assigned to Scotland the foremost place in the history of masonry, the highest degrees began to be known as Scottish, or, after the name of Scotland’s patron, Saint Andrew, Saint Andrew’s degrees, and the lodges Scottish or Saint Andrew’s lodges. In their rites of admission they adopted from the traditions of the English and French stonemasons a lot of myths about the death of Hiram, and taught the aspirants for admission to avenge that death, the meaning being that they were to avenge the expulsion of the Stuarts, and the wrongs done the Catholic Church by the Reformation and by illuminism.

But as degrees were multiplied the Hiram myth no longer sufficed, and for the higher steps it was necessary to have recourse to other myths. Meanwhile it was seen that the story of the consolidation of the Freemasons and the Knights of Saint John would not work, for that knightly order was still in existence; therefore, if the aristocratic brethren were to have their vanity flattered, recourse must be had to a suppressed order of knighthood. True, that was not pleasing to strict Catholics, but there was no alternative—and a bond of connection had to be formed between Masonry and the order of the Templars—the heretical Templars.

So here is the story of the relation of the Freemasons to the Templars: A few Templars, fleeing from papal and royal persecution—among them Grand Comptroller Harris and Marshal Aumont—reached Scotland, and in that country, in order to gain a livelihood, worked as common masons. Advised of the death of the Grandmaster Molay, and of his last will, wherein he had directed the brethren to perpetuate the order, these fugitive knights that same year established the “Freemasons’ league,” and on the Scotch Isle of Mull held the first “chapter” in 1314. Now, to say nothing of the fact that, as we shall see, the story took more than one different shape afterward, it is on other grounds quite unworthy of belief. It is beyond question that documentarily the Freemason league can assign for itself no other origin but the constitution of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. But, besides, the story is ridiculous, not only in that Harris and Aumont are purely fictitious personages, but also in that the Grand Lodge of Scotland and the oldest lodges of that ancient kingdom know nothing of any such creation of a society; and, furthermore, the objects and the sentiments of Templarism and masonry differ too widely for any unification to take place between them. In the one body free thinking through levity of temperament: in the other repudiation of odium theologicum out of love of fellowmen; on one side egotism: on the other regard for the general weal; on one side pride of aristocracy: on the other regard only for the dignity of manhood.

And yet the most eminent men of the 18th century were fooled into believing that the Freemasons are descended from the Templars. The first serious and formal introduction of spurious Templarism into masonry took place in France. The Chevalier de Boneville, on November 24, 1764, founded at Paris a chapter of the high degrees called (apparently in honor of the then grandmaster of Freemasons, Louis de Bourbon, count of Clermont) the “Clermont chapter”; its members were, for the most part, partisans of the Stuarts, and therefore of the Jesuits also. Here it was that the story of the wondrous transformation of Templars into Freemasons in Scotland was invented, taught, and employed as part of the ceremonial of admission to the higher degrees. The members wore the masonic togs, and in their ritual the death of the Grandmaster Molay took the place of that of Hiram; and, in fact, by Hiram, as some asserted, Molay was meant. From this chapter the influence of the Jesuits extended soon over the whole field of French Freemasonry. Surely, it was not by accident nor out of patriotism that the very next year the French Grand Lodge, till then dependent on England, declared itself independent, and adopted statutes according to which the “Scottish Masters” (unknown both in England and Scotland) were to have oversight of the work.

4. APOSTLES OF NONSENSE.

Soon the craze spread further still, and first, of course, through Germany, where, in those degenerate days, whatever bore the French stamp was received with reverence and conscientiously aped. The Scottish lodges got entrance into Berlin as early as 1742. The dubious honor of this importation belongs to Baron E. G. von Marschall, who had been initiated into the new Templarism at Paris. Dying soon afterward, he was succeeded by a man who presented the curious spectacle of noblest and most strenuous endeavor toward a fantastic goal, of the nature of which he knew nothing. Charles Gotthilf, Imperial Baron of Hund and Altengrottkau (so he was styled), born in 1722, was a nobleman of Lusatia and actual privy councilor of the Emperor; he was a man of narrow mind, without high education, but he was an idealist, a chivalrous, hospitable and kindly gentleman. At Paris he was received into the Catholic Church and into the spurious order of Templars, to which he was devoted heart and soul: he was commissioned “Master of the Host” in Germany. He founded a lodge on one of his estates, which bore the ominous name of Unwurde (unworth), and soon had several subordinate lodges under his jurisdiction.

“About this time,” says a contemporary writer, “the Seven-Years War broke out. The French troops came into Germany, and with them many Jesuits. With the French Army, and particularly in its commissariat, were a great many Freemasons of the higher degrees, and some of those gentlemen had calculated to make a good deal of money by the sale of merchandise in Germany. I knew one French commissary who had a whole wagonload of decorations for some forty-five degrees, and these he peddled all the way from Strasburg to Hamburg. Thereafter no German lodge was any longer content with the three symbolic degrees, but nearly every one of them had a series of higher degrees of one brand or another, according to the particular windbag each fell victim to; and so they dropped one system and took up another when a new apostle came that way and reformed them.”

Such an apostle of fraud was the Marquis de Lernais or Lerney. Taken prisoner of war to Berlin, he there made known the Jesuitical doctrine of the Chapter of Clermont, and even founded a chapter in the Grand Lodge of the Three World-Spheres. To spread these chapters over the rest of Germany, or, in plain terms, to give the whole country into the hands of the Jesuits, a character by no means ambiguous, one Philip Samuel Rosa, once a Protestant clergyman, counsel to the consistory, and superintendent, but afterward deposed for immorality, was employed. Rosa’s whole endeavor was to make money. Joining the Chapter of Clermont he got the title “Knight of Jerusalem and Prior of the Chapter of Halle.” As he traveled up and down the land, the lodge at Halle paid his expenses. The eyes of the deluded brethren were at last opened, on the discovery of the relations between Rosa and another swindler, one Leuchte, who palmed himself off as an Englishman, Baron Johnson, and who founded a Grand Chapter, admitted novices and knights, boasted of armies and fleets at his command, and sent forth to all Templars in Germany an encyclical letter summoning them to his standard. Many were his dupes, among them Rosa, who visited him at Jena, humbled himself before him, and consented to the expulsion of the Berlin chapter from the “order.” But as Rosa was loth to admit at Halle his submission to Johnson, and counseled the “knights” there not to recognize Johnson, his double-dealing was betrayed to his dupes at Halle by the “Baron,” and he was dismissed from their service in disgrace. The “Baron” himself, after the discovery of his frauds, was repudiated by his followers, and in 1765 was imprisoned in the famous castle of Wartburg, and there remained till his death in 1775.

This was the opportunity of the Baron von Hund, the Don Quixote of the 18th century. He became now the acknowledged head of the “order,” and ruled it as his fancy dictated. He always spoke of “Unknown Superiors” of the order as though his policy was guided by them; but the “Superiors” who imposed on the guileless gentleman were the intriguants at Paris. Because of the unconditional obedience required of the members, Hund called the system of the order that of “Strict Observance,” in contradistinction to the “lax observance” of ordinary Freemasons. The Strict Observance comprised seven degrees; viz., the three masonic degrees, the degree of the Scottish Master, that of the Novice, that of the Knight-Templar, finally the degree of the Eques Professus, or Professed Knight (one who has “professed” or taken the monastic vows!). All knights assumed Latin names or surnames. Hund was Eques ab Ense (Knight of the Sword); others were Knight of the Sun, of the Lion, of the Star, even of the Whale, of the Chafer, of the Golden Crab, of the Mole, etc. Soon Strict Observance was dominant in the German lodges, while genuine Freemasonry was forgotten. No less than twenty-six German princes joined the order, and so puffed up were its directors in consequence that forthwith they divided Europe up into provinces, after the manner of the Templars and the Jesuits, naming for each province a Master of the Host. The subdivisions of provinces were called, as among the Templars, Priories, Prefectures, Comptrollerships, etc. To give these subdivisions something more than an existence on paper, Hund dispatched the Baron G. A. von Weiler, Knight of the Golden Ear (of wheat, barley, etc.) to France and Italy, where he founded several chapters: even the Grand Orient of France united itself with the Strict Observance. Toward those German lodges which held aloof from this bastard masonry the Hundian Templars were supremely disdainful, and but few of the lodges had the spirit to speak out against the “obscurantist innovations.” Chief among the few was the gallant old Lodge of Unity, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, which declared itself an English provincial lodge, to show its independence of pseudo-Templarism.

A zealous apostle of the Strict Observance was John Christian Schubart of Kleefeld, Knight of the Ostrich, who was constantly on the road converting lodges to that system. Schubart devised a plan by which the order was to acquire great wealth. Hund’s financial affairs were in confusion, in consequence of the war, and he proposed to bequeath his property to the order, in consideration of a certain sum in cash: but the order had not the money. Schubart now proposed to exact enormous fees for initiations and admissions to high degrees (for example, 350 thalers for admission). But the scheme could not be worked, and Schubart withdrew from the order.

The order had no longer any use for Hund. The time had come for the Jesuit influence to assert itself: it would have no more fooleries with helmets, swords, accoutrements, and Templar’s mantles. It was seen by the original projectors of the “order” that if they would succeed in their design of winning over Freemasonry to the plan of catholizing Germany, they must betimes provide a clerical directorate for the organization, which till now had worn the mask of knighthood. They found a convenient instrument in the person of the Protestant theologian, John Augustus von Stark, born at Schwerin in 1741. While a student in Goettingen Stark was admitted (1761) to the masonic order; then he was a teacher in Petersburg, where he adopted the mystic system of one Melesino, a Greek. The ceremonial of Melesino’s system comprised a number of prayers and genuflections, and even a mass; the high-degree meetings were called Conclaves, and the members wore surplices. Later, at Paris, Stark took an interest in Oriental manuscripts, and joined the Catholic Church, but all the same, on his return home he served as professor of theology at Koenigsberg, and then as court preacher and general ecclesiastical superintendent in the same city, and afterward in Darmstadt. Through some acquaintances, who were members of the Strict Observance, he got an introduction to Hund, to whom he revealed the great secret which he had learned at Petersburg, namely, that the grand mysteries of the Templars were revealed not to the knights, but only to the clerical members, and that these mysteries had been kept and handed down to that time; further, that the true chief of the order of Templars was none other but the Knight of the Golden Sun, Charles Edward Stuart, the Pretender, then resident in Florence. Delighted at the prospect of an enhancement of what he fancied to be his sciences, Hund recognized Stark and two of Stark’s friends as Clerics of the Order of Templars. These clerical Templars thereupon drew up a ceremonial and created degrees of their own, and as a special favor initiated some secular knights into their mysteries. But because Hund declined to accommodate Stark with a loan of two hundred thalers to defray the expenses of a journey to Petersburg, where Pylades, head of the Templar clerics, resided, the two fell out, and Stark announced his purpose to keep the “Clericate” independent of the “Order.” Nevertheless, he begged a friend to negotiate on his behalf with the secular Templars. This friend was a noble personage, Ernest Werner von Raven, Knight of the Pearl, a wealthy landowner, “prior” in the “order,” member of a Chapter under Rosa and Hund, and also an initiate in Stark’s own clerical order of Templars. Like Hund, he was a man of honor, but vain and narrow-minded, a mystic and an alchemist. Raven, in 1772, attended a convention held at Kohlo, in Lusatia, for the purpose of bringing about an understanding between the Knights and the clerics. He appeared in the costume of the Templar clerics, viz.; white cassock with red cross on the breast and a hat like that of a cardinal. He presented to the meeting a project of union drawn up by Stark, which the knights received with plaudits of satisfaction. Hund was deposed from his high office, and appointed one of the Masters of the Host, while Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick was made Grandmaster, and other princes were named to be Superiors and Protectors under him.

But the ritualistic pomp of the Clerics had already awakened suspicion in the minds of the Protestant members, and they began to cry out against mysteries of foreign origin and against the dictation of unknown Superiors. This discontent found expression in the convention held at Brunswick in 1775. There Hund was questioned as to the legitimacy of his appointment as a Master of the Host and the Clerics as to the authenticity of their mysteries. Hund was deposed from office; the following year he died of a broken heart, and, clothed in the regalia of Master of the Host, was interred in the church at Melrichsstadt in front of the altar. The seat of the Grandmaster was fixed permanently at Brunswick.

Thus the machinations of the Jesuits seemed to have come to naught. But now they sent forth a new apostle, a man who was an enigma, whose place of birth and of death are unknown, and who himself admitted to his confidants that he was an agent of the Jesuits. Gugomos—such was his name—styled baron and professor of art, and as a member of the Strict Observance Knight of the Triumphant Swan, in 1776, in his capacity as dignitary of the order of Templars with a long string of titles, invited the Grandmaster, the Directorate, and the Prior of the Clerics to attend a convention at Wiesbaden, in order, as he said, to instruct them in the genuine Templarism. And many “Knights” obeyed this singular invitation, among them several princes. Gugomos made loud boasts of the great number of mysteries into which he had been initiated, and in telling of them used phrases and terms that remind us strongly of the “Exercitia Spiritualia;” he exhibited his insignia and the commission of a “Most Holy See” in Cyprus; and declared that the Order to which he belonged, and of which the ancient order of Templars was only an offshoot, was founded by Moses, whose successors in the office of Grandmaster had been Egyptian, Judean, and other kings, Grecian philosophers, Christ himself and his apostles, finally popes. The Templar succession, he said, had been perpetuated in Cyprus (not in Scotland, then), and the archbishops of Cyprus were the successors of the Grandmasters. The degrees of Freemasonry (thus he driveled on) were a later innovation on the original clerical and knightly system, which in its organization was, he said, exactly the same as the Jesuit order. The one thing needed in order to instruct men in the occult sciences was a holy temple. On the completion of such a temple the “natural fire” would fall from heaven, etc. Many persons recognized the fraud; others walked into the trap, and were initiated. But seeing how little confidence was placed in him, Gugomos absconded, and that was the end of Jesuit Freemasonry.

But the farce of Templarism lived a few years yet, though people were growing tired of it. Some of the members went back to the old-fashioned masonry; others turned to new lights of mysticism that had for some time been looming on the horizon—the Swedish Rite and the New Rosicrucianism.

5. THE SWEDISH RITE.

Swedish Freemasons, as early as the middle of the 18th century, had found the genuine English masonry too simple and inornate: they longed for more glitter and pomp, mysteries and degrees. King Gustavus III. attempted to satisfy this want by concocting a new system, the ingredients being genuine freemasonry, the Strict Observance, and the system then known at “Rosicrucianism,” and in largest proportion the Clermont system: the doctrines of the famous mystic and seer, Swedenborg, may also have given a flavor to the compound. In founding the Swedish Rite or System, Gustavus counted on obtaining the help of the members in his effort to rid himself of the party of the nobles. The Swedish Rite has ten degrees. It is founded on two stories, one that certain secrets have descended to it from Christ through the Apostles, the clerical Templars, and the Freemasons; the other, that a nephew of the Grandmaster Beaulieu, a predecessor of Molay, visited Molay in prison, and, at the suggestion of Molay, went down into his uncle’s sepulchre, where, in a casket, he found the insignia and the records of the order; that from Paris he took these into Scotland, and thence into Sweden. The symbols of the higher degrees refer to Templarism and Catholicism. The ceremonies of the highest degree are said closely to resemble the mass. Other alleged usages are, the wearing of the red cross of the Templars on the breast, reciting every night Saint Bernard’s prayer to the Lamb of God, fasting on Good Friday till sundown, then eating three slices of bread, with oil and salt. The title of the head of the System is Vicar of Solomon. Several distinguished members of the Swedish System, among them the celebrated poet J. H. Voss, have characterized its ceremonies as “vain, useless and ridiculous.”

6. THE NEW ROSICRUCIANISM AND ALLIED SYSTEMS.

The New Rosicrucianism had its rise in Southern Germany about the year 1760, while Rosa and Johnson were busy with their systems. Its originators had no connection with Freemasonry, and of its nine degrees not even the first three were named after the masonic degrees. Several discontented members of the Strict Observance joined the new order. The members assumed fanciful names, as Foebron, Ormesus, Cedrinus; the lodges were called “Circles.” Unquestioning obedience was to be rendered to the Superiors. The members learned only the mysteries of their own particular circle. The motto was: “May God and His Word be with us.” They claimed to possess a cryptic Book containing a sacred history of events prior to the creation of the world, especially of the Fall of the Angels.

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

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

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

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

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

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