Secret societies and subversive movements

Now, we have only to study the Gospels carefully in order to realize that the teachings of Christ were totally different from those peculiar to the Essenes.⁹⁸ Christ did not live in a fraternity, but, as Dr. Ginsburg himself points out, associated with publicans and sinners. The Essenes did not frequent the Temple and Christ was there frequently. The Essenes disapproved of wine and marriage, whilst Christ sanctioned marriage by His presence at the wedding of Cana in Galilee and there turned water into wine. A further point, the most conclusive of all, Dr. Ginsburg ignores, namely, that one of the principal traits of the Essenes which distinguished them from the other Jewish sects of their day was their disapproval of ointment, which they regarded as defiling, whilst Christ not only commended the woman who brought the precious jar of ointment, but reproached Simon for the omission: "My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment." It is obvious that if Christ had been an Essene but had departed from His usual custom on this occasion out of deference to the woman's feelings, he would have understood why Simon had not offered Him the same attention, and at any rate Simon would have excused himself on these grounds. Further, if His disciples had been Essenes, would they not have protested against this violation of their principles, instead of merely objecting that the ointment was of too costly a kind?

But it is in attributing to Christ the Communistic doctrines of the Essenes that Dr. Ginsburg's conclusions are the most misleading--a point of particular importance in view of the fact that it is on this false hypothesis that so-called "Christian Socialism" has been built up. "The Essenes," he writes, "had all things in common, and appointed one of the brethren as steward to manage the common bag; so the primitive Christians (Acts ii. 44, 45, iv. 32-4; John xii. 6, xiii. 29)." It is perfectly true that, as the first reference to the Acts testifies, some of the primitive Christians after the death of Christ formed themselves into a body having all things in common, but there is not the slightest evidence that Christ and His disciples followed this principle. The solitary passages in the Gospel of St. John, which are all that Dr. Ginsburg can quote in support of this contention, may have referred to an alms-bag or a fund for certain expenses, not to a common pool of all monetary wealth. Still less is there any evidence that Christ advocated Communism to the world in general. When the young man having great possessions asked what he should do to inherit eternal life, Christ told him to follow the commandments, but on the young man asking what more he could do, answered: "If thou wilt be perfect go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor." Renunciation--but not the pooling--of all wealth was thus a counsel of perfection for the few who desired to devote their lives to God, as monks and nuns have always done, and bore no relation to the Communistic system of the Essenes.

Dr. Ginsburg goes on to say: "Essenism put all its members on the same level, forbidding the exercise of authority of one over the other and enjoining mutual service; so Christ (Matt. xx. 25-8; Mark ix. 35-7, x. 42-5). Essenism commanded its disciples to call no man master upon the earth; so Christ (Matt. xxiii. 8-10)." As a matter of fact, Christ strongly upheld the exercise of authority, not only in the oft-quoted passage, "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," but in His approval of the Centurion's speech: "I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." Everywhere Christ commends the faithful servant and enjoins obedience to masters. If we look up the reference to the Gospel of St. Matthew where Dr. Ginsburg says that Christ commanded His disciples to call no man master on earth, we shall find that he has not only perverted the sense of the passage but reversed the order of the words, which, following on a denunciation of the Jewish Rabbis, runs thus: "But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.... Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant." The apostles were therefore, never ordered to call no man master, but not to be called master themselves. Moreover, if we refer to the Greek text, we shall see that this was meant in a spiritual and not a social sense. The word for "master" here given is in the first verse διδάσκαλος, i.e. teacher, in the second, καθηγητὴς literally guide, and the word is servant is διακὸνοσ. When masters and servants in the social sense are referred to in the Gospels, the word employed for master is κύριος and for servant δοῦλος. Dr. Ginsburg should have been aware of this distinction and that the passage in question had therefore no bearing on his argument. As a matter of fact it would appear that some of the apostles kept servants, since Christ commends them for exacting strict attention to duty:

Which of you, having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterwards thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded to him? I trow not.99

This passage would alone suffice to show that Christ and His apostles did not inhabit communities where all were equal, but followed the usual practices of the social system under which they lived, though adopting certain rules, such as taking only one garment and carrying no money when they went on journeys. Those resemblances between the teaching of the Essenes and the Sermon on the Mount which Dr. Ginsburg indicates refer not to the customs of a sect, but to general precepts for human conduct--humility, meekness, charity, and so forth.

At the same time it is clear that if the Essenes in general conformed to some of the principles laid down by Christ, certain of their doctrines were completely at variance with those of Christ and of primitive Christians, in particular their custom of praying to the rising sun and their disbelief in the resurrection of the body.¹⁰⁰ St. Paul denounces asceticism, the cardinal doctrine of the Essenes, in unmeasured terms, warning the brethren that "in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils, ... forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving ... If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ."

This would suggest that certain Essenean ideas had crept into Christian communities and were regarded by those who remembered Christ's true teaching as a dangerous perversion.

The Essenes were therefore not Christians, but a secret society, practising four degrees of initiation, and bound by terrible oaths not to divulge the sacred mysteries confided to them. And what were those mysteries but those of the Jewish secret tradition which we now know as the Cabala? Dr. Ginsburg throws an important light on Essenism when, in one passage alone, he refers to the obligation of the Essenes "not to divulge the secret doctrines to anyone, ... carefully to preserve the books belonging to their sect and the names of the angels or the mysteries connected with the Tetragrammaton and the other names of God and the angels, comprised in the theosophy as well as with the cosmogony which also played so important a part among the Jewish mystics and the Kabbalists."101 The truth is clearly that the Essenes were Cabalists, though doubtless Cabalists of a superior kind. The Cabal they possessed very possibly descended from pre-Christian times and had remained uncontaminated by the anti-Christian strain introduced into it by the Rabbis after the death of Christ.¹⁰²

The Essenes are of importance to the subject of this book as the first of the secret societies from which a direct line of tradition can be traced up to the present day. But if in this peaceful community no actually anti-Christian influence is to be discerned, the same cannot be said of the succeeding pseudo-Christian sects which, whilst professing Christianity, mingled with Christian doctrines the poison of the perverted Cabala, main source of the errors which henceforth rent the Christian Church in twain.

The Gnostics

The first school of thought to create a schism in Christianity was the collection of sects known under the generic name of Gnosticism. In its purer forms Gnosticism aimed at supplementing faith by knowledge of eternal verities and at giving a wider meaning to Christianity by linking it up with earlier faiths. "The belief that the divinity had been manifested in the religious institutions of all nations"103 thus led to the conception of a sort of universal religion containing the divine elements of all.

Gnosticism, however, as the Jewish Encyclopædia points out, "was Jewish in character long before it became Christian."¹⁰⁴ M. Matter indicates Syria and Palestine as its cradle and Alexandria as the centre by which it was influenced at the time of its alliance with Christianity. This influence again was predominantly Jewish. Philo and Aristobulus, the leading Jewish philosophers of Alexandria, "wholly attached to the ancient religion of their fathers, both resolved to adorn it with the spoils of other systems and to open to Judaism the way to immense conquests."¹⁰⁵ This method of borrowing from other races and religions those ideas useful for their purpose has always been the custom of the Jews. The Cabala, as we have seen, was made up of these heterogeneous elements. And it is here we find the principal progenitor of Gnosticism. The Freemason Ragon gives the clue in the words: "The Cabala is the key of the occult sciences. The Gnostics were born of the Cabalists."¹⁰⁶

For the Cabala was much older than the Gnostics. Modern historians who date it merely from the publication of the Zohar by Moses de Leon in the thirteenth century or from the school of Luria in the sixteenth century obscure this most important fact which Jewish savants have always clearly, recognized.¹⁰⁷ The Jewish Encyclopædia, whilst denying the certainty of connexion between Gnosticism and the Cabala, nevertheless admits that the investigations of the anti-Cabalist Graetz "must be resumed on a new basis," and it goes on to show that "it was Alexandria of the first century, or earlier, with her strange commingling of Egyptian, Chaldean, Judean, and Greek culture which furnished soil and seeds for that mystic philosophy."¹⁰⁸ But since Alexandria was at the same period the home of Gnosticism, which was formed from the same elements enumerated here, the connexion between the two systems is clearly evident. M. Matter is therefore right in saying that Gnosticism was not a defection from Christianity, but a combination of systems into which a few Christian elements were introduced. The result of Gnosticism was thus not to christianize the Cabala, but to cabalize Christianity by mingling its pure and simple teaching with theosophy and even magic. The Jewish Encyclopædia quotes the opinion that "the central doctrine of Gnosticism--a movement closely connected with Jewish mysticism--was nothing else than the attempt to liberate the soul and unite it with God"; but as this was apparently to be effected "through the employment of mysteries, incantations, names of angels," etc., it will be seen how widely even this phase of Gnosticism differs from Christianity and identifies itself with the magical Cabala of the Jews.

Indeed, the man generally recognized as the founder of Gnosticism, a Jew commonly known as Simon Magus, was not only a Cabalist mystic but avowedly a magician, who with a band of Jews, including his master Dositheus and his disciples Menander and Cerinthus, instituted a priesthood of the Mysteries and practised occult arts and exorcisms.109 It was this Simon of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles that he "bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God," and who sought to purchase the power of the laying on of hands with money. Simon, indeed, crazed by his incantations and ecstasies, developed megalomania in an acute form, arrogating to himself divine honours and aspiring to the adoration of the whole world. According to a contemporary legend, he eventually became sorcerer to Nero and ended his life in Rome.¹¹⁰

The prevalence of sorcery amongst the Jews during the first century of the Christian era is shown by other passages in the Acts of the Apostles; in Paphos the "false prophet," a Jew, whose surname was Bar-Jesus, otherwise known as "Elymas the sorcerer," opposed the teaching of St. Paul and brought on himself the imprecation: "O full of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?"

Perversion is the keynote of all the debased forms of Gnosticism. According to Eliphas Lévi, certain of the Gnostics introduced into their rites that profanation of Christian mysteries which was to form the basis of black magic in the Middle Ages.111 The glorification of evil, which plays so important a part in the modern revolutionary movement, constituted the creed of the Ophites, who worshipped the Serpent (ὅφις) because he had revolted against Jehovah, to whom they referred under the Cabalistic term of the "demiurgus,"¹¹² and still more of the Cainites, so-called from their cult of Cain, whom, with Dathan and Abiram, the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and finally Judas Iscariot, they regarded as noble victims of the demiurgus.¹¹³ Animated by hatred of all social and moral order, the Cainites "called upon all men to destroy the works of God and to commit every kind of infamy."¹¹⁴

These men were therefore not only the enemies of Christianity but of orthodox Judaism, since it was against the Jehovah of the Jews that their hatred was particularly directed. Another Gnostic sect, the Carpocratians, followers of Carpocrates of Alexandria and his son Epiphanus--who died from his debaucheries and was venerated as a god¹¹⁵--likewise regarded all written laws, Christian or Mosaic, with contempt and recognized only the γνῶσις or knowledge given to the great men of every nation--Plato and Pythagoras, Moses and Christ--which "frees one from all that the vulgar call religion" and "makes man equal to God."¹¹⁶

So in the Carpocratians of the second century we find already the tendency towards that deification of humanity which forms the supreme doctrine of the secret societies and of the visionary Socialists of our day. The war now begins between the two contending principles: the Christian conception of man reaching up to God and the secret society conception of man as God, needing no revelation from on high and no guidance but the law of his own nature. And since that nature is in itself divine, all that springs from it is praiseworthy, and those acts usually regarded as sins are not to be condemned. By this line of reasoning the Carpocratians arrived at much the same conclusions as modern Communists with regard to the ideal social system. Thus Epiphanus held that since Nature herself reveals the principle of the community and the unity of all things, human laws which are contrary to this law of Nature are so many culpable infractions of the legitimate order of things. Before these laws were imposed on humanity everything was in common--land, goods, and women. According to certain contemporaries, the Carpocratians returned to this primitive system by instituting the community of women and indulging in every kind of licence.

The further Gnostic sect of Antitacts, following this same cult of human nature, taught revolt against all positive religion and laws and the necessity for gratifying the flesh; the Adamites of North Africa, going a step further in the return to Nature, cast off all clothing at their religious services so as to represent the primitive innocence of the garden of Eden--a precedent followed by the Adamites of Germany in the fifteenth century.117

These Gnostics, says Eliphas Lévi, under the pretext of "spiritualizing matter, materialized the spirit in the most revolting ways.... Rebels to the hierarchic order, ... they wished to substitute the mystical licence of sensual passions to wise Christian sobriety and obedience to laws.... Enemies of the family, they wished to produce sterility by increasing debauchery."¹¹⁸

By way of systematically perverting the doctrines of the Christian faith the Gnostics claimed to possess the true versions of the Gospels, and professed belief in these to the exclusion of all the others.¹¹⁹ Thus the Ebionites had their own corrupted version of the Gospel of St. Matthew founded on the "Gospel of the Hebrews," known earlier to the Jewish Christians; the Marcosians had their version of St. Luke, the Cainites their own "Gospel of Judas," and the Valentinians their "Gospel of St. John." As we shall see later, the Gospel of St. John is the one that throughout the war on Christianity has been specially chosen for the purpose of perversion.

Of course this spirit of perversion was nothing new; many centuries earlier the prophet Isaiah had denounced it in the words: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness!" But the role of the Gnostics was to reduce perversion to a system by binding men together into sects working under the guise of enlightenment in order to obscure all recognized ideas of morality and religion. It is this which constitutes their importance in the history of secret societies.

Whether the Gnostics themselves can be described as a secret society, or rather as a ramification of secret societies, is open to question. M. Matter, quoting a number of third-century writers, shows the possibility that they had mysteries and initiations; the Church Fathers definitely asserted this to be the case.120 According to Tertullian, the Valentinians continued, or rather perverted, the mysteries of Eleusis, out of which they made a "sanctuary of prostitution."¹²¹

The Valentinians are known to have divided their members into three classes--the Pneumatics, the Psychics, and the Hylics (i.e. materialists); the Basilideans are also said to have possessed secret doctrines known to hardly one in a thousand of the sect. From all this M. Matter concludes that:

1. The Gnostics professed to hold by means of tradition a secret doctrine superior to that contained in the public writings of the apostles.

2. That they did not communicate this doctrine to everyone....

3. That they communicated it by means of emblems and symbols, as the Diagram of the Ophites proves.

4. That in these communications they imitated the rites and trials of the mysteries of Eleusis.¹²²

This claim to the possession of a secret oral tradition, whether known under the name of γνῶσις or of Cabala, confirms the conception of the Gnostics as Cabalists and shows how far they had departed from Christian teaching. For if only in this idea of "one doctrine for the ignorant and another for the initiated," the Gnostics had restored the very system which Christianity had come to destroy.¹²³

Manicheism

Whilst we have seen the Gnostic sects working for more or less subversive purposes under the guise of esoteric doctrines, we find in the Manicheans of Persia, who followed a century later, a sect embodying the same tendencies and approaching still nearer to secret society organization.

The fundamental doctrine of Manicheism is Dualism--that is to say, the existence of two opposing principles in the world, light and darkness, good and evil--founded, however, not on the Christian conception of this idea, but on the Zoroastrian conception of Ormuzd and Ahriman, and so perverted and mingled with Cabalistic superstitions that it met with as vehement denunciation by Persian priests as by Christian Fathers. Thus, according to the doctrine of Manes, all matter is absolute evil, the principle of evil is eternal, humanity itself is of Satanic origin, and the first human beings, Adam and Eve, are represented as the offspring of devils.124 Much the same idea may be found in the Jewish Cabala, where it is said that Adam, after other abominable practices, cohabited with female devils whilst Eve consoled herself with male devils, so that whole races of demons were born into the world. Eve is also accused of cohabiting with the Serpent.125 In the Yalkut Shimoni it is also related that during the 130 years that Adam lived apart from Eve, "he begat a generation of devils, spirits, and hobgoblins."¹²⁶ Manichean demonology thus paved the way for the placation of the powers of darkness practised by the Euchites at the end of the fourth century and later by the Paulicians, the Bogomils, and the Luciferians.

So it is in Gnosticism and Manicheism that we find evidence of the first attempts to pervert Christianity. The very fact that all such have been condemned by the Church as "heresies" has tended to enlist sympathy in their favour, yet even Eliphas Lévi recognizes that here the action of the Church was right, for the "monstrous gnosis of Manes" was a desecration not only of Christian doctrines but of pre-Christian sacred traditions.

2. The Revolt Against Islam127

We have followed the efforts of subversive sects hitherto directed against Christianity and orthodox Judaism; we shall now see this attempt, reduced by gradual stages to a working system of extraordinary efficiency, organized for the purpose of undermining all moral and religious beliefs in the minds of Moslems. In the middle of the seventh century an immense schism was created in Islam by the rival advocates of successors to the Prophet, the orthodox Islamites known by the name of Sunnis adhering to the elected Khalifas Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman, whilst the party of revolt, known as the Shiahs, claimed the Khalifate for the descendants of Mohammed through Ali, son of Abu-Talib and husband of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. This division ended in open warfare; Ali was finally assassinated, his elder son Hason was poisoned in Medina, his younger son Husain fell at the battle of Kerbela fighting against the supporters of Othman. The deaths of Hasan and Husain are still mourned yearly by the Shiahs at the Moharram.

The Ismailis

The Shiahs themselves split again over the question of Ali's successors into four factions, the fourth of which divided again into two further sects. Both of these retained their allegiance to the descendants of Ali as far as Jafar-as-Sadik, but whilst one party, known as the Imamias or Isna-Asharias (i.e. the Twelvers), supported the succession through his younger son Musa to the twelfth Iman Mohammed, son of Askeri, the Ismailis (or Seveners) adhered to Ismail, the elder son of Jafar-as-Sadik.

To link together into one body the vanquished and the conquerors; to unite in the form of a vast secret society with many degrees of initiation free-thinkers--who regarded religion only as a curb for the people--and bigots of all sects; to make tools of believers in order to give power to sceptics; to induce conquerors to overturn the empires they had founded; to build up a party, numerous, compact, and disciplined, which in due time would give the throne, if not to himself, at least to his descendants, such was Abdullah ibn Maymūn's general aim--an extraordinary conception which he worked out with marvellous tact, incomparable skill, and a profound knowledge of the human heart. The means which he adopted were devised with diabolical cunning....

It was ... not among the Shi-ites that he sought his true supporters, but among the Ghebers, the Manicheans, the pagans of Harran, and the students of Greek philosophy; on the last alone could he rely, to them alone could he gradually unfold the final mystery, and reveal that Imams, religions, and morality were nothing but an imposture and an absurdity. The rest of mankind--the "asses," as Abdullah called them--were incapable of understanding such doctrines. But to gain his end he by no means disdained their aid; on the contrary, he solicited it, but he took care to initiate devout and lowly souls only in the first grades of the sect. His missionaries, who were inculcated with the idea that their first duty was to conceal their true sentiments and adapt themselves to the views of their auditors, appeared in many guises, and spoke, as it were, in a different language to each class. They won over the ignorant vulgar by feats of legerdemain which passed for miracles, or excited their curiosity by enigmatical discourse. In the presence of the devout they assumed the mask of virtue and piety. With mystics they were mystical, and unfolded the inner meanings of phenomena, or explained allegories and the figurative sense of the allegories themselves....

By means such as these the extraordinary result was brought about that a multitude of men of diverse beliefs were all working together for an object known only to a few of them....128

I quote this passage at length because it is of immense importance in throwing a light on the organization of modern secret societies. It does not matter what the end may be, whether political, social, or religious, the system remains the same--the setting in motion of a vast number of people and making them work in a cause unknown to them. That this was the method adopted by Weishaupt in organizing the Illuminati and that it came to him from the East will be shown later on. We shall now see how the system of the philosopher Abdullah paved the way for bloodshed by the most terrible sect the world had ever seen.

The Karmathites

The first open acts of violence resulting from the doctrines of Abdullah were carried out by the Karmathites, a new development of the Ismailis. Amongst the many Dais sent out by the leader--which included his son Ahmed and Ahmed's son--was the Dai Hosein Ahwazi, Abdullah's envoy to Irak in Persia, who initiated a certain Hamdan surnamed Karmath into the secrets of the sect. Karmath, who was a born intriguer and believed in nothing, became the leader of the Karmathites in Arabia, where a number of Arabs were soon enlisted in the society. With extraordinary skill he succeeded in persuading these dupes to make over all their money to him, first by means of small contributions, later by larger sums, until at last he convinced them of the advantages of abolishing all private property and establishing the system of the community of goods and wives. This principle was enforced by the passage of the Koran: "Remember the grace of God in that whilst you were enemies, He has united your hearts, so that by His grace you have become brothers...." De Sacy thus trans-scribes the methods employed as given by the historian Nowairi:

But in proclaiming themselves revolutionaries the Karmathites had departed from the plan laid down by the originator of their creed, Abdullah ibn Maymūn, which had consisted not in acts of open violence but in a secret doctrine which should lead to the gradual undermining of all religious faith and a condition of mental anarchy rather than of material chaos. For violence, as always, had produced counter-violence, and it was thus that while the Karmathites were rushing to their own destruction through a series of bloody conflicts, another branch of the Ismailis were quietly reorganizing their forces more in conformity with the original method of their founder. These were the Fatimites, so-called from their professed belief that the doctrine of the Prophet had descended from Ali, husband of Fatima, Mohammed's daughter. Whilst less extreme than the Karmathites, or than their predecessor Abdullah ibn Maymūn, the Fatimites, according to the historian Makrizi, adopted the method of instilling doubts into the minds of believers and aimed at the substitution of a natural for a revealed religion. Indeed, after the establishment of their power in Egypt, it is difficult to distinguish any appreciable degree of difference in the character of their teaching from the anarchic code of Abdullah and his more violent exponent Karmath.

The founder of the Fatimite dynasty of the Khalifas was one Ubeidallah, known as the Mahdi, accused of Jewish ancestry by his adversaries the Abbasides, who declared--apparently without truth--that he was the son or grandson of Ahmed, son of Adbullah ibn Maymūn, by a Jewess. Under the fourth Fatimite Khalifa Egypt fell into the power of the dynasty, and, before long, bi-weekly assemblages of both men and women known as "societies of wisdom" were instituted in Cairo. In 1004 these acquired a greater importance by the establishment of the Dar ul Hikmat, or the House of Knowledge, by the sixth Khalifa Hakim, who was raised to a deity after his death and is worshipped to this day by the Druses. Under the direction of the Dar ul Hikmat or Grand Lodge of Cairo, the Fatimites continued the plan of Abdullah ibn Maymūn's secret society with the addition of two more degrees, making nine in all. Their method of enlisting proselytes and system of initiation--which, as Claudio Jannet points out, "are absolutely those which Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, prescribed to the 'Insinuating Brothers'"129--were transcribed by the fourteenth-century historian Nowairi in a description that may be briefly summarized thus¹³⁰:

The proselytes were broadly divided into two classes, the learned and the ignorant. The Dai was to agree with the former, applauding his wisdom, and to impress the latter with his own knowledge by asking him perplexing questions on the Koran. Thus in initiating him into the first degree the Dai assumed an air of profundity and explained that religious doctrines were too abstruse for the ordinary mind, but must be interpreted by men who, like the Dais, had a special knowledge of this science. The initiate was bound to absolute secrecy concerning the truths to be revealed to him and obliged to pay in advance for these revelations. In order to pique his curiosity, the Dai would suddenly stop short in the middle of a discourse, and should the novice finally decline to pay the required sum, he was left in a state of bewilderment which inspired him with the desire to know more.

In the second degree the initiate was persuaded that all his former teachers were wrong and that he must place his confidence solely in those Imams endowed with authority from God; in the third he learnt that these Imams were those of the Ismailis, seven in number ending with Mohammed, son of Ismail, in contradistinction to the twelve Imams of the Imamias who supported the claims of Ismail's brother Musa; in the fourth he was told that the prophets preceding the Imams descending from Ali were also seven in number--namely Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, the first Mohammed, and finally Mohammed son of Ismail.

So far, then, nothing was said to the initiate in contradiction to the broad tenets of orthodox Islamism. But with the fifth degree the process of undermining his religion began, he was now told to reject tradition and to disregard the precepts of Mohammed; in the sixth he was taught that all religious observances--prayer, fasting, etc.--were only emblematic, that in fact all these things were devices to keep the common herd of men in subordination; in the seventh the doctrines of Dualism, of a greater and a lesser deity, were introduced and the unity of God--fundamental doctrine of Islamism--was destroyed; in the eighth a great vagueness was expressed on the attributes of the first and greatest of these deities, and it was pointed out that real prophets were those who concerned themselves with practical matters--political institutions and good forms of government; finally, in the ninth, the adept was shown that all religious teaching was allegorical and that religious precepts need only be observed in so far as it is necessary to maintain order, but the man who understands the truth may disregard all such doctrines. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the other prophets were therefore only teachers who had profited by the lessons of philosophy. All belief in revealed religion was thus destroyed. It will be seen then that in the last degrees the whole teaching of the first five was reversed and therefore shown to be a fraud. Fraud in fact constituted the system of the society; in the instructions to the Dais every artifice is described for enlisting proselytes by misrepresentation: Jews were to be won by speaking ill of Christians, Christians by speaking ill of Jews and Moslems alike, Sunnis by referring with respect to the orthodox Khalifas Abu Bakr and Omar and criticizing Ali and his descendants. Above all, care was to be taken not to put before proselytes doctrines that might revolt them, but to make them advance step by step. By these means they would be ready to obey any commands. As the instructions express it:

To believe nothing and to dare all was, in two words, the sum of this system, which annihilated every principle of religion and morality, and had no other object than to execute ambitious designs with suitable ministers, who, daring all and knowing nothing, since they consider everything a cheat and nothing forbidden, are the best tools of an infernal policy. A system which, with no other aim than the gratification of an insatiable lust for domination, instead of seeking the highest of human objects, precipitates itself into the abyss, and mangling itself, is buried amidst the ruins of thrones and altars, the wreck of national happiness, and the universal execration of mankind.131

The Druses

The terrible Grand Lodge of Cairo before long became the centre of a new and extraordinary cult. Hakim sixth Fatimite Khalifa and founder of the Dar ul Hikmat--a monster of tyranny and crime whose reign can only be compared to that of Caligula or Nero--was now raised to the place of a divinity by one Ismail Darazi, a Turk who in 1016 announced in a mosque in Cairo that the Khalifa should be made an object of worship. Hakim, who "believed that divine reason was incarnate in him," four years later proclaimed himself a deity, and the cult was finally established by one of his viziers, the Persian mystic Hamza ibn Ali. Hakim's cruelties, however, had so outraged the people of Egypt that a year later he was murdered by a band of malcontents, led, it is said, by his sister, who afterwards concealed his body--a circumstance which gave his followers the opportunity to declare that the divinity had merely vanished in order to test the faith of believers, but would reappear in time and punish apostates. This belief became the doctrine of the Druses of Lebanon, whom Darazi had won over to the worship of Hakim.

It is unnecessary to enter into the details of this strange religion, which still persists to-day in the range of Lebanon; suffice it to say that, although the outcome of the Ismailis, the Druses do not appear to have embraced the materialism of Abdullah ibn Maymūn, but to have grafted on a primitive form of Nature-worship and of Sabeism the avowed belief of the Ismailis in the dynasty of Ali and his successors, and beyond this an abstruse, esoteric creed concerning the nature of the Supreme Deity. God they declare to be "Universal Reason," who manifests Himself by a series of "avatars." Hakim was the last of the divine embodiments, and "when evil and misery have increased to the predestined height he will again appear, to conquer the world and to make his religion supreme."

It is, however, as a secret society that the Druses enter into the scope of this book, for their organization presents several analogies with that which we now know as "masonic." Instead of the nine degrees instituted by the Lodge of Cairo, the Druses are divided into only three--Profanes, Aspirants, and Wise--to whom their doctrines are gradually unfolded under seal of the strictest secrecy, to ensure which signs and passwords are employed after the manner of Freemasonry. A certain degree of duplicity appears to enter into their scheme, much resembling that enjoined to the Ismaili Dais when enlisting proselytes belonging to other religions: thus in talking to Mohammedans, the Druses profess to be followers of the Prophet; with Christians, they pretend to hold the doctrines of Christianity, an attitude they defend on the score that it is unlawful to reveal the secret dogmas of their creed to a "Black," or unbeliever.

Von Hammer regards Hasan as a mighty genius, one of a splendid triad, of which the two others were his schoolfellows the poet Omar Khayyám and Nizam ul Mulk, Grand Vizier under the Seljuk Sultan, Malik Shah. Hasan, having through the protection of Nizam ul Mulk secured titles and revenues and finally risen to office at the Court of the Sultan, attempted to supplant his benefactor and eventually retired in disgrace, vowing vengeance against the Sultan and vizier. At this juncture he encountered several Ismailis, one of whom, a Dai named Mumin, finally converted him to the principles of his sect, and Hasan, declaring himself now to be a convinced adherent of the Fatimite Khalifas, journed to Cairo, where he was received with honour by the Dar ul Hikmat and also by the Khalifa Mustansir, to whom he became counsellor. But his intrigues once more involving him in disgrace, he fled to Aleppo and laid the foundations of his new sect. After enlisting proselytes in Bagdad, Ispahan, Khusistan, and Damaghan, he succeeded in obtaining by strategy the fortress of Alamut in Persia on the Caspian Sea, where he completed the plans for his great secret society which was to become for ever infamous under the name of the Hashishiyīn, or Assassins.

Opinions are powerless, so long as they only confuse the brain, without arming the hand. Scepticism and free-thinking, as long as they occupied only the minds of the indolent and philosophical, have caused the ruin of no throne, for which purpose religious and political fanaticism are the strongest levers in the hands of nations. It is nothing to the ambitious man what people believe, but it is everything to know how he may turn them for the execution of his projects.132

Thus, as in the case of the French Revolution, "whose first movers," von Hammer also observes, "were the tools or leaders of secret societies," it was not mere theory but the method of enlisting numerous dupes and placing weapons in their hands that brought about the "Terror" of the Assassins six centuries before that of their spiritual descendants, the Jacobins of 1793.

Designs against religion were, of course, not admitted by the Order; "strict uniformity to Islam was demanded from all the lower rank of uninitiated, but the adept was taught to see through the deception of 'faith and works.' He believed in nothing and recognized that all acts or means were indifferent and the (secular) end alone to be considered."133

Thus the final object was domination by a few men consumed with the lust of power "under the cloak of religion and piety," and the method by which this was to be established was the wholesale assassination of those who opposed them.

In order to stimulate the energy of the Fadais, who were required to carry out these crimes, the superiors of the Order had recourse to an ingenious system of delusion. Throughout the territory occupied by the Assassins were exquisite gardens with fruit trees, bowers of roses, and sparkling streams. Here were arranged luxurious resting-places with Persian carpets and soft divans, around which hovered black-eyed "houris" bearing wine in gold and silver drinking-vessels, whilst soft music mingled with the murmuring water and the song of birds. The young man whom the Assassins desired to train for a career of crime was introduced to the Grand Master of the Order and intoxicated with haschisch--hence the name "Hashishiyīn" applied to the sect, from which the word assassin is derived. Under the brief spell of unconsciousness induced by this seductive drug the prospective Fadai was then carried into the garden, where on awaking he believed himself to be in Paradise. After enjoying all its delights he was given a fresh dose of the opiate, and, once more unconscious, was transported back to the presence of the Grand Master, who assured him that he had never left his side but had merely experienced a foretaste of the Paradise that awaited him if he obeyed the orders of his chiefs. The neophyte, thus spurred on by the belief that he was carrying out the commands of the Prophet, who would reward him with eternal bliss, eagerly entered into the schemes laid down for him and devoted his life to murder. Thus by the lure of Paradise the Assassins enlisted instruments for their criminal work and established a system of organized murder on a basis of religious fervour. "'Nothing is true and all is allowed' was the ground of their secret doctrine, which, however, being imparted but to few and concealed under the veil of the most austere religionism and piety, restrained the mind under the yoke of blind obedience."134 To the outside world all this remained a profound mystery; fidelity to Islam was proclaimed as the fundamental doctrine of the sect, and when the envoy of Sultan Sajar was sent to collect information on the religious beliefs of the Order he was met with the assurance: "We believe in the unity of God, and consider that only as true wisdom which accords with His word and the commands of the prophet."

Von Hammer, answering the possible contention that, as in the case of the Templars and the Bavarian Illuminati, these methods of deception might be declared a calumny on the Order, points out that in the case of the Assassins no possible doubt existed, for their secret doctrines were eventually revealed by the leaders themselves, first by Hasan II, the third successor of Hasan Saba, and later by Jalal-ud-din Hasan, who publicly anathematized the founders of the sect and ordered the burning of the books that contained their designs against religion--a proceeding which, however, appears to have been a strategical manoeuvre for restoring confidence in the Order and enabling him to continue the work of subversion and crime. A veritable Reign of Terror was thus established throughout the East; the Rafiqs and Fadais "spread themselves in troops over the whole of Asia and darkened the face of the earth"; and "in the annals of the Assassins is found the chronological enumeration of celebrated men of all nations who have fallen the victims of the Ismailis, to the joy of their murderers and the sorrow of the world."135

Inevitably this long and systematic indulgence in blood-lust recoiled on the heads of the leaders, and the Assassins, like the Terrorists of France, ended by turning on each other. The Old Man of the Mountain himself was murdered by his brother-in-law and his son Mohammed; Mohammed, in his turn, whilst "aiming at the life of his son Jalal-ud-din, was anticipated by him with poison, which murder was again avenged by poison," so that from "Hasan the Illuminator" down to the last of his line the Grand Masters fell by the hands of their next-of-kin, and "poison and the dagger prepared the grave which the Order had opened for so many."¹³⁶ Finally in 1250 the conquering hordes of the Mongol Mangu Khan swept away the dynasty of the Assassins.

But, although as reigning powers the Assassins and Fatimites ceased to exist, the sects from which they derived have continued up to the present day; still every year at the celebration of the Moharram the Shiahs beat their breasts and besprinkle themselves with blood, calling aloud on the martyred heroes Hasan and Husain; the Druses of the Lebanon still await the return of Hakim, and in that inscrutable East, the cradle of all the mysteries, the profoundest European adept of secret society intrigue may find himself outdistanced by pastmasters in the art in which he believed himself proficient.

The sect of Hasan Saba was the supreme model on which all systems of organized murder working through fanaticism, such as the Carbonari and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, were based, and the signs, the symbols, the initiations, of the Grand Lodge of Cairo formed the groundwork for the great secret societies of Europe.

How came this system to be transported to the West? By what channel did the ideas of these succeeding Eastern sects penetrate to the Christian world? In order to answer this question we must turn to the history of the Crusades.