Templarios -

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19104/19104-8.txt




THE TEMPLERS



In the year 1118--nineteen years after the first crusade had ended with
the defeat of the Moslems,
the capture of Antioch and Jerusalem, and the
instalment of Godefroi de Bouillon as king of the latter city--a band of
nine French _gentilshommes_, led by Hugues de Payens and Godefroi de
Saint-Omer, formed themselves into an Order for the protection of
pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre. Baldwin II, who at this moment succeeded
to the throne of Jerusalem, presented them with a house near the site of
the Temple of Solomon--hence the name of Knights Templar under which
they were to become famous. In 1128 the Order was sanctioned by the
Council of Troyes and by the Pope, and a rule was drawn up by St.
Bernard under which the Knights Templar were bound by the vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience.

But although the Templars distinguished themselves by many deeds of
valour, the regulation that they were to live solely on alms led to
donations so enormous that, abandoning their vow of poverty, they spread
themselves over Europe, and by the end of the twelfth century had become
a rich and powerful body. The motto that the Order had inscribed upon
its banner, "_Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam_," was
likewise forgotten, for, their faith waxing cold, they gave themselves
up to pride and ostentation. Thus, as an eighteenth-century masonic
writer has expressed it:

The war, which for the greater number of warriors of good faith
proved the source of weariness, of losses and misfortunes, became
for them (the Templars) only the opportunity for booty and
aggrandizement, and if they distinguished themselves by a few
brilliant actions, their motive soon ceased to be a matter of doubt
when they were seen to enrich themselves even with the spoils of
the confederates, to increase their credit by the extent of the new
possessions they had acquired, to carry arrogance to the point of
rivalling crowned princes in pomp and grandeur, to refuse their aid
against the enemies of the faith, as the history of Saladin
testifies, and finally to ally themselves with that horrible and
sanguinary prince named the Old Man of the Mountain, Prince of the
Assassins.[137]

The truth of the last accusation is, however, open to question. For a
time, at any rate, the Templars had been at war with the Assassins. When
in 1152 the Assassins murdered Raymond, Comte de Tripoli, the Templars
entered their territory and forced them to sign a treaty by which they
were to pay a yearly tribute of 12,000 gold pieces in expiation of the
crime. Some years later the Old Man of the Mountain sent an ambassador
to Amaury, King of Jerusalem, to tell him privately that if the Templars
would forgo the payment of this tribute he and his followers would
embrace the Christian faith. Amaury accepted, offering at the same time
to compensate the Templars, but some of the Knights assassinated the
ambassador before he could return to his master. When asked for
reparations the Grand Master threw the blame on an evil one-eyed Knight
named Gautier de Maisnil.[138]

It is evident, therefore, that the relations between the Templars and
the Assassins were at first far from amicable; nevertheless, it appears
probable that later on an understanding was brought about between them.
Both on this charge and on that of treachery towards the Christian
armies, Dr. Bussell's impartial view of the question may be quoted:

When in 1149 the Emperor Conrad III failed before Damascus, the
Templars were believed to have a secret understanding with the
garrison of that city; ... in 1154 they were said to have sold, for
60,000 gold pieces, a prince of Egypt who had wished to become a
Christian; he was taken home to suffer certain death at the hands
of his fanatical family. In 1166 Amaury, King of Jerusalem, hanged
twelve members of the Order for betraying a fortress to Nureddin.

And Dr. Bussell goes on to say that it cannot be disputed that they had
"long and important dealings" with the Assassins "and were therefore
suspected (not unfairly) of imbibing their precepts and following their
principles."[139]

By the end of the thirteenth century the Templars had become suspect,
not only in the eyes of the clergy, but of the general public. "Amongst
the common people," one of their latest apologists admits, "vague
rumours circulated. They talked of the covetousness and want of scruple
of the Knights, of their passion for aggrandizement and their rapacity.
Their haughty insolence was proverbial. Drinking habits were attributed
to them; the saying was already in use 'to drink like a Templar.' The
old German word _Tempelhaus_ indicated a house of ill-fame."[140]

The same rumours had reached Clement V even before his accession to the
papal throne in 1305,[141] and in this same year he summoned the Grand
Master of the Order, Jacques du Molay, to return to France from the
island of Cyprus, where he was assembling fresh forces to avenge the
recent reverses of the Christian armies.

Du Molay arrived in France with sixty other Knights Templar and 150,000
gold florins, as well as a large quantity of silver that the Order had
amassed in the East.[142]

The Pope now set himself to make enquiries concerning the charges of
"unspeakable apostasy against God, detestable idolatry, execrable vice,
and many heresies" that had been "secretly intimated" to him. But, to
quote his own words:

Because it did not seem likely nor credible that men of such
religion who were believed often to shed their blood and frequently
expose their persons to the peril of death for Christ's name, and
who showed such great and many signs of devotion both in divine
offices as well as in fasts, as in other devotional observances,
should be so forgetful of their salvation as to do these things, we
were unwilling ... to give ear to this kind of insinuation ...
(_hujusmodi insinuacioni ac delacioni ipsorum ... aurem noluimus
inclinare_).[143]

The King of France, Philippe le Bel, who had hitherto been the friend of
the Templars, now became alarmed and urged the Pope to take action
against them; but before the Pope was able to find out more about the
matter, the King took the law into his own hands and had all the
Templars in France arrested on October 13, 1307. The following charges
were then brought against them by the Inquisitor for France before whom
they were examined:

1. The ceremony of initiation into their Order was accompanied by
insults to the Cross, the denial of Christ, and gross obscenities.

2. The adoration of an idol which was said to be the image of the
true God.

3. The omission of the words of consecration at Mass.

4. The right that the lay chiefs arrogated to themselves of giving
absolution.

5. The authorization of unnatural vice.

To all these infamies a great number of the Knights, including Jacques
du Molay, confessed in almost precisely the same terms; at their
admission into the Order, they said, they had been shown the cross on
which was the figure of Christ, and had been asked whether they believed
in Him; when they answered yes, they were told in some cases that this
was wrong (_dixit sibi quod male credebat_),[144] because He was not
God, He was a false prophet (_quia falsus propheta erat, nec erat
Deus_).[145] Some added that they were then shown an idol or a bearded
head which they were told to worship[146]; one added that this was of
such "a terrible aspect that it seemed to him to be the face of some
devil, called in French _un maufé_, and that whenever he saw it he was
so overcome with fear that he could hardly look at it without fear and
trembling."[147] All who confessed declared that they had been ordered
to spit on the crucifix, and very many that they had received the
injunction to commit obscenities and to practise unnatural vice. Some
said that on their refusal to carry out these orders they had been
threatened with imprisonment, even perpetual imprisonment; a few said
they had actually been incarcerated[148]; one declared that he had been
terrorized, seized by the throat, and threatened with death.[149]

Since, however, a number of these confessions were made under torture,
it is more important to consider the evidence provided by the trial of
the Knights at the hands of the Pope, where this method was not
employed.

Now, at the time the Templars were arrested, Clement V., deeply
resenting the King's interference with an Order which existed entirely
under papal jurisdiction, wrote in the strongest terms of remonstrance
to Philippe le Bel urging their release, and even after their trial,
neither the confessions of the Knights nor the angry expostulations of
the King could persuade him to believe in their guilt.[150] But as the
scandal concerning the Templars was increasing, he consented to receive
in private audience "a certain Knight of the Order, of great nobility
and held by the said Order in no slight esteem," who testified to the
abominations that took place on the reception of the Brethren, the
spitting on the cross, and other things which were not lawful nor,
humanly speaking, decent.[151]

The Pope then decided to hold an examination of seventy-two French
Knights at Poictiers in order to discover whether the confessions made
by them before the Inquisitor at Paris could be substantiated, and at
this examination, conducted without torture or pressure of any kind in
the presence of the Pope himself, the witnesses declared on oath that
they would tell "the full and pure truth." They then made confessions
which were committed to writing in their presence, and these being
afterwards read aloud to them, they expressly and willingly approved
them (_perseverantes in illis eas expresse et sponte, prout recitate
fuerunt approbarunt_).[152]

Besides this, an examination of the Grand Master, Jacques du Molay, and
the Preceptors of the Order was held in the presence of "three Cardinals
and four public notaries and many other good men." These witnesses, says
the official report, "having sworn with their hands on the Gospel of
God" (_ad sancta dei evangelia ab iis corporaliter tacta_) that--

they would on all the aforesaid things speak the pure and full
truth, they, separately, freely, and spontaneously, without any
coercion and fear, deposed and confessed among other things, the
denial of Christ and spitting upon the cross when they were
received into the Order of the Temple. And some of them (deposed
and confessed) that under the same form, namely, with denial of
Christ and spitting on the cross, they had received many Brothers
into the Order. Some of them too confessed certain other horrible
and disgusting things on which we are silent.... Besides this, they
said and confessed that those things which are contained in the
confessions and depositions of heretical depravity which they made
lately before the Inquisitor (of Paris) were true.

Their confessions, being again committed to writing, were approved by
the witnesses, who then with bended knees and many tears asked for and
obtained absolution.[153]

The Pope, however, still refused to take action against the whole Order
merely because the Master and Brethren around him had "gravely sinned,"
and it was decided to hold a papal commission in Paris. The first
sitting took place in November 1309, when the Grand Master and 231
Knights were summoned before the pontifical commissioners. "This
enquiry," says Michelet, "was conducted slowly, with much consideration
and gentleness (_avec beaucoup de ménagement et de douceur_) by high
ecclesiastical dignitaries, an archbishop, several bishops, etc."[154]
But although a number of the Knights, including the Grand Master, now
retracted their admissions, some damning confessions were again
forthcoming.

It is impossible within the scope of this book to follow the many trials
of the Templars that took place in different countries--in Italy, at
Ravenna, Pisa, Bologna, and Florence, where torture was not employed and
blasphemies were admitted,[155] or in Germany, where torture was
employed but no confessions were made and a verdict was given in favour
of the Order. A few details concerning the trial in England may,
however, be of interest.

It has generally been held that torture was not applied in England owing
to the humanity of Edward II, who at first absolutely refused to listen
to any accusations against the Order.[156] On December 10, 1307, he had
written to the Pope in these terms:

And because the said Master or Brethren constant in the purity of
the Catholic faith have been frequently commended by us, and by all
our kingdom, both in their life and morals, we are unable to
believe in suspicious stories of this kind until we know with
greater certainty about these things.

We, therefore, pity from our souls the suffering and losses of the
Sd. Master and brethren, which they suffer in consequence of such
infamy, and we supplicate most affectionately your Sanctity if it
please you, that considering with favour suited to the good
character of the Master and brethren, you may deem fit to meet with
more indulgence the detractions, calumnies and charges by certain
envious and evil disposed persons, who endeavour to turn their good
deeds into works of perverseness opposed to divine teaching; until
the said charges attributed to them shall have been brought legally
before you or your representatives here and more fully proved.[157]

Edward II also wrote in the same terms to the Kings of Portugal,
Castile, Aragon, and Sicily. But two years later, after Clement V had
himself heard the confessions of the Order, and a Papal Bull had been
issued declaring that "the unspeakable wickednesses and abominable
crimes of notorious heresy" had now "come to the knowledge of almost
everyone," Edward II was persuaded to arrest the Templars and order
their examination. According to Mr. Castle, whose interesting treatise
we quote here, the King would not allow torture to be employed, with the
result that the Knights denied all charges; but later, it is said, he
allowed himself to be overpersuaded, and "torture appears to have been
applied on one or two occasions,"[158] with the result that three
Knights confessed to all and were given absolution.[159] At Southwark,
however, "a considerable number of brethren" admitted that "they had
been strongly accused of the crimes of negation and spitting, they did
not say they were guilty but that they could not purge themselves ...
and therefore they abjured these and all other heresies."[160] Evidence
was also given against the Order by outside witnesses, and the same
stories of intimidation at the ceremony of reception were told.[161] At
any rate, the result of the investigation was not altogether
satisfactory, and the Templars were finally suppressed in England as
elsewhere by the Council of Vienne in 1312.

In France more rigorous measures were adopted and fifty-four Knights who
had retracted their confessions were burnt at the stake as "relapsed
heretics" on May 12, 1310. Four years later, on March 14, 1314, the
Grand Master, Jacques du Molay, suffered the same fate.

Now, however much we must execrate the barbarity of this sentence--as
also the cruelties that had preceded it--- this is no reason why we
should admit the claim of the Order to noble martyrdom put forward by
the historians who have espoused their cause. The character of the
Templars is not rehabilitated by condemning the conduct of the King and
Pope. Yet this is the line of argument usually adopted by the defenders
of the Order. Thus the two main contentions on which they base their
defence are, firstly, that the confessions of the Knights were made
under torture, therefore they must be regarded as null and void; and,
secondly, that the whole affair was a plot concerted between the King
and Pope in order to obtain possession of the Templars' riches. Let us
examine these contentions in turn.

In the first place, as we have seen, all confessions were not made under
torture. No one, as far as I am aware, disputes Michelet's assertion
that the enquiry before the Papal Commission in Paris, at which a number
of Knights adhered to the statements they had made to the Pope, was
conducted without pressure of any kind. But further, the fact that
confessions are made under torture does not necessarily invalidate them
as evidence. Guy Fawkes also confessed under torture, yet it is never
suggested that the whole story of the Gunpowder Plot was a myth.
Torture, however much we may condemn it, has frequently proved the only
method for overcoming the intimidation exercised over the mind of a
conspirator; a man bound by the terrible obligations of a confederacy
and fearing the vengeance of his fellow-conspirators will not readily
yield to persuasion, but only to force. If, then, some of the Templars
were terrorized by torture, or even by the fear of torture, it must not
be forgotten that terrorism was exercised by both sides. Few will deny
that the Knights were bound by oaths of secrecy, so that on one hand
they were threatened with the vengeance of the Order if they betrayed
its secrets, and on the other faced with torture if they refused to
confess. Thus they found themselves between the devil and the deep sea.
It was therefore not a case of a mild and unoffending Order meeting
with brutal treatment at the hands of authority, but of the victims of a
terrible autocracy being delivered into the hands of another autocracy.

Moreover, do the confessions of the Knights appear to be the outcome of
pure imagination such as men under the influence of torture might
devise? It is certainly difficult to believe that the accounts of the
ceremony of initiation given in detail by men in different countries,
all closely resembling each other, yet related in different phraseology,
could be pure inventions. Had the victims been driven to invent they
would surely have contradicted each other, have cried out in their agony
that all kinds of wild and fantastic rites had taken place in order to
satisfy the demands of their interlocutors. But no, each appears to be
describing the same ceremony more or less completely, with
characteristic touches that indicate the personality of the speaker, and
in the main all the stories tally.

The further contention that the case against the Templars was
manufactured by the King and Pope with a view to obtaining their wealth
is entirely disproved by facts. The latest French historian of mediæval
France, whilst expressing disbelief in the guilt of the Templars,
characterizes this counter-accusation as "puerile." "Philippe le Bel,"
writes M. Funck-Brentano, "has never been understood; from the beginning
people have not been just to him. This young prince was one of the
greatest kings and the noblest characters that have appeared in
history."[162]

Without carrying appreciation so far, one must nevertheless accord to M.
Funck-Brentano's statement of facts the attention it merits. Philippe
has been blamed for debasing the coin of the realm; in reality he merely
ordered it to be mixed with alloy as a necessary measure after the war
with England,[163] precisely as own coinage was debased in consequence
of the recent war. This was done quite openly and the coinage was
restored at the earliest opportunity. Intensely national, his policy of
attacking the Lombards, exiling the Jews, and suppressing the Templars,
however regrettable the methods by which it was carried out, resulted in
immense benefits to France; M. Funck-Brentano has graphically described
the prosperity of the whole country during the early fourteenth
century--the increase of population, flourishing agriculture and
industry. "In Provence and Languedoc one meets swineherds who have
vineyards; simple cowherds who have town houses."[164]

The attitude of Philippe le Bel towards the Templars must be viewed in
this light--ruthless suppression of any body of people who interfered
with the prosperity of France. His action was not that of arbitrary
authority; he "proceeded," says M. Funck-Brentano, "by means of an
appeal to the people. In his name Nogaret (the Chancellor) spoke to the
Parisians in the garden of the Palace (October 13, 1307). Popular
assemblies were convoked all over France";[165] "the Parliament of
Tours, with hardly a dissentient vote, declared the Templars worthy of
death. The University of Paris gave the weight of their judgement as to
the fullness and authenticity of the confessions."[166] Even assuming
that these bodies were actuated by the same servility as that which has
been attributed to the Pope, how are we to explain the fact that the
trial of the Order aroused no opposition among the far from docile
people of Paris? If the Templars had indeed, as they professed, been
leading noble and upright lives, devoting themselves to the care of the
poor, one might surely expect their arrest to be followed by popular
risings. But there appears to have been no sign of this.

As to the Pope, we have already seen that from the outset he had shown
himself extremely reluctant to condemn the Order, and no satisfactory
explanation is given of his change of attitude except that he wished to
please the King. As far as his own interests were concerned, it is
obvious that he could have nothing to gain by publishing to the world a
scandal that must inevitably bring opprobrium on the Church. His
lamentations to this effect in the famous Bull[167] clearly show that he
recognized this danger and therefore desired at all costs to clear the
accused Knights, if evidence could be obtained in their favour. It was
only when the Templars made damning admissions in his presence that he
was obliged to abandon their defence.[168] Yet we are told that he did
this out of base compliance with the wishes of Philippe le Bel.

Philippe le Bell is thus represented as the arch-villain of the whole
piece, through seven long years hounding down a blameless Order--from
whom up to the very moment of their arrest he had repeatedly received
loans of money--solely with the object of appropriating their wealth.
Yet after all we find that the property of the Templars was not
appropriated by the King, but was given by him to the Knights of St.
John of Jerusalem!

What was the fate of the Templars' goods? Philippe le Bel decided
that they should be handed over to the Hospitallers. Clement V
states that the Orders given by the King on this subject were
executed. Even the domain of the Temple in Paris ... up to the eve
of the Revolution was the property of the Knights of St. John of
Jerusalem. The royal treasury kept for itself certain sums for the
costs of the trial. These had been immense.[169]

These facts in no way daunt the antagonists of Philippe, who we are now
assured--again without any proof whatever--was overruled by the Pope in
this matter. But setting all morality aside, as a mere question of
policy, is it likely that the King would have deprived himself of his
most valuable financial supporters and gone to the immense trouble of
bringing them to trial without first assuring himself that he would
benefit by the affair? Would he, in other words, have killed the goose
that laid the golden eggs without any guarantee that the body of the
goose would remain in his possession? Again, if, as we are told, the
Pope suppressed the Order so as to please the King, why should he have
thwarted him over the whole purpose the King had in view? Might we not
expect indignant remonstrances from Philippe at thus being baulked of
the booty he had toiled so long to gain? But, on the contrary, we find
him completely in agreement with the Pope on this subject. In November
1309 Clement V distinctly stated that "Philippe the Illustrious, King of
France," to whom the facts concerning the Templars had been told, was
"not prompted by avarice since he desired to keep or appropriate for
himself no part of the property of the Templars, but liberally and
devotedly left them to us and the Church to be administered," etc.[170]

Thus the whole theory concerning the object for which the Templars were
suppressed falls to the ground--a theory which on examination is seen to
be built up entirely on the plan of imputing motives without any
justification in facts. The King acted from cupidity, the Pope from
servility, and the Templars confessed from fear of torture--on these
pure hypotheses defenders of the Order base their arguments.

The truth is, far more probably, that if the King had any additional
reason for suppressing the Templars it was not envy of their wealth but
fear of the immense power their wealth conferred; the Order dared even
to defy the King and to refuse to pay taxes. The Temple in fact
constituted an _imperium in imperio_ that threatened not only the royal
authority but the whole social system.[171] An important light is thrown
on the situation by M. Funck-Brentano in this passage:

As the Templars had houses in all countries, they practised the
financial operations of the international banks of our times; they
were acquainted with letters of change, orders payable at sight,
they instituted dividends and annuities on deposited capital,
advanced funds, lent on credit, controlled private accounts,
undertook to raise taxes for the lay and ecclesiastical
seigneurs.[172]

Through their proficiency in these matters--acquired very possibly from
the Jews of Alexandria whom they must have met in the East--the Templars
had become the "international financiers" and "international
capitalists" of their day; had they not been suppressed, all the evils
now denounced by Socialists as peculiar to the system they describe as
"Capitalism"--trusts, monopolies, and "corners"--would in all
probability have been inaugurated during the course of the fourteenth
century in a far worse form than at the present day, since no
legislation existed to protect the community at large. The feudal
system, as Marx and Engels perceived, was the principal obstacle to
exploitation by a financial autocracy.[173]

Moreover, it is by no means improbable that this order of things would
have been brought about by the violent overthrow of the French
monarchy--indeed, of all monarchies; the Templars, "those terrible
conspirators," says Eliphas Lévi, "threatened the whole world with an
immense revolution."[174]

Here perhaps we may find the reason why this band of dissolute and
rapacious nobles has enlisted the passionate sympathy of democratic
writers. For it will be noticed that these same writers who attribute
the King's condemnation of the Order to envy of their wealth never apply
this argument to the demagogues of the eighteenth century and suggest
that their accusations against the nobles of France were inspired by
cupidity, nor would they ever admit that any such motive may enter into
the diatribes against private owners of wealth to-day. The Templars thus
remain the only body of capitalists, with the exception of the Jews, to
be not only pardoned for their riches but exalted as noble victims of
prejudice and envy. Is it merely because the Templars were the enemies
of monarchy? Or is it that the world revolution, whilst attacking
private owners of property, has never been opposed to International
Finance, particularly when combined with anti-Christian tendencies?

It is the continued defence of the Templars which, to the present
writer, appears the most convincing evidence against them. For even if
one believes them innocent of the crimes laid to their charge, how is it
possible to admire them in their later stages? The fact that cannot be
denied is that they were false to their obligations; that they took the
vow of poverty and then grew not only rich but arrogant; that they took
the vow of chastity and became notoriously immoral.[175] Are all these
things then condoned because the Templars formed a link in the chain of
world revolution?

At this distance of time the guilt or innocence of the Templars will
probably never be conclusively established either way; on the mass of
conflicting evidence bequeathed to us by history no one can pronounce a
final judgement.

Without attempting to digmatize on the question, I would suggest that
the real truth may be that the Knights were both innocent and guilty,
that is to say, that a certain number were initiated into the secret
doctrine of the Order whilst the majority remained throughout in
ignorance. Thus according to the evidence of Stephen de Stapelbrugge, an
English Knight, "there were two modes of reception, one lawful and good
and the other contrary to the Faith."[176] This would account for the
fact that some of the accused declined to confess even under the
greatest pressure. These may really have known nothing of the real
doctrines of the Order, which were confided orally only to those whom
the superiors regarded as unlikely to be revolted by them. Such have
always been the methods of secret societies, from the Ismailis onward.

This theory of a double doctrine is put forward by Loiseleur, who
observes:

If we consult the statutes of the Order of the Temple as they have
come down to us, we shall certainly discover there is nothing that
justifies the strange and abominable practices revealed at the
Inquiry. But ... besides the public rule, had not the Order another
one, whether traditional or written, authorizing or even
prescribing these practices--a secret rule, revealed only to the
initiates?[177]

Eliphas Lévi also exonerates the majority of the Templars from
complicity in either anti-monarchical or anti-religious designs:

These tendencies were enveloped in profound mystery and the Order
made an outward profession of the most perfect orthodoxy. The
Chiefs alone knew whither they were going; the rest followed
unsuspectingly.[178]

What, then, was the Templar heresy? On this point we find a variety of
opinions. According to Wilcke, Ranke, and Weber it was "the unitarian
deism of Islam"[179]; Lecouteulx de Canteleu thinks, however, it was
derived from heretical Islamic sources, and relates that whilst in
Palestine, one of the Knights, Guillaume de Montbard, was initiated by
the Old Man of the Mountain in a cave of Mount Lebanon.[180] That a
certain resemblance existed between the Templars and the Assassins has
been indicated by von Hammer,[181] and further emphasized by the
Freemason Clavel:

Oriental historians show us, at different periods, the Order of the
Templars maintaining intimate relations with that of the Assassins,
and they insist on the affinity that existed between the two
associations. They remark that they had adopted the same colours,
white and red; that they had the same organization, the same
hierarchy of degrees, those of fedavi, refik, and dai in one
corresponding to those of novice, professed, and knight in the
other; that both conspired for the ruin of the religions they
professed in public, and that finally both possessed numerous
castles, the former in Asia, the latter in Europe.[182]

But in spite of these outward resemblances it does not appear from the
confessions of the Knights that the secret doctrine of the Templars was
that of the Assassins or of any Ismaili sect by which, in accordance
with orthodox Islamism, Jesus was openly held up as a prophet, although,
secretly, indifference to all religion was inculcated. The Templars, as
far as can be discovered, were anti-Christian deists; Loiseleur
considers that their ideas were derived from Gnostic or Manichean
dualists--Cathari, Paulicians, or more particularly Bogomils, of which a
brief account must be given here.

The _Paulicians_, who flourished about the seventh century A.D., bore a
resemblance to the Cainites and Ophites in their detestation of the
Demiurgus and in the corruption of their morals. Later, in the ninth
century, the _Bogomils_, whose name signifies in Slavonic "friends of
God" and who had migrated from Northern Syria and Mesopotamia to the
Balkan Peninsula, particularly Thrace, appeared as a further development
of Manichean dualism. Their doctrine may be summarized thus:

God, the Supreme Father, has two sons, the elder Satanael, the younger
Jesus. To Satanael, who sat on the right hand of God, belonged the right
of governing the celestial world, but, filled with pride, he rebelled
against his Father and fell from Heaven. Then, aided by the companions
of his fall, he created the visible world, image of the celestial,
having like the other its sun, moon, and stars, and last he created man
and the serpent which became his minister. Later Christ came to earth in
order to show men the way to Heaven, but His death was ineffectual, for
even by descending into Hell He could not wrest the power from Satanael,
i.e. Satan.

This belief in the impotence of Christ and the necessity therefore for
placating Satan, not only "the Prince of this world," but its creator,
led to the further doctrine that Satan, being all-powerful, should be
adored. Nicetas Choniates, a Byzantine historian of the twelfth century,
described the followers of this cult as "Satanists," because
"considering Satan powerful they worshipped him lest he might do them
harm"; subsequently they were known as Luciferians, their doctrine (as
stated by Neuss and Vitoduranus) being that Lucifer was unjustly driven
out of Heaven, that one day he will ascend there again and be restored
to his former glory and power in the celestial world.

The Bogomils and Luciferians were thus closely akin, but whilst the
former divided their worship between God and His two sons, the latter
worshipped Lucifer only, regarding the material world as his work and
holding that by indulging the flesh they were propitiating their
Demon-Creator. It was said that a black cat, the symbol of Satan,
figured in their ceremonies as an object of worship, also that at their
horrible nocturnal orgies sacrifices of children were made and their
blood used for making the Eucharistic bread of the sect.[183]

Thus the Templars recognize at the same time a good god,
incommunicable to man and consequently without symbolic
representation, and a bad god, to whom they give the features of an
idol of fearful aspect.[184]

Their most fervent worship was addressed to this god of evil, who alone
could enrich them. "They said with the Luciferians: 'The elder son of
God, Satanael or Lucifer alone has a right to the homage of mortals;
Jesus his younger brother does not deserve this honour.'"[185]

Although we shall not find these ideas so clearly defined in the
confessions of the Knights, some colour is lent to this theory by those
who related that the reason given to them for not believing in Christ
was "that He was nothing, He was a false prophet and of no value, and
that they should believe in the Higher God of Heaven who could save
them."[186] According to Loiseleur, the idol they were taught to
worship, the bearded head known to history as Baphomet, represented "the
inferior god, organizer and dominator of the material world, author of
good and evil here below, him by whom evil was introduced into
creation."[187]

The etymology of the word Baphomet is difficult to discover; Raynouard
says it originated with two witnesses heard at Carcassonne who spoke of
"Figura Baflometi," and suggests that it was a corruption of "Mohammed,"
whom the Inquisitors wished to make the Knights confess they were taught
to adore.[188] But this surmise with regard to the intentions of the
Inquisitors seems highly improbable, since they must have been well
aware that, as Wilcke points out, the Moslems forbid all idols.[189] For
this reason Wilcke concludes that the Mohammedanism of the Templars was
combined with Cabalism and that their idol was in reality the
_macroprosopos_, or head of the Ancient of Ancients, represented as an
old man with a long beard, or sometimes as three heads in one, which has
already been referred to under the name of the Long Face in the first
chapter of this book--a theory which would agree with Eliphas Lévi's
assertion that the Templars were "initiated into the mysterious
doctrines of the Cabala."[190] But Lévi goes on to define this teaching
under the name of Johannism. It is here that we reach a further theory
with regard to the secret doctrine of the Templars--- the most important
of all, since it emanates from masonic and neo-Templar sources thus
effectually disposing of the contention that the charge brought against
the Order of apostasy from the Catholic faith is solely the invention of
Catholic writers.

In 1842 the Freemason Ragon related that the Templars learnt from the
"initiates of the East" a certain Judaic doctrine which was attributed
to St. John the Apostle; therefore "they renounced the religion of St.
Peter" and became Johannites.[191] Eliphas Lévi expresses the same
opinion.

Now, these statements are apparently founded on a legend which was first
published early in the nineteenth century, when an association calling
itself the _Ordre du Temple_ and claiming direct descent from the
original Templar Order published two works, the _Manuel des Chevaliers
de l'Ordre du Temple_ in 1811, and the _Lévitikon_ in 1831, together
with a version of the Gospel of St. John differing from the Vulgate.
These books, which appear to have been printed only for private
circulation amongst the members and are now extremely rare, relate that
the Order of the Temple had never ceased to exist since the days of
Jacques du Molay, who appointed Jacques de Larménie his successor in
office, and from that time onwards a line of Grand Masters had succeeded
each other without a break up to the end of the eighteenth century, when
it ceased for a brief period but was reinstituted under a new Grand
Master, Fabré Palaprat, in 1804. Besides publishing the list of all
Grand Masters, known as the "Charter of Larmenius," said to have been
preserved in the secret archives of the Temple, these works also
reproduce another document drawn from the same repository describing the
origins of the Order. This manuscript, written in Greek on parchment,
dated 1154, purports to be partly taken from a fifth-century MS. and
relates that Hugues de Payens, first Grand Master of the Templars, was
initiated in 1118--that is to say, in the year the Order was
founded--into the religious doctrine of "the Primitive Christian Church"
by its Sovereign Pontiff and Patriarch, Theoclet, sixtieth in direct
succession from St. John the Apostle. The history of the Primitive
Church is then given as follows:

Moses was initiated in Egypt. Profoundly versed in the physical,
theological, and metaphysical mysteries of the priests, he knew how
to profit by these so as to surmount the power of the Mages and
deliver his companions. Aaron, his brother, and the chiefs of the
Hebrews became the depositaries of his doctrine....

The Son of God afterwards appeared on the scene of the world.... He
was brought up at the school of Alexandria.... Imbued with a spirit
wholly divine, endowed with the most astounding qualities
(_dispositions_), he was able to reach all the degrees of Egyptian
initiation. On his return to Jerusalem, he presented himself before
the chiefs of the Synagogue.... Jesus Christ, directing the fruit
of his lofty meditations towards universal civilization and the
happiness of the world, rent the veil which concealed the truth
from the peoples. He preached the love of God, the love of one's
neighbour, and equality before the common Father of all men....

Jesus conferred evangelical initiation on his apostles and
disciples. He transmitted his spirit to them, divided them into
several orders after the practice of John, the beloved disciple,
the apostle of fraternal love, whom he had instituted Sovereign
Pontiff and Patriarch....

Here we have the whole Cabalistic legend of a secret doctrine descending
from Moses, of Christ as an Egyptian initiate and founder of a secret
order--a theory, of course, absolutely destructive of belief in His
divinity. The legend of the _Ordre du Temple_ goes on to say:

Up to about the year 1118 (i.e. the year the Order of the Temple
was founded) the mysteries and the hierarchic Order of the
initiation of Egypt, transmitted to the Jews by Moses, then to the
Christians by J.C., were religiously preserved by the successors of
St. John the Apostle. These mysteries and initiations, regenerated
by the evangelical initiation (or baptism), were a sacred trust
which the simplicity of the primitive and unchanging morality of
the _Brothers of the East_ had preserved from all adulteration....

The Christians, persecuted by the infidels, appreciating the
courage and piety of these brave crusaders, who, with the sword in
one hand and the cross in the other, flew to the defence of the
holy places, and, above all, doing striking justice to the virtues
and the ardent charity of Hugues de Payens, held it their duty to
confide to hands so pure the treasures of knowledge acquired
throughout so many centuries, sanctified by the cross, the dogma
and the morality of the Man-God. Hugues was invested with the
Apostolic Patriarchal power and placed in the legitimate order of
the successors of St. John the apostle or the evangelist.

Such is the origin of the foundation of the Order of the Temple and
of the fusion in this Order of the different kinds of initiation of
the Christians of the East designated under the title of Primitive
Christians or Johannites.

It will be seen at once that all this story is subtly subversive of true
Christianity, and that the appellation of Christians applied to the
Johannites is an imposture. Indeed Fabré Palaprat, Grand Master of the
_Ordre du Temple_ in 1804, who in his book on the Templars repeats the
story contained in the _Lévitikon and the Manuel des Chevaliers du
Temple_, whilst making the same profession of "primitive Christian"
doctrines descending from St. John through Theoclet and Hugues de Payens
to the Order over which he presides, goes on to say that the secret
doctrine of the Templars "was essentially contrary to the canons of the
Church of Rome and that it is principally to this fact that one must
attribute the persecution of which history has preserved the memory."[192]
The belief of the Primitive Christians, and consequently that the
Templars, with regard to the miracles of Christ is that He "did or may
have done extraordinary or miraculous things," and that since "God can
do things incomprehensible to human intelligence," the Primitive Church
venerates "all the acts of Christ as they are described in the Gospel,
whether it considers them as acts of human science or whether as acts of
divine power."[193] Belief in the divinity of Christ is thus left an
open question, and the same attitude is maintained towards the
Resurrection, of which the story is omitted in the Gospel of St. John
possessed by the Order. Fabré Palaprat further admits that the gravest
accusations brought against the Templars were founded on facts which he
attempts to explain away in the following manner:

The Templars having in 1307 carefully abstracted all the
manuscripts composing the secret archives of the Order from the
search made by authority, and these authentic manuscripts having
been preciously preserved since that period, we have to-day the
certainty that the Knights endured a great number of religious and
moral trials before reaching the different degrees of initiation:
thus, for example, the recipient might receive the injunction under
pain of death to trample on the crucifix or to worship an idol, but
if he yielded to the terror which they sought to inspire in him he
was declared unworthy of being admitted to the higher grades of the
Order. One can imagine in this way how beings, too feeble or too
immoral to endure the trials of initiation, may have accused the
Templars of giving themselves up to infamous practices and of
having superstitious beliefs.

It is certainly not surprising that an Order which gave such injunctions
as these, for whatever purpose, should have become the object of
suspicion.

Eliphas Lévi, who, like Ragon, accepts the statements of the _Ordre du
Temple_ concerning the "Johannite" origin of the Templars' secret
doctrine, is, however, not deceived by these professions of
Christianity, and boldly asserts that the Sovereign Pontiff Theoclet
initiated Hugues de Payens "into the mysteries and hopes of his
pretended Church, he lured him by the ideas of sacerdotal sovereignty
and supreme royalty, he indicated him finally as his successor. So the
Order of the Knights of the Temple was stained from its origin with
schism and conspiracy against Kings."[194] Further, Lévi relates that
the real story told to initiates concerning Christ was no other than the
infamous _Toledot Yeshu_ described in the first chapter of this book,
and which the Johannites dared to attribute to St. John.[195] This would
accord with the confession of the Catalonian Knight Templar, Galcerandus
de Teus, who stated that the form of absolution in the Order was: "I
pray God that He may pardon your sins as He pardoned St. Mary Magdalene
and the thief on the cross"; but the witness went on to explain:

By the thief of which the head of the Chapter speaks, is meant,
according to our statutes, that Jesus or Christ who was crucified
by the Jews because he was not God, and yet he said he was God and
the King of the Jews, which was an outrage to the true God who is
in Heaven. When Jesus, a few moments before his death, had his side
pierced by the lance of Longinus, he repented of having called
himself God and King of the Jews and he asked pardon of the true
God; then the true God pardoned him. It is thus that we apply to
the crucified Christ these words: "as God pardoned the thief on the
cross."[196]

Raynouard, who quotes this deposition, stigmatizes it as "singular and
extravagant"; M. Matter agrees that it is doubtless extravagant, but
that "it merits attention. There was a whole system there, which was not
the invention of Galcerant."[197] Eliphas Lévi provides the clue to that
system and to the reason why Christ was described as a thief, by
indicating the Cabalistic legend wherein He was described as having
_stolen_ the sacred Name from the Holy of Holies. Elsewhere he explains
that the Johannites "made themselves out to be the only people initiated
into the true mysteries of the religion of the Saviour. They professed
to know the real history of Jesus Christ, and by adopting part of Jewish
traditions and the stories of the Talmud, they made out that the facts
related in the Gospels"--that is to say, the Gospels accepted by the
orthodox Church--"were only allegories of which St. John gives the
key."[198]

But it is time to pass from legend to facts. For the whole story of the
initiation of the Templars by the "Johannites" rests principally on the
documents produced by the Ordre du Temple in 1811. According to the
Abbés Grégoire and Münter the authenticity and antiquity of these
documents are beyond dispute. Grégoire, referring to the parchment
manuscript of the _Lévitikon_ and Gospel of St. John, says that
"Hellenists versed in paleography believe this manuscript to be of the
thirteenth century, others declare it to be earlier and to go back to
the eleventh century."[199] Matter, on the other hand, quoting Münter's
opinion that the manuscripts in the archives of the modern Templars date
from the thirteenth century, observes that this is all a tissue of
errors and that the critics, including the learned Professor Thilo of
Halle, have recognized that the manuscript in question, far from
belonging to the thirteenth century, dates from the beginning of the
eighteenth. From the arrangement of the chapters of the Gospel, M.
Matter arrives at the conclusion that it was intended to accompany the
ceremonies of some masonic or secret society.[200] We shall return to
this possibility in a later chapter.

The antiquity of the manuscript containing the history of the Templars
thus remains an open question on which no one can pronounce an opinion
without having seen the original. In order, then, to judge of the
probability of the story that this manuscript contained it is necessary
to consult the facts of history and to discover what proof can be found
that any such sect as the Johannites existed at the time of the Crusades
or earlier. Certainly none is known to have been called by this name or
by one resembling it before 1622, when some Portuguese monks reported
the existence of a sect whom they described as "Christians of St. John"
inhabiting the banks of the Euphrates. The appellation appears, however,
to have been wrongly applied by the monks, for the sectarians in
question, variously known as the Mandæans, Mandaites, Sabians,
Nazoreans, etc., called themselves Mandaï Iyahi, that is to say, the
disciples, or rather the wise men, of John, the word _mandaï_ being
derived from the Chaldean word _manda_, corresponding to the Greek word
[Greek: gnosis] or wisdom.[201] The multiplicity of names given to the
Mandæans arises apparently from the fact that in their dealings with
other communities they took the name of Sabians, whilst they called the
wise and learned amongst themselves Nazoreans.[202] The sect formerly
inhabited the banks of the Jordan, but was driven out by the Moslems,
who forced them to retire to Mesopotamia and Babylonia, where they
particularly affected the neighbourhood of rivers in order to be able to
carry out their peculiar baptismal rites.[203]

There can be no doubt that the doctrines of the Mandæans do resemble the
description of the Johannite heresy as given by Eliphas Lévi, though not
by the _Ordre du Temple_, in that the Mandæans professed to be the
disciples of St. John--the Baptist, however, not the Apostle--but were
at the same time the enemies of Jesus Christ. According to the Mandæans'
_Book of John_ (Sidra d'Yahya), Yahya, that is to say, St. John,
baptized myriads of men during forty years in the Jordan. By a
mistake--or in response to a written mandate from heaven saying,
"Yahya, baptize the liar in the Jordan"--he baptized the false prophet
Yishu Meshiha (the Messiah Jesus), son of the devil Ruha Kadishta.[204]
The same idea is found in another book of the sect, called the "Book of
Adam," which represents Jesus as the perverter of St. John's doctrine
and the disseminator of iniquity and perfidy throughout the world.[205]
The resemblance between all this and the legends of the Talmud, the
Cabala, and the Toledot Yeshu is at once apparent; moreover, the
Mandæans claim for the "Book of Adam" the same origin as the Jews
claimed for the Cabala, namely, that it was delivered to Adam by God
through the hands of the angel Razael.[206] This book, known to scholars
as the _Codex Nasaræus_, is described by Münter as "a sort of mosaic
without order, without method, where one finds mentioned Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Solomon, the Temple of Jerusalem, St. John the Baptist, Jesus
Christ, the Christians, and Mohammed." M. Matter, whilst denying any
proof of the Templar succession from the Mandæans, nevertheless gives
good reason for believing that the sect itself existed from the first
centuries of the Christian era and that its books dated from the eighth
century[207]; further that these Mandæans or Nazoreans--not to be
confounded with the pre-Christian Nazarites or Christian Nazarenes--were
Jews who revered St. John the Baptist as the prophet of ancient Mosaism,
but regarded Jesus Christ as a false Messiah sent by the powers of
darkness.[208] Modern Jewish opinion confirms this affirmation of Judaic
inspiration and agrees with Matter in describing the Mandæans as
Gnostics: "Their sacred books are in an Aramaic dialect, which has close
affinities with that of the Talmud of Babylon." The Jewish influence is
distinctly visible in the Mandæan religion. "It is essentially of the
type of ancient Gnosticism, traces of which are found in the Talmud, the
Midrash, and in a modified form the later Cabala."[209]

It may then be regarded as certain that a sect existed long before the
time of the Crusades corresponding to the description of the Johannites
given by Eliphas Lévi in that it was Cabalistic, anti-Christian, yet
professedly founded on the doctrines of one of the St. Johns. Whether it
was by this sect that the Templars were indoctrinated must remain an
open question. M. Matter objects that the evidence lacking to such a
conclusion lies in the fact that the Templars expressed no particular
reverence for St. John; but Loiseleur asserts that the Templars did
prefer the Gospel of St. John to that of the other evangelists, and that
modern masonic lodges claiming descent from the Templars possess a
special version of this Gospel said to have been copied from the
original on Mount Athos.[210] It is also said that "Baphomets" were
preserved in the masonic lodges of Hungary, where a debased form of
Masonry, known as Johannite Masonry, survives to this day. If the
Templar heresy was that of the Johannites, the head in question might
possibly represent that of John the Baptist, which would accord with the
theory that the word Baphomet was derived from Greek words signifying
baptism of wisdom. This would, moreover, not be incompatible with
Loiseleur's theory of an affinity between the Templars and the Bogomils,
for the Bogomils also possessed their own version of the Gospel of St.
John, which they placed on the heads of their neophytes during the
ceremony of initiation,[211] giving as the reason for the 'I peculiar
veneration they professed for its author that they regarded St. John as
the servant of the Jewish God Satanael.[212] Eliphas Lévi even goes so
far as to accuse the Templars of following the occult practices of the
Luciferians, who carried the doctrines of the Bogomils to the point of
paying homage to the powers of darkness:

Let us declare for the edification of the vulgar ... and for the
greater glory of the Church which has persecuted the Templars,
burned the magicians and excommunicated the Free-Masons, etc., let
us say boldly and loudly, that all the initiates of the occult
sciences ... have adored, do and will always adore that which is
signified by this frightful symbol [the Sabbatic goat].[213] Yes,
in our profound conviction, the Grand Masters of the Order of the
Templars adored Baphomet and caused him to be adored by their
initiates.[214]

It will be seen, then, that the accusation of heresy brought against the
Templars does not emanate solely from the Catholic Church, but also from
the secret societies. Even our Freemasons, who, for reasons I shall show
later, have generally defended the Order, are now willing to admit that
there was a very real case against them. Thus Dr. Ranking, who has
devoted many years of study to the question, has arrived at the
conclusion that Johannism is the real clue to the Templar heresy. In a
very interesting paper published in the masonic journal _Ars Quatuor
Coronatorum_, he observes that "the record of the Templars in Palestine
is one long tale of intrigue and treachery on the part of the Order,"
and finally:

That from the very commencement of Christianity there has been
transmitted through the centuries a body of doctrine incompatible
with Christianity in the various official Churches....

That the bodies teaching these doctrines professed to do so on the
authority of St. John, to whom, as they claimed, the true secrets
had been committed by the Founder of Christianity.

That during the Middle Ages the main support of the Gnostic bodies
and the main repository of this knowledge was the Society of the
Templars.[215]

What is the explanation of this choice of St. John for the propagation
of anti-Christian doctrines which we shall find continuing up to the
present day? What else than the method of perversion which in its
extreme form becomes Satanism, and consists in always selecting the most
sacred things for the purpose of desecration? Precisely then because the
Gospel of St. John is the one of all the four which most insists on the
divinity of Christ, the occult anti-Christian sects have habitually made
it the basis of their rites.

Esenios - Gnostics - Cainites- Carpocratians - Valentinians Manicheism

The Essenes


A subtler device for discrediting Christianity and undermining belief in
the divine character of our Lord has been adopted by modern writers,
principally Jewish, who set out to prove that He belonged to the sect of
the Essenes, a community of ascetics holding all goods in common, which
had existed in Palestine before the birth of Christ.
Thus the Jewish
historian Graetz declares that Jesus simply appropriated to himself the
essential features of Essenism, and that primitive Christianity was
"nothing but an offshoot of Essenism."[95]

The Christian Jew Dr. Ginsburg partially endorses this view in a small pamphlet[96] containing most of the evidence that has been brought forward on the subject, and
himself expresses the opinion that "it will hardly be doubted that our
Saviour Himself belonged to this holy brotherhood."[97] So after
representing Christ as a magician in the Toledot Yeshu and the Talmud,
Jewish tradition seeks to explain His miraculous works as those of a
mere healer--an idea that we shall find descending right through the
secret societies to this day. Of course if this were true, if the
miracles of Christ were simply due to a knowledge of natural laws and
His doctrines were the outcome of a sect, the whole theory of His divine
power and mission falls to the ground. This is why it is essential to
expose the fallacies and even the bad faith on which the attempt to
identify Him with the Essenes is based.

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 [Greek:
didaskalos], i.e. teacher, in the second, [Greek: kathêgêtês] literally
guide, and the word is servant is [Greek: diakonos].
When masters and
servants in the social sense are referred to in the Gospels, the word
employed for master is [Greek: kurios] and for servant [Greek: doulos].
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
([Greek: ophis]) 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
god[115]--likewise regarded all written laws, Christian or Mosaic, with
contempt and recognized only the [Greek: gnosis] 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 humannature, 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 [Greek: gnosis] 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.


Cubricus or Corbicius, the founder of Manicheism, was born in Babylonia about the year A.D. 216. Whilst still a child he is said to have been bought as a slave by a rich widow of Ctesiphon, who liberated him and on
her death left him great wealth. According to another story--for the
whole history of Manes rests on legends--he inherited from a rich old woman the books of a Saracen named Scythianus on the wisdom of the
Egyptians
. Combining the doctrines these books contained with ideas
borrowed from Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Christianity, and also
with certain additions of his own, he elaborated a philosophic system
which he proceeded to teach. Cubricus then changed his name to Mani or
Manes and proclaimed himself the Paraclete promised by Jesus Christ. His
followers were divided into two classes--the outer circle of hearers or
combatants, and the inner circle of teachers or ascetics described as
the Elect. As evidence of their resemblance with Freemasons, it has been
said that the Manicheans made use of secret signs, grips, and passwords,
that owing to the circumstances of their master's adoption they called
Manes "the son of the widow" and themselves "the children of the widow,"

but this is not clearly proved. One of their customs is, however,
interesting in this connexion.

According to legend, Manes undertook to cure the son of the King of Persia who had fallen ill, but the prince died, whereupon Manes was flayed alive by order of the king and his corpse hanged up at the city gate. Every year after this, on Good
Friday, the Manicheans carried out a mourning ceremony known as the Bema
around the catafalque of Manes, whose real sufferings they were wont to
contrast with the unreal sufferings of Christ.


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.

Secret societies and Subversive Movements

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Secret Societies And Subversive Movements, by
Nesta H. Webster

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Secret Societies And Subversive Movements

Author: Nesta H. Webster

Release Date: August 23, 2006 [EBook #19104]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SECRET SOCIETIES ***




Produced by Dave Maddock, Curtis A. Weyant and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





SECRET SOCIETIES and SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS

by

NESTA H. WEBSTER


CHRISTIAN BOOK CLUB OF AMERICA




BY THE SAME AUTHOR

_The Chevalier de Boufflers_
_The French Revolution_
_World Revolution_
_The Socialist Network_
_The Surrender of an Empire_
_Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette: Before the Revolution_
_Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette: During the Revolution_
_Spacious Days_

* * * * *

"There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House ... I
mean the secret societies.... It is useless to deny, because it is
impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe--the whole of Italy
and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other
countries--is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as
the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And
what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not
want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated
institutions ... they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out
the present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiastical
establishments. Some of them may go further...." (DISRAELI in the House
of Commons, July 14, 1856.)




PREFACE



It is a matter of some regret to me that I have been so far unable to
continue the series of studies on the French Revolution of which _The
Chevalier de Boufflers_ and _The French Revolution, a Study in
Democracy_ formed the first two volumes. But the state of the world at
the end of the Great War seemed to demand an enquiry into the present
phase of the revolutionary movement, hence my attempt to follow its
course up to modern times in _World Revolution_. And now before
returning to that first cataclysm I have felt impelled to devote one
more book to the Revolution as a whole by going this time further back
into the past and attempting to trace its origins from the first century
of the Christian era. For it is only by taking a general survey of the
movement that it is possible to understand the causes of any particular
phase of its existence. The French Revolution did not arise merely out
of conditions or ideas peculiar to the eighteenth century, nor the
Bolshevist Revolution out of political and social conditions in Russia
or the teaching of Karl Marx. Both these explosions were produced by
forces which, making use of popular suffering and discontent, had long
been gathering strength for an onslaught not only on Christianity, but
on all social and moral order.

It is of immense significance to notice with what resentment this point
of view is met in certain quarters. When I first began to write on
revolution a well-known London publisher said to me, "Remember that if
you take an anti-revolutionary line you will have the whole literary
world against you." This appeared to me extraordinary.

Why should the literary world sympathize with a movement which from the French
Revolution onwards has always been directed against literature, art, and
science, and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workers
over the intelligentsia? "Writers must be proscribed as the most
dangerous enemies of the people," said Robespierre; his colleague Dumas
said all clever men should be guillotined. "The system of persecution
against men of talents was organized.... They cried out in the sections
of Paris, 'Beware of that man for he has written a book!
'"[1] Precisely
the same policy has been followed in Russia. Under Moderate Socialism in
Germany the professors, not the "people," are starving in garrets. Yet
the whole press of our country is permeated with subversive influences.
Not merely in partisan works, but in manuals of history or literature
for use in Schools, Burke is reproached for warning us against the
French Revolution and Carlyle's panegyric is applauded. And whilst every
slip on the part of an anti-revolutionary writer is seized on by the
critics and held up as an example of the whole, the most glaring errors
not only of conclusions but of facts pass unchallenged if they happen to
be committed by a partisan of the movement. The principle laid down by
Collot d'Herbois still holds good: "Tout est permis pour quiconque agit
dans le sens de la révolution."




All this was unknown to me when I first embarked on my work. I knew that
French writers of the past had distorted facts to suit their own
political views, that a conspiracy of history is still directed by
certain influences in the masonic lodges and the Sorbonne; I did not
know that this conspiracy was being carried on in this country.
Therefore the publisher's warning did not daunt me. If I was wrong
either in my conclusions or facts I was prepared to be challenged.
Should not years of laborious historical research meet either with
recognition or with reasoned and scholarly refutation? But although my
book received a great many generous and appreciative reviews in the
press, criticisms which were hostile took a form which I had never
anticipated. Not a single honest attempt was made to refute either my
_French Revolution_ or _World Revolution_ by the usual methods of
controversy; statements founded on documentary evidence were met with
flat contradiction unsupported by a shred of counter evidence. In
general the plan adopted was not to disprove, but to discredit by means
of flagrant misquotations, by attributing to me views I had never
expressed, or even by means of offensive personalities. It will surely
be admitted that this method of attack is unparalleled in any other
sphere of literary controversy.

It is interesting to notice that precisely the same line was adopted a
hundred years ago with regard to Professor Robison and the Abbé Barruel,
whose works on the secret causes of the French Revolution created an
immense sensation in their day. The legitimate criticisms that might
have been made on their work find no place in the diatribes levelled
against them; their enemies content themselves merely with calumnies and
abuse. A contemporary American writer, Seth Payson, thus describes the
methods employed to discredit them:

The testimony of Professor Robison and Abbé Barruel would doubtless
have been considered as ample in any case which did not interest
the prejudices and passions of men against them. The scurrility and
odium with which they have been loaded is perfectly natural, and
what the nature of their testimony would have led one to expect.
Men will endeavour to invalidate that evidence which tends to
unveil their dark designs: and it cannot be expected that those who
believe that "the end sanctifies the means" will be very scrupulous
as to their measures. Certainly he was not who invented the
following character and arbitrarily applied it to Dr. Robison,
which might have been applied with as much propriety to any other
person in Europe or America. The character here referred to, is
taken from the American _Mercury_, printed at Hartford, September
26, 1799, by E. Babcock. In this paper, on the pretended authority
of Professor Ebeling, we are told "that Robison had lived too fast
for his income, and to supply deficiencies had undertaken to alter
a bank bill, that he was detected and fled to France; that having
been expelled the Lodge in Edinburgh, he applied in France for the
second grade, but was refused; that he made the same attempt in
Germany and afterwards in Russia, but never succeeded; and from
this entertained the bitterest hatred to masonry; and after
wandering about Europe for two years, by writing to Secretary
Dundas, and presenting a copy of his book, which, it was judged,
would answer certain purposes of the ministry, the prosecution
against him was stopped, the Professor returned in triumph to his
country, and now lives upon a handsome pension, instead of
suffering the fate of his predecessor Dodd."[2]

Payson goes on to quote a writer in _The National Intelligencer_ of
January 1801, who styles himself a "friend to truth" and speaks of
Professor Robison as "a man distinguished by abject dependence on a
party, by the base crimes of forgery and adultery, and by frequent
paroxysms of insanity." Mounier goes further still, and in his pamphlet
_De l'influence attribuée aux Philosophes, ... Francs-maçons et ...
Illuminés_, etc., inspired by the Illuminatus Bode, quotes a story that
Robison suffered from a form of insanity which consisted in his
believing that the posterior portion of his body was made of glass![3]

In support of all this farrago of nonsense there is of course no
foundation of truth; Robison was a well-known savant who lived sane and
respected to the end of his days. On his death Watt wrote of him: "He
was a man of the clearest head and the most science of anybody I have
ever known."[4] John Playfair, in a paper read before the Royal Society
of Edinburgh in 1815, whilst criticizing his _Proofs of a
Conspiracy_--though at the same time admitting he had himself never had
access to the documents Robison had consulted!--paid the following
tribute to his character and erudition:

His range in science was most extensive; he was familiar with the
whole circle of the accurate sciences.... Nothing can add to the
esteem which they [i.e. "those who were personally acquainted with
him"] felt for his talents and worth or to the respect in which
they now hold his memory.[5]

Nevertheless, the lies circulated against both Robison and Barruel were
not without effect. Thirteen years later we find another American, this
time a Freemason, confessing "with shame and grief and indignation" that
he had been carried away by "the flood of vituperation poured upon
Barruel and Robison during the past thirty years," that the title pages
of their works "were fearful to him," and that although "wishing calmly
and candidly to investigate the character of Freemasonry he refused for
months to open their books." Yet when in 1827 he read them for the first
time he was astonished to find that they showed "a manifest tendency
towards Freemasonry." Both Barruel and Robison, he now realized, were
"learned men, candid men, lovers of their country, who had a reverence
for truth and religion. They give the reasons for their opinions, they
quote their authorities, naming the author and page, like honest people;
they both had a wish to rescue British Masonry from the condemnation and
fellowship of continental Masonry and appear to be sincerely actuated by
the desire of doing good by giving their labours to the public."[6]

That the author was right here in his description of Barruel's attitude
to Freemasonry is shown by Barruel's own words on the subject:

England above all is full of those upright men, excellent citizens,
men of every kind and in every condition of life, who count it an
honour to be masons, and who are distinguished from other men only
by ties which seem to strengthen those of benevolence and fraternal
charity. It is not the fear of offending a nation amongst which I
have found a refuge which prompts me to make this exception.
Gratitude would prevail with me over all such terrors and I should
say in the midst of London: "England is lost, she will not escape
the French Revolution if the masonic lodges resemble those I have
to unveil. I would even say more: government and all Christianity
would long ago have been lost in England if one could suppose its
Freemasons to be initiated into the last mysteries of the sect."[7]

In another passage Barruel observes that Masonry in England is "a
society composed of good citizens in general whose chief object is to
help each other by principles of equality which for them is nothing else
but universal fraternity."[8] And again: "Let us admire it [the wisdom
of England] for having known how to make a real source of benefit to the
State out of those same mysteries which elsewhere conceal a profound
conspiracy against the State and religion."[9]

The only criticism British Freemasons may make on this verdict is that
Barruel regards Masonry as a system which originally contained an
element of danger that has been eliminated in England whilst they regard
it as a system originally innocuous into which a dangerous element was
inserted on the Continent. Thus according to the former conception
Freemasonry might be compared to one of the brass shell-cases brought
back from the battle-fields of France and converted into a flower-pot
holder, whilst according to the latter it resembles an innocent brass
flower-pot holder which has been used as a receptacle for explosives. The
fact is that, as I shall endeavour to show in the course of this book,
Freemasonry being a composite system there is some justification for
both these theories. In either case it will be seen that Continental
Masonry alone stands condemned.

The plan of representing Robison and Barruel as the enemies of British
Masonry can therefore only be regarded as a method for discrediting them
in the eyes of British Freemasons, and consequently for bringing the
latter over to the side of their antagonists. Exactly the same method of
attack has been directed against those of us who during the last few
years have attempted to warn the world of the secret forces working to
destroy civilization; in my own case even the plan of accusing me of
having attacked British Masonry has been adopted without the shadow of a
foundation. From the beginning I have always differentiated between
British and Grand Orient Masonry, and have numbered high British Masons
amongst my friends.

But what is the main charge brought against us? Like Robison and
Barruel, we are accused of raising a false alarm, of creating a bogey,
or of being the victims of an obsession. Up to a point this is
comprehensible. Whilst on the Continent the importance of secret
societies is taken as a matter of course and the libraries of foreign
capitals teem with books on the question, people in this country really
imagine that secret societies are things of the past--articles to this
effect appeared quite recently in two leading London newspapers--whilst
practically nothing of any value has been written about them in our
language during the last hundred years. Hence ideas that are
commonplaces on the Continent here appear sensational and extravagant.
The mind of the Englishman does not readily accept anything he cannot
see or even sometimes anything he can see which is unprecedented in his
experience, so that like the West American farmer, confronted for the
first time by the sight of a giraffe, his impulse is to cry out angrily:
"I don't believe it!"

But whilst making all allowance for honest ignorance and incredulity, it
is impossible not to recognize a certain method in the manner in which
the cry of "obsession" or "bogey" is raised. For it will be noticed that
people who specialize on other subjects are not described as "obsessed."
We did not hear, for example, that the late Professor Einstein had
Relativity "on the brain" because he wrote and lectured exclusively on
this question, nor do we hear it suggested that Mr. Howard Carter is
obsessed with the idea of Tutankhamen and that it would be well if he
were to set out for the South Pole by way of a change. Again, all those
who warn the world concerning eventualities they conceive to be a danger
are not accused of creating bogeys. Thus although Lord Roberts was
denounced as a scaremonger for urging the country to prepare for
defence against a design openly avowed by Germany both in speech and
print, and in 1921 the Duke of Northumberland was declared the victim of
a delusion for believing in the existence of a plot against the British
Empire which had been proclaimed in a thousand revolutionary harangues
and pamphlets. People who, without bothering to produce a shred of
documentary evidence, had sounded the alarm on the menace of "French
Imperialism" and asserted that our former Allies were engaged in
building a vast fleet of aeroplanes in order to attack our coasts. They
were not held to be either scaremongers or insane. On the contrary,
although some of these same people were proved by events to have been
completely wrong in their prognostications at the beginning of the Great
War, they are still regarded as oracles and sometimes even described as
"thinking for half Europe."

Another instance of this kind may be cited in the case of Mr. John
Spargo, author of a small book entitled _The Jew and American Ideals_.
On page 37 of this work Mr. Spargo in refuting the accusations brought
against the Jews observes:

Belief in widespread conspiracies directed against individuals or
the state is probably the commonest form assumed by the human mind
when it loses its balance and its sense of proportion.

Yet on page 6 Mr. Spargo declares that when visiting this country in
September and October 1920:

I found in England great nation-wide organizations, obviously well
financed, devoted to the sinister purpose of creating anti-Jewish
feeling and sentiment. I found special articles in influential
newspapers devoted to the same evil purpose. I found at at least
one journal, obviously well financed again, exclusively devoted to
the fostering of suspicion, fear, and hatred against the Jew ...
and in the bookstores I discovered a whole library of books devoted
to the same end.

It will be seen then that a belief in widespread conspiracies is not
always to be regarded as a sign of loss of mental balance, even when
these conspiracies remain completely invisible to the general public.
For those of us who were in London during the period of Mr. Spargo's
visit saw nothing of the things he here describes. Where, we ask, were
these "great nation-wide organizations" striving to create anti-Jewish
sentiments? What were their names? By whom were they led? It is true,
however, that there were nation-wide organizations in existence here at
this date instituted for the purpose of combating Bolshevism. Is
anti-Bolshevism then synonymous with "anti-Semitism"?[10] This is the
conclusion to which one is inevitably led. For it will be noticed that
anyone who attempts to expose the secret forces behind the revolutionary
movement, whether he mentions Jews in this connexion or even if he goes
out of his way to exonerate them, will incur the hostility of the Jews
and their friends and will still be described as "anti-Semite." The
realization of this fact has led me particularly to include the Jews in
the study of secret societies.

The object of the present book is therefore to carry further the enquiry
I began in _World Revolution_, by tracing the course of revolutionary
ideas through secret societies from the earliest times, indicating the
rôle of the Jews only where it is to be clearly detected, but not
seeking to implicate them where good evidence is not forthcoming. For
this reason I shall not base assertions on merely "anti-Semite" works,
but principally on the writings of the Jews themselves. In the same way
with regard to secret societies I shall rely as far as possible on the
documents and admissions of their members, on which point I have been
able to collect a great deal of fresh data entirely corroborating my
former thesis. It should be understood that I do not propose to give a
complete history of secret societies, but only of secret societies in
their relation to the revolutionary movement. I shall therefore not
attempt to describe the theories of occultism nor to enquire into the
secrets of Freemasonry, but simply to relate the history of these
systems in order to show the manner in which they have been utilized for
a subversive purpose. If I then fail to convince the incredulous that
secret forces of revolution exist, it will not be for want of evidence.

Nesta H. Webster.




CONTENTS



PREFACE

PART I _THE PAST_

I. THE ANCIENT SECRET TRADITION
II. THE REVOLT AGAINST ISLAM
III. THE TEMPLARS
IV. THREE CENTURIES OF OCCULTISM
V. THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY
VI. THE GRAND LODGE ERA
VII. GERMAN TEMPLARISM AND FRENCH ILLUMINISM
VIII. THE JEWISH CABALISTS
IX. THE BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI
X. THE CLIMAX

PART II _THE PRESENT_

XI. MODERN FREEMASONRY
XII. SECRET SOCIETIES IN ENGLAND
XIII. OPEN SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS
XIV. PAN-GERMANISM
XV. THE REAL JEWISH PERIL

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX:
I. JEWISH EVIDENCE ON THE TALMUD
II. THE "PROTOCOLS" OF THE ELDERS OF ZION

INDEX




PART I

_THE PAST_




1

THE ANCIENT SECRET TRADITION



The East is the cradle of secret societies. For whatever end they may
have been employed, the inspiration and methods of most of those
mysterious associations which have played so important a part behind the
scenes of the world's history will be found to have emanated from the
lands where the first recorded acts of the great human drama were played
out--Egypt, Babylon, Syria, and Persia. On the one hand Eastern
mysticism, on the other Oriental love of intrigue, framed the systems
later on to be transported to the West with results so tremendous and
far-reaching.

In the study of secret societies we have then a double line to
follow--the course of associations enveloping themselves in secrecy for
the pursuit of esoteric knowledge, and those using mystery and secrecy
for an ulterior and, usually, a political purpose.

But esotericism again presents a dual aspect. Here, as in every phase of
earthly life, there is the _revers de la médaille_--white and black,
light and darkness, the Heaven and Hell of the human mind. The quest for
hidden knowledge may end with initiation into divine truths or into dark
and abominable cults. Who knows with what forces he may be brought in
contact beyond the veil? Initiation which leads to making use of
spiritual forces, whether good or evil, is therefore capable of raising
man to greater heights or of degrading him to lower depths than he could
ever have reached by remaining on the purely physical plane. And when
men thus unite themselves in associations, a collective force is
generated which may exercise immense influence over the world around.
Hence the importance of secret societies.

Let it be said once and for all, secret societies have not always been
formed for evil purposes. On the contrary, many have arisen from the
highest aspirations of the human mind--the desire for a knowledge of
eternal verities. The evil arising from such systems has usually
consisted in the perversion of principles that once were pure and holy.
If I do not insist further on this point, it is because a vast
literature has already been devoted to the subject, so that it need only
be touched on briefly here.

Now, from the earliest times groups of Initiates or "Wise Men" have
existed, claiming to be in possession of esoteric doctrines known as the
"Mysteries," incapable of apprehension by the vulgar, and relating to
the origin and end of man, the life of the soul after death, and the
nature of God or the gods. It is this exclusive attitude which
constitutes the essential difference between the Initiates of the
ancient world and the great Teachers of religion with whom modern
occultists seek to confound them. For whilst religious leaders such as
Buddha and Mohammed sought for divine knowledge in order that they might
impart it to the world, the Initiates believed that sacred mysteries
should not be revealed to the profane but should remain exclusively in
their own keeping, although the desire for initiation might spring from
the highest aspiration, the gratification, whether real or imaginary, of
this desire often led to spiritual arrogance and abominable tyranny,
resulting in the fearful trials, the tortures physical and mental,
ending even at times in death, to which the neophyte was subjected by
his superiors.



The Mysteries


According to a theory current in occult and masonic circles, certain
ideas were common to all the more important "Mysteries," thus forming a
continuous tradition handed down through succeeding groups of Initiates
of different ages and countries. Amongst these ideas is said to have
been the conception of the unity of God. Whilst to the multitude it was
deemed advisable to preach polytheism, since only in this manner could
the plural aspects of the Divine be apprehended by the multitude, the
Initiates themselves believed in the existence of one Supreme Being, the
Creator of the Universe, pervading and governing all things, Le
Plongeon, whose object is to show an affinity between the sacred
Mysteries of the Mayas and of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks,
asserts that "The idea of a sole and omnipotent Deity, who created all
things, seems to have been the universal belief in early ages, amongst
all the nations that had reached a high degree of civilization. This was
the doctrine of the Egyptian priests."[11] The same writer goes on to
say that the "doctrine of a Supreme Deity composed of three parts
distinct from each other, yet forming one, was universally prevalent
among the civilized nations of America, Asia, and the Egyptians," and
that the priests and learned men of Egypt, Chaldea, India, or China
"...kept it a profound secret and imparted it only to a few select among
those initiated in the sacred mysteries."[12] This view has been
expressed by many other writers, yet lacks historical proof.

That monotheism existed in Egypt before the days of Moses is, however,
certain. Adolf Erman asserts that "even in early times the educated
class" believed all the deities of the Egyptian religion to be identical
and that "the priests did not shut their eyes to this doctrine, but
strove to grasp the idea of the one God, divided into different persons
by poesy and myth.... The priesthood, however, had not the courage to
take the final step, to do away with those distinctions which they
declared to be immaterial, and to adore the one God under the one
name."[13] It was left to Amenhotep IV, later known as Ikhnaton, to
proclaim this doctrine openly to the people. Professor Breasted has
described the hymns of praise to the Sun God which Ikhnaton himself
wrote on the walls of the Amarna tomb-chapels:

They show us the simplicity and beauty of the young king's faith in
the sole God. He had gained the belief that one God created not
only all the lower creatures but also all races of men, both
Egyptians and foreigners. Moreover, the king saw in his God a
kindly Father, who maintained all his creatures by his goodness....
In all the progress of men which we have followed through thousands
of years, no one had ever before caught such a vision of the great
Father of all.[14]

May not the reason why Ikhnaton was later described as a "heretic" be
that he violated the code of the priestly hierarchy by revealing this
secret doctrine to the profane? Hence, too, perhaps the necessity in
which the King found himself of suppressing the priesthood, which by
persisting in its exclusive attitude kept what he perceived to be the
truth from the minds of the people.

The earliest European centre of the Mysteries appears to have been
Greece, where the Eleusinian Mysteries existed at a very early date.
Pythagoras, who was born in Samos about 582 B.C., spent some years in
Egypt, where he was initiated into the Mysteries of Isis. After his
return to Greece, Pythagoras is said to have been initiated into the
Eleusinian Mysteries and attempted to found a secret society in Samos;
but this proving unsuccessful, he journeyed on to Crotona in Italy,
where he collected around him a great number of disciples and finally
established his sect. This was divided into two classes of
Initiates--the first admitted only into the exoteric doctrines of the
master, with whom they were not allowed to speak until after a period of
five years' probation; the second consisting of the real Initiates, to
whom all the mysteries of the esoteric doctrines of Pythagoras were
unfolded. This course of instruction, given, after the manner of the
Egyptians, by means of images and symbols, began with geometrical
science, in which Pythagoras during his stay in Egypt had become an
adept, and led up finally to abstruse speculations concerning the
transmigration of the soul and the nature of God, who was represented
under the conception of a Universal Mind diffused through all things. It
is, however, as the precursor of secret societies formed later in the
West of Europe that the sect of Pythagoras enters into the scope of this
book. Early masonic tradition traces Freemasonry partly to Pythagoras,
who is said to have travelled in England, and there is certainly some
reason to believe that his geometrical ideas entered into the system of
the operative guilds of masons.



The Jewish Cabala[15]


According to Fabre d'Olivet, Moses, who "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," drew from the Egyptian Mysteries a part of the oral tradition which was handed down through the leaders of the Israelites.[16] That such an oral tradition, distinct from the written word embodied in the Pentateuch, did descend from Moses and that it was later committed to writing in the Talmud and the Cabala is the opinion of many Jewish writers.[17]

The first form of the Talmud, called the Mischna, appeared in about the
second or third century A.D.;
a little later a commentary was added
under the name of the Gemara. These two works compose the Jerusalem
Talmud, which was revised in the third to the fifth centry[A]. This
later edition was named the Babylonian Talmud and is the one now in use.

The Talmud relates mainly to the affairs of everyday life--the laws of
buying and selling, of making contracts--also to external religious
observances, on all of which the most meticulous details are given. As a
Jewish writer has expressed it:

... the oddest rabbinical conceits are elaborated through many
volumes with the finest dialectic, and the most absurd questions
are discussed with the highest efforts of intellectual power; for
example, how many white hairs may a red cow have, and yet remain a
_red_ cow; what sort of scabs require this or that purification;
whether a louse or a flea may be killed on the Sabbath--the first
being allowed, while the second is a deadly sin; whether the
slaughter of an animal ought to be executed at the neck or the
tail; whether the high priest put on his shirt or his hose first;
whether the _Jabam_, that is, the brother of a man who died
childless, being required by law to marry the widow, is relieved
from his obligation if he falls off a roof and sticks in the
mire.[18]

But it is in the Cabala, a Hebrew word signifying "reception," that is
to say "a doctrine orally received," that the speculative and
philosophical or rather the theosophical doctrines of Israel are to be
found. These are contained in two books, the _Sepher Yetzirah_ and the
_Zohar_.

The _Sepher Yetzirah_, or Book of the Creation, is described by
Edersheim as "a monologue on the part of Abraham, in which, by the
contemplation of all that is around him, he ultimately arrives at the
conclusion of the unity of God"[19]; but since this process is
accomplished by an arrangement of the Divine Emanations under the name
of the Ten Sephiroths, and in the permutation of numerals and of the
letters of the Hebrew alphabet, it would certainly convey no such
idea--nor probably indeed any idea at all--to the mind uninitiated into
Cabalistic systems. The Sepher Yetzirah is in fact admittedly a work of
extraordinary obscurity[20] and almost certainly of extreme antiquity.
Monsieur Paul Vulliaud, in his exhaustive work on the Cabala recently
published,[21] says that its date has been placed as early as the sixth
century before Christ and as late as the tenth century A.D., but that it
is at any rate older than the Talmud is shown by the fact that in the
Talmud the Rabbis are described as studying it for magical purposes.[22]
The Sepher Yetzirah is also said to be the work referred to in the Koran
under the name of the "Book of Abraham."[23]

The immense compilation known as the _Sepher-Ha-Zohar_, or Book of
Light, is, however, of greater importance to the study of Cabalistic
philosophy.
According to the Zohar itself, the "Mysteries of Wisdom"
were imparted to Adam by God whilst he was still in the Garden of Eden,
in the form of a book delivered by the angel Razael. From Adam the book
passed on to Seth, then to Enoch, to Noah, to Abraham, and later to
Moses, one of its principal exponents.[24] Other Jewish writers declare,
however, that Moses received it for the first time on Mount Sinai and
communicated it to the Seventy Elders, by whom it was handed down to
David and Solomon, then to Ezra and Nehemiah, and finally to the Rabbis
of the early Christian era.[25]

Until this date the Zohar had remained a purely oral tradition, but now
for the first time it is said to have been written down by the disciples
of Simon ben Jochai. The Talmud relates that for twelve years the Rabbi
Simon and his son Eliezer concealed themselves in a cavern, where,
sitting in the sand up to their necks, they meditated on the sacred law
and were frequently visited by the prophet Elias.[26] In this way,
Jewish legend adds, the great book of the Zohar was composed and
committed to writing by the Rabbi's son Eliezer and his secretary the
Rabbi Abba.[27]

The first date at which the Zohar is definitely known to have appeared
is the end of the thirteenth century, when it was committed to writing
by a Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon, who, according to Dr. Ginsburg, said he
had discovered and reproduced the original document of Simon ben Jochai;

his wife and daughter, however, declared that he had composed it all
himself.[28] Which is the truth? Jewish opinion is strongly divided on
this question, one body maintaining that the Zohar is the comparatively
modern work of Moses de Leon, the other declaring it to be of extreme
antiquity. M. Vulliaud, who has collated all these views in the course
of some fifty pages, shows that although the name Zohar might have
originated with Moses de Leon, the ideas it embodied were far older than
the thirteenth century. How, he asks pertinently, would it have been
possible for the Rabbis of the Middle Ages to have been deceived into
accepting as an ancient document a work that was of completely modern
origin?[29] Obviously the Zohar was not the composition of Moses de
Leon, but a compilation made by him from various documents dating from
very early times. Moreover, as M. Vulliaud goes on to explain, those who
deny its antiquity are the anti-Cabalists, headed by Graetz, whose
object is to prove the Cabala to be at variance with orthodox Judaism.
Theodore Reinach goes so far as to declare the Cabala to be "a subtle
poison which enters into the veins of Judaism and wholly infests it";
Salomon Reinach calls it "one of the worst aberrations of the human
mind."[30] This view, many a student of the Cabala will hardly dispute,
but to say that it is foreign to Judaism is another matter. The fact is
that the main ideas of the Zohar find confirmation in the Talmud. As the
_Jewish Encyclopædia_ observes, "the Cabala is not really in opposition
to the Talmud," and "many Talmudic Jews have supported and contributed
to it."[31] Adolphe Franck does not hesitate to describe it as "the
heart and life of Judaism."[32] "The greater number of the most eminent
Rabbis of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries believed firmly in
the sacredness of the Zohar and the infallibility of its teaching."[33]

The question of the antiquity of the Cabala is therefore in reality
largely a matter of names. That a mystical tradition existed amongst the
Jews from remote antiquity will hardly be denied by anyone[34]; it is
therefore, as M. Vulliaud observes, "only a matter of knowing at what
moment Jewish mysticism took the name of Cabala."[35] Edersheim asserts
that--

It is undeniable that, already at the time of Jesus Christ, there
existed an assemblage of doctrines and speculations that were
carefully concealed from the multitude. They were not even revealed
to ordinary scholars, for fear of leading them towards heretical
ideas. This kind bore the name of Kabbalah, and as the term (of
Kabbalah, to receive, transmit) indicates, it represented the
spiritual traditions transmitted from the earliest ages, although
mingled in the course of time with impure or foreign elements.[36]

Is the Cabala, then, as Gougenot des Mousseaux asserts, older than the
Jewish race, a legacy handed down from the first patriarchs of the
world?[37] We must admit this hypothesis to be incapable of proof, yet
it is one that has found so much favour with students of occult
traditions that it cannot be ignored. The Jewish Cabala itself supports
it by tracing its descent from the patriarchs--Adam, Noah, Enoch, and
Abraham--who lived before the Jews as a separate race came into
existence. Eliphas Lévi accepts this genealogy, and relates that "the
Holy Cabala" was the tradition of the children of Seth carried out of
Chaldea by Abraham, who was "the inheritor of the secrets of Enoch and
the father of initiation in Israel."[38]

According to this theory, which we find again propounded by the American
Freemason, Dr. Mackey,[39] there was, besides the divine Cabala of the
children of Seth, the magical Cabala of the children of Cain, which
descended to the Sabeists, or star-worshippers, of Chaldea, adepts in astrology and necromancy. Sorcery, as we know, had been practised by the Canaanites before the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites; Egypt
India, and Greece also had their soothsayers and diviners. In spite of
the imprecations against sorcery contained in the law of Moses, the
Jews, disregarding these warnings, caught the contagion and mingled the
sacred tradition they had inherited with magical ideas partly borrowed
from other races and partly of their own devising. At the same time the
speculative side of the Jewish Cabala borrowed from the philosophy of
the Persian Magi, of the Neo-Platonists,[40] and of the
Neo-Pythagoreans. There is, then, some justification for the
anti-Cabalists' contention that what we know to-day as the Cabala is not
of purely Jewish origin.

Gougenot des Mousseaux, who had made a profound study of occultism,
asserts that there were therefore two Cabalas: the ancient sacred
tradition handed down from the first patriarchs of the human race; and
the evil Cabala, wherein this sacred tradition was mingled by the Rabbis
with barbaric superstitions, combined with their own imaginings and
henceforth marked with their seal.[41] This view also finds expression
in the remarkable work of the converted Jew Drach, who refers to--

The ancient and true Cabala, which ... we distinguish from the
modern Cabala, false, condemnable, and condemned by the Holy See,
the work of the Rabbis, who have also falsified and perverted the
Talmudic tradition. The doctors of the Synagogue trace it back to
Moses, whilst at the same time admitting that the principal truths
it contains were those known by revelation to the first patriarchs
of the world.[42]

Further on Drach quotes the statement of Sixtus of Sienna, another
converted Jew and a Dominican, protected by Pius V:

Since by the decree of the Holy Roman Inquisition all books
appertaining to the Cabala have lately been condemned, one must
know that the Cabala is double; that one is true, the other false.
The true and pious one is that which ... elucidates the secret
mysteries of the holy law according to the principle of anagogy
(i.e. figurative interpretation). This Cabala therefore the Church
has never condemned. The false and impious Cabala is a certain
mendacious kind of Jewish tradition, full of innumerable vanities
and falsehoods, differing but little from necromancy. This kind of
superstition, therefore, improperly called Cabala, the Church
within the last few years has deservedly condemned.[43]

The modern Jewish Cabala presents a dual aspect--theoretical and
practical; the former concerned with theosophical speculations, the
latter with magical practices. It would be impossible here to give an
idea of Cabalistic theosophy with its extraordinary imaginings on the
Sephiroths, the attributes and functions of good and bad angels,
dissertations on the nature of demons, and minute details on the
appearance of God under the name of the Ancient of Ancients, from whose
head 400,000 worlds receive the light. "The length of this face from the
top of the head is three hundred and seventy times ten thousand worlds.
It is called the 'Long Face,' for such is the name of the Ancient of
Ancients."[44] The description of the hair and beard alone belonging to
this gigantic countenance occupies a large place in the Zoharic
treatise, Idra Raba.[45]

According to the Cabala, every letter in the Scriptures contains a
mystery only to be solved by the initiated
.[46] By means of this system
of interpretation passages of the Old Testament are shown to bear
meanings totally unapparent to the ordinary reader. Thus the Zohar
explains that Noah was lamed for life by the bite of a lion whilst he
was in the ark,[47] the adventures of Jonah inside the whale are related
with an extraordinary wealth of imagination,[48] whilst the beautiful
story of Elisha and the Shunnamite woman is travestied in the most
grotesque manner.[49]

In the practical Cabala this method of "decoding" is reduced to a
theurgic or magical system in which the healing of diseases plays an
important part and is effected by means of the mystical arrangement of
numbers and letters, by the pronunciation of the Ineffable Name, by the use of amulets and talismans, or by compounds supposed to contain
certain occult properties.

All these ideas derived from very ancient cults; even the art of working
miracles by the use of the Divine Name, which after the appropriation of the Cabala by the Jews became the particular practice of Jewish
miracle-workers, appears to have originated in Chaldea.[50] Nor can the
insistence on the Chosen People theory, which forms the basis of all
Talmudic and Cabalistic writings, be regarded as of purely Jewish
origin; the ancient Egyptians likewise believed themselves to be "the
peculiar people specially loved by the gods."[51] But in the hands of
the Jews this belief became a pretension to the exclusive enjoyment of
divine favour. According to the Zohar, "all Israelites will have a part
in the future world,"[52] and on arrival there will not be handed over
like the _goyim_ (or non-Jewish races) to the hands of the angel Douma
and sent down to Hell.[53] Indeed the _goyim_ are even denied human
attributes. Thus the Zohar again explains that the words of the
Scripture "Jehovah Elohim made man" mean that He made Israel.[54] The
seventeenth-century Rabbinical treatise Emek ha Melek observes: "Our
Rabbis of blessed memory have said: 'Ye Jews are men because of the soul
ye have from the Supreme Man (i.e. God). But the nations of the world
are not styled men because they have not, from the Holy and Supreme Man,
the Neschama (or glorious soul), but they have the Nephesch (soul) from
Adam Belial, that is the malicious and unnecessary man, called Sammael,
the Supreme Devil.'"[55]

In conformity with this exclusive attitude towards the rest of the human
race, the Messianic idea which forms the dominating theme of the Cabala
is made to serve purely Jewish interests. Yet in its origins this idea
was possibly not Jewish. It is said by believers in an ancient secret
tradition common to other races besides the Jews, that a part of this
tradition related to a past Golden Age when man was free from care and
evil non-existent, to the subsequent fall of Man and the loss of this
primitive felicity, and finally to a revelation received from Heaven
foretelling the reparation of this loss and the coming of a Redeemer who
should save the world and restore the Golden Age. According to Drach:

The tradition of a Man-God who should present Himself as the
teacher and liberator of the fallen human race was constantly
taught amongst all the enlightened nations of the globe. _Vetus et
constans opinio_, as Suetonius says. It is of all times and of all
places.[56]

And Drach goes on to quote the evidence of Volney, who had travelled in
the East and declared that--

The sacred and mythological traditions of earlier times had spread
throughout all Asia the belief in a great Mediator who was to come,
of a future Saviour, King, God, Conqueror, and Legislator who would
bring back the Golden Age to earth and deliver men from the empire
of evil.[57]

All that can be said with any degree of certainty with regard to this
belief is that it did exist amongst the Zoroastrians of Persia as well
as amongst the Jews. D'Herbelot, quoting Abulfaraj, shows that five
hundred years before Christ, Zerdascht, the leader of the Zoroastrians,
predicted the coming of the Messiah, at whose birth a star would appear.
He also told his disciples that the Messiah would be born of a virgin,
that they would be the first to hear of Him, and that they should bring
Him gifts.[58]

Drach believes that this tradition was taught in the ancient
synagogue,[59] thus explaining the words of St. Paul that unto the Jews
"were committed the oracles of God"[60]:

This oral doctrine, which is the Cabala, had for its object the
most sublime truths of the Faith which it brought back incessantly
to the promised Redeemer, the foundation of the whole system of the
ancient tradition.[61]

Drach further asserts that the doctrine of the Trinity formed a part of
this tradition:

Whoever has familiarized himself with that which was taught by the
ancient doctors of the Synagogue, particularly those who lived
before the coming of the Saviour, knows that the Trinity in one God
was a truth admitted amongst them from the earliest times.[62]

M. Vulliaud points out that Graetz admits the existence of this idea in
the Zohar: "It even taught certain doctrines which appeared favourable
to the Christian dogma of the Trinity!" And again: "It is incontestable
that the Zohar makes allusions to the beliefs in the Trinity and the
Incarnation."[63] M. Vulliaud adds: "The idea of the Trinity must
therefore play an important part in the Cabala, since it has been
possible to affirm that 'the characteristic of the Zohar and its
particular conception is its attachment to the principle of the
Trinity,'"[64] and further quotes Edersheim as saying that "a great
part of the explanation given in the writings of the Cabalists resembles
in a surprising manner the highest truths of Christianity."[65] It
would appear, then, that certain remnants of the ancient secret
tradition lingered on in the Cabala. The _Jewish Encyclopædia_, perhaps
unintentionally, endorses this opinion, since in deriding the
sixteenth-century Christian Cabalists for asserting that the Cabala
contained traces of Christianity, it goes on to say that what appears to
be Christian in the Cabala is only ancient esoteric doctrine.[66] Here,
then, we have it on the authority of modern Jewish scholars that the
ancient secret tradition was in harmony with Christian teaching. But in
the teaching of the later synagogue the philosophy of the earlier sages
was narrowed down to suit the exclusive system of the Jewish hierarchy,
and the ancient hope of a Redeemer who should restore Man to the state
of felicity he had lost at the Fall was transformed into the idea of
salvation for the Jews alone[67] under the ægis of a triumphant and even
an avenging Messiah.[68] It is this Messianic dream perpetuated in the
modern Cabala which nineteen hundred years ago the advent of Christ on
earth came to disturb.



The Coming of the Redeemer


The fact that many Christian doctrines, such as the conception of a
Trinity, the miraculous birth and murder of a Deity, had found a place
in earlier religions has frequently been used as an argument to show
that the story of Christ was merely a new version of various ancient
legends, those of Attis, Adonis, or of Osiris, and that consequently the
Christian religion is founded on a myth. The answer to this is that the
existence of Christ on earth is an historic fact which no serious
authority has ever denied. The attempts of such writers as Drews and
J.M. Robertson to establish the theory of the "Christ-Myth," which find
an echo in the utterances of Socialist orators,[69] have been met with
so much able criticism as to need no further refutation. Sir James
Frazer, who will certainly not be accused of bigoted orthodoxy, observes
in this connexion:

The doubts which have been cast on the historical reality of Jesus
are, in my judgement, unworthy of serious attention.... To dissolve
the founder of Christianity into a myth, as some would do, is
hardly less absurd than it would be to do the same for Mohammed,
Luther, and Calvin.[70]

May not the fact that certain circumstances in the life of Christ were
foreshadowed by earlier religions indicate, as Eliphas Lévi observes,
that the ancients had an intuition of Christian mysteries?[71]

To those therefore who had adhered to the ancient tradition, Christ
appeared as the fulfilment of a prophecy as old as the world. Thus the
wise men came from afar to worship the Babe of Bethlehem, and when they
saw His star in the East they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. In
Christ they hailed not only Him who was born King of the Jews, but the
Saviour of the whole human race.[72]

In the light of this great hope, that wondrous night in Bethlehem is
seen in all its sublimity. Throughout the ages the seers had looked for
the coming of the Redeemer, and lo! He was here; but it was not to the
mighty in Israel, to the High Priests and the Scribes, that His birth
was announced, but to humble shepherds watching their flocks by night.
And these men of simple faith, hearing from the angels "the good tidings
of great joy" that a Saviour, "Christ the Lord" was born, went with
haste to see the babe lying in the manger, and returned "glorifying and
praising God." So also to the devout in Israel, to Simeon and to Anna
the prophetess, the great event appeared in its universal significance,
and Simeon, departing in peace, knew that his eyes had seen the
salvation that was to be "a light to lighten the Gentiles" as well as
the glory of the people of Israel.

But to the Jews, in whose hands the ancient tradition had been turned to
the exclusive advantage of the Jewish race, to the Rabbis, who had,
moreover, constituted themselves the sole guardians within this nation
of the said tradition, the manner of its fulfilment was necessarily
abhorrent. Instead of a resplendent Messiah who should be presented by
them to the people, a Saviour was born amongst the people themselves and
brought to Jerusalem to be presented to the Lord; a Saviour moreover
who, as time went on, imparted His divine message to the poor and humble
and declared that His Kingdom was not of this world. This was clearly
what Mary meant when she said that God had "scattered the proud in the
imagination of their hearts," that He had "put down the mighty from
their seats, and exalted them of low degree." Christ was therefore
doubly hateful to the Jewish hierarchy in that He attacked the
privilege of the race to which they belonged by throwing open the door
to all mankind, and the privilege of the caste to which they belonged by
revealing sacred doctrines to the profane and destroying their claim to
exclusive knowledge.

Unless viewed from this aspect, neither the antagonism displayed by the
Scribes and Pharisees towards our Lord nor the denunciations He uttered
against them can be properly understood. "Woe unto you, Lawyers! for ye
have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and
them that were entering in ye hindered.... Woe unto you, Scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men:
tor ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are
entering to go in." What did Christ mean by the key of knowledge?
Clearly the sacred tradition which, as Drach explains, foreshadowed the
doctrines of Christianity.[73] It was the Rabbis who perverted that
tradition, and thus "the guilt of these perfidious Doctors consisted in
their concealing from the people the traditional explanation of the
sacred books by means of which they would have been able to recognize
the Messiah in the person of Jesus Christ."[74] Many of the people,
however, did recognize Him; indeed, the multitude acclaimed Him,
spreading their garments before Him and crying, "Hosanna to the Son of
David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" Writers who
have cited the choice of Barabbas in the place of Christ as an instance
of misguided popular judgement, overlook the fact that this choice was
not spontaneous; it was the Chief Priests who delivered Christ "from
envy" and who "moved the people that Pilate should rather release unto
them Barabbas." _Then_ the people obediently cried out, "Crucify Him!"

So also it was the Rabbis who, after hiding from the people the meaning
of the sacred tradition at the moment of its fulfilment, afterwards
poisoned that same stream for future generations. Abominable calumnies
on Christ and Christianity occur not only in the Cabala but in the
earlier editions of the Talmud. In these, says Barclay--

Our Lord and Saviour is "that one," "such a one," "a fool," "the
leper," "the deceiver of Israel," etc. Efforts are made to prove
that He is the son of Joseph Pandira before his marriage with Mary.
His miracles are attributed to sorcery, the secret of which He
brought in a slit in His flesh out of Egypt. He is said to have
been first stoned and then hanged on the eve of the Passover. His
disciples are called heretics and opprobrious names. They are
accused of immoral practices, and the New Testament is called a
sinful book. The references to these subjects manifest the most
bitter aversion and hatred.[75]

One might look in vain for passages such as these in English or French
translations of the Talmud, for the reason that no complete translation
exists in these languages. This fact is of great significance. Whilst
the sacred books of every other important religion have been rendered
into our own tongue and are open to everyone to study, the book that
forms the foundation of modern Judaism is closed to the general public.
We can read English translations of the Koran, of the Dhammapada, of the
Sutta Nipata, of the Zend Avesta, of the Shu King, of the Laws of Manu,
of the Bhagavadgita, but we cannot read the Talmud. In the long series
of Sacred Books of the East the Talmud finds no place. All that is
accessible to the ordinary reader consists, on one hand, in expurgated
versions or judicious selections by Jewish and pro-Jewish compilers,
and, on the other hand, in "anti-Semitic" publications on which it would
be dangerous to place reliance. The principal English translation by
Rodkinson is very incomplete, and the folios are nowhere indicated, so
that it is impossible to look up a passage.[76] The French translation
by Jean de Pauly[B] professes to present the entire text of the Venetian
Talmud of 1520, but it does nothing of the kind.[77] The translator, in
the Preface, in fact admits that he has left out "sterile discussions"
and has throughout attempted to tone down "the brutality of certain
expressions which offend our ears." This of course affords him infinite
latitude, so that all passages likely to prove displeasing to the
"Hébraisants," to whom his work is particularly dedicated, are
discreetly expunged. Jean de Pauly's translation of the Cabala appears,
however, to be complete.[78] But a fair and honest rendering of the
whole Talmud into English or French still remains to be made.

Moreover, even the Hebrew scholar is obliged to exercise some
discrimination if he desires to consult the Talmud in its original
form. For by the sixteenth century, when the study of Hebrew became
general amongst Christians, the antisocial and anti-Christian tendencies
of the Talmud attracted the attention of the Censor, and in the Bâle
Talmud of 1581 the most obnoxious passages and the entire treatise
Abodah Zara were suppressed.[79]

In the Cracow edition of 1604 that followed, these passages were
restored by the Jews, a proceeding which aroused so much indignation
amongst Christian students of Hebrew that the Jews became alarmed.
Accordingly a Jewish synod, assembled in Poland in 1631, ordered the
offending passages to be expunged again, but--according to Drach--to be
replaced by circles which the Rabbis were to fill in orally when giving
instruction to young Jews.[80] After that date the Talmud was for a time
carefully bowdlerized, so that in order to discover its original form it
is advisable to go back to the Venetian Talmud of 1520 before any
omissions were made, or to consult a modern edition. For now that the
Jews no longer fear the Christians, these passages are all said to have
been replaced and no attempt is made, as in the Middle Ages, to prove
that they do not refer to the Founder of Christianity.[81]

Thus the _Jewish Encyclopædia_ admits that Jewish legends concerning
Jesus are found in the Talmud and Midrash and in "the life of Jesus
(Toledot Yeshu) that originated in the Middle Ages. It is the tendency
of all these sources to belittle the person of Jesus by ascribing to Him
illegitimate birth, magic, and a shameful death."[82]

The last work mentioned, the _Toledot Yeshu_, or the _Sepher Toldos
Jeschu_, described here as originating in the Middle Ages, probably
belongs in reality to a much earlier period. Eliphas Lévi asserts that
"the Sepher Toldos, to which the Jews attribute a great antiquity and
which they hid from the Christians with such precautions that this book
was for a long while unfindable, is quoted for the first time by
Raymond Martin of the Order of the Preaching Brothers towards the end
of the thirteenth century.... This book was evidently written by a Rabbi
initiated into the mysteries of the Cabala."[83] Whether then the
Toledot Yeshu had existed for many centuries before it was first brought
to light or whether it was a collection of Jewish traditions woven into
a coherent narrative by a thirteenth-century Rabbi, the ideas it
contains can be traced back at least as far as the second century of the
Christian era. Origen, who in the middle of the third century wrote his
reply to the attack of Celsus on Christianity, refers to a scandalous
story closely resembling the Toledot Yeshu, which Celsus, who lived
towards the end of the second century, had quoted on the authority of a
Jew.[84] It is evident, therefore, that the legend it contains had long
been current in Jewish circles, but the book itself did not come into
the hands of Christians until it was translated into Latin by Raymond
Martin. Later on Luther summarized it in German under the name of _Schem
Hamphorasch_; Wagenseil in 1681 and Huldrich in 1705 published Latin
translations.[85] It is also to be found in French in Gustave Brunei's
_Evangiles Apocryphes_.

However repugnant it is to transcribe any portion of this blasphemous
work, its main outline must be given here in order to trace the
subsequent course of the anti-Christian secret tradition in which, as we
shall see, it has been perpetuated up to our own day. Briefly, then, the
Toledot Yeshu relates with the most indecent details that Miriam, a
hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan,
was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to
a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic
authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, Jeschu was taken during his
boyhood to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of
the priests, and on his return to Palestine gave himself up to the
practice of magic.[87] The Toledot Yeshu, however, goes on to say that
on reaching manhood Jeschu learnt the secret of his illegitimacy, on
account of which he was driven out of the Synagogue and took refuge for
a time in Galilee. Now, there was in the Temple a stone on which was
engraved the Tetragrammaton or Schem Hamphorasch, that is to say, the
Ineffable Name of God; this stone had been found by King David when the
foundations of the Temple were being prepared and was deposited by him
in the Holy of Holies. Jeschu, knowing this, came from Galilee and,
penetrating into the Holy of Holies, read the Ineffable Name, which he
transcribed on to a piece of parchment and concealed in an incision
under his skin. By this means he was able to work miracles and to
persuade the people that he was the son of God foretold by Isaiah. With
the aid of Judas, the Sages of the Synagogue succeeded in capturing
Jeschu, who was then led before the Great and Little Sanhedrim, by whom
he was condemned to be stoned to death and finally hanged.

Such is the story of Christ according to the Jewish Cabalists, which
should be compared not only with the Christian tradition but with that
of the Moslems. It is perhaps not sufficiently known that the Koran,
whilst denying the divinity of Christ and also the fact of His
crucifixion,[88] nevertheless indignantly denounces the infamous legends
concerning Him perpetuated by the Jews, and confirms in beautiful
language the story of the Annunciation and the doctrine of the
Miraculous Conception.[89] "Remember when the angels said, 'O Mary!
verily hath God chosen thee and purified thee, and chosen thee above the
women of the worlds.' ... Remember when the angels said, 'O Mary! verily
God announceth to thee the Word from Him: His name shall be Messiah,
Jesus the son of Mary, illustrious in this world, and in the next, and
one of those who have near access to God.'"

The Mother of Jesus is shown to have been pure and to have "kept her
maidenhood"[90]; it was the Jews who spoke against Mary "a grievous
calumny."[91] Jesus Himself is described as "strengthened with the Holy
Spirit," and the Jews are reproached for rejecting "the Apostle of
God,"[92] to whom was given "the Evangel with its guidance and light
confirmatory of the preceding Law."[93]

Thus during the centuries that saw the birth of Christianity, although
other non-Christian forces arrayed themselves against the new faith, it
was left to the Jews to inaugurate a campaign of vilification against
the person of its Founder, whom Moslems to this day revere as one of the
great teachers of the world.[94