Part I (continued 2)

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

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

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

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

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

3. 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:

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

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

The omission of the words of consecration at Mass.

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

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 worship¹⁴⁶; 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 incarcerated¹⁴⁸; 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 Bull¹⁶⁷ 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 γνῶσις 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 century²⁰⁷; 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.

4. Three Centuries of Occultism

It has been shown in the foregoing chapters that from very early times occult sects had existed for two purposes--esoteric and political. Whilst the Manicheans, the early Ismailis, the Bogomils, and the Luciferians had concerned themselves mainly with religious or esoteric doctrines, the later Ismailis, the Fatimites, the Karmathites, and Templars had combined secrecy and occult rites with the political aim of domination. We shall find this double tradition running through all the secret society movement up to the present day.

The Dualist doctrines attributed to the Templars were not, however, confined to this Order in Europe, but had been, as we have seen, those professed by the Bogomils and also by the Cathari, who spread westwards from Bulgaria and Bosnia to France. It was owing to their sojourn in Bulgaria that the Cathari gained the popular nickname of "Bulgars" or "Bourgres," signifying those addicted to unnatural vice. One section of the Cathari in the South of France became known after 1180 as the Albigenses, thus called from the town of Albi, although their headquarters were really in Toulouse. Christians only in name, they adhered in secret to the Gnostic and Manichean doctrines of the earlier Cathari, which they would appear to have combined with Johannism, since, like this Eastern sect, they claimed to possess their own Gospel of St. John.²¹⁶

Although not strictly a secret society, the Albigenses were divided after the secret society system into initiates and semi-initiates. The former, few in number, known as the Perfecti, led in appearance an austere life, refraining from meat and professing abhorrence of oaths or of lying. The mystery in which they enveloped themselves won for them the adoring reverence of the Credentes, who formed the great majority of the sect and gave themselves up to every vice, to usury, brigandage, and perjury, and whilst describing marriage as prostitution, condoning incest and all forms of licence.²¹⁷ The Credentes, who were probably not fully initiated into the Dualist doctrines of their superiors, looked to them for salvation through the laying-on of hands according to the system of the Manicheans.

It was amongst the nobles of Languedoc that the Albigenses found their principal support. This "Judæa of France," as it has been called, was peopled by a medley of mixed races, Iberian, Gallic, Roman, and Semitic.²¹⁸ The nobles, very different from the "ignorant and pious chivalry of the North," had lost all respect for their traditions. "There were few who in going back did not encounter some Saracen or Jewish grandmother in their genealogy."²¹⁹ Moreover, many had brought back to Europe the laxity of morals they had contracted during the Crusades. The Comte de Comminges practised polygamy, and, according to ecclesiastical chronicles, Raymond VI, Comte de Toulouse, one of the most ardent of the Albigense Credentes, had his harem.²²⁰ The Albigensian movement has been falsely represented as a protest merely against the tyranny of the Church of Rome; in reality it was a rising against the fundamental doctrines of Christianity--more than this, against all principles of religion and morality. For whilst some of the sect openly declared that the Jewish law was preferable to that of the Christians,²²¹ to others the God of the Old Testament was as abhorrent as the "false Christ" who suffered at Golgotha; the old hatred of the Gnostics and Manicheans for the demiurgus lived again in these rebels against the social order. Forerunners of the seventeenth-century Libertines and eighteenth-century Illuminati, the Albigense nobles, under the pretext of fighting the priesthood, strove to throw off all the restraints the Church imposed.

Inevitably the disorders that took place throughout the South of France led to reprisals, and the Albigenses were suppressed with all the cruelty of the age--a fact which has afforded historians the opportunity to exalt them as noble martyrs, victims of ecclesiastical despotism. But again, as in the case of the Templars, the fact that they were persecuted does not prove them innocent of the crimes laid to their charge.

Satanism

At the beginning of the fourteenth century another development of Dualism, far more horrible than the Manichean heresy of the Albigenses, began to make itself felt. This was the cult of Satanism, or black magic. The subject is one that must be approached with extreme caution, owing to the fact that on one hand much that has been written about it is the result of mediæval superstition, which sees in every departure from the Roman Catholic Faith the direct intervention of the Evil One, whilst on the other hand the conspiracy of history, which denies in toto the existence of the Occult Power, discredits all revelations on this question, from whatever source they emanate, as the outcome of hysterical imagination.²²² This is rendered all the easier since the subject by its amazing extravagance lends itself to ridicule.

It is, however, idle to deny that the cult of evil has always existed; the invocation of the powers of darkness was practised in the earliest days of the human race and, after the Christian era, found its expression, as we have seen, in the Cainites, the Euchites, and the Luciferians. These are not surmises, but actual facts of history. Towards the end of the twelfth century Luciferianism spread eastwards through Styria, the Tyrol, and Bohemia, even as far as Brandenburg; by the beginning of the thirteenth century it had invaded western Germany, and in the fourteenth century reached its zenith in that country, as also in Italy and France. The cult had now reached a further stage in its development, and it was not the mere propitiation of Satanael as the prince of this world practised by the Luciferians, but actual Satanism--the love of evil for the sake of evil--which formed the doctrine of the sect known in Italy as la vecchia religione or the "old religion." Sorcery was adopted as a profession, and witches, not, as is popularly supposed, sporadic growths, were trained in schools of magic to practise their art. These facts should be remembered when the Church is blamed for the violence it displayed against witchcraft--it was not individuals, but a system which it set out to destroy.

The essence of Satanism is desecration. In the ceremonies for infernal evocation described by Eliphas Lévi we read: "It is requisite to profane the ceremonies of the religion one belongs to and to trample its holiest symbols under foot."²²³ This practice found a climax in desecrating the Holy Sacrament. The consecrated wafer was given as food to mice, toads, and pigs, or denied in unspeakable ways. A revolting description of the Black Mass may be found in Huysmans's book Là-bas. It is unnecessary to transcribe the loathsome details here. Suffice it, then, to show that this cult had a very real existence, and if any further doubt remains on the matter, the life of Gilles de Rais supplies documentary evidence of the visible results of black magic in the Middle Ages.

Gilles de Rais was born at Machecoul in Brittany about the year 1404. The first period of his life was glorious; the companion and guide of Jeanne d'Arc, he became Maréchal of France and distinguished himself by many deeds of valour. But after dissipating his immense fortune, largely on Church ceremonies carried out with the wildest extravagance, he was led to study alchemy, partly by curiosity and partly as a means for restoring his shattered fortunes. Hearing that Germany and Italy were the countries where alchemy flourished, he enlisted Italians in his service and was gradually drawn into the further region of magic. According to Huysmans, Gilles de Rais had remained until this moment a Christian mystic under the influence of Jeanne d'Arc, but after her death--possibly in despair--he offered himself to the powers of darkness. Evokers of Satan now flocked to him from every side, amongst them Prelati, an Italian, by no means the old and wrinkled sorcerer of tradition, but a young and attractive man of charming manners. For it was from Italy that came the most skilful adepts in the art of alchemy, astrology, magic, and infernal evocation, who spread themselves over Europe, particularly France. Under the influence of these initiators Gilles de Rais signed a letter to the devil in a meadow near Machecoul asking him for "knowledge, power, and riches," and offering in exchange anything that might be asked of him with the exception of his life or his soul. But in spite of this appeal and of a pact signed with the blood of the writer, no Satanic apparitions were forthcoming.

It was then that, becoming still more desperate, Gilles de Rais had recourse to the abominations for which his name has remained infamous--still more frightful invocations, loathsome debaucheries, perverted vice in every form, Sadic cruelties, horrible sacrifices, and, finally, holocausts of little boys and girls collected by his agents in the surrounding country and put to death with the most inhuman tortures. During the years 1432-40 literally hundreds of children disappeared. Many of the names of the unhappy little victims were preserved in the records of the period. Gilles de Rais met with a well-deserved end: in 1440 he was hanged and burnt. So far he does not appear to have found a panegyrist to place him in the ranks of noble martyrs.

It will, of course, be urged that the crimes here described were those of a criminal lunatic and not to be attributed to any occult cause; the answer to this is that Gilles was not an isolated unit, but one of a group of occultists who cannot all have been mad. Moreover, it was only after his invocation of the Evil One that he developed these monstrous proclivities. So also his eighteenth-century replica, the Marquis de Sade, combined with his abominations an impassioned hatred of the Christian religion.

What is the explanation of this craze for magic in Western Europe? Deschamps points to the Cabala, "that science of demoniacal arts, of which the Jews were the initiators," and undoubtedly in any comprehensive review of the question the influence of the Jewish Cabalists cannot be ignored. In Spain, Portugal, Provence, and Italy the Jews by the fifteenth century had become a power; as early as 1450 they had penetrated into the intellectual circles of Florence, and it was also in Italy that, a century later, the modern Cabalistic school was inaugurated by Isaac Luria (1533-72), whose doctrines were organized into a practical system by the Hasidim of Eastern Europe for the writing of amulets, the conjuration of devils, mystical jugglery with numbers and letters, etc.²²⁴ Italy in the fifteenth century was thus a centre from which Cabalistic influences radiated, and it may be that the Italians who indoctrinated Gilles de Rais had drawn their inspiration from this source. Indeed Eliphas Lévi, who certainly cannot be accused of "Anti-Semitism," declares that "the Jews, the most faithful trustees of the secret of the Cabala, were almost always the reat masters of magic in the Middle Ages,"²²⁵ and suggests that Gilles de Rais took his monstrous recipes for using the blood of murdered children "from some of those old Hebrew grimoires (books on magic), which, if they had been known, would have sufficed to hold up the Jews to the execration of the whole earth."²²⁶ Voltaire, in his Henriade, likewise attributes the magical blood-rites practised in the sixteenth century to Jewish inspiration:

Dans l'ombre de la nuit, sous une voûte obscure, Le silence conduit leui assemblée impure. A la pàle lueur d'un magique flambeau S'élève un vil autel dressé sur un tombeau. C'est là que des deux rois on plaça les images, Objets de leur terreur, objets de leurs outrages. Leurs sacrilèges mains out mêlé sur l'autel A des noms infernaux le nom de l'Éternel. Sur ces murs ténébreux des lances sont rangées, Dans des vases de sang leurs pointes sont plongées; Appareil menaçant de leur mystère affreux. Le prêtre de ce temple est un de ces Hébreux Qui, proscrits sur la terre et citoyens du monde, Portent de mers en mers leur misère profonde, Et, d'un antique ramas de superstitions, Out rempli dès longtemps toutes les nations, etc.

Voltaire adds in a footnote: "It was ordinarily Jews that were made use of for magical operations. This ancient superstition comes from the secrets of the Cabala, of which the Jews called themselves the sole depositaries. Catherine de Medicis, the Maréchal d'Ancre, and many others employed Jews for these spells."

This charge of black magic recurs all through the history of Europe from the earliest times. The Jews are accused of poisoning wells, of practising ritual murder, of using stolen church property for purposes of desecration, etc. No doubt there enters into all this a great amount of exaggeration, inspired by popular prejudice and mediæval superstition. Yet, whilst condeming the persecution to which the Jews were subjected on this account, it must be admitted that they laid themselves open to suspicion by their real addiction to magical arts. If ignorant superstition is found on the side of the persecutors, still more amazing superstition is found on the side of the persecuted. Demonology in Europe was in fact essentially a Jewish science, for although a belief in evil spirits existed from the earliest times and has always continued to exist amongst primitive races, and also amongst the ignorant classes in civilized countries, it was mainly through the Jews that these dark superstitions were imported to the West, where they persisted not merely amongst the lower strata of the Jewish population, but formed an essential part of Jewish tradition. Thus the Talmud says:

If the eye could perceive the demons that people the universe, existence would be impossible. The demons are more numerous than we are: they surround us on all sides like trenches dug round vineyards. Every one of us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right. The discomfort endured by those who attend rabbinical conferences ... comes from the demons mingling with men in these circumstances. Besides, the fatigue one feels in one's knees in walking comes from the demons that one knocks up against at every step. If the clothing of the Rabbis wears out so quickly, it is again because the demons rub up against them. Whoever wants to convince himself of their presence has only to surround his bed with sifted cinders and the next morning he will see the imprints of cocks' feet.²²⁷

The same treatise goes on to give directions for seeing demons by burning portions of a black cat and placing the ashes in one's eye: "then at once one perceives the demons." The Talmud also explains that devils particularly inhabit the waterspouts on houses and are fond of drinking out of water-jugs, therefore it is advisable to pour a little water out of a jug before drinking, so as to get rid of the unclean part.²²⁸

These ideas received a fresh impetus from the publication of the Zohar, which, a Jewish writer tells us, "from the fourteenth century held almost unbroken sway over the minds of the majority of the Jews. In it the Talmudic legends concerning the existence and activity of the shedhim (demons) are repeated and amplified, and a hierarchy of demons was established corresponding to the heavenly hierarchy.... Manasseh [ben Israel]'s Nishmat Hayim is full of information concerning belief in demons.... Even the scholarly and learned Rabbis of the seventeenth century clung to the belief."²²⁹

Here, then, it is not a case of ignorant peasants evolving fantastic visions from their own scared imaginations, but of the Rabbis, the acknowledged leaders of a race claiming civilized traditions and a high order of intelligence, deliberately inculcating in their disciples the perpetual fear of demoniacal influences. How much of this fear communicated itself to the Gentile population? It is at any rate a curious coincidence to notice the resemblances between so-called popular superstitions and the writings of the Rabbis. For example, the vile confessions made both by Scotch and French peasant women accused of witchcraft concerning the nocturnal visits paid them by male devils²³⁰ find an exact counterpart in passages of the Cabala, where it is said that "the demons are both male and female, and they also endeavour to consort with human beings--a conception from which arises the belief in incubi and succubæ."²³¹ Thus, on Jewish authority, we learn the Judaic origin of this strange delusion.

It is clearly to the same source that we may trace the magical formulæ for the healing of diseases current at the same period. From the earliest times the Jews had specialized in medicine, and many royal personages insisted on employing Jewish doctors,²³² some of whom may have acquired medical knowledge of a high order. The Jewish writer Margoliouth dwells on this fact with some complacency, and goes on to contrast the scientific methods of the Hebrew doctors with the quackeries of the monks:

In spite of the reports circulated by the monks, that the Jews were sorcerers (in consequence of their superior medical skill), Christian patients would frequent the houses of the Jewish physicians in preference to the monasteries, where cures were pretended to have been effected by some extraordinary relics, such as the nails of St. Augustine, the extremity of St. Peter's second toe, ... etc. It need hardly be added that the cures effected by the Jewish physicians were more numerous than those by the monkish impostors.²³³

Yet in reality the grotesque remedies which Margoliouth attributes to Christian superstition appear to have been partly derived from Jewish sources. The author of a further article on Magic in Hastings' Encyclopædia goes on to say that the magical formulæ handed down in Latin in ancient medical writings and used by the monks were mainly of Eastern origin, derived from Babylonish, Egyptian, and Jewish magic. The monks therefore "played merely an intermediate rôle."²³⁴ Indeed, if we turn to the Talmud we shall find cures recommended no less absurd than those which Margoliouth derides. For example:

The eggs of a grasshopper as a remedy for toothache, the tooth of a fox as a remedy for sleep, viz. the tooth of a live fox to prevent sleep and of a dead one to cause sleep, the nail from the gallows where a man was hanged, as a remedy for swelling.²³⁵

A strongly "pro-Semite" writer quotes a number of Jewish medical writings of the eighteenth century, republished as late as the end of the nineteenth, which show the persistence of these magical formulæ amongst the Jews. Most of these are too loathsome to transcribe; but some of the more innocuous are as follows: "For epilepsy kill a cock and let it putrefy." "In order to protect yourself from all evils, gird yourself with the rope with which a criminal has been hung." Blood of different kinds also plays an important part: "Fox's blood and wolf's blood are good for stone in the bladder, ram's blood for colic, weasel blood for scrofula," etc.--these to be externally applied.²³⁶

But to return to Satanism. Whoever were the secret inspirers of magical and diabolical practices during the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the evidence of the existence of Satanism during this long period is overwhelming and rests on the actual facts of history. Details quite as extravagant and revolting as those contained in the works of Eliphas Lévi²³⁷ or in Huysmans's Là-bas are given in documentary form by Margaret Alice Murray in her singularly passionless work relating principally to the witches of Scotland.²³⁸

The cult of evil is a reality--by whatever means we may seek to explain it. Eliphas Lévi, whilst denying the existence of Satan "as a superior personality and power," admits this fundamental truth: "Evil exists; it is impossible to doubt it. We can do good or evil. There are beings who knowingly and voluntarily do evil."²³⁹ There are also beings who love evil. Lévi has admirably described the spirit that animates such beings in his definition of black magic:

Black magic is really but a combination of sacrileges and murders graduated with a view to the permanent perversion of the human will and the realization in a living man of the monstrous phantom of the fiend. It is, therefore, properly speaking, the religion of the devil, the worship of darkness, the hatred of goodness exaggerated to the point of paroxysm; it is the incarnation of death and the permanent creation of hell.²⁴⁰

The Middle Ages, which depicted the devil fleeing from holy water, were not perhaps quite so benighted as our superior modern culture has led us to suppose. For that "hatred of goodness exaggerated to the point of paroxysm," that impulse to desecrate and defile which forms the basis of black magic and has manifested itself in successive phases of the world-revolution, springs from fear. So by their very hatred the powers of darkness proclaim the existence of the powers of light and their own impotence. In the cry of the demoniac: "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? art Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God," do we not hear the unwilling tribute of the vanquished to the victor in the mighty conflict between good; and evil?

The Rosicrucians

In dealing with the question of Magic it is necessary to realize that although to the world in general the word is synonymous with necromancy, it does not bear this significance in the language of occultism, particularly the occultism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Magic at this date was a term employed to cover many branches of investigation which Robert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian, classified under various headings, of which the first three are as follows: (1) "Natural Magic, ... that most occult and secret department of physics by which the mystical properties of natural substances are extracted"; (2) Mathematical Magic, which enables adepts in the art to "construct marvellous machines by means of their geometrical knowledge "; whilst (3) Venefic Magic "is familiar with potions, philtres, and with various preparations of poisons."²⁴¹

It is obvious that all these have now passed into the realms of science and are no longer regarded as magical arts; but the further categories enumerated by Fludd and comprised under the general heading of Necromantic Magic retain the popular sense of the term. These are described as (i) Goetic, which consists in "diabolical commerce with unclean spirits, in rites of criminal curiosity, in illicit songs and invocations, and in the evocation of the souls of the dead"; (2) Maleficent, which is the adjuration of the devils by the virtue of Divine Names; and (3) Theurgic, purporting "to be governed by good angels and the Divine Will, but its wonders are most frequently performed by evil spirits, who assume the names of God and of the angels." (4) "The last species of magic is the Thaumaturgic, begetting illusory phenomena; by this art the Magi produced their phantoms and other marvels." To this list might be added Celestial Magic, or knowledge dealing with the influence of the heavenly bodies, on which astrology is based.

The forms of magic dealt with in the preceding part of this chapter belong therefore to the second half of these categories, that is to say, to Necromantic Magic. But at the same period another movement was gradually taking shape which concerned itself with the first category enumerated above, that is to say, the secret properties of natural substances.

A man whose methods appear to have approached to the modern conception of scientific research was Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, commonly known as Paracelsus, the son of a German doctor, born about 1493, who during his travels in the East is said to have acquired a knowledge of some secret doctrine which he afterwards elaborated into a system for the healing of diseases. Although his ideas were thus doubtless drawn from some of the same sources as those from which the Jewish Cabala descended, Paracelsus does not appear to have been a Cabalist, but a scientist of no mean order, and, as an isolated thinker, apparently connected with no secret association, does not enter further into the scope of this work.

Paracelsus must therefore not be identified with the school of so-called "Christian Cabalists," who, from Raymond Lulli, the "doctor illuminatus" of the thirteenth century, onward, drew their inspiration from the Cabala of the Jews. This is not to say that the influence under which they fell was wholly pernicious, for, just as certain Jews appear to have acquired some real medical skill, so also they appear to have possessed some real knowledge of natural science, inherited perhaps from the ancient traditions of the East or derived from the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, and other of the great Greek physicians and as yet unknown to Europe. Thus Eliphas Lévi relates that the Rabbi Jechiel, a Cabalistic Jew protected by St. Louis, possessed the secret of ever-burning lamps,²⁴² claimed later by the Rosicrucians, which suggests the possibility that some kind of luminous gas or electric light may have been known to the Jews. In alchemy they were the acknowledged leaders; the most noted alchemist of the fourteenth century, Nicholas Flamel, discovered the secret of the art from the book of "Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer, and Philosopher," and this actual book is said to have passed later into the possession of Cardinal Richelieu.²⁴³

It was likewise from a Florentine Jew, Alemanus or Datylus, that Pico della Mirandola, the fifteenth-century mystic, received instructions in the Cabala²⁴⁴ and imagined that he had discovered in it the doctrines of Christianity. This delighted Pope Sixtus IV, who thereupon ordered Cabalistic writings to be translated into Latin for the use of divinity students. At the same time the Cabala was introduced into Germany by Reuchlin, who had learnt Hebrew from the Rabbi Jacob b. Jechiel Loans, court physician to Frederick III, and in 1494 published a Cabalistic treatise De Verbo Mirifico, showing that all wisdom and true philosophy are derived from the Hebrews. Considerable alarm appears, however, to have been created by the spread of Rabbinical literature, and in 1509 a Jew converted to Christianity, named Pfefferkorn, persuaded the Emperor Maximilian I to burn all Jewish books except the Old Testament. Reuchlin, consulted on this matter, advised only the destruction of the Toledot Yeshu and of the Sepher Nizzachon by the Rabbi Lipmann, because these works "were full of blasphemies against Christ and against the Christian religion," but urged the preservation of the rest. In this defence of Jewish literature he was supported by the Duke of Bavaria, who appointed him professor at Ingoldstadt, but was strongly condemned by the Dominicans of Cologne. In reply to their attacks Reuchlin launched his defence De Arte Cabalistica, glorifying the Cabala, of which the "central doctrine for him was the Messianology around which all its other doctrines grouped themselves."²⁴⁵ His whole philosophical system, as he himself admitted, was in fact entirely Cabalistic, and his views were shared by his contemporary Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim. As a result of these teachings a craze for Cabalism spread amongst Christian prelates, statesmen, and warriors, and a number of Christian thinkers took up the doctrines of the Cabala and "essayed to work them over in their own way." Athanasius Kircher and Knorr, Baron von Rosenroth, author of the Kabbala Denudata, in the course of the seventeenth century "endeavoured to spread the Cabala among the Christians by translating Cabalistic works which they regarded as most ancient wisdom." "Most of them," the Jewish Encyclopædia goes on to observe derisively, "held the absurd idea that the Cabala contained proofs of the truth of Christianity.... Much that appears Christian [in the Cabala] is, in fact, nothing but the logical development of certain ancient esoteric doctrines."²⁴⁶

The Rosicrucians appear to have been the outcome both of this Cabalistic movement and of the teachings of Paracelsus. The earliest intimation of their existence was given in a series of pamphlets which appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The first of these, entitled the Fama Fraternitatis; or a Discovery of the Fraternity of the most Laudable Order of the Rosy Cross, was published at Cassel in 1614 and the Confessio Fraternitatis early in the following year. These contain what may be described as the "Grand Legend" of Rosicrucianism, which has been repeated with slight variations up to the present day. Briefly, this story is as follows²⁴⁷:

"The most godly and highly-illuminated Father, our brother C.R.," that is to say, Christian Rosenkreutz, "a German, the chief and original of our Fraternity," was born in 1378, and some sixteen years later travelled to the East with a Brother P.A.L., who had determined to go to the Holy Land. On reaching Cyprus, Brother P.A.L. died and "so never came to Jerusalem." Brother C.R., however, having become acquainted with certain Wise Men of "Damasco in Arabia," and beheld what great wonders they wrought, went on alone to Damasco. Here the Wise Men received him, and he then set himself to study Physick and Mathematics and to translate the Book M into Latin. After three years he went to Egypt, whence he journeyed on to Fez, where "he did get acquaintance with those who are called the Elementary inhabitants, who revealed to him many of their secrets.... Of those of Fez he often did confess that their Magia was not altogether pure and also that their Cabala was defiled with their religion, but notwithstanding he knew how to make good use of the same." After two years Brother C.R. departed the city Fez and sailed away with many costly things into Spain, where he conferred with the learned men and being "ready bountifully to impart all his arts and secrets" showed them amongst other things how "there might be a society in Europe which might have gold, silver, and precious stones sufficient for them to bestow on kings for their necessary uses and lawful purposes...."

Christian Rosenkreutz then returned to Germany, where "there is nowadays no want of learned men, Magicians, Cabalists, Physicians, and Philosophers." Here he "builded himself a fitting and neat habitation in which he ruminated his voyage and philosophy and reduced them together in a true memorial." At the end of five years' meditation there "came again into his mind the wished-for Reformation: accordingly he chose some few adjoyned with him," the Brethren G.V., I.A., and I.O.--the last of whom "was very expert and well learned in Cabala as his book H witnesseth"--to form a circle of initiates. "After this manner began the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross." Five other Brethren were afterwards added, all Germans except I.A., and these eight constituted his new building called Sancti Spiritus. The following agreement was then drawn up:

First, that none of them should profess any other thing than to cure the sick, and that gratis.

Second, none of the posterity should be constrained to wear one certain kind of habit, but therein to follow the custom of the country.

Third, that every year, upon the day C., they should meet together at the house Sancti Spiritus, or write the cause of his absence.

Fourth, every Brother should look about for a worthy person who, after his decease, might succeed him.

Fifth, the word C.R. should be their seal, mark, and character.

Sixth, the Fraternity should remain secret one hundred years.

Finally Brother C.R. died, but where and when, or in what country he was buried, remained a secret. The date, however, is generally given as 1484. In 1604 the Brethren who then constituted the inner circle of the Order discovered a door on which was written in large letters

Post 120 Annos Patebo.

On opening the door a vault was disclosed to view, where beneath a brass tablet the body of Christian Rosenkreutz was found, "whole and unconsumed," with all his "ornaments and attires," and holding in his hand the parchment "I" which "next unto the Bible is our greatest treasure," whilst beside him lay a number of books, amongst others the Vocabulario of Paracelsus, who, however, the Fama observes, earlier "was none of our Fraternity."²⁴⁸

The Brethren now knew that after a time there would be "a general reformation both of divine and human things." While declaring their belief in the Christian faith, the Fama goes on to explain that:

Our Philosophy is not a new invention, but as Adam after his fall hath received it and as Moses and Solomon used it, ... wherein Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and others did hit the mark and wherein Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Solomon, did excel, but especially wherewith that wonderful Book the Bible agreeth.

It will be seen that, according to this Manifesto, Rosicrucianism was a combination of the ancient secret tradition handed down from the patriarchs through the philosophers of Greece and of the first Cabala of the Jews.

The "Grand Legend" of Rosicrucianism rests, however, on no historical evidence; there is, in fact, not the least reason to suppose that any such person as Christian Rosenkreutz ever existed. The Illuminatus von Knigge in the eighteenth century asserted that:

It is now recognized amongst enlightened men that no real Rosicrucians have existed, but that the whole of what is contained in the Fama and the Universal Reformation of the World [another Rosicrucian pamphlet which appeared in the same year] was only a subtle allegory of Valentine Andrea, of which afterwards partly deceivers (such as the Jesuits) and partly visionaries made use in order to realize this dream.²⁴⁹

What, then, was the origin of the name Rose-Cross? According to one Rosicrucian tradition, the word "Rose" does not derive from the flower depicted on the Rosicrucian cross, but from the Latin word ros, signifying "dew," which was supposed to be the most powerful solvent of gold, whilst crux, the cross, was the chemical hieroglyphic for "light."²⁵⁰ It is said that the Rosicrucians interpreted the initials on the cross INRI by the sentence "Igne Nitrum Roris Invenitur."²⁵¹ Supposing this derivation to be correct, it would be interesting to know whether any connexion could be traced between the first appearance of the word Rosie Cross in the Fama Fraternitatis at the date of 1614 and the cabalistic treatise of the celebrated Rabbi of Prague, Shabbethai Sheftel Horowitz, entitled Shefa Tal, that is to say, "The Effusion of Dew," which appeared in 1612.²⁵² Although this book has often been reprinted, no copy is to be found in the British Museum, so I am unable to pursue this line of enquiry further. A simpler explanation may be that the Rosy Cross derived from the Red Cross of the Templars. Mirabeau, who as a Freemason and an Illuminatus was in a position to discover many facts about the secret societies of Germany during his stay in the country, definitely asserts that "the Rose Croix Masons of the seventeenth century were only the ancient Order of the Templars secretly perpetuated."²⁵³

Lecouteulx de Canteleu is more explicit:

In France the Knights (Templar) who left the Order, henceforth hidden, and so to speak unknown, formed the Order of the Flaming Star and of the Rose-Croix, which in the fifteenth century spread itself in Bohemia and Silesia. Every Grand officer of these Orders had all his life to wear the Red Cross and to repeat every day the prayer of St. Bernard.²⁵⁴

Eckert states that the ritual, symbols, and names of the Rose-Croix were borrowed from the Templars, and that the Order was divided into seven degrees, according to the seven days of creation, at the same time signifying that their "principal aim was that of the mysterious, the investigation of Being and of the forces of nature."²⁵⁵

The Rosicrucian Kenneth Mackenzie, in his Masonic Cyclopædia, appears to suggest the same possibility of Templar origin. Under the heading of Rosicrucians he refers enigmatically to an invisible fraternity that has existed from very ancient times, as early as the days of the Crusades, "bound by solemn obligations of impenetrable secrecy," and joining together in work for humanity and to "glorify the good." At various periods of history this body has emerged into a sort of temporary light; but its true name has never transpired and is only known to the innermost adepts and rulers of the society. "The Rosicrucians of the sixteenth century finally disappeared and re-entered this invisible fraternity "--from which they had presumably emerged. Whether any such body really existed or whether the above account is simply an attempt at mystification devised to excite curiosity, the incredulous may question. The writer here observes that it would be indiscreet to say more, but elsewhere he throws out a hint that may have some bearing on the matter, for in his article on the Templars he says that after the suppression of the Order it was revived in a more secret form and subsists to the present day. This would exactly accord with Mirabeau's statement that the Rosicrucians were only the Order of the Templars secretly perpetuated. Moreover, as we shall see later, according to a legend preserved by the Royal Order of Scotland, the degree of the Rosy Cross had been instituted by that Order in conjunction with the Templars in 1314, and it would certainly be a remarkable coincidence that a man bearing the name of Rosenkreutz should happen to have inaugurated a society, founded, like the Templars, on Eastern secret doctrines during the course of the same century, without any connexion existing between the two.