TRACES OF A HIDDEN <r * 
 TRADITIOH IN MASONRY ^ 
 AND MEDIAEVAL MYSTICISM 
 
 -» *■ 3- *- «- » *- ^■ 
 
 Mra. COOPER OAKLEY # » » ♦ » 
 
Qfarnell HniuKtatty ffiibrarj} 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Comall University Library 
 HS397 .C77 
 
 Traces of a hdden tradition in masonry 
 
 3 1924 030 276 350 
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Cornell University 
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 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030276350 
 
TRACES OF A HIDDEN TRADITION 
 
 IN 
 
 Pasnnrj anlr P^Ma^kl pptidsm 
 
 FIVE ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 ISABEL COOPER-OAKLEY 
 
 LONDON 
 THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY 
 
 madras: the " THEOSOPHIST " OFFICE, ADYAK 
 
 BENARES : THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY 
 
 1900 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 I. Introduction 5 
 
 II. Towards the Hidden Sources of Masonry . 31 
 
 III. The Traditions of the Knights Templars 
 
 Revived in Masonry . . . . ' . 76 
 
 IV. The Troubadours 103 
 
 V. The Heavenly Kingdom of the Holy Grail 137 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The series of sketches which are now brought 
 together appeared originally as detached articles in 
 the pages of the Theosophical Review, written, how- 
 ever, with the object of demonstrating to students of 
 Theosophy that a definite design could be traced 
 beneath the apparently disconnected mystic doctrines 
 held by the many occult brotherhoods, heretic sects 
 and mystic associations which cluster so thickly 
 together as we glance along the historical by-ways of 
 religious thought during the Middle Ages, that object 
 becomes clearer when they appear as they do now in 
 closer juxtaposition. 
 
 To those who wish to understand the reason of 
 this steady recurrence of mystic tradition in every 
 century, these studies may be of some use. They 
 will serve as literary landmarks to guide the seeker to 
 
6 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 those distant sources whence flow faint echoes of 
 divine truths — the heritage of the divine human 
 race. Truths that bring dim memories to the soul 
 which are its highest impulse, and give the clue that 
 guides it to the inner " science of the soul " — the 
 mystic quest of all the saints, and the hidden truth 
 that all religions have tried to teach, and which only 
 a few in each religion have ever realized. 
 
 Mystics, visionaries, dreamers of vain dreams have 
 been the names which the scoffers have always 
 thrown at those who counted the world as nought 
 compared with the treasure of the unseen life, and 
 who devoted their lives to this divine science, and 
 tried to reach an understanding of its laws. And as 
 we trace out the records of the past it will be clearly 
 seen that the Theosophical development is but 
 another link in a wondrous chain of mystic teaching 
 which stretches far back into the night of time. 
 
 Such a claim must be proved and its pretentions 
 shown to be accurate, but it is only by careful 
 researches in the historical dust-bins of the middle- 
 ages that these data can be disinterred, and the chain 
 of evidence rendered complete. Then it becomes 
 evident that Theosophy is that glorious wisdom- 
 religion which includes in its scope all religions and 
 all philosophies. 
 
 And as we piece together the fragments of these 
 historical relics, they waken delicate memories of the 
 divine dreamer Dionysius the Areopagite, hallowed 
 echoes of John Septus Erigena, and thus we come 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 face to face with the holy secrets of tender mystical 
 souls who sought the true meaning of life. We get 
 strange glimpses of the intense devotion of the 
 scholastic Divines, and Monks to whom the unseen 
 life was an intense and vital reality. The thoughts of 
 Averroes and the Arabian Mystics emerge — they who 
 brought much of the Eastern truth and who founded 
 the great occult schools of the once glorious Toledo, 
 whence flowed a stream of thought, which formed the 
 very life and soul of the heresies — so-called — of the 
 Middle Ages. Nor may we omit the lore of the 
 Eastern and Syrian Monasteries to whom the books 
 of Dionysius had taken the wisdom of Plotinus. Nor 
 can the Troubadours be passed by, the singers of 
 mystic songs, and carriers of occult knowledge. 
 
 Singers, Scholars, Saints, and Martyrs, a goodly 
 array of men and women, all seeking the soul, and the 
 soul's true world. Looked at from without, such a 
 view appears like a worn mosaic pavement, broken, 
 defaced, with many gaps lacking to make a perfect 
 picture, and yet as we search and piece the apparently 
 broken fragments the design begins to unfold itself, 
 and finally the picture may be traced in perfect 
 outline. For at the back of all these varying streams 
 of thought there may be found one centre whence all 
 diverge, and that great fount was named in ancient 
 India, Brahma- VidyS, the Theosophia of the Neo- 
 Platonists. 
 
 This Ancient Wisdom kefigion is the " thread- 
 soul " on which are strung all the various incarnations 
 
8 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 and encasements of the religious life, adapted to the 
 changing conditions and developments of humanity 
 in its growth from childhood to manhood. 
 
 Begotten by that Spiritual Hierarchy in whose 
 guardianship is the evolution of the human race, 
 brought forth from them, They, the guardians of the 
 mystic tradition, give to those children of men who 
 are strong enough for the burden, a portion of the 
 real teaching of the Divine Science* concerning God 
 and man, and the wonderful relationship that exists 
 between the two. 
 
 With the passing of time the old orders changed, 
 old forms perished, and the Divine Sun that shone on 
 the ever-changing screen of time veiled Itself in new 
 hues, and gathered into new groupings the humanity of 
 the Western races, and each century which rolled by 
 evolved a new phase of the ancient mystic tradition. 
 
 In the olden days men fought for their faiths, for 
 they identified the form with that Divine life which 
 lies at the back of all forms, and the changing of an 
 outward veil shook their belief in the Holy Spirit, 
 which it did but shroud. They feared change and 
 sought to crystallise the Spirit, and this fear of 
 change gave rise to that tenacious hold on outward 
 , ceremonies which has wrought so much evil in all the 
 religions of the world. 
 
 * This " Science of the Soul" is the fact against which the Roman 
 Church waged such bitter war, and formed the basis for the attack upon 
 the various Sects such as the Albigenses, Patarini, and Vaudois, all 
 remnants of Gnostic. Sects. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 Religious parties, secret societies, sects of every 
 description, such is the shifting panorama of the 
 religious life of Europe during the last eighteen 
 hundred years, and as we glance back from our 
 present standpoint, it is difficult at times to discern 
 the mystic traditions, so loud is the clamour of con- 
 tending sects over their formal doctrines, the outward 
 expressions of their inner faith. 
 
 A word may here be said to guard against one 
 error that might arise with regard to the Spiritual 
 Hierarchy before mentioned, the guardians of the 
 world's religions. It is from this Great Communion 
 that the World-Saviours have from time to time 
 come forth, and from this centre have sprung all 
 the " Sons of God." 
 
 The inception of all religions is from Them, but 
 lesser men build up the body ; like wise teachers 
 They do not force dogmas on a child humanity. We 
 see ordinary mankind prolific in building moulds for 
 their faiths, heaping dogma upon dogma ; but in 
 tracing back all the religions to their Founders, it 
 may be seen that at the beginning the outward 
 observances were ever subordinated to the -inner life, 
 the forms and ceremonies in fact, were merely 
 organized in order to turn the attention of man to 
 the inner and spiritual aspect of life. This method 
 of training receives its completest exposition in the 
 ancient code of Manu, where the whole daily life of 
 ancient India was directed, by its very organization, 
 towards the religious aspect. In the West this ideal 
 
lO MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 was revived under the monastic orders, but since it 
 was chiefly done under the rigid doctrinal supervision 
 of the Catholic Church, the ideal of the simple 
 spiritual life was crushed. 
 
 For the building of form — even religious form — is 
 materializing in its tendency, and thus we see that 
 in all the centuries subsequent to the inception of 
 Christianity, the tendency of every " reformation " has 
 been to throw back, if possible, to the original 
 standard erected by the Founder. On careful 
 investigation, for instance, the Christ appears 
 responsible only for certain high and pure ideals, 
 insistence being made on a holy life leading to a 
 divine goal. The doctrines and elaborations which 
 were later introduced arose in every case from the 
 followers, who brought in their more worldly aims, 
 and transformed thereby the purity and simplicity of 
 the early ideal into an ornate body,* with wordly 
 passions and constant strivings for mundane power. 
 
 Hence we find at the end of the nineteenth 
 century, on one side the Catholic Church, on the 
 
 * " The favour and success of the PauUcians in the eleventh and 
 twelfth centuries must be imputed to the strong, though secret, discon- 
 tent vfhich armed the most pious Christians against the Church of 
 Rome. Her avarice was oppressive, her despotism odious ; less 
 degenerate, perhaps, than the Greeks in the worship of saints and 
 images, her innovations were more rapid and scandalous." — Gibbon 
 (E.), Decline amd Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. IX., chap, liv., 
 p. 289. In Italy the descendants of the Manichaeans were termed 
 Cathari, sometimes Gazari, or "The Pure." A good account, with 
 many references, is tp be found in Fuesslins (Johann CoTaaA),_Neue und 
 unpartheyische Kirchen uttd Ketxerhistorie der Mittlern Zeit. Frank- 
 furt u. Leipzig, 1770, 
 
INTRODUCTION. I I 
 
 other the Protestant, and between the extremes of 
 these doctrinal communities, a fluctuating, ever- 
 increasing body of thinkers, formed by the mystics 
 and idealists of both parties, who from century to 
 century have been at variance with their " orthodox " 
 brethren, seeking a higher Truth, a purer ideal, than 
 those offered by the dogmatists. 
 
 The doctrines hidden in the secret fraternities 
 have been handed down in regular succession from 
 first to last. We can see that the esoteric teachings 
 which in Egypt, in Persia, and in Greece, were kept 
 from the ears of an illiterate multitude precisely 
 because it was known that they could not, in their 
 then uneducated and ignorant condition, understand 
 the deeper truth of Nature and of God. Hence the 
 secrecy with which these pearls of great price were 
 guarded and handed on with slight modifications into 
 the possession of those grand early Christians, the 
 Gnostics, the so-called heretics ; then straight from 
 the Gnostic schools of Syria and Egypt to their 
 successors the Manichseans, and from these through 
 the Paulicians, Albigenses, and Templars, and other 
 secret bodies — these occult traditions have been 
 bequeathed to the mystic bodies of our own times. 
 Persecuted by Protestants on one side and by 
 Catholics on the other, the history of mysticism is the 
 history of martyrdom. 
 
 It is sometimes said that modern Theosophy is of 
 sporadic growth and can show no sure basis, no line 
 of religious or spiritual ancestry. But very little 
 
12 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 research proves the contrary, proves indeed that in 
 spite of the many forms — religious bodies, secret 
 societies, occult groups, Protestant reforms, and 
 Catholic heresies — there is distinct evidence that 
 there are certain points on which all of the various 
 orders meet in accord, and that when these points are 
 brought together, there appear self-revealed the same 
 underlying teachings which form the basis of the 
 great Wisdom Religion, parent and children standing 
 out in unmistakable relation. For as King truly 
 remarks : 
 
 Hippolytus was right in calling all these 
 
 heresies nothing better than the old philosophies disguised 
 under new names ; his only error lay in not going back far 
 enough to find their ultimate source.* 
 
 Let us turn to that great conception, the doctrine 
 of reincarnation, sometimes less correctly termed in 
 Metempsychosis or transmigration. This tenet is the 
 basis of the old Wisdom-religion — or Brahma- Vidya, 
 and can be distinctly traced in all those mystic 
 societies which draw their spiritual life from Gnostic 
 sources. As Leckyf says : 
 
 The doctrine of transmigration was emphatically repu- 
 diated by the Catholics ; the human race was isolated 
 by the scheme of redemption, more than ever from all 
 other races, 
 
 and it was against this isolation that the mystics, 
 
 * King (C. W.), The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 13. London, 
 1887. 
 
 + Lecky (W. E., M.A.), History of European Morals, Vol. 11. 
 p. 167. Third Edition. London, 1877. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 3 
 
 or so-called heretics, struggled ; this ancient doc- 
 trine of the transmigration of the soul was one of 
 the heretical opinions for which the Cathari* were 
 persecuted by the Catholic Church. It was very 
 freely taught by the Troubadours in their mystic 
 poems ; a monk in his attack on Troubadour heretics 
 mentions this doctrine with much scoffing and 
 ridicule. We owe a debt of thanks to many such 
 opponents, for they often show us where traces of the 
 " Secret Doctrine " are to be found. For instance, it 
 is to the orthodox and pious Catholic, Eugene Aroux, 
 that we owe a mass of most important and valuable 
 information on the Troubadours and their religious 
 mission ; their connection with mystic bodies, and the 
 esoteric interpretation of their poems. Information 
 as to their tenets which is not divulged by the 
 mystics themselves is often given to us by their 
 opponents, whose dissertations provide us with much 
 evidence. 
 
 Such research indeed reveals a new phase, for out 
 of the dim obscurity which shrouds the early 
 centuries, undoubted historic evidence can be found 
 of a wide-spread occult fraternity, which under 
 various names has introduced into many societies the 
 hidden aspect of spiritual truths, striving to avert the 
 
 * Says Lea : " Transmigration provides for the fiiture reward or 
 punishment of deeds done in life." Lea (Henry Charles), A History of 
 the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Vol. I., p. 91, 98.^ Schmid (C), 
 Histoire et Doctrine de la Secte des Cathares oii Albigeois, Vol. II., 
 p. 256. Paris, 1849. Says : " La Metempsycose enseign^e par I'une 
 des <fcoles Cathares se retrouve egalement dans le ManichSsme." 
 
14 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 materialising tendency by turning the eyes of men to 
 the inner instead of the outer life. 
 
 Three principal streams of religious thought can be 
 distinctly traced as we struggle through the labyrinth 
 of evidences, and these may not inappropriately be 
 termed the Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine doctrines, 
 the last being the fountain-head of all the later 
 Christian mystical heresies. The Johannine doctrine 
 caused great excitement in the fourteenth century, 
 the details of which will be given when we come to 
 that period. It must be borne in mind that the true 
 occultism, the real mysticism, is essentially religious 
 in its nature, and students of Theosophy must not be 
 surprised to find that some of the historical religious 
 sects* have had their foundation in occultism and 
 Theosophy. Such for instance are the Albigenses and 
 the Waldenses, the forerunners of the Wesleyans, the 
 Quietists and Quakers. These appear side by side 
 with the Rosicrucians, the Knights Templars, the 
 Fratres Lucis and many other sects who hold the 
 same religious tenets. 
 
 This view will necessarily arouse some criticism, 
 for the standard orthodox works on all the sects and 
 heresies studiously omit every reference to occultism, 
 and in some cases the real tradition can scarcely be 
 
 * The principal secret societies take St. John as their patron saint 
 as we shall see when dealing with the details of many of these bodies. 
 Notably is this the case with many of the Masonic bodies. See the 
 articles on " Johannesbruder " and "Johanneschristen" in Allgemeines 
 Handbuch der Frtimaurerei, Zweite voUig umgearbeitete Auflage ; ii. p. 
 68. Leipzig, 1S65. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 5 
 
 found, SO carefully is every reference to it extirpated 
 from ordinary history. 
 
 It is only by searching into the records themselves 
 that the real evidences of such esoteric doctrine are 
 discovered, and it is in truth somewhat startling to 
 find so many, while the outside public is in total 
 ignorance of the very existence of a mystic tradition 
 or a secret doctrine, or a Spiritual Hierarchy. On 
 this point a well-known writer on mysticism says : 
 
 The publication of the life and times of Reuchlin, who 
 exercised so marked an influence over Erasmus, Luther, 
 Melancthon, and the chief spirits of his age will, I trust, afford 
 a key to many passages of the German Reformation which 
 have not yet been understood in this country. They will 
 reveal many of the secret causes, the hidden springs, which 
 were moving the external machinery of several ecclesiastical 
 reforms, which were themselves valuable rather as symbols of 
 a spiritual undercurrent than as actual institutions and 
 establishments. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. 
 Fortunate is it for the student of truth when he can thus dis- 
 cover the causes of effects, when he is allowed to examine the 
 origin of those changes and revolutions, which but for this 
 intelligible process would look like monstrous and un- 
 accountable abortions, obeying no law and owning no 
 reason. Fortunate is he who is thus allowed to step behind 
 the scenes of the world's drama and hear the plans pro- 
 posed and the pros and cons of the councillors which give 
 rise to lines of action.* 
 
 Truly one could almost think a Theosophist was 
 
 *Tke Life and Times of John Reuchlin or Capnion, by Francis 
 Barham (editor of the Hebrew and English Bible. London, 1843), 
 p. 17. 
 
1 6 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 writing the paragraph just quoted. The whole of 
 Reuchlin's period will, we hope, be dealt with in due 
 course, and a digest of the mysticism of this period 
 made. 
 
 As already said, the occult doctrines of the 
 Gnostics were heirlooms and sacred traditions from 
 a very distant past, and when the early Christian era 
 dawned, the human race had long been plunged in 
 the darkening and materializing tendencies of the 
 Black Age.* Soon indeed, the Gnosis was rejected 
 by the orthodox church, and the sacred and secret 
 teachings of the Great Master Jesus became mate- 
 rialised ; they have, however, never been lost, and 
 traces of them can be discerned from epoch to 
 epoch. 
 
 Says Marrasf in his interesting study : 
 
 When therefore we speak of the continuation of their 
 doctrines during the Middle Ages, we mean only a secret 
 transmission of certain opinions, either in a number of 
 families whose inner doctrines did not correspond to their 
 outward profession of faith, or in the midst of certain sects 
 
 which had had relations with the Gnostics The 
 
 vitality of the Manichseans was wonderful ; notwithstanding 
 the severe persecution they endured in the heathen as well as 
 the Christian Roman Empire, they survived both in the East 
 and in the West, and often reappeared in the Middle Ages 
 in different parts of Europe. Manichseism dared to do 
 what Gnosticism had never ventured upon : it openly 
 entered the lists against the Church in the fifth century, 
 
 * The Kali-Yuga of the Hindus. 
 
 t Marras (P.), Secret Fraternities of the Middle Ages, pp. 19-21. 
 London, 1865. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 7 
 
 but the civil authority came to aid the religious authority in 
 repressing it. The Manichaeans wherever they appeared 
 were immediately attacked : they were condemned in Spain 
 in the year 380, and at Treves in 385, in their representa- 
 tives the Priscillianists ; the Empire seem determined to 
 annihilate Manichasism*, as well as Gnosticism when 
 suddenly the latter arose under a new form and under 
 a new name — that of Paulicianism. 
 
 In order that our readers may follow this line of 
 study more clearly, it will be well to group the 
 evidences of each century together. We must bear 
 in mind that many of these societies stretch back 
 through several centuries, and are not limited to one 
 date or confined to one period. The consequent 
 overlapping makes one of the difficulties of following 
 these evidences of the secret tradition. Sometimes 
 a body will remain the same, changing only its name, 
 but keeping the same tenets. This is markedly 
 the case with the Albigenses, the Paulicians, the 
 Waldenses, and many of the middle age bodies 
 — the Rosicrucians and others. Then again, we 
 find that the same terms are sometimes used for 
 the highest spiritual sciences and at others debased by 
 the usage of charlatans. Theurgy, alchemy, mystic- 
 ism, occultism, theosophy, yoga, all these names have 
 
 * In his last years the Pope had leisure to turn his arms against the 
 Manichsean heretics, who, starting from the mountains of Bulgaria, 
 carried their pure but stem religion westwards in a constant stream 
 which never lost touch with its fountain-head, and under the names of 
 Paterini, Ketzer, and Albigenses, earned the execration of their contem- 
 poraries, and the respect of posterity. Browning (Oscar), Gtulphs and 
 Ghibellines : a short History of Medieval Italy from 1250-14C39, p. 10, 
 1893, 
 
 B 
 
1 8 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 been alternately used to indicate the purest and 
 highest ideal of development for man, and then 
 adopted by those who sought in them but their own 
 selfish ends. To discriminate between these extremes, 
 to find the true and leave the false mysticism, is then 
 the aim in view. It is perhaps simplest to begin with 
 the present era and trace the way back through the 
 darkness of the middle ages to the period when the 
 Gnostic schools still preserved to a great extent the 
 sacred Eastern traditions.* The details of that 
 period must be left to hands more skilled to treat 
 the subject. 
 
 Let us then take a survey of the last nine centuries 
 of the Christian era, and in a series of sketches sub- 
 stantiate with historical facts the proposition here but 
 briefly outlined : that the ancient Wisdom Religion, 
 or Theosophia, has had throughout these periods its 
 votaries, teachers, messengers and followers, that the 
 Great Lodge has never been without its represen- 
 tatives, and in truth that the guidance of the spiritual 
 
 * One curious fact which makes a further identity between these 
 bodies is given by H. C. Lea, in his History of the Inquisition of the 
 Middle Ages, Vol. I., p. 92. London, 1888. " A further irrefragable 
 evidence of the derivation of Catharism from Manichsism is furnished 
 by the Sacred thread and garment which were worn by all the Perfect 
 among the Cathari. This custom is too peculiar to have had an 
 independent origin, and is manifestly the Mazdean kosti and saddarah, 
 the sacred thread and shirt, the wearing of which was essential to all 
 believers, and the use of which by both Zends and Brahmins shows 
 that its origin is to be traced to the prehistoric period anterior to the 
 separation of those branches of the Aryan family. Among the Cathari 
 the wearer of the thread and vestment was what was known among the 
 inquisitors as the hcereticus induttis or vestitus, initiated into all the 
 mysteries of the heresy." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 9 
 
 evolution of the world by this body of teachers can be 
 discerned by those who search the records. 
 
 The wave of gross materialism which swept over 
 the Western world is now but slowly rolling away. 
 The deplorable scepticism of our own day is but 
 the result, and the natural result, of the methods 
 adopted by the Catholic and Protestant Churches in 
 the struggles of the Middle Ages. It has already 
 been pointed out as one of the basic teachings of 
 Theosophy that part of the evolutionary progress 
 is the breaking up of forms in order that the spiritual 
 nature of man may find wider conditions. In both 
 of these Churches the extremes of dogmatic limitation 
 were reached, the result being an ever increasing 
 irritation of the more highly educated people against 
 dogmas which were contrary to reason, and forms 
 of faith which degraded the God they were supposed 
 to uphold. For the Protestants believed in the 
 verbal inspiration of an inaccurately translated Bible, 
 claiming that their God gave his fiat in books whose 
 historical basis is now shown to be unreliable. All 
 who refused the letter of the law and sought the 
 spirit which lay behind were cast out. We have but 
 to search the records of the Puritans and some other 
 Protestant bodies to see how rigid were their dealings 
 with those who rejected their narrow theological 
 dogmas.* 
 
 * See the execution and trial of Servetus, 1553, Willis (R., M.D.) 
 Servetus and Calvin. A Study of an important Epoch in the early 
 History of the Reformation ; p. 480. London, 1877. 
 
20 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 The Catholic Church permitted no education, no 
 freedom of religious thought, and, knowing the 
 unstable basis on which she stood, the Dominicans 
 in the early middle ages took up the very simple 
 position of entirely forbidding the reading of the 
 Bible, except in such scamped versions as were 
 authorised ; and all who did not obey were removed 
 by the Church. Indeed, the bloodiest and blackest 
 records that history can show us are the attacks of 
 the Catholic Church on the mystics of all these 
 centuries. 
 
 " We do condemn to perpetual infamy the Cathari, 
 the Patarines, the Leonists, the Speronists, and the 
 Arnoldists circumcised, and all other heretics of both 
 sexes by what name soever they are called. . . . 
 And in case any nian by a presumptuous attempt, 
 being instigated thereto by the enemy of mankind, 
 shall in any way endeavour the infraction of them 
 [i.e., the laws against the heretics] let him be 
 assured, that by so doing, he will incur the indig- 
 nation of Almighty God, and of the blessed Apostles 
 Peter and Paul ! " 
 
 Thus thundered Pope Honorius III. in the four- 
 teenth century.* To give one solitary instance out 
 of the numerous condemnations that fluttered about 
 the mystic path. 
 
 Indeed it is hardly credible, even with the records 
 open before us, that such inhuman tortures as were 
 
 * History of the Christian Church, by the Rev. Henry Stabbing, 
 A.M. (London, 1834), ii., 301. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 2 1 
 
 perpetrated on some of the mystic sects enumerated 
 could have been devised in the name of a Saviour of 
 mercy and love. Such fiendish barbarity, however, 
 brought its own karma, a rich reward of hatred, 
 scepticism and unbelief. The education and know- 
 ledge that the Church discountenanced and withheld 
 were reached by natural evolution ; the priests who 
 should have been the spiritual leaders were over- 
 thrown and cast down, and the result was that 
 education fell into the hands of materialistic and 
 rationalistic thinkers, and the spiritual aspect of 
 life was crushed out. 
 
 During the dark days of the revolution in France, 
 it was the mystics who most bitterly deplored the 
 growing scepticism. The materialists were the 
 enemies of mystics, occultists and religionists of 
 every kind, Catholic and Protestant. The Catholic 
 party tried to father the outbreak of the revolution 
 on the mystics. The Abb^ Barruel in his book on 
 Jacobinism * has taken every pains to do this, as 
 also have the Abbd Migne and many others. But the 
 appalling corruption of the Catholic Church, conjoined 
 with her insistence on the ignorance of the people, was 
 one of the great factors in that terrible outbreak. 
 
 In a very interesting correspondence between the 
 Baron Kirschberger de Liebesdorf and Louis Claude 
 de St. Martin,! the situation is most clearly described, 
 
 * Barruel: Mimoircs pour servir i FHistoire du JacubinUme, 4 
 vols. London, 1797. 
 
 t Le Philosophe Inconnu, the leader of the Martinists. 
 
22 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 and the following important extract shows the 
 insidious method of work adopted by the German 
 materialistic school, the enemy alike of mystics and 
 Churches. 
 
 The Baron writes : 
 
 " MoRAT, _/««(?, 1795. 
 
 " . . . . Unbelief has actually formed a well- 
 organised club ; it is a great tree which overshadows a 
 considerable portion of Germany, bearing very bad fruit, and 
 pushing its roots even into Switzerland. The enemies of 
 the Christian religion have their affiliations, their lookers- 
 out, and a well-established correspondence; they have a 
 provincial for each department, who directs the subaltern 
 agents ; they control the principal German newspapers ; 
 these newspapers are the favourite reading of the clergy who 
 do not like to study ; in them they puff the writings which 
 air their views, and abuse all besides ; if a writer ventures 
 to rise against this despotism, he can hardly find a publisher 
 who will take charge of his manuscript. This is what they 
 can do in the literary way ; but they have much more in 
 their power than this. If there is a place vacant in the 
 public instruction department . . . they have three or 
 four candidates all ready, whom they get presented through 
 different channels ; ... in this way is constituted the 
 University of Gottingen. . . . Another grand means 
 which they employ is that of . . . calumny. This is 
 all the easier for them, that most of the Protestant ecclesi- 
 astics, are, unhappily, their zealous agents ; and as this class 
 has a thousand ways of mixing everywhere, they can at 
 pleasure circulate reports which are sure to hit their mark, 
 before one knows anything about it, or is able to defend 
 oneself This monstrous coalition has cost its chief, an old 
 man of letters at Berlin and at the same time one of the 
 most celebrated publishers of Germany, thirty years' labour. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 He has edited the first journal of the country ever since 1 765 ; 
 his name is Frederick Nicolai. This Bibliothique Ger- 
 manique has, by its agents, taken hold also of the spirit of 
 the Literary Gazette of Jena, which is very well got up, and 
 circulates wherever the German language is known. Besides 
 this Nicolai influences the Berlin Journal, and the Museum, 
 two works of repute. Political organisation and affiliated 
 societies were estabhshed, when these journals had suffi- 
 ciently disseminated their venom. Nothing can equal the 
 constancy with which these people have followed their plan. 
 They have moved slowly, but surely ; and, at the present 
 hour, their progress has been so enormous, and their 
 influence become so frightful, that no effort can now avail 
 against them ; Providence alone can deliver us from this 
 plague. 
 
 At first, the march of the Nicolaites was very circum- 
 spect ; they associated the best heads of Germany in their 
 Bibliothkqtie Universelle, their scientific articles were 
 admirable, and the reviews of theological works occupied a 
 considerable portion of every volume. These reviews were 
 composed with so much wisdom that our professors in 
 Switzerland recommended them in their public discourses to 
 our young Churchmen. But they let in the poison [of 
 materialism] a little at a time and very carefully.* 
 
 This organised conspiracy was the result of the 
 methods adopted by the Catholic Church. Men 
 demanded knowledge, sought knowledge, and 
 attained knowledge, but only of the material side 
 of life. Shocked by the barbaric superstitions and 
 illogical dogmas insisted on by the Church, the revolt 
 of reason threw men back into a dogmatism which 
 
 * La Correspondance inidite deL.C. Saint-Martin et Kirchoerger, 
 Baron de Lieiistorf(l^qz•l1yJ). Paris, 1862; pp. 195, 196. 
 
24 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 was scarcely less rigid than the one they had left. 
 The study of history, the knowledge of science, all 
 tended to show the superficiality of that basis on 
 which the Catholic Church had reared herself, and 
 the leaders of thought who led this revolt, the 
 Encyclopaedists in France and the NicolaYtes in 
 Germany, were the bitter fruit of Catholic karma. 
 They banded themselves together, and it was this 
 body of sceptics and their organised conspiracy for 
 which the Ahh6 Barruel and others tried to make the 
 mystics responsible. The Church blamed others for 
 the results of her own work, and the poison of 
 unbelief and deadly materialism was meantime being 
 slowly spread in Europe by the Nicolaltes. 
 
 They tried to crush out all belief in or investiga- 
 tions into the unseen life and its forces. Hence their 
 bitter and criminal attacks upon the Comte de St. 
 Germain, Cagliostro, Saint Martin, and also upon the 
 various mystical secret societies and Freemasonry 
 in general. Keeping this powerful and malignant 
 organisation* in view, we shall better understand the 
 charges brought against the various mystics above 
 mentioned. It is only in the course of research that 
 it is possible to realise the vindictiveness and argus- 
 eyed watchfulness with which these Nicolaites pursued 
 mysticism and Freemasonry. Article after article, 
 book upon book, was produced, one and all from the 
 same source, each teeming with the same poisonous 
 
 * The Nicolaites. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 intent, the destruction of mysticism and the crushing 
 out of the spiritual life. 
 
 The eighteenth century is perhaps the most 
 difficult in which to sift the true tradition from the 
 spurious ; mushroom-like, semi-mystical societies 
 sprang up on all sides, claiming occult knowledge 
 and mystic teaching ; but when these claims are sifted 
 for verification they lack the stamp of high morality 
 and purity which is the ineffaceable mark of all that 
 emanates from the Great Lodge ; hence in selecting 
 the societies and bodies which will be dealt with and 
 studied in detail, only those have been chosen in 
 which outer and inner investigation proves their 
 unmistakable origin to be from a source whose ideals 
 are pure and holy. 
 
 That there was definite connection between the 
 various sects, societies, and heresies, is evident ; they 
 had moreover a common language of signs, by which 
 they could make themselves known to each other. 
 Says Rossetti, speaking of the fourteenth century : 
 
 There are some events in history, whether literary, 
 or political, or ecclesiastical, which at first sight appear to us 
 quite enigmatical ; but when once aware of the existence of 
 the marked language of the secret Anti-papal Sects (especially 
 of the Society of the Templars, and the Patarini, or Albigenses, 
 or Cathari, with whom the learned in Italy were then so 
 strictly connected), we find them very intelligible and clear.* 
 
 • Disquisitions on the Anti-papal Spirit which produced the 
 Reformation, by Gabriele Rossetti, Prof, of Italian Literature at King's 
 College (London, 1834), ii. 156. He is here referring to a secret 
 language, the existence of which was known to many writers. 
 
26 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 So that Rossetti speaks in the same manner as 
 Barham in the passage already cited about a secret 
 force* permeating the outer society. Again he says : 
 
 Why were the Templars, who were members of the most 
 illustrious families in Europe, sacrificed by hundreds in 
 different countries ? Why were the Patarini burned alive in 
 almost every city ? History tells us : they belonged to secret 
 societies, and professed doctrines inimical to Rome. What 
 those doctrines were is well known, as far as regards the 
 Patarini. t 
 
 Rossetti then proceeds to mention the Albigenses 
 as a sect emanating from the Templars, who them- 
 selves held Eastern doctrines, a fact not found in 
 the ordinary standard dictionaries of heresies, for 
 the connection between those religious bodies, the 
 Templars, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons is 
 entirely suppressed, yet the historical links are all to 
 be found by the unprejudiced student. 
 
 The rough enumeration which now follows of the 
 mystical societies and so-called heresies serves only 
 as a guide to where the evidence can be found. 
 
 * Says Lea in speaking of Calabria : " The Heretics sought and 
 obtained in 1497 from King Frederic the confirmation by the crown of 
 agreements. . . . They were visited every two years by the 
 travelling pastors or barbes, who came in pairs, an elder known as the 
 reggitore, and a younger, the coadiutore, journeying with some pretence 
 of occupation, finding in every city the secret band of believers whom it 
 
 was their mission to comfort and keep steadfast in the faith 
 
 Everywhere they met friends acquainted with their secret passwords, 
 and in spite of ecclesiastical vigilance there existed throughout 
 Italy a subterranean network of heresy disguised under outward 
 conformity."— Lea (H. C), History of the Inquisition of the Middle 
 Ages; 11. , pp. 268, 269. New York ; 1888. 
 
 t Of. cit., I. 14S. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 They are, moreover, selected from many other bodies 
 simply because in their inception they fulfil the 
 before-mentioned conditions of purity and morality 
 combined with occult knowledge. Some few societies, 
 or groups rather, have been omitted simply because 
 they are so occult that very little outer historical 
 evidence is forthcoming. Facts are known about 
 them by a limited number of people ; but they 
 stand more as the inspirers of the bodies here 
 enumerated than in their ranks. A few names of 
 leading mystics are also given, so that students 
 may be able to trace the groups to which they 
 are related. 
 
 Eighteenth century : The Fratres Lucis, or The 
 Knights of Light ; The Rosicrucians ; The Knights 
 and Brothers Initiate of St. John the Evangelist from 
 Asia, or the Asiatische Briider ; The Martinists ; The 
 Theosophical Society* ; The Quietists ; The Knights- 
 Templars ; Some Masonic Bodies. 
 
 Seventeenth century : The Rosicrucians ; The 
 Templars ; The Asiatische Briider ; Academia di 
 Secreti, at the home of John Baptista Porta ; The 
 Quietists, founded by Michael de Molinos ; and the 
 whole group of Spanish mystics. 
 
 Sixteenth century : The Rosicrucians became 
 widely known ; The Order of Christ, derived from 
 the Templars ; Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, in 
 connection with a secret association ; Saint Teresa ; 
 
 * Founded in London, 1767, by Benedicte Chastamer, a mystic 
 mason. 
 
28 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 St. John of the Cross ; Philippe Paracelsus ; The Fire 
 Philosophers ; Militia ,Crucifera Evangelica, under 
 Simon Studion ; The Mysteries of the Hermetic 
 Masters. 
 
 Fifteenth century : The Fratres Lucis at Florence, 
 also the Platonic Academy; The Alchemical Society; 
 Society of the Trowel ; The Templars ; The 
 Bohemian Brothers, or Unitas Fratrum ; The Rosi- 
 crucians. 
 
 Fourteenth century : The Hesychasts, or the pre- 
 cursors of the Quietists ; The Friends of God ; 
 German Mysticism, led by Nicholas of Basle ; Johann 
 Tauler ; Christian Rosencreutz ; The great Templar 
 persecution ; The Fraticelli. 
 
 Thirteenth century : The Brotherhood of the 
 Winkelers ; The Apostolikers ; The Beghards and 
 the Beguinen ; The Brothers and Sisters of the Free 
 Spirit ; The Lollards ; The Albigenses, crushed out 
 by the Catholic Church ; The Troubadours. 
 
 Twelfth century: The Albigenses appear, probably 
 derived from Manichzeans, who settled in Albi ; The 
 Knights Templars, publicly known ; The Cathari, 
 widely spread in Italy ; The Hermetists. 
 
 Eleventh century : The Cathari and Patarini, 
 condemned by the Roman Church, both derived 
 from Manichseans ; The Paulicians with the same 
 tradition, also persecuted ; The Knights of Rhodes 
 and of Malta ; Scholastic Mystics. 
 
 Tenth century: Paulicians: Bogomiles; Euchites ; 
 Manichaeans. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 From the Ninth century to the Third century 
 the following organisations and sects appear : 
 Manichaeans ; Euchites ; Magistri Comacini ; * Diony- 
 sian Artificers ; Ophites ; Nestorians ; Eutychians. 
 
 In the Fourth century the central figure for all 
 occult students is the great lamblichus ; the fore- 
 runner of the Rosicrucians ; and in the Third 
 century we find Manes, the widow's son, the link 
 for all of those who believe in the great work done 
 by the " Sons of the Widow " and the Magian 
 Brotherhood. 
 
 The various sects and bodies here detailed should 
 not, of course, be understood as belonging exclusively 
 to the century under which they appear in the above 
 classification. All that this list is intended to convey 
 is that such sects were more markedly prominent 
 during the century in which they are placed. 
 
 The possibility of dealing with mysticism and the 
 real mystic societies consists in the fact that we are 
 dealing with a certain definite teaching, its difficulty 
 consists in the fact that the outward presentation is 
 constantly changing according to the exigencies of 
 
 * Llorente (J. A.). Hist, of the Inquisition. London, 1826. 
 Merzario (Giuseppe, Prof.); / Maestri Comacini; Milano ; 1893. 
 This author says : " In this darkness which extended over all Italy, only 
 one small lamp remained alight, making a bright spark in the vast 
 Italian necropolis. It was irom the Magistri Comacini. Their respective 
 names are unknown, their individual works unspecialized, but the breath 
 of their spirit might be felt all through those centuries, and their name 
 collectively is legion. We may safely say that of all the works of art 
 between 800 and 1000, the greater and better part are due to that 
 brotherhood — always faithful and often secret — of the Magistri 
 Comacini." 
 
30 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 the f)eriod. New teachers are sent to build new 
 forms, for the tendency to crystallize and to petrify is 
 the natural inclination of the human mind ; the 
 emotional nature clings fondly to familiar conditions, 
 but these belong to the " natural body " and we are 
 following the evolution of the " spiritual body." 
 Through forms and phases many and painful does the 
 soul acquire experience. Hence all these many 
 societies have been but the schools through which the 
 souls have been passing, and wherein they have 
 acquired knowledge. 
 
 Thus the study of mysticism in the Middle Ages 
 places before us a landscape flickering with shadow 
 and with light, and the people who travel across that 
 tract are alternately in light and shade, and their 
 experiences, bitter as well as sweet, belong to all 
 pilgrims who are seeking truth in the perplexities of 
 the changing phases of human life. 
 
TOWARDS THE HIDDEN SOURCES 
 OF MASONRY. 
 
 As researches into its history are pursued, it appears 
 more and more probable that the Masonic movement, 
 to state it generally, was a sort of broad, semi-mystic 
 and largely moral movement, worked from certain 
 unknown centres, and deriving its origin from some 
 ancient and not generally known basis. That is to 
 say, its basis was, and is, unknown to all of those who 
 do not recognise a definitely spiritual guidance in the 
 practical, mental, and moral developments which 
 from time to time change the surface of society by 
 the introduction of new factors into the evolving 
 processes of which life consists. Researches into 
 Masonic literature must be made in many languages 
 and countries before this view can be firmly 
 established for the general world, but to the student 
 of Theosophy who is also a student of Masonry it 
 
32 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 becomes more and more apparent that the movement . 
 which is generally termed Masonic had its roots in 
 that true mysticism which originated, as an ideal 
 effort, from the spiritual Hierarchy which guides the 
 evolution of the world ; and that, however much the 
 branches may be separated from the root-idea, there 
 is nevertheless a mystic teaching in Masonry for 
 those who will seek below the surface. 
 
 One such searcher into the origin of Masonry 
 gives the following interesting and suggestive passage 
 in his study on the discoveries respecting the obelisk 
 made by Commander Gorringe, which tend to " prove 
 that an institution similar to Freemasonry existed in 
 Egypt," and the writer proceeds : 
 
 According to our reading of history, the priesthoods of 
 Belus, or Baal in Assyria, of Osiris in Egypt, of Jehova in 
 Palestine, of Jupiter in Greece and Rome, of Ahura-Mazda 
 in Persia, of Brahma in India, and of Teutates in Britain, 
 were primitive secret societies, who instructed and governed 
 the primitive families and races. It little matters whether 
 we call the members of those priesthoods Belites, Pasto- 
 phori, Levites, Curetes, Magi, Brahmins, or Druids ; they 
 were connected by secret ties, and intercommunicated from 
 the Indus to the Tiber, from the Nile to the Thames. 
 Hence there ever has been, is, and ever will be Free- 
 masonry on our planet. Masonry was ever more or less 
 connected with priesthoods till about the thirteenth century 
 of our era, when Masons declared themselves Freimaurer 
 (Freemasons). Since about that period priesthoods have 
 ever denounced and persecuted Freemasonry.* 
 
 * Weisse, M.D. (John A.), Obelisk and Freemasonry, p.p. 94, 95. 
 New York; 1880. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. ^^ 
 
 The evidences of the basic mystic teaching can be 
 largely traced by watching the eddies and under- 
 currents which constantly break the smooth stream of 
 ordinary Masonry. Frequently do we find other and 
 smaller bodies, whose mystic aim was more marked 
 and whose occult tendencies were more decidedly 
 definite, springing up within the larger organisation. 
 Some few members with deeper insight gather round 
 themselves others with the same tendencies, and thus 
 we find formations of smaller societies constantly 
 taking place. It is the main features of some of these 
 that we are now going to outline, and after we have 
 briefly reviewed the sources from which some of 
 the leading Masons draw their historical Masonic 
 tradition, we can pass from the general outline to the 
 smaller societies, and it will be seen that the same 
 traditions re-appear in them. 
 
 And in corroboration of the hypothesis just 
 enunciated, the words of a well-known Mason may 
 be quoted, who in summing up an admirable lecture 
 which had just been delivered by a Brother Mason 
 spoke as follows : 
 
 A thoughtful consideration of our principal ceremony 
 irresistibly leads us to the doctrine that was typified by the 
 Jiasios in the King's Chamber of the great Pyramid, and 
 connects with the main characteristic of all the mysteries, 
 which embodied the highest truths then known to the 
 illuminated ones. 
 
 . . . The twelfth century witnessed an outbreak of 
 mystic symbolism, perhaps unparalleled in our era, and gave 
 us the religious legends of the Holy Grail, which point to 
 C 
 
34 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 an Eastern origin; this period coincides with the greatest 
 popularity of the Templars, whose fall is contemporaneous 
 with the decadence noticed by the lecturer. 
 
 Without pressing the argument, I may suggest that some 
 portion, at least, of our symbolism may have come through 
 a Templar source, Romanist yet deeply tinged with 
 Gnosticism ; while at a later date the Lollards (supposed 
 to be inheritors of Manichaeism) and who were but one of 
 the many religio-political societies with which Europe was 
 honeycombed, possibly introduced or revived some of these 
 
 teachings One thing is certain, that satisfactory 
 
 I renderings of our symbols can only be obtained by a study 
 \of Eastern Mysticism: KabaUstic, Hermetic, Pythagorean 
 land Gnostic. 
 
 Down the centuries we find enrolled the names of 
 philosophic teachers who veiled their doctrines in figures 
 similar to those in vogue among the Rosicrucians and still 
 more recent students, and often identical with the signs we 
 blazon on the walls of our Lodges and Chapters.* 
 
 Many Theosophical students will find such 
 utterances of immense value, as show^ing the view 
 held by a Masonic authority of such well-known 
 repute as Mr. E. Macbean, LG., with regard to some, 
 at any rate, of the Eastern links with moderrs 
 Masonry .-|- Mr. Gould, the lecturer, also made the 
 following suggestive remarks : 
 
 * Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. Transactions of the Lodge Quatuoi: 
 Coronati, No. 2076. III., Parti., p. 31. London; 1890. 
 
 t Another Masonic authority says: — "A little latec, or about: 
 the year 200 a.d., the most noteworthy Gnostic sect was a 
 Persian branch, the Manichees ; it was divided into three classes — 
 Auditors, Elect, and Perfect, and the sect was ruled by twelve- 
 Apostles, with a thirteenth as President. Manicheism was always. 
 a source of trouble to the Church, and St. Augustine between 
 the years 374 and 383 a.d., was an " Auditor," but for some reason 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 35 
 
 With regard to the derivations of Masonry, there are, 
 briefly, three possibilities. 
 
 It may have come down to us 
 I. Through a strictly Masonic Channel. 
 II. Through the Rosicrucians. 
 
 III. Through a variety of defunct societies, whose 
 usages and customs have been appropriated, 
 not inherited, by the Freemasons. 
 
 The views thus put forward by these two 
 authorities coincide perfectly with those of many 
 German and Italian mystic writers of the last 
 century and those preceding it. We will, therefore, 
 investigate the early traditions in order to trace the 
 links which bind them together, and join the chain to 
 the yet more remote spiritual centre hidden, though 
 not lost, in the clouds of time, and in piecing together 
 
 could not obtain advancement, and so abandoned the system. The 
 Rite had a Theosophical Gospel which taught that the basis of all 
 religion was one. In 657 they had changed their name to Paulicians, 
 and later Cathari (purified), Euchites, Bogomiles, and in more recent 
 times still, Lollards. We could quote numberless authors of the early 
 period of the Church to prove the origin of these sects from the Eastern 
 Magi, but it is unnecessary and space forbids. In a few words, they 
 were a secret speculative society with degrees, distinguished by signs, 
 tokens and words like Freemasonry, and the Church of Rome from the 
 4th to the 19th century has hated them with the hatred of death, 
 butchering and burning them by tens of thousands ; for Christianity has 
 shed more blood than any other faith. Yet the fathers often admit 
 their great purity of life, but that was their sin against a corrupt priest- 
 hood and unpardonable. The Templars were Gnostics, on the evidence 
 of the Papal trials in 1313, and Hugh, G.M. 1118, is said to have 
 received initiation from Theocletus, Patriarch of St. John the Baptist 
 and the Codex Nazareus." The Kneph, Vol. V., No. 4, 1885. 
 " Records and Documents relating to Freemasonry as a speculative 
 society," by John Yarker, P.M., P.M.M.K., P.Z., P.E.C., P.R.G.C, 
 &c. Chapter IV. — " Secret Theosophical Societies. " (Continued from 
 p^e4l.) 
 
36 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 the fragments of these esoteric links it is better to 
 begin with the views of a well-known Italian Mason, 
 for it is to the " Sons of the Widow " we must look 
 for help in revivifying the ancient spiritual truths of a 
 once esoteric Masonry. The writer from whom we 
 quote believed profoundly in Masonry and' writes of it 
 as one who knows that it was a vehicle for conveying 
 spiritual mysteries to the people : Thus he writes* 
 of the early history of Masonry : 
 
 Three centuries had passed since the origin of 
 Christianity when at this epoch of barbarism there arose 
 in the same Persia whence so many teachings had gone 
 forth, a philosopher who wished to lead back the confused 
 spirit of men to the cult of the only true God. He was 
 called Manes. Some of the uninstructed have regarded 
 him as the first originator of our Order, and the creator of 
 our doctrines. 
 
 Manes lived under the Persian King Sopares. He 
 endeavoured to recall to life in their entire purity the 
 mysteries and the religion of Zoroaster, uniting them with 
 the pure compassionate teachings of Jesus Christ. The 
 teachings of Manes were liberal, whereas superstition and 
 
 * The quotations are taken from the German edition of the work 
 of Reghellini da Schio, La Mofonnerie considirie comnie le Risultat des 
 Religions Egyptienne,Juive et Chritienne. Paris, 1883. 
 
 See also Eckert (Edward Emil), Die Mysierien der Heidenkirche 
 erhallen und fortgebildet im Bunde der alten und der tieuen Kinder der 
 Wittwe. Schaffhausen, i860. Chap, vi., p. 77. "Die Manichaer 
 Oder die Kinder der Wittwe in Abendlande als Johannes-Briider-und 
 Schwesternschaft. " 
 
 In this chapter Eckert traces the connection of the Manichaeans or 
 the "Children of the Widow" to the Johannes-Bruder of the West, 
 and links them also to the German Building Corporations and Societies. 
 
 Chap, vii., 307. In this chapter he links them by their signs and 
 symbols to the Cologne Masonic body of 1535. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 37 
 
 despotism governed Europe. It is easy to believe that 
 those who professed demagogic principles and a religion 
 free from all that was chimerical would be persecuted. 
 Thus the Manichaeans from about the fourth century were 
 persecuted to the fullest by all the despots and by the 
 Romish Priests. . . . The Holy Augustine, brought 
 up in the mysteries of Zoroaster adapted to the holy 
 teaching of Jesus, became his bitterest persecutor and the 
 greatest enemy to the teaching of Manes which was known 
 under the name of the religion of the Child of the Widow. 
 
 This hatred shown towards Manes by St. Augustine, and 
 his zeal for the Christian Trinity doctrine, may have 
 originated in the vexation which Augustine experienced at 
 having been only admitted into the first degree of the 
 mysteries of Manes. The Magi, who had recognised in 
 him an ambitious and restless spirit, were thereby induced 
 to refuse to him all advancement, and this in spite of his 
 nine years study, which he made in order to be raised to the 
 higher degree. This fact is sufficiently confirmed by Fleury, 
 Baronius, and by Augustine himself in his confessions. 
 After the death of Manes, twelve of his pupils went forth 
 into all the parts of the earth and imparted his teachings 
 and his mysteries to all people. They illumined as with a 
 lightning-flash Asia, Africa, and Europe, as may be seen 
 
 from Baronius, Fleury, Bayle, and others 
 
 We have already said that still in the lifetime of Manes, his 
 pupil Herman had spread his teaching in Egypt, where the 
 Coptic priests and other Christians mingled it with the 
 
 mysteries adopted from the Jews It 
 
 was through these same Coptic priests and the Eastern 
 Christians that both the mysteries of the Children of the 
 Widow, and the cult of the great Architect came to us in 
 consequence of apparently unforeseen events, and it will be 
 seen that it was principally by means of the Crusades that 
 they obtained a secure footing in the West. The mysteries 
 maintained their existence under the name of the cult of 
 
38 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 the Great Architect of the Universe, a name that has its 
 origin in the allegory of Hiram, which represented, in the 
 mysteries, "the unknown God," the Eternal, and sole 
 creator of all things and the Regenerator of all beings. 
 
 Thus does Reghellini da Schio write, as he traces 
 the Masonic ancestry back to the pre-Christian 
 period, and he continues : 
 
 Bossuet in his Histoire des Variations, IV., says that 
 in the middle ages the Christian sects, and especially 
 the Manichseans and Gnostics, had concealed themselves 
 as much as possible in the Orthodox Church itself: the 
 remainder of the Manichjeans who had maintained 
 themselves only too well in the East, crowded into 
 the Latin Church. Montfaucon, VII., p. 271, says when he 
 speaks of the religion of the Egyptians, that the heresy of 
 the good and evil principles which had been upheld by 
 Manichseans, had at various times brought forth in the 
 Church great disorder, and he asserts that in the East . . 
 . . . . these doctrines existed at the time of the 
 
 Crusades, the long time that elapsed during 
 
 the wars of the Crusaders gave them the opportunity of 
 being admitted into all the mysteries of the Children of the 
 Widow, the teachings of the Great Architect of the world, 
 and of both principles .... the Crusaders who had 
 been admitted to the mysteries of the Children of the 
 Widow and initiated therein, imparted them, on their return 
 
 home, to their pupils in Europe during the 
 
 sojourn of the Crusaders with the Mussulmans, all kinds of 
 theological investigations were instituted. These led the 
 Crusaders deeper into the faith in the Great Architect of 
 the world. . . . 
 
 And again in another passage (p. 46) he adds : 
 
 In spite of the religious and political changes that 
 followed upon the conquests of the Saracens in Asia, Africa, 
 and Europe; in spite of the persecutions introduced by 
 
HIDDEN' SOtfROfiS OF MASONRY. 39 
 
 them, the doctrines as to the unity of God was able to 
 maintain itself by means of the Mysteries in Palestine, 
 Syria, and Egypt, more especially, however, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Thebes; for here the Christians and Coptic 
 priests preserved, in the lap of their solitude, the teachings 
 communicated to them by Hesman, the pupil of Manes, a 
 teaching which later passed over into Europe.* 
 
 Passing on from these important and interesting 
 indications to the more detailed aspect of our sub- 
 ject we find that at a later period many of the 
 semi-Masonic bodies had " Unknown Heads," and 
 more especially those whose aims were avowedly 
 occult, this being the term which was applied in 
 Germany, Austria and Hungary to those organisations 
 that did not make public the sources from which their 
 teachings were derived, nor say from whom their 
 inspiration came. To find the origin of such secrecy 
 we must turn back to the early history of the Masonic 
 tradition and sketch briefly what is told us by a Mason 
 of the early part of this century, when dealing with 
 this historic secrecy. He tells us : 
 
 We find among all the priests of ancient peoples, and in 
 order that none but really capable and worthy men should 
 be associated with their offices and studies, they instituted 
 forms of probation and examination upon which followed 
 some kind of initiation. Now as the oldest writers ascribed 
 such mysteries and initiations to the Egyptian Priests, it is 
 very probable that they already existed before the downfall 
 of that people, for we find traces of them in equally ancient 
 
 * " Acerrellos" Rossler (Karl) Die Freimaurerei in ihrem Zusam- 
 menhange mit den Religionen der alter Aegypter, der Juden, tmd der 
 Christen: II., p. II. Leipzig, 1836. 
 
40 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 nations and perceive from the likeness of their fundamental 
 principles and of the teaching and customs of their priests, 
 that they must have had a common origin. Among the 
 Chaldeans the Magi dwelt on the summits of the mountains, 
 and among the Celtic races the Druids lived in the quiet 
 solitude of the forests. Among the Indians and Ethiopians 
 the Brahmins and Gymnosophists had localities specially 
 dedicated to them, and among the Egyptians the Priests 
 had intricate dwelling-places far beneath the surface of the 
 earth. All had their symbols and distinctive signs, and 
 owed their fame only to the secrecy of their initiation. 
 
 The secrets of Antiquity had a twofold aim. In the 
 first case Religion was chosen as the object of care; the 
 greater the mysteries the more eternally secret were they to 
 be kept from the people. The aim in the second case was 
 to guard the Wisdom of all things. He who would be 
 initiated must be a man of upright character and true 
 mental power. The sacred mysteries fell into decay with 
 the Roman Empire, the flourishing and spread of the 
 Christian religion being the chief cause of this decadence. 
 The initiation into the mysteries of the Wisdom was how- 
 ever of much longer duration. They changed only from 
 time to time either the name, the inner constitution, the 
 degrees and various kinds of knowledge bound up in these, 
 or even the nature of the union itself The men, who were 
 known under the name of Magi, or the White Masters, made 
 one of their most important aims the true knowledge of the 
 human heart, which lay always open before their eyes. To 
 them alone was entrusted the bringing up of Kings and the 
 great of the earth, for they alone could understand science 
 as well as art, and careless of all prejudice taught a simple 
 and natural Theology, which based itself upon the worship 
 of a Supreme Being. 
 
 Because, however, their method of teaching was sym- 
 bolical, many errors of which they were entirely incapable 
 were ascribed to them on account of their numerous 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 4 1 
 
 hieroglyphics. The Magi of Memphis and Heliopolis were 
 held in such esteem, and their renown was so widespread 
 that the greatest heroes of war, philosophers, and strangers 
 of the highest rank journeyed to Egypt and sought to be 
 initiated by the Priests in order to learn the secrets of the 
 Priesthood. From among these priests Lycurgus and Solon 
 drew a part of their system of philosophy ; and Orpheus was 
 also initiated by them, and by this means enabled to 
 introduce into his own land, festivals from which the Greek 
 mythology afterwards arose. Thales also was instructed by 
 them, Pythagoras received from the same source his doctrine 
 of Metempsychosis, Herodotus obtained much information, 
 and Democritus his secrets. Moses also, who was brought 
 up by the Magi, used his knowledge of the mysteries to free 
 the Israelites from Egyptian bondage and lead them to the 
 service of the true God. It is well known that Moses 
 prescribed certain probation for his Levites, and that the 
 secrets of the Priesthood were inaccessible to the rest of the 
 Israelites, and this principle ruled till the time of Solomon.* 
 
 And this policy of silence was a wise one, for the 
 bitter vituperations which were showered on the 
 heads of the few who were the exoteric leaders in 
 such organizations, demonstrated the wisdom which 
 guarded the personalities of the real leaders. Such 
 
 • Sarsena, oder der Volkommene Baumeister, enthaltend die 
 Geschichte und Estehung des Frei-Maurerordens. Bamberg, 1816. 
 The author of this work is not definitely known, but another Mason, 
 Herr Z. Funck, wrote, in 1838, the Kurze Geschichte des Bucks Sarsena, 
 Bamberg, and said of the above work : "There are few books which on 
 their publication caused so great a sensation as did this one. . . . 
 the author of this work was an old experienced Freemason." The 
 publisher says that 1500 copies were sold in the first month, and it went 
 through five editions ; it caused, moreover, a miniature Masonic war- 
 fare. Written by one who knew what Freemasonry should be, it 
 naturally raised the violent opposition of those who wished to drag it 
 away from its mystical standpoint. 
 
42 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 work was better done by small groups, and this 
 appears to have been the view held by those leaders 
 with whom the student does come into contact. 
 Some few of these groups in the last century have 
 already been cited * but it will be as well to repeat 
 their titles, which run as follows : 
 
 The Canons of the Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 The Canons of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. 
 
 The Beneficent Knights of the Holy City fThe 
 Strict Observance). 
 
 The Clergy of Nicosia in the Island of Cyprus. 
 
 The Clergy of Auvergne. 
 
 The Knights of Providence (The Order of the 
 Knights of St. Joachim). 
 
 The African Brothers. 
 
 The Knights of Light (The Order of Fratres Lucis). 
 
 The Asiatic Brothers (The Order of the Knights 
 of St. John of Asia). 
 
 These Societies do not belong to any one country 
 in particular, for we find ramifications of them 
 appearing, disappearing and re-appearing, like beacon 
 lights, in Austria, Hungary, Italy, France, Sweden, 
 and Russia. England was the least prolific soil in 
 the early centuries for the implanting of this mystic 
 seed. In Scotland and Ireland, however, that light 
 shone more clearly than in England. But in Austria 
 and the Danubian Provinces mysticism grew apace 
 for a short and happy while, and so a few words about 
 Austria in particular may be said before passing on. 
 
 * The Theosophical Review, xxii. 311. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 43 
 
 Says Ludwig Abafi, in his Introduction to Pre- 
 Historic Freemasonry in Austria and Hungary:* 
 
 It is proved that the Emperor Rudolph I., even in the 
 year 1275, authorised an Order of Masons, whilst Pope 
 Nicholas III., in the year 1278, granted to the Brotherhood 
 of Stonemasons at Strassburg, a letter of Indulgence which 
 was renewed by all his successors down to Benedict XII. 
 in 1340. The oldest order of German Masons arises in 
 the year 1397 ; next follow the so-called Vienna Witnesses 
 of 141 2, 1430, and 1435; then the Strassburg Order of 
 Lodges of 149s ; that of Torgau of 1462, and finally sixteen 
 different Orders on to 1 500, and to the following centuries 
 for Spires, Regensburg, Saxon-Altenburg, Strassburg, Vienna, 
 and the Tyrol. 
 
 At this period the Roman Church appears to have 
 made various futile efforts to retain a hold upon these 
 Masons, but vi'ithout tangible result. For the forces 
 at the back of these movements prevented the 
 destruction of a new free spiritual growth by the 
 Roman power. At this period also came those great 
 souls, burning for freedom, who worked the Reforma- 
 tion,*!- and although that work and those reforms were 
 
 * Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Oestcrreich und Ungat-n. Buda- 
 pest, 1890-1891. Pt. I., p. 8. • 
 
 t Such, for instance, as John Tauler, the famous Dominican (born 
 1290, died 1361), who formed a mystical fraternity, the members of 
 which recognized each other by secret signs. Then we have Nicholas 
 of Basle, with his four disciples, the beginning of the "Friends of God." 
 These men kept a watch on all that was going on in the world, and 
 they had special messengers who had certain secret signs, by which they 
 recognized each other ; Nicholas was burned as a heretic. Much 
 information concerning this sect is given in a MS. called TJie Book of 
 the Five Men. (1377). See for details, Jundt (A.), Les Amis de 
 Dieu au XIV^ SiMe. Paris 1879. 
 
44 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 dwarfed of their full growth by the natural crudity 
 and narrowness of the human mind, nevertheless the 
 dogmatic and mind-killing power of Rome was 
 materially thwarted, and the spirit in the teaching of 
 the Master Christ set free from those trammels. At 
 all events, Abafi proceeds : 
 
 Equally important in the formation of Freemasonry 
 . were certain religious communities and 
 brotherhoods of the Middle Ages, which for the most part 
 aimed at a return to the pure teaching of Christ, and at 
 making its ethical form familiar to their adherents. One of 
 these brotherhoods was that of the Waldenses, established 
 by Peter Waldo in the year 1170 at Lyons. Their aim was 
 the restitution of the original purity of the Church through 
 the adoption of voluntary poverty, and other ascetic 
 practices. But because of the doctrine of Transubstantia- 
 tion they soon came into conflict with the Catholic Church, 
 and as early as 1134 Pope Lucius III. excommunicated 
 them, and Sextus IV. in 1477 proclaimed a Crusade against 
 them. In spite of these attacks they have kept alive up to the 
 present day, and have spread into several countries, namely 
 into Italy, France and Bohemia, and in this latter country 
 we shall meet them again under the name " Bohemian 
 Brothers.'' 
 
 A few words may be summarised from the same 
 writer about some of the other mystic bodies in 
 Bohemia and Hungary, lands full of occult tendencies. 
 Among them are the following : " Die Briider von 
 Reif und Hammer," or the " Brothers of the Circle 
 and Hammer," " Die Hackebrudershaft," " The 
 Brotherhood of the Hatchet," " Die Freunde vom 
 Kreuz," or the " Friends of the Cross." This last 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 45 
 
 society spread into the Netherlands, and had its 
 greatest success in the latter part of the 17th Century. 
 The " Brothers of the Cross " * were still holding 
 their meetings in 1785 : they had many members in 
 Wallachia, and still more in Transylvania.-f Brabbee 
 in his Masonic studies says : It consisted principally of 
 
 Older men and those who were generally reputed 
 wise, and therefore of the prominent leaders of the 
 Brotherhood, who here, in the Metropolis of the Kingdom, 
 formed a kind of stronghold of the " inner East." 
 
 The last expression is worthy of our notice, 
 for it shows how the minds of men were turning, 
 even in Masonic Circles, to the Eastern teachings. 
 Abafi also says that a great and moulding force 
 was exercised at this period on the form of Free- 
 masonry by Jan Amos Komensky (latinised 
 Comenius) who was born at Briinn, in Bohemia, in 
 1592, and who became a chaplain of the Bohemian 
 Brothers in 161 8. When the civil wars began 
 Komensky lost wife, child, and property, and was 
 e.xiled from Austria like all other non-Catholics. 
 He escaped to Poland, turned his thoughts to educa- 
 tional matters, and became famous in Sweden, 
 Hungary, and England. 
 
 Komensky was actively interested in the Rosicru- 
 cian movement, and joined John Valentinus Andreas 
 in his work in that body. In 1650 Komensky was 
 
 * Sometimes called Fratres de Cruce. 
 
 t Brabble (Gustav), Sub-Jiosa Vertrauliche Mittheilungen atis dem 
 Maurerischen Leben unserer Grossvdter, p. 25. Wien, 1879. 
 
MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 invited to Hungary and Transylvania by the Prince 
 Ragozcy, vviiere he stayed four years. It is doubtless 
 partly owing to his influence that the Rosicrucian 
 movement spread so widely in these countries. His 
 philosophical and metaphysical views were so widely 
 spread, that when Anderson* wrote his book on 
 Freemasonry, he, according to Abafi, incorporated in 
 his work a compilation of the most essential portions 
 of the plans of Komensky. As Abafi phrases it : 
 
 It was reserved for an Austrian, a Moravian school- 
 master, the Chaplain of the Bohemian Brothers, to bestow 
 ethical treasures upon a brotherhood in proud Albion, the 
 home of the boldest intellects ; to formulate the ideas, and 
 to point out the way for a league which — after its trans- 
 formation — was destined to embrace the noblest of all 
 nations, and being brought to perfection by them, ordained 
 to influence the whole of humanity. 
 
 The spread of mysticism in Austria and Hungary 
 during the last century was astoundingly rapid ; 
 according to one authorityj- about five per cent, of 
 the entire population belonged to the Freemasons, 
 Rosicrucians, and other allied societies. 
 
 The vast majority of these Lodges must, he 
 thinks, have been secret, for at the death of the 
 
 * James Anderson, D.D,, whose work was published in 1723, 
 under the title The Constitutions of the Freemasons ; containing the 
 History, Charges, Regulations, etc., of that Most Ancient and Right 
 Worshipful Fraternity, for the use of the Lodges. A second edition, 
 revised, was published in 1738. 
 
 f Freimaurer ; Heft. I., p. 10, ed. by von Andr^e. Gotha, 
 1789. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 47 
 
 Empress* only three legitimate and perfect Lodges 
 existed. That is to say, only three Lodges in 
 which Freemasonry as such existed without any more 
 extended search into occultism. Another authority, 
 Dr. Otto Henne-am-Rhyn.-f promptly doubles 
 this number, saying that there were 20,000 mystic 
 students in Vienna. As this writer was an avowed 
 enemy of mysticism, his views may be taken as not 
 likely to exaggerate the numerical value of occult 
 students. 
 
 In Austria mysticism had been aided by the 
 kindly interest taken in such subjects by the Emperor 
 Francis I. He had protected and favoured a very 
 remarkable man called Seefels — or Sehfeld — a 
 Rosicrucian and Mason, who had an alchemical 
 laboratory at Rodaun, a small village about a 
 mile from Vienna. This man was loved and 
 respected by the whole neighbourhood for his 
 kindliness, as well as feared for his powers, which were 
 most remarkable. Seefels is mentioned by Schmieder 
 in his valuable History of Alchemy, J as one of the 
 " Seven true Adepts " who should appear in Europe 
 in the course of the century. Schmieder also gives 
 some very interesting proofs of his powers. But in 
 spite of the Emperor's protection he was seized by 
 
 * Maria Theresa, wife of Franz I., and the mother of Joseph II. 
 of Austria. 
 
 + Henne-am-Rhyn (Otto), KuUurgeschichte des Zeitallers der 
 Aufkldrung, v., p. 244. Leipzig, 1878. 
 
 X Schmieder (C. C), Geschichte der Alchemic, pp. 527-542, 1832. 
 
48 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 the police and placed in the fortress at Temeswar in 
 Hungary. A careful study of Schmieder's work 
 would more than repay any student who desires to 
 have evidences for occult powers made certain by 
 history. 
 
 The following interesting notes* are quoted as 
 showing the connecting link between the Continental 
 mystic Masonry and England, of which but little has 
 been heard in the outer world. 
 
 In a German tract, printed about 1803, and bound up 
 with another tract of Fessler's, called Geschichte der 
 Freimaurerei, occur the following startling statements, which 
 I give to Masonic students for what they are worth. 
 
 1. The Templars worked with the so-called "Magical 
 Brethren " at an early period of their existence. 
 
 2. A Rosicrucian MS. states that at Cologne, with the 
 motto, " non omnis moriar," this Magical Union was created 
 there in 11 15. 
 
 3. A MS. of Michael Mayer's still exists in the Uni- 
 versity Library at Ley den, which sets forth that in 1570 the 
 Society of the old Magical Brethren, or "Wise Men" was 
 revived under the name of Brethren of the Golden Rosy 
 Cross. 
 
 4. It is asserted that in 1563 the statutes of the 
 Brotherhood were, on the 22nd of September, at Basle, at a 
 meeting of seventy-two Masters of Lodges, revised, set forth, 
 and printed; that the Lodges of Swabia, Hesse, Bavaria, 
 Franconia, Saxony, Thuringia, and those on the Moselle 
 acknowledged the headship of the Grand Lodge of Strass- 
 burg. That in the eighteenth century the Lodges of 
 Dresden and Nuremberg were fined by the Grand-Master of 
 Strassburg, and that the Grand Lodge of Vienna, of Hungary, 
 
 * See The Kneph, vol. iv., 3. August, 1884. "Masonic Notes." 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 49 
 
 and Stirrmark, the Grand Lodge of Zurich, which ruled the 
 Swiss Lodges, referred to the Mother Lodge of Strassburg 
 in all difficult and doubtful matters. 
 
 To these notes by a " Masonic Student " the 
 following editorial note is appended : 
 
 There can be no doubt that the Theosophical and 
 Magical Union above mentioned did exist as an organised 
 Secret Society. The correspondence of Cornelius Agrippa 
 von Nettesheim shows that he was a member of such a 
 secret society, and it is further asserted that when he was in 
 London he established a branch of it in that city. Fludd, 
 as showing that secret societies existed in the Universities, 
 has the passage "notwithstanding any allegiance which I 
 may have vowed by a ceremonial Rite to Aristotle* in my 
 youth." These societies used the double Triangles, or Seal 
 of Solomon, and in the ruins of one of the old Temple Pre- 
 ceptories in France was found a copper medallion with the 
 Lamb surmounted by this Cabalistic symbol. 
 
 Two points in this interesting note can be corro- 
 borated by further evidence. The Rosicrucian MS. 
 mentioned in para. 2, is also mentioned on page 56 of 
 a most valuable German book (to which reference has 
 already been made) by Friedrich Gottlieb Ephraim 
 Weisse, or Magister Pianco ; it is called Der Rosen- 
 ^reutzer in seiner B/osse (Amsterdann ; 1781). Some 
 extracts from it will not be without interest, for it 
 refers to the older body of " Wise-Men," who were 
 known as the " Unknown Heads " of many of the 
 
 * Says Accelleros (Dr. Karl Rossler) : "The Gnostic principles 
 were spread under the form of Aristotelean Philosophy at Paris and 
 elsewhere." — Die Freimaurerei in ikrem Zusammenhange mit dm 
 Religioneti der alten Aegypter, der jfuden und der Christen, II., 
 p. 63. Leipzig, 1836. 
 D 
 
50 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 small societies. The conditions of entrance are 
 briefly given as follows : 
 
 3. Whosoever wished to be admitted to the secrets, 
 and afterwards to be initiated, must be a man of honour 
 and of true spiritual power; and he must be already of 
 considerable learning ; for only those were accepted, of 
 whom it could be hoped that they would be of great 
 service to the Sacred Alliance. . . 
 
 10. The Initiates wore a triangle, symbolical of the 
 three qualities of the Demiurgos — Power, Wisdom and 
 Love. . . . 
 
 The Masters of the second secret were Masters in the 
 knowledge of all nature, and her forces, and divisions. 
 
 11. They were called Philosophers or the World- Wise. 
 Their science was called the World- Wisdom. . . . 
 
 12. These World- Wise occupied themselves in secret. 
 No one knew where they met, or what they did. 
 
 14. But they had also secret sciences known only 
 to the highest among them — called Magos, Mage, or the 
 Wise Master, who taught the people of Divine things. He 
 could do things which appeared quite supernatural. * 
 
 The author, speaking of the relation of Masonry 
 to this older and more secret body, says : 
 
 Those Brother Masons (of the highest degrees) knew 
 that they owed their brotherhood to the Initiations of the 
 old Wise-Men ; that the great part of their (the Masons') 
 knowledge came from Them, and that without Their help 
 they could do nothing, f 
 
 In another passage he says : 
 
 Long before the year 11 18, there was a society which in 
 the mysteries of the ancients took the place of the last and 
 
 " Op. cit., pp. 28, 30-32. t Op. cit., p. 54. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 5 1 
 
 youngest grade, and which had the same position with the 
 Tempelherren, who had adopted it with the other teachings 
 of the Wise Ones. — They were the novices from all time. 
 As in the time of the Inquisition against the Templars no 
 one knew anything about the lower and last grades, and 
 those who belonged to them had no public connection with 
 them and thus lived without attracting any attention, they 
 were overlooked in the cruelties of the time. One did not 
 think of them. As the members of the Templars who 
 escaped were few in number and died one after the other, 
 the remaining members drew together to form a bond of 
 friendship, to which end they drew up certain rules. This 
 new society appeared in different forms and under different 
 names. Cross Society or Brothers of the Cross, Noaites, and 
 in later days adopted the name of Freemasons. 
 
 Length of time and the involved issues consequent 
 thereon made those initiated into the Mysteries at length 
 perceive that they must introduce an entirely different 
 organisation into the community, in order to bring it into 
 line with Christianity. 
 
 Those associates who still remained over from the 
 collapse* of the community of Initiates, and who were 
 scattered about the world, began to make fresh projects for 
 a general union. They took the laws of their community 
 and the laws of the Christians, which are known under the 
 name of the Bible, into a real assimilation. They began to 
 institute a parallel between the books of Moses and the 
 memorials of the Magi, and from all this they evolved a 
 kind of association, provided with certain laws, which could 
 fit in with the Christian. 
 
 The association was, as is always the custom with 
 innovations, in the beginning somewhat dark and involved ; 
 it was saddled with various meanings and names, which it 
 
 * The writer is referring to the persecutions of the " Magian 
 Brothers," who followed Manes the Reformer. 
 
52 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 would be quite unnecessary to repeat here, but which were 
 all of short duration, so that the first ones called it the 
 association of Magi and its members the Magi Brotherhood 
 and associates. And this first association was formed in the 
 year 1115 and lasted till the year 11 17, though it underwent 
 changes from time to time. The Crusaders had given rise 
 to many societies and orders amongst the profane, and 
 associations had sprung up which had quite differing 
 objects. Amid innumerable ones there arose in the year 
 418 the Knights, with whom the Magi Brotherhood united 
 and shared their principles and secrets with them. 
 
 The writer speaks " as one having authority" and 
 knowledge also. 
 
 Turning to the particular date mentioned in the 
 notes from The Kneph, we find that about this period, 
 or a few years earlier, the first documentary evidence 
 of the appearance of the Asiatische Briider is men- 
 tioned by the Baron Hans Ecker von Eckhoffen in 
 his treatise, Authentischen Nachrichten von den Rilter- 
 und Briider-Eingeweihten mis Asien (Hamburg ; 
 1788). These writings, he says, date from 15 10; 
 showing that a body of mystics was known at that 
 period ; these Knights of Asia also called themselves 
 the Knights of St. John, and it is a curious fact to 
 notice that one of the Masonic records which has 
 caused an infinity of discussion, and also of dis- 
 sension, amongst Masons, is the celebrated " Cologne 
 Record " which is dated 1535, and in which an Order 
 of St. John is noticed. This charter has been a 
 veritable bone of contention between materialistic 
 and mystic Masons, and much polemical literature 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 53 
 
 has been published on the subject. The mystics hold 
 it to be true on external and internal evidences ; while 
 the materialists reject it, as they reject all such 
 evidence. 
 
 In the record there is the name of Philip 
 Melancthon — the friend and co-worker of Martin 
 Luther — who appears as a Brother in the Order of the 
 Freemasons. This document bears witness also that 
 a secret society was known in various parts of the 
 world, which existed before 1440 under the name of 
 the " Brotherhood of St. John," and since then, and 
 up to 1535, under the title, the " St. John's Order of 
 Freemasonry" or " Masonic Brotherhood." 
 
 This Society* was reformed and re-arranged in 
 the year 17 17, the generally accepted modern date of 
 the materialistic and non-mystic Masons. It became 
 more atheistic in its views, and more democratic 
 in its tendencies. Amongst other deeply interesting 
 matter, the "Charter of Cologne" contains the 
 following passage : 
 
 The Brotherhood, or the order of Freemason Brothers, 
 bound together according to St. John's holy rules, traces its 
 origin neither from the Templars nor from any other spiritual 
 or temporal Knightly Order, but it is older than all similar 
 Orders, and has existed in Palestine and Greece, as well as 
 in various parts of the Roman Empire. Before the Crusades 
 our Brotherhood arose ; at a time when in consequence of 
 the strife between the sects teaching Christian morals, a 
 small number of the initiated — entrusted with the true 
 
 * The present Freemason body. 
 
MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 teaching of virtue, and the sensible exposition of the secret 
 teaching — separated themselves from the mass.* 
 
 According to the record, the following reason was given 
 for the adoption of the name : The Masters of this confeder- 
 ation were called the St. John's Brethren, as they had chosen 
 John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Light of the World 
 . . . as their original and example, f 
 
 There is a curious similarity between this docu- 
 ment in its phrasing and style, and the remarks made 
 in the book by Weisse, in his Der Rosenkreutzer in 
 seiner Bl'dsse, some passages of which have already 
 been summarised. 
 
 Yet another well-known Masonic authority bears 
 witness to the value of the Cologne Record. Thus 
 Mackenzie writes : 
 
 The documents are still preserved in one of the Lodges 
 at Namur. They have been very hotly debated. On the 
 one hand, Oliver, Reghellini, and some others treat them as 
 authentic, and the antiquaries of the University of Leyden 
 certify that the paper on which the register of the Lodge at 
 the Hague is written is of the same kind as that used in 
 Holland in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Now 
 this register refers to the Charter of Cologne as being 
 in existence, so that the fraud, if a fraud, is two centuries 
 old.J 
 
 Our chief interest in all this detailed evidence lies 
 in the ever-recurring testimony that it bears to that 
 older Fraternity, which was the inspiring body at the 
 
 * Freimaurer Lexicon, Gi.^\^&{]. Q,.). Berlin; 1818. 
 + J. G. YxxiA^i History of Freemasonry, p. 721. Translated from 
 and German ed. with preface by G. von Dalen. London ; 1866. 
 % The Royal Masonic Cydo^eedia, ■^. 126. London | 1877. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 55 
 
 back. But we must now turn to some of the Societies 
 which had " Unknown Heads," as given in our list. 
 
 J. M. Ragon, in his Orthodoxie Maqonnique, gives 
 the following interesting account of one of these 
 bodies, more information on which will be added from 
 other sources. 
 
 Order of the Architects of Africa, or the African Brothers 
 {1767). 
 
 This Order was composed of educated and well- 
 principled brothers. Their lodges, in Europe, were all 
 closed, excepting perhaps that of Constantinople (at 
 Berlin). 
 
 Only one of their Grand-Masters . was known ; this was 
 the councillor of war, Kbppen. 
 
 Their first degree offered a more extensive and complete 
 instruction than all the degrees of the Scotch systems together. 
 They said that the Lodges of St. John neglected the great 
 end, and that instruction was hardly to be had there, and 
 that the Strict Observance did not know the grounds of the 
 continuation of the Masonic Order. They occupied them- 
 selves with hieroglyphics, especially with those relating to 
 Freemasonry, which they sought to know well. They made 
 a mystery of their goal up to the seventh degree, which 
 could only be gained by zeal, perseverance and discretion. 
 Their secondary occupations were the sciences, especially 
 history and antiquities, the study of which they considered 
 indispensable for the true Freemason. 
 
 Their first degree was symbolically called the Architect 
 or Apprentice of Egyptian secrets. 
 
 They called themselves the Africans,* because their 
 
 * This tradition came from Egypt and passing along North Africa, 
 swept over into Spain, and was at the foundation of the great Arabic 
 mystic development which has made Spain immortal. The true name 
 
56 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 studies began with the history of the Egyptians, in whose 
 mysteries they found indications of Freemasonry, although 
 they placed its origin much later, as to which the Crusades 
 gave them no light. 
 
 Their customs were simple and noble. They never laid 
 any stress on decorations, aprons, ribbons, jewels, etc., but 
 they liked a certain luxury, and sententious inscriptions with 
 a sublime but hidden meaning. In their assemblies they 
 read treatises and communicated to each other the result of 
 their researches. 
 
 Their banquets were simple, decorum prevailed, and 
 instructive and scientific discourses were given at them. 
 
 Admissions were given without any fees. Earnest 
 brothers who fell into distress received much assistance. 
 
 They have published many important documents in 
 Germany on Freemasonry. 
 
 This Order was established in Prussia, in 1767, with the 
 assent of Frederick II., called the Great. 
 
 Its degrees, to the number of eleven, were divided into 
 two temples, viz. : 
 
 First Temple. 
 
 1. Apprentice. 
 
 2. Companion. 
 
 3. Master. 
 
 Second Temple. 
 
 4. Architect, or Apprentice of the Egyptian secrets 
 
 (Manes Musae). 
 
 5. Initiate in the Egyptian secrets. 
 
 6. Cosmopolitan Brother. 
 
 7. Christian Philosopher (Bossinius). 
 
 8. Master of the Egyptian secrets, Alethophilote 
 ^ (Friend of Truth). 
 
 of this African tradition is Manichseism, and in the Church of North 
 Africa the Gnostic teaching lived for many a century : and among the 
 Copts the tradition yet endures. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 57 
 
 Higher Degrees. 
 9. Armiger. 
 
 10. Miles. 
 
 11. Eques. 
 
 The Grand Chapter gave each year, during the life of 
 Frederick II., a gold medal of 50 ducats as a prize for the 
 best treatise or discourse. 
 
 In 1806 only one Chapter of this system remained, that 
 of Berlin (' Constantinople '). 
 
 On the supposed Origin of the Order, Ragon 
 
 writes as follows : 
 
 When Frederick II. came to the throne, seeing that 
 Freemasonry was no longer what it had been, and 
 appreciating what it might be, he conceived the plan of an 
 Inner Order which might at the same time take the place of 
 a Masonic Academy. He made choice of a certain number 
 of Masons capable of comprehending his ideas, and charged 
 them with the organisation of this body. Among these 
 were to be noticed the brothers Stahl, de Gone, Meyerotto 
 and du Bosc. They instituted the Order under the name 
 of an extinct society. The Architects of Africa, and estab- 
 Hshed statutes in accordance with the views of the King, 
 who on his side granted privileges, and in 1768 had erected 
 in Silesia, by his architect Meil, a building specially designed 
 for the Grand Chapter, and endowed it with an ample fund, 
 with a choice library and rich furniture, the whole being of 
 an elegance worthy of the Order and of the King. 
 
 This Order, without pretending to dominion, teaching 
 tolerance, professing the primitive principles of Free- 
 masonry, and making a special study of its history, 
 prospered in silence and in complete freedom. Its chief 
 statutes were to fear God only, to honour the King and to 
 be discreet, to exercise universal tolerance towards all 
 Masonic sects without ever affiliating itself to any. It was 
 
58 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 for this reason that they never submitted to the act of 
 obedience of the Baron de Hund, notwithstanding all the 
 entreaties that were made to them to do so. In the 
 admission of candidates they observed the strictest caution. 
 It is said that Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick was refused 
 because he meddled with sectarian affairs. They devoted 
 themselves to active researches into the history of the 
 mysteries, of secret societies and their various branches, and 
 cultivated the sciences, chiefly mathematics. In their works, 
 carried on often in Latin, reigned morality, a high tone, 
 a solid and unostentatious teaching. 
 
 Their library and their archives obtained through the 
 protection of the King and of persons of distinction, among 
 others the Prince von Lichtenstein at Vienna, some real 
 treasures of manuscripts and documents, which no Masonic 
 branch can boast. (Dkouverte sur le Systime de POrdre des 
 Architectes Africains, Constantinople. Berlin ; in 8vo, 51 pp., 
 1806.) This article is taken from the Masonic library of 
 the very kind brother, Th. Juge.* 
 
 Few monarchs have more thoroughly protected 
 the Mystic Schools within the Masonic body than 
 Frederick II., King of Prussia, well named "The 
 Great." Not onl}- did he protect them, but he also 
 actively sympathised with them. While still Crown 
 Prince, he was initiated as a Mason at Brunswick in 
 August, 1738, and was from that period the staunch 
 protector of the Masonic Fraternity ; nor did he omit 
 to penetrate very deeply into the early traditions of 
 Masonry, far more so, indeed, than many who have 
 fewer duties to engage their time. 
 
 Frederick the Great was, however, by no means the 
 
 * Ragon, op. cit. , pp. 239, et seq. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 59 
 
 vague and dreamy mystic of popular representation ; 
 his Academy and Schools were the centres of the 
 most brilliant intellects of the period, while the 
 choice of his friends, literary, philosophical, and 
 mystic, testifies to the breadth of his knowledge, 
 and it also illustrates the manifold sympathies of 
 his nature, both as soldier and mystic, philosopher 
 and scholar ; though not saintly, by any means, 
 he was thoroughly appreciative of ideals that were 
 beyond him. 
 
 His sympathy with mystics is evidenced by his 
 selection of a librarian, for he gave that post at the 
 Royal Public Library in Berlin, with the title of 
 Academician, to Dom Antoine Joseph Pernetty (or 
 Pernety), a man who had been a Benedictine monk,* 
 but having become — like many others — dissatisfied 
 with the Order, he applied to the Pope for a 
 dispensation from his vows. This was no obstacle in 
 the eyes of the King, deeply interested as he was in 
 the researches of this well-known Hermetist and 
 Alchemist. 
 
 That the opinions of Dom Pernety were publicly 
 known is demonstrated by a writer of the period, 
 who says : 
 
 A remarkable trait in the character of this Acade- 
 mician was, that he believed in the philosopher's stone, 
 
 * Benedictine Monk of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, Abbot of 
 Burgel in Thuringia, Librarian of the King of Prussia : author of Les 
 Fables igyptiennes et gricques devoileis et riduites au mime Principe, I^ 
 Dietionnaire Mytho-Hermitique, and other treatises on Alchemy. 
 
6o MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 the mysteries of the Cabala, apparitions, patagonians, 
 witcheries, enchantments, the race of giants, etc. But, 
 notwithstanding this inconceivable and ridiculous weakness, 
 he was beloved by everyone, and the more as, to his 
 other excellent qualities, he joined that of the most perfect 
 discretion in regard to such affairs as were at any time 
 confided to his secrecy ; never did a word from his lips 
 give room for the smallest explanation or disagreement.* 
 
 Such is the comment on this mystic's character 
 by one who, while adverse to his opinions, neverthe- 
 less renders justice to a personality which some 
 traduced. 
 
 Dom Pernety was for some time in personal 
 relationship with M. de St. Germain ; and later on, 
 he founded the Acad^mie des Illumines d' Avignon, 
 which was essentially Hermetic in its aims, and had 
 also a close connection with the Swedish system. 
 This was a secret body, but it was also under the 
 general Masonic regulations. It was also in close 
 union with the followers of Martinez Pasquales, and 
 that bond has been kept up, for some of the treatises 
 written by Dom Pernety are now being published by 
 the Martinists in America. To pursue this interesting 
 topic would, however, lead us too far from our 
 " Afrikanische Bauherren " and their protector, the 
 King of Prussia, with whom our attention is at 
 present engaged. 
 
 The most succinct account of the opinions held by 
 
 ' Original Anecdotes of Frederic 11. , JCing of Prussia, translated 
 from the French of Dieudonn^ Thiebault, Professor of Belles-Lettres 
 in the Royal Academy of Berlin, II., p. 383. London, 1805. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 6 1 
 
 the leading Freemasons in Germany at this juncture 
 is given by Findel, who, although a pronounced 
 antagonist, shows very lucidly the underlying mystic 
 basis on which the outward Masonic forms were 
 supported, and it is of value to these researches to 
 quote his testimony in full, illustrating, as it unwit- 
 tingly does, the hypothesis put forward, namely, that 
 all the societies similar to the African Brothers, the 
 Fratres Lucis and others of like calibre, were but the 
 outward manifestations of hidden forces which were 
 attempting to indoctrinate the whole Masonic body 
 with true spiritual, mental and moral mystic know- 
 ledge. Says Findel : 
 
 The Grand Lodge of Germany* further assumes,! that 
 in the Building Fraternities J of the Middle Ages, besides 
 
 * This Lodge " Zu den drei Weltkugeln " (The Three Globes) was 
 established by Frederick II., who was its first Grand Master. It 
 became the Grand Mother Lodge of Germany in 1744. It was also 
 the protectress of the mystic element in Masonry for many years. 
 
 + Findel had been disputing the point held by the "Grand Lodge," 
 viz. , that the links of true Masonry are to be found not in England, but 
 in Scotland. 
 
 J " It has been argued with much force and apparent truth, that 
 the building art was, in times of remotest antiquity, regarded as sacred, 
 and existed under special concession and care of the native priesthood 
 where it was practised, but this allegation cannot be accepted without 
 qualification." Fort (George F.), TAe Early History and Antiquities 
 of Freemasonry. Philadelphia, U.S.A., 1875, p. 363. And again, 
 Mr. Fort tells us (p. 374) that in the years 643 and 729, " the 
 inhabitants of Como had already attained to so high a degree of 
 .skill as to be designated Magistri Comacini, or Masters of Como." He 
 further points out that their knowledge was obtained firom the East, and 
 directly from Byzantium, and then goes on to say " the secret arts thus 
 obtained by the Teutonic races were perpetuated in fraternities or 
 Guilds, whose existence ascends to the oldest forms of Germanic 
 government." 
 
62 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 their art, a secret science was carried on ; the substratum of 
 which was a real Christian mystery, serving as a preparatory 
 or elementary school and stepping-stone to that and the St. 
 John's Masonry, which latter was not a mere system of 
 moral philosophy, but closely allied and connected with this 
 mystery. It was conceded, that the Freemasonry of our 
 days (St. John's Freemasonry) sprang from the Building 
 Fraternities of the Middle Ages, but at the same time 
 asserted that in the early ages there existed a secret society 
 which strove to compass the perfecting of the human race, 
 precisely in the same manner, and employing similar means, 
 as did the Swedish system, which in fact only followed in 
 the wake of its predecessor, being concealed in the Building 
 Fraternities, so that our society did not rise from them, but 
 made itself a way through them. The secret science, the 
 mystery, was very ancient indeed. This mystery formed the 
 secret of the Higher Degrees of the Rite, which were not 
 merely kept hidden from the rest of the confederation, but 
 also from the members of the inferior degrees of the system 
 itself. This mystery was fully confirmed by documents, 
 which the Grand Lodge of Germany had in its keeping. 
 . . . . This secret legend is the same as that of the 
 Carpocratians, which is that Jesus chose some of the 
 Apostles and confided to them a secret science, which waS 
 transmitted afterwards to the priests of the Order of the 
 Knights-Templars, and through them to the Building 
 Fraternities, down to the present Freemasons of the 
 Swedish Rite. . . . The Swedish system teaches that 
 there have been men of all nations who have worshipped 
 God in spirit and in truth, and surrounded by idolatry and 
 superstition have yet preserved their purer faith. Separate 
 from the world, and unknown to it, this Wisdom has been 
 preserved by them and handed down as a mystery. 
 
 In the time of the Jews they had made use of the 
 Essenes, in which sect Jesus was brought up, and had spent 
 the greater part of His life. Having been instructed by 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 63 
 
 Him in a more perfect knowledge of Holy things, they had 
 amidst persecution taught in silence that which had been 
 committed to their keeping.* At the period of the Saracens 
 and the Crusades they were so greatly oppressed that they 
 must ultimately have sought for protection from without. 
 As fate, however, would have it, seven of them, Syriac 
 Christians, pursued by unbelievers near Bastrum, were 
 rescued by the Knights-Templars, and afterwards taken 
 under their protection. When they had lived there for a 
 certain time they begged for permission to dwell with the 
 Canons or Prebendaries of Jerusalem, as the life there led 
 agreed better with their own inclinations and habits. This 
 was accorded them, and Andreas Montebarrensis effected a 
 union of these Syrians with the Canons, to whom, out of 
 gratitude, they imparted all their science, and so completely 
 did they make the priests of the order the depositories of 
 their secrets that they kept them and handed them over to 
 others under certain conditions. 
 
 Thus, this secret knowledge, which was continually being 
 added to, lived on in the very heart of the Order of Knights- 
 Templars till its abolition. The clergy were dispersed with 
 the persecution that ensued, but as the secular arm did not 
 touch them as it did the Knights, they managed to rescue 
 many of their secret writings, and when the Knights sought 
 refuge in Scotland, they founded a chapter at Aberdeen, the 
 first Prior of which was Petrus de Bononia. The science 
 was disseminated from this place, but very cautiously, first to 
 Italy, then to the extreme North (Sweden and Russia) and 
 France. In Italy Abbot Severin had been the guardian of 
 the True Science, t 
 
 * Compare with this statement, that a comparatively small body of 
 men had received the inner teaching, and had a mission to hand it on, 
 what was quoted about the "World- Wise Men" in the Theosophical 
 Review, xxiii. 354. 
 
 + Findel (J. G.), History of Freemasonry, translated from the 
 second German edition, by C. von Dalen, pp. 316-318. London, 1866. 
 
64 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Findel quotes all this histoiy in a purely sceptical 
 way, with adverse remarks of his own of doubt and 
 derision. Nevertheless the history of this ancient 
 secret teaching is true, and it coincides in its details 
 with accounts which come to us from other sources. 
 In order that the " Hidden Sources " may thus be 
 more clearly kept in view, we will quote the words of 
 a well-known Masonic writer, Mr. Lawrie : 
 
 Although it will be acknowledged by every unbiassed 
 reader, that Freemasonry has a wonderful resemblance to 
 the Eleusinian and Dionysian mysteries, the fraternity of 
 Ionian architects and the Essenian and Pythagorean 
 associations, yet some may be disposed to question the 
 identity of these institutions, because they had different 
 names, and because some usages were observed by one 
 which were neglected by another. But these circumstances 
 of dissimilarity arise from those necessary changes which are 
 superinduced upon every institution, by a spirit of innov- 
 ation, by the caprice of individuals, and by the various 
 revolutions in civilised society. Every alteration or im- 
 provement in philosophical systems, or ceremonial institu- 
 tions, generally produces a corresponding variation in their 
 name, deduced from the nature of the improvement, or 
 from the name of the innovator. 
 
 The different associations, for example, whose nature 
 and tendency we have been considering, received their 
 names from circumstances merely casual, and often of 
 trifling consideration ; though all of them were established 
 for the same purpose, and derived from the same source. 
 When the mysteries of the Essenes were imported by 
 Pythagoras into Italy, without undergoing much variation, 
 they were there denominated the mysteries of Pythagoras ; 
 and, in our own day, they are called the secrets of Free- 
 masonry, because many of their symbols are derived from 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 65 
 
 the art of building, and because they are believed to have 
 been invented by an association of architects, who were 
 anxious to preserve, among themselves, the knowledge 
 which they had acquired.* 
 
 The Dionysia, or Mysteries of Bacchus, were intimately 
 connected with those of Ceres and perhaps still more with 
 Freemasonry, says Mr. Lawrie ; the rites came from Egypt, 
 and there according to Plutarch Ceres was the Egyptian 
 Isis, and Bacchus was Osiris. 
 
 The Dionysian artificers or architects were an association 
 of scientific men, who were incorporated by command of the 
 Kings of Pergamus into a corporate body, some three hundred 
 years B.C. They had the city of Tecs given to them. The 
 members of this association which was intimately connected 
 with the Dionysian mysteries, were distinguished from the 
 uninitiated inhabitants of Teos, by their Science, and by 
 words and signs by which they could recognize their 
 Brethren of the Order. Like Freemasons they were 
 divided into Lodges which were characterised by different 
 names. 
 
 From some circumstances which are stated in these 
 inscriptions, but particularly from the name of one of 
 the Lodges, it is highly probable that Attalus, King of 
 Pergamus, was a member of the Dionysian Fraternity. 
 
 Such is the nature of that association of architects, who 
 erected those splendid edifices in Ionia, whose ruins even 
 afford us instruction, while they excite our surprise. If it be 
 possible to prove the identity of any two societies, from the 
 coincidence of their external forms, we are authorised to 
 conclude that the Fraternity of the Ionian architects and 
 the Fraternity of Freemasons, are exactly the same; and 
 as the former practised the mysteries of Bacchus and Ceres, 
 
 * Symbols derived from the art of building, were also employed by 
 the Pyth^oreans, for conveying instruction to those who were initiated 
 iotp their fraternity. See Proclus in Eucl. lib. XI. def. 2, etc, 
 
 E 
 
66 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 several of which we have shown to be similar to the 
 mysteries of Masonry, we may safely affirm, that, in their 
 internal as well as external procedure, the Society of 
 Freemasons resembles the Dionysiacs of Asia Minor. 
 
 The opinion, therefore, of Freemasons, that their Order 
 existed, and flourished at the building of Solomon's Temple, 
 is by no means so pregnant with absurdity, as some men 
 would wish us to believe. 
 
 We have already shown, from authentic sources of 
 information, that the mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus were 
 instituted about four hundred years before the reign of 
 Solomon ; * and there are strong reasons for believing that 
 even the association of the Dionysian architects existed 
 before the building of the Temple. 
 
 It was not, indeed, till about three hundred years before 
 the birth of Christ, that they were incorporated at Taos, 
 under the Kings of Pergamus ; but it is universally allowed, 
 that they arose long before their settlement in Ionia, and, 
 what is more to our present purpose, that they existed in the 
 very land of Judea. 
 
 The difference in the ceremonial observances of these 
 institutions, may be accounted for nearly upon the same 
 principles. From the ignorance, or superior sagacity of 
 those who presided over the ancient fraternities, some 
 ceremonies would be insisted upon more than others, some 
 of less moment would be exalted into consequence, while 
 others of greater importance would be depressed into 
 obscurity. In process of time, therefore, some trifling 
 changes would be effected upon these ceremonies, some 
 rites abolished, and some introduced. The chief difference, 
 however, between the ancient and modern mysteries, is in 
 
 * According to Playfair's Chronology, the Temple of Solomon was 
 begun in 1016 and finished in 1008, B.C. The Eleusinian mysteries 
 were introduced into Athens in 1356, B.C., a considerable time after 
 their institution. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 67 
 
 those points which concern religion. But this arises from 
 the great changes which have been produced in reUgious 
 knowledge. It cannot be supposed that the rites of the 
 Egyptian, Jewish, and Grecian religions should be observed 
 by those who profess only the religion of Christ ; or that we 
 should pour out libations to Ceres and Bacchus, who 
 acknowledge no heavenly superior, but the true and the 
 living God.* 
 
 The connection-f- of the Afrikanische Bauherren 
 with the Templars and their secret traditions is 
 common to all those mystic associations I who 
 
 * Lawrie, (Alexander), TAe History of Freemasonry, drawn from 
 authentic sources of information, with an account of the Grand Lodge 
 of Scotland, p. 28 et seq. Edinburgh, 1804. 
 
 t They have both a common bond in Manichzeism, the Templars 
 were ' ' Sons of the Widow " in the earlier times, as well as the African 
 Brothers. Both bodies again hold the Egyptian line of tradition, and 
 were versed in its grand symbology and hieroglyph. — Lenning (C). 
 Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, I., p. 7. Leipzig, 1863. 
 
 X " There is no portion of our annals so worthy of investigation as 
 that which is embraced by the middle ages of Christendom when the 
 whole of Europe was perambulated by our Brethren, in associations of 
 travelling artizans, under the name of ' Free and Accepted Masons,' 
 for the purpose of erecting religious edifices. There is not a country of 
 Europe, which does not at this day contain honourable evidences of the 
 skill and industry of our Masonic ancestors. I therefore propose, in the 
 present article, to give a brief sketch of the origin, the progress, and the 
 character of these travelling architects. Clavel, in his Histoire 
 Pittoresque de la Franc-Mafonnerie, has traced the organisation of these 
 associations to the collegia artificum, or colleges of artizans, which were 
 instituted at Rome by Numa, in the year B.C. 714, and whose members 
 were originally Greeks, imported by this law-giver for the purpose of 
 embellishing the city over which he reigned. These associations existed 
 in Rome in the time of the Emperors. They were endowed with certain 
 privileges peculiar to themselves, such as a government by their own 
 statutes, the power of making contracts as a corporation, and an 
 immunity from taxation. Their meetings were held in private, like the 
 esoteric schools of the philosophers. Their presiding officers were called 
 
68 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 claimed, like them, to have deeper truths and more 
 spiritual knowledge in charge for the human race. 
 
 Seeing, then, that the African Brothers have this 
 link with other mystic bodies, we can investigate the 
 details of their system with interest, and we find that 
 the members of this school were almost without 
 exception learned men and persons of position and 
 rank, often selected by the King as suitable members. 
 Devoted to mystic research, in general they paid the 
 closest attention to symbolism and hieroglyphs. 
 
 The description given of them by Ragon differs 
 somewhat in detail to that given by Lenning, which 
 runs as follows : 
 
 The double character of the Order confirms what we 
 know about the tendency and ritual of the first four grades. 
 They are as follows : 
 
 Grade i. Pupil of the Egyptian secrets (Menes Musae).* 
 Here the doctrines of the true Religion, as concealed under 
 the hieroglyphs which were already in the Egyptian 
 Mysteries, were brought forward for the pupil. The first 
 degree shows already that Moses was held as an important 
 teacher of these doctrines even to the Egyptians. 
 
 Grade 2. The Initiates of the ^gaeic secrets. Here 
 Moses was presented as one of the greatest of the Wise 
 Men of the world, who instructed the Jews in the 
 
 " magistri." They were divided into three classes, corresponding with 
 the three degrees of Freemasonry, and they admitted into their ranks as 
 honorary members persons who were not by profession operative 
 Masons. Finally, they used a symbolic language drawn from the 
 implements of masonry, and they were in possession of a secret mode of 
 recognition." — Mackey's Lexicon of Freemasonry. Charleston, 184S, 
 p. 316- 
 
 * Ragon gives " Manes" where Lenning uses " Menes." 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 69 
 
 doctrines of religion from his knowledge of nature and the 
 world. 
 
 Grade 3. The Cosmopolitans (or citizens of the world) 
 had for its object the necessity for self-knowledge, because 
 most ethical teachers failed in teaching this, for they 
 depicted all human nature as being utterly corrupt, while 
 instead of this, human nature was capable through self- 
 knowledge of, and self-respect for, its destiny, of becoming a 
 great instrument for the work of God. 
 
 Grade 4. The Christian world-wise men (or Bossonians) 
 — was the expounding of the intimate connection between 
 man and the world, so that to call each of them the 
 ' Temple,' and to call Christ the Foundation Stone was the 
 True Religion. 
 
 Grade 5. Was practically that of the Alethophiles, or 
 Friends of Truth, which was identical with the society of 
 that name, and whose tendency is expressed in the name. 
 
 After these five, or lower student-grades, there follow 
 three higher, or inner grades, of which, however, only the 
 names are known in the outer world. According to what is 
 told, they were the same as the Freimaurerei Ritterwesen. 
 . . . The names are variously given and are of but little 
 consequence, this Order was never a very large one, for the 
 qualifications as to learning and education were somewhat 
 restrictive at that period. It appears to have had its Lodges 
 in Berlin, and also in Oberlavsitz ; there were some of the 
 same Lodges in Cologne, Worms, and also in Paris under 
 the guidance of a certain Kiihn. He came into contact 
 with Baron von Hund and his system of 'The Strict 
 Observance' of which Von Koppen was a devoted 
 member.* 
 
 The brief mention of the highest grade, the 
 Knights of Silence, or Everlasting Silence, is 
 
 * Lenning (C), Allgemeines Handimch der Freimaurerei, pp. 7-8. 
 Leipzig, 1863. 
 
70 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 interesting, for it has reference to an edict which was 
 published from the "Unknown Heads" suspending 
 all studies and all work for a time — the limit of time 
 was not specified. There will be more, however, to 
 be said on this point at a later date. The Minister of 
 War, Herr von Koppen, was aided in his work of 
 organisation in the African Brothers by Herr von 
 Hymmen, a Councillor of Justice in Berlin ; both men 
 were Rosicrucians, and von Hymmen was an adherent 
 of the Baron von Gugomas, another celebrated mystic 
 in the last century. 
 
 Von Koppen and von Hymmen published the 
 well-known work. Grata Repoa, or Initiation in the 
 Ancient Secret Society 0/ the Egyptian Priests* 
 
 Another leader of this confraternity was Karl du 
 Bosc, one of the chamberlains at the Prussian Court. 
 He was also connected with the Rosicrucians and 
 some of the other mystic sects. It confirms the 
 accuracy of our hypothesis when we find all these 
 public ofiRcers working harmoniously in different 
 organisations, aiding all for the general weal, knowing 
 well that each Society represented, as it were, one 
 facet of the precious stone of truth which lay hidden 
 securely beneath the surface. 
 
 Turning now to the links which connect the 
 African Brothers with other mystic fraternities we 
 shall find the Deutsche Ritter, or Kreuz-Herren, akin 
 to them ;' the origin of the last-mentioned association 
 
 * Crata Repoa, oder Einweihungen in der alien geheimen 
 Gesellschaft der Aegyptien Priester. Berlin, 1770. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. 7 1 
 
 can be traced back to the year 1 190, where their 
 history is closely allied with another interesting 
 body, viz., the Maltheser-Ritter, or Knights of Malta ; 
 coalescing again with these we find the well-known 
 Johanniter-Ritter, or Knights of St. John, whose 
 history is so intimately interwoven with the Johannite 
 Masonry, dedicated as it was to the two St. John's, 
 the Baptist and the Evangelist. 
 
 Further, we find a curious secret sect existing in 
 Africa of which Mollien gives a most interesting 
 sketch. He calls this sect " Les Almousseri," and 
 connects their community with the Freemasons as 
 follows : 
 
 In Foutatoro, and among the Moors, there exists a sort 
 of freemasonry, the secret of which has never been revealed ; 
 the adept is shut up for eight days in a hut, he is allowed to. 
 eat but once a day, he sees no person excepting the slave 
 appointed to carry him his food ; at the end of that period 
 a number of men in masks present themselves, and employ 
 all possible means to put his courage to the proof; if he 
 acquits himself with honour he is admitted. The initiated 
 pretend that at this moment they are enabled to behold all 
 the kingdoms of the earth, that the future is unveiled to 
 them, and that thenceforward heaven grants all their 
 prayers. In the villages where persons of this fraternity 
 reside, they perform the functions of conjurors, and are 
 called Almousseri. One day Boukari told me, after attesting 
 the truth of what he was about to say by the most solemn 
 oaths, that being in a canoe with one of these men, there 
 fell such a heavy shower of rain that he would not depart ; 
 yielding, however, to the wishes of the Almousseri, he set 
 sail ; " torrents of rain fell on all sides," added Boukari, 
 "but our bark remained perfectly dry, and a favourable 
 
72 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 wind swelled our sails. I asked this Almousseri to explain , 
 his secret, but he answered that if he revealed it his brethren 
 would infallibly destroy him."* 
 
 From many sources it is evident that scattered 
 communities -f- with mystic knowledge, existed in 
 various parts of Northern Africa. Such communities 
 having nothing to do, of course, with the fetish- 
 worship of the negro tribes, but adhere to the 
 Egyptian tradition of mystic teaching, for they are 
 off-shoots of the Manich^an and Coptic teachers 
 who spread the secret doctrines of Manes in Northern 
 Africa ; his disciples carried on this line of work 
 immediately after his death. They kept up also a 
 communication with the mystics in Europe, for M. de 
 St. Germain at one period of his travels was in 
 Northern Africa. 
 
 Some reference has been made to the fifth grade 
 of the African Bauherren system, namely the 
 " Master of the Egyptian Secrets " ; " Alethophilote " 
 or " Friend of Truth." This grade is given as the 
 eighth by Ragon,J and Lenning in his encyclopaedia 
 says : 
 
 There appears to have been some connection between 
 this grade and the little known society of the "Aletho- 
 philotes " in! Berlin. This is probably the earlier sect which 
 
 * MoUien (G.), Travels in the Interior of Africa, translated from 
 the French, edited by T. E. Bowdich, p. i6i. London, 1820. 
 
 t These communities were chiefly Moors and Arabians, and we 
 touch the Sufite mystic tradition along this line. 
 
 X See The Theosophical Review, xxiii., 358. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF MASONRY. •] ■>> 
 
 is alluded to sometimes, and it was founded, so far as is 
 known, by the Graf von Manteuffel in 1736.* 
 
 The details of this system will be of interest to 
 students, as it throws some light upon the older 
 association, of which very little is told ; they are 
 given by Kundmann as follows : 
 
 I. Let Truth be the sole aim of your understanding 
 and of your will. 
 
 II. Consider nothing true, consider nothing false, if 
 you are not convinced about it by adequate reasons. 
 
 III. Be satisfied with this, that you know and love the 
 Truth ; seek to impart it, that is to make it known and 
 agreeable to your fellow-citizens. He who buries his 
 experience, buries a thing which has been committed to 
 his care for the furtherance of the glory of the Highest ; 
 and he thus diverts its use from humanity, which might 
 have profited therefrom. 
 
 IV. Do not deny your love and help to those who 
 know the Truth and are seeking it themselves, or who are 
 honestly trying to defend it. It would be too disgraceful 
 and contrary to the actual vocation of an Alethophilote 
 (Friend of Truth) if you were to deny protection and 
 defence to those whose object is one with yours. 
 
 V. Never contradict a truth when you see that you are 
 being overborne by others whose insight is more keen than 
 yours. An Alethophilote would be unworthy of his name if 
 he undertook to combat the Truth out of pride or conceit, 
 or from any other unreasonable cause. 
 
 VI. Be pitiful with those who either are ignorant of 
 the Truth, or who have incorrect perceptions of it ; instruct 
 
 * Lenning (C), AlUgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, i., 15. 
 Leipzig, 1863. 
 
74 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 them without bitterness, and seek to bring them into the 
 right way solely by the strength of your arguments and by 
 no other way. You would disgrace the Truth and make it 
 appear suspicious if you were to fight for it and defend it 
 with any other weapons but those which Reason gives into 
 your hand.* 
 
 It is an interesting, but somewhat difficult, matter 
 to understand the reason why such bitter war was 
 carried on against bodies of men with tenets so high 
 and aims so pure. As each of these semi-Masonic 
 sects is investigated the astonishment of the student 
 increases at the groundless accusations with which the 
 ordinary historian is content. 
 
 In the passage quoted from Findel, he gives the 
 traditions and Masonic tenets held by the Grand 
 Lodge of Germany, and also by the Afrikanische 
 Bauherren, these bodies being practically identical, 
 the latter being but a more advanced and occult 
 section of the Mother-Lodge. In the passage just 
 referred to the Carpocratians are particularly 
 alluded to ; this Gnostic sect is of especial interest 
 to students of Theosophy, seeing that metempsychosis 
 — or re-incarnation — was one of their tenets ; and if 
 we summarise a well-known authority on the subject 
 we get an identity of view which is remarkable. 
 
 These sectarians called themselves Gnostics. In most 
 respects the teaching of their Founder coincides with that 
 of Basilides. He held there was one principal virtue from 
 
 *Kundmann, Die hShen und niedern Schultn Deutschlands, p. 769. 
 Breslau, 1741. 
 
HIDDEN SOURCES OF IVfASONRY. 75 
 
 whom proceeded all other virtues and angels who founded 
 this world ; that Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin, but a 
 man truly born of the seed of Joseph, though better than 
 other men in integrity of Life. . . Virtue was given Him 
 by the Great First Cause whereby He retained the 
 recollection of things seen in a former state of existence. . 
 . . Metempsychosis and the pre-existence of the soul was 
 an integral part of the system.* 
 
 There is much more of interest in the summary 
 given for the student of Modern Gnosticism or 
 Theosophia, and it can also be readily seen that if the 
 tenets of the Carpocratians were held by the African 
 Brothers, the Templars and other mystic sects, then 
 there was indeed a vital necessity for secrecy and 
 silence, since these heretical views brought about the 
 destruction of the Templars in the Middle Ages, and 
 would have called forth the direst wrath not only 
 of the Catholic, but also the Protestant authorities. 
 
 * Blunt (John Henry, D.D.), Dictionary of Sects and Heresies, 
 p. 102. London, 1891. See also Mead (G. R. S.), "Among the 
 Gnostics of the First Two Centuries," Lucifer, xx. 207. 
 
THE TRADITIONS OF 
 
 THE TEMPLARS REVIVED IN 
 
 MASONRY. 
 
 The Rite of the Strict Observance. , 
 
 Ancient history is like a night-landscape, over which we 
 grope, vaguely discerning a few outlines in the general gloom, 
 and happy if here or there the works of a particular author 
 or a ruin or work of art momentarily illumine, like a lightning 
 flash in the dark, the particular field which we are exploring. 
 — Philo about the Contemplative Life, p. 349, F. C. 
 
 CONYBEARE. 
 
 Dupes or charlatans ! Such is the stricture of the 
 Masonic authorities on the leading spirits of the Strict 
 Observance ; but as the student wades through the 
 pile of polemical literature which has heaped itself 
 round this particular body, he is moved to ask : Is it 
 possible that all the honesty and wisdom is with the 
 critics ; and is it rational to suppose that in this wide- 
 spread development of mystic Masonry there existed 
 no one clear-sighted enough to do within the body the 
 
 76 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 'J'J 
 
 work which the " enemy at the gate " ever arrogates 
 to himself as his special function, the work of healthy- 
 investigation ? 
 
 One well-known authority opens fire with the 
 following critical broadside : 
 
 Of all the wonderful perversions of Freemasonry which 
 owe their origin to the fervid imaginings of our brethren of the 
 last century, none can compare in point of interest with the 
 system of the " Strict Observance."* . . . The whole system 
 was based upon the fiction that at the time of the destruction 
 of the Templars, a certain number of Knights took refuge 
 in Scotland, and there preserved the existence of the Order. 
 The sequence of Grand-Masters was presumed never to have 
 been broken, and a list of those rulers in regular succession 
 was known to the initiates, but the identity of the actual 
 Grand-Master was always kept during his life-time a secret 
 from everyone except his immediate confidants — hence the 
 term " Unknown Superiors." 
 
 In order to secure their perfect security these Knights 
 are said to have joined the Guilds of Masons in Scotland, 
 and thus to have given rise to the Fraternity of Freemasons, t 
 
 The trail of the materialistic serpent is traceable 
 in his valuable work, although the author is in advance 
 
 * " The mysteries of Mithras were solemnized in a consecrated 
 cavern, on December 2Sth, which was the date fixed for the celebration. 
 They began from the moment that the priests at midnight saw the 
 constellation of Virgo appear, which on setting ushered in the year by 
 calling forth the sun, which appeared as a son supporting itself on its 
 Mother's lap. 
 
 "Some Masonic Systems have preserved the Magian degree, it is 
 the last in the Strict Observance." Acerrellos (R. S.), Die Freimau- 
 rerei in ihrem Zusammenhange mit den Religionen der alien Aegypter, 
 derjuden, und der Ckrislen, I., p. 293. Leipzig, 1836. 
 
 t Gould (R. F.), Hisl. of Freemasonry. V., p. 99. London, 
 1886. 
 
78 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 of some German critics by giving credit for honest 
 motives to one at least of the leaders of this Rite. 
 But even with this extension of generosity it is evident 
 that " dupes or charlatans " is the summing up by at 
 least two-thirds of the Masonic writers in the last 
 century and in the present one, of the mental and 
 moral condition of the members of the Strict 
 Observance. 
 
 The evidences of the position — mental, moral and 
 worldly— of many of the members, however, preclude 
 such a hasty generalisation, for it should not be 
 overlooked by critics who thus stigmatise the students 
 of mysticism that more royalties, members of reigning 
 families, scholars and officers, belonged to this Order, 
 than were enrolled on any other Masonic list. And 
 among these princes and grand-dukes were earnest 
 students, good and wise rulers, men respected by all 
 who knew them both for their judgment and their 
 probity. With them we find scholars, nobles and 
 officers of high standing, with stainless records ; these 
 again cannot be swept up into one category or the 
 other, and even allowing for a residue of members 
 whose principles were not of the highest, and making 
 a generous allowance for such persons, who are found 
 in every society, even then there remains too large a 
 body of honest members devoted to mystic research 
 to allow of any hasty generalisations, and the fact 
 remains of a widespread feeling that within Masonry 
 was hidden that occult and mystic tradition which is 
 the true history of spiritual evolution. 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 79 
 
 In reading the merciless and shallow criticisms 
 upon those members of the Strict Observance who 
 were trying to re-assert the mystic doctrine, it is 
 amusing to note the cool assumptions of honesty and 
 clear-sightedness which — from their own stand-point 
 — appear to have been the sole prerogatives of an 
 all-knowing few who had sounded — as they thought — 
 mysticism and its supernatural follies with an 
 illuminated wisdom that angels might envy. 
 
 Before passing to the system itself, however, it will 
 be well to note some of the members who have fallen 
 under the " mangling tooth of criticism." We find in 
 the year 1774 no less than twelve reigning princes 
 were members of this Rite, and in the list which 
 follows — in which by no means all the royal members 
 are cited — we find that in some cases whole families 
 joined the Society. They cannot all have been 
 dupes, and they were certainly not charlatans ; they 
 were also in too responsible positions for them to 
 have taken up with what was doubtful. The list 
 stands as follows : 
 
 Karl George, Landgraf of Hesse-Darmstadt. 
 
 Friedrich, Landgraf and Prince of Hesse-Kassel. 
 
 Ludwig, Grand - Duke and Prince of Hesse- 
 Darmstadt. 
 
 . Christian Ludwig, Landgraf and Prince of Hesse- 
 Darmstadt. 
 
 Friedrich George August, Prince of Hesse-Darm- 
 stadt. 
 
 Ludwig George, Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt. 
 
8o MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Friedrich Karl Alexander, Markgraf of Branden- 
 burg, Onolzbach and Baireuth. 
 
 Karl I., Duke of Brunswick, and his three sons : 
 
 Friedrich August, Maximilian Julius Leopold, 
 Wilhelm Adolf 
 
 Karl, Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. 
 
 Karl, Prince of Hesse-Kassel. 
 
 Karl, Prince of Courland. 
 
 These are a few of those who joined this much 
 decried Rite, and the same class of members may be 
 found in Austria, Italy, France, Russia, and Sweden. 
 All, moreover, were real lovers of mysticism ; many 
 of them were members of the Rosicrucian and other 
 allied bodies, all were seeking in various systems for 
 the old narrow path which leads to wisdom ; not 
 seeking by one way alone, but testing all ways that 
 presented themselves. A sketch, therefore, -of some 
 of the leading spirits in this interesting Order may 
 perhaps be of interest, and it will serve to bring the 
 leading spirits more clearly before our readers. 
 
 The most important personage is Charles Gotthelf, 
 Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, of Hund and Alten- 
 Grotkare, a Lusatian nobleman, born in 1722. He became, 
 in 1753, a Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Chamberlain, 
 and in 1755 was elected senior of the nobility of Upper 
 Lusatia. The seven years' war brought great misfortune to 
 him, his estates being occupied and plundered by the war- 
 waging armies. He had himself, as an adherent of 
 Austria, to flee to Bohemia, where he remained until the 
 end of the war. King Augustus of Poland appointed him a 
 Privy Councillor in 1769, and Maria Theresa in that yeaa" 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 8 1 
 
 did the same ; but he did not accept the post in Vienna, 
 being desirous of accomplishing the contemplated reform of 
 Masonry. 
 
 He entered the Masonic Order in 1742, when at 
 Frankfurt-am-Main. In the next year he is said to have 
 estabUshed a Lodge at Paris, and while staying with the 
 French Army he became acquainted with the heads of 
 a Rite which pretended to be, in its higher degrees, 
 the continuation of the famous Order of Knights Templars. 
 According to his repeated declarations, maintained even on 
 his death-bed, he was received into this Order in Paris by 
 Lord Kilmarnock, Grand-Master of Scotland, a Jacobite 
 nobleman, on which occasion Lord Clifford acted as Prior. 
 He was presented to a very high member of the Order, 
 a mysterious personage called only " the Knight of the Red 
 Feather." Perhaps this was Prince Charles Edward himself. 
 Von Hund supposed him to be the Supreme Grand 
 Master of the Order, and was appointed by him coadjutor 
 of the Seventh Province of the Order (Germania Inferior). 
 Hund visited Scotland also, where he was bidden to raise 
 the Order in Germany, together with the then Master of the 
 Seventh Province, de Marschall, whom he always con- 
 sidered his predecessor. Marschall had founded Lodges at 
 Altenburg and Naumburg, but found only in the latter men 
 worthy of being led further, viz., to be received into the 
 Templar degrees. He did not care for the rest of the 
 German Lodges, and on his return to Germany (about 
 1751) Hund placed himself in connection with Marschall, 
 who, unfortunately, was very ill already, and died soon 
 afterwards. 
 
 Before his death he destroyed nearly all his Templar 
 papers, only a very few of which he had given to Hund. 
 He (Hund) hoped to find the missing rituals, etc., with the 
 Naumburg Lodge, but was disappointed. He, therefore, 
 sent two brethren of that Lodge to England and Scotland, 
 in order to acquire the missing documents. They returned, 
 F 
 
82 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 carrying with them only a patent to him as Master of the 
 Seventh Province, written in cypher, and nothing more.* 
 
 A full account of the working arrangements of the 
 Order is given by the writer from whom we sum- 
 marise, and he tells us these were changed from time 
 to time according to the conditions that arose 
 incident upon the constant attacks that were being 
 made on this and all other occult societies by the 
 group of materialists in Germany, Herr Dr. Blester 
 and his colleagues, of whom mention has already been 
 made.f and there will be necessity to refer to these 
 critics again a little later on. Another interesting 
 sketch of the Baron von Hund by Reghellini runs as 
 follows : 
 
 In 1756 the wars had caused the Prussian (Masonic) 
 Lodges to be abandoned. Baron de Hund, who had 
 received the High Templar's Degree in the Chapter of 
 Clermont at Paris, on returning to Berlin declared that he 
 had been raised to the dignity of Grand-Master of the 
 Templars by M. Marschall, who called himself the 
 successor of the G .'. G .'. Master-Templars by uninter- 
 rupted transmission from the time of Jacques Molay ; that 
 Marschall on his death-bed had delegated this high dignity 
 to him, and had declared him his successor, transmitting to 
 him all his powers and dignities. He did not omit to give 
 Hund a list of all the names of the Templar Grand- 
 Masters, which must therefore have been a curious contrast 
 to the list of the Order of the Temple of Paris. 1 
 
 * This summary is taken from an interesting study on the Baron 
 yon Hund, written by a well-known Hungarian mason, which appeared 
 in the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, " Transactions of the Lodge Quatuor 
 Coronati," No. 2076. VI., part ii., p. 89. Margate, 1893. 
 
 t The Theosophical Review, xxii. p. 431. 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 83 
 
 Hund placed himself at the head of the German 
 reformers : he persuaded them that his Rite would restore 
 Freemasonry .-. to its ancient brilliancy and its former 
 splendour; he was even bold enough to establish, at his 
 own expense, a Lodge at Kittlitz, near Lobau. At the 
 same time he caused a Protestant church to be built. It 
 was the Brother Masons of this Lodge who laid the first 
 stone ; Baron de Hund placed upon this stone a copper 
 plate on which he had his Masonic .-. opinions engraved, 
 and if we except that of the continuation of the Ancient 
 Templar Order in the Masonry .-. to which he especially 
 belonged (for in order to be received into the Rite of the 
 Clerks of the Strict Observance he had even become a 
 Catholic*) — if we except, as we say, this opinion, we believe 
 that his principles were altogether philosophical. In the 
 doctrines of his Eques Professus, the eighth rung which he 
 added to the Templar ladder of the Strict Observance, he 
 maintains that these Pontiffs are the only Priests of the 
 True Light, the Worshippers of God, and the disciples of 
 the pure doctrines of Jesus and of John.f 
 
 There are very many details about the work done 
 by Von Hund in his efTorts to dravir the mystic side 
 of Masonry into prominence ; details which can be 
 read in the work of any real authority on the history 
 of Masonry, and which cannot, for want of space, be 
 entered into in these pages. Most of the German 
 Masonic authorities, such as Keller, Rebold, Krause, 
 Lenning, Findel, and others, concede his personal 
 asceticism and moreover his entire honesty of 
 purpose, but he is usually summed up as a dupe. 
 
 * This is contradicted by some authorities. 
 
 tReghellini da Schio (Par le F .-. M .-. R .-. da S .-.), La 
 Mofonnen'e consider^ comme le Resultat des Religions igyptienne, juive 
 et chritiemte, II., pp. 374, 375. Paris, 1833. 
 
84 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Passing on to another aspect of this much-tangled 
 web of Masonic evolution, we find that about 1770 
 events of great importance transpired in Germany ; 
 Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick had become a Mason, 
 and he induced his brother, the reigning Duke 
 Charles, and his nephews — the sons of Duke Charles 
 — to enter the Masonic Fraternity, and they all 
 joined the Rite of the Strict Observance. It was at 
 this juncture that there appeared also on the scene 
 Johann Augustus Starck, a profoundly striking per- 
 sonality from all accounts. 
 
 He had been in St. Petersburg from 1762-65 as 
 teacher of Oriental languages, and was also a deep 
 student of theology and philosophy. Starck had held 
 many public positions of trust and importance, 
 amongst others that of interpreter of Oriental MSS. 
 at the Royal Library in Paris. He had travelled in 
 England, Scotland, Italy and Russia, and was an 
 ardent searcher after hermetic and theosophic mystic- 
 ism. In St. Petersburg he had come into contact with 
 the Melesino System, which was both hermetic and 
 theosophic in its tenets. 
 
 Starck held that the mystic traditions of the 
 Knights-Templars, derived by them from those still 
 older fraternities with whom they had been in contact 
 in the East, were preserved amongst the clericals of 
 that Order who had cherished their unbroken con- 
 tinuity until his days, and he announced that he was 
 in communication with certain Superiors, or chiefs of 
 the Order. 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 85 
 
 Our well-known English authority, writing on the 
 Strict Observance, says : 
 
 On February 17th, 1767, some Masons, chief amongst 
 whom may be mentioned Von Vegesack, Von Bohnen and 
 Starck, founded at Wismar the Lodge of the "Three Lions," 
 and added thereto a Scots Lodge, " Gustavus of the Golden 
 Hammer." 
 
 Shortly afterwards they added a hitherto unknown body, 
 a " Clerical Chapter." To these brethren we are indebted 
 for the historical fiction (sic) that the Knights-Templars were 
 divided into miUtary and sacerdotal members; that the 
 latter possessed all the secrets and mystic learning of the 
 Order ; and that they had preserved a continuous existence 
 down to the eighteenth century. Starck claimed to be the 
 emissary of these Clerical Templars, asserted their and his 
 superiority over the Secular Knights, and offered, on his 
 claims being acknowledged, to impart their valuable secrets 
 to Von Hund and his disciples. Starck (1741 — 1816), was 
 a student of GSttingen, and a very learned man, an Oriental 
 linguist of great attainments, and had held scientific appoint- 
 ments in St. Petersburg, Paris, Wismar, and elsewhere.* 
 
 The author of this work — a standard work on 
 Masonry — regards Starck as a charlatan, although he 
 brings no proofs, other than his assertions, which are 
 upheld by many modern materialistic critics, that 
 there were no leaders, or unknown Superiors, that the 
 tradition was false, and that no real connection 
 existed between the Templars and the Masons. 
 Unfortunately for many of these critics this tradition 
 was not " written in the stars " but preserved on 
 stones, and we find the eminent archaeologist Baron 
 
 * Gould^ Hist, of Freemasonry, V., p. 104. London, l88^. 
 
86 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Joseph von Hammer* demonstrating the connection 
 between the Masons and the Templars. He traces 
 the Eastern origin of both by means of engraved 
 symbols, showing the extraordinary identity between 
 those used by the Masons, and those of the Templars, 
 and practically makes them identical in their incep- 
 tion, that is to say, developed from the same original 
 stock of mystic Eastern lore, and when we have to 
 sketch the history of the Knights-Templars we shall 
 turn to these researches for their monumental records, 
 proving the Eastern sources from which the secret 
 traditions of the Templars were derived ; justifying 
 the claim of all those later societies which based their 
 assertions on the same tradition. 
 
 At present we must coniine ourselves to the Strict 
 Observance, and so we pass on to what Johann Starck 
 says in his own writings on the subject. One of his 
 works deals entirely with the accusation brought 
 against the Strict Observance and other secret societies, 
 namely that they were derived from the Jesuit order.f 
 
 He was particularly attacked on his belief that the 
 Knights-Templars could have continued in existence 
 for four hundred and iifty years, unknown to the 
 world at large. To this charge he replied that 
 
 If he [Dr. Blaster |] had been somewhat better 
 
 * Fundgruben des Orients, V\., p. 445 (Wien, 1818), "Gegenrede 
 wider die Einrede der Vertheidiger der Templer." 
 
 t See his long dissertation on the subject in Uber Krypto 
 Katholicismus, Proselyten-Macherey,Jesuitismus, Geheime Gesellschaften, 
 etc. Frankfort und Leipzig, 1787. 
 
 % Editpr of th? Berliner Monatfchri/t, See above, p. 13. 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 87 
 
 acquainted with ecclesiastical history, he would have found 
 not only one, but several religious bodies, which under far 
 more violent oppression and persecution than those endured 
 by the Knights-Templars, have secretly continued to exist 
 for a longer period than four hundred and fifty years. 
 
 Starck's view is upheld by a modern writer of 
 note, who, speaking of the Templars says : 
 
 Considering how widely the Order had spread its 
 branches, obtained possession and afifiliated to itself 
 multitudes both male and female amongst the laity all over 
 Europe, it would be a mere absurdity to believe that all its 
 traditions were swept away at one stroke by the suppression 
 of the Templars in the year 1307.* 
 
 Thus we find this view supported a century later 
 than the time when Starck penned his defence of the 
 tradition. Starck proceeds, moreover, to show how 
 many scholars were of the same opinion. He writes : 
 
 How great are the number of scholars "who joined it 
 [the Strict Observance] and accepted the opinion that the 
 order of the Templars had continued to exist for four 
 hundred and fifty years, secretly truly, but uninterruptedly ! 
 There are Professor Dahmart at Greifswalde, Eques ab abiete. 
 Doctor and Professor Rehfeld, Eques h caprea. Doctor and 
 Professor Rolpen, Eques d tribus specis. Professor and 
 Preacher Ruhlenkamp at Gottingen, Eques a gallo cantante. 
 Professor Schwarz at Reval, Eques d, rota. Professor Eck at 
 Leipzig, Eques h, nodua, etc. 
 
 These men are scholars and students holding 
 responsible public positions and as such would hardly 
 be all fools or charlatans. Space will not permit us 
 
 * King (C.W.), The Gnostics and their Remains, Ancient and 
 Medieeval, p. 399, 2nd ed. London, 1887. 
 
88 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 to follow at present all the arguments brought forward 
 by Starck, in order to show the absurdity of the 
 accusations of Jesuitism, an accusation which was 
 freely brought against many of the societies of the 
 period ; we must pass on to the condition of the 
 society itself, and trace even this but briefly. 
 
 Ragon, in speaking of the Strict Observance, says 
 that in Germany a society was formed of Reformed 
 Masons, that is to say : 
 
 Approaching more nearly to the true institution than 
 the ordinary Freemasons. The study of the Kabala, of the 
 Philosopher's Stone, and of Necromancy or the invocation 
 of spirits, occupied them chiefly, because according to them 
 all these sciences formed the system and the object and end of 
 the ancient mysteries of which Freemasonry is the sequel.* 
 
 The studies enumerated in this quotation appear 
 to have been carried on chiefly in one of the higher 
 grades of the Strict Observance called Clerici Ordinis 
 Templariorum. It was this branch that took up the 
 study of Alchemy, and which was under the 
 particular direction of Starck, Herr von Raven, and 
 others, who were entirely devoted to the mystic side 
 of Masonry. Ragon gives the following divisions and 
 grades into which the System was divided, namely : 
 
 I 
 
 2, 
 
 3- 
 4- 
 
 Apprenti 
 
 Compagnon 
 
 Maltre 
 
 Maltre Ecossais 
 
 Novice 
 
 Symboliques. 
 
 ' Ragon (J. M.), Orthodoxie Maconnique, p. 210. Paris, 1853. 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 89 
 
 6. Templier, divis^ en 3 classes „ . 
 
 , , J- Socius. 
 
 sous les noms de • . 
 
 J Armiger. 
 
 Between 1768 and 1770 the Baron von Hund 
 
 added a seventh grade, which he called : 
 
 7. Eques Professus. 
 
 It is also stated by Ragon* that the largest 
 portion of this society became Martinists, and were 
 known later by the name of the " Knights of the 
 Holy Sepulchre." This change was made at the 
 convention at Lyons, which took place in 1778. The 
 Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick and the Baron von 
 Raven also joined this division. Another group took 
 the name of the " Beneficent Knights of the Holy 
 City," and amongst them we find the two mystics, the 
 Comte de St. Martin and Willermoz. 
 
 It will be better to add here a few details about 
 the Knights Templars, since they are so intimately 
 connected with the Masonic Order just mentioned ; 
 details which will also serve to show the inner aspect 
 of their tradition. Much has been written about 
 them and their history — from one aspect — is better 
 known than that of almost any other mystic organ- 
 isation, but the fact of a secret teaching is not 
 sufficiently clear. That there was a secret doctrinef 
 
 * op. (it. , p. 230. 
 
 t If these fects already point to the existence of secret statutes in 
 the Order of the Knights Templars, this will also be proved by a 
 number of other notes and finally substantiated by some quite positive 
 statements which are most explicit. 
 
 A great number of witnesses, who give information on the 
 
go MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 amongst the Templars is shown by Neaf* ; he points 
 out that the Knights Templars considered that the 
 Roman Church had failed in its ideal, and that when 
 the terrible persecutions fell upon them that they 
 divided and joined two different associations, one the 
 body of Freemasons and the other a body named the 
 Johannites. Another writerf points out the con- 
 nection between the Templars and the Bogomiles, 
 who were the Manichasans of the Balkan Provinces, 
 and the Gnostics of the early Christian period and 
 their descendants, the Cathari of the mediaeval ages. 
 Dr. SimrockJ suggests a deeply interesting idea with 
 regard to the connection between the tradition of the 
 Holy Grail and the secret teachings of the Templars ; 
 he appears to consider that the Grail tradition, which 
 is drawn in some parts from the Apocryphal Gospels, 
 is the basis of the secret teaching of the Templars. 
 Some of the early sources of the tradition are given 
 
 ceremonies of admission in question refer the same to certain definite 
 phrases which describe them. It then furthermore transpires that these 
 secret statutes were not only received by means of oral tradition but also 
 existed in manuscript form. Gervais de Beauvais saw at one of the 
 Heads of the Orders, a little book with the Statutes of the Order of 
 1 128, which was shown without thinking, and he knew that the 
 same man had also possessed another book about which he was very 
 mysterious and which he "would not show anyone for all the world." 
 Prutz (Hans Dr.), Geheimelehre des Templherren Ordens, p. 45. 
 Berlin, 1879. 
 
 * Naef (F.), Recherches sur les Opinions religieuses des Templiers, 
 pp. 25 to 41. Nismes, 1890. 
 
 t Loiseleur (Jules), La Doctrine SecrHe des Templiers, pp. 35, 48. 
 Paris, 1872. 
 
 X Simrock (Dr. K.), Parzifal u. Titurel, Rittergedichte von 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach, I., 497. Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1842. 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 9 1 
 
 by the author of Sarsena, and also the connection 
 between the Templars and the Essenes. 
 
 All these links are of importance if we wish to 
 understand the close connection between these various 
 organizations, and also how one developed out of the 
 other. Another writer says : 
 
 Taking the rules of their Order and of the Christians in 
 equal division, they (the Kabalists) began to draw a parallel 
 between the books of Moses and the records of the Magi, 
 and formed from all this material a new Brotherhood into 
 which they imported certain rules that could exist together 
 with those of the Christians. During the Crusades there 
 were several orders of widely different views ; and among 
 numerous others in the year 1118, the Knights of the 
 Temple, with whom the Magi joined themselves, and to 
 whom they imparted their principles and mysteries. The 
 fall of the Templars and the entire demolition of the Order 
 by the Council held in Vienna in 131 1, is due to the fact 
 that all the knowledge which we may consider as part of the 
 Wisdom of the ancient Magi, and also the Natural Sciences, 
 had at this time begun to be lost. There is one section of 
 Freemasons which finds in Freemasonry the restoration of 
 the Order of the Knights Templars, and the systems of the 
 Great German Lodge and that of the Swedish Brothers are 
 certainly pre-eminently connected with the former. 
 According to this system, and in especial according to all 
 the various systems which obtain in this particular Order, 
 Freemasonry is a mystical conception of the principle 
 doctrines of Christianity, the slain Master no other than the 
 Christ ! And here the question fairly arises, had the teachings 
 of the Christ in truth mysteries, unsearchable, incomprehen- 
 sible doctrines, which were only to be made comprehensible 
 to a small number of specially chosen disciples, and 
 were not the Essenes that body among whom He had 
 
92 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 learned those mysteries, for the Essenes demanded of those 
 initiated, moderation, justice, avoidance of injury, love of 
 Truth and detestation of evil ; holy water belonged to the 
 ritual of admission to their highest grade, and John said 
 " Repent and be baptized." Christ who led the blameless 
 life, suffered himself to be baptized. Does not this lead us 
 to the almost certain conclusion that Christ, and even more 
 John, were initiated members of the Essenes? Were 
 sufficient documents available to prove the historic truth of 
 this statement, it would be perfectly obvious why John (the 
 Baptist) who bled for Truth and Goodness, should have been 
 chosen as the Patron of the present Order and of nearly all 
 that precede it. The keeping of John the Baptist's Day as a 
 Festival by the Freemasons is adduced in confirmation of 
 this idea that the Freemasons had for over six hundred 
 years identified themselves with the " Johannrittern '' and St. 
 John the Baptist had been chosen Patron by both Orders. 
 And as it is certain that much of the ritual of the form of 
 Reception means something quite other than that which 
 has been substituted latterly, it may very easily be that 
 there is some truth in this assertion. For it is just as little true 
 that the Freemasons identified themselves six hundred years 
 ago with the " Johannrittern " as that they now crown the 
 Master, Hiram, in the Lodge in real earnest. Christ, as has 
 been said above, founded no secret society, and yet He gave 
 out His teaching only by degrees as regarded its inner 
 significance, for he said " I have many things to say unto you, 
 but ye cannot bear them now." After His death the pure 
 doctrine was falsified by additions, but yet it may be possible 
 that its pristine purity and simplicity may have been 
 preserved, and where else than in some kind of Order ? In 
 the early Christian Church there was a disciplina arcani, and 
 in this manner were the mysteries transmitted among the 
 few, and even in the time of the Crusades there were still 
 living descendants of the Essenes. The Order of Knights 
 of the Temple was founded in the year 1113 by Gottfried 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 93 
 
 von St. Omar, Hugo de Paiens, and seven others whose 
 names are not known. They consecrated themselves 
 to the service of God according to the form of the Canoni- 
 corum Regularium, and took solemn vows before the Bishop 
 of Jerusalem. Baldwin the Second, in consideration of the 
 office of these seven servants of God, lent to them a house 
 near the Temple of Solomon. They bound themselves (as 
 we are told by the author of the book called Die theoretische 
 Bruder U.S.V.) with certain Essenes who formed a secret 
 society consisting of virtuous Christians and true seekers 
 after Truth in Nature, and learned also their secrets. That 
 the Templars had mysteries in their keeping is beyond 
 contention. The Order had secret ceremonies of admission, 
 gloried in possessing such, and for this reason several of its 
 members endured martyrdom. The Order of Knights 
 Templar contained many of the best and most far-seeing 
 minds among the parents of Freemasonry ; and, as is well- 
 known, there were whole branches of Freemasonry specially 
 devoted to the restoration of the Templars. And the 
 Johannine and other systems taught this descent, even 
 before the "Strict Observance" became generally known, 
 which insisted on the restoration of the Templars as the 
 highest aim of the mysteries. If we consider closely the 
 similarity between the customs of both Orders we shall find 
 that the Reception and other ceremonies of the Order of 
 Freemasonry relates to that of the Knights of the Temple 
 exactly in so far as to enable us to say with positiveness that 
 the Freemasons preserve in their midst the mysteries of the 
 Templars and transmit them. That the Templars possessed 
 secrets is witnessed by the evidence in their procedure : the 
 Freemasons claim the like procedure for themselves, for 
 from grade to grade the Aspirant is told that later he shall 
 experience yet more. More what? Also a secret. Nine 
 Brothers founded the Order of the Templars ; the chief 
 and hieroglyphic number of the Freemasons is three times 
 three. The Templars held Divine Service in places which 
 
94 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 were interdicted. By the strictest observances they reserved 
 these for themselves (or set these aside) they appealed to the 
 rights of their forefathers. 
 
 In the general organisation, Roessler tells us : 
 
 The Brother Templars were, according to their statutes 
 as Hospital Brothers divided into three classes : i, into the 
 class of the serving who, without distinction, nursed sick 
 pilgrims and Knights Templars ; 2, into that of the spiritual 
 Brothers destined for the service of pilgrims ; 3, into that of 
 Knights who went to war. 
 
 We find in the Instructions of the Chevalier d'Orient 
 where are celebrated the foundation of the Knights 
 Templars and the spread of their teachings in Europe the 
 following declaration on the matter is given : 
 
 " Eighty-one Masons* under the leadership of 
 Garimonts, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, went, in the year 
 1 150, to Europe and betook themselves to the Bishop of 
 Upsala who received them in very friendly fashion and was 
 consequently initiated into the mysteries of the Copts which 
 the Masons had brought with them ; later he was entrusted 
 with the deposit of the collection of those teachings, rites 
 and mysteries. The Bishop took pains to enclose and 
 conceal them in the subterranean vaults of the tower of the 
 ' Four Crowns ' which at that time, was the crown treasure 
 chamber of the King of Sweden. Nine of these Masons, 
 amongst them Hugo de Paganis, founded in Europe the 
 Order of the Knights Templars ; later on they received 
 from the Bishop the dogmas, mysteries and teachings of the 
 Coptic Priests, confided to him. 
 
 " Thus in a short time the Knights Templars became 
 the receivers and depositors of the mysteries, rites and 
 
 * " These Masons are always in the figurative sense Knights of the 
 Cross who had been admitted to the mysteries of the working in the 
 mystic Temple, and to the religion of the Children of the Widow. " 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 95 
 
 ceremonies which had been brought over by the Masons 
 from the East — the Levites of the true Light 
 
 " The Knights Templars, devoted entirely to the sciences 
 and to the dogmas brought from the Thebaid, wished, in 
 course of time, to preserve this doctrine in solemn fashion 
 by a token. The Scotch Templars served as pattern in the 
 matter, they having founded the three degrees of St. Andreas 
 of Scotland, and adapted them to the allegorical legend to 
 be found in the instructions referred to. 
 
 "Scotch Templars were occupied in excavating a place 
 at Jerusalem in order to build a temple there, and precisely 
 on the spot where the temple of Solomon — or at least that 
 part of it called the Holy of Holies — had stood. During 
 their work they found three stones which were the corner 
 stones of the Solomon temple itself. The monumental form 
 of these excited their attention ; this excitement became all 
 the more intense when they found the name Jehovah 
 engraved in the elliptical spaces of the last of these stones — 
 this which was also a type of the mysteries of the Copt — the 
 sacred word which, by the murder of the Master Builder, 
 had been lost, and which, according to the legend of the 
 first degree, Hiram had had engraved on the foundation 
 stone of Solomon's temple. After such a discovery the 
 Scotch Knights took this costly memorial with them, and, 
 in order eternally to preserve their esteem for it, they 
 employed these as the three corner stones of their first 
 temple at Edinburgh."* 
 
 Our author further tells us that : 
 
 The works began on St. Andreas' day; and so the 
 Templars who had knowledge of this fact, of the secret of 
 the three stones, and of the re-discovered word, called them- 
 
 * The legend of these three stones has a striking resemblance to 
 that of the three mysterious stones which the Nymphs found and 
 brought to Minerva — the Goddess of Wisdom. 
 
96 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 selves Knights of St. Andreas ; they appointed degrees of 
 merit in order to attain, and these are present in the 
 apprentice, companion, and master degrees known under 
 the name of the Little Master-Builder, the Great Master- 
 Builder, and the Scotch Master. 
 
 By the instruction common to all Knightly Orders the 
 Crusaders were under obligation to make many journeys 
 and pilgrimages where, as is said, they had to see themselves 
 surrounded by dangers. Therefore they founded those 
 degrees in order to recognise each other and to assist each 
 other in need. For these journeys they took signs, words, 
 and particular touches or grips, and imparted to all Brothers 
 a principal sign in order to find help in case of a surprise. 
 
 In order to imitate the Christians of the East and the 
 Coptic Priests, these Knights preserved among themselves 
 the verbal law which was never written down, and took care 
 that it should remain concealed to the initiated of the lower 
 degrees. All this is preserved with exactitude in the 
 philosophic rite of our days, although this rite does not 
 precisely seek to derive its origin from the Knights 
 Templars. 
 
 The Knights Templars united the possessions of the 
 Old Man of the Mountains under their rule, as they had 
 perceived the supernatural courage of his pupils, they 
 admitted these into their order. Some historians have thus 
 come to the opinion that the Knights Templars had been 
 induced themselves to accept the institutions of those 
 admitted. Gauthier von Montbar was acquainted with 
 these teachings, and transplanted them into Europe. 
 
 All these circumstances were very detrimental to the 
 religion of Rome ; it lost many of those who had belonged 
 to it; more .especially many Crusaders who were sojourning 
 in Syria, Palestine and Egypt, where all the forms of belief 
 of the first Christians were preserved and tolerated by the 
 Saracens. 
 
 Eastern Christians regarded the dogma of the unity of 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 97 
 
 God as a mystery and saw in it a divine manifestation. 
 They, therefore, only imparted the knowledge thereof at 
 initiation which they held very secret. They practised the 
 morality commanded by the Son of Mary, but did not 
 believe in his divinity ; for all those who followed Gnostic 
 and Kabalistic traditions considered him to be their Elder 
 Brother. 
 
 The Knights of the Cross who had come to know these 
 dogmas and mysteries of the Christians of the East, were 
 obliged, when they had returned to Europe, to hold this 
 initiation still more secret, for the mere suspicion of such a 
 faith would have been sufficient to bring these new religious 
 professors to the rack and the stake.* 
 
 We will now pass on to some of the religious and 
 philosophic views held by the Knights Templars 
 which are summarised from the Abbe Gr^goire and 
 which show the link with the Gnostic teachings. 
 
 The Order of the Temple is cosmopolitan ; it is divided 
 into two great classes : i, the Order of the East ; 2, the 
 Order of the Temple. 
 
 The Order of the Temple sprang from the Order of the 
 East, of which ancient Egypt was the cradle. The Order 
 of the East comprised different orders or classes of adepts. 
 The adepts of the first order were at once legislators, 
 judges, and pontiffs. 
 
 Their policy was opposed to the propagation of meta- 
 physical knowledge and the natural sciences, of which they 
 made themselves the sole depositories ; and whoever should 
 have dared to reveal the secrets reserved for the initiates in 
 the order of the sacerdotal hierarchy, would have been 
 punished with most dire severity. They gave to the people 
 only unintelligible emblems constituting, the exoteric 
 
 * Accerrelos (Roessler, Dr. Karl), History of Freemaionry, 
 l^ipzig, 1836, II., p. Sseisej. 
 C 
 
98 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 theology, which was a compound of absurd dogmas and 
 extravagant practices tending to give more ascendency to 
 superstition, and to consolidate the government. 
 
 Moses was initiated in Egypt. He was profoundly 
 versed in the theological, physical, and metaphysical 
 mysteries of the priests. Aaron, his brother, and the other 
 Hebrew chiefs became the depositories of these doctrines. 
 These chiefs or Levites were divided into several classes, 
 according to the custom of the Egyptian priests. 
 
 Later on, the Son of God was born into the world. He 
 was brought up in the Alexandrian school. Filled with a 
 spirit altogether divine, endowed with the most marvellous 
 intelligence, he succeeded in attaining all the degrees of 
 Egyptian initiation. 
 
 On returning to Jerusalem, he presented himself before 
 the chiefs of the Synagogue, and pointed out to them the 
 numerous alterations that the Law of Moses had undergone 
 at the hands of the Levites ; he confounded them by the 
 power of his spirit and the extent of his knowledge ; but 
 the Jewish priests, blinded by their passions, persisted in 
 their errors. 
 
 However, the moment had come when Jesus Christ, 
 directing the fruit of his lofty meditations towards the 
 universal civilisation and welfare of the world, tore down 
 the veil which hid the truth from the people, preached the 
 love of one's neighbour and the equality of all men before 
 the common Father. Finally, consecrating by a sacrifice 
 worthy of the Son of God the heavenly doctrines which he 
 had come to spread, he established for ever on the earth, by 
 his gospels, the religion inscribed in the Book of Eternity. 
 
 Jesus conferred on his disciples the evangelical 
 initiation, caused his spirit to descend upon them, divided 
 them into different orders, according to the custom of the 
 Egyptian priests and Hebrew priests, and placed them under 
 the authority of St. John, his beloved disciple, and whom he 
 had made supreme pontiff and patriarch. 
 
THE TEMPLARS. 99 
 
 John never quitted the East ; his doctrine, always pure, 
 was not altered by the admixture of any other doctrine. 
 
 Peter and the other apostles, on the contrary, carried 
 the teachings of Jesus Christ to distant peoples ; but as they 
 were often forced, in order to propagate the faith, to 
 conform to the manners and customs of these different 
 nations, and even to admit other rites than those of the 
 East, slight variations and changes crept into the different 
 gospels, as well as into the doctrines of the numerous 
 Christian sects. 
 
 Down to 1 1 1 8, the mysteries and the hierarchical order 
 of the Egyptian initiation, transmitted to the Jews through 
 Moses and afterwards to the Christians through Jesus Christ, 
 were religiously preserved by the successors of the apostle 
 John. These mysteries and these initiations regenerated 
 through the evangelical initiation or baptism formed a 
 sacred deposit which, thanks to the simplicity of primitive 
 customs from which the brothers of the East never departed, 
 never underwent the slightest alteration. 
 
 The Christians of the East, persecuted by the infidels, 
 appreciating the courage and piety of those valiant crusaders 
 who, sword in one hand and cross in the other, flew to the 
 defence of the holy places ; doing justice, above all, to the 
 virtues and the ardent charity of Hugh of Payens, con- 
 sidered it their duty to entrust to hands so pure the 
 treasures of knowledge acquired during so many centuries, 
 and sanctified by the cross, the teachings and the ethics of 
 the Man-God. 
 
 Hugh was then invested with the patriarchal apostolic 
 power, and placed in the legitimate line of the successors of 
 John the Apostle or Evangelist. 
 
 Such is the origin of the foundation of the Templars, 
 and of the introduction amongst them of the different 
 modes of initiation of the Christians of the East designated 
 by the name of Primitive or Johannite Christians. It is to 
 this initiation that belong the various degrees consecrated 
 
lOO MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 by the rules of the Temple, and which were so much called 
 in question in the famous but terrible action brought against 
 this august Order. 
 
 Jacques de Molay, foreseeing the misfortunes that 
 threatened the Order, appointed as his successor Brother 
 Jean Marc Larmenius, of Jerusalem, whom he invested with 
 full patriarchal apostolic authority, and with magisterial 
 power. 
 
 This Grand Master passed on the supreme power to 
 Brother Theobald, of Alexandria, as is evidenced by the 
 charter of transmission, etc. 
 
 Let us come finally to the Levitical doctrines : — God is 
 all that exists ; every part of all that exists is a part of God, 
 but is not God. 
 
 Immutable in His essence, God is mutable in His parts, 
 which after having existed under the laws of certain 
 combinations more or less complex, live again under laws 
 of fresh combinations. All is increate. 
 
 God being supremely intelligent, every one of the parts 
 which compose Him is endowed with a portion of His 
 intelligence, in virtue of its destiny, whence it follows that 
 there is an infinite gradation of intelligences resulting from 
 an infinity of different compounds, the union of which 
 forms the entirety of the worlds. This entirety is the Great 
 All, or God, who alone has the power to modify, change, 
 and govern all these orders of intelligences, according to the 
 eternal and immutable laws of an infinite justice and 
 goodness. 
 
 God — infinite Being — is composed of three powers ; 
 the Father, or Being ; the Son, or action ; the Spirit, or 
 mind, proceeding from the power of the Father and the 
 Son. These three powers form a trinity, a power infinite, 
 unique and individual. 
 
 There is but one only true religion, that which acknow- 
 ledges one only God, Eternal, filling the infinity of time 
 and space. 
 
THE TEMPLARS. lOI 
 
 The Order of Nature is immutable ; therefore all 
 doctrines that any one would attempt to build up on a 
 change of these laws would be founded only on error. . . 
 
 Eternal life is the power with which every being is 
 endowed, of living in his own life and of acquiring an 
 infinity of modifications by combining himself unceasingly 
 with other beings, according to what is ordained by the 
 eternal laws of the wisdom, the justice and the infinite 
 goodness of the supreme Intelligence. 
 
 According to this system of modification of matter, it is 
 natural to conclude that all its parts have the right of 
 thought and free-will, and therefore the power of merit and 
 demerit ; hence there is no longer anything of what is 
 called inorganic matter ; if, however, any must be admitted, 
 where is the limit, for instance, among mineral, vegetable, 
 and animal substances ? 
 
 However, the high Initiates do not profess to believe 
 that all the parts of matter possess the faculty of thought. 
 It is not thus that they profess to understand their system. 
 They certainly admit a series of intelligences from the 
 elementary substance, the most simple molecule, or the 
 monad, up to the reunion of all these monads or of their 
 compounds, a reunion which would constitute the great All, 
 or God, which, as the Universal Intelligence, would alone 
 have the power of comprehending Itself But the manner 
 of being, of feeling, and of using the intelligences, would 
 be relative to the hierarchical order in which they found 
 themselves placed ; consequently the intelligence would 
 differ according to the mode of organization and the 
 hierarchical place of each body. Thus, according to this 
 system, the intelligence of the simple molecule would be 
 limited to seeking or rejecting union with certain other 
 molecules. The intelligence of a body composed of several 
 molecules would have other characters, according to the 
 mode of organization of its elements, and the higher or 
 lower degree that it occupied in the hierarchical scale of 
 
I02 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 compounds. Man, for example, among the intelligences 
 which form part of the earth, would alone have that 
 modification or organization which would fully give the " I " 
 consciousness, as well as the faculty of distinguishing good 
 from evil, and consequently which would procure the gift 
 of free-will. 
 
 Such is a summary of the version given by the 
 Abb^ Gregoire* of some of the inner philosophy held 
 by the Knights Templars. There is a distinctly 
 Eastern tone of thought in even these few fragments, 
 fragments which indicate quite clearly to many 
 students the sources from which these traditions were 
 drawn. 
 
 The Strict Observance ejideavoured to recon- 
 stitute a Gnostic teaching when it sought to revive 
 the Traditions of the Templars. 
 
 * Grfgoire (Abb^), Histoire des Sectes Keligieuses, II., pp. 292 
 et seq. Paris, 1828. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS, 
 
 The Singing Messengers from East to West. 
 
 Oh, these are voices of the Past, 
 Links of a broken chain. — Procter. 
 
 Mysterious songsters of the Middle Ages, mes- 
 sengers who were burdened — by right of the royal 
 gift of song — with a knowledge that transcended that 
 of their fellow-men — such were the Troubadours, who 
 formed an integral portion of the mystic thread, and 
 thus served in the weaving of the glorious traditions 
 of eastern arcane lore into the young web of the 
 western child-life. 
 
 Much has been already set down by many 
 competent writers on this most complicated and 
 interesting period of the Middle Ages ; here and 
 there some few frankly acknowledge that in the 
 study of the writings and poems of the Troubadours, 
 traces of hidden knowledge on their part become 
 revealed, a knowledge which pertains to some more 
 ancient tradition than that of the Catholic Church, 
 
104 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 It is these traces that must be collected, in order to 
 demonstrate that these " Messengers of Love," as 
 they were often termed, were inheritors of a 
 " Kingdom of Heaven " — a mystic heaven, indeed, 
 of pure doctrine, noble life, and holy aspirations. 
 
 It is but slightly that we need touch on their 
 general history, for the outer aspect of their work can 
 be easily followed by students ; our chief attention 
 must be centred on the most important part of their 
 mission, and the part but little known in the general 
 world, namely, that of their work as spiritual teachers, 
 their secret language, and above all their secret 
 doctrine. 
 
 Rossetti* in his valuable book gives many proofs 
 of the existence of a mystic language in the " Secret 
 Schools," and of the " double " and even " triple 
 language" used by these Troubadours in com- 
 municating with each other. These details must be 
 investigated if we desire to arrive at any clear 
 comprehension of the extent to which these Secret 
 Schools were organised and developed during the 
 Middle Ages, and on this point Rossetti writes as 
 follows : 
 
 The existence of such a style of language is an 
 historical fact affirmed by many, and denied by none; 
 it is a not less notorious fact that the persecuted sect 
 conformed in public to the language and ceremonies of 
 the persecuting religion ; while they give in secret to every 
 
 * Rossetti (Gabriele), Disquisitions on the Anti-papal Spirit which 
 ■broduced the Reformation, \\, 112, 170. London, 1834. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. IO5 
 
 sentence of that language, and to every act of those 
 ceremonies, an arbitrary and conventional meaning, cor- 
 responding with their own designs. There is scarcely a 
 contemporary or succeeding historian who does not tell 
 us that the Patarini, or Cathari, or Albigenses, were Mani- 
 cheans ; and we know that Silvanus, one of the successors of 
 the murdered Manes, so artfully used that doctrine " that it 
 seemed all drawn from the Scriptures, as they are received 
 by catholics. He affected to make use of Scriptural phrases 
 and he spoke like the most orthodox among us, when he 
 mentioned the baptism, death, burial or resurrection of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ." And he and his proselytes did all 
 this so cunningly that "the Manicheans seduced numbers of 
 people; and their sect was considered by the simple-minded 
 to be a society of Christians, who made profession of an 
 extraordinary perfection.'' These are the words of the 
 Abbe Pluquet {Diet, des Hirh., art.. Silvan and Manicheans), 
 who traced the existence of this sect in Italy as far back as 
 1022, when many of them were discovered and burned for 
 the love of God. Let us hear the same author describe the 
 actions of later sectarians after other innumerable examples 
 of inhuman cruelty. "The Clanculars were a society of 
 anabaptists who taught that on religious subjects it was 
 necessary to speak in public like other men, and only in secret 
 to express the thoughts.'' And the Albigensis and Mani- 
 cheans show the best means of succeeding in this design 
 with the following fact. 
 
 Persecuted incessantly by the remorseless Inquisition, 
 one of their chiefs had recourse to a cunning device. He 
 knew that he and his friends were accused of refusing to 
 worship the saints, and of denying the supremacy of the 
 Romish Church, and that they would be forced to make a 
 profession of faith and to swear by the Holy Mary to have 
 no other religion than that of the Holy Church. He was 
 resolved not to betray his inward sentiments, but he desired 
 if possible, to escape death. " O, muses ! O, high genius ! 
 
I06 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Now vouchsafe your aid ! " He shut himself up in a cave 
 with two aged females of his own sect, and gave the name 
 of Holy Church to the one and Holy Mary to the other, 
 " In order, that, when the sectarians were interrogated by 
 the Father Inquisitors, they might be able to swear by the 
 Holy Mary that they held no other faith than that of the 
 Holy Church." Hence, when we desire to estimate properly 
 the devout and holy things written in those times, we must 
 first consider who composed them ; and thus we shall be 
 able to reconcile the frequent contradictions which are 
 apparent between the verses and the actions of the 
 Troubadours and Trouveurs."* 
 
 It is remarkable that this Secret language should 
 have remained so little knowrn, since it gives a clue of 
 almost unmeasured importance to many a hidden 
 mystery in the Troubadour life of the Middle Ages. 
 It is to Eugene Aroux that wre owe the largest 
 debt of gratitude for unveiling this Mysterious bye- 
 way of Mystic Studies ; he denounces, with the wrath 
 
 * Rossetti, Gabriele, Disquisitions on the Antipapal Spirit which 
 produced the Reformation, ii., 113-115. London, 1834. 
 
 Another writer makes the following comment: — "D'apr^s les 
 ideas de M. Rossetti, il y aurait encore dans les poesies de Dante et de 
 P^trarque, ainsi que dans les romans de Boccace, quelque chose que ces 
 hommes n'ont jamais entierement exprini6 dans leurs ecrits latins. II 
 semblerait, a entendre le nouveau commentateur de la Divine Comedie, 
 qu'une grande et ^ternelle verity, partie de la bouche des Orph^es, des 
 Thales, des Pythagores, et bondissant d'echo en echo jusqu'a nous, par 
 I'interm^daire des proph^tes, de Platon, des Sibylles, de Virgile et de 
 Bo^tius, a ^te recueillie enfin, tenue voiMe, mais exactement transmise 
 aux generations modernes, par une succession de sectaires, comme les 
 manich^ens, les templiers, les patarins, les gibelins, les rosecroix, les 
 sociniens, les swedenborgiens, les francs-ma9ons, et enfin les carbonari. " 
 — Del^clure (E. J.), Dante Alighieri, ou la Poisie Amoureuse ; pp. 
 605-606. Paris, 1848. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. I07 
 
 of a good, but bigoted Catholic, the teachings of 
 Dante, and he unveils for us the real reason of his 
 wrath : and from his stand-point he is right, Dante 
 was not an Orthodox Catholic ; he was a true Mystic, 
 and his Church was composed of all those great and 
 liberated souls who have existed in every clime : 
 without distinction of race, religion or caste. Aroux 
 draws the attention of the Student to the following 
 important points : with relation to the real views 
 of Dante, thus he says, in commenting on the Poet : 
 
 Though we may seem to have gone back quite beyond 
 the deluge, it is evident that we are really completely in the 
 Middle Ages. And in fact, though people may talk to us 
 of the origin of the human species and of its dispersion over 
 the earth, the question is really that of the starting-point of 
 the Manichean-Gnostic doctrine and of its course from East 
 to West. Let the following lines be carefully considered : 
 " We do not readily believe that men were, immediately on 
 the confusion of tongues, dispersed all over the world. The 
 root of the human race was first planted in the countries of 
 the East, then our race spread itself by putting forth 
 numerous shoots on one side and another, [like] palm-treks, 
 and it finally reached the extreme boundaries of the West, 
 whence it resulted that rational throats quenched their 
 thirst for the first time at the streams of Europe, at some at 
 least, if not at all. But whether they were foreigners 
 coming there for the first time, or whether, born in Europe, 
 they had returned there, they brought with them a triple 
 language. " 
 
 Here is the text of this passage, so singular as it is, 
 understood in a literal sense : 
 
 '■^ Ex prmcedenti memorata confusione linguarum non 
 leviter opinamur per universa mundi climata . . . tunc 
 
I08 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 homines primuni fuisse disperses. Et cum radix humana 
 propaginis principaliter in oris orientalibus sit plantata ; 
 nee nan ab inde ad utrumque per diffusos multipliciter 
 PALMiTES. Nostra fuit extensa propago ; demumque ad 
 fines ocddentales protracta, unde primitus tunc vel totius 
 EuropcB, vel saltern quadam, rationalia guttura pot- 
 averunt. Sed sive adven^e tunc primitus advenissent, 
 sive ad Europam indigence repetissent, idioma secum 
 trifarium homines attulerunt." 
 
 However little it may now be remembered that, 
 according to Dante, those only are men who make use 
 of their reason, others being brutes in his eyes ; that, 
 further, he has taken care to explain to us in the Vita 
 Nuova that the name of palms, palmieri, was affected by 
 those who had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, it will be 
 acknowledged that the true meaning of this- passage is quite 
 different from that which we have given it, and that it 
 conceals another which is as follows : 
 
 Our doctrine had its origin in the East ; its votaries, 
 constituting the true human race, were not at first spread 
 all over the earth : it was by slow degrees that our Sectarian 
 race, nostra propago, multiplied itself with the help of Syrian 
 pilgrims, palms palmieri, who brought the light to the 
 confines of the West, and then rational throats, men using 
 their reason, quenched their thirst at the streams of Europe. 
 These missionaries of the sect being either Orientals or 
 Europeans returning to the country of their birth, they 
 brought with them a language of three-fold meaning, 
 allegorical, moral, and mystical. 
 
 To reject an interpretation so plain and so thoroughly 
 in accordance with all that we have previously seen, it would 
 have to be explained how it could have come into Dante's 
 head that men were born in Europe, when no rational throat 
 had as yet drunk of its streams, that these Europeans had 
 been to the East to learn a triple language, to bring it back 
 into their own country, which no doubt had one of its own, 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. IO9 
 
 and that the human race born in the East had to people the 
 West, already inhabited by men, whether rational or not. 
 Now this explanation is none of the easiest. 
 
 It is always the case that these importers of the triple 
 language are divided into three bands, having each their 
 own idiom ; to one was allotted the South of Europe, to 
 another the North, to the third the part of Asia and of 
 Europe occupied by those who are now called Greeks, quos 
 nunc Grmcos vocamus, as if they did not bear this name ages 
 ago. But let us explain : here it is a question of the 
 refugees of the Sect, of the Sinon of the party, whom we 
 have seen so ill-treated in Hell, who are also spoken of in 
 the Monarchy under the name of Greek pastors. These 
 hold to white and yellow, as one of the aspects of Lucifer ; 
 they have one foot on the European soil of the Catholics, 
 the other on the Eastern land of the Manicheans, and, 
 which is very disturbing, they understand for the most part 
 the artifices of the conventional vocabulary. The three 
 idioms were then subdivided in each of the regions men- 
 tioned ; but those of the north, such as the Hungarians, 
 Slavs, Teutons, Saxons, and English kept the monosyllable 
 is as the sign of their common origin. For the rest of 
 Europe there was a third idiom, " though it may not be 
 perceived that it is triple, licet nee videatur trifarium.'' 
 Among the inhabitants of this region, " some say, as 
 affirmation, oc, others oil, and others again si ; that is to say, 
 Spaniards, French, and Italians. But what proves the 
 common origin of their idiom is that they use some of the 
 same words to express many things, such as Dieu, del, 
 amour, mer, terre, vivre, mourir, aimer, and others besides. 
 [God, heaven, love, sea, earth, to live, to die, to love.] " 
 
 Dante knew very well that the Spaniards did not use oc 
 as an affirmation, that they used si like the Italians, but he 
 desired to call attention to the chief centre of the 
 Albigensian doctrine, to the land of the langue d'oc, and 
 not venturing to name Toulouse, he made use of this very 
 
no MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 visible artifice, especially when it is recognised that the 
 words which he mentions as revealing the common origin of 
 the language in the three countries are precisely those which 
 the sectarian poets so frequently use in their mysterious 
 compositions. 
 
 Aroux further explains that these " importers " of 
 the " triple language " were divided into three bands, 
 each having its own idiom : one set traversed the 
 South of Europe, another the North, another the part 
 of Asia and Europe occupied by those novi^ called 
 Greeks. Then Aroux breaks out in wrath : " They 
 have one foot on the European soil of the Catholics, 
 the other on the Eastern land of the Manichaeans." 
 
 But it is from another of his interesting worksf 
 that we get the most intimate details about the 
 organisation of these Troubadour heretics, and their 
 spiritual teaching ; the passages are so important 
 that it is better to give them in full. 
 
 The eminent professor § whom we follow untiringly 
 because he is an authority on the subject, had no suspicion, 
 when making researches into the elements composing the 
 
 * Aroux (Eugene), Dante HirHique, Rivolutionnaire ei Socialiste, 
 Rivilations d'un Catholique, p. 388. Paris, 1854. 
 
 + Aroux (E.), Les Mysteres de la Chevalerie, pp. 161-169. Paris, 
 1858. 
 
 J The phrases "True human race " and "Sectarians " are generally 
 applied to Mystics, also to the Manichaeans, Albigenses, Troubadours, 
 Palmers, and Palmieri ; it meant those men and women throughout the 
 world, of every nation and in every clime, who were seeking the inner 
 life in its true sense ; and who will be the " first fruits " of the 
 " Redeemer," in the mystical sense. 
 
 § Aroux is here referring to Fauriel (M.P., Paris), whose works on 
 the Proven9al literature have been so often quoted in these pages. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. Ill 
 
 personnel oi Provengal literature, that he was digging into 
 the archives of the Albigensian Church. So it is, however, 
 as will be shown by a rapid estimate of these elements in 
 the light of common sense. One may believe with him that 
 previous to the Xlth century there were in the south of 
 France men, who under the name of jesters, joculatores, 
 made it their profession to recite or to sing romantic fictions. 
 But it was precisely because the apostles of the dissenting 
 doctrine found this custom established in the countries 
 where it had survived the Roman domination, that they 
 eagerly adopted it for the furtherance of their propaganda. 
 For just as they excelled in turning to account the heroic 
 traditions, the religious fables of the various peoples in order 
 to engraft their ideas on this national foundation, they 
 displayed exceeding skill in adapting themselves, according 
 to times and places, to the manners and customs of the 
 countries in which they carried on their ministry. Thus 
 they became mi?inesingers in Germany, bards and skalds in 
 Scandinavia, minstrels in England, trouvires in northern 
 France, troubadours and jugglers in ancient Aquitaine, 
 giullari, men of mirth, in Italy — leaving everywhere monu- 
 ments of their genius and a most popular memory. 
 
 The missionaries of the heresy certainly preached the 
 religion of love long before the time when William of 
 Poitiers spoke of them, towards iioo, by the name of 
 Troubadours, for before winning over the higher classes of 
 society, their doctrines must have taken a long time to 
 filter through the lower ranks. 
 
 At the time of the complete organization* of the 
 sectarian propaganda, that is to say from 1 1 50 to 1 200, the 
 most brilliant period of Provenjal literature, Faiiriel rightly 
 distinguishes different orders of troubadours and jesters. 
 
 * This was just before the most deadly persecutions began. There 
 was an extraordinarily extended organization of this so-called heretical 
 church. 
 
112 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 the very necessity of things having obliged their division 
 into two distinct classes. The one in fact addressing 
 themselves more especially to social parties, singing only for 
 courts and castles ; the other, appealing more to popular 
 instincts, composed for public places, for the mercantile and 
 working classes, for the country population. We have said 
 that the former were the dissenting bishops, combining the 
 qualities of the Perfect Knights and the Perfect Trou- 
 badours. We have explained how, having no less courage 
 than skill, knowing how at need to employ cunning, and 
 giving constant evidence of a patience and humility proof 
 against everything, they were of the type of Renaud de 
 Montauban, the chivalrous figure in contrast to Maitre 
 Renard, the symbolical representative of the Roman clergy. 
 
 The latter, no less useful on account of the recruits that 
 they unceasingly made amongst the most numerous classes, 
 amongst those who had most to suffer from clerical 
 oppression and exactions, furnished the model of the 
 knights errant, as also that of the wild knights [" chevaliers 
 sauvages "], personified in the romance of which Guido the 
 Wild is the easily to be recognised hero. 
 
 Lastly, above these two orders of knights and trou- 
 badours, there was that of the barons and feudal lords, who, 
 having embraced the Albigensian faith, having become its 
 protectors or godfathers, carried on the propaganda in their 
 own way and in their own social sphere. These men often 
 cultivated poetry, and used it to impress on the nobility, 
 and still more on the bourgeoisie, ideas hostile to pontifical 
 omnipotence. Not only did they encourage the people to 
 shake off the theocratic yoke by setting them the example, 
 but they further upheld them and resolutely took up their 
 defence against prelates, inquisitors and legates, the Estults, 
 Galaffrons, giants and necromancers that abound in the 
 romances of Geste. Thence, we have that heroic personage 
 Roland, in contrast to Master Issengrin ; that son of Milo, 
 whose powerful words, under the name of Durendal, made 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. II3 
 
 an enormous breach in the granite of the mountains, a 
 breach through which an invasion was made on to Spanish 
 soil, where it could exclaim, long before Louis XIV., " The 
 Pyrenees exist no longer ! " 
 
 These noble sectaries, of the type of the chivalric 
 Roland, were, as a matter of fact, feudal lords, true knights. 
 As such, they did not hesitate to confer in case of need, in 
 accordance with the ideas of the time, and especially in 
 masonic [? " masseniques "] lodges, the order of knighthood 
 on distinguished members of their communion whom 
 religious or political interest drew into foreign countries. 
 
 On another side, observe how generously certain 
 German Emperors — such as a Conrad, an Otho, the two 
 Fredericks — once came down into Italy, lent themselves to 
 bestowing the order of knighthood on the bourgeois of 
 Milan, on merchants and bankers of Genoa and Florence. 
 For them it was a means of recruiting their forces against 
 the papacy, and of strengthening in Italy an opposition 
 which they well knew to be not simply political. And 
 Dante also is careful not to forget the families who 
 quartered on their shields "the arms of the great baron," 
 vicar of the Emperor Otho; and it is with pride that he 
 recalls the promotion of his great-great-grandfather Cac- 
 ciaguida, knighted by Conrad. 
 
 As to the jesters, properly so-named jesters of song, of 
 sayings, of romance, as they were called — they must be 
 distinguished from the mimic jesters, that is to say, from the 
 mountebanks and buffoons. The clerical jesters were, as 
 has already been said, evangelical ministers, still subject to 
 the preliminary discipline of the priesthood. Holding the 
 rank of deacons in the sectarian church, they were with 
 regard to the pastors to whom they were attached, in a 
 position analogous to that of squires to knights, and it is 
 under this title that they figure in the romances. 
 
 If distinguished troubadours are spoken of, and, among 
 others, Giraud de Borneil, as always accompanied by two 
 H 
 
114 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 jesters, it is unquestionably that these troubadours were 
 Albigensian bishops, whose dignity and functions required 
 the assistance of two deacons. This is why it is said of 
 them that " They never went on a tour (episcopal) without 
 having both of them in their retinue." 
 
 It would be a great mistake to think that the first 
 comer could be admitted to the functions of a jester. 
 Fauriel will tell you that it was necessary to have "an 
 extraordinary memory, a fine voice, to be able to sing 
 well, to play well on the accompanying instrument, and 
 also to have a knowledge of history, of traditions, of 
 genealogies. Several jesters indeed are cited for their 
 historical knowledge." The learned member of the 
 Institute thinks that this knowledge could not have 
 been very great, at a time when all history was 
 reduced to barren chronicles; but is it quite certain that 
 their blunders, their anachronisms, their confounding of 
 personages, countries, and dates, may not be voluntary? 
 Would they not on the contrary be a proof that their know- 
 ledge in this respect was much greater than one is willing 
 to suppose ? As to the genealogies, it is a question of those 
 of Geste's romances. 
 
 Besides the jesters attached to the person of the bishop 
 or of the mere pastor, were those who, having already 
 completed their probation, went forth, furnished with the 
 recommendation of the one or the other, to give instruction 
 or carry consolation into courts and castles. It was these 
 who were called elder sons [of age? " fils ma/eurs"\ 
 deacons of the first-class. The others, designated younger 
 sons [under age? "fils mtneurs"\ performed the same 
 functions in towns and villages ; but for the most part 
 their own special aptitudes marked them out for the kind 
 of service expected from them. 
 
 These two classes of one and the same priesthood were 
 recruited from all ranks of society, on the sole condition of 
 uniting to a true vocation the natural gifts and the know- 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. 115 
 
 ledge necessary for success in so difficult and dangerous 
 a mission. 
 
 One curious matter, to state precisely,- would be how 
 many personages came down into these poetic classes from 
 a station generally considered superior. Nothing was more 
 common in the 12th and 13th centuries, in the countries of 
 the Provengal tongue, than to see knights, castellans, canons, 
 clerics, become troubadours or simple jesters. Several of 
 the most distinguished among both had begun by being 
 considerable personages in society. Peyrols had been a 
 knight ; Pierre Cardinal was born of a noble and wealthy 
 family ; Pierre Roger had been a canon at Clermont ; 
 Arnaud de Marueilh had been a clergyman, and the 
 famous Arnaud Daniel was a noble who had received a 
 first-rate education. Assuredly these men did not consider 
 that they were lowering themselves by embracing the 
 apostolate, but on the contrary were raising themselves in 
 their own eyes and in those of their brethren. The 
 mysterious Sordello was a noble lord. 
 
 Moreover, how should knights such as Sordello, such as 
 the Dauphin of Auvergne and so many others, have 
 hesitated to become troubadours out of zeal for their faith, 
 when kings like Richard of England and Peter of Aragon, 
 powerful suzerains like William of Poitiers, had declared 
 themselves professors of the Gay Science ; when they 
 added their voices to those of the servants of love, to exalt, 
 in interests perhaps less religious than poUtical, the 
 mysterious and Perfect lady who under various names — as 
 star, flower, light — was appealed to, to cast down to hell the 
 Roman she-wolf, to crush the pontifical serpent? The 
 Infamous dates not from Voltaire. 
 
 Just as episcopal mandates, days for the sermons of 
 preachers, and the order of the offices, &c., are affixed to 
 the doors of churches, so did the troubadours give out 
 their notices in the castles by a kind of poetical programme, 
 thus making known the lyric, pastoral or romantic com- 
 
Il6 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 positions which were to serve as the text for their teachings. 
 In how many places was not the Divine Comedy thus recited 
 and commented on before a select audience ? Fauriel cites 
 as a specimen a whimsical piece by Pierre Cardinal, "in which 
 the author," he says, "envelops himself in veils of allegory 
 of the most fantastic kind till it appears to him unintelligible." 
 These veils would have appeared to him transparent if he 
 had understood the true composition of the balsam of 
 Fierabras. 
 
 As this famous balsam, the unguent proclaimed by the 
 troubadour knight and probably bishop, Pierre Cardinal, 
 the unguent which heals all kinds of wounds, even the 
 bites of the venemous reptiles (in the orthodox ranks, 
 be it understood) — is in fact none other than the word of 
 the Gospel ; so also the golden vessel in which it is con- 
 tained, the vessel adorned with the most precious stones, is 
 none other than the Holy Grail itself, or the book of the 
 Gospels, as the Albigenses had adopted and translated it ; the 
 golden book, the vessel containing the true light, visible only to 
 the initiated, to the professors of the gay science [" du gay 
 saber"\ Now, among the romances given out by Pierre 
 Cardinal, we find in the nick of time that of Tristan of 
 Leonois, so well-known to Dante, and which, celebrating 
 the conquest of England by the law of love, should 
 have more than one claim to the interest of the people 
 of Provence. 
 
 We have seen, on the one hand, that the Albigensian 
 clergy, so skilful and so full of zeal, were recruited from the 
 ranks of the priesthood as well as from those of the nobility 
 and the bourgeoisie ; on the other hand we have become 
 convinced, from the interpretations that we have given of 
 the decrees of the Courts of Love and of the decisions in 
 the amorous casuistry, that ecclesiastics converted to the 
 faith of Love could not continue their cure of souls in the 
 parish where they had performed their vicarial functions. 
 
 What then became of those fresh recruits enrolled under 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. I 1 7 
 
 the banner of heresy when once dispossessed of their cure 
 or of any other sacerdotal function ? 
 
 Like the other aspirants to the sectarian priesthood, 
 they went into seminaries or lodges to receive instruction ; 
 then, having become deacons or squires, having undergone 
 tests and given the required pledges, they were admitted to 
 the rank of Perfect Knights, or Perfect Troubadours. 
 Having thus graduated, they started in the character of 
 missionaries or of pilgrims of love (" pellegrini d'amore ") as 
 Dante says, sometimes undertaking long and dangerous 
 journeys. And so we find traces of them everywhere, from 
 the icy north and the depths of Germany even to the east, 
 in France and the low countries, in England, Spain and 
 Italy. Then it was that, in the symbolical language of the 
 faithful in love, they were called by the name of Knights- 
 errant. 
 
 Preaching the doctrine of love, the true law of the 
 Redeemer, their mission was to redress the wrongs of 
 Rome, to take up the defence of the weak and oppressed ; 
 they were also represented and celebrated as the true 
 soldiers of the Christ, the champions of the poor, attacking 
 under all their forms the monstrous abuses of theocratic 
 regime; as comforters of the widow Rachel, that Gnostic 
 church so cruelly tried by the pontifical Herod ; as the 
 devoted supporters of the sons of the widow, those humble 
 members of the " massenie " of the Holy Grail ; as the 
 terror of ogres, dragons, and giants. 
 
 Fauriel must then believe in them, writing : " It is 
 unquestionable that in all the countries in Europe in which 
 there were Knights, there was one particular class known by 
 the title of Knights errant ; " and he cites in proof of this 
 the tax which was levied upon them in 1241 by Henry III. 
 of England, who was in great need of money and would 
 naturally turn to his best allies to obtain it ; would he 
 necessarily call them by their true name of Albigensian 
 missionaries ? 
 
Il8 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 " It is in the poetical monuments of southern France, 
 he adds, that I find the most ancient traces of knight- 
 errantry. What may be gathered from them as a whole, is 
 that the condition of Knight errant was rather accidental and 
 transitory than fixed and permanent.'' Where else indeed 
 than in Provence could one find more traces of their 
 pilgrims of love since Provence was their native soil ? And 
 was it not the least that could be expected, after the trials 
 of a wandering life, that these zealous missionaries, called 
 back to sedentary functions, might rest after their prolonged 
 fatigue ? 
 
 Contrary to the romances which represent them as 
 always solitary, and running about in search of adventures, 
 " the Provencal poets depict them to us as usually travelling 
 several together, and to all appearance temporarily asso- 
 ciated for some enterprise or common quest." Yes, indeed ! 
 Exactly like the missionaries of our own times, and they were 
 always accompanied by their socius, whom the Troubadours, 
 their colleagues, turned into their squire. 
 
 One of the most illustrious among these knights-errant 
 — an authentic personage, at least as a Troubadour — was 
 Raimbaud de Vaqueiras, whose platonic amours with 
 Madame Beatrice, who called him her beautiful knight 
 ("beau chevalier"), are extremely curious, but would make 
 too long an episode. We will merely say that Boniface, 
 Marquis de Montferrat, whose sister Raimbaud's Beatrice 
 must have been, was one of the nobles of the south of 
 Europe who most especially occupied the attention of the 
 Troubadours, for the very simple reason that, sharing their 
 faith, he sheltered under his protection the Vaudois, whose 
 cradle was in the valleys of Piedmont. 
 
 Other knights are mentioned at the same period in the 
 historical monuments of the south of France and of the 
 Catalogue, under the name of the " Chevalier Sauvages "■ — 
 Wild Knights. The romance entitled " Guido, the Wild," 
 presents the poetical personification of these guides or 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. I I9 
 
 pastors of Alpine districts. He figures in Ariosto's "Roland," 
 which we shall probably annotate some day, with some heroes 
 whose symbolical value is not more difficult to estimate. 
 
 An article of certain constitutions of James I., of Aragon, 
 who wanted to treat with Rome, forbade in 1234, the making 
 of Wild Knights; another article, says Fauriel, "seems to 
 establish a connection between this class of Knights and the 
 jesters ; it prohibits the giving of any gratuities to ^. jester or 
 to a Wild Knight." I can well believe it, and such a 
 connection was a matter of course. Was not the jester the 
 squire, the socius of the Wild Knight, and the King of 
 Aragon wishing to give pledges to Rome, how could he 
 separate them in the prohibition he was issuing ? Would 
 not the gratuity given to one have been given to the other ? 
 The Wild Knights had in reality the closest relations with 
 the Knights errant ; like them they were ministers of the 
 proscribed worship, forced to disguise their character 
 carefully. They differed from them on one point only, and 
 that was that instead of going to a foreign land to catechise 
 and convert the orthodox population, they had to fulfil 
 their own ministry in their own native country. Further, 
 instead of exercising sedentary functions in a single 
 parish, they had to move over a much more extensive area. 
 They were obliged to go up hill and down dale, in Alpine 
 districts, to carry the words of peace and consolation to the 
 isolated populations, who were too few in number to have a 
 resident pastor ; and also to those whom persecution or the 
 stake had deprived of their own. 
 
 Unlike the ministers of towns, boroughs and castles, the 
 gentle knights, as titularies of this or that church, their lady- 
 love — they themselves were the pastors of the woods and 
 mountains, compelled, in order to feed their sheep, to travel 
 through the wildest districts ; hence the name given to them 
 by their co-religionists, who caused it to be taken, like so 
 many other conventional terms, outside their church, in a 
 totally different sense. 
 
I20 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 The most bitter feeling on the part of the Catholics 
 was aroused from the fact that the teachings they 
 denounced were so closely allied to those inculcated 
 by themselves, and that the lives of the heretics shone 
 out as stars against the blackness of the mediaeval 
 monastic life.* Indeed, the majority of the higher 
 classes became Troubadours, and when prevented by 
 persecution from speaking, they took refuge in song,-]- 
 and treated their subjects sometimes seriously, some- 
 times lightly, but ever was there, as we have seen, a 
 dual meaning in La gate saber, or the "Art of loving ": 
 for the true " union of love," as Aroux points out, 
 meant the attachment of the " Perfect Chevalier " to 
 the " celestial chivalry," for such were those knightsj 
 called who gave themselves to the service of the 
 " Holy Grail," or the " Mystic Quest," i.e., to the inner 
 service, or initiation, of their secret body. They 
 were indeed : 
 
 The soldier-saints who, row on row, 
 Burn upward each to his point of bliss. 
 
 The perfect passion of self-sacrifice was theirs, 
 and moved those men of the Middle Ages to martyr- 
 dom and suffering in their zeal for the spreading of 
 the knowledge of the mystic doctrine. Such, for 
 
 * Lecky (W. E. H., M.A.), History of European Morals, ii. 217. 
 London, 1877. 
 
 t Thus we have the " Bible" of Guiot von Provins ; and the whole 
 cycle of the " Grail legends." 
 
 X Wolfram von Eschenbach was one of these. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. 121 
 
 instance, was Peter Waldo* who became the founder 
 of the powerful groups of Waldensians.-j- or the 
 " Poor of Lyons," a secret body with masonic 
 connections. He was first attracted to serious 
 subjects by a Troubadour who was reciting a poem 
 in the streets of Lyons — a chant in favour of the 
 ascetic life ; Waldo invited the Troubadour in, and 
 from that time became one of them. 
 
 We must here digress from the mystic aspect, in 
 order to give a slight outline on the general organi- 
 sation, which can be taken from Baret's admirable 
 work on the subject ; { he gives a chart of the chief 
 School of Troubadours as follows : § 
 
 The School of Aquitaine 
 The School of Auvergne 
 The School of Rodez 
 The School of Languedoc 
 The School of Provence 
 
 The general compositions of the Troubadours 
 may be classified under the following heads : 
 
 " The Gallant," " The Historical," " The Didactic," 
 " The Satirical," and the purely " Theological " ; then 
 
 * See Gilly, D.D. (W. S.), The Jfomaunt version, of the Gospel 
 according to St. John; from MSS. preserved in Trinity College, 
 Dublin. Introduction, pp. xc. xcix. 
 
 t Also called Valdes, Valdernis, Valdensis, and then Waldensis. 
 *" X Baret (Eugene), Les Troubadours et leur Influence sur la 
 Littirature du Midi de t Europe, p. 64. Paris, 1867. 
 
 § These are the French Schools only ; Germany, Italy, Austria, 
 and the Danubian Provinces contained as many. 
 
 All these were again 
 sub-divided into 
 groups. 
 
122 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 further, others we may term " The Mystical," or even 
 " Hermetic " ; the " Satirical " were often Theological 
 from an essentially belligerent standpoint. Baret 
 emphasises the fact that theological matters occupied 
 the attention of the Troubadours much more than 
 history. Nostradamus enumerates several works of 
 this kind.* In the Vatican Library, says Baret, there 
 are four anonymous treatises which belong to the 
 Provencal Literature. 
 
 But the object which was the special search of the 
 Inquisition was the translation of the Bible into the 
 Catalonian tongue, and very carefully was this work 
 concealed ; for the organisation of these mystic 
 schools was admirable and their Bishops and Deacons 
 were disguised as Troubadours. Throughout Spain, 
 Germany, Italy and Central Europe, this powerful 
 " secret organisation " extended with its mystic 
 traditions. Aroux, in connecting the Troubadours 
 with the Albigenses on one side, links them also to 
 the Manichaean religion on the other, that most 
 pernicious — according to the Roman Church — of all 
 heresies, because the most vital ; -f- and, indeed, 
 nothing but the wholesale bloodshed undertaken by 
 
 * There is one of importance, TraiU sur la Doctrine des 
 Albigeois et Tuschius, by Raoul de Gassin. 
 
 t Says Lea : " When to Dualism is added the doctrine of trans- 
 migration as a means of reward and retribution, the sufferings of man 
 seem to be fully accounted for. . . . Manes had so skilfully compounded 
 Mazdean Dualism with Christianity and with Gnostic and Buddhist 
 elements, that his doctrines found favour with high and low, with the 
 subtle intellects of the Schools, and with the toiling masses." Hist, of 
 the Inquisition, i. 89. London, 1888. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. 1 23 
 
 the Dominicans could have crushed out its public 
 organisation ; still, it lived again in other forms and 
 under other names, and when Rutherford and other 
 writers connect the Manichaeans with the Freemasons 
 they are touching a deeper truth than perhaps they 
 know. As the above-mentioned writer points out, 
 the Troubadours and the " Steinmetzen or Bridge- 
 Builders " were connected, and " among them, 
 too, the Freemasons found ample occupation " ; 
 this is accurately true, for from Manes* "the 
 widow's son," descends the tradition which was 
 common to Troubadour and Freemason ; their 
 hieroglyphs were in many cases identical and the 
 signs common to both. Manes went into Egypt 
 and brought back from thence the ancient tradition, 
 he who was crucified for reforming the Magian 
 Priesthood, became the originator of the powerful 
 symbolic phrase used among " the sons of the widow " 
 with its corresponding sign. It is this tradition 
 which underlies the well-known societies of the 
 Knight Templars, the Fratres Lucis, the Asiatische 
 BriJder, and many others who have kept alive the 
 mystic teaching, and handed it on. 
 
 From the death of Manes, 276 A.D., there was 
 
 * Mani — or Cubricus — was the pupil of Terebinthe (who was after- 
 wards called Buddas). He was an Egyptian Philosopher, and from 
 him Manes received the Hermetic tradition ; Manichseism was based on 
 the Ancient Babylonian religion with Christian, Persian and Egyptian 
 elements introduced. The Gnostics who joined the Manichjean stream 
 were the Basilideans, Marcionites, and Bardesanites. See Beausobre 
 (M. de), Histoire critique dt Manichle, 2 vols. Amsterdam, 1734. 
 
124 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 an intimate alliance* — even a fusion — with some of 
 the leading Gnostic sects, and thence do we derive 
 the intermingling of the two richest streams of 
 Oriental Wisdom : the one, directly through Persia 
 from India ; the other, traversing that marvellous 
 Egyptian period, enriched by the wisdom of the 
 great Hermetic teachers, flowed into Syria and 
 Arabia, and thence with added force — garnered 
 from the new divine powers made manifest in the 
 profound mystery of the blessed Jesus — into Europe, 
 through Northern Africa, finding a home in Spain, 
 where it took deep root. From this stock sprang 
 into full flower that richness of speech' and song for 
 which the Troubadours will live for ever, Manichseans, 
 who sang and chanted the Esoteric Wisdom they 
 dared not speak. 
 
 Next we see them dispersed in sects, taking local 
 names, — separated in name only, but using the same 
 secret language, having the same signs. Thus, every- 
 where they journeyed, and, no matter by what name 
 they were called, each knew the other as a " widow's 
 son," bound together on a Mystic Quest, knitted — by 
 virtue of a secret science — into one community ; with 
 them came from the East the chivalric ideal, and they 
 
 * Says Lea: "Of all the heresies with which the early Church 
 had to contend, none had excited such mingled fear and loathing as 
 Manichseism." And again : " The Manichseism of the Cathari, 
 Patarins, or Albigenses, was not a mere speculative dogma of the 
 schools, but a faith which aroused fanaticism so enthusiastic that its 
 devotees shrank from no sacrifices in its propagation." Lea (H. C), 
 op. cit, i. 89. 
 
THE TROUBABOURS. I 25 
 
 chanted of love and sang of heaven : but the love was 
 a " Divine Love," and their heaven was the wisdom 
 and peace of those who sought the higher life. As 
 Aroux* says, the chief object which dominated the 
 work of these " Trouveurs " [Troubadours] was 
 Chivalry — " not the feudal, fighting, iniquitous 
 Chivalry, as corrupt as it was ignorant," but that 
 tone of thought which is well termed mystic, and 
 which sees in all life only a manifestation of the 
 Divine power ; they fought for the purity of their 
 ideal against the ever-increasing corruption of the 
 Roman Church. 
 
 A word must here be added on the origin of 
 chivalry which is mistakenly supposed to be of 
 Christian inception. Viardot says : 
 
 In recalling what Christian Europe owes to the Arabs 
 with regard to knowledge, we must not omit what she owes 
 to them with regard to manners. The high civilisation to 
 which they had attained bore its natural fruit, and the 
 Arabs were no less distinguished by the advance and the 
 gentleness of their manners than by the extent and variety 
 of their knowledge. The humanity, the tolerance that they 
 displayed towards conquered nations, to whom they gener- 
 ously left their possessions, their religion, their laws, and 
 -mostly their civic rights, bore a striking testimony on this 
 point, which was thoroughly confirmed by their whole 
 
 * Aroux (Eugine), Les Mysterh de la ChevaUrie, pp. 69-71. 
 aris, 1858. 
 
 "Every Knight has the power to create Knights. There is in 
 the hand and in the sword of every Knight a power (I nearly wrote ' a 
 fluid,' but I did not dare) which is really capable of creating other 
 Knights."— Gautier (L^on), Chivalry, its. Henry Frith, p. 223. 
 London, 1891. 
 
126 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 history. This high civilisation appeared under two chief 
 aspects — gallantry in private manners, chivalry in public 
 manners. Gallantry (as we will call the delicacy of social 
 relations) arose among them from the extreme reserve 
 imposed on the two sexes, from the severity of the laws and 
 of opinion, in fine, from the cultivated mind of the women, 
 who knew Jiow to inspire love and to command respect. 
 In all social relations, in all family customs, the Arabs 
 showed extreme austerity. "Those people," they said of 
 the Spaniards, " are full of courage, and endure privations 
 with fortitude; but they live like wild beasts, washing 
 ■ neither their bodies nor even their clothes, which they only 
 take off when they fall into rags, and going into each other's 
 houses without asking permission."* 
 
 Chivalry was the virtue of warriors. Founded on justice, 
 it corrected the abuses of force, which is the right of war ; 
 founded on humanity, it tempered the excesses of hatred, 
 reminding men of their brotherhood even in the midst of 
 combat ; it was a kind of association or confraternity 
 between men of arms which drew together and united all 
 its members when politics or religion separated them, and 
 which imposed on them noble duties when all rights were 
 disowned. Chivalry was the most powerful correction of 
 feudalism by giving to the weak and the oppressed, 
 protectors and avengers . . . 
 
 Bravery, however, the sole virtue of German soldiers, 
 was neither the only one nor even the first, required of an 
 Arab Knight. Ten qualities were indispensable to give him 
 a right to this name, namely : goodness, valour, courtesy, 
 poetry, elegance of speech, strength, horsemanship, skill in 
 the use of lance, sword and bow. f 
 
 * " O believers ! enter not into a strange house without asking 
 permission to do so." (Xoran, Sour. XXIV., v., 27). Jos. Conde, 
 Part I., cap. 18. 
 
 t "Fue muy buen caballero, y se decia de (A que tenia las diez 
 prendas qu6 distinguen ^ los nobles y generosos, qu6 consisten en 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. 1 27 
 
 This " Celestial Chivalry" — Aroux demonstrates 
 — was derived from the " Albigensian Gospel," whose 
 " Evangel " or " Gospel " was again derived from the 
 Manichaean-Marcion tradition.* These Albigenses 
 were identical with the Cathari, and the Troubadours 
 were the links bearing the secret teaching from one 
 body to another. " Thus one sees them taking every 
 form : by turns, artizans, colporteurs, pilgrims, 
 weavers, colliers . . . deprived of the right to 
 speak, they took to singing." 
 
 It must be remembered that simultaneously with 
 the inflow of this Manichaean Oriental wisdom into 
 
 bondad, valentia, caballeria, gentileza, poesia, bien hablar, fuerza, 
 destreza en la lanza, en la espada, y en el tirar del arco." (J. Conde, 
 perto II., cap. 63.) 
 
 He was an excellent Knight, and it was said of him that he 
 possessed the ten accomplishments that distinguish nobles and 
 honourable men, which consist in goodness, valour, horsemanship, 
 courtesy, poetry, excellence of speech, ability, skill in lance, sword, and 
 in drawing the bow. 
 
 The word "gentileza" or " gentillesse," which has greatly 
 changed in meaning with the lapse of time, means charming manners, 
 the good tone of a man well born and well bred, of one whom the 
 English call a gentleman. Viardot (L), Histoire des Araies et des 
 Mores d^ Espagne, ii., pp. 197, 199. Paris, 1851. 
 
 * Lea (H. C), op. cit., i. 92 : A further irrefragable evidence of 
 the derivation of Catharism from Manichaeism is furnished by the sacred 
 thread and garment which were worn by all the Perfect among the 
 Cathari. This custom is too peculiar to have had an independent 
 origin, and is manifestly the Mazdean kosti and saddarah, the sacred 
 thread and shirt, the wearing of which was essential to all believers, 
 and the use of which, by both Zends and Brahmins, shows that its 
 origin is to be traced to the prehistoric period anterior to the separation 
 of those branches of the Aryan family. Among the Cathari the wearer 
 of the thread and vestment was what was known among the inquisitors 
 as the ' haretictts indutus ' or ' vestttus,' initiated into all the mysteries 
 of the heresy." 
 
128 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Spain, there had been the same development in Italy 
 from Sicily, and all through the Danubian Provinces 
 into Hungary, over the Caucasus to Russia, and along 
 the shores of the Caspian Seas ; just as the legend of 
 the Holy Grail was everywhere, so also was this 
 stream of thought, for the two were one. 
 
 The most prominent public development takes 
 place, as we see, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, 
 but the enormous spread of the teaching was the 
 result of centuries of quiet work. Travel was slow, 
 and nearly all communication was from person to 
 person. Hence when we see in the twelfth century 
 the " flowering of the plant," it must be remembered 
 that this result was the work in each country of small 
 bands of — even isolated — travelling mystics who were 
 true missionaries in life and heart. 
 
 To turn to another aspect it is curious to think of 
 the Troubadours as authorities in dress and etiquette. 
 Rutherford says : * " They prepared the youth of both 
 sexes for society, and they drew up rules for their 
 guidance therein," and then he gives a most interesting 
 quotation from a Troubadour, Amanieu des Escas, 
 who instructed a young man of rank while he was a 
 Page or Esquire as follows : " Shun the companionship 
 of fools, impertinents, or meddlers, lest you pass for 
 the same. Never indulge in buffoonery, scandals, 
 deceit, or falsehood. Be frank, generous, and brave ; 
 be obliging and kind ; study neatness in your dress, 
 
 * Rutherford (John), The Troubadours, their Loves and Lyrics, p. 
 4. London, 1873. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. I 29 
 
 and let elegance of fashion make up for plainness of 
 material. Never allow a seam to remain ripped and 
 gaping ; it is worse than a rent ; the first shows ill- 
 breeding, the last only poverty, which is by far the 
 lesser evil of the two. There is no great merit in 
 dressing well if you have the means : but a display of 
 neatness and taste on a small income is a sure token 
 of superiority of spirit," etc., etc. There is much more 
 of the same kind, but this citation serves to show how 
 eminently practical was the advice given to the young 
 men in olden days. 
 
 Very bitter and violent were the attacks made 
 upon these men by the monks, who were jealous 
 of the real purity and asceticism of these heretical 
 Troubadours, and who were infuriated at the publicity 
 given to their own misdeeds ; such an attack is 
 graphically described by Huefifer in his thoughtful 
 work on the Troubadours. The writings of "Izarn 
 the Monk," for instance, he well describes as a " strik- 
 ing specimen of monkish effrontery " and he proceeds 
 to criticise the " unctuous self-laudation " of his work, 
 the Novas del Heretge, or the Tale of a Heretic, a 
 dialogue between the author and a Bishop of the 
 Albigeois sect. 
 
 " The opening lines," says Hueffer, "are important 
 to the historian of theology. They prove that the 
 Neo-Manichsean heretics believed, or at least were said 
 by the Catholics to believe, in something very like 
 metempsychosis. ' Tell me,' the monk begins, ' in 
 what school you have learned that the spirit of man, 
 I 
 
1 30 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 when it has lost its body, enters an ox, an ass, or a 
 horned wether, a hog, or a hen, whichever it sees first, 
 and migrates from one to the other until a new body 
 of man or woman is born for it ? . . . This thou 
 hast taught to deluded people, whom thou hast given 
 to the devil and taken away from God. May every 
 place and every land that has supported thee perish ! ' " 
 
 It is curious and suggestive to find that St. 
 Francis of Assisi had been a Troubadour ; Gorresf 
 speaks of him as a '' genuine Troubadour," and there 
 is no doubt that he and some of his Franciscans were 
 at one time members of the heretical Cathari : indeed 
 it is questionable whether he was at any time an 
 orthodox Churchman, though — ^like that other 
 Troubadour, Dante — the Church has ever claimed 
 him as a " faithful son." 
 
 x\ few words must now be devoted to what may 
 be termed the general position of the Troubadours, 
 the place and functions of some of them at least. 
 Among the most illustrious of the Troubadours was, 
 Alfonso the Second, King of Arragon (1162-1196). 
 Ticknorj says : " From 1209 to 1229, the shameful 
 war which gave birth to the Inquisition was carried, 
 on with extraordinary cruelty against the Albigenses,, 
 a religious sect in Provence, accused of heresy, but 
 persecuted rather by an implacable political ambition.. 
 
 * Huetfer (Francis), TAe Trotidadours, p. 32. London, 1878. 
 
 + Gorres (J. ), Der Jieilige Franciskus von Assisi, ein Troubadour.. 
 Strassburg, 1826. 
 
 J Ticknor (George), History of Spanish Literature, i., p.p. 284. 
 285. 1849. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. 13I 
 
 To this sect — which in some points opposed the 
 pretensions of the See of Rome, and was at last 
 exterminated by a crusade under the Papal Authority 
 — belonged nearly all the contemporary Troubadours, 
 whose poetry is full of their sufferings and remon- 
 strances.* In their great distress, the principal ally 
 of the Albigenses and Troubadours was Peter the 
 Second of Arragon, who in 1213 perished nobly 
 fighting in their cause at the disastrous battle of 
 Muret. When therefore the Troubadours of Provence 
 were compelled to escape from the burnt and bloody 
 ruins of their homes, not a few of them hastened to 
 the friendly Court of Arragon, sure of finding them- 
 selves protected, and their art held in honour, by 
 princes who were at the same time poets." These 
 passages and the accompanying notes are of import- 
 ance to students, for they show how intimate a part 
 was played by the Troubadours in the religious 
 movements of the period ; and how they were 
 instruments in keeping the mystic teaching alive, 
 and in handing on the Wisdom of the East clothed 
 in this, its latest, poetical disguise. 
 
 In Germany also the Troubadours dwelt in high 
 places, for, according to M. de Saint-Peloie, the Baron 
 
 * The following note is given by this author : " Sismondi (Hist, 
 des Frattfais, Paris, 8vo. torn. vi. and vii. 1823, 1826), gives an ample 
 account of the cruelties and horrors of the war of the Albigenses, and 
 Llorente (Histoire de F Inquisition, Paris, 1817, torn, i., p. 43), shows 
 the connection of that war with the origin of the Inquisition. The fact 
 that nearly all the Troubadours took part with the persecuted Albigenses 
 is equally notorious. Histoire Litt. de la Franu, torn, xviii., p. 588. 
 
132 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Zurlandben had just (1773) found a MS. in the library 
 of the King, containing the sonnets of princely Trou- 
 badours, written about the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries. Among these royal writers were the 
 Emperor Henry VI., Conradin, King of Bohemia, and 
 other Princes, Electors, Dukes and Margraves. 
 
 The emotional life of the young European nations 
 was largely educated by means of the chivalric 
 romances, based, as they were, on the highest religious 
 and mystic teaching ; and later, in 1400-1500, the 
 Celestial Chivalry was the great standard set before 
 the people, as a national ideal. 
 
 Says Ticknor :* " Religious romances were written. 
 . . . in the form of Allegories, like the ' Celestial 
 Chivalry,' the ' Christian Chivalry,' ' The Knight of 
 the Bright Star ' " ; and this author remarks that the 
 object of that interesting book — the Celestial Chivalry, 
 written by Hier6nimo de San Pedro (at Valencia, in 
 1554) was to drive out of the world "the profane 
 books of chivalry." 
 
 The titles he uses are worth attention, the first 
 part being called " The Root of the Fragrant Rose " ; 
 the second, " The Leaves of the Rose." The names 
 are suggestive, for it was just at this period, when, 
 owing to bitter persecution, the Cathari and Albig- 
 enses were nearly exterminated,-]- that the Rosicrucians 
 
 * Ticknor (George), Hist, of Spanish Literature, i. 220, 221. 
 London, 1849. 
 
 + " By order of the same Fran9ois I. , his General Almeida extirpated 
 with a cruelty unusual even in those times, the remnant of the Albigenses 
 still lurking in the villages of Provence, a sect, it should be remembered. 
 
THE TROUBADOURS. 1 33 
 
 began to revive the same old Eastern tradition, and 
 the blessed Christian Rosencreutz turned his steps 
 eastwards, and in Arabia spent three years fitting 
 himself for the work to come. 
 
 The Rose was one of the ancient traditional 
 mystic symbols, re-adapted by the Rosicrucians, 
 and used, indeed, by all sectaries and mystics 
 Aroux* asserts that the famous Roman de la Rose\ 
 was not only a satire against the Pontifical Court, 
 but also the apotheosis of heresy, for it contained 
 the Hermetic Science under the guise of a religious 
 poem. 
 
 RossettiJ is as emphatic about this symbolic 
 language, and Warton § gives us the following 
 suggestive hints : " In the preface of the edition [to 
 this poem,] printed in the year 1583, all this allegory 
 is turned to religion. The Rose is proved to be a 
 state of grace or divine wisdom, or eternal beatitude, 
 or the Holy Virgin to which heretics cannot gain 
 
 of genuine Manichseans, transplanted thither from the East at a com- 
 paratively recent date. As Manichseans, they would naturally have 
 preserved the symbols and tokens for mutual recognition so much 
 in vogue, as history and existing monuments attest." King M.A. 
 (C. W.), The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 399. London, 1887. 
 
 * Aroux (Eugene), Dante, HMtique, R&volutionnaire et Socialiste, 
 p. 83. Paris, 1854. 
 
 t Begun by Guillaume de Loris — a Troubadour — 1260, finished by 
 Jean de Meung, Poet, Alchemist, and Astrologer. It is a Hermetic 
 treatise of much value. 
 
 J Rossetti (Gabriele), // Mistero dell 'Amor Platonico del Medio 
 Evo, ii. 411-414. London, 1840. 
 
 § Warton (Thomas), Hist, of English Poetry, II., p. 149, note d. 
 London, 1840. 
 
134 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 access. It is the White Rose of Jericho 
 
 the Chemists made it a search for the Philosopher's 
 Stone." There is ever a mystery in the crucified 
 Rose, typical of light and glory springing from 
 the blood of Adonis, himself Dionysus, the best 
 of heavenly beings. Endless are the exquisitely 
 beautiful and refined symbolic meanings of the sacred 
 Rose. 
 
 Thus as we study the Troubadours it becomes 
 evident that an enormous under-current of secret 
 teaching was being carried on, and Rutherford 
 gives us some important hints on this point which 
 have been previously noticed* but may again 
 be usefully referred to since they illustrate this 
 particular fact and verify much that is said by 
 Aroux. 
 
 The body of the learned in the Middle Ages — or the 
 inner circle of that body — seems to have formed a secret 
 society, whose purpose was to keep as much knowledge 
 as possible confined to itself, after the manner of the 
 Druids, or of the Egyptians and Chaldaen Sages; when 
 compelled to put the more occult portions of their scientific 
 acquirements into a more permanent form they adopted 
 one perfectly unintelligible to the vulgar. Some wrapped 
 up their more valuable secrets in parables, others threw 
 them again into the shape of illuminations, and others 
 again adopted the device of Roger Bacon, who, giving the 
 name of an important ingredient of gunpowder in an 
 anagram, rendered the whole receipt for the composition 
 of the substance a complete mystery to the uninitiated. 
 
 * The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 202. London, 1899. 
 
tMfi TROUBADOURS. 1^5 
 
 It has been said that Rutherford has allied the 
 Troubadours with the Freemasons, and the latter 
 body has an undoubtedly Manichaean tradition. For 
 confirmation on this point we can refer to what is 
 said by a very well-known Masonic authority,* whose 
 knowledge about Masonry is unquestionable : 
 
 Sons of the Widowf — a powerful society founded by 
 Manes, a Persian slave .... and continued to 
 the present day; it consisted of two degrees: i. Auditor. 
 2. Elect. It was at peace under the Mother of the 
 Emperor Anastasius (A.D. 491-518), but was persecuted 
 by Justin. In the course of time, its agents secretly 
 instigated the Crusades; but being betrayed, had to 
 veil their mysteries under many names. In Bulgaria 
 and Lombardy it was known as the Society of the 
 Paterini, in France as the Cathari and Albigenses, and 
 from it originated the Hussites, Wyckliffites, and Lollards. 
 The Dutch sect of the Family of Love also sprang 
 from it. 
 
 Such is the statement of a high Mason on this 
 connection, corroborating the links that have already 
 been outlined, and many more might be instanced, 
 showing that all the tenets of these mediaeval sects of 
 Troubadours are traceable to Gnostic and Mani- 
 chaeistic doctrines. Very wonderful is the part filled 
 by the " Messengers of Love " in the spiritual evolution 
 of Europe during the Dark Ages. Martyrs many, 
 
 * Mackenzie (Kenneth R. H., ix°), The Royal Masonic Cycloftedia, 
 p. 768. New York, 189S. 
 
 t This term is applied to the Albigensian Troubadours ; and it was 
 employed amongst themselves. 
 
136 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 and Saints not a few — such will be the roll-call of the 
 Minniesangers, Troubadours, and Bards of these 
 olden days, when in the future the Ancient Wisdom 
 once more reigns supreme. 
 
THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM OF 
 THE HOLY GRAIL. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 And like a flying star 
 Led on the gray-haired Wisdom of the East. 
 
 I saw the spiritual city and all her spires 
 And gateways in a glory like one pearl — 
 No larger, tho' the goal of all the Saints — 
 Strike from the sea ; and from the star there shot 
 A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there 
 Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail, 
 
 Which was an image of the mighty world. 
 
 — The Holy Grail and The Passing of Arthur, 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 The legend of the founding of the City Spiritual — 
 the Kingdom of the Holy Grail* or San Greal — is so 
 interwoven with myth and superadded tradition that 
 to trace its origin is as difficult as to see through 
 a dense fog the delicate outline of some fair gothic 
 
 * See The TheosophiccU Seview, xxiii., pp. 9-16. Hardcastle 
 (Miss A. L. B.), "The Secret of the Holy Grail." 
 
 137 
 
138 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 spire whose lofty head towers beyond the mists 
 towards the blue heights above. But as we gaze with 
 straining effort, slowly through the gloom line upon 
 line reveals itself, and finally the whole structure 
 takes form most definite before us. Thus is it with 
 the priceless " Legend of the Holy Grail," and as we 
 trace it back from Western lands to its Eastern 
 home, gradually from the mists of time's obscurity 
 there stands revealed once more the glorious tradition 
 of the Wisdom Religion, another messenger from 
 East to West bringing the ancient mystic teaching 
 from the old worlds to the new. 
 
 In this case the gracious message is vestured, not 
 as usual in religious forms, but veiled in garb of 
 chivalry, so that it may, perhaps, in this new 
 presentation more readily touch the hearts of men, 
 and draw them to seek for the Kingdom Spiritual, 
 the " house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens." 
 
 Gathered round the " Holy Grail" are the Knights 
 — the Guardians of the " Grail Kingdom," led by 
 Titurel,* the mystic King, to whom is entrusted the 
 charge of the Holy Teaching. Then later we find 
 the Knights Templars taking up the sacred mission.-}- 
 
 * Hammer-Purgstall (Baron J. von), Fundgruben des Orients, 
 vi. 24., n. 33. Vienna, 1818. 
 
 + See Naef (F.), Opinions religieuses des Templiers, p. 36. 
 Nismes ; 1890. " The cult with which this mysterious chalice is 
 surrounded far surpasses in grandeur and exaltation the worship paid 
 by the Church even to the most sacred relics, and it is just this exalta- 
 tion of mystery and of holiness which unveils so clearly the symbol and 
 the allegory." And again p. 38, "In the Grail does one not see the 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 39 
 
 But everywhere and always is there the inner doctrine 
 for the few who seek the Holy Grail, for it is invisible 
 to all but those who form the " Ingesinde " * (inner 
 circle). 
 
 The chief function of the Grail Kingdom was to 
 supply a constant type of a divinely governed 
 Society, a Society ruled from the inner and spiritual 
 planes, and to train in "the kingly art of ruling" 
 
 striking symbol of Mystic Wisdom (Sagesse mystique) and of the 
 communion which is established between God and man?" 
 
 * J. Rutherford writes ( Tlie Troubadours, their Loves and Lyrics, 
 p. 43. London, 1873) : 
 
 "The body of the learned in the Middle Ages — or the inner 
 circle of that body — seems to have formed a secret society, whose 
 purpose was to keep as much knowledge as possible confined to itself, 
 after the manner of the Druids, or of the Egyptians and Chaldean 
 Sages ; when compelled to put the more occult portions of their scientific 
 acquirements into a permanent form, they adopted one perfectly 
 unintelligible to the vulgar. Some wrapped up their more valuable 
 secrets in parables, others threw them again into the shape of illumina- 
 tions, and others again adopted the device of Roger Bacon, who, giving 
 the name of an important ingredient of gunpowder in an anagram, 
 rendered the whole receipt for the composition of the substance a 
 complete mystery to the uninitiated. 
 
 " Our reading shows us that much more was known to the few, 
 six or seven hundred years ago, than modern savants are inclined to 
 think. Strange and startling glimpses of this knowledge flicker over 
 the pages of the poets and romancists of the Middle Ages. Selecting 
 but two examples from many, we may remark that no one could have 
 written that passage in the Inferno of Dante (Canto xxxiv., lines 70-84), 
 descriptive of the transit of Virgil and his follower through the centre 
 of the earth, who was not well acquainted with the leading principles of 
 the theory of gravitation, as elaborated by Newton. Nor could any 
 one have evolved from the depths of his internal consciousness a 
 passage so singularly anticipative of the discovery of America as that 
 contained in Stanzas 228-230 of the twenty-fifth canto of the Morgante 
 Maggiore — precisely the Canto in which it is said that the author, Pulci, 
 was aided by the erudite Marsilio Ficino." See Canti (Cesare), GU 
 Eretici d" Italia, i. 178. Torino, 1865. 
 
140 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 leaders for such communities as needed them. It 
 was destined to be a practical civilising power as well 
 as a Palace Spiritual, not a passive force only, but 
 active and powerful for the suppression of all evil on 
 earth. Titurel* is the type and ideal leader round 
 whom revolves the whole of Mystic or Celestial 
 chivalry .-f- The Grail kingship is indeed the paradigm 
 of the highest perfection, " the goal of all the Saints," 
 but the goal cannot be reached except by the con- 
 quest of the lower nature ; every human being must 
 struggle and must suffer ere he sees 
 
 those shores 
 Where tideless sweep the waves of time 
 Hard by the city of the Saints of God. 
 
 Let us now trace the origin of this time-honoured 
 tradition, the stock from which developed all the 
 " Arthurian " legends, all the " Graal-sagas " of 
 Germany, and the " Romans " of Provence. Two 
 dominant variants of the earliest traditions have come 
 to us. 
 
 I. The Grail as a Secret Gospel J or Tradition. 
 
 * There are two Titurels ; the poem Titurel of Wolfram von 
 Eschenbach ; and, later, Der Jiingere Titurel, by Albrecht von 
 Scharffenberg, written about 1270. An interesting notice on the subject 
 is given by Vilmar (A. F. C), Geschichte der deutschen National- 
 Literatur, 147, Marburg u. Leipsig, 1870. 
 
 + Chivalry was divided into Heavenly and Earthly orders during 
 part of the Middle Ages, especially in Spain. 
 
 t Aroux (E.), Les Mysteres de la Chevalerie, p. 166. Paris, 1858. 
 Paris (A. Paulin), Les Jiomans de la Table Ronde, Addenda to p. 102. 
 Vol. I. Paris, 1868. Helinandi Op., Ed. Migne, Patrol., Vol. CCXII., 
 col. 814. Fauriel (C. C), Histoire de la Polsie Provenfale, ii. 332, 
 et seq. Paris, 1846. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. I4I 
 
 2. The Grail as a Mystic Cup* with miraculous 
 power. 
 
 Both variants are of vital interest to the Theoso- 
 phic student ; we must here, however, confine our- 
 selves to tracing. 
 
 I. The earliest sources of the Grail Legend. 
 
 II. The history of Titurel, the type of divine 
 kingship and spiritual knighthood. 
 
 III. The links which prove this popular mystic 
 legend to be part of the Great Wisdom Tradition 
 which is guarded by the " Masters of Wisdom " yet 
 on this earth. 
 
 I. 
 The Origin of the Tradition. — I. 
 
 This can be definitely followed through Arabia to 
 India ; for according to a large number of author- 
 ities,-f the tradition is mainly Eastern in origin, 
 
 * Burnouf (Emile) writes as follows: "La vraie legende du Vase 
 Sacr^ est celle qu'on pent suivre dans le pass^ en remontant d'aujourd'hui 
 meme par les textes chr6tiens, grecs, perses et bouddhiques jusqu' aux 
 hymnes du V^da, oil elle trouve son explication.'' Le Vase Sacri et ce 
 qu'il contieni — dans I'Inde, la Perse, la Grece, et dans I'Eglise chr^tienne 
 avec un appendice sur le Saint-Graal, p. 189. Paris, 1896. 
 
 * The Theosophical Review, xxiii. pp. 12-15. London, 1899. 
 Hammer-Purgstall (Baron J. von), Fundgruben des Orients, vi. p. 24. 
 Rio, L' University Catholique, i. p. 241. 
 
 t Rosenkranz (Dr. Karl), Handbuch einer Allgemeinen Geschichte 
 der Poesie, ii., 84. Halle, 1832. Hagen (F. H. von der), Heldenbilde 
 aus dem Sagen Kreisen, II., iii. 8. Breslau, 1823. Simrock (Dr. 
 K.), Parzifal und Titurel, p. 484. Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1842. 
 Bergmann (Dr. F. G.), The San Great ; an Enquiry into the Origin 
 and Signification cf the San Greal. Edinburgh, 1870. Bartsch (Karl), 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach — Parzifal und Titurel, pt. i. p. xxiv. 
 Leipzig, 1870. Vilmar (A. F. C.), Geschichte der Deutschen National- 
 Literatur, i. 129-130. Marburg and Leipzig, 1870. 
 
142 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 especially that of the Gral-king and Founder, with 
 which are linked most intimately those of Parsifal 
 and Lohengrin. Rosenkranz divides them as follows : 
 Titurel is Oriental in its inception ; Parsifal is Gallic 
 (from Anjou) ; and Lohengrin* is Belgian. 
 
 The most sympathetic and interesting version 
 perhaps, is that given by Gorres-f- in his introduction 
 to the translation of the oldest MS. which is in the 
 Vatican Library. This manuscript was seen by von 
 Hagen,! who gives an interesting account of it in his 
 letters ; another sketch of the Gral-saga, but less 
 sympathetic, is given by Dr. Bergman in a small 
 pamphlet printed in 1870. From all these various 
 sources must be gathered the important fragments 
 which will help us to find those details which are a 
 necessity to the student for a clear understanding of 
 the real meaning of this grand old legend. 
 
 Our attention must first be directed to what may 
 be termed the " setting " of the tradition, that is to 
 say the channel by which it comes to the Western 
 world. The record of Titurel was first made 
 known by Wolfram von Eschenbach, a Troubadour 
 of a noble but poor family ; born within the 
 
 * The history of Lohengrin, or Garin-le-Loherain was first treated 
 by Hugo Metullus, in 11 50. 
 
 + Gorres (Joseph), Lohengrin, ein altdeutsches Gedicht nach der 
 Abschrift des Vaticanischen Manuscriptes, von Ferdinand GlSckle 
 herausgegeben. 1813. 
 
 Koberstein (A.), Grundriss zur Geschichte der Deutschen National- 
 Literatur, p. 50- Leipzig, 1830. 
 
 X Hagen (F. H. von der), Briefe in die Heimat, ii. 305. 
 Breslau, 1818. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 43 
 
 last thirty years of the twelfth century, he died 
 about 1220 ; his monument was still existing at 
 Eschenbach in Bavaria in the fifteenth century. He 
 was one of a brilliant circle of Troubadours or 
 Minnesanger* who at that period were gathered at 
 the then famous Court of Herman, Landgraf of 
 Thuringia. Wolfram began a history in verse of 
 Titurel, the old Gral-king, which was however left in 
 an unfinished and fragmentary condition at his death. 
 Then about the year 1 270, Albrecht von Schaffenberg 
 wrote a poem upon Titurel which for long passed as 
 the work of von Eschenbach. It was called Der 
 Jungere Titurel, to distinguish it from the original 
 poem of Wolfram. Speaking of it San Martef 
 says : 
 
 Titurel — two fragments to which, according to the 
 opening lines of the first piece, this title has been given, 
 should according to Wolfram von Eschenbach's own 
 assurances have formed part of a history of Sigune and 
 Schiantulander, for it stands in close relation to Parzifal, 
 the material having been drawn from the same source — 
 remained unfinished. That work, however, and especially 
 the sayings of the Holy Grail contained therein, aroused 
 such excitement, that after Wolfram's death an unknown 
 poet decided to write, in strophe form, the history of the 
 Gral and its race of kings (Titurel), in accordance with the 
 same source. . . . This also remained unfinished until 
 
 * Trouvires in Northern France ; Troubadours in the South of 
 France ; Minnesanger in Germany ; Skalds or Scalds in Norway; Bards 
 in Wales and Ancient Britain. 
 
 t San Marte (A. Schulz), Leben und Dickten von W. v. Eschenbach, 
 xiv. Magdeburg, 1 836. 
 
144 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 about 1270, when a certain Albrecht completed it. This 
 so-called Jiingere Titurel and the Parzifal, both of which 
 come frpm the same source, contain pretty well the whole 
 history of the Holy Grail and in many passages they 
 supplement one another. * 
 
 These form undoubtedly the most authentic 
 versions of the Gral legend, but there is another 
 line of tradition written down by Chrestien de 
 Troyes, which eliminates the Oriental and gives 
 the purely Christian version of the vision of Joseph 
 of Arimathaea. Of this Wolfram was cognisant, 
 or, as Nutt-f tells us. 
 
 He knew Chrestien's poem well, and repeatedly refers 
 to it, but with great contempt, as being the wrong version 
 of the story, whereas he holds the true version from Kyot|: 
 the singer, a "Provenzal," who found the tale of Parzifal 
 
 * The fragments of " Titurel " written by Wolfram were first made 
 known by Docens (l8io). They are in Karl Lachmann's edition of 
 Wolfram v. Eschenbach (1833). The only edition of the Jiingere 
 Titurel, which exists in a good many MSS., is that of Hahn (1842). 
 
 + Nutt (Alfred), Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, p. 6. 
 London, 1888. See The Theosophical Review, xxiii. 10. 
 
 X Many materialistic critics have tried to disprove the very existence 
 of Kyot (or Guiot de Provins), and further have tried to prove that the 
 tradition was invented by Wolfram. But research shows definitely that 
 at this very period there was a Jongleur, or singer, of this name. He is 
 mentioned by the Abb^ de la Rue in his Essais historiques sur Us 
 Bardes, les Jongleurs, et les Trouvires, i. 216. Caen, 1834. In this 
 passage is mentioned a Satire written by Guiot de Provins ; Rosenkranz 
 also mentions him in his Handbuch einer Allgemeinen Geschichte der 
 Poesie, ii. 114. The same conclusion has also been arrived at by San 
 Marte in an interesting article " Der Mythus vom Heiligen Gral," which 
 appeared in the Neue Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiet historisch antiquar- 
 ischer Forschungen. Herausgegeben von dem Thuringisch-Ssechsichen 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 45 
 
 written in a heathen tongue at Dolet (Toledo) by Flegetanis, 
 a heathen, and who first wrote concerning the Grail, put it 
 into French, and after searching the Chronicles of Britain, 
 France, and Ireland in vain, at length found the informa- 
 tion in the Chronicle of Anjou. » 
 
 Later on we shall see why it was found in 
 these chronicles to the exclusion of the rest. The 
 basis of the Christian legend is from the Gnostic 
 tradition, and said to have been founded on the 
 Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which was trans- 
 lated into Provengal verse, a " mystical Gospel " in 
 every sense, says Paulin Paris,* who, in referring to 
 the MS. in the Vatican, further writes : " This latter 
 text was of great antiquity and evidently mystical, 
 showing a profound knowledge of the Apocryphal'l' 
 Gospels containing the secret teachings of the 
 Eucharist." J This of course refers to the Christian 
 aspect, and had to do with the Christian arcane 
 doctrines, but this aspect must be left for treatment 
 at some future time. 
 
 A digression, however, must be here made, the 
 subject of which is so intimately interwoven with the 
 
 Verein fUr Erforschung des Vaterlandischen Alterthums. (III., pt. 
 iii., pp. 1-40). The author identifies the supposed mythical Guiot von 
 Provence with the historical character Guiot von Provins (the town in 
 Brie ?) which is called Proruts by Wolfram. 
 
 * Paris (A. Paulin), Les Manuscrits franfois de la Bibliothique 
 du Roi. Paris, 1848. Vol. vii., p. 377. 
 
 t " Books v^ithdrawn from public perusal, or in other words, 
 hidden or secret." See Mead (G. R. S), " The Secret Sermon on the 
 Mountain," The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 26. 
 
 JSee Fauriel (C. C), Histoire de la Poisie Prm/ettfale, iii. 5. 
 Paris, 1846. 
 K 
 
146 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 mystic foundation of the Grail tliat it is necessary to 
 go into some important details in order to form a 
 clear conception of the many forces which were at 
 play during this epoch. 
 
 It has been said that Wolfram von Eschenbach,* 
 the writer of Titurel, was a Troubadour, and according 
 to some authorities Guiot (or Kyot) de Provins was a 
 Jongleur. Who, then, are these Troubadours and 
 Jongleurs who played a part so important in the 
 so-called dark ages ? On another occasion we hope 
 to take up this subject separately, forming as it does 
 an important link between Eastern mysticism and 
 Western development ; it will be enough for the 
 present to cite one important Catholic writer, who 
 makes a very clear statement as to the hidden 
 functions of these Troubadours.-}- Says Aroux : 
 
 The Troubadours, hostile to Rome, were, to say the 
 
 * Mysticism was "in the air" at this epoch; in Calabria the 
 Abbate Gioachimo di Flor was preaching his Evangelic EUrno. 
 Educated at the Court of the Duca di Puglia, a pilgrim to the Holy 
 Land, a monk at Mount Tabor, he became a mystic and was according 
 to Canti deeply tinged with Buddhistic views (Gli Eretici d' Italia, 
 i. 120-135. Torino, 1865). He had a large following. A quantity 
 of important writings were left by this great mystic. His prophecies 
 were known even in England, for we find an English Cistercian, 
 Rudolph, Abbot of Coggeshall, coming to Rome in 1 195, had a 
 conference with him, and left an account of it (Mart^ne, Amplissima 
 Collectio, V. 837), and Felice Tocco (VEresia nel Medio Evo, i. 
 261-409. Florence, 1884) writes : " The works of Joachim were 
 printed at Venice in the years 1517-19, and his life was written by a 
 Dominican named Gervaise in 1745. A full summary of his opinions, 
 and those contained in Tie Everlasting Gospel, may be found in Natalis 
 Alexander's Ecclesiastical History, VHI., pp. 73-76." 
 
 + Aroux (Eugene) Dante, Hiritiqtie, Rivolutionnaire et Socialiste ; 
 Rivilation cPun Catholique sur le Moyen Age, p. 14. Paris, 1854. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 47 
 
 truth, the journalists of the period ; and in this way con- 
 stituted one of the powers of society and took up sides 
 for republican liberty in the towns of the south, for the 
 feudal suzerainty and its patrons — that is to say chivalry — 
 against the church or authority. ... for chivalry 
 itself had become a machinery of war on the side of the 
 Albigensian* heresy. 
 
 Strange and striking statements, but they can be 
 tested and verified by testimony from all sides. 
 Through these secret mystical channels came pouring 
 the old teachings from the East, and Wolfram von 
 Eschenbach and Guiot de Provins were but instru- 
 ments or channels for that tradition. 
 
 A few words must here be said about Guiot, or, as 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach calls him in his German 
 tongue, Kyot. As we have seen from the Abb^ de la 
 Rue, he was a Jongleur, and Aroux has given a clue 
 as to the real metier of the true Jongleur at that 
 period. He appears to have been a native of the 
 Duchy of Anjou, and was not a noble but a lay 
 commoner, for Wolfram terms him simply Meister. 
 Guiot studied literature and philosophy in the south 
 of France in the Province of Saint Giles — a centre 
 of Albigensian mystic tradition, and in constant 
 communication with northern Spain, which was 
 permeated, at this period, with Arabian mysticism. 
 He also studied for some time in Spain at Toledo 
 
 * The mystic doctrines of the Albigenses will be treated later. 
 They believed in re-incarnation and other fundamental theosophic 
 doctrines. 
 
148 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 under the learned Arabian philosophers, to whom the 
 Western world owes a heavy debt. Meister Guiot le 
 Provengal found at Toledo an Arabian book compiled 
 by an astrologer and philosopher named Flegetanis,* 
 containing the story of the Holy Greal. This volume 
 was written in a foreign character, of which Guiot 
 was compelled to make himself master. After 
 reading this Guiot began to search the records of 
 other countries, Brittany, France, Ireland, and he 
 found the legends of this in some old Chroniques 
 (f Angevin (Anjou). These he used as corroboration, 
 and introduces the Western elements into his history, 
 but, as Warton and Gorres both insist, the scene 
 for the most part is laid in the East, and a large 
 proportion of the names are of Oriental origin. 
 Then, again, the Saracens are always spoken of with 
 consideration ; Christian knights enroll themselves 
 under the banner of the Caliph,f and no trace of 
 hatred is to be found between the followers of the 
 crescent and the cross. Speaking of the widespread 
 development of this mysterious legend, or tradition of 
 the Holy Grail, Gorres % says : 
 
 From the waters of the Ganeas (Ganges) in the land 
 
 * Flegetanis was both an astronomer and an astrologer. Both 
 Gorres and Warton (Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry, 
 Vol. I., London, 1824) consider that Flegetanis is a corruption of the 
 Arabic name Felek-daneh, an astronomer. 
 
 t It can be proved from various sources that there was a friendly 
 interchange of visits between the Caliph at Cairo and the Templars. 
 (King, C. W., The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 418. London, 
 1887.) 
 
 X Lohengrin, p. ix. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 49 
 
 of Tribalibot, that is Palibothra* in Tricalinga, the Sanskrit 
 name of the Ganges Provinces, it has spread itself over the 
 Caucasus, or as the poem more correctly says, Kukkhasus, 
 or again, as Titurel says, Kaukasus, where the red gold 
 grows, from which the heathen weave many a beautiful 
 coat (Wat) and over the mountains Agrimontin, where 
 the warm Salamanders weave their glittering uniform amid 
 the fire-flames' dance, and where the Queen Gekurdille 
 rules. 
 
 Everywhere can be found the tradition of a sacred 
 cup.f and it is said by Flegetanis, who had carefully 
 recorded the result of his nocturnal studies at Toledo, 
 that this mysterious cup J with the name of Graal 
 emblazoned on it was left behind on earth by a band 
 of spirits § as they winged their way to their celestial 
 abode. This holy vessel is delivered by an angel to 
 Titurel, at whose birth an angel had announced that 
 God had chosen him to be a defender of the faith II 
 
 * " Pitaliputra (Palibothra des Grecs) qui est aujourd'hui Patna." 
 Burnouf, op. cit. p. 109. 
 
 t In the Persian tradition a similar miraculous and mystical vessel 
 was given to Jemshad, the pattern of perfect kings, in whose reign the 
 Golden Age was realised in Iran. He was the favourite of Ormuzd 
 and his legitimate representative on earth ; he discovered the " Goblet 
 of the Sun " when digging the foundation of Persepolis, and from him 
 it passed to Alexander the Great. It is a symbol of the world. See 
 Burnouf (Emile), Le Vase SacH et u qu'il contient. Dans Vlnde, la 
 Perse, la Grice et dans PEglise chritienne, p. 189. Paris, 1896. 
 
 X In Grecian mythology Apollo, or Helios, rises out of a golden- 
 winged cup. 
 
 § BIavatsky(H. P.) The Secret Doctrine, ii. 379 : " The beneficent 
 Entities who . . . brought light to the world, and endowed 
 Humanity with intellect and reason." 
 
 II The Gnosis, or Wisdom Mysteries. 
 
150 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 and the guardian of the Sangreal. He became, in 
 fact, one of the custodians of that Secret Wisdom 
 which has been left in the charge of the elect, the 
 group of humanity's perfected sons. 
 
THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM OF 
 THE HOLY GRAIL. 
 
 PART II. 
 The Origin of the Tradition. — II. 
 
 . . . The Grail, throughout all Ages, may never by man 
 
 be known, 
 Save by him God calleth to It, whose name God doth know 
 
 alone. 
 And the tale shall be told in all lands .... 
 
 Parzival, translated by J. L. Weston, i. 162. 
 
 We must trace the history of the World-Religion, alike 
 through the secret Christian sects as through those of other 
 great religious subdivisions of the race ; for the Secret 
 Doctrine is the Truth, and that religion is nearest divine 
 that has contained it with the least adulteration. Our 
 search takes us hither and thither, but never aimlessly 
 do we bring sects, widely separated in chronological order, 
 into critical juxtaposition. There is one purpose in our 
 work to be kept constantly in view — the analysis of religious 
 beliefs, and the definition of their descent from the past to 
 the present. 
 
 Blavatsky (H. p.), his Unveiled, ii., 292. 
 
 It is now necessary to add some more important 
 details to the question of the origin of the tradition 
 of the Holy Grail. Too much care cannot be given 
 
152 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 by students to the most fundamental portion of this 
 research. 
 
 It has already been said that many German* and 
 French writers, in their zealous efforts to prove the 
 Grail tradition to be a myth, have made efforts to 
 disprove the existence of Guiot von Provins, but 
 owing to the careful researches of San Marte-f- there 
 is evidence of his existence so conclusive that no 
 further doubt can remain ; in the review from which 
 we quote he gives a careful resume of the evidence, 
 and he has made a thorough study of Guiot's Bible, 
 which was written as a denunciation of the priests of 
 that period, and of the iniquities of the Roman 
 Church : " Guiot was, without doubt, a learned man, 
 and had been a monk as well as a courtier," says San 
 Marte, from whose article the following summary is 
 made. 
 
 He was present in the year 1184, at Mainz, at the great 
 court day of the Emperor Frederick I., at which the French 
 nobility were also present in great numbers. He further 
 assures us that he had seen the Hospitallers at Jerusalem ; 
 the information he gives us as regards the Knight Templars 
 in Syria will consequently rest likewise on first-hand 
 observation. In the EastJ he saw King Araalrich of 
 
 * Lachmann (K.), Wolfram von Eschenbach, xxiv., and Gervinus, 
 Deutsche National Literatur, i., 358, 1835, are both of this opinion. 
 
 t San Marte (A. Schuiz), "Wolfram von Eschenbach and Guiot 
 von Provins " ; Germania, iii. 445. Wien, i860. 
 
 X This fact that Guiot von Provins was himself in the East, that he 
 was, moreover, a Troubadour, gives us those links which were needed 
 to prove the direct connection of this Grail Tradition with the Eastern 
 Wisdom ; as a Troubadour he was one of the Secret Society already 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 53 
 
 Jerusalem, who died in the year 1 1 73, in the flower of his 
 age and his glory. But in the year 1147 there was the 
 second, and in the year 11 90 the third Crusade .... 
 it may be inferred from his writing that he journeyed into 
 the Holy Land, not as a warrior, but in the retinue of a 
 Prince or Baron, and we learn that Guiot was also in the 
 monastery of Clairvaux,* and moreover, when he wrote his 
 Bible he had already worn the black cowl for more than 
 twelve years ; thus his denunciations would rest on personal 
 observations, and not on any mere gossip or scandal. 
 
 Guiot shows himself, in this writing, to be a man 
 of scholarly education, of penetrating mind, keen 
 observation and full of biting sarcasm. His com- 
 parisons and examples are of incisive acuteness, he 
 has an exact knowledge of the Bible, and brings 
 forward passages from the Scriptures in confirmation 
 of his judgment, and in justification of his reproaches 
 of the clergy. To quote again from San Marte : 
 
 His language is incisive and severe 
 
 pouring out his noble anger, galling blame and bitter 
 sarcasm, over priests and nobles, higher jind lower clergy, 
 
 mentioned both by Rossetti in his Disquisitions on the Anti-fapal 
 Spirit which produced the Reformation, (ii., 115. London, 1834), and 
 by Aroux ; see The Theosophical Review, xxiv. , p. 207. San Marte 
 added a footnote stating that he was preparing an edition of Guiot's 
 Bible and Lyric Poems, in French and German, to which Professor G. 
 Wohlfart was adding notes. 
 
 * S. Bernard of Clairvaux was one of the Church Mystics of the 
 twelfth century ; he gave the first rules to the Order of the Knights- 
 Templars, the regulations having been arranged at the Council of 
 Troyes in 1 1 18. The great Abbey of Clairvaux was one of the chief 
 centres of education at this period. S. Bernard considered the con- 
 templative life as the highest, and he was himself a contemplative 
 mystic. 
 
154 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 and over pretended erudition, he nevertheless loves to add 
 that, of course, there are glorious exceptions. . . . We 
 perceive in hitn a mind which, formed in the school of life, 
 has seen and experienced much ; a man who with keen 
 vision and solid judgment watched and weighed the crimes 
 
 of all positions He very clearly distinguishes 
 
 genuine piety from the hypocritical appearance of holiness — 
 
 the true faith from professional sanctity Truth 
 
 is for him beyond all else ; it is his light. 
 
 Such is the judgment of this well-known German 
 author upon the man through whom the tradition 
 comes. Miss Weston, another authority, says : 
 
 Such a man would have been thoroughly familiar with 
 the legends that had gathered round the early Angevin 
 Princes, as well as with the historical facts connected 
 with their successors ; he would have come into contact 
 with the Order of the Knights Templars .... he 
 would be familiar with many a legend of precious stones, 
 the favourite talismans of the East, and would know 
 the special virtue ascribed to each. ... In 
 fact, if we will allow the existence of such a writer as a 
 travelled Angevin might well have been, we shall find all the 
 principal problems of the Parzifal admit of a rational 
 explanation. Even the central puzzle. Wolfram's representa- 
 tion of the Grail, is explicable on such a hypothesis. We 
 know how very vague Chretien's* account of the Grail is ; 
 how much in the dark he leaves us as to Its outward form. 
 Its influence and its origin. A writer before Chretien is 
 scarcely likely to have been more explicit ; what more 
 likely than that a man long resident in the East, and 
 familiar, as has been said above, with Eastern jewel 
 talismans, and the legends connected with them, when 
 
 * Troyes (Chretien de), Li conte del Graal. 1189. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 55 
 
 confronted with this mysterious Grail, of which no definite 
 account was given, yet which apparently exercised a 
 magical life-sustaining influence, should have jumped to the 
 conclusion of Its, at least partial, identity with the precious 
 stones of the power of which he had heard so much ? 
 
 Then later on the same writer says : 
 
 To sum up the entire question, the drift of the internal 
 evidence of the Parzival seems to indicate that the author 
 of Wolfram's Source was a warm partisan of the House of 
 Anjou,* sometime resident in the East, familiar with the 
 history of the House whose fortunes he followed, and with 
 much curious Oriental lore, and thoroughly imbued with 
 the broader views of life and religion inspired by the 
 crusades. That he wrote his poem after 11 72 seems most 
 likely from the connection between England, Anjou and 
 Ireland noted in Book IX ; . . if we grant the 
 
 correctness of the Angevin allusions to be found in the 
 earlier parts of the poem, we must logically grant that these 
 two first books, and as a consequence the latter part of the 
 poem which agrees with them, are due to the French source 
 rather than the German redaction ; that it was Kiot (Guiot 
 de Provins) who introduced the characters of Gamuret, 
 Belakane, Feirefis and LIhelein; that to Kiot is due the 
 first germ of the ethical interpretation amplified by Wolfram. 
 It was probably in a great measure owing to the 
 unecclesiastical nature of Kiot's teaching, and the freedom 
 with which he handled the Grail myth, that his work failed 
 to attain the popularity of Chretien's. When the Grail 
 legend was once definitely stamped with the traditional 
 
 * He was in the retinue of Fulk of Anjou, who, in 1129, became 
 the son-in-law of Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, and eventually became 
 its King. There is, however, a much earlier connection of the House 
 of Anjou with the East, for in 987 Fulk Nerra, or Fulk the Palmer, 
 went to Jerusalem. See Croniques des Comtes cF Anjou, par M. Emile 
 Mabille, p. Ixxviii. Paris, 1856. 
 
156 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Christian character which it finally assumed and retained, 
 the semi-pagan character of Kiot's treatment would cause 
 his version to be regarded with disfavour by the monkish 
 compilers of his day.* 
 
 There is no difficulty in perceiving that the 
 Christian version has become the more popular, 
 almost to the extinction of the Oriental tradition, 
 but the suggestion here made by the w^riter is of 
 importance — for Guiot, having been in contact with 
 the Secret and Mystical Societies in the East, would 
 certainly bring that doctrine into his work, which 
 accounts for what Miss Weston terms the "uneccle- 
 siastical nature of Kiot's (Guiot) teaching." 
 
 It is an important fact for the students of this 
 tradition to bear in mind, that the Roman Church 
 monopolised and adopted this Legend of the Holy 
 Grail, laying stress upon the version given by 
 Chretien de Troyes, ignoring its Oriental descent, 
 and popularising the idea that the Legend was 
 founded on a purely Christian basis ; hence many 
 of the contemporaries of Wolfram von Eschenbach 
 were writing solely from the Christian standpoint ; 
 but we have also many writers who took a broader 
 view, and who recognised that the tradition had 
 descended from some earlier doctrine. In San Marte 
 (A. Schulz), for instance, we have a German scholar 
 of profound research adopting practically the same 
 view as that of Eugene Aroux in his Mysthes de la 
 Chevalerie, to which book reference was made in the 
 
 * Weston (Jessie L.), Parzival, ii. 191, 197, 198. London, 1894. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 157 
 
 last number. We must now summarise some impor- 
 tant passages from this new source, relating as they 
 do to the same view, namely, that the Legend of the 
 Holy Grail is, in truth, part of the mystical tradition 
 of those so-called heretical sects, the Albingenses, the 
 Cathari, and others of that date, descendants of 
 the older Gnostic Sects. Says San Marte : 
 
 The conflicts of the Hohenstaufen with Rome bear 
 witness to the strength of this movement in Germany ; 
 princes, knights and poets accepted* it with fullest 
 consciousness [of its significance]. Guiot's Bii/e, and other 
 similar writings, the Proven9al poets, the numerous heretical 
 sects of Southern France, of Northern Italy and Spain prove 
 the same thing regarding these countries. Among the 
 Waldensians there even gradually arose, under the influence 
 of the Provencal poets, a literature, the content of 
 which was chiefly spiritual, and which, in a poetical 
 form, made the peculiar principles of the sect current 
 and familiar among the people.f We may mention the 
 
 * The writer is referring to the enormous spread of these mystical 
 and heretical teachers. See San Marte (A. SchuU), "Wolfram's 
 Parzival und seine Beurtheiler," in Germania, vii., p. 60. Wien, 1862. 
 
 t This was the secret language to which Aroux refers so often. In 
 one passage he says : " Let the Philologists make as much outcry as 
 they will, our old Troveurs knew more about it than they do, and when 
 they adopted certain names they thought far more of the hidden mean- 
 ing than of the actual etymology, for which they cared very little " ; 
 again, referring to the well-known legend of Amadis, " the Knight of 
 the Lion," he adds : " We may easily recognise him, by these 
 various signs, as a ' Poor-man of Lyons.' Like his colleagues, this 
 Apostle of the Albigensian Gospel leaves Aquitanian Gaul, 
 his own country, to go into Spain and win over that country to 
 the Religion of Love, as in other romances. What gives an 
 account of his acts and deeds is the journal, the record of his 
 apostolic feats, of his triumph over the agents of Rome. What could 
 be easier to recognise ? Amadis, the ' Perfect Knight of Lyons,' under 
 
158 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 celebrated didactic poem, written about 1180, La nobla 
 Leyczon, which leads up to Waldensian through sacred 
 history, and other poems such as La Barca, Lo novel 
 Sermon, Lo novel Confort, Lo Payre Eternal, Lo Desprecza 
 del Mont (Contentio Mundt) and L'Avangeli de It quatre 
 Semenez, which deals with the parable, Matthew xiii. 5, of 
 the different seeds. They all possess peculiarly strong 
 anti-papistic elements and belong to those products of 
 anti-hierarchy, which transplanted the conflict against Rome 
 from ecclesiastical domain to the ground of popular life. 
 How wrathful is Bernard of Clairvaux against Abelard ; * 
 he says that, thanks to him, the street-boys of Paris are to 
 be heard discussing the doctrine of the Trinity ! It was a 
 storm which raged through the whole of western Christendom 
 in all strata of the population, a process of fermentation 
 which, originally repressed by force, repeated itself in the 
 Reformation and forced itself to the forefront. When, 
 therefore, Reichel t reproaches me with having introduced 
 far more theological elements than the poem itself justifies, 
 into my interpretation of the oracle of the Grail and of 
 Parzival's refraining from questions, I reply that, on the 
 contrary, not nearly enough of the theology of the twelfth 
 century has been applied to the understanding of our poem, 
 
 disguise of person and language is enamoured of the beautiful Oriane. 
 This name, derived from the East, also indicates the close connection 
 established between the local Vaudism and the oriental Albigensianisni 
 typified by the beautiful lady, Flower, Rose, Star of the East. All 
 light, all good, was in this literature reputed to come from the East." 
 Aroux (E.), Les Mystires de la Chmalerie, pp. 175, 176. Paris, 1858. 
 
 * One of the Scholastic mystics, a heretic, and condemned by the 
 Pope about 1140; he opposed the view of those who extol the faith 
 that yields an unreasoning assent, without examination, to whatever is 
 heard. See Blunt, D.D. (J. H.), article, "Schoolmen"; Dictionary 
 of Sects and Heresies, p. 530. London, 1874. 
 
 t Reichel, Studien au Wolfram's Parzival, p. 6. Wien, 1858. 
 San Marte (A. Schulz), Parzival Studien, Heft ii. Halle ; Waisenhaus, 
 1861. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 59 
 
 and my attempt to examine it from that standpoint is only a 
 first beginning on those Hnes. 
 
 For that which we now after the lapse of centuries can 
 only laboriously and yet imperfectly discover about the 
 explanation of the external historical phenomena of those 
 religious conflicts — all that surround the then existing world 
 like a fiery atmosphere in which it breathed, and which 
 penetrated all the pores of its life, the elements of religious 
 discord which can now hardly be understood and methodi- 
 cally arranged by the scholars who make the subject their 
 special study — was formerly in the minds and mouths of the 
 masses and urged them on to action ; and if the poems* of 
 that period afford us in almost every other respect a faithful 
 mirror of contemporary phenomena in action and thought, 
 the same must be true of a work which has a predomina- 
 tingly religious tendency, that finds expression even in the 
 first two lines [of the poem]. 
 
 It is very desirable that the Church historians of to-day 
 should, in their writings and academic lectures, pay greater 
 attention than they do to the investigations and the treasures 
 which have been brought to light in the ever-increasing 
 study of the early German and French literatures, indeed 
 they would then find much which preceded and led up to 
 the Reformation, and would recognise more clearly the 
 forms taken by the dogmatic theses in the practical faith 
 and opinions of the people, and the special expression 
 which they there received. For there is a difference 
 between the doctrinal formulation of an article of faith 
 and its acceptance and transmission by the laity. 
 
 The position taken up by Wolfram, whether Guelph or 
 Ghibelline, Apostolic -Evangelical or Roman- Hierarchic, 
 
 • The poems of the Troubadours, which contained the mystical 
 teaching, as we have seen from Aroux, in his Mystires de la Chevalerie, 
 and also from Rutherford in his Troubadours, their Loves and Lyrics, 
 p. 43. London, 1873. See for quotation. The Theosophical Review, 
 xxiv., p. 202. 
 
l6o MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 must determine the standpoint from which his poem must 
 be judged and understood. And even if we condemn the 
 poet as a heretic, we must not demand of his poem that it 
 should teach what he rejects,* but in order to do it justice 
 we must enter into his religious tendency, which it brings 
 quite clearly and candidly to light. In view of the historical 
 situation and the religious stream of tendency at the end 
 of the twelfth century the intention of our poet can no 
 longer be open to doubt. He wished, namely, to depict 
 in the institution of the Templars a Christian brother- 
 hood,t a kingdom of the faithful and the elect of the 
 Lord, without a Roman hierarchy, without a Pope and a 
 privileged priesthood, without ban, interdict or Inquisition, 
 where God Himself, through the revelation of the Grail, is, 
 in the spirit of the pure Gospel, Ruler and Judge of His 
 people. He considered the real priesthood to belong to the 
 individuals struggling towards a true knowledge of God, not 
 to an exclusive class, however highly he may have esteemed 
 the latter; finally, he borrowed from the order of the 
 Templars, at that time still flourishing and immaculate, 
 the poetical symbol of the ideal constitution of this 
 brotherhood. 
 
 This idea, plainly heretical from the Roman point of 
 view, necessarily implied that the Kingdom of the Grail, 
 which alone led to salvation, stood in quite as sharp a 
 contrast to Roman orthodox Christianity, as represented by 
 the existing visible Church, as it did to paganism ;J but it is 
 a fine trait in the poet that he is neither led away into open 
 
 * This is precisely what the dogmatic Christian writers have tried 
 to do by eliminating the Gnostic traces, and the yet more eastern 
 sources of the grand old tradition. 
 
 t This is the true Christian Brotherhood open to every Soul, the 
 Elect of Humanity, that " Communion of Saints " of which the Great 
 White Lodge is the sole earthly representative. 
 
 i Even San Marte, in spite of his frankly acknowledged change of 
 position, is still bound by the obsolete views about paganism. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL, l6l 
 
 polemic against the ruling Church nor into fanatical hostility 
 to Paganism. There is, therefore, small ground for astonish- 
 ment at the facts ' that no trace is to be found in the poem 
 of any subordination of the Templars to clergy or Pope,' 
 that Parzival attains to the kingdom of the Grail without 
 any ecclesiastical mediation, and that he did not gain the 
 crown of martyrdom in the conflict, as the fundamental 
 thought of the poet logically demanded.* 
 
 This fundamental thought, however, is not based on the 
 Dictatus Gregorii VII. nor on the saying of Innocent III., 
 ^ Papa vert Dei vicem gerit in terra,' but directly on the 
 Gospel and on the saying of the Apostle : ' But ye are a 
 chosen generation — a royal priesthood — a holy nation — a 
 peculiar people ; that ye should show forth the praises of 
 Him who hath called you out of darkness into His 
 marvellous light ' ; t which saying is repeated almost 
 literally in strophes 44 and 45 of Wolfram's Titurel-frag- 
 ments. It is, therefore, inadmissible to regard the Grail as 
 'a Christian relic,' to make it the representment of 
 the pre-cosmic genesis of Evil, and to speak of 
 ' the spiritual side of the poem ' as ' weighed down 
 by the fetishism of the impersonal relic ' ; this view 
 could only arise through the introduction of evidence 
 regarding Lucifer's fall and the Holy Grail much 
 later than Wolfram's poem, or which — in the cases when 
 this [evidence] is earlier, he does not himself introduce, and 
 which, therefore, must be treated as non-existent in the 
 criticism of our poem. Wolfram makes no special allusion 
 to the dish of CsesareaJ used in the Lord's Supper, never 
 speaks of Joseph of Arimathea, nor does he mention the 
 
 * See Studies, I.e., pp. 30 et seq. 
 
 1 1 Peter, ii., 9, 10. 
 
 X The " dish of Caesarea " belongs to the other version, Joseph of 
 Arimathea, by Sires Robiers de Borron, which was " englisht" in 1450, 
 by Henry Lonelich. See The Grand St. Graal, from Furnivall's 
 edition. Early English Text Society. Trubner, 1874. 
 L 
 
1 62 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Stone of the Grail having been originally in the crown of 
 Lucifer ; on the contrary, according to him, it is the lapis 
 exilis,"^ the Stonef of the Lord, which at the beginning of all 
 things was with God. 
 
 The symbolism of man as a stone, is the idea that 
 is being expressed by the writer ; an ancient idea, 
 and one that is found in almost every religion. 
 
 There is one beautiful tradition connected with, 
 this legend of the Grail, supposed to have had its 
 origin in Great Britain, and therefore of peculiar 
 interest to us. It is said to have been inscribed in 
 the Chronicles of Helinandus, who was " well-known 
 at the time the Romance was written, not only as a 
 historian but as a Troubadour, at one time in high 
 favour at the Court of Philip Augustus, and in later 
 years as one of the most ardent preachers of the 
 Albigensian Crusade." J He lived aboiit 1229. The 
 passages here summarised are from Paulin Paris" 
 charming work ; the marvellous vision was revealed 
 to a hermit in Britain about 720, and runs thus : 
 
 On Holy Thursday of the year 717, after concluding; 
 
 * Writers vary in their spelling of the stone ; Lapis, Lapsit or 
 Jaspes, exilles, exiUxor, exillis, and other variants are given. Lapis: 
 Electrix is given by William Hertz in his Parzival, pp. i6o, 528. 
 Stuttgart, 1898. He draws attention to the fiery and life-giving- 
 properties of the stone. This to some students of Theosophy will be a 
 valuable suggestion. 
 
 t In the old symbolism, " Man," chiefly the Inner Spiritual Man, 
 is called a "stone." Christ is called a corner stone, and Peter refers to 
 all men as "lively" (living) stones. Blavatsky (H. P.), The Secret 
 Doctrine, ii. 663, 3rd edition. London, 1893. 
 
 J Evans (Sebastian), The High History of the Holy Grail, II., 
 p. 293. London, 1898. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 63 
 
 the office of the Tenebrae, I fell asleep, and presently 
 methought I heard in a piercing voice these words : — 
 " Awake ! Hearken to three in one, and to one in three ! " 
 I opened my eyes — I found myself surrounded by an 
 extraordinary brightness. Before me stood a man of most 
 marvellous beauty : " Hast thou rightly understood my 
 words ? " he said. " Sire, I should not dare to say so." " It is 
 the proclamation of the Trinity. Thou didst doubt whether 
 in the three Persons there were only one God, one only 
 Power. Canst thou now say who I am ? " " Sire, my eyes 
 are mortal ; Thy great brightness dazzles me, and the tongue 
 of man cannot give utterance to that which is above 
 humanity." 
 
 The Unknown bent towards me and breathed upon my 
 face. Thereupon my senses expanded, my mouth was 
 filled with infinity of speech. But when I would fain have 
 spoken I thought I saw bursting forth from my lips a 
 fiery brand which checked the first words I would have 
 uttered. 
 
 " Take courage," said the Unknown to me ; " I am the 
 source of all truth, the fount of all wisdom. I am the 
 Great Master, he of whom Nicodemus said : ' We know 
 that thou art God.' I come, after confirming thy faith, to 
 reveal to thee the greatest secret in the world." 
 
 He then held out to me a book which could easily have 
 been held in the hollow of the hand ; " I entrust to you," 
 he said, "the greatest marvel that man can ever receive. 
 This is a book written by my own hand, which must be 
 read with the heart, no mortal tongue being able to 
 pronounce the words without affecting the four elements, 
 troubling the heavens, disturbing the air, rending the earth, 
 and changing the colour of the waters. For every man 
 who shall open it with a pure heart, it is the joy of both 
 body and soul, and whosoever shall see it need have no fear 
 of sudden death, whatever be the enormity of his sins." 
 
 The great light that I had already found so hard to 
 
1 64 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 endure then increased until I was blinded by it. I fell, 
 unconscious, and when I felt my senses returning, I no 
 longer saw anything around me, and I should have taken 
 what I had just experienced for a dream, had I not still 
 found in my hand the book that the Great Master had 
 given me. I then arose, filled with sweet joy ; I said my 
 prayers, then I looked at the book, and found as its first 
 title : This is the beginning of thy lineage. After reading until 
 Prime,* it seemed to me that I had only just begun, so 
 many letters were there in these small pages. I read on 
 again until Tierce, and continued to follow the steps of my 
 lineage, and the record of the good life of my predecessors. 
 
 Beside them, I was but the shadow of a man, so far was 
 I from equalling them in virtue. Continuing the book, 
 I read : Here beginneth the Holy Grail. Then, the third 
 heading : This is the beginning of Fears. Then, a fourth 
 heading : This is the beginning of Wonders. A flash of 
 lightning blazed before my eyes, followed by a clap of 
 thunder. The light continued, I could bear its dazzling 
 brightness no longer, and a second time I fell unconscious. 
 
 How long I remained thus I do not know. When 
 I arose, I found myself in profound darkness. Little by 
 little, daylight returned, the sun resumed its brightness, I 
 felt myself pervaded by the most delicious scents, I heard 
 the sweetest songs that I had ever listened to ; the voices 
 from which they proceeded seemed to touch me, but I 
 neither saw them nor could I reach them. They praised 
 Our Lord, and repeated : Honour and glory to the 
 Vanquisher of death, to the source of life eternal. 
 
 Having repeated these words eight times, the voices 
 ceased; I heard a great rustling of wings, succeeded by 
 perfect silence ; nothing remained but the perfumes whose 
 sweetness entered into me. 
 
 * Six o'clock in the morning. Tierce corresponds to 9 ; Sexte, 
 Nones, and Vespers to noon, 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 65 
 
 The hour of Nones came, and I thought myself yet at 
 the earliest dawn. Then I closed the book and commenced 
 the service for Good Friday. We do not consecrate on this 
 day, because our Lord chose it for His death. In presence 
 of the reality one should not have recourse to symbol ; and 
 if we consecrate on other days, it is in commemoration of 
 the real Sacrifice of the Friday.* 
 
 As I was preparing to receive my Saviour, and had 
 already divided the bread into three portions, an angel came, 
 took hold of my hands and said to me : " Thou must not 
 make use of these portions until thou hast beheld what I am 
 about to show thee.'' Then he raised me into the air, not 
 in the body but in the spirit, and transported me to a place 
 where I was immersed in a joy such as no tongue could tell, 
 no ear could hear, no heart could feel. I should speak no 
 untruth in saying that I was in the third heaven, whither 
 St. Paul was caught up ; but that I be not accused of vanity 
 I will merely say that there was revealed to me the great 
 secret which, according to St. Paul, no human speech could 
 utter. The angel said to me : " Thou hast seen great 
 wonders, prepare thyself to see still greater." He carried 
 me higher yet, into a place a hundred times clearer than 
 glass, and a hundred times more brilliant in colouring. 
 There I had a vision of the Trinity, of the distinction 
 between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and of 
 their union in one and the same form, one and the same 
 Deity, one and the same power. Let not the envious here 
 reproach me with going against the authority of St. John 
 the Evangelist, in that he has told us that mortal eyes never 
 will or can behold the Eternal Father, for St. John meant 
 the bodily eyes, whereas the soul can see, when it is 
 
 * " For where the truth is, the symbol should be put in the back- 
 ground. On other days we consecrate in remembrance of his being 
 sacrificed. But on that day of Good Friday he was veritably sacrificed ; 
 for there is no meaning whatever in it when the day comes on which he 
 was actually sacrificed." 
 
l66 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 separated from the body, that which the body would 
 prevent it from perceiving. 
 
 While I was thus contemplating I felt the firmament 
 trembling at the sound of the loudest thunder. An infinite 
 number of heavenly Virtues surrounded the Trinity, then 
 fell down as if in a swoon. The angel then took me and 
 brought me back to the place whence he had taken me. 
 Before restoring its ordinary covering to my soul, he asked 
 me if I had beheld great marvels. " Ah ! " I replied, " so 
 great that no tongue could recount them." " Then resume 
 thy body, and now that thou hast no longer any doubts as 
 to the Trinity, go, and receive worthily Him whom thou 
 hast learnt to know." 
 
 The hermit, thus restored to the possession of his body, 
 no longer saw the angel, but only the book, which he read 
 after he had communicated, and which he laid in the 
 reliquary where was kept the box for the consecrated wafers. 
 He locked the coffer, returned to his binnacle, and would 
 not touch the book again until after he had chanted the 
 Easter service. But what were his astonishment and grief 
 when, after the office, he opened the reliquary and found 
 that it was no longer there, though the opening had never 
 been unclosed ! Presently a voice spoke these words to 
 him : " Wherefore be surprised that thy book is no longer 
 where thou didst lay it ? Did not God come forth from the 
 sepulchre without removing the stone from it ? Hearken 
 to what the Great Master doth command thee ! To-morrow 
 morning, after chanting- mass, thou shalt break thy fast, and 
 then thou shalt take the path leading to the high road. 
 This road will lead thee to that of the Prise, near the 
 Perron. Thou shalt turn a little aside and take the path 
 towards the right which leads to the cross-roads of the 
 Eight Paths, in the plain of Valestoc. On reaching the 
 Fountain of Tears, where the great slaughter formerly took 
 place, thou wilt find a strange beast commissioned to be 
 thy guide. When thy eyes lose sight of him, thou wilt 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 67 
 
 enter into the land of Norgave* and that will be the end 
 of thy quest, t 
 
 This vision is perhaps one of the most spiritual 
 expressions of the Grail legend that can be found, 
 and whoever the hermit was to whom the angel came, 
 or the chronicler who wrote the vision down, the 
 imagination of the person was pure and holy, and the 
 teaching has the ring in it of a high and holy truth. 
 
 Yet one more version of this many-leaved book 
 must we glance at before passing on. We have seen 
 the Gnostic Eastern tradition, and the purely 
 Christian, now must be seen the Druidic, or the 
 so-called pagan tradition. Mr. Gould says that there 
 exists a " Red Book," a volume of Welsh prose begun 
 1318 and finished in 1454, which contains "a Welsh 
 tale entitled Pheredur, which is indisputably the 
 original of Perceval." This book is preserved in the 
 library of Jesus College, Oxford. 
 
 Pheredur is mentioned as well in the Annales 
 CambricB, which extend from the year 444 to 1066. 
 
 Mr. Gould says : 
 
 Pheredur is not a Christian. His habits are barbarous. 
 The Grail is not a sacred Christian vessel, but a mysterious 
 relic of a past heathen rite. 
 
 Taliesin ben Beirdd, the famous poet says: "This 
 vessel inspires poetic genius, gives wisdom, discovers the 
 
 * I have not discovered a trace of any of these names of places ; 
 I am much inclined to think them disguised. 
 
 t Paris (A. Paulin), Romans de la Table Ronde, i., pp. 156-162. 
 Paris, 1868. 
 
1 68 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 knowledge of futurity, the mysteries of the world, the whol^ 
 treasure of human sciences." 
 
 That this vessel of the liquor of Wisdom held a 
 prominent place in British mythology is certain from the 
 allusions made to it by the bards. Taliesin, in the descrip- 
 tion of this initiation into the mysteries of the basin, cries 
 out, " I have lost my speech ! " because on all who had been 
 admitted to the privileges of full membership secrecy was 
 imposed. This initiation was regarded as a new birth ; and 
 those who had once become joined members were regarded 
 as elect, regenerate, separate from the rest of mankind, who 
 lay in darkness and ignorance. 
 
 This Druidic mystery was adapted to Christianity by a 
 British hermit a.d. 720. . . . It is likely that the 
 tradition of the ancient druidic brotherhood lingered on and 
 gained consistency again among the Templars. Just as the 
 Miles Templi fought for the holy sepulchre, so did the 
 soldier of Montsalvatsch for the Holy Grail. Both orders 
 were vowed to chastity and obedience, both were subject 
 to ahead, who exercised regal authority.* 
 
 One more link with the ancient Wisdom Religion 
 is forged for us by another author, one perhaps more 
 sympatheticf and he connects the Grail-cult with that 
 Gnostic body named " Mendaeens '' or the " Christians 
 of St. John " ;| this is a point of extreme interest to 
 
 * Baring-Gould (S), Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 617, 
 622-3-4. London, 1881. 
 
 + Simrock (R., jr.), Parzival und Titurel, p. 776. Stuttgart und 
 Augsberg, 1857. 
 
 t See Blunt (J. H.), Dictionary of Sects and Heresies, p. 309. 
 London, 1874. He says: "An ancient Eastern Sect found in Persia 
 and Arabia, but chiefly at Bussara . . . who profess to be Mendai- 
 Ijahi or disciples of St. John the Baptist ! They are called ' Christians 
 of St. John ' by many European writers, and Sabians or Tzabians by the 
 Mahometans. " 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 69 
 
 Students of Theosophy, for it makes a direct con- 
 nection between the legend of the Holy Grail and the 
 " Order of the Knights Templars," who were so closely 
 allied with this body. 
 
 Mackenzie,* moreover, includes the "Johannite 
 Christians," as he terms them, among other bodies 
 connected with Masonry, and indeed many of the 
 Masonic Lodges were dedicated to St. John the 
 Baptist, and looked on him as their patron saint. 
 Simrock builds his theory on the solid fact that Prester 
 John, a mysterious Priest-King of the East (with 
 whom we shall deal next time), was himself a leader 
 of one of the Gnostic Sects, a heretic of course ; but, 
 as the author points out, the Grail Legend is too 
 intimately interwoven with him for him to be left out. 
 It is to Indiaf indeed, that the Grail goes when the 
 western world becomes too cold for worship, too dead 
 for ideals to stir it to a higher life. 
 
 * Mackenzie (R. R. H.), The Royal Masonic Cyclopadia, p. 386. 
 New York, 1877. 
 
 t Weston (Jessie L.), Parzifal, ii., notes 184, line 589, p. 223. 
 "The belief in a Christian Kingdom in the East, ruled over by a king 
 who was at the same time a priest, was very widely spread in the 
 middle ages, but it is very curious to find it thus connected with the Grail 
 Legend. Simrock takes this connection to be a confirmation of his theory, 
 that the Grail Myth was originally closely connected with St. John the 
 Baptist. According to Der Jiingere Titurel, a poem which, professedly 
 written by Wolfram and long supposed to be his, is now known to be 
 the work of a certain Albert von Scharffenberg, the Grail, with its 
 guardians, Parzival, Lohengrin, Konwiramur, and all the Templars, 
 eventually left Monsalvasch and found a home in the domains of 
 Prester John, but the story seems to be due rather to the imagination of 
 the writer than to any real legendary source." 
 
THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM OF 
 THE HOLY GRAIL. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 II. 
 
 The History of Titurel. 
 
 The fairest of old men ancient whom ever his eyes had seen, 
 Grey was he as mists of morning. 
 
 Parzifal, i. 137, by Jessie Weston. 
 
 Apd the Grail, it chooseth strictly, and its Knights must be 
 chaste and '^vx&.—Ibid., i. 283. 
 
 To the founding of the Palace Spiritual, and to 
 Titurel, the noble ancestor of the Grail-Kings, our 
 attention must now be turned. Many and varied are 
 the versions which may be found of the history of 
 this Grail-Race, and each interpretation of its 
 traditional history differs according to the writer's 
 sympathy with and comprehension of the mystical 
 history of the human family. Few and far between 
 are those clear-sighted critics who recognise, in this 
 fascinating tradition of Oriental generation, a link 
 which relates the outer life of man to its hidden basis, 
 and sets forth the type of an ideal life which had its 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. I7I 
 
 inception on this earth when the " Sons of God " still 
 trod its paths, and the " Children of the Fire-mist " 
 had not withdrawn from the outer world, but yet 
 dwelt among the children of men. 
 
 From the despised mental dust-bins of the " Dark 
 Middle Ages" — as they are termed — precious gems of 
 rarest literary worth are being disinterred, of quality 
 so pure, with richness so wondrous, that the geniuses 
 of the 19th century show poor and forlorn when 
 measured by the power and mental strength of their 
 predecessors of that despised time. No peers are the 
 modern poets of those noble singers who created the 
 chivalric virtues in the hearts of the men and women 
 of their time, and who sent their burning words 
 ringing through the centuries fraught with love ideals 
 both pure and true, and religious fervour at once self- 
 sacrificing and humble. Their ideals of noble man- 
 hood and pure womanhood are still the ideals of the 
 present time, for the " Legend of the Holy Grail " is 
 yet potent, nor can time destroy its " infinite variety." 
 Titurel, the Perfected One, who 
 
 Like a flying star 
 Led on the gray-haired Wisdom of the East, 
 
 is in modern days deemed to be but the poetical 
 creation of a more than usually fertile -brained 
 troubadour of the Middle Ages ; but it is the 
 chronicle of this first spotless Grail-King which must 
 now be studied, for he was the type of the model 
 ruler, pure in life, just in action, living for his people, 
 
172 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 with his heart set on a higher kingdom than his 
 earthly realm. 
 
 The most detailed description of the descent and 
 genealogy of Titurel that we can briefly summarise is 
 given by a group of German authors* in a careful and 
 laborious study of the " Jiingere,"f which runs as 
 follows : Among the princes who gathered round 
 Vespasian at the siege of Jerusalem were Sennabor, a 
 Prince of CappadociaJ and his three sons, Parille, 
 Azubar and Sabbilar. After the fall of the city 
 these three brothers went to Rome, and were 
 overwhelmed with gracious gifts by the Emperor. 
 Parille received his daughter Argusilla § for wife, 
 and some provinces in France were also given to 
 him. To the brothers Azubar and Sabbilar were 
 given Anschowe (Anjou) and Kornwaleis (Cornwall). 
 To Parille and Argusilla was born a son whom they 
 
 * Hagen (Dr. H. von der), Docen (B. J.), Busching (J. G.), 
 Museum fur Altdeutsche Literatur und Kunst, i. , 502 et seq. Berlin, 
 1809. 
 
 t Scharffenberg (Albrecht von), Der Jiingere Titurel ; circa 1270. 
 Vilmar (A. F. C. ), Geschichte der deutschen National-Literatur, i, 147. 
 Marburg u. Leipzig, 1870. 
 
 t Cappadocia was at this time a Roman Province. Sennabor is 
 rendered by some authorities as "Senbar." Says San Marte : "The 
 first forerunners of Christianity in the West were demigods ; and in 
 Asia is rooted the main stem of the Senaboriden. (B6readen) Senebar 
 der Reiche — Senber, in Arabic a sage — he came from Cappadocia, from 
 the Caucasus, and Colchis, whence Odin also brought his bloody 
 worship." See "Der Mythus vom Heiligen Oral" in the Neue 
 Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiet historisck antiquarischer Forschungen. 
 Herausgegeben von dem Thuringisch-Sachsichen Verein fUr Erforschung 
 des vaterlandischen Alterthums, III., iii., 5. 
 
 § Sometimes given as Orgusille. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 73 
 
 named Titurisone, who became the stem of the Grail- 
 Race. Parille tried to reform and Christianise his 
 pagan provinces, which had fallen into degraded 
 superstitions, but he was poisoned by the people and 
 Titurisone reigned in his place. 
 
 He married Elizabel of Arragonia, and the royal 
 couple went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There 
 it was they received the prophecy about the great 
 future of the son who should be born to them. He 
 was to be under the special protection of God, 
 and he would be dowered with great gifts. His 
 name was to be formed from those of his father and 
 mother ; thus Titurel was he called, which includes 
 a part of Titurisone and Elizabel. He grew in grace 
 and in " favour with God and man." In him was 
 embodied the true type of the ideal Knight, noble, 
 pure, tender and chivalrous. Such was Titurel, 
 the first Grail-King ; and — say some accounts — 
 he conquered the rebellious heathen of Auvergne 
 and Navarre, with the help of the Proven5als, and 
 the people of Aries and Lotheringen. These com- 
 bined forces — so runs the tradition — conquered the 
 Saracenic union, and put down the degraded remnants 
 of the old Druidical worship. It was after these long 
 struggles were completed that Titurel was bidden to 
 prepare and build the Temple for the reception of 
 the Holy Grail — that perfect treasure which was to 
 be entrusted to his charge. Amongst the " powers " 
 and "gifts" with which Titurel was dowered was that 
 of " length of days," for when the temple was builded, 
 
174 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 and he was commanded to marry, in order that the 
 Grail-Race might be continued, Titurel had reached 
 four hundred years of age. The site where the Sacred 
 Shrine, or Grail -Temple, was to be founded was 
 shown to him by an angel-guide ; so carefully 
 secluded was the spot, that it could not be discovered 
 but by the aid of a higher Power. 
 
 It is without doubt on the far side of Pyrenees* 
 that we find this legend most deeply engrafted, 
 though the name of its abiding place is differently 
 rendered by various writers. Thus the name Mon 
 Salvdsch^ or Mont Salvat, may from its wild and 
 inaccessible position only mean the uncultivated 
 mountain, Mont Salvatge or Sauvage. It is said 
 that between Navarre and Arragon there is still a 
 place named Salvaterra. 
 
 The site of the Temple was shown to Titurel, and 
 the " Invisible Helpers " brought him materials for 
 the building ; the description is marvellously elabor- 
 ate, full of symbolical detail, | entirely oriental in its 
 whole construction, both material and ideal, but it 
 cannot here be given, as our sketch is limited to 
 
 * Says Gorres : "The Temple of Mont Salvatsck stands in Salva- 
 tierra, and not as people thought in distant Gallizein, but in Arragonia 
 just at the entrance into Spain, and close to the Valley of Ronceval and 
 the great road which leads from France towards Gallicia and Cotn- 
 postella." — Lohengrin. Koblentz, 1812. 
 
 + Sometimes called San- Salvador, or Salvez. 
 
 X See Boisser^e (Sulpiz), Uber die Besckreibung des Heiligen Grab. 
 Munich, 1834. Also Transactions of the Munich Academy, i. 30. The 
 description is in the Jiingere Titurel, edited by Hahn, strophe 311, 
 1842. San Marte (A. Schulz), Leben und Dichten Wolfram's von 
 Eschenbach, ii., 357. Magdeburg, 1836. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 75 
 
 Titurel himself. When the building of the Temple 
 was completed he was four hundred years old, but 
 such was the power of the Holy Grail that he looked 
 — says the tradition — only forty. And now he 
 gathered around himself that goodly company of 
 knights— the Knights of the Temple Holy— and 
 gradually their influence and their power spread into 
 other lands ; first Arragon and then Navarre were 
 drawn to this spiritual society, then followed 
 Catalonia, Grenada and Gallicia ; the chief town 
 of this great alliance was concealed in the forests 
 on the boundaries between Navarre and Arragon, 
 on the ridge of the Pyrenees. The centre of the 
 spiritual supremacy of the new faith reached from 
 Gallicia beyond Provence, towards Burgundy and 
 Lorraine. All of this was done during the four 
 hundred years of Titurel's reign. San Marte speaks 
 of it as a " similar institution to that which existed in 
 the Pythagorean Alliance." 
 
 The Sacred Grail was enshrined in the Temple, 
 and the instructions to the King and his knights 
 appeared on its surface, remained there for a while, 
 then faded slowly away. And now was given the 
 order for Titurel to marry, and the wife chosen for 
 him was Richonde, a maiden consecrated to God. 
 Her father's name was Frimutelle, a king of a 
 Spanish province ; messengers were sent to her, 
 and she came to Mon Salvatsch accompanied by 
 a great suite of maidens and of warriors, 
 all of whom returned to Spain except those 
 
176 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 whom the Grail ordered to remain. Titurel 
 had to select two hundred knights from amongst 
 those who came ; moral qualifications alone fitted 
 them to enter the service of the Grail. Two children 
 were born to Titurel. His son Frimutel, who married 
 the daughter of the King of Grenat, became the next 
 Grail-King, and they had five children — Amfortas, 
 who succeeded him as Grail-King ; Herzeloide, the 
 mother of Parzival ; Treverizent, the hermit ; Tchoy- 
 siane, and Urepanse. This was the male line. The 
 daughter of Titurel married Kailet, King of Spain, 
 the capital of which was, at this time, Toledo, and 
 this marriage connected the Kings of Spain with the 
 Kings of the Grail-Race. It must be remembered 
 that it was at Toledo that the manuscript on the 
 Holy Grail legend was found by Flegetanis, the 
 contents of which gave the Eastern sources of this 
 tradition. 
 
 By daily contemplation of the Grail Titurel's life* 
 had been prolonged for five hundred years, and when 
 he knew his forces were beginning to fail him, he 
 gathered his children round him to instruct them on 
 the spiritual significance of the Holy Grail. 
 
 Thus he taught : no one may ever see the Grail 
 but the elect ; those who do not live a holy life, and 
 guard themselves in purity and from all strife, are not 
 fit to gaze upon that holiness ; no tongue may ever 
 tell the Grail's true form. 
 
 * In Persian history the life ofjemshad was extended to nearly 
 seven centuries from a similar cause. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 177 
 
 Titurel also instructed his knights as to the inner 
 meaning of the symbols and ceremonial they used, 
 particularly the spiritual significance and power of the 
 twelve precious stones. He sorrowed that his son 
 Frimutelle had not been " called " by the Grail 
 to be the Grail-King. Shortly after this, we are 
 told, the name of Frimutelle appeared on the 
 Grail, and then followed the names of the Knights 
 who were to enter the Grail service. Titurel 
 was also warned that his son, and his grandson, 
 Amfortas, would suffer bodily injuries, as the result 
 of their ungoverned natures. Finally, Titurel died 
 in India, more than five hundred years old.* Of 
 his journey thither we know nothing, but the 
 tradition runs, that there is a " waiting place,"-f- 
 whence the return of these knightly souls is expected, 
 in that region of peace, where they dwell and watch 
 over the human race. Thus passes the Founder of 
 the Grail-Kingship from our immediate view ; he had 
 but to strike the keynote of a higher purity and a 
 nobler manhood, and his work in the material world 
 of that period ended. 
 
 He still holds, we are told, communication with the 
 
 * One of the few definite dates is given to us by Gorres in his 
 Lohengi-in, p. Ixiii. where, speaking of Lohengrin's death, he says : 
 " It was known now to the murderers who this Prince was .... 
 they became monks . . . these events took place five hundred 
 years after the birth of Jesus Christ." 
 
 tHere we have a clear and most definite hint given that the 
 doctrine of re-incarnation was taught by this Troubadour, who is hand- 
 ing down the Secret Wisdom of the Holy Grail. 
 M 
 
178 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 world, and occasionally despatches a faithful champion to 
 grant assistance in cases of momentous need. There also 
 the Grail maintains the sanctity of its character, and 
 becomes at once the register of human grievances and 
 necessities, and the interpreter of the will of heaven as to 
 the best mode of redressing them. 
 
 Immense stress is laid on the necessity for a 
 perfect purity, but so corrupt did the court grow, that 
 at one time only the infant children of Perceval and 
 Lancelot, and the daughter of Gawain, v/ere con- 
 sidered worthy to step within the sacred shrine. 
 
 Warton speaks quite frankly in his book of 
 "esoteric doctrines" which belonged to the "heathen 
 world" (sic), and which have been transplanted into 
 Christendom, a new name having therein been given 
 to the old teachings of the East.* 
 
 But we must pass on to the other aspects of this 
 legend, and one of the most curious is the connection 
 traced by many authors between the Holy Grail and 
 the traditions of the Knights Templars.f 
 
 * Warton (Thomas, B.D.), T/te History of English Poetry, i., 85, 
 London, 1824. 
 
 t " Le Temple du Graal une fois bati dans les Pyrte^es, Titurel 
 institua pour sa defense et pour sa garde une milice, une Chevalerie 
 sp^ciale, qui se nomme la Chevalerie du Temple, et dont les membres 
 prennent le nom de Templiens, ou de Templiers. Ces Chevaliers font 
 voeu de chastet6, et sont tenus ^ une grande puret6 de sentimens et de 
 .conduite. L'objet de leur vie, c'est de d^fendre le Graal, ou pour 
 mieux dire, la foi chr^tienne, dont ce vase est le symbole, contre les 
 infidHes. Je I'ai d^ji insinu^, et je puis ici I'affirmer express^ment, il y 
 , a dans cette milice religieuse du Graal une allusion manifeste i. la milice 
 des Templiers. Le but, le caract^re religieux, le nom, tout se rapporte 
 entre cette derni^re Chevalerie et la Chevalerie id^ale du Graal : et I'on 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. I79 
 
 Aroux, is very definite on this point : 
 
 "It must be acknowledged," says he, "that the romances 
 of the Sangreal (the legend of which is borrowed from the 
 Apocryphal Gospels) composed, according to an essentially 
 Albigensian idea, in glorification of the Templars, mark the 
 period when the poets of the South felt the need of pro- 
 curing auxiliaries in the North."* 
 
 It is Aroux to whom we are chiefly indebted for 
 the secret thread which guides us through much of 
 the tangled maze of the struggles of the mystics 
 during the Middle Ages. He points out that the 
 Holy Grail was a mystic Gospelf as well as the Holy 
 Chalice, containing a mysterious power. Another 
 GermanJ thinker connects the legend of Titurel with 
 the origin of the Masonic Orders, and the early 
 Ritter-Orden in Germany. It is Herr Doctor Simrock 
 who has given us much detail with regard to the 
 tradition of the Holy Grail and its connection with 
 the " Order of the Knights Templars " ; it is his view, 
 and that of other serious students, that that Holy 
 Grail tradition, which is termed by Aroux the " book 
 of the Gospels," was in reality the Secret Doctrine of 
 the Templars, for which they suffered so bitterly. 
 
 a quelque peine a comprendre la fiction de celle-ci, si I'on fait abstraction 
 de ['existence r^elle de I'autre." Fauriel (C), " Romans Proven9aux," 
 Revue des Deux Mondes ; Premiere sitie, viii. 185. Paris, 1832. 
 
 * Aroux (E.), La Comidie de Dante, i. 39. Paris, 1857. 
 
 t Aroux (E.), Les Mystires de la Chevalerie, p. 166. Paris, 1858. 
 
 X Rosenkranz (Karl), Doctor der Philosophie, zu Halle. Uber den 
 Titurel und Dante's Komodie mit eitur Vorerinnerung iiber die 
 Bildung der Geistlicken Ritter-Orden, pp. 52-7°- Halle a. Leipzig, 
 1829. 
 
l8o MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Founded in 1118 on the base of the old Society of 
 the Magian Brothers, drawn together by the same 
 guiding powers, the Templars did but develop the 
 ideal seed which Titurel had sown. Let us see what 
 Simrock says on these points. 
 
 It seems our duty to bring forward here that which has 
 already been shown to hold good as regards this view. 
 Fauriel, who finds in the Templeisenthum — or the Knight- 
 hood of the Grail — that there is only a play on the Knights 
 Templars, appeals to the evidence given by the power and 
 the riches which that Order had already obtained in 
 Southern France and the South-East of Spain, but 
 especially in the Pyrenees, where since the founding of the 
 Temple-lands as the first in Europe, 'by Roger III. Graf von 
 Foix, castles, churches, temples, and chapels had rapidly 
 increased. San Marte lays stress on the agreement of the 
 name as well as on the different rules and customs of the 
 Order which coincided [with those of the Grail] : for 
 instance the Templars at the Lord's Supper, diverging from 
 the Roman Liturgy, made use of the opening words of the 
 Gospel of St. John, which change also occurs at the baptism 
 of Feirefis ■* but he bases his arguments chiefly upon the 
 heresies of which the Templars are known to have been 
 accused : the worship of certain idols .... their 
 belief in spirits and demons, which recall the " Heavenly 
 Host " [around the Grail] — angels who, according to 
 Trevrezent's statement had to serve the Grail as they 
 
 * Baptism had a much deeper meaning among the Gnostic sects 
 than among the orthodox church people. A " true baptism is only that 
 which takes place in the living water ; " and again, speaking of S. John 
 the Baptist, " He . . . baptised with the living baptism and 
 named the Name of Iiife." Brandt (A. J. H. W.), Die Manddische 
 Religion, ihre Entwickelung und Geschichtliche Bedeuiung, pp. 98 and 
 100. Leipzig, 1889. It was an Initiation into the Real Mysteries, 
 and is so still. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. l8l 
 
 hovered around it. The fact remains, however undecided 
 [to San Marte] whether the accusers took their incriminating 
 charges from the Romances of the Grail, or from the scraps 
 which had been pubUshed of the real teachings of the 
 Templars.* Other authorities t think that by these 
 Templeisen are to be understood the Knights of San 
 Salvador de Mont Real, who were, however, founded at 
 a much later date, in the year 1120. Another Knightly 
 
 * Simrock (K. Dr.), Parzi/al und Titurel, Rittergedichte von 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach, p. 793, third edition. Stuttgart 11. Augsburg, 
 
 1857. 
 
 t Hagen (Dr. H. von der), Docen (B. J.), Busching (J. G.), 
 Museum fiir Altdeutsche Literatur und Kutist ; i., 507. Berlin, 1809. 
 Shallow J. (J. Y. A. Morshead), The Templet's Trials, p. 62. London, 
 1888. " M. Loiseleur considers that the Temple compiled its heresy 
 from the principles of three contemporary sects — Bogomiles, Euchetes, 
 Luciferians. The actual history of these sects, however, rather gives 
 one the impression that each was suggested to some heresiarch by some 
 particular phase of that Manichaean feeling which always existed in 
 Bulgaria or Asia Minor." Mignard (Monographic du Coffret de M. le 
 Due de Blacas, Paris, 1852), proves that the Templars were Cathari — 
 another name for Albigenses — who believed in the doctrine of reincar- 
 nation. Says Aroux : " How did Walther of Aquitaine, how did the 
 romance of Perceval, the Perfect Knight of the Saint-Graal, accurately 
 translated by a Templar — Wolfram vpn Eschenbach, after the poem of 
 the Troubadour Guiot — become transplanted into Germany, if the 
 Proven9al missionaries had no relations with that country, if their 
 romances, their symbols were not understood there ? . . . . Who 
 but themselves and their disciples conveyed thither the ideas and 
 romances of chivalry, and by turning to account the national 
 traditions, worked on the foundation of the ancient sagas and im- 
 pressed on the modern ones the very visible stamp of Albigensianism ? 
 Traces are again to be found not only in Europe, but even as far as 
 Asia. True Knights errant of the Church Militant, in open war (but 
 more often war secret and hidden) with Roman Catholicism, they 
 journeyed unceasingly .... sometimes they went as bearers of 
 secret messages or were charged with transmitting verbally important 
 information from Prince to Prince." Thus was the secret mystical 
 teaching preserved through the dark ages. Aroux (E.), Mysth-es de la 
 Chevalerie, p. 189. Paris, 1858. 
 
1 82 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Order was founded at this period, who wore a "five- 
 pointed star " upon their breasts ; they were the 
 Knights of Monfrac in Castille and Knights of Mongoia, 
 on Mont Gaudii in Catalonia. There had, moreover, been a 
 close connection between the Order of the Templars and 
 the House of Anjou, for a tax on his dominions for the 
 benefit of the Templars had been imposed by Fulk. V. of 
 Anjou, on his return from Jerusalem in 1120. It is, how- 
 ever the learned Baron von Hammer-Purgestall* who gives 
 the most detail on the connection of the Templars with the 
 Holy Grail, by tracing its history from the identity of 
 hieroglyphs which he found on the old churches and buildings 
 in the Danubian Provinces. He unfortunately is for ever 
 trying to find the most unsavoury interpretation for all the 
 ancient symbolism ; with his views we are not concerned, 
 but to the work of research which he carried on with such 
 ability we are profoundly indebted. His statement is very 
 decided, for on p. 88, in note 33, of his article, he says : 
 The whole poem T8 Titurel, is nothing but the allegory of 
 the Society and the doctrines of the Templars. 
 
 Upon these details we cannot dwell, for we must 
 trace the passing of the Holy Grail to India, and this 
 will bring to view another mysterious personage, whose 
 name was Prestre John — a man about whom legends 
 were rife in both East and West during . the early 
 Middle Ages. Colonel Yule speaks of his history as 
 
 * Hammer-Purgestall (J. Baron von), " Mysterium Baphometis 
 Revelatum ; seu ftatres militise Templi, quS Gnostici et quidem ophiani, 
 apostasiee, idololatrise et quidem impuritatis convicti per ipsa eorum 
 monumenta." See Fundgruben des Orients, vi. p. 3. Vienna, 1818. 
 Nell (M. von) writing on Hammer's " Baphometum," says that Hammer^ 
 insists that the Cup of the Holy Graal is Gnostic, and of the same set as 
 the Baphometo of the Templars, which all have Gnostic-Ophite 
 symbols on them. But Nell says they are theosophical and alchemical : 
 in both cases these authors trace the Grail legend to hereticail sects, 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 83 
 
 " that of a phantom taking many forms."* The 
 so-called apostate Nestorians, and the personage 
 called Presbyter Johannes, appear to have been 
 Manichaean Buddhists ; the country of Prestre John 
 was Indian Tartary, and the real Prestre John was 
 the Grand Lama, the incarnation of Wisdom or 
 Gnyana.f Every authority joins in admitting that 
 there was some mysterious and powerful individual of 
 this name, some identifying him with Gengis-Khan.J 
 
 * Yule (Col.) : see sub voce, Encyclo. Brit. 
 " Prestre John " seems to have been the title of an office, for the 
 periods of time at which we hear of this curious person are various. 
 The person who succeeded to the position took the designation Prestre 
 John. 
 
 t Sir John Maundeville, an old knight, writing in the fourteenth 
 century, relates (Cassell's National Library, TAe V^ages and Travels 
 of Sir John Maundeville, p. 169) the following: "This Emperor 
 Prester John takes always to wife the daughter of the great Chan, and 
 the great Chan also in the same wise the daughter of Prester John. 
 For they two are the greatest lords under the firmament. . . . And 
 Prester John has under him Seventy-two provinces, and in every 
 province is a king, all which kings are tributary to Prester John, and in 
 his lordships are many great marvels, for in his country is the sea called 
 the Gravelly Sea. . . . Three days from that sea are great 
 mountains, out of which runs a great river which comes from Paradise, 
 and it is full of precious stones without a drop of water. . . . 
 Beyond that river is a great plain, and in that plain every day at sunrise 
 small trees begin to grow, and they grow till midday, bearing fruit ; 
 but no man dare take of that fruit, for it is a thing of fairie. . . . 
 This Emperor Prester John when he goes to battle against any other 
 lord has no banners borne before him, but he has three large crosses of 
 gold full of precious stones, and each cross is set in a chariot full richly 
 arrayed. . . . And when he has no war but rides with a private 
 company, he has before him but one plain cross of wood, in remem- 
 brance that Jesus Christ suffered death upon a wooden cross. And 
 they carry before him also a platter of gold full of earth, in token that 
 his nobleness and his might and his flesh shall turn to earth. And he 
 has borne before him also a vessel of silver, full of noble jewels of gold 
 
184 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 We must now return to the Grail Legend and 
 trace the connection which is therein made between 
 this cryptic entity and that tradition. 
 
 " The passage of the Grail to India," says San Marte, 
 "and the transformation of Parzival into Prestre John is 
 important for us to notice; according to the version of 
 Wolfram, this curious and interesting person is the son 
 of Urepanse,* hence a cousin of Parzival ; no details are 
 given to us about this mysterious personage, whose 
 existence, however, cannot be denied. The Monk Wilhelm 
 von Rubruquisjt passing through the East about 1253, told 
 of a ruler in the northern regions of India, in 1057, called 
 Ken-Khan. The Turks sought his help against the Chris- 
 tians. The Nestorians called him King Johannes. Interior 
 Asia was peopled by numerous sects ; besides the Nestorians 
 were the Jacobites, Monophysites, and the Zaboer or 
 Johannes Christians. All travellers of the thirteenth 
 
 and precious stones, in token of his lordship, nobility and power . . . 
 the frame of his bed is of fine sapphires, blended with gold to make him 
 sleep well. This Emperor Prester John has evermore seven kings with 
 him to serve him, who share their service by certain months. " 
 
 * Urepanse was one of the grand-daughters of Titurel. 
 
 t In the account of the travels of Rubruquis, in the Geography of 
 the Middle Ages, Book III., p. 270, London, 1831, we read : "There is 
 reason to believe that the Nestorians had penetrated into China as early 
 as the sixth or seventh century, and carried into that kingdom the 
 civilisation of the Bactrian Greeks." Rubruquis says, that in his time 
 they "inhabited fifteen cities in Cathay. . . . The Nestorians of 
 Tartary had imbibed the specious doctrine of the transmigration of 
 souls." They then told him of a child about three years old who could 
 write and reason, and who stated " that he had passed through three 
 several bodies." William de Rubruquis — or more properly. Van Ruys- 
 broek — was a Minorite Friar, from a village of that name near Brussels. 
 He started on his travels in 1253. He also said (p. 273), "that he had 
 been told by Baldwin de Hainault at Constantinople some facts about 
 the direction of the rivers in Tartary which he afterwards found to be 
 true." 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 85 
 
 century speak of a widely-spread Christianity in the East, 
 and the information thereof may have come to the West 
 with the first crusade — confused with vague intelligence 
 about the Hierarchy of the Dalai Lama, of whom Kiot 
 may have heard."* 
 
 Writing on the " Disciples of St. John," Madame 
 Blavatskyf says : 
 
 Glancing rapidly at the Ophites and Nazareans, we 
 shall pass to their scions which yet exist in Syria and 
 Palestine, under the name of Druzes of Mount Lebanon ; 
 and near Basra or Bassorah, in Persia, under that of 
 Mendaeans, or Disciples of St. John. All these sects have 
 an immediate connection with our subject, for they are of 
 kabalistic parentage and have once held to the secret 
 "Wisdom-Religion," recognizing as the One Supreme, the 
 Mystery-God of the Ineffable Name. Noticing these 
 numerous secret societies of the past, we will bring them 
 into direct comparison with several of the modern. 
 
 Our object is not to write the history of either of them ; 
 but only to compare these sorely-abused communities with 
 the Christian sects, past and present, and then, taking 
 historical facts for our guidance, to defend the secret 
 science as well as the men who are its students and 
 champions against any unjust imputation. 
 
 One by one the tide of time engulfed the sects of the 
 early centuries, until of the whole number only one sur- 
 vived in its primitive integrity. That one still exists, still 
 teaches the doctrine of its founder, still exemplifies its faith 
 in works of power. The quicksands which swallowed up 
 every other outgrowth of the religious agitation of the times 
 
 * Neue Mittheilungen aus dem Gebietc Historisch- Antiqttarischer 
 Forschungen, ii. 36. 
 
 t Blavatsky (H. P.), Isis Unveiled, ii. ; pp. 289, 290. New York, 
 1884. 
 
1 86 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 of Jesus, with its records, relics, and traditions, proved 
 firm ground for this. Driven from their native land, its 
 members found refuge in Persia, and to-day the anxious 
 traveller may converse with the direct descendants of the 
 " Disciples of John," who listened, on the Jordan's shore, 
 to the " man sent from God," and were baptized and 
 believed. This curious people, numbering thirty thousand 
 or more, are mis-called "Christians of St. John," but, in 
 fact, should be known by their old name of Nazareans, or 
 their new one of Mendaeans. 
 
 The poem entitled Der Jungere Titurel* deals 
 most minutely with the passing of the Grail-Kings to 
 the realms of Prestre John ; and in this work it is not 
 Parzival around whom the chief interest is grouped, 
 but Titurel and his race, as they follow the Founder ; 
 then — when the darkening of the spiritual fervour 
 begins, and the falling away from the standard of 
 purity grows more general — then with prayer and 
 fasting do the few sorrowing knightly souls, the 
 Templeisen, make preparations to return to that East 
 whence had come their early inspiration. Led by 
 Parzival they pass from West to East. The 
 description of the kingdom of Prestre John far 
 surpasses, however, in splendour that of the Holy 
 Grail. There, we are told, the whole of nature is 
 sanctified ; it is a land free from crime, perfidy, 
 scoffing, and lack of faith. 
 
 Prestre John is described as a man holy before 
 God and man, perfect in virtue, and glorified with 
 
 * Scharffenberg (A. von), Der Jungere Titurel, 1270, line 5893 
 et seq. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 87 
 
 humility : he gives honour to Parzival, who comes 
 bringing the Holy Grail to its Indian home, and the 
 Priest-King of that land offers his crown and kingdom 
 to the king of the Grail-Race ; Parzival desires, in his 
 humility, to give himself to the service of Prestre 
 John, and finally it is the Grail which decides the 
 noble strife of these two great souls. The decree was 
 given that Parzival should accept the kingship, but 
 his name was to be changed into that of Prestre John. 
 Then was fulfilled a prophecy, formerly made by 
 an angel, that Prestre John should receive a son who 
 should be a more powerful ruler than himself But it 
 was also decreed that Parzival should only wear the 
 crown for ten years, since he was not entirely purified 
 from the sin that his mother, Herzeloide, had died of 
 grief for him. As San Marte* points out, the sin 
 was entirely unintentional on his part ; nevertheless, 
 it was still unexpiated and stained that spotless- 
 purity of a perfect life which was demanded of every 
 knight who entered the service of the Holy Grail. 
 Thus it appears that even a more perfect condition 
 was required in the office of the Priest-King Johannes 
 
 * San Marte (A. Schuk), " Vergleichung von Wolfram's Parzival 
 mit Albrecht's Titurel in Theologischer Beziehung," Gtrmania, viii., 
 454. Wien, 1863. This writer also remarks in the same inter- 
 esting article that " the poem appears as a mirror of those religious 
 movements at the end of the twelfth century which were struggling 
 towards freedom from the compulsion of the Church .... the 
 fundamental appreciation of both poems, 'Titurel' and 'Parzival,' is 
 only obtained by comparing them from the theological standpoint. . 
 . . Titurel is full of learned and varied reminiscences brought from 
 afar.'' Op. eit. supra, pp. 431, 423, 
 
1 88 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 than in that of the Grail-Kingship. The holders of 
 both offices were nominated by the Holy Grail. 
 
 III. 
 The Links of the Mystic Chain. 
 
 The strongly Eastern tinge that characterises 
 this tradition may be noticed in many different 
 points. The knowledge, for instance, of the occult 
 properties of precious stones and metals and their 
 powers ; the stone that enables the wearer to make 
 himself invisible, the condition being that he should 
 do nothing dishonourable, Then we have the 
 mysterious land of mist, where people* are neither 
 dark nor light, but have lost all ordinary human 
 colour. Again, there is the magic column brought 
 from India, in which all that happens for miles 
 around is represented ; and one of the most important 
 links is the clear reference made to reincarnation in 
 the belief held that Titurel and his knights may 
 return, and that the Perfect King still holds com- 
 munication with the earth and its sorrows. 
 
 The moral and mystic teaching of the Grail 
 tradition is the most vitally interesting to the student 
 of Theosophy and Mysticism, for the resemblances 
 between the present laws of spiritual development 
 and those given to the Knights of the Grail are 
 strikingly identical : The knight who watched 
 
 * Some of the Kamalokic planes might be thus described. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 1 89 
 
 the Grail — the highest office— had to be entirely 
 pure ; all sensual love, even within the bounds 
 of marriage, was forbidden ; one single thought* of 
 passion would obscure the eye and conceal the 
 mystic vessel ; the only marriage that was permitted 
 amongst those who stepped on to this " Path " was 
 the marriage of the King, and even that was not 
 based on personal attractions or attachments ; the 
 Grail alone decided whom the Grail-King should take 
 as wife. Not for himself, not for gratification, but for 
 the service of the race was he to marry. 
 
 As we search into the mystic chalice symbolism 
 of the Grail myth does it not become clear that we 
 are face to face with a symbol of man : man who is 
 the temple of the Holy Spirit. The chalice or cup is 
 but another way of denoting the " coats of skin," the 
 " veils " or " vestures " which garriient man on earth ; 
 robes woven by the nature powers, in which and 
 through which the divine spark has to dwell, until in 
 process of time the vestures or chalice become 
 permeated through and through by the divine light 
 within. Says one writer on this subject : 
 
 " In that marvellous relic of Gnostic Philosophy called 
 the Pistis-Sophia, the three vestures of the Glorified 
 Christos or perfected man — what we may all be in some 
 future birth — are thus described : 
 
 " And the Disciples saw not Jesus because of the great 
 light with which He was surrounded, or which proceeded 
 
 • One single thought about the past that thou hast left behind 
 will drag thee down." Blavatsky (H. P.), Tht Voice of the Silence, 
 p. 23. London, 1892. 
 
1 9© MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 from him. For their eyes were darkened because of it. 
 But they gazed upon the Light only, shooting forth great 
 rays of light. Nor were the rays equal to one another, and 
 the Light was of divers modes and various aspect, from the 
 lower to the higher part thereof, each ray more admirable 
 than its fellow in infinite manner, in the great radiance of 
 the immeasurable Light. It stretched from the earth to the 
 heaven. ... It was of three degrees, one surpassing 
 the other in infinite manner. The second, which was in 
 the midst, excelled the first, which was below it, and the 
 third, the most admirable of all, surpassed the other twain." 
 
 The Master explains this mystery to His Disciples as 
 follows : 
 
 " Rejoice, therefore, in that the time is come that I 
 should put on my Vesture. 
 
 " Lo ! I have put on my Vesture and all power has been 
 given me by the First Mystery. Yet a little while and I 
 will tell you every Mystery and every Completion ; hence- 
 forth from this hour I will conceal naught from you, but in 
 Perfectness will I perfect you in all Completion, and all 
 Perfectioning and every Mystery, which indeed are the End 
 of all Ends, and the Completion of all Completions, and 
 the Wisdom (Gnosis) of all Wisdoms. Hearken ! I will 
 tell you all things which have befallen me. 
 
 " It came to pass, when the sun had risen in the places 
 of the East, a great Stream of Light descended, in which 
 was my Vesture."* 
 
 The vesture of the Self in its perfect glory is of a 
 purity of transcendent perfection. No mortal stained 
 with earthly passion can gaze upon that garment of 
 the soul. 
 
 And as the upward striving soul struggles to free 
 
 *Mead (G. R. S., B.A.), The World-Mystery, pp. 102, 104. 
 London, 1895. ■. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. I9I 
 
 itself from the bondage of the lower bodies and their 
 subtle forces, and as it purifies one vehicle after 
 another pertaining to the three lower planes of 
 matter, finally it reaches that step on the Path 
 whereof the substance is perfect purity, and the soul 
 perceives that " Light vesture" which is the garment 
 — spoken of in theosophic terms as the buddhic body 
 — veiling the divine mysterious Self 
 
 This is the great reality which is typified by the 
 Holy Grail, the symbolic Cup or Chalice, the first 
 container of the Holy Life of the Logos. In all 
 religions is this myth to be found ; truly an " outward 
 and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." 
 Titurel had told his knights that no tongue may ever 
 tell the Grail's true form. This shows that some 
 mystery was concealed behind the outward symbolism 
 of the Cup and Chalice, or Gospel. 
 
 Burnouf says : " In spite of the difference produced by 
 the influences of the place, the study of the legend of the 
 Vase permits us to understand and discover that esoteric 
 teaching which has never ceased to animate or ensoul the 
 five great Aryan religions. This theory — which in the 
 Christian churches was transmitted under the name of the 
 Secret Doctrine, disciplina secreti — is of a Fire as the 
 universal force under different names, always the same at 
 the basis, and manifesting itself by the same words and 
 symbols." 
 
 This Fire is the true Spirit of life, the living Word, 
 
 Burnouf (E.), Le Vase Sacri et ce qu'il contient : dans rinde, la 
 Perse, la Grece, et dans PEglise Chritienne; avec un appendice sur 
 le Saint Graal, p. 172. Paris, 1896. 
 
192 MASONRY AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 which inflames the soul of man, and gives it that force 
 by which it can conquer the kingdoms of the lower 
 world, and, crossing the ocean of births and deaths, 
 can finally land itself on the further shore, a holy, 
 purified " Son of God," a Saviour of Worlds to come. 
 Thus runs the Legend of the Holy Grail. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 William Byles & Sons, Printers, 129 Fleet Street, London, and Bradford.