23. The Brotherhood of Luxor

Ascended Masters

It was in Cairo in the mid 1870s, the formative period in his political development in Egypt, that Afghani befriended a student of Arminius Vambery, Ignaz Goldziher (1850 – 1921),  a Hungarian scholar of Islam, who alongside Joseph Schacht and G.H.A. Juynboll, is considered one of the pioneers of modern academic Hadith studies, and who became the first European non-Muslim to attend lectures at the prestigious university of Al-Azhar.[1] Referring to Afghani’s interest in Freemasonry, Kedourie notes, “It cannot be doubted that he saw in masonry a modern extension of ancient Islamic heterodoxy to which he was clearly attracted.”[2] As a reputed leader of a mysterious organization called the Brotherhood of Luxor, Afghani would have been regarded by numerous prominent European occultists as the modern representative of an Ismaili tradition that had survived in Egypt. It would have supposedly issued originally from the Essenes, by way of the Sabians of Harran and the Brethren of Sincerity, and preserving the ancient teachings of Hermeticism, who through contact with the Templars led to the development in the eighteenth century of Egyptian Freemasonry. In that role, Afghani became the authoritative source of the mysteries of Agartha—corresponding to the myth of Shambhala—an ancient pre-Atlantean civilization that had survived in the hollow earth beneath the Himalayas, and preserved the Ancient Wisdom which was the true root of all the world’s religions.

Freemasonry, according to the Rite of Memphis, was introduced to Egypt in 1798 by Napoleon’s invading army.[3] During the reign of Mohammed Ali Pasha, several chapters were founded under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of France. By the 1800, several chapters were formed under the jurisdiction of a variety of rites, French, English, Scottish, Italian, German and Greek. As early as 1845, the lodge of the “Pyramides” was founded in Cairo and was directly under the patronage of the Grand Orient of France. Eight lodges were founded between 1862 and 1868 under the United Grand Lodge of England alone.[4] The Grand Orient of Egypt, founded in 1872 by Italian freemasons, in turn gave rise to the Grand National Lodge of Egypt, which would be the most important and long-lasting Masonic order in the Arab world and in the Middle East in general.[5] When a friend of Afghani’s, Abdul Qadir al Jazairi (1808 – 1883), an Algerian Islamic scholar, Sufi and military leader, was initiated in the Lodge of the “Pyramides” in 1864, the event was celebrated in the following speech delivered in the parent Lodge “Henry IV” in Paris on June 18:

 

What we have seen above all in this initiation, my Brothers, is that the Emir has succeeded in setting up indigenous lodges in the East. We want Masonry to orientalize itself in a certain way, to bring back to the places which were its cradle all the benefits of which it is capable, that it tears the blindfold of ignorance, that it shatters forever the sword of fanaticism, and finally leads these rogue nations back to the Great Temple of humanity by the gentle paths of love and brotherhood.[6]

 

Afghani would become a leading member of a Masonic lodge in Cairo, founded in 1871 when Egyptian Masons associated with the Bulwer Lodge—named after Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s older brother, Henry Lytton Earl Bulwer (1801 – 1872)—obtained a Warrant for a lodge to be worked in Arabic, and to be reserved for non-Europeans, under the name Kawkab-el-Sharq (“Star of the East”), a reference to Venus.[7] According to historian K. Paul Johnson in The Masters Revealed, as a purported leader of an order named the “Brotherhood of Luxor,” Afghani would have been one of one the “Ascended Masters” contacted by Helena P. Blavatsky (1831 – 1891), a medium considered the godmother of the New Age movement, as one of the founders of the Theosophical Society, which itself combined a number of elements from Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism with Western elements.[8] Blavatsky admired the work of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, an initiate of the Frankfurt Judenloge, who became the preeminent personality of the Occult Revival.

The first formal announcement of Blavatsky’s mission was an advertisement addressed to spiritualists and placed by Henry Olcott on April 17 1875 in The Spiritual Scientist, which he was told to sign: “To the Committee of Seven, Brotherhood of Luxor.”[9] Blavatsky explained to Olcott that this was “a group of seven Adepts belonging to the Egyptian group of the Universal Mystic Brotherhood.”[10] SRIA founder Kenneth Mackenzie had first mentioned this order as the “Hermetic Order of Egypt” in The Rosicrucian of May 1874, where he said that he had met six members of it.[11] From various allusions in Blavatsky’s and Mackenzie’s works, the Theosophical historian David Board argued that this American Brotherhood of Luxor was inspired by the English Brotherhood of Light, the Fratres Lucis, founded by Francis Irwin in 1873 on orders from the spirit of “Cagliostro.”[12] Questioned as to which lodge she belonged to, after she wrote an article for The Rosicrucian, Blavatsky answered:

 

It is certainly not to the Rosicrucians as I said to every one in the Article to Hiram. It is a secret Lodge in the East; perhaps they are the Brotherhood Mejnour speaks about in Zanoni.[13]

 

At her grandparents’ home, Blavatsky had studied the occult library of her great-grandfather, Prince Pavel Dolgorukov, a prominent Rosicrucian Freemason in the years before Catherine the Great closed the lodges, who was rumored to have met both Cagliostro and the Count of St. Germain.[14] Dolgorukov belonged to the Rite of the Strict Observance, where Johann Georg Schwarz (1751 – 1784) had been made Chancellor, after he had been invited by Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick to the Masonic Congress at Wilhelmsbad in 1782, where Russia was recognized as the Eighth Autonomous province of the order. Schwarz had been sent to Germany the year before with the mission of to become affiliated with the Three Globe Lodge in Berlin, which during these years had become the center of the Golden and Rosy Cross, headed by Johann Christoph von Wöllner.[15] Schwarz also came under the influence of Willermoz and he and Novikov joined his Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte. Due to Schwarz’s system, “illuminated” Martinism became widely fashionable in Russia.[16]

Blavatsky’s father was Pyotr Alexeyevich Hahn von Rottenstern (1798 – 1873) was a descendant of the German Hahn aristocratic family. Her mother was Yelena Hahn a self-educated seventeen-year-old who translated the works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton into Russian. In 1849, at age seventeen, Helena married Nikifor Blavatsky, vice­governor of Yerevan province in Armenia, but left him soon after. For the next nine years she traveled widely, visiting Europe, the Americas, and India, but her itinerary is disputed by her biographers.[17] She also claimed that during this period she encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the “Masters of the Ancient Wisdom,” who sent her to Shigatse, Tibet. During the 1850s and 1860s, she became familiar with Sufism, Kabbalah, the Druze religion, and met with Paolos Metamon, a Coptic magician in Cairo. In the early 1870s in Cairo, she was also associated with several other occultists, among whom was Afghani.[18]

Blavatsky went to New York in 1873 where she founded the Theosophical Society. Within a decade, the lodges of the society, organized like Freemasonry, spread all over the world, with more than 500 lodges in over 40 countries. Blavatsky’s channeled books Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, outlined the basic philosophy of the society. She also began the magazine Lucifer in 1887. Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled that she hoped for Freemasonry to return to its ancient, occult roots, but warned that the craft would remain “empty words” for “as long as they neglect their mother Magic, and turn their backs upon its twin sister, Spiritualism.”[19] According to Godwin, “Everywhere she was involved with Freemasonry, Oriental secret societies, occult fraternities, and with the spiritualists who constituted, as it were, the exoteric ‘church’ from which doors opened to the more esoteric circles.”[20]

Josephson-Storm notes that Blavatsky’s theories were widely circulated in Europe, and that influential linguists such as Émile-Louis Burnouf (1821 – 1907)—the director of the French School at Athens and a leading nineteenth-century Orientalist and racialist author of Aryanism—either practiced Theosophy as promoted by the Theosophical Society or publicly defended its doctrines.[21] Following in the footsteps of his uncle, Jean-Louis Burnouf, a famous philologist, and his cousin of Eugène Burnouf, the founder of Buddhist studies in the West, sought to connect Buddhist and Hindu thought to Western European classical culture. Burnouf was consulted by Heinrich Schliemann (1822 – 1890), German businessman and an influential amateur archaeologist, over his discovery of swastika motifs in the ruins of Troy. Hearing of the find, Burnouf wrote to Schliemann in 1872, stating “the Swastika should be regarded as a sign of the Aryan race.”[22] Accordingly, Schliemann concluded: “The primitive Trojans, therefore, belonged to the Aryan race.”[23]

Schliemann also read the works of the Anglo-German philologist Friedrich Max Müller (1923 –1900), the most prominent scholar to develop the notion of an Indo-European race—referred to as “Aryans” by Friedrich Schlegel and who influenced Blavatsky to expand her own notions of the history of the Aryans and their origins in Atlantis.[24] Müller, who was one of the founders of the Western academic disciplines of Indology and religious studies, directed the preparation of The Sacred Books of the East, a fifty-volume set of English translations which continued after his death. Müller’s godfather was Carl Maria von Weber (1786 – 1826), a teacher and friend to Giacomo Meyerbeer.[25] It was during his time in Leipzig that Müller frequently met Felix Mendelssohn.[26] Müller wrote:

 

The Aryan nations, who pursued a northwesterly direction, stand before us in history as the principal nations of northwestern Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals; and we learn from their literature and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilization, commerce and religion.[27]

 

The aim of the Theosophical Society was to lay the foundation of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity by uniting all people in this Ancient Wisdom, the true foundation of all religions, to carry out studies on the Aryan race, to demonstrate the true of Brahmanism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, and to study the secrets occult powers of man and nature. Theosophists believed that a being called Sanat Kumara, who belonged to a group called Lords of the Flame, and who Christians “incorrectly” called Lucifer, descended to Earth from Venus. Sanat Kumara, the lord of the world, founded the legendary city called Shambhala in Tibet, the original home of the Aryan race. From there, his duty was to raise the human race to a higher level of consciousness through evolution, through the spiritual hierarchy of enlightened beings, called Ascended Masters, who together formed the Great White Brotherhood. Among those whom the early Theosophists regarded as Masters were Biblical figures such as Abraham, Moses, Solomon, and Jesus, as well as Asian religious figures such as Gautama Buddha, Confucius, and Laozi, and modern individuals such as Jakob Bohme, Count Cagliostro, and Franz Mesmer. The most prominent Masters to appear in Theosophical literature are Koot Hoomi and Morya. K. Paul Johnson, proposes that Afghani was the Master contacted by Blavatsky named Serapis Bey, who was the chief of the Brotherhood of Luxor, who came from Venus and became a high priest in the Ascension Temple on Atlantis, and brought the Ascension Flame from Atlantis to Egypt.[28]

 

Star of the East

The minutes of a letter found among Afghani’s private documents contain a request in Arabic to be admitted to an unnamed Masonic lodge, dated March 31, 1875:

 

I the undersigned, a teacher of philosophical sciences, Jamal al-Din al-Kabuli, aged thirty-seven, ask the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-safa), call on the faithful companions (Khullan wafa), guides of the sacred masonic organisation, […] to be willing and favourable to accept me in that pure organisation, and to let me enter the body of the affiliates of that glorious association.[29]

 

Freemasonry continued to flourish, and around 1864, a large representation of Freemasons of European nationality residing in Egypt decided to create a national Masonic center. After some conflict, the institution was founded in Alexandria, with the authorization of the Khedive Ismail Pasha (1830 – 1895). The newly formed Grand Orient of Egypt included a Grand Symbolic Lodge and a Supreme Council of the thirty-three degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. The Grand Symbolic Lodge was set up to operate according to the Masonic regularity rule and obtained the recognition of the Grand Lodge of England, while the Supreme Council instead received the recognition of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, in Charleston, South Carolina, then under the authority of Grand Commander Albert Pike.[30] Although all of these chapters were established by Europeans, many of them included important Egyptian elites. Leading amongst them was Prince Halim Pasha, Mohammed Ali’s youngest son, who in 1867 was elected Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Egypt.[31]

After the death of Said Pasha, Ismail was proclaimed Khedive on January 19, 1863, though the Ottoman Empire and the other Great Powers recognized him only as Wali. Like all Egyptian and Sudanese rulers since his grandfather Mohammed Ali Pasha, he claimed the higher title of Khedive, which the Sublime Porte had consistently refused to sanction. Finally, in 1867, Ismail succeeded in persuading the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Aziz to grant a Firman finally recognizing him as Khedive in exchange for an increase in the tribute. Being based on primogeniture, the new law of succession thereby deprived the other male members of the Khedive’s family of any claim to the throne. The real motive behind this exclusion was Ismail’s desire to secure the Egyptian throne for his own son Tewfik.[32] In reaction, Prince Halim Pasha attempted a coup d’état which was aborted and he was exiled to Istanbul, where he became Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Turkey.[33]

After being expelled from Afghanistan in 1868, Afghani traveled to Istanbul, passing through India and Cairo on his way there. He stayed in Cairo long enough to meet a young student who would become a devoted disciple of his, Mohammad Abduh (1849 – 1905). As Eli Kedourie noted, “One curious aspect of Afghani’s appeal for the young ‘Abduh was that he made himself out to be sexually impotent.”[34] And yet, one of his students recalled that Abduh told them that his relation to Afghani was not merely that of a disciple to his master, or of a brother to his brother, “but was a relation of love which had overwhelmed the heart.”[35] In 1874, Abduh wrote in his first work, a short essay entitled Risalat al-waridat (“Treatise of Mystical Inspirations”):

 

While I found myself in this state, the arrival of the perfect Sage, of Truth personified, of our venerated master Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani who does not cease to garner the fruits of science, made the sun of truths rise for us which illuminated the most complicated problems.[36]

 

Afghani then appeared in Istanbul in 1870, which was when he first started to refer to himself as “al Afghani,”[37] presumably to avoid being recognized as a Shiah in the Sunni environment of Ottoman Turkey. Afghani was brought there by Mehmed Emin Ali Pasha (1815 – 1871)—himself a Freemason[38]—and Grand Vizier five times during the reign of Sultan Abdul Majid and Sultan Abdul Aziz.[39] There, Afghani moved in the circles of the secularist reform movement known as Tanzimat. He became a member of the reformist Council of Education, and a friend of the director of the new university, the Dar ul-Funun. There he offered a series of public lectures in 1870, comparing philosophy to prophecy. Afghani was severely disliked by the clergy for these heretical views. Hasan Fahmi, a leading scholar of his time, and the Shaikh al-Islam of the Ottoman Empire, pronounced a Fatwa declaring Afghani a disbeliever, and he was expelled late in 1870.[40]

Afghani was invited to Egypt by Ryad Pasha (1835 or 1836 – 1911), an Egyptian statesman, whom he had met in Istanbul, and arrived in 1871, where he was granted a government pension and a position teaching philosophy at the University of Al-Azhar.[41] However, opposition from the conservative Ulama to the subjects he taught and to his reformist ideas forced him to withdraw from the university. Nevertheless, he moved to the Jewish quarter and continued to meet with several students at his home, where they discussed social and political issues.[42] As explained by Kudsi-Zadeh, Afghani’s students reported that “he opened their eyes to the political plight of the East, to the nature of the Western challenge and especially to British imperialist designs.”[43]

By at least 1876, Afghani was introduced to Egypt’s Star of the East Lodge by its founder Raphael Borg, British consul in Cairo, who was in communication with Blavatsky.[44] Star of the East was affiliated with the United Grand Lodge of England, which originally had jurisdiction over the Grand Orient. Afghani became the Grand Master the following year. However, according to a dispatch from Frank Lascelles, then British Consul-General in Cairo, Afghani was expelled from the lodge “on account of his open disbelief in a Supreme Being.” Afghani then founded a “national lodge” affiliated with the French Grand Orient, who had removed the requirement for a belief in a deity in 1877, after which the United Grand Lodge terminated their affiliation.[45]

As noted by K. Paul Johnson, while there is no direct evidence of Afghani’s contact with Blavatsky, Afghani was in India in his early twenties when she was there in the early 1980s, and he was in Central Asia and the Caucasus when Blavatsky was in Tbilisi. In the late 1960s, he was in Afghanistan until he was expelled and returned to India. He went to Istanbul and was again expelled in 1871, when he proceeded to Cairo, where his circle of disciples was similar to Blavatsky’s Brotherhood of Luxor. Afghani was forced to leave Egypt and settled in Hyderabad, India, in 1879, the year the Theosophical Society’s founders arrived in Bombay. He then left India, and spent a short time in Egypt before arriving in Paris in 1884. The following year he proceeded to London, and then on to Russia where he collaborated with Blavatsky’s publisher, Mikhail Katkov.[46]

One of Afghani’s closest associates was James Sanua (1839 – 1912), an actor born in Cairo to a well-connected Italian Jewish family of Sephardic origin. Sanua’s girlfriend Lydia Pashkov, was a woman of Russian origin and correspondent for Le Figaro in Paris, a magazine funded by the Okhrana, the Russian secret service.[47] Sanua and Pashkov, along with Lady Jane Digby, were also friends and traveling companions of Blavatsky.[48] Jane Digby, or Lady Ellenborough (1807 – 1881), was an English aristocrat who lived a scandalous life of romantic adventures, having had four husbands and many lovers, including King Ludwig I of Bavaria, his son King Otto of Greece, statesman Felix Schwarzenberg, and an Albanian brigand general.

 

Golden Dawn

After she published Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky was conferred a Masonic initiation in 1878 by John Yarker (1833 – 1913), another founding member of the SRIA, who was friends with both Blavatsky and General Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1881, Garibaldi prepared to fuse the Rites of Misraim and of Memphis, which succeeded the Illuminati front of the Philadelphes, and which came to be known as the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraim.[49]  In December 1885, the Society for Psychical Research published their report on Blavatsky authored by Richard Hodgson, who accused Blavatsky of being a spy for the Russian government, and of faking paranormal phenomena, which was devastating to her reputation.

Even before the catastrophe, a number of Theosophists had begun joining the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, known as the H.B. of L, which became active in 1884, under the leadership of Aia Aziz (1848 – 1927), also known as Max Theon, Peter Davidson, and Thomas H. Burgoyne. Theon was born Louis-Maximilian Bimstein, the son of Rabbi Judes Lion Bimstein of Warsaw. Based in North Africa and France, Theon taught a Frankist doctrine of sex magic interpreted through the Hindu and Buddhist tradition of Tantra.[50] The HBofL, through the influence of Theon, became the key organization behind the rise of the Occult Revival, and, as occult historian Allen Greenfield has demonstrated in The Roots of Modern Magick, was chiefly responsible for the transmission of Frankist sex magic to its leading organizations and exponents.[51] Theon taught a “Cosmic Philosophy” that combined Kabbalistic with Vedic elements, developed in collaboration with his English wife, who was an automatic writing medium.[52] In 1882, Theon worked for a long period in daily sessions with the black magician, Thomas Dalton (1855 – 1895), who went by the alias of Thomas H. Burgoyne.[53] Burgoyne was charged with petty fraud in 1883, and after his release from jail, he again contacted Peter Davidson (1842 - 1929), a Scottish Freemason and member of the Theosophical Society who had been in contact with Francis George Irwin, and was secretary of the HBofL. Together with Burgoyne, Theon and Davidson adapted Paschal Beverly Randolph’s The Mysteries of Eros and Eulis!, placing more emphasis on practical sex magic in the brotherhood’s curriculum.[54] From January 1885 to December 1886, Davidson, writing as “Mejnour” and Burgoyne as “Zanoni,” published a monthly, the Occult Magazine. They were later joined by “Glyndon,” a French occultist, probably F.-Ch. Barlet (1838 – 1921), a.k.a. Albert Faucheux, and by two authors who signed respectively with a star of David and a swastika.[55]

“The influence of the H.B. of L.” explains Godwin, “was out of all proportion to its obscurity. In France, its practices permeated the occult revival of the fin de siècle, thanks to the Grand Master Barlet and his wide web of connections.[56] All the leading French Theosophists belonged to the order.[57] The influential occultist Gérard Encausse (1865 – 1916), also known as Papus, used the HBofL as recruiting grounds for his many organizations and societies.[58] As a young man, Papus spent a great deal of time at the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the Kabbalah, occult tarot, magic and alchemy, and the writings of Eliphas Lévi. He joined the French Theosophical Society shortly after it was founded in 1884–1885, but he resigned soon after joining because he disliked the Society’s emphasis on Eastern occultism. In 1880, Papus became acquainted with the doctrines of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. Subsequently, in 1884, together with some of his associates, he established a Mystical Order which he called the Ordre Martiniste or the Martinist Order.[59]

Papus was also a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn temple in Paris, as well as Memphis-Misraim. William Wynn Westcott, the Supreme Magus of the SRIA, was one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, named after the Loge zur aufgehenden Morgenrothe, or “the Nascent Dawn,” the full name of the Frankfurt Judenloge. Just before his death, towards the end of 1887, Arthur Edward Waite (1857 – 1942), a member of the SRIA, passed on the so-called “cipher manuscripts” which resulted in the establishment of the Golden Dawn. By some accounts, Bulwer-Lytton received a copy of the manuscripts from the Judenloge, which was acquired by his friend Frederick Hockley, a founding member of the SRIA.[60] The manuscript contained an address by certain Anna Sprengel, countess of Landsfeldt, the supposed love-child of Ludwig I of Bavaria and the actress Lola Montez, who was the member of the “Goldene Morgenrothe,” referring to the Judenloge.[61] Sprengel is supposed to have given Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854 – 1918) a charter authorising him to found lodges of the Golden Dawn in Britain. Named in reference to the Golden and Rosy Cross and the Nascent Dawn, the order, known simply as the Golden Dawn, claimed to be a continuation of the Kabbalistic school of Rabbi Samuel Falk.[62] Reading the first folio page of the cipher manuscripts one finds the words Chevrah Zerach Aur Bequr, which relates to the Hebrew name of the Judgenloge, Chevrah Zerach Bequr Aur, which translate to “The Society of the Rising Light of Dawn.”[63]

In England in 1885, the Theosophist Theodor Reuss (1855 – 1923) had become friends with Westcott, under whose authority he founded irregular Masonic and Rosicrucian lodges in Germany.[64] In 1895, Karl Kellner (1784 – 1855) met Reuss, who would succeed Yarker as Grand Master Garibaldi’s of Memphis-Misraim. Reuss was a professional singer in his youth and took part in the first performance of Wagner’s Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882.[65] Reuss first met Wagner in 1873, along with Wagner’s patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the son of Ludwig I.[66] In 1873, Kellner, another of the many occultists associated with Egyptian Freemasonry, had traveled to Cairo in the time of al Afghani’s activity. Kellner claims to have been initiated into Indian sexual techniques in the course of his own travels to the Orient, citing three masters, one Sufi and two Indian yogis.[67] Kellner also claimed to have come into contact with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, which was purportedly descended from the Fratres Lucis.[68] Although it is not known what association it had with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, the most immediate source of Kellner’s rituals seems to have been a group of European followers of Paschal Beverly Randolph. Kellner and Reuss would then put together the ritual of Egyptian Rite Freemasonry to convey the inner secret of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light.[69] Reuss and Kellner conceived the idea of a “masonic academy” which was later became the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO),  based on the Rite of Memphis and Misraim, which had been obtained from John Yarker.[70]

Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947), godfather of twentieth-century Satanism, studied magic with the Golden Dawn, then went on to construct his own occult system using an amalgamation of the ritual working of Abramelin the Mage, the Goetia, and the Tantric sexual techniques of the OTO, among other sources. Crowley was convinced that he was the reincarnation of Éliphas Lévi, who died the year Crowley was born. It was Lévi who created the popular depiction of the “Baphomet”, the idol worshipped by the Templars. He described it as “The Sabbatic Goat,” inherited from the versions of the devil said to have been worshipped by medieval witches. He depicted the idol as a winged androgynous figure with parts of a male and female, but with the head of a goat, and a torch on its head between its horns. As Levi confessed: “…let us say boldly and loudly, that all the initiates of the occult sciences… have adored, do and will always adore that which is signified by this frightful symbol. Yes, in our profound conviction, the Grand Masters of the Order of the Templars adored Baphomet and caused him to be adored by their initiates.[71]

 

Agartha

Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1871 novel, The coming Race, described an Aryan civilization living in a vast underground and possessing a secret “Enochian” knowledge which gave them immense powers, such as the control of an energy called the Vril. The book was “inscribed to Max Müller in tribute of respect and admiration.”[72] Traces of Bulwer Lytton’s writings are found in the works of the influential French occultist, Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842 – 1909), who was Papus’ “intellectual Master.”[73] In 1888, Papus and Saint-Yves, along with celebrated occultists Stanislas de Guaita and Joséphin Péladan, had founded the Rosicrucian Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix (OKR+C), which came to be regarded as the “inner circle” of the Martinist Order. [74] Working closely with Papus was Charles Barlet, one of the first members of the French branch of the Theosophical Society, which he left at the same time as Papus.[75]

Posing as “Haji Sharif,” Afghani also came into contact with Saint-Yves, the founder of synarchism, an occult and political movement founded on the myth of Agartha, a legendary city that is said to reside in the earth’s core, connected to the legend of Shambhala, developed by Blavatsky. Saint Yves comments that Agartha is the heavenly Asgard of Norse mythology, the secret Pole of the world, and that it is alluded to in the Epistles of Saint Paul, as “Aggarta” means an Epistle or Message in Hebrew.[76] According to the Yngling Saga, written from historical sources available to the Icelander Snorri Sturluson (1179 –1241), Odin originally came from Asia. Noted explorer Thor Heyerdahl surmised that Odin and his people, who were known as Asir, may have been the Azeris of Azerbaijan[77] Snorri speaks of Odin making “ready to journey out of Turkland, and was accompanied by a great number of people, young folk and old, men and women; and they had with them much goods of great price.” Snorri here speaks of the land east of the Don River being known as Asaland, or Asaheim, and the chief city in that land was called Asgaard, the home of Odin. The city may have been Chasgar, located in the region of the Caucasian ridge, “called by Strabo Aspargum, the Asburg, or castle of the asas.”[78] This would have been approximately 450 AD, when Odin’s descendants were said to have founded the nations of the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, and in Germany, the Saxon tribes. The name “Asgaard” was first mentioned by Ernest Renan (1823 – 1892), a friend of Arthur de Gobineau, in support of his ideas that represented an early form of eugenics:

 

A factory of Ases [Scandinavian heroes], an Asgaard, might be reconstituted in the center of Asia. If one dislikes such myths, one should consider how bees and ants breed individuals for certain functions, or how botanists make hybrids. One could concentrate al the nervous energy in the brain […] It seems that if such a solution should be at all realizable on the planet Earth, it is through Germany that it will come.[79]

 

As Joscelyn Godwin notes, “But although that name came straight from Nordic mythology, it is curious how close Renan’s utopian land was, both phonetically and geographically, to the “Asgartha” which another French freethinker, Louis Jacolliot, was writing about at the time.”[80] In Le Fils de Dieu (The Son of God, 1873), Jacolliot—who also served as a source to Nietzsche for the Laws of Manu—recounts how he became friends with the local Brahmins who allowed him to read ancient texts such as the Book of Historical Zodiacs, and invited him to witness the Shaivite orgy in an underground temple, and shared with him the story of “Asgartha.” Jacolliot’s Asgartha was an ancient “City of the Sun,” the seat of the “Brahmatma,” chief priest of the Brahmins and the visible manifestation of God on earth. The Brahmatmas, based on his astronomical calculations, ruled India from the accession f the Yati-Rishi in 13,000 BC. According to Jacolliot, the Aryans conquered Asgartha, and forged an alliance with the local priests, henceforth becoming the warrior cast of the Kshatriyas. Much later, around 5000 BC, Asgartha was destroyed by the brothers Ioda and Skandah who invaded Hindustan from the Himalays. Driven out by the Brahmins, the Aryans returned northwards and became known by the names of Odin and Scandinavia.[81]

In 1877, Saint Yves revealed the synarchist system for the first time in his book Clefs de l’Orient (“Keys of the Orient”) and he developed it over the following years in a series of “Mission” pamphlets: Mission actuelle des souverains, Mission actuelle des ouvriers (1882) and Mission des juifs (1884). Clefs de l’Orient sought to resolve the “Eastern Question” by restoring the unity of the three Semitic faiths on the basis of their primeval origins, the Gnosis recorded in the Vedas which he saw as the source of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In writing Mission des juifs (“Mission of the Jews”), Saint-Yves plagiarized large sections directly from Fabre d’Olivet (1767 – 1825), the French Martinist and astrologer, and an important influence on Éliphas Levi. The Mission des juifs (“Mission of the Jews”) purported that the esoteric wisdom handed down by Moses was inherited from the Vedic “Atlantean” science conveyed by the “Pontiff Jethro,” Moses’s father-in-law, and that the Hebrews had lost the keys to its true meaning when they had become disconnected from the original source. Hence, it was necessary to go back to the teachings of Manu and his Indian successors.

It was after 1885 that Saint-Yves began to refer to an Asian origin of synarchy, after he met the mysterious Haji Sharif. Sharif, or Afghani, claimed to be the “Guru Pandit of the Great Agarthian School,” the residence of the “Master of the Universe” and a far advanced society where synarchy had been realized long ago.[82] Synarchism was a purported response to the ills produced by anarchism and intended to provide an alternative through the combination of fascism and occultism. Saint-Yves d’Alveydre’s Mission de l’Inde (1886) details a supposed mystical journey to an underground realm called Agartha, located beneath the Himalayas, where a population of millions is ruled by Sovereign Pontiff, the “Brahatma,” and his two colleagues the “Mahatma” and the “Mahanga.” This realm, according to Saint-Yves, went underground and concealed themselves from the surface-dwellers at the start of the Kali Yuga, the present dark age Hinduism, which he dates to about 3200 BC. Agartha benefits from technologies advanced far beyond our own, including one of “Synarchy,” which the surface races have lost ever since the schism that ended the Universal Empire in the fourth millennium BC, and which Moses, Jesus, and Saint Yves strove to restore, the theme of Mission des Juifs. From time to time, Agartha sends emissaries to the surface world, of which it has perfect knowledge. The time will come for Agartha to reveal itself outer world had adopted Synarchic government.[83]

 

Synarchy 

In order to accelerate this process, Saint-Yves included in the Mission de l’Inde open letters to Queen Victoria, Emperor Alexander III of Russia, and Pope Leo XIII, inviting them to join in the grand synarchist project. To Saint-Yves, the rapprochement between the Russia and England was a precondition for the synarchic union of the European rulers with the “university temple of Agarttha.”[84] Saint-Yves was able to promote the idea of synarchism thanks to his excellent social connections among the ruling dynasties of Western Europe, Scandinavia and Russia through Tsar Alexander III Romanov (1845 – 1894).[85] During the reign of Alexander III’s great-grandfather, Alexander I (1777 – 1825), the secret societies exerted their greatest influence at the Russian court. Alexander had come under the influence of Madame von Krüdener, the famous psychic and friend of Madame de Staël.[86] Madame von Krüdener had an influence on the Swiss Réveil, a revival movement within the Swiss Reformed Church of western Switzerland and some Reformed communities in southeastern France initiated by earlier efforts missionaries of the Moravian Church.[87] Through her contact with Alexander, she and Henri-Louis Empaytaz, a member of the Réveil, were in part responsible for the religious aspects of the Holy Alliance, the coalition linking the monarchies of Russia, Austria and Prussia, created after the final defeat of Napoleon at the behest of Alexander I and signed in Paris in 1815.[88]

Saint-Yves benefitted from access to Russian nobility through his marriage in 1877 to a prestigious Russian aristocrat, Marie-Victoire de Riznitch, Comtesse de Keller (1827 – 1895), who belonged to a family of Russian Baltic nobility that had also produced Madame von Krüdener.[89] Marie-Victoire was a friend of Eugénie de Montijo, Empress of the French from her marriage to Napoleon III. Marie was also relative of Ewelina Hańska, the famous patron and wife of Honoré de Balzac, and one of the adepts of Éliphas Lévi.[90] Ewelina was the sister of the writer Henryk Rzewuski and Russian spy Karolina Rzewuska, who was a friend of Alexander Pushkin and the Polish Frankist poet Adam Mickiewicz, though some claim that she was his mistress.[91] Balzac was acquainted with Victor Hugo, who was a life-long friend of Saint-Yves. Afghani left a record of a meeting with Hugo in Paris as well.[92]

In the company of Marie-Victoire, Saint Yves was able not only to deepen and expand his psychic research, but also to rise in status as he was made a Marquis of the holy See by Pope Leo XIII in 1880, who would endorse the anti-Masonic writings of Leo Taxil. In 1868, when Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès, a.k.a. Taxil, was only fourteen years old, he was apprehended by the French police during an attempt to reach Belgium to join the exiled Henri Rochefort (1831 – 1913), founder and editor of L’Intransigeant, who collaborated with Afghani.[93] In 1863, Rochefort joined the staff of Le Figaro, where James Sanua’s girlfriend Lydia Pashkov was a correspondent.[94] Taxil was subsequently sent to a juvenile correctional institute at Mettray, near Tours, where Saint-Yves had spent time several years before. The institute was directed by Frédéric Demetz (1796 – 1873), who was interested in occultism and proclaimed himself a follower of Fabre d’Olivet.[95]

Marie-Victoire was also a good friend of the wife of Christian IX, King of Denmark, the Danish Queen Louise of Hesse-Kassel (1817 – 1898), of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel, descendants of the founders of the Rosicrucian movement who had been intimately connected with the Rothschilds.[96] Louise’s grandfather was Prince Frederick of Hesse-Kassel (1747 – 1837), whose brother Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel was a friend of Comte St. Germain and a member of the Illuminati and Grand Master of the Asiatic Brethren, the first to use the swastika as their symbol.[97] Christian IX was the grandson of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel and Princess Louise, the daughter of Frederick V of Denmark. Christian IX and Louise’s six children married into other royal families across Europe—including the children of Queen Victoria and the Romanovs of Russia—earning him the sobriquet “the father-in-law of Europe.”[98] Queen Victoria’s son, Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1844 – 1900), married Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, the daughter of Alexander II. Another daughter of Louise and Christian IX, Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark), married Maria Alexandrovna’s brother, Tsar Alexander III (1845 – 1894).

In his address to Pope Leo XIII, Saint Yves reminded him of being announced under the motto lumen in caelo in prophecies of Malachy (1094 – 1148), an Irish saint who was Archbishop of Armagh. The “Prophecy of the Popes” attributed to Malachy claimed to predict that there would be only 112 more popes before the Last Judgment. Benedictine Arnold de Wyon discovered and published the so-called “Doomsday Prophecy” in 1590. Most scholars consider the document a 16th-century elaborate hoax.[99] Among the reported “successes” are  lumen in caelo  (“Light in the sky”) for Leo XIII, with a comet in his coat of arms. Leo XIII was the first pope never to have held any control over the Papal States, which had been conquered by the Kingdom of Italy, when Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy, as the culmination of the Risorgimento led by Mazzini and Garibaldi. At the First Vatican Council in 1869, the dogma of Papal Infallibility had been proclaimed, proffering the Pope absolute authority on matters of faith and doctrine.

Quoting various theological texts and church prophecies, Saint-Yves asked for his Mission books to be studied in the Pontifical college and reiterated his earlier proposition, stated in his Mission des Souverains (1882), for the Pope to assume the role of spiritual leader over Europe and to recognize the Church’s filiation with Agartha. Affirming that the Magi of the Bible, who had come to adore the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem, were messengers of Agartha, he proposed that the Pope should move his headquarters to Jerusalem. He went on to note that he had received assurances from both the Jewish Gaon of Jerusalem and the Grand Mufti of Mecca that they were aware of the Agarthic tradition and knowledge.[100]

Saint-Yves enjoyed access to Queen Victoria through his friend the Earl of Lytton, and actually obtained from her permission to dedicate a later work to her.[101] Afghani’s collaborator Blunt was the father-in-law to Neville Stephen Lytton, the youngest son of the Earl of Lytton. Blunt had a number of mistresses, including Jane Morris, the muse of Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 – 1882), the nephew of John William Polidori, the Dark Romantic author associated with Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Blunt’s wife was Lady Anne, a grand-daughter of the poet Lord Byron, and who studied drawing with John Ruskin. Blunt and Lady Jane were close friends with Jane Digby and Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 – 1890), the famous British explorer and spy.[102] Burton is best-known for traveling in disguise to Mecca, for his translation of One Thousand and One Nights, and for bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English. Burton was also a friend of Blavatsky and a member of the British Theosophical Society.[103] Jane Digby died in Damascus, Syria as the wife of Arab Sheikh Medjuel al Mezrab.

Their careers intersected with British activities in the Middle East, around the person of Abdul Qadir al Jazairi, an Algerian Islamic scholar, Sufi and military leader. Abdul Qadir led a struggle against the French invasion of Algeria in the mid-nineteenth century, for which he is seen by some Algerians as their national hero. Abdul Qadir was ultimately forced to surrender, and he and his family were detained in France. There he remained until October 1852, when he was released by Napoleon III and given an annual pension on taking an oath never again to disturb Algeria. Abdul Qadir then went to Damascus in 1855.

In 1860, Abdul Qadir attained international fame when he and his personal guard saved large numbers of Christians who had come under attack by the local Druze population. As reward, the French government increased his pension and bestowed on him the Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur, and he received the “magnificent star” from the Freemasons of France. He was also honored by Abraham Lincoln for this gesture with several guns that are now on display in the Algiers museum. The town of Elkaker of Iowa was named after him. In 1864, the Lodge “Henry IV” extended an invitation to him to join Freemasonry, which he accepted, being initiated at the Lodge of the “Pyramides” in Alexandria, Egypt.[104] Johnson, in the Masters Revealed, lists Abdul Qadir as a likely influence on Blavatsky, who seems to have referred to him in a letter in which she wrote, “I have lived with the whirling Dervishes, with the Druses of Mt. Lebanon, with the Bedouin Arabs and the Marbouts of Damascus.”[105] Marabout is a North African term for Sufi saint, and Abdul Qadir was regarded as the preeminent Sufi sheikh of Damascus, being the head of the Qadiriyyah Sufis.

 


[1] Daniel Brown. “Introduction.” In Daniel Brown (ed.). The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), p. 9.

[2] Kedourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh, p. 21.

[3] Ibid., p. 20.

[4] Karim Wissa. “Freemasonry in Egypt 1798-1921: A Study in Cultural and Political Encounters.” Bulletin, 16:2 (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 1989), p. 146.

[5] De Poli. Freemansonry and the Orient, p. 16.

[6] Étienne. Abd el-Kader et la franc-maçonnerie, 36; translated by DeepL; cited in De Poli. Freemansonry and the Orient, p. 70.

[7] Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 75; “The Rise and Fall of English Freemasonry.” Fraternal Secrets. Retrieved from https://www.fraternalsecrets.org/rise-fall-english-freemasonry/;

[8] K. Paul Johnson. The Masters Revealed: Madam Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge (State University of New York, 1994), pp. 47-51.

[9] Henry S. Olcott. Old Diary Leaves. Vol. 1 (Adyar: TPH, 1928-41), p. 75; cited in Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 282.

[10] Henry S. Olcott. Old Diary Leaves. Vol. 1 (Adyar: TPH, 1928-41), p. 75–76; cited Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 282.

[11] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 293.

[12] Ibid..

[13] Ibid., p. 288.

[14] Johnson. The Masters Revealed; Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935 (Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press, 1985), pp. 2–3.

[15] Boris Telepnef. Outline of the History of Russian Freemasonry (Kessinger Publishing, 2003), p. 21.

[16] Mcintosh. Rose Cross and the Age of Reason (SUNY Press, 2012), pp. 153–154.

[17] Johnson. The Masters Revealed, p. 1.

[18] Ibid., p. 1.

[19] Blavatsky. Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, Science (Theosophical University Press, 1988), p. 30; cited in Lee Penn. False Dawn: The United Religions Initiative, Globalism, and the Quest for a One-World Religion (Sophia Perennis, 2004), p. 19.

[20] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 281.

[21] Jason Josephson-Storm. The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), pp. 119–20.

[22] Cathy Gere. The Tomb of Agamemnon (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006).

[23] Philip Smith (ed.). Troy and Its Remains; A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries Made on the Site of Ilium, and in the Trojan Plain (London: John Murray, 1875).

[24] Isaac Lubelsky. “The Star in the East: Occultist Perceptions of the Mystical Orient.” Andreas Önnerfors & Dorothe Sommer (eds.). Freemasonry and Fraternalism in the Middle East (University of Sheffield, 2008), p. 99.

[25] R.C.C. Fynes. “Müller, Friedrich Max (1823–1900).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).

[26] Fynes. “Müller, Friedrich Max (1823–1900).”

[27] Müller. “The Veda”: Chips from A German Workshop, vol. 1, p. 63 quoted from In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, p. 49

[28] “Serapis Bey.” The Summit Lighthouse Ascended Masters Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ascendedmasterencyclopedia.org/w/Serapis_Bey

[29] Mahdavi Afshar. Documents inédits, doc. 16, repr. 40; cited in Barbara De Poli. Freemasonry and the Orient Esotericisms between the East and the West (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2019), p. 79.

[30] Emanuela Locci. “History of Freemasonry in Egypt since the 19th Century.” Dosario. Retrieved from https://www.freemasonryresearchforumqsa.com/elocci-freemasonry-in-egypt.php; Mehmet Sabeheddin. “The Masons and the Moors” New Dawn, 86 (September-October, 2004). Retrieved from https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/secret-history/the-masons-and-the-moors

[31] Thierry Zarcone. “Freemasonry and Islam.” In Henrik Bogdan & Jan A.M. Snoek (ed.). Handbook of Freemasonry (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 239.

[32] Ahmet Seyhun. Competing Ideologies in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic: Selected Writings of Islamist, Turkist, and Westernist Intellectuals (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), p. 147.

[33] Zarcone. “Freemasonry and Islam,” p. 239.

[34] Kerourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh, p. 9.

[35] Ibid., p. 9.

[36] Ibid., p. 10.

[37] Carol S. Northrup, M.A.. “Al-Afghani and Khomeini: A Study in Islamic Anti-Imperialism in Iran.” (The University of Texas at Austin, 1995).

[38] Roderic Davison. Reform in the Ottoman Empire: 1856-1876 (Princeton, New Jersey Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 90.

[39] Keddie. An Islamic Response to Imperialism, p. 67.

[40] N. R. Keddie, “AFGHANI, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/5, pp. 481-486; Retrievd from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/afgani-jamal-al-din

[41] A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 92: 1 (January–March, 1972), p. 25.

[42] Kedourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh, p. 8.

[43] Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt,” p. 26.

[44] Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 75.

[45] Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt,”), p. 29.

[46] Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 71.

[47] “Paris Okhrana 1885-1905.” Center for the Study of Intelligence. Studies Archive Indexes, vol 10 no 3. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol10no3/html/v10i3a06p_0001.htm

[48] Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 161.

[49] Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[50] A. H. Greenfield. The Roots of Modern Magick: An Anthology (Lulu.com, 2005), pp. 12-13.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 350.

[53] Ibid., p. 355.

[54] Nevill Drury. Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 104.

[55] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 355.

[56] Ibid., p. 360.

[57] Ibid., p. 360.

[58] Ibid., p. 360.

[59] “A Brief History of Martinism.” Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20000424231617/http://geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1896/marthist.html

[60] WRvL. “Golden Dawn and its Connection to Freemasonry.” Retrieved from http://www.mastermason.com/luxocculta/golden.htm

[61]  “L’Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose Croix.” Splendor Solis, IV (2006), p. 5.

[62] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 223.

[63] Tomas Stacewicz. “The Origins of the Qabalistic Tradition of the Golden Dawn.” (2008, 2009, 2010).

[64] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 223; Goodrick-Clarke. The Occult Roots of Nazism, p. 59.

[65] “Albert Karl Theodore Reuss.” Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon (July 2, 2014). Retrieved from http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/esoterica/reuss_t/reuss_t.html

[66] Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 161.

[67] Hugh B. Urban. “Tantra and Its Impact on Modern Western Esotericism” (Ohio State University). Retrieved from http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIII/HTML/Oom.html

[68] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment (State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 121.

[69] Drury. Stealing Fire from Heaven, p. 93.

[70] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 361.

[71] Eliphas Lévi. Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, II. 209.

[72] Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The Coming Race (London, 1886), p. 3.

[73] Joe van Dalen. “Saint-Yves d’Alveydre: A Life Devoted to Synarchy.” Pantacle, 4 (2004), p. 6. Retrieved from https://www.martinists.org/downloads/pantacle_1204.pdf

[74] Marcel Roggemans. History of Martinism and the F.U.D.O.S.I (Lulu.com, 2009), p. 36.

[75] René Guénon. “F.-Ch. Barlet et les sociétés initiatiques,” Le Voile d'Isis (April 1925).

[76] Dr. Come Carpentier de Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century: Saint Yves d’Alveydre and his ‘Mission de l’Inde’.” OccasIonal PublicatIon, 24 (New Dehli: ndIa InternatIonal Centre), p. 11.

[77] Snorri Sturluson. The Younger Edda, Also Called Snorre’s Edda of the Prose Edda (S.C. Griggs, 1879) footnote, p. 226.

[78] Thor Heyerdahl. “Scandinavian Ancestry: Tracing Roots to Azerbaijan.” Azerbaijan International.

[79] Ernest Renan. Dialogues et fragments philosophiques. 6th ed. (Paris: Calmann-Lery), pp. 117, 120; cited in Joscelyn Godwin. Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival, (Kempton: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996). p. 40–41.

[80] Godwin. Arktos, p. 81.

[81] Ibid., p. 82.

[82] Markus Osterrieder. “Political Occultism and Social Messianism in the Activities of Nicholas Roerich.” In Birgit Menzel, Michael Hagemeister and Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (ed.) The New Age of Russia: Occult and Esoteric Dimensions (Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe, Volume 17), p. 12.

[83] Joscelyn Godwin. “Introduction.” The Kingdom of Agarttha (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2008).

[84] Mission de l’Inde; cited in Markus Osterrieder. “Synarchie und Weltherrschaft,” in Die Fiktion von der jüdischen Weltverschwörung (Wallstein Verlag. 2012), p. 115.

[85] Osterrieder. “From Synarchy to Shambhala,” p. 113 n. 42.

[86] Ibid.

[87] Léon Maury. Le Réveil religieux dans l’Église réformée à Genève et en France (Paris, 1892), pp. 316-319.

[88] Timothy C.F. Stunt. From awakening to secession: radical evangelicals in Switzerland and Britain, 1815-35 (illustrated ed.), (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000), p. 30.

[89] Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century,”  p. 4.

[90] Osterrieder. “Synarchie und Weltherrschaft,” p. 111.

[91] Neal Ascherson. Black Sea (1995), pp. 150-165.

[92] Keddie. Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani,” , p. 213.

[93] Josep Puig Montada. “Al-Afghânî, a Case of Religious Unbelief?” Studia Islamica, 100/101 (2005), p. 208; Keddie. Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani,” , p. 205.

[94] “Paris Okhrana 1885-1905.” Center for the Study of Intelligence. Studies Archive Indexes, vol 10 no 3. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol10no3/html/v10i3a06p_0001.htm

[95] Massimo Introvigne. Satanism: A Social History (Leiden: Brill, 2016), p. 217.

[96] Osterrieder. “From Synarchy to Shambhala,” p. 113 n. 42.

[97] G. van Rijnberk. Épisodes de la vie ésotérique, 1780-1824 : Extraits de la correspondance inédite de J. B. Willermoz, du prince Charles de Hesse-Cassel et de quelques-uns de leurs contemporains Broché – 1948 (Lyon: Derain, 1948); Novak. Jacob Frank, p. 61.

[98] “HM King Christian IX of Denmark.” European Royal History.

[99] Rossella Lorenzi. “Resigning Pope Brings Doomsday Prophecy.” Discovery News (February 13, 2013). Retrieved from http://news.discovery.com/history/resigning-pope-brings-doomsday-prophecy-130213.htm

[100] Gourdon. “A French Prophet of India’s Resurgence in the Nineteenth century,”  p. 18.

[101] Godwin. “Introduction.” The Kingdom of Agarttha.

[102] Vambery. The story of my struggles, p. 256.

[103] Johnson. The Masters Revealed, p. 66.

[104] Colonel Churchill. Life of Abdel Kader (London: Chapman and Hall, 1867), p. 328. Retrieved from http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeofabdelkader00churrich#page/328/mode/2up; Robert Morris. Freemasonry in the Holy Land (New York: Masonic Publishing Company, 1872), p. 577. Retrieved from http://www.archive.org/stream/freemasonryinho01morrgoog#page/n586/mode/2up]

[105] Johnson. The Masters Revealed, p. 67.

Divide & Conquer