Occult Revival

Through the Frankfurt Judenlodge, the Asiatic Brethren became the inspiration for a number of orders who represented the core of Western occultism, beginning with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, which contributed to the emergence of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). These organizations were the product of the Occult Revival of the nineteenth century, whose notion of an “Oriental Kabbalah” eventually gave rise to the New Age, and ultimately spawned the rise of the theories of the Nazis. According to G. van Rijnberk, based on archives of the family, Illuminatus Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel first introduced the Buddhist symbol of the swastika into the Asiatic Brethren—to represent the doctrine of reincarnation, as it was similar to a belief called “Gilgul” in the Kabbalah—alongside the Star of David, the Sabbatean symbol in the Order, introduced by Moses Dobruschka, the cousin of Jacob Frank, and one of the founders of the order.[1] The swastika was not new to Judaism, as it was found alongside the Star of David in the ancient synagogue of Capernaum in Israel, one of the oldest synagogues in the world, as well as on various Jewish tombs of the third century AD in the south of Italy, and also printed in the Sepher Reziel a thirteenth century book of practical Kabbalah.

As described by Nevill Drury in The New Age: Searching for the Spiritual Self, there are four key precursors of the New Age, who had set the way for many of its widely held precepts.[2] They were Emanuel Swedenborg, Franz Mesmer (1734 – 1815), Helena P. Blavatsky (1831 – 1891)—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—and George I. Gurdjieff (c. 1866 – 1949).

The Occult Revival was founded on a bourgeoning of interest in communication with the “spirit” world. The foundation of the spiritualist practices of the Occult Revival were set by Swedenborg and his communication with “angels” and “spirits.” Another key influence was Franz Anton Mesmer (1734 – 1815), a German Freemason and physician, who became widely popular for artificially inducing trance-like states, where subjects tended to report time travel and spirit contacts. With an interest in astronomy, Mesmer theorized that there was a natural energetic transference that occurred between all things, which he called “animal magnetism,” a magnetic fluid in the body which was supposed to connect humanity, the earth and the stars. Mesmer’s name is the root of the English verb “mesmerize.”

The Occult Revival represented a reaction to the secularizing trends that preceded it, and was an attempt to reaffirm the “spiritual” aspects of the universe. However, the interests of the Occult Revival confused spiritualism with spiritism. In effect, the Occult Revival introduced the modern misconception of a distinction between spirit and matter. Since God is a conscious non-physical entity, therefore discarnate entities were also considered be of “spirit.” And, since the defining attribute of God is an ability to perform miracles, all phenomena that aren’t explicable through the known laws of physics are then also mistakenly interpreted to be “supernatural.” Thus, the denizens of the Occult Revival were able to present themselves as an enlightened response to the strict secularism of academia, and as courageously probing the limits of known reality. The common means of communicating with spirits is what is called channeling. Commonly, a state of trance is achieved, during which the entities “possess” the mystic, and communicate through them, either through speech or automatic writing.[3] Séances then became the vogue in Europe where mediums were in demand to entertain guests with physical and mental phenomena at private parties.

The fad was brought to England by Mrs. Hayden, whose séances were attended by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 – 1873), the pre-eminent personality of the Occult Revival, who was affiliated with the Judenlodge. Bulwer-Lytton served as a Whig MP from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative MP from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia, Canada. He declined the Crown of Greece in 1862 after King Otto abdicated. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866. Bulwer-Lytton’s works were popular and paid him well. He coined the phrases “the great unwashed,” “pursuit of the almighty dollar,” “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and “dweller on the threshold.” He is also known for “It was a dark and stormy night,” considered one of the worst opening lines in fiction.[4] Bulwer-Lytton was a close friend of Benjamin Disraeli and author Charles Dickens, for whom he was the godfather of one of his sons. He convinced Dickens to revise the ending of Great Expectations to make it more palatable to the reading public, as in the original version of the novel, Pip and Estella do not get together.[5]

Bulwer-Lytton was closely acquainted with the famous occultist Eliphas Lévi (1810 – 1875), whose real name was Alphonse Louis Constant. Fabre d’Olivet exercised a profound influence on Lévi, a former deacon who had to abandon his clerical career shortly before his consecration, and who was one of the most radical French socialists of the 1840s.[6] In 1832, Constant entered the seminary of Saint Sulpice to study to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood, but he fell in love and left in 1836 without being ordained. He spent the following years among his socialist and Romantic friends, including Henri-François-Alphonse Esquiros and so-called petits romantiques such as Gérard de Nerval and Théophile Gautier. Nerval was also a close friend of Heinrich Heine. During this time, he turned to radical socialism inspired by de Lamennais. In the course of the 1840s, Constant developed close ties to the Fourierist movement, publishing in Fourierist publications and praising Fourierism as the “true Christianity.” He also turned to the writings of Joseph de Maistre. Levi was also published in one of the most influential socialist projects of the time, the Revue philosophique et religieuse (1855 – 1857), led by the former prominent Saint-Simonians. The journal functioned as a platform for a French-German exchange, and whose primary personalities were Moses Hess and Hegel’s publisher Karl Ludwig Michelet.[7]

In 1855, under his civil name of Constant, Eliphas Lévi published a series of articles in the Revue entitled “The Kabbalistic Origins of Christianity” and the Kabbalah as the “Source of all Dogmas,” which was the first time that he expounded his “Kabbalistic” theories to a wider socialist readership. In fact, Levi’s “Kabbalistic” articles were discussed in other contributions by Fourierist François Cantagrel (1810 – 1887) and Louis de Tourreil (1799–1863), and they received critical attention from Moses Hess and the Saint-Simonian Léon Brothier, who noted that the “Kabbalah of Monsieur Constant” was representative of the systems that wanted to deduce everything from a single principle.[8] Similar to many other socialists at the time, Levi had perceived the emperor as the defender of the people and the restorer of public order. In the Moniteur parisien (1852), Louis-Napoleon praised the new government’s actions as “veritably socialist,” but he soon became disillusioned with the dictatorship and was eventually imprisoned in 1855 for publishing a polemical chanson against the emperor.

After Constant had adopted his occult name of Eliphas Lévi, he would become one of the most important esoteric writers of all time.[9] Lévi was initiated into the occult by Jozef Maria Hoene-Wronski, who inspired the Frankists to view Napoleon as a messiah. In an obituary for him, Lévi wrote that Wronski had “placed, in this century of universal and absolute doubt, the hitherto unshakeable basis of a science at once human and divine. First and foremost, he had dared to define the essence of God and to find, in this definition itself, the law of absolute movement and of universal creation.”[10]

Lévi collaborated closely with Charles Nodier (1780 – 1844) was an influential French author and librarian who introduced a younger generation of Romanticists to the conte fantastique, gothic literature, and vampire tales. As early as 1790, at the age of ten, Nodier was involved in the secret society of the Philadelphes.[11] In 1815, he published anonymously one of his most influential works, the History of Secret Societies in the Army. Nodier successfully adapted John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” for the stage. “The Vampyre” was taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley, which also produced the novel Frankenstein. In 1824, Nodier was appointed librarian of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris, a position that he kept for the rest of his life. The Bibliothèque was originally founded by Francis I of France, a patron of the alchemist Guillaume Postel. Nodier and his associates methodically explored the library, which included an exhaustive collection of works on magic, Kabbalah and Hermetic thought, including the original manuscripts of The Book of Abramelin, Book of the Penitence of Adam and the Grimoire of Armadel. Nodier became a source of influence for artists and intellectuals such as Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Dumas, Delacroix, Gérard de Nerval. Like Heine, Balzac’s and Delacroix’s patron was James Mayer de Rothschild. Dumas incorporated his recollections of Nodier into his novelette La Dame au Collier de Velours. It was Wronski’s brother-in-law, the Marquis Alexandre Sarrazin de Montferrier, the last Grand Master of the Order of the Temple, who hosted Victor Hugo during the coup d’etat of December 2, 1851.[12]

Bulwer-Lytton met Levi during a trip to London in 1853. Through Bulwer-Lytton, Levi met a “certain lady,” an initiate of “a most exalted grade,” who arranged for him to summon the spirit of Apollonius of Tyanna.[13] Lévi conceived the idea of writing a treatise on magic with his Bulwer-Lytton, which appeared in 1855 under the title Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, which presents his own system of magic, based in part on the grimoire known as the Greater Key of Solomon. Levi taught Lytton various magical rituals and procedures that Lytton incorporated into his fictional works, A Strange Story (1862) and The Haunted and the Haunters (1857), in which Levi served as the model for the magus.[14]

Order of the Swastika

Bulwer-Lytton was the “Great Patron” of the Masonic research group known as the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), which was restricted to high-ranking Freemasons. Bulwer-Lytton however, publicly disavowed any association with the SRIA. Instead he claimed that, unlike the various pretenders of his time, he possessed the “cipher sign of the ‘Initiate’,” and declared that the “Rosicrucian Brotherhood” still existed, only not under any name recognizable by the uninitiated.[15] What he was referring to was the survival of the Asiatic Brethren, many of whom had become initiates of a Jewish Masonic lodge in Germany called L’Aurore Naissante (“Loge zur aufgehenden Morgenrothe”), or “the Nascent Dawn,” known as the Judenlodge, founded in Frankfurt-on-Main in 1807.[16] The lodge was founded by Illuminati member and Rothschild agent Siegmund Geisenheimer, assisted by Asiatic Brethren Daniel Itzig, and headed by Asiatic Brethren Franz Joseph Molitor.[17] Jacob Katz and Paul Arnsberg have shown its members included all the great families of Frankfurt’s Jewish community, including the Goldschmidts and Rothschilds.[18] In 1817, the Judenlodge obtained a new charter from Illuminatus Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, Grand Master of the Asiatic Brethren.[19] The Asiatic Brethren, or Fratres Lucis, were derived from the German Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross (Gold- und Rosenkreuz), from which much of the hierarchical structure was used in the SRIA.[20]

Bulwer-Lytton and an English astrologer, named Richard James Morrison (1895 – 1874), commonly known by his pseudonym Zadkiel, were members of a group known as the Orphic Circle. From the 1830s, the group conducted séances using young adolescents as mediums as well as the invocation of spirits into mirrors and crystals. One of these was Emma Hardinge Britten, who would later become a founding member of the Theosophical Society. According to her, the Orphic Circle was comprised of representatives of many different countries, who claimed an affiliation with societies derived from the ancient mysteries of Egypt, Greece, and Judaea, and whose beliefs and practices were concealed from the non-initiated by Kabbalistic methods. They claimed that alchemy, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry were offshoots of the original Kabbalah, and to be in touch with many other such organizations in other countries.[21]

According to Godwin, the Occult Revival begins with the formation of a very small group within the SRIA, who were recognizable by their use of the swastika, which they identified with the red cross of the Rosicrucians. This swastika group of British Masons and their ideas instigated a sequence of developments that ultimately resulted in a wide variety of occult organizations in England, the United States, and many other Western countries over the next thirty years, some of which, such as the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, went on to become incredibly influential in Western religious culture. The group was probably started in 1844 by Morrison, along with mystically-inclined Freemasons Major Francis George Irwin, (1823 – 98), a veteran of the “Great Game” on the Indian North-West Frontier, and Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie (1822 – 1892), also a founder of the SRIA, best known for his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia. Mackenzie was a cousin of Alexander Mackenzie (1822 – 1892), the second prime minister of Canada, in office from 1873 to 1878, and worked in the publishing office of Benjamin Disraeli. In 1861, Mackenzie traveled to Paris to meet Eliphas Lévi.

In 1854, Mackenzie had met the American Rosicrucian Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825 – 1875) who, in Paris in 1861, was newly appointed Supreme Grand Master for the Western World of the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis. Randolph was an American mulatto and Rosicrucian sex magician who in the late 1840s travelled through Europe and came into contact with Kenneth Mackenzie, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eliphas Lévi, Hargrave Jennings and Francois Dumas (son of author Alexandre Dumas). The German historian, Karl R.H. Frick, suggests that President Lincoln, General A. H. Hitchcock, and other notable Americans were members of the Brotherhood of Eulis, or the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, during the period embracing the Civil war.[22]

In 1864, when Robert Wentworth Little (1840 – 1878), a clerk and cashier of the secretary’s office at the United Grand Lodge of England, found some old Rosicrucian rituals written in German in the storerooms of London’s Freemason’s Hall, he immediately turned to Mackenzie to help him fashion them into an esoteric order. Assuming that Mackenzie, had as he himself had claimed, been initiated into a German Rosicrucian fraternity when he lived in Vienna, Little believed Mackenzie had the “authority” to found the new, “authentic” esoteric society. Thus, in 1866, with Mackenzie’s help, Little founded the SRIA. The main leaders of the new organization were Little, and three fellow Freemasons of the United Grand Lodge of England: William Wynn Westcott (1848 – 1925), William Robert Woodman (1828 – 1891), and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, who would later go on to found the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Woodman was Grand Sword Bearer of the United Grand Lodge of England. Woodman is credited with introducing Kabbalistic emphasis to the studies of the SRIA. Under Woodman’s leadership, the SRIA expanded from London to the rest of England and abroad to Australia and America, where it gained acceptance as the premier Rosicrucian society.[23]

Many years later, in his Zadkiel’s Almanac, Morrison announced his intention to “resuscitate in England, and spread throughout Europe, India and America—The Most Ancient Order of the Suastica; or, The Brotherhood of the Mystic Cross.” The order, he claimed, was first founded in Tibet in 1027 BC, and subsequently spread throughout China and South Asia. This order was related to the “Fratres Lucis,” the name of an order given to Francis George Irwin, when he was contacted by an entity that called itself “Count Cagliostro.” Other names of the order were “Brotherhood of the Cross of Light” and “Order of the [swastika symbol].” This “Cagliostro” told him that the Fratres Lucis was originally founded in Florence in 1498, and had included Ficino, Fludd, St. Germain, Pasquales, Swedenborg and Cagliostro himself, who derived from it the knowledge to found his Egyptian Rite Freemasonry.[24]

Zadkiel’s use of the swastika seems to have significantly influenced Irwin and Mackenzie, both of whom put the symbol in various books and manuscripts in the early 1870s. Mackenzie included the swastika when he prepared the rituals for his own occult, Eastern-connected group, the Order of Ishmael. In a 1872 article in the Freemason, Mackenzie proposed that there was a group called the Order of Reconciliation, which existed only in Russia originally led by Peter the Great, a non-Mason who ensured the political equality of Muslims living in his land because he was inspired by peace, unity, and justice.[25] In his Cyclopaedia, Mackenzie claims that this order is the Order of Ishmael, and claims that it existed “in Russia, Turkey, Greece, Austria, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, Portugal, Africa, and the United Kingdom.” [26]

The library of the United Grand Lodge of England possesses a manuscript from 1907 that claims to have been based off of information received by Mackenzie in 1872 and contains a shortened version of the rites of the Order of Ishmael. The manuscript indicates that one of the jewels of the order is to be in the shape of a left-turning swastika, which is labeled in the manuscript as a “Cross of Praise.”[27] The swastika would therefore have been the symbol which Mackenzie he referred to when he gave a speech for the SRIA in 1873 entitled “The Hermetic Cross of Praise.” The speech, which was reprinted in the Rosicrucian and then again in another esoteric journal in 1875, indicates that Mackenzie saw the swastika as representing “Infinite Wisdom and Love of Faith, Hope and Charity, of true Universal and Cosmical Brotherhood.”[28]

In 1873, just prior to receiving information about the Fratres Lucis, Irwin was supposedly translating the ritual for a group said to have been named the Knight of the Hermetic Cross.[29] Mackenzie appears to have invented another group as well, perhaps after his Order of Reconciliation/Ishmael had failed to take off. First described in the SRIA’s Rosicrucian in April 1874 as the Hermetic Order of Egypt, the group then appeared in the Cyclopaedia under the name Hermetic Brothers of Egypt, and, while in 1874 Mackenzie said he had met six members, in the Cylcopaedia he says he had only met three.[30] Later, a group calling itself the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light almost certainly based its name partly on Mackenzie’s entry for the “Brothers of Light,” one of the alternative titles for Irwin’s Fratres Lucis, of which Mackenzie was a member.[31]

In 1887, Woodman, Mathers and Westcott, the Supreme Magus of the SRIA, were the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was governed by the “Secret Chiefs,” who were related to both those of the Strict Observance and the “Ascended Masters” Blavatsky. A year earlier, Westcott joined the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, the premier lodge of Masonic Research, and would eventually become its Worshipful Master. Nine Masons, including Charles Warren, William Harry Rylands, Robert Freke Gould, Reverend Adolphus Frederick Alexander Woodford, Walter Besant, John Paul Rylands, Major Sisson Cooper Pratt, William James Hughan, and George William Speth, dissatisfied with the way the history of Freemasonry had been expounded in the past, founded the Quatuor Coronati, obtaining a warrant in 1884, which was formally inaugurated until two years later. The Lodge meets at Freemasons’ Hall in London.

In 1863, Woodroof became Grand Chaplain of United Grand Lodge. While still Rector of Swillington, his new masonic duties took him to the consecration of many new lodges, and saw him deliver the oration at the laying of the foundation stone for the new extension to Freemason's Hall in Great Queen Street, London, the next year. After moving to London, his editorship of The Freemason ignited an interest in the study of Masonic history, and led to the establishment of Quatuor Coronati Lodge. In the same period, Woodford started to contribute articles on masonic history, starting with his researches into the old York lodges. He became known to local booksellers as he began to collect old manuscripts.[32]

Theosophical Society

William Wynn Westcott became an influential member of the Theosophical Society, founded by Russian medium and spy H.P. Blavatsky (1831 – 1891). Blavatsky was born in the Ukraine to Russian nobility. At least twice in her career Blavatsky offered her services as a spy to the Russian and British intelligence agencies respectively.[33] Endowed with extrasensory abilities, she traveled the world in search of occult teachings and spent many years on the Indian subcontinent. Blavatsky formed the Theosophical Society in 1875, and wrote monumental works such as Isis Unveiled, and The Secret Doctrine, considered the “bibles” of Freemasonry.[34] The Theosophical Society quickly gained wide popularity. Civil War general and Grand Master of Scottish Rite Freemasonry Albert Pike was a member for a short time, [35] as were W.B. Yeats, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Edison.

Blavatsky was also a member of the Carbonari, having allied herself with Mazzini around 1856.[36] After she published Isis Unveiled, she was conferred a Masonic initiation in 1878 by John Yarker, another founding member of the SRIA, who was friends with both Blavatsky and Garibaldi. Yarker seems to have had a hand in the founding of the Theosophical Society, whose leading members were also members of Memphis-Misraïm, which was headed by Garibaldi. In 1881, General Giuseppe 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-Misraïm.[37] Yarker eventually became Deputy Grand Master of the Rite of Memphis-Misraim in 1900 and Grand Master in 1902. Yarker formed the Ancient and Primitive Rite with thirty-three degrees by eliminating duplicative degrees from the Rite of Memphis-Misraïm.

Blavatsky claimed to have been in contact with discarnate entities she referred to as Ascended Masters, belonging to the Great White Brotherhood, who were supposedly the original inhabitants of Atlantis, said to now reside in the mysterious realm of Shambhala. From there they have been aiding humanity to evolve into a race of supermen. The idea was pioneered in the late eighteenth century by Karl von Eckartshausen (1752 – 1803), a Bavarian philosopher and member of Weishaupt’s Illuminati, in his book The Cloud upon the Sanctuary. Eckartshausen also corresponded extensively with Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, who greatly admired him. Eckartshausen was also one of the recommended authors for Illuminati initiates.[38] Eckartshausen referred to a group of mystics, who remained active after their physical deaths on earth, as the Council of Light.[39] According to Godwin, Eckartshausen drew partially on Christian ideas such as the Communion of the Saints, and partially on ideas about secret societies of enlightened, mystical adepts typified by the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati.[40]

Blavatsky’s initial fascination with Egypt as the fount of ancient wisdom arose from her reading of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose The Last Days of Pompeii was a narrative of the impact of the Isis cult in Rome during the first century AD. Blavatsky's recurrent homage to Bulwer-Lytton and the Vril force has exerted a lasting influence on other esoteric authors. Blavatsky endorsed the view of the Vril as a real magical force in her book Isis Unveiled (1877) and again in The Secret Doctrine (1888). In Blavatsky, Bulwer-Lytton’s subterranean race are transformed into benevolent spiritual guides.

Brotherhood of Luxor

In the early 1870s, Blavatsky went to Cairo, where she associated with a group she would later call the Brotherhood of Luxor. Theosophical historian David Board argues from various allusions to Blavatsky’s and Mackenzie’s works that the Brotherhood of Luxor was inspired by the Fratres Lucis. The Brotherhood of Luxor’s relation, if any, with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor is not clear.[41] When the HBofL became public, many of its members simultaneously belonged to the Theosophical Society, with the founders claiming it was a continuation of work begun in Egypt in 1870. The HBofL, that was later reborn as the Hermitic Brotherhood of Light, drew on the teachings of Randolph’s Brotherhood of Eulis.[42]

The HBofL, to which belonged Emma Hardinge Britten, became the key organization behind the rise of the Occult Revival, and which, 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.[43] Blavatsky was also instructed in occultism by the supposed leader of the HBofL, who went by the name of Aia Aziz, also known as Max Theon. 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.[44] Louis was a friend of Matteo Alfassa, the brother of Mirra Alfassa, who would later associate with Indian yogi Sri Aurobindo and become known as The Mother.

Theon gathered a number of students, including Charles Barlet and a Zionist and Kabbalist named Louis Themanlys, and they established the “Cosmic Movement,” based on material channelled by Theon’s wife, which includes an account of creation that incorporates elements of Lurianic Kabbalah.[45] In 1934, Themanlys published Les merveilles du Becht (“Wonders of Becht”), the first book in French about the Baal Shem Tov. Also interested in the cosmic work were Tomáš Masaryk (who became the first President of Czechoslovakia), the poets Helene Vacaresco and Anna de Noailles, Dr. Serge Voronoff, the occultist and friend of Richard Wager, Edouard Schuré, the psychologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, the Princess of Rohan in Vienna, the Hellenist Mario Meunier, General Zinovy Peshkov, the Marchioness Ali Maccarani of Florence, and others.[46] According to a document authored by Peter Davidson, a Scottish Freemason who had been in contact with Francis George Irwin, the order was established by Theon, who when in England was initiated as a Neophyte by “an adept of the serene, ever-existing and ancient Order of the original HB of L.”[47] Theon recruited Davidson to join him in administering the HBofL. Together with Thomas H. Burgoyne, Theon and Davidson adapted Randolph’s The Mysteries of Eros and Eulis!, placing more emphasis on practical sex magic in the brotherhood’s curriculum.[48]

Ascended Masters

According to historian K. Paul Johnson, one of H.P. Blavatsky’s “ascended masters,” as a purported leader of an order named the Brotherhood of Luxor, would have been Jamal ud Din al Afghani (1838/1839 – 1897), British spy, Sufi mystic and Islamic reformer.[49] While also acting as Grand Master of the Freemasons of Egypt, Afghani was simultaneously the founder of the fanatical “Salafi” fundamentalist tradition of Islam, of which the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS—currently ravaging parts of Syria and Iraq—are an outgrowth. Despite the appellation “Afghani,” to claim Afghan nationality, scholars generally believe that he was instead an Iranian Shiah. There are some reports that he was a Jew.[50] More specifically, Afghani was more likely an Ismaili. On his many trips to India, Afghani, under the assumed name of Jamal Effendi, would visit the Agha Khan, hereditary leader of the Ismailis, who was living there at the time. And, despite posing as a Sufi Sheikh of the Mawlavi order, or Mevlevi, who follow the very influential Iranian mystic and poet of the thirteenth century, Jalal ud Din ar Rumi, he was also proselytizing for the Bahai faith, purportedly having been sent on such a mission by Baha Ullah himself.[51]

Afghani was the Grand Master of Egypt’s Star of the East Masonic lodge, and the leader of Egypt’s Masons, who included about three hundred members, most of whom were scholars and state officials. Several of those who witnessed Afghani’s teachings confirm his deviation from orthodoxy. Among them was Lutfi Juma, who recounted, “his beliefs were not true Islam although he used to present they were.”[52] In addition, Afghani had acquired considerable knowledge of Islamic philosophy, particularly of the Persians, including Avicenna, an Ismaili scholar named Nasir ud Din Tusi, and others, and of Sufism. Evidence also proves that he possessed such works, but also that he showed interest in occult subjects, such as mystical alphabets, numerical combinations, alchemy and other Kabbalistic subjects.[53] In Afghani’s own words, as cited in Elie Kedourie’s Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam:

We do not cut off the head of religion except with the sword of religion. Therefore, if you were to see us now, you would see ascetics and worshipers, kneeling and genuflecting, never disobeying God’s commands and doing all that they are ordered to do.[54]

As demonstrated by K. Paul Johnson in The Masters Revealed, Afghani’s travels often coincided in time and locale with those of Blavatsky. He was in India in his early twenties when she was there In the early 1980s, 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.[55]

One of Afghani’s closest associates was James Sanua, 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.[56] Sanua and Pashkov, along with Lady Jane Digby, were also friends and traveling companions of Blavatsky.[57] 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—knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece—his son King Otto of Greece, statesman Felix Schwarzenberg, and an Albanian brigand general. She died in Damascus, Syria as the wife of Arab Sheikh Medjuel al Mezrab, who was twenty years younger than her.

Digby was close friends with Wilfred Scawen Blunt, who was Afghani’s British handler along with Edward G. Browne.[58] Edward G. Browne was also one of Britain’s leading Orientalists. Blunt’s wife was Lady Anne, a grand-daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Blunt and Lady Anne’s daughter, Judith Blunt-Lytton, married Neville Bulwer-Lytton, grandson to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and son of the Earl of Lytton. Blunt had a number of mistresses, including Jane Morris, the muse of Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Blunt and Lady Jane were close friends with Jane Digby and Sir Richard Burton, the famous British explorer and spy who 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.

Nobles of the Mystic Shrine

Also rooted in the influence of Afghani’s Brotherhood of Luxor is the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (A.A.O.N.M.S.), known more simply as the Shriners North America, is an appendant body to Freemasonry established in 1870, who trace their lineage to the Bektashi Sufis.[59] The Shriners describes themselves as a fraternity based on fun, fellowship, and the Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief, and truth. One must first be a Master Mason who can then join groups like the Scottish Rite, the Knights Templar and the Shriners. According to Susan Nance, “many of the early members of the Mystic Shrine were already initiates of the notorious Sons of Malta [parent organization of the KKK], one of the many ‘Abbeys of Misrule’–type fraternities in the nation rooted in the same traditions as the New Orleans Mardi Gras club, the Mistick Krewe of Comus or the Veiled Prophet Organization of St. Louis.”[60]

Walter M. Fleming, M.D., and William J. Florence, a world-renowned actor, would build on these performance traditions by founding the Shriners.[61] While on tour in Marseille, Florence was invited to a party given by an Arabian diplomat, which featured an elaborately staged musical comedy. When it was over, the guests became members of a secret society. When he returned to New York in 1870, after also travelling to Algiers and Cairo, he showed his material to Fleming, who created the ritual, emblem and costumes. Florence and Fleming initiated eleven other men in 1871.

In 1876 or 1877, Albert Leighton Rawson, an associate of H.P. Blavatsky, agreed to help Florence and Fleming redesign their fraternal order.[62] Blavatsky claimed that Rawson, along with Max Theon and Jamal ud Din al Afghani, was a member of the “Brotherhood of Luxor.” She wrote in Isis Unveiled:

What will, perhaps, still more astonish American readers, is the fact that, in the United States, a mystical fraternity now exists, which claims an intimate relationship with one of the oldest and most powerful of Eastern Brotherhoods. It is known as the Brotherhood of Luxor, and its faithful members have the custody of very important secrets of [spiritual] science.[63]

Blavatsky praised Rawson as the only Westerner to have been initiated by the Druze of Syria while developing superior knowledge of secret Middle Eastern sources of information “closed against the ordinary traveler.’’[64] Blavatsky and Rawson travelled to Egypt together, where they sought out Paulos Metamon, Max Theon’s teacher. As Rawson told it, he afterwards traveled extensively in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas for occult purposes. Rawson also claimed to have also secretly infiltrated Mecca disguised as a Muslim, one year before Richard Burton did the same.[65]

Rawson devised a mystical order in England “upon the instructions derived from an Arab in Paris, who was a member of the Occult College of Samarcand.” This Arab, he believed, was an Ismaili Muslim and from an elite group called “Guards or Keepers of the Kaaba.”[66] In New York, Rawson created another secret mystery school, the ‘‘Sheikhs of the Desert, Guardians of the Kaaba, Guardians of the Mystic Shrine.’’ The well-known English Mason John Yarker later wrote that Rawson had made him a member of this fraternity.[67]

The Royal Order of Jesters is a male fraternal organization, founded in 1911, allowing only Shriners in good standing to join. The Jesters, whose past members have included movie stars, judges, prominent businessmen, and two presidents, is a tax-exempt organization that admits it is openly dedicated to the pursuit of mirth and merriment.[68] According to the Jesters official website, “Whereas most Masonic bodies are dedicated to charity, The Royal Order of Jesters is a fun ‘degree,’ with absolutely no serious intent.”[69] “Jesterdom” focuses on “humor, laughter, and mirth, with particular emphasis on the works of William Shakespeare.” Founding members are known as the “original cast.”[70] Like the plays once performed at Gray’s Inn, the initiation ritual is a play of a mock trial, in this case, for the murder of Shakespeare. The motto of the Jesters is “Mirth is King,” because “all the world’s a stage.” The King is Momus.[71] Some say that the Jesters wield undue influence over the Shriners. Also, they have risen through the ranks in every body of Masonry including the Scottish Rite, York Rite, Rosicrucians, Red Cross of Constantine, Eastern Star and the DeMolay organizations.[72]

Agartha

In addition to Theosophy and Salafism, Jamal ud Din al Afghani was also the sources for the occult politics of Synarchism, 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 prominent occultist Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842 – 1909). Saint-Yves was Grand Master of the Martinist Order, and close to Victor Hugo and to Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s son, the Earl of Lytton, a former Ambassador to France and Viceroy of India. The Earl of Lytton was concerned primarily with India’s relations with Afghanistan, even precipitating the Second Afghan War against Russia of 1878-80, due to his concern for an imminent Russian invasion of India.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton penned the Rosicrucian and Martinist-themed novels named Zanoni and The Coming Race or Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (1871), which featured a superhuman civilization living in a hollow earth, influenced the legend of Agartha. Their egalitarian order was founded on the principles of eugenics and controlled with the help of an unexploited force called Vril. As Bulwer-Lytton explained, “I did not mean Vril for mesmerism, but for electricity, developed into uses as yet only dimly guessed, and including whatever there may be genuine in mesmerism, which I hold to be a mere branch current of the one great fluid pervading all nature.”[73] According to historian Joscelyn Godwin, “…as far as esotericism in Victorian Britain is concerned, there is no more important literary work than Zanoni, and… no more important figure than Bulwer-Lytton.”[74]

In the late seventeenth century, the British astronomer Sir Edmund Halley, proposed the theory that the earth is hollow. The French novelist Jules Verne popularized the idea in Voyage to the Center of the Earth (1864). Bulwer-Lytton penned a Rosicrucian and Martinist-themed novel named Zanoni, and The Coming Race or Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (1871). The Coming Race centers on a young man who accidentally finds his way into an underground world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels and call themselves Vril-ya. The Vril-ya are descendants of a pre-Flood civilization who live in networks of subterranean caverns linked by tunnels. It is a technologically supported Utopia, chief among their tools being the “all-permeating fluid” called “Vril.” It is a latent source of energy which its spiritually advanced hosts are able to master through training of their will, to a degree which depends upon their hereditary constitution, giving them access to an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will. In telling that parallels accounts of Gog and Magog, the narrator states that in time the Vril-ya will run out of habitable spaces underground and start claiming the surface of the Earth, destroying mankind in the process if necessary.

Revealing its connection to the age-old veneration for sex associated with the dying-god mysteries, by way of the sex rites of Sabbateanism and Hindu Tantra, Vril has usually been said to be derived from “virility.”[75] “The name vril may be fiction,” wrote Blavatsky, “[but] the force itself is doubted as little in India as the existence itself of their Rishis, since it is mentioned in all the secret works.”[76] The powers of the Vril are typical of magic, and include telepathy, the ability to heal, change, and destroy beings and things. Its destructive powers are terribly powerful, allowing Vril-ya to wipe out entire cities if necessary. In a similar vein, according to Albert Pike, “There is in nature one most potent force, by means whereof a single man, who could possess himself of it, and should know how to direct it, could revolutionize and change the face of the world.”[77]

Agartha was first referred to by Ernest Renan in the 1870s. Inspired by Nordic mythology, Renan placed Asgard of the Viking sagas in Central Asia. Prefiguring the eugenic policies of the Nazis, Renan proposed a program of selective breeding, and stated: “A factory of Ases [ancestors of the Scandinavians], an Asgard, might be reconstituted in the center of Asia… It seems that if such a solution should be at all realizable on the planet Earth, it is though Germany that it will come.”[78]

The myth of Agartha was further developed by another French writer, Louis Jacolliot (1837 – 1890), who was quoted by Blavatsky. In Les Fils de Dieu (“The Sons of God”) wrote at the same time about a city of “Asgartha.” Jacolliot explains that the legend was revealed to him by Brahmins in India, who allowed him to read the Book of Historical Zodiacs and took him to witness a Shaivite orgy in an underground temple. Jacolliot learned that Asgartha was the “City of the Sun,” the seat of the Brahmatma,” the chief priest of the Brahmins and God’s manifestation on earth. Around 10,000 BC, the Aryans, who were originally a separate caste of the Brahmins, took hold of Asgartha. Only later, around 5000 BC, when the Aryans were finally vanquished, did they return from where they came and continued north and were remembered as “Odin” and “Scandinavia.”

An important contribution to the myth of the arctic home of the Aryans were the books of Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856 – 1920), the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement. Tilak was born in a family of Marathi Chitpavan Brahmins, a Hindu Maharashtrian Brahmin community inhabiting Konkan, the coastal region of the state of Maharashtra in India. The origin myth of the Chitpavan, as a shipwrecked people, is similar to the mythological story of the Bene Israel Jews of Raigad district, who claim to be descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel.[79] The Bene Israel claim that Chitpavans are also of Jewish origin.[80] The British colonial authorities derisively called Tilak “Father of the Indian unrest.” He also helped found the All India Home Rule League in 1916–18, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Annie Besant. Tilak was an accomplished scholar of ancient Hindu sacred literature. In 1903, he wrote the book The Arctic Home in the Vedas, in which he argued that the Vedas could only have been composed in the Arctic, and that Aryan bards had brought them south after the onset of the last ice age.

However, as Joscelyn Godwin described, in Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival, Saint-Yves d’Alveydre who “took the lid off of Agartha.”[81] It was after 1885 that Saint-Yves began to refer to an Asian origin of synarchy, after he met the mysterious Haji Sharif. Sharif 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] Haji informed Saint-Yves that his school taught the primordial language of Atlanteans called Vattan, or Vattanian, based on a 22-letter alphabet. Although Haji Sharif presented himself as “a high official in the Hindu church,” he had a Muslim name, and was familiar with Hebrew and Arabic. In reality, Sharif, who was believed to be an “Afghan prince,” was none other than Jamal ud Din al Afghani, who was in France as of 1884. Afghani and Sharif also shared the same birth year, 1838.[83] A photo of Shariff is clearly Afghani disguised in Indian costume.[84]

From his studies with Haji Sharif, Saint-Yves supposedly mastered the art of astral travel, by which he claims to have travelled to Agartha himself in a state of “waking dream,” details of which he reported in Mission de l’Inde. Synarchy came to mean “rule by secret societies”, serving as a priestly class in direct communication with the “gods,” meaning the Ascended Masters of Agartha. Synarchism was a purported response to the ills produced by anarchism and to provide an alternative through the combination of fascism and occultism. In 1877, Saint Yves revealed the synarchist system for the first time in his book Clefs de l’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).

Martinist Order

Saint-Yves’s ideas were adapted by Gérard Encausse (1865 – 1916), more popularly known by his alias Papus, who founded the Martinist Order based on synarchist ideas. A close friend and colleague of Max Theon’s disciple Peter Davidson, Papus joined the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (HBofL) and the Golden Dawn. [85] As a young man, Encausse spent a great deal of time at the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the Kabbalah, occult tarot, magic and alchemy, and the writings of Eliphas Lévi. Papus joined the French Theosophical Society shortly after it was founded by Blavatsky in 1884–1885, but he resigned soon after joining because he disliked the Society’s emphasis on Eastern occultism. His first actual teacher in the intellectual aspects of occultism was the Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, who probably Saint-Yves who introduced him to the marquis Stanislas de Guaita (1861 - 1897). In 1891, Papus claimed to have come into the possession of the original papers of Martinez de Pasquales, and therefore founded, with the assistance of de Guaita and Joséphin Péladan (1858 – 1918), the modern Order of Martinists called l’Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus (Order of the Unknown Superiors).

As reported by the famous occultist René Guenon, who would later join the order, Papus had intended a unique relationship between his Martinist Order and the H.B. of L.:

Towards the middle of 1888, Barlet [a member of Max Theon’s Cosmic Movement] resigned from the Theosophical Society, after the dissension that had arisen within the Isis Branch of Paris… It was also at about this date that Papus began to organize Martinism, and Barlet was one of the first people he called on to form his Supreme Council. It was understood, at first, that Martinism’s sole purpose was to prepare its members for entry into an Order that could confer an authentic initiation on those who showed themselves able to receive it; and the Order which they had in view for this was none other than the H.B. of L., of which Barlet had become the official representative for France. This is why Papus wrote, in 1891: “Authentically occult societies still exist, possessing the integral tradition; I call for witness one of the wisest of Western adepts, my Practical Master, Peter Davidson.” However, this project did not succeed, and they had to content themselves, for Martinism’s superior center, with the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross.[86]

In 1888, Papus and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, 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. [87] Working closely with Papus was Charles Barlet (a.k.a. Albert Faucheux). Barlet was one of the first members of the French branch of the Theosophical Society, which he left at the same time as Papus.[88] Barlet would become Grand Master of the OKR+C in 1897 at the death of Guaita, and then member of the First Supreme Council of the Martinist Order in March 1891.

Église Catholique Gnostique

The Martinist Order had an official church called l'Église Catholique Gnostique, originally founded in 1890 by Jules Doinel (1842 – 1902), a Grand Orient Freemason. Doinel had for some years frequented esoteric and mystical circles, where he encountered the teachings of the Johannite Church of Fabré-Palaprat and Eugène Vintras (1807 – 1875), who claimed to be the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah and founded the Church of Carmel. Vintras was alleged to have incorporated forms of sex magic in his rituals, which included naked celebrations of the Mass, homosexuality, and magical prayers accompanied by masturbation.[89] From 1841 onwards, Vintras claimed to have obtained mysterious bloody hosts during ceremonies. Éliphas Lévi visited him. Stanislas de Guaita devoted a long study to him, concluding with: “The bloody hosts are true, but they are demonic!”

Doinel was initiated Master Mason in 1885 with “congratulations and encouragement” from Albert Pike.[90] Doinel was inspired by the Cathars, and began to study their doctrines and those of their predecessors, the Bogomils, Paulicians, Manichaeans and ancient Gnostics, and became convinced that they were the true religion behind Freemasonry. In 1888, the “Eon Jesus” appeared to him in a vision and charged him with the work of establishing a new church, spiritually consecrating him as “Bishop of Montségur and Primate of the Albigenses.” After his vision, Doinel began attempting to contact Cathar and Gnostic spirits during seances in the salon of Lady Caithness, Duchesse de Medina Pomar, who is particularly remembered for her interest in spiritualism and interest in sexual magic. Lady Caithness was approached around 1882 by Blavatsky, Colonol Olcott, and Annie Besant, to establish the French artery of the Theosophic Society. She married, as his second wife, James Sinclair, 14th Earl of Caithness (1821 – 1881), a respected scientist and inventor and was a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Lady Caithness’ Theosophical Society of the East and West included more than one princess and the widowed Comtesse de Mnizech, Balzac’s stepdaughter, whose husband had been Eliphas Levi’s heir. Her salons attracted Papus, Stanislas de Guaita and Oswald Wirth (1860 – 1943), another founding member of the OKR+C. Also belonging to the secret group were Louis Dramard, a militant socialist, the Alsatian litterateur Edouard Schuré, soon to be famous for his Les Grands Inities (1888), future Nobel laureate Charles Richet, and the Christian socialist Albert Jounet, a friend of Bois. The Vice-President was Dr. M. Thurmann and the Secretary Emilie de Morsier, both spiritualists.[91] It was likely at Lady Caithness’ salon that Jules Bois met the famous actress and singer Emma Calvé (1858 – 1942), who would eventually become his lover.[92] Starting in 1887, de Guaita would invite guests “faithful to the Gnosis” who included Papus, Abbé Roca, Péladan, Lady Caithness, Victor-Émile Michelet, Maurice Barrès, and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre.[93]

Doinel proclaimed the year 1890 as the beginning of the “Era of the Gnosis Restored.” He assumed the title of Patriarch under the mystic name of Valentin II, in homage to Valentinus, the second century founder of the Gnostic sect of the Valentinians. He consecrated a number of bishops, who all adopted a mystic name, which was prefaced by the Greek letter Tau to represent the Greek Tau Cross or the Egyptian Ankh.[94] A bridge was established with the lodges of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, through to the Ordre des chevaliers faydits [the name given to the Cathar lords] de la Colombe du Paraclet, which was an imitation of the Strict Observance.[95] “The ties between the Gnostic Church and Freemasonry,” explained Ladislav Toth, “would never be broken.”[96]

At the end of 1890, Doinel joined the Martinist Order and also became a member of its Supreme Council. Doinel started to consecrate a number of Bishops and Sophias, among the first who was Papus, as Tau Vincent, Bishop of Toulouse, in 1892, along with other leaders from the Martinist Order, OKR+C and the HBofL, like Paul Sédir and Lucien Chamuel, who would form the Sacred Synod of the Gnostic Ecclesia. Francois-Charles Barlet and Jules Lejay, both members of the Martinist Supreme Council, were also consecrated.[97]

After Oswald Wirth conveyed to Guaita some papers of Vintras’ successor Abbé Boullan (1824 – 1893), Guaïta embarked on a “magical war,” known as the Boullan Affair. In 1893, the journalist Jules Bois (1868 – 1943), a notorious Satanist and friend of Boullan, openly accused Guaita of having murdered Vintras, after which Guaita summoned him to a gun duel. Both come out unscathed. Boullan became the model for Joris-Karl Huysman’s character in his novel Là-bas.[98] Huysmans’ friend and novelist, Remy de Gourmont (1858 – 1915), introduced him to his lover called Berthe Courrière (1852-1917), who told him of her contacts with Father Louis Van Haecke (1864 – 1912), a Belgian priest who she claimed as the leader of a ring of international Satanists. Huysmans decided to write a novel about Satanism, titled Là-bas, which included what was to become the standard literary depiction of a Black Mass, based on combined material Huysmans had received from Courrière, Bois, and Boullan. The novel would also be used by the notorious Léo Taxil, who denounced Albert Pike as the head of a Luciferian body over Freemasonry called the Palladium Rite

Doinel was also a member of a small occult circle, L’Institut d’études Cabalistiques (“Institute for Kabbalistic Studies”), which included Léo Taxil. In 1895, Doinel suddenly converted to Roman Catholicism, abdicated as Patriarch of the Gnostic Church, resigned from his Masonic Lodge, and the pseudonym “Jean Kostka,” Doinel collaborated with Taxil a book called Lucifer Unmasked, denouncing the organizations he had formerly been a part of. Doinel describes satanic rituals at the private chapel of a “Madame X,” who was thought to be the Lady Caithness.[99] However, in 1900, three years after Taxil confessed to his hoax, Doinel recanted and requested his readmission as a Bishop in the Gnostic Church.[100]

Golden Dawn

In 1895, Papus also became a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in Paris. In 1883, Lady Caithness became a close friend of seeress Anna Kingsford (1846 – 1888) who would become president of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society. In 1887, when Kingsford and her friend Edward Maitland (1824 – 1897) were in Marseilles, they were approached by Éliphas Lévi’s pupil and heir, Baron Guiseppi Spedalieri, who gave them some of Lévi’s original manuscripts as well as Lévi’s own copy of Trithemius’s tract De Septem Secundeis (1567). However, by 1885, Kingsford Maitland had disapproved of the Society’s stress on Indian philosophy and founded their own Hermetic Society, which attracted William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Mathers. Such was Mathers’ and Westcott’s admiration for Kingsford that her premature death in 1888 seems to have inspired their own Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, prompted by Jules Bois.[101]

Just before his death, towards the end of 1887, Waite passed on the so-called “cipher manuscripts” which resulted in the establishment of the Golden Dawn. Westcott maintained they were found by chance in a London bookstall, but scholars believe they were written by Mackenzie. 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 Judgenlodge, Chevrah Zerach Bequr Aur, which translate to “The Society of the Rising Light of Dawn.”[102] 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.[103] “Thus,” explains Godwin in The Theosophical Enlightenment, “we come back again to that offshoot of the Asiatic Brethren and the Fratres Lucis of the early nineteenth century, in which Bulwer-Lytton is said to have been initiated.”[104] The Golden Dawn seems to have been largely based on Mackenzie’s research and ideas, many of which were found in his Cyclopaedia.[105]

Written in English using Trithemius cipher, the cipher manuscripts give specific outlines of the Grade Rituals of the Order. The First Order taught esoteric philosophy based on the “Hermetic Qabalah,” and personal development through study and awareness of the four Classical Element, as well as astrology, Tarot, and geomancy. The Second or “Inner” Order, the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis (Ruby Rose and Cross of Gold), taught magic, including scrying, astral travel, and alchemy. The Third Order was that of the “Secret Chiefs,” who were said to direct the activities of the lower two orders by spirit communication with the Chiefs of the Second Order.

Mathers traced the spiritual ancestry of the order to the Rosicrucians, and from there, through to the Kabbalah and to ancient Egypt where Hermeticism was falsely believed to have originated. Mathers later married Moina Bergson, sister of the famous philosopher, Henri Bergson. The order included, among others, William Butler Yeats, Maude Gonne, Constance Lloyd (the wife of Oscar Wilde, a friend of John Ruskin), Arthur Edward Waite and Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Waite’s Transcendental Magic, it’s Doctrine and Ritual is a translation of Levi’s magical treatise Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. Other members included the actress Florence Farr, occult novelist Dion Fortune, and writer on magic Israel Regardie.

Stoker’s Dracula was inspired by the vampire novel Carmilla by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 – 1873), an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels inspired by Swedenborg. Le Fanu was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. According to one occult historian, the model for le Fanu’s Carmilla was Barbara of Cilli, who assisted her husband Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in founding the Order of the Dragon in 1408, was a vampire who was taught by Ibraham Eleazar, the keeper of the Sacred Magic of Abremalin the Mage, said to have been discovered by Nicholas Flamel in 1357.[106] The Book of Abramelin, which purported to contain a system of magic taught by an Egyptian mage named Abramelin to Abraham of Worms, a Jewish Kabbalists in the fourteenth century, regained popularity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries due to the efforts of Golden Dawn founder MacGregor Mathers’ translation, and later within the mystical system of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema.

Tarot Deck

It was through the establishment of the Golden Dawn that the occult tarot was to become established as a tool in the English-speaking world. The oldest surviving tarot cards are the Visconti-Sforza tarot decks, commissioned in the fifteenth century by Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and by his successor and son-in-law Francesco Sforza, a member of the Order of the Crescent founded by René of Anjou, purported Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. The Tarot was used by Romani people when telling fortunes, what became a popular stereotype. The Tarot was used by Romani people when telling fortunes, what became a popular stereotype. As reported by Albert Mackey in his Masonic Encyclopedia, Cornelius Van Paun, in his Philosophical Researches on the Egyptians and Chinese (1774), advanced the theory that Freemasonry originated with the Gypsies.

Sir William Sinclair of Roslin—who was confirmed hereditary patron of Freemasonry by William Schaw—did not agree with the laws against the Gypsies, and defied the ban and allowed their plays to continue in Roslin Glen, fueling later speculation of the Gypsies’ association with the Tarot. As noted by Marsha Keith Schuchard, “It is perhaps relevant that the gypsies were believed to possess the occult secrets of the ancient Egyptians, which they preserved through the Middle Ages.”[107] It is well documented that the Sinclairs allowed gypsies to live on their land in Midlothian at a time when they were outlawed elsewhere in Scotland.[108] Sinclair was documented to “delivered once ane Egyptian from the gibbet.”[109] Today a permanent exhibition at Rosslyn is devoted to this unusual relationship. In May of each year, until the Protestant Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, the Sinclairs sponsored an annual festival held in Roslin Glen. A variety of plays, in particular, Robin Hood and Little John, were performed by Gypsies. Rosslyn Castle had two towers, one named Robin Hood and the other Little John. In 1555, the Scottish Parliament passed severe legislation against the gypsies, including a ban on the play Robin Hood and Little John. On Corpus Christi Day in 1584, a number of Gypsies, fleeing persecution, sought refuge with the knights of the Order Santiago, of which Rosslyn Chapel’s founder, Sir William St. Clair, was a member. The most famous Black Madonna pilgrimage site today is Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in Provence, where there is a special cult of St. Sara, the patron saint of the Gypsies in southern France. The site also has special connections to Mary Magdalene. Every 24th of May, Gypsies from all over the world converge at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in southern France to honor St. Sara, their patron saint.[110]

The belief in the divinatory meaning of Tarot cards is closely associated with a belief in their occult properties commonly propagated in the eighteenth century by prominent Protestant clerics and freemasons.[111] One of them was Protestant pastor Court de Gébelin (1725 –1784), who was initiated into Freemasonry at the lodge Les Amis Réunis, in 1771, and moved on to the lodge Les Neuf Sœurs with fellow member Benjamin Franklin. He was a supporter of American Independence and contributed to the massive Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique, of the new theories of economics. In a letter from the Reverend James Madison to James Madison in 1782, he is spoken of with the words, “Mr. Gibelin of Paris, who is said tho’ to have a very great Reputation.” In 1783, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.[112] A patient of Mesmer, he was found dead in a bath after undergoing Mesmer’s magnetic treatment, apparently of an electrically induced heart attack.[113] Court de Gébelin is famous for his book Le Monde Primitif, in which he put forward the notion that the ancient world knew a “primitive science” which has been since lost. In a chapter on the Tarot, he wrote that the first time he saw the Tarot deck, he immediately perceived that it held the secrets of the Egyptians, of deep Kabbalistic significance, and brought to Europe by Gypsies.

Victor Hugo’s ideas may have been derived from Court de Gébelin, whose influence might have contributed to the Esmerelda in his 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. The link with the the Fool card of the Tarot is hinted at in Hugo’s account of a Feast of Fools, celebrated on January 6, 1482, where Quasimodo serves as Pope of Fools. The scene was recreated in Disney’s 1996 animated film version of the novel through the song “Topsy Turvy,” whose lyrics include, “It’s the day the devil in us gets released; It’s the day we mock the prig and shock the priest; Ev’rything is topsy turvy at the Feast of Fools!” Hugo cites Jean de Troyes, who in the fifteenth century remarked that, what “excited all the people of Paris” on January 6 was the two age-old celebrations of the Feast of the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools. The day included a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a mystery play at the Palais de Justice, and a maypole at the chapel of Braque.

Hugo was also close to Éliphas Lévi, who accepted Court de Gébelin’s claims of the Tarot’s Egyptian origin. Lévi called it The Book of Hermes and claimed that the tarot existed before Moses, and could unlock Hermetic and Kabbalistic concepts as propounded by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. However, it wasn’t until the late 1880s when Lévi's notion of the occult tarot truly began to be propounded by various French and English occultist in France, such as the French Theosophical Society and the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross.

Among Papus’ publications are two treatises on the use of tarot cards, like Le Tarot des Bohémiens (“The Tarot of the Gypsies,” 1889), which attempted to formalize the method of using tarot cards in ceremonial magic first proposed by Lévi in his Clef des grands mysteries (“Key of the Great Mysteries”).[114] According to Papus:

The Gypsies possess a Bible by which they earn their living, as it enables them to tell fortunes; this Bible is also a perpetual source of distraction, for it can also be used for games of chance.

Yes, the game of cards called the Tarot in possession of the Gypsies is the Bible of all Bibles. It is the book of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus, it is the book of Adam, it is the book of the primitive Revelation of ancient civilizations.

Whereas the Freemason, an intelligent and virtuous man, has lost this tradition; whereas the priest, although intelligent and virtuous, has lost his esoterism; the Gypsy, even if ignorant and intemperate, has given us the key that will allow us to explain all the symbolism of the ages with no difficulty whatsoever.

How can we fail to admire the wisdom of the Initiates, who made use of this vice to produce results that are more beneficial than those produced by virtue.

This Gypsy card game is a wonderful book, as seen by Court de Gébelin and Vaillant. This game, known as TAROT, THORA, ROTA, later became a foundation, a sum of the teachings of all the ancient peoples.[115]

In 1886, Waite published The Mysteries of Magic, a translation of a selection of Lévi's writings and the first significant treatment of the occult Tarot to be published in England. Two influential tarot decks designed by members of the Golden Dawn included the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and the Thoth deck. The Rider-Waite tarot deck, originally published in 1909, is widely considered the most popular tarot deck for tarot card reading.[116] The cards were drawn by illustrator Pamela Colman Smith from the instructions from Waite and were originally published by the Rider Company. The symbols and imagery used in the deck were influenced by the 19th-century magician and occultist Eliphas Lévi. The Devil is modelled a drawing by Levi called the Sabbatic Goat, claimed to have been the Baphomet worshipped by the Templars.

Ordo Templi Orientis

The Thoth deck was first released as part of The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley, a former member of the Golden Dawn. Crowley would become most famously associated with the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), inheritors of the traditions of the Asiatic Brethren, who claimed descent from the so-called “Eastern Mystics” of the legends Scottish Rite Freemasonry, who were supposedly rescued from the Middle East by the Templars and transferred to Scotland. The OTO was founded in Germany or Austria between 1895 and 1906, by Karl Kellner and Theodor Reuss, who would succeed John Yarker as Grand Master Garibaldi’s of Memphis-Misraïm. In England in 1885, Reuss became friends with William Wynn Westcott, the Supreme Magus of the SRIA and one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, under whose authority Reuss founded irregular Masonic and Rosicrucian lodges in Germany.[117] Reuss collaborated with Kellner, a wealthy German mystic who regarded sex magic—inherited from Sabbateanism through Paschal Beverly Randolph and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light—as “…the key to all the secrets of the Universe and to all the symbolism ever used by secret societies and religions.”[118] As a consequence, in 1895 Kellner began discussing with Reuss the formation of an Academia Masonica, which was eventually called Ordo Templi Orientis. The occult inner circle of this order (OTO) would be organized parallel to the highest degrees of the Rite of Memphis-Misraim and would teach the esoteric Rosicrucian doctrines of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, and Kellner’s “key” to Masonic symbolism.

Papus made Yarker Head of the Martinist Order for England, as Papus and his successors tried to fuse the Memphis-Misraim rite with the Martinist Order and the Gnostic Church.[119] In 1901, Kellner was provided with a charter designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist Order in Germany by Papus. On June 24, 1908, Reuss attended Papus’ “International Masonic and Spiritualist Conference” in Paris, where he chartered Papus to establish a Supreme Grand Council of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies. The constituting letters of Patent were sent to Berlin by Yarker. Reuss elevated Papus to the X° of the OTO. Reciprocally, Reuss received authority in the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim, and episcopal and primatial authority in l'Église Catholique Gnostique (“Catholic Gnostic Church), the official church of the Martinist Order. In the same year, Reuss incorporated the Gnostic Catholic Church into the OTO, after the original founders renamed their own church to the l'Église Gnostique Universelle (“the Universal Gnostic Church”). The name Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC) was applied to the church after 1913, when Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) wrote the Gnostic Mass, based on his Book of the Law, and which Reuss proclaimed to be the church’s official rite. The mass declared:

We claim descent from the Gnostics of old, through the secret traditions of the Knights Templar, the grail legends of the troubadours and minnesingers, and the veiled teachings of the alchemists, hermeticists, qabalists, magicians, Rosicrucians, Masons and Sufis. However, we are not Gnostics in the sense of the word used by the modern-day Gnostic revivalists, who are attempting to breathe life into the dry skeletons of Basilides, Valentinus and Mani. Our Gnosis has been tempered in the furnace of 18 centuries of trial, experiment and dialogue, and has been ultimately transmuted by the Gnosis of a New Word: THELEMA.

Crowley is the notorious godfather of twentieth century Satanism, once referred to by the British Press as, “the wickedest man in the world.” Reuss met Crowley in 1910, who after being initiated into the OTO rose to become the leader of its British branch, called Mysteria Mystica Maxima. Crowley, who self-identified as “the Beast” of the Book of Revelation, was born to a wealthy family who belonged to the Plymouth Brethren—successors of the Moravian Brethren of Count Zinzendorf.[120] Ideas about a secret council of sages, under several names, were a widely shared feature of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century esotericism. Arthur Edward Waite, in his 1898 Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, hinted at the existence of a secret group of initiates who dispense truth and wisdom to the worthy. A young Crowley, reading this, wrote Waite and was directed to read von Eckartshausen’s book. Crowley’s search for this secret wisdom eventually led him to become a neophyte in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which represented itself to be the visible and earthly outer order of the Great White Brotherhood.

Crowley 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. He firmly believed that he was the herald for a new age of strife and destruction that would sweep across the world. He saw himself as an incarnation of John Dee’s assistant, Edward Kelley and practiced Enochian magic. Crowley concentrated on Dee’s Apocalypse Working, although it is not known whether he accessed the elusive occult key necessary to usher in the apocalypse. Nevertheless, Crowley died in 1947, believing he had opened the gate of the apocalypse almost 45 years earlier, in 1904, when he spiritually ‘received’ The Book of the Law.[121]

Crowley was convinced that he was the reincarnation of Eliphas 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 declare for the edification of the vulgar… and for the greater glory of the Church which has persecuted the Templars, burned the magicians and excommunicated the Free-Masons, etc., let us say boldly and loudly, that all the initiates of the occult sciences… have adored, do and will always adore that which is signified by this frightful symbol. 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.[122]

Levi’s version of the Templars’ Baphomet would become an important figure in Crowley’s cosmology, with Crowley proposing that the idol was derived from “Father Mithras.” Baphomet also features in the Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church, the ecclesiastical arm of the OTO, recited by the congregation in The Gnostic Mass, in the sentence: “And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET.”[123] According to Crowley:

The Devil does not exist. It is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions. A devil who had unity would be a God... ‘The Devil’ is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes... This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade ‘Know Thyself!’ and taught Initiation. He is ‘The Devil’ of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection... He is therefore Life, and Love. But moreover his letter is ayin, the Eye, so that he is Light; and his Zodiacal image is Capricornus, that leaping goat whose attribute is Liberty.[124]

The OTO developed a system of nine degrees, the first six of which were more conventional Masonic initiations. The seventh, eight and ninth, however, focused on the theory of sex magic and on the techniques of auto- and hetero-sexual magic. Crowley regarded sex as “the supreme magical power.” The XI° consisted of homosexual anal intercourse. In his own words Crowley noted, “Oh, how superior is the Eye of Horus to the Mouth of Isis!”[125] The Eye of Horus—which Crowley used to refer to the anus—is traditionally equated in Freemasonry with the All-Seeing Eye. Thus, Crowley declared, “That all orthodox religions are rubbish, and that the sole true gods are the sun and his vice-regent, the penis.”[126]

The Book of the Law would come to be the basis of his new philosophy of Thelema. Crowley wrote in The Antecedents of Thelema that Rabelais—who was associated by Francois Naudé with the Rosicrucians—not only set forth the law of Thelema in a way similar to how Crowley understood it but predicted and described in The Book of the Law. In The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, Rabelais wrote of the Abbey of Thélème, built by the giant Gargantua, where the only rule is “fay çe que vouldras” (“Fais ce que tu veux,” or “Do what thou wilt”). Sir Francis Dashwood also employed Rabelais’s “Do what thou wilt” as the motto his Hellfire Club. Rabelais’ Abbey of Thelema has been referred to by later writers Sir Walter Besant, Annie Besant’s brother-in-law, and James Rice, in their novel The Monks of Thelema (1878). In the Gnostic Catholic Church, Rabelais is included among its saints, along with others such as Virgil, Catullus, Algernon x, and William Blake.

[1] 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 (Lyon: Derain, 1948); Novak. Jacob Frank, p. 61.

[2] Nevill Drury. The New Age: Searching for the Spiritual Self (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), p. 8.

[3] Hanegraaf. New Age Religion and Western Thought, p. 23.

[4] Christopher John Murray. Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850 (Routledge, 2013), pp. 139.

[5] John Forster. The Life of Charles Dickens, Volume 2 (Chapman and Hall, 1870), p. 206.

[6] Mark Booth. The Secret History of the World (Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2008) p. 373.

[7] Philippe Régnier. “Späte Wiederbelebung der intellektuellen Allianz zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich: Moses Hess, Karl Ludwig Michelet und die Saint-Simonisten der Revue Philosophique et religieuse (1855–1857).” In Hegelianismus und Saint-Simonismus, edited by Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch, Ludwig Siep, Hans-Ulrich Thamer, and Norbert Waszek (Paderborn: Mentis, 2007), pp. 159-180.

[8] Moses Hess & Léon Brothier. “Religion, Philosophie, Science.” La revue philosophique et religieuse (Paris: Bureaux de la Revue, 1857), pp. 143–144.

[9] Ibid., p. 373.

[10] Christopher McIntosh. Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London: Rider, 1972), p. 97-8.

[11] Pingaud. La Jeunesse de Charles Nodier, p. 39. Cited in Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy Grail, p. 134.

[12] “Autour de Julie Duvidal : les marquis de Montferrier.” (March 12, 2019). Retrieved from https://artifexinopere.com/blog/interpr/peintres/duvidal-de-montferrier/autour-de-julie-duvidal/

[13] Christopher McIntosh. Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (SUNY Press, 2011), p. 102.

[14] E. M. Butler & Eliza Marian Butler. The Myth of the Magus (Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 243.

[15] Joscelyn Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, (State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 122-3

[16] Wynn Westcott. “Data of the History of the Rosicrucians.” S.R.I.A. (1916); cited in A. Butler. Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition (Springer, Jan. 5, 2011), p. 79.

[17] Jacob Katz. Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939 (Harvard, 1970), pp. 58-59.

[18] Schreiber Jean-Philippe, “Juifs et franc-maçonnerie au XIXe siècle. Un état de la question,” Archives Juives 2/2010 (Vol. 43), p. 30-48.

[19] “History of Freemasonry in Germany.” The American Freemason’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume 8 (J.F. Brennan, 1856), p. 129; Zur aufgehenden Morgenröthe. Masonic Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://freimaurer-wiki.de/index.php/Zur_aufgehenden_Morgenr%C3%B6the

[20] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 121.

[21] The Two Worlds, cited in Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 211.

[22] Edward James, “Preface,” Sexual Magic by Pascal Beverly Randolph (New York: Magickal Childe, 1988).

[23] R.A. Gilbert. The Golden Dawn Scrapbook (York Beach, ME: Samuel Wiser, 1997).

[24] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, p. 220.

[25] Cryptonymus [Mackenzie], “Bro. Lessing and His Masonic Conversations. By Way of Commentary—Part the First,” pp. 306-307; cited in Patrick D. Bowen. “The British Birth of the Occult Revival, 1869-1875,” p. 16.

[26] Mackenzie, Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, pp. 344-345.

[27] “Ancient Oriental Order of Ishmael: history laws etc. from W. Wynn Westcott & J. Yarkers” MSS, [and], Rite of Swedenbourg (unpublished manuscript, 1907), in the possession of the UGLE Library and Museum, p. 11. Cited in Patrick D. Bowen. “The British Birth of the Occult Revival, 1869-1875,” p. 10.

[28] Patrick D. Bowen. “The British Birth of the Occult Revival, 1869-1875.”

[29] Ellic Howe. “Fringe Masonry in England 1870-85,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 85 (1972), p. 258.

[30] J.P. Deveney. Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth Century Black American Spiritualist (Albany: SUNY Press 1996), p. 516 n. 44.

[31] Joscelyn Godwin, Christian Chanel & John Patrick Deveney. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism (Samuel Weiser, 1995), pp. 290-291.

[32] R. F. Gould. “Obituary of the Rev. A. F. A. Woodford,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, vol 1, 1888, pp 174–176.

[33] Markus Osterrieder. “From Synarchy to Shambhala: The Role of Political Occultism and Social Messianism in the Activities of Nicholas Roerich” 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. 3.

[34] Manly P. Hall (33rd degree mason). The Phoenix, An Illustrated Review of Occultism and Philosophy (The Philosophical Research Society, 1960), p. 122.

[35] Edith Starr Miller. Occult theocrasy, p. 531.

[36] René Guénon. Le Theosophisme, p. 14; cited from K. Paul Johnson, The Masters Revealed, p. 40.

[37] Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[38] Ibid.

[39] K. von Eckartshausen. The Cloud upon the Sanctuary (Isabelle de Steiger, translator) (Weiser: 2003)

[40] Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, ch. 1.

[41] Godwin, Chanel & Deveney. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, p. 6.

[42] Nevill Drury. Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 93.

[43] A. H. Greenfield. The Roots of Modern Magick: An Anthology (Lulu.com, 2005).

[44] Ibid., pp. 12-13.

[45] Max Théon & Alma Théon. La Tradition Cosmique, 6 Vols, (Bibliothèque Chacornac/Publications Cosmiques, Paris, 1903).

[46] Pascal Themanlys. “Le Mouvement Cosmique.” Retrieved from http://www.abpw.net/cosmique/theon/mouvem.htm

[47] Godwin, Chanel & Deveney. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, p. 95

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

[49] K. Paul Johnson. Masters Revealed, pp. 47-51.

[50] Ibid.

[51] (C.S.B.) Report of D.E. McCracken, dated 14 August 1897, in file Foreign: Secret E, Sept. 1898, no. 100, pp. 13-14; national archives of the government of India, New Delhi. Retrieved from http://www.breacais.demon.co.uk/abs/bsr09/9B2a_momen_jamal.htm

[52] Nikki Keddie. Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani”: A Political Biography p. 116.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Elie Kedourie. Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (New York: The Humanities Press, 1966), p. 45.

[55] K. Paul Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 71.

[56] “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

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

[58] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini.

[59] “Our Moorish Martyr: Walid al-Taha.” Moorish Orthodox Church of Bridgewater Ma; Terry Melanson. “The Bektashi Begat the Shriners?” Conspiracy Archive (December 9, 2008).

[60] Susan Nance. How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), p. 99-100.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Ibid., p. 99.

[63] Blavatsky. Isis Unveiled, 2:308;

[64] Ibid., 1:38.

[65] Johnson. Masters Revealed, p. 66.

[66] Paul Johnson, ‘‘Albert Leighton Rawson,’’ 232–33; Deveney, ‘‘Nobles of the Secret Mosque.’’

[67] Nance. How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, p. 97.

[68] Adam Parfrey & Craig Heimbichner. Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society: A Visual Guide (Feral House, Mar. 6, 2012).

[69] Royal Order of Jesters “Official Website.” Archived from the original on October 16, 2011.

[70] Ibid.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Sandy Frost. “Ex-Jesters confirm ‘Sam Houston’ E-mail.” Newsvine (December 5, 2008).

[73] Earl of Lytton. The Life of Edward Bulwer, First Lord Lytton (London 1913, vol. II), p. 466.

[74] Joscelyn Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, (State University of New York Press, 1994) p. 129.

[75] Betsy van Schlun. Science and the Imagination: Mesmerism, Media, and the Mind in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature (Galda + Wilch Verlag, 2007) p. 164

[76] Michael Barkun. A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 2003 2003), p. 32.

[77] Morals and Dogma, p. 615.

[78] Godwin. Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996), p. 40.

[79] Tudor Parfitt & Yulia Egorova (2005). “Genetics, History, and Identity: The Case Of The Bene Israel and the Lemba.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 29 (2): 206, 208, 221.

[80] Yulia Egorova. Jews and India: Perceptions and Image (2006). p. 85; Schifra Strizower. The Bene Israel of Bombay: A Study of a Jewish Community (1971). p. 16.

[81] Ibid., p. 84.

[82] Osterrieder. “From Synarchy to Shambhala,” p. 12

[83] Joscelyn Godwin. “Introduction.” The Kingdom of Agarttha: A Journey into the Hollow Earth (Inner Traditions, 2008), p. 1.

[84] See photo published in Joscelyn Godwin. The Kingdom of Agarttha, p. 158.

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

[86] René Guenon. “F-Ch.Barlet et les Sociétiés Initiatiques,” Le Voile d’Isis 30/64 (April 1925), pp. 217-221.

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

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

[89] Joanne Pearson. Wicca and the Christian Heritage (Taylor and Francis, 2007), p. 45.

[90] Ladislaus Toth. “Gnostic Church.” Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (Brill, 2006), p. 402.

[91] Joscelyn Godwin. The Beginnings of Theosophy in France (London Theosophical History Centre, 1989), p. 9.

[92] Massimo Introvigne. Satanism: A Social History (Brill, 2016), p. 130.

[93] Tobias Churton. Occult Paris: The Lost Magic of the Belle Époque (Inner Traditions).

[94] T. Apiryon. “History of the Gnostic Catholic Church.” (Ordo Temple Orientis, 1995). Retrieved from https://hermetic.com/sabazius/history_egc

[95] Ladislaus Toth. “Gnostic Church.” Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (Brill, 2006), p. 401.

[96] Ladislaus Toth. “Gnostic Church.” Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (Brill, 2006), p. 401.

[97] “L’Église Gnostique Apostolique – Gnostic Apostolic Church.” Retrieved from https://www.apostolicgnosis.org/jules-doinel.html

[98] Jean-Pierre Laurant. “Guaïta, Stanislas, Marquis de.” Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (Brill, 2006), p. 442.

[99] Peter F. Anson. Bishops at Large (London: Faber & Faber, 1965).

[100] “L’Église Gnostique Apostolique – Gnostic Apostolic Church.” Retrieved from https://www.apostolicgnosis.org/jules-doinel.html

[101] Tobias Churton. Occult Paris: The Lost Magic of the Belle Époque (Inner Traditions).

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

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

[104] K. Paul Johnson. The Masters Revealed, p. 224.

[105] Patrick D. Bowen. “The British Birth of the Occult Revival, 1869-1875,” p. 17.

[106] Nicholas de Vere. The Dragon Legacy: The Secret History of an Ancient Bloodline (Book Tree, 2004) p. 22.

[107] Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 236.

[108] The Newsroom. “Rosslyn, Templars, Gypsies and the Battle of Bannockburn.” The Scotsman (November 9, 2005). Retrieved from https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/rosslyn-templars-gypsies-and-battle-bannockburn-2463275

[109] Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 236.

[110] Ralls. The Templars and the Grail.

[111] Michael Dummett. The Game of Tarot (London: Duckworth, 1980), p. 96

[112] “APS Member History.” search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved from https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=antoine+court+&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced

[113] Robin Waterfield. Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis (Psychology Press, 2003), p. 93.

[114] Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis & Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 256–260.

[115] Papus (Gérard Encausse). Le Tarot des Bohémiens (1889).

[116] Cynthia Giles. The Tarot: History, Mystery, and Lore (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 46.

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

[118] Neil Powell. Alchemy, the Ancient Science (Aldus Books Ltd., 1976) p. 127.

[119] “L’Église Gnostique Apostolique – Gnostic Apostolic Church.” Retrieved from https://www.apostolicgnosis.org/jules-doinel.html

[120] Tim O’Neill. “The Erotic Freemasonry of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf,” in Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History, ed. Jim Keith (Feral House, l993), 103-08.

[121] Andrew Gough. “John Dee & the Enochian Apocalypse.” New Dawn No. 133 (July-August 2012).

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

[123] Tau Apiryon Helena. “The Invisible Basilica: The Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church: An Examination.”

[124] Aleister Crowley, Desti Mary, Waddell Leila & Beta Hymenaeus., ed. Magick: Liber ABA, Book Four, Parts I-IV. (York Beach, Me.: S. Weiser, 2004)

[125] Diary 1913, cited in Peter-Robert Koenig, “XI° – Rocket to Uranus Anal Intercourse and the O.T.O.” ParaReligion.com. Retrieved from http://www.parareligion.ch/sunrise/xi.htm

[126] Francis King. Megatherion: The Magical World of Aleister Crowley (Creation Books, 2012), p. 100.

Volume Two

1. The Elizabethan Age

2. The Great Conjunction

3. The Alchemical Wedding

4. The Rosicrucian Furore

5. The Invisible College

6. 1666

7. The Royal Society

8. America

9. Redemption Through Sin

10. Oriental Kabbalah

11. The Grand Lodge

12. The Illuminati

13. The Asiatic Brethren

14. The American Revolution

15. Haskalah

16. The Aryan Myth

17. The Carbonari

18. The American Civil War

19. God is Dead

20. Theosophy

21. Shambhala