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The Gnostics and Their Remains

By Charles William King

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The Illuminati

As for the transmission of these symbols, the question would be at once settled should we accept the bold declaration of Lessing, for which, however, we have only his own authority (Fortsetzung des Ernst. p. 53): "The Lodges of the Templars were in the very highest repute during the 12th and 13th centuries; and out of such a Templars’ Lodge which had been continually kept up in the heart of London, was the Society of Freemasons established in the 17th century by Sir Christopher Wren." But this venerable tradition is directly contravened by the testimony of the most unimpeachable of all witnesses, the grand illuminato, Spartacus Weishaupt himself. At Munich, in the St. Theodosius Lodge (in 1777), he received the first Masonic degrees, but was inexpressibly disappointed on finding in Masonry nothing beyond "les jeux d’une fraternité innocente!" Nevertheless he suspected that something deeper yet remained; and soon his expectations were fulfilled. That same winter his friend, Cato Zwack, had an interview at Augsburg with a certain Abbé Marotti, who conferred upon him the highest degrees, even those of the Scottish Lodges, and expounded to him all the mysteries, founded, according to the Abbé, upon the religion and history of the Church. Zwack lost no time in communicating his acquisitions to Weishaupt, who replies: "The important discovery you have made at Nicomedia, in your interviews with Marotti, gives me extreme pleasure; let us profit by the circumstance, and extract from it all the advantages possible." Weishaupt had therefore been anticipated by his explanation of their symbolism, which he himself adopted in the new Mysteries he founded. Barruel adds (Jacobinisme, iv. 81) that the charge of illuminatism does not apply to the first three degrees of Masonry, neither to such as hold that these three degrees alone belong to the real, ancient, fraternity. This would intimate that the "Rosicrucian" had been later grafted upon the original number of gradations in the Masonic hierarchy.

For the sake of comparison I shall give Barruel's account of the degrees amongst the Illuminati, the predecessors of the Jacobins, viz.,

   I. Novices.

  II. Brethren of Minerva.

 III. Minor Illuminate.

  IV. Major Illuminate, or Scottish Novices.

   V. Scottish Knights.

  VI. The Lesser Mysteries: Epoptæ, or Illuminati Priests.

 VII. The Regent or Illuminato Prince.

VIII. The Greater Mysteries; the Magus or King-Man

Like the Rosicrucians, each novice upon admission received his characteristic, or mystic name, taken from Roman history: he then studied the geography of the Order which classicised modern places after a similar fashion: then he acquired the cypher, of which the simple set was this

12

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11

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10

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2

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1

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a

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b

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c

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d

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e

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f

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g

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h

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i

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k

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l

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The other, more abstruse, cypher consisted of particular symbols. The Noviciate lasted from two three years, according to the age of the Candidate. One of the things most strictly prohibited

p. 426

was to ever write the name of either Order or Lodge; they must be expressed by Θ and Π respectively. *

In the admission to his degrees Weishaupt adopted all the Masonic ceremonial. For example, in making the "Scottish Knight," the "secret conclave" was hung with green; the Prefect, booted and spurred, wearing St. Andrew's Cross by a green ribbon tied en saltire, sat under a green canopy, and received the candidate similarly equipped, holding a mallet for sceptre. There was also the triple Benediction, and the sacrament, to conclude, administered by the Chaplain. At the making of the Epoptas, he was taken, blindfolded, by his sponsor in a perfectly closed coach, by a circuitous route, into the hall now hung with red; on a table covered with scarlet were laid the crown and sceptre, heaps of gold mingled with chains. On a cushion lay a white robe and girdle. The novice was told to choose: if he took the gold, he received a severe reprimand, phrased with a lot of humanitarian cant too tedious to copy here, and unnecessary besides--seeing that the same is perpetually dinned into our ears at the present day. †

At the end, the Hierophant delivered a long address upon natural liberty and equality, and all the rest thereto pertaining. Weishaupt, a professional Atheist, was both astonished and diverted at finding eminent Protestant divines, after their initiation, declaring that all these notions were the genuine doctrines of the Gospel: which was certainly a very awkward truth to be held by the friends of the established order of civilised society. It is not, however, less a truth, if the same

p. 427

doctrines be carried out to their logical consequences, instead of being employed in defending ideas deduced in reality from a totally different source. But Barruel, the refugee, who had just seen the doctrines of liberty, equality and fraternity practically and naturally expounded by means of the guillotine, reasonably enough puts down this declaration of Weishaupt's as the most conclusive proof of his audacious impiety.

Footnotes
426:* "'Brother A. B., Write upon this MS. of the R. S. of this Degree.' In his attempt to do this he receives a severe and prudent C. by the J. D. placed behind him for that purpose, by the C. T. united to his F. &c."--Masonic Ceremonial.

426:† The popular notion of the brand-mark received by Masons on initiation is derived front the stigmata impressed upon the ancient mystæ at their admission. A remarkable, example is that of Ptolemy Auletes, who was thus marked in several parts of the body with the lotus, the colocynth-flower, and the timbrel of Cybele (Plutarch, 'De dignoscendo adulatore'). The remarking of the Mithraici has been noticed in the section devoted to that worship (pp. 139, 140). Hence came the mediæval belief in the secret mark impressed by the; Devil at the Sabbat upon those who swore allegiance to him; and which mark could be recognised by the witch-finders from its insensibility to pain.