by Umberto Eco
"It all fits, like a mosaic."
"Stick with me. At the time of the failed appointment Bacon is only twenty-three. But in 1621 he becomes viscount St. Albans. What does he find in the ancestral possessions? A mystery. Note that this is the year he is accused of corruption and imprisoned for a while. He had unearthed something that caused fear in someone. In whom? This is when Bacon understood that Saint-Martin should be watched; he conceived the idea of putting his House of Solomon there, the laboratory in which, through experimental means, the secret could be discovered."
"But," Diotallevi asked, "how do we find the link between Bacon's followers and the revolutionary groups of the late eighteenth century?"
"Could Freemasonry be the answer?" Belbo said.
"Splendid idea. Actually, Agliè suggested it to us that night at the castle."
"We should reconstruct the events. What exactly was going on then in those circles?"
75
The only ones who elude ... the eternal sleep ... are those who in life are able to orient their mind toward the higher way. The initiates, the Adepts, are at the edge of that path. Having achieved memory, anamnesis, in the expression of Plutarch, they become free, they proceed without bonds. Crowned, they celebrate the "mysteries" and see on earth the throng of those who are not initiated and are not "pure," those who are crushed and pushing one another in the mud and in the darkness.
—Julius Evola, La tradizione ermetica, Rome, Edizioni Mediterranee, 1971, p. 111
Rashly I volunteered to do some quick research. I soon regretted it. I found myself in a morass of books, in which it was difficult to distinguish historical fact from hermetic gossip, and reliable information from flights of fancy. Working like a machine for a week, I drew up a bewildering list of sects, lodges, conventicles. I occasionally shuddered on encountering familiar names I didn't expect to come upon in such company, and there were chronological coincidences that I felt were curious enough to be noted down. I showed this document to my two accomplices.
1645 London: Ashmole founds Invisible College, Rosicrucian in inspiration.
1660 From the Invisible College is born the Royal Society; and from the Royal Society, as everyone knows, the Masons.
1666 Paris: founding of Académie Royal des Sciences.
1707 Birth of Claude-Louis de Saint-Germain, if he was really born.
1717 Creation of the Great Lodge in London.
1721 Anderson drafts the constitutions of English Masonry. Initiated in London, Peter the Great founds a lodge in Russia.
1730 Montesquieu, passing through London, is initiated.
1737 Ramsay asserts the Templar origin of Masonry. Origin of the Scottish rite, henceforth in conflict with the Great Lodge of London.
1738 Frederick, then crown prince of Prussia, is initiated. Later he is patron of Encyclopedists.
1740 Various lodges created in France around this year: Ecossais Fidèles of Toulouse, Souverain Conseil Sublime, Mère Loge Ecossaise du Grand Globe Français, Collège des Sublimes Princes du Royal Secret of Bordeaux, Cour des Souverains Commandeurs du Temple of Carcassonne, Philadelphes of Narbonnne, Chapitre des Rose-Croix of Montpellier, Sublimes Elus de la Vérité...
1743 First public appearance of Comte de Saint-Germain. In Lyon, the degree of chevalier kadosch originates, its task being to vindicate Templars.
1753 Willermoz founds lodge of Parfaite Amitié.
1754 Martinez Pasqualis founds Temple of the Elus Cohen (perhaps in 1760).
1756 Baron von Hund founds Templar Strict Observance, inspired, some say, by Frederick II of Prussia. For the first time there is talk of the Unknown Superiors. Some insinuate that the Unknown Superiors are Frederick and Voltaire.
1758 Saint-Germain arrives in Paris and offers his services to the king as chemist, an expert in dyes. He spends time with Madame Pompadour.
1759 Presumed formation of Conseil des Empereurs d'Orient et d'Occident, which three years later is said to have drawn up the Constitutions et Règlement de Bordeaux, from which Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite probably originates (though this does not appear officially until 1801).
1760 Saint-Germain on ambiguous diplomatic mission in Holland. Forced to flee, arrested in London, released. Dom J. Pernety founds Illuminati of Avignon. Martinez Pasqualis founds Chevaliers Maçons Elus de l'Univers.
1762 Saint-Germain in Russia.
1763 Casanova meets Saint-Germain, as Surmont, in Belgium. Latter turns coin into gold. Willermoz founds Souverain Chapitre des Chevaliers de l'Aigle Noire Rose-Croix.
1768 Willermoz joins Pasqualis's Elus Cohen. Apocryphal publication in Jerusalem of Les plus secrets mystères des hauts grades de la maçonnerie devoilée, ou le vrai Rose-Croix: it says that the lodge of the Rosicrucians is on Mount Heredon, sixty miles from Edinburgh. Pasqualis meets Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, later known as Le Philosophe Inconnu. Dom Pernety becomes librarian of king of Prussia.
1771 The Duc de Chartres, later known as Philippe-Egalité, becomes grand master of the Grand Orient (then, the Grand Orient de France) and tries to unify all the lodges. Scottish rite lodge resists.
1772 Pasqualis leaves for Santo Domingo, and Willermoz and Saint-Martin establish Tribunal Souverain, which becomes Grand Loge Ecossaise.
1774 Saint-Martin retires, to become Philosophe Inconnu, and as delegate of Templar Strict Observance goes to negotiate with Willermoz. A Scottish Directory of the Province of Auvergne is born. From this will be born the Rectified Scottish rite.
1776 Saint-Germain, under the name Count Welldone, presents chemical plans to Frederick II. Société des Philathètes is born, to unite all hermeticists. Lodge of the Neuf Soeurs has as members Guillotin and Cabanis, Voltaire and Franklin. Adam Weishaupt founds Illuminati of Bavaria. According to some, he is initiated by a Danish merchant, Kolmer, returning from Egypt, who is probably the mysterious Altotas, master of Cagliostro.
1778 Saint-Germain, in Berlin, meets Dom Pernety. Willermoz founds Ordre des Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte. Templar Strict Observance and Grand Orient agree to accept the Rectified Scottish rite.
1782 Great conference of all the initiatory lodges at Wilhelmsbad.
1783 Marquis Thomé founds the Swedenborg rite.
1784 Saint-Germain presumably dies while in the service of the landgrave of Hesse, for whom he is completing a factory for making dyes.
1785 Cagliostro founds Memphis rite, which later becomes the Ancient and Primitive rite of Memphis-Misraim; it increases the number of high degrees to ninety. Scandal of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, orchestrated by Cagliostro. Dumas describes it as Masonic plot to discredit the monarchy. The Illuminati of Bavaria are suppressed, suspected of revolutionary plotting.
1786 Mirabeau is initiated by the Illuminati of Bavaria in Berlin. In London a Rosicrucian manifesto appears, attributed to Cagliostro. Mirabeau writes a letter to Cagliostro and to Lavater.
1787 There are about seven hundred lodges in France. Weishaupt publishes his Nachtrag, which describes the structure of a secret organization in which each adherent knows only his immediate superior.
1789 French Revolution begins. Crisis in the French lodges.
1794 On 8 Vendémiaire, Deputy Grégoire presents to the Convention the project for a Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. It is installed in Saint-Martin-des-Champs in 1799, by the Council of Five Hundred. The Duke of Brunswick urges lodges to dissolve because a poisonous subversive sect has now corrupted them all.
1798 Arrest of Cagliostro in Rome.
1804 Announcement in Charleston of official foundation of Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite, with number of degrees increased to 33.
1824 Document from court of Vienna to French government denounces secret associations like the Absolutes, the Independents, the Alta Vendita Carbonara.
1835 The cabalist Octtinger claims to meet Saint-Germain in Paris.
1846 Viennese writer Franz Graffer publishes account of a meeting of his brother with Saint-Germain between
1788 and 1790. Saint-Germain received his visitor while leafing through a book by Paracelsus.
1865 Foundation of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (other sources give 1860, 1866, or 1867). Bulwer-Lytton, author of the Rosicrucian novel Zanoni, joins.
1868 Bakunin founds International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, inspired, some say, by the Illuminati of Bavaria.
1875 Elena Petrovna Blavatsky, with Henry Steel Olcott, founds Theosophical Society. Her his Unveiled appears. Baron Spedalieri proclaims himself a member of Grand Lodge of the Solitary Brothers of the Mountain, Frater Illuminatus of the Ancient and Restored Order of the Manicheans and of the Martinists.
1877 Madame Blavatskv speaks of the theosophical role of Saint-Germain. Among his incarnations arc Roger and Francis Bacon, Rosencreutz, Proclus, Saint Alban. Grand Orient of France eliminates invocation to the Great Architect of the Universe and proclaims absolute freedom of conscience. Breaks ties with Grand Lodge of England and becomes firmly secular and radical.
1879 Foundation of Societas Rosicruciana in the USA.
1880 Beginning of Saint-Yves d'Alveydre's activity. Leopold Engler reorganizes the Illuminati of Bavaria.
1884 Leo XIII, with the encyclical Humanum Genus, condemns Freemasonry. Catholics desert it; rationalists flock to it.
1888 Stanislas de Guaita founds Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix. Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn founded in England, with eleven degrees, from neophyte to ipsissimus. Its imperator is McGregor Mathers, whose sister marries Bergson.
1890 Joseph Péladan, called Joséphin, leaves Guaita and founds the Rose-Croix Catholique du Temple et du Graal, proclaiming himself Sar Merodak. Conflict between Rosicrucians of Guaita's order and those of Péladan's is called the War of the Two Roses.
1891 Papus publishes his Traité méthodique de science occulte.
1898 Aleister Crowley initiated into Golden Dawn. Later founds Order of Thelema.
1907 From the Golden Dawn is born the Stella Matutina, which Yeats joins.
1909 In the United States, LI. Spencer Lewis "reawakens" the Anticus Mvsticus Ordo Rosae Crucis and in 1916, in a hotel, successfully transforms a piece of zinc into gold. Max Heindel founds the Rosicrucian Fellowship. At uncertain dates follow Lectorium Rosicrucianum, Frères Aines de la Rose-Croix, Fraternitas Hermetica, Templum Rosae-Crucis.
1912 Annie Besant, disciple of Madame Blavatskv, founds, in London, Order of the Temple of the Rose-Cross.
1918 Thule Society is born in Germany.
1936 In France Le Grand Prieuré des Gaules is born. In the "Cahiers de la fraternité polaire," Enrico Contardi-Rhodio tells of a visit from Comte de Saint-Germain.
"What does all this mean?" Diotallevi said.
"Don't ask me. You wanted data? Help yourself. This is all I know."
"We'll have to consult Aglié. I doubt that even he knows all these organizations."
"Want to bet? They're his daily bread. But we can put him to the test. Let's add a sect that doesn't exist. Founded recently."
I recalled the curious question of De Angelis, whether I had ever heard of the Tres. And I said: "Tres."
"What's that?" Belbo asked.
"If it's an acrostic, there has to be a subtext," Diotallevi said. "Otherwise my rabbis would not have been able to use the notarikon. Let's see ... Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. That suit you?"
We liked the name, and put it at the bottom of the list.
"With all these conventicles, inventing one more was no mean trick," Diotallevi said in a sudden fit of vanity.
76
If it were then a matter of defining in one word the dominant characteristic of French Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, only one would do: dilettantism.
—René Le Forestier, La Franc-Maçonnerie Templière et Occultiste, Paris, Aubier, 1970, 2
The next evening, we invited Agliè to Pilade's. Though the bar's new customers had gone back to jackets and ties, the presence of our guest, in blue chalk-stripe suit and snow-white shirt, tie fastened with a gold pin, caused eyebrows to be raised. Luckily, at six o'clock Pilade's was fairly empty.
Agliè confused Pilade by ordering a cognac by its brand name. Pilade had it, of course, but the bottle had stood enthroned on the shelf behind the zinc counter, untouched, for years.
Agliè studied the liquor in his glass against the light, then warmed it with his hands, displaying gold cuff links that were vaguely Egyptian in style.
We showed him the list, telling him we had compiled it from the manuscripts of the Diabolicals.
"The fact that the Templars were connected with the early lodges of the master masons established during the construction of Solomon's Temple is certain," he said. "And it is equally certain that these associates, on occasion, recalled the murder of the Temple's architect, Hiram, a sacrificial victim. The masons vowed to avenge him. After their persecution then, many knights of the Temple must have joined those artisan confraternities, fusing the myth of avenging Hiram with the determination to avenge Jacques de Molay. In the eighteenth century, in London, there were lodges of genuine masons, and they were called operative lodges. Then, gradually, some idle but thoroughly respectable gentlemen were determined to join operative masonry, so it became symbolic, philosophical masonry.
"In this atmosphere a certain Desaguliers, popularizer of Newton, encouraged a Protestant pastor, Anderson, to draft the constitutions of a lodge of Mason brothers, deist in persuasion, and Anderson began speaking of the Masonic confraternities as corporations dating back four thousand years, to the founders of the Temple of Solomon. These are the reasons for the Masonic masquerade: the apron, the trowel, the T square. Masonry became fashionable, attracting the aristocracy with the genealogical tables it hinted at, but it appealed even more to the bourgeoisie, who now not only could hobnob with the nobles but were actually permitted to wear a short sword. In the wretched modern world at its birth, the nobles need a place where they can come into contact with the new producers of capital, and the new producers of capital are looking to be ennobled."
"But the Templars seem to have emerged later."
"The one who first established a direct relation with the Templars, Ramsay, I'd prefer not to discuss. I suspect he was put up to it by the Jesuits. His preaching led to the birth of the Scottish wing of Masonry."
"Scottish?"
"The Scottish rite was a Franco-German invention. London Masonry had established three degrees: apprentice, fellow craft, and master. Scottish Masonry multiplied the degrees because doing so meant multiplying the levels of initiation and secrecy. The French, congenitally foolish, love secrecy...."
"But what was the secret?"
"There was no secret, obviously. But if there had been one—or if they had possessed it—its complexity would have justified the number of degrees of initiation. Ramsay multiplied the degrees to make others believe he had a secret. You can imagine the thrill of those solid tradesmen now at last able to become princes of vengeance...."
Agliè was prodigal with Masonic gossip. And in the course of his talk, as was his custom, he slipped gradually into first-person recollection.
"In those days, in France, they were already writing couplets about the new fashion, the Frimaçons. The lodges, multiplying, attracted monsignors, friars, barons, and shopkeepers, and the members of the royal family became grand masters. The Templar Strict Observance of that Hund character received Goethe, Lessing, Mozart, Voltaire. Lodges sprang up among the military; in the regimental mess they plotted to avenge Hiram and discussed the coming revolution. For others, Masonry was a société de plaisir, a club, a status symbol. You could find a bit of everything there: Cagliostro, Mesmer, Casanova, Baron d'Hol-bach, d'Alembert....Encyclopedists and alchemists, libertines and hermetics. At the outbreak of the Revolution, members of the same lodge found themselves on opposite sides, and it seemed that the great brotherhood would never recover from this crisis...."
"Wasn't there a conflict between the Grand Orient and the Scot
tish lodge?"
"Only verbally. For example: the lodge of the Neuf Soeurs welcomed Franklin, whose goals, naturally, were secular; he was interested only in supporting his American revolution.... But at the same time, one of its grand masters was the Comte de Milly, who was seeking the elixir of longevity. Since he was an imbecile, in the course of his experiments he poisoned himself and died. Or take Cagliostro: on the one hand, he invented Egyptian rites; on the other, he was implicated in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, a scandal devised by the rising bourgeoisie to discredit the ancien régime. And Cagliostro was indeed involved! Just try to imagine the sort of people one had to live with...."
"It must have been hard," Belbo said, with comprehension.
"But who," I asked, "are these barons von Hund who seek the Unknown Superiors...?"
"New groups sprang up at the time of the necklace farce, altogether different in nature. To gain adepts, they identified themselves with the Masonic lodges, but actually they were pursuing more mystical ends. It was at this point that the debate about the Unknown Superiors took place. Hund, unfortunately, wasn't a serious person. At first he led his adepts to believe that the Unknown Superiors were the Stuarts. Then he said that the aim of the order was to rescue the original possessions of the Templars, and he scraped together funds from all sides. Unsatisfied with the proceeds, he fell into the hands of a man named Starck, who claimed to have learned the secret of making gold from the authentic Unknown Superiors, who were in Petersburg. Hund and Starck were surrounded by theosophists, cheap alchemists, last-minute Rosicrucians. All together, they elected as grand master a thoroughly upright man, the Duke of Brunswick. He immediately realized that he was in the worst possible company. One of the members of the Strict Observance, the landgrave of Hesse, summoned the Comte de Saint-Germain, believing this gentleman could produce gold for him. And why not? In those days the whims of the mighty had to be indulged. But the landgrave also believed himself to be Saint Peter. I assure you, gentlemen: once, when Lavater was the landgrave's guest, he had a dreadful time with the Duchess of Devonshire, who thought she was Mary Magdalene."