Burdett's possible connections with German Freemasonry do not end there. Three years later, he travelled to Karlsruhe to become surveyor to the margrave, Karl Friedrich of Baden-Durlach, an enlightened ruler and dedicated Freemason who was brother-in-law to the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt.90 Burdett described Baden in a letter to his friend Benjamin Franklin as “this delicious philosophical retreat,” inviting the American scientist to join him there. In 1777, despite his reservations about American independence, Burdett recommended to Franklin the services of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian officer who would reform the drill and tactics of the fledgling American patriot army. The baron was an enthusiastic Freemason, who later joined two New York lodges and had a third named after him. Franklin, of course, was one of the most prominent Masons in the colonies.91
These are circumstantial links, but they suggest that “The Alchymist” may have had Masonic origins. Such an interpretation would make sense of the three figures in the picture, who are of different ages and may represent the degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason. The arched ceiling overhead would stand for the fourth or Royal Arch degree, while within the paned windows can be recognized the outline of Masonic tools, a compass and plumb line. The alchemist's discovery may illuminate even higher degrees.92 Wright had already painted a canvas entitled “The Philosopher by Lamp Light” that contains three figures, including two searching youths and an older philosopher contemplating human remains (the telltale signs of Hiram's murder). This strange work may have served as an early version of “The Alchymist.” Another painting, showing “Miravan, a Young Nobleman of Ingria [sic: Izra], Breaking Open the Tomb of his Ancestors,” was executed by Wright in 1772. Based on an obscure Orientalist tale, it depicts a scene reminiscent of the discovery of Hiram's tomb. Wright called it “a favourite picture,” and although he never sold it, he was confident enough of its success to have an engraving made of it.93
The purpose of this detailed investigation is not to uncover the secrets of Wright's paintings, fascinating though they may be, but to point out that links between English and continental Freemasonry were more active than has often been supposed. The tendency to divide late eighteenth-century Masonry into “rational” English or Scottish varieties and “occult” continental strains is misleading, because the two intermingled more often, and with fewer constraints, than is usually realized.94 Contacts with France, Germany, the Dutch Republic and Sweden brought English and Scottish Freemasons into close relationships with representatives of continental European Masonry. Some British Masons became members of foreign lodges, and brought the ideas of French or German Masonry back to England and Scotland. Conversely, the continental movements were deeply indebted to British influence, and some esoteric strains of Masonry may have begun in Britain. It was a Scot, Andrew Michael Ramsay, called Chevalier Ramsay after his induction into the Order of St Lazare of Jerusalem, who set off the whole chain of inventive fantasy that would lead to Strict Observance, the Avignon Rite and other manifestations of occult Freemasonry. Although esoteric degrees may have existed before his famous “Discours,” any discussion of the subject must begin with this remarkable Scotsman.
Ramsay should be regarded as a mystic who opened the door to the occult, but did not walk through it himself. An adherent of Scottish Quietism, he was unconventional enough to write to a friend in 1709 that “I shall embrace you at meeting with all the freedom of a Philadelphian.” After his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Ramsay briefly served as tutor to Prince Charles Edward Stuart at Rome, but the Pretender James III thought him “a madd man,” and he soon left again for Paris.95 Among his forms of madness was a conviction that “the great Men of all Times, and of all Places, have the same Ideas of the Divinity, and of Morality.”96 This was the enlightened lesson taught to a young Persian prince in Ramsay's masterpiece, The Travels of Cyrus, which appeared in French and English in 1727. Prince Cyrus voyages around the ancient world in search of wisdom, meeting great men of his time, including Pythagoras and the prophet Daniel, both of whom turn out to be mystics. At the work's culmination, Cyrus frees the Jews from bondage and sponsors the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple. The liberation of the Jews by Cyrus became the central myth in the Royal Arch degree of Masonry. The book was an instant sensation, in spite of critics denouncing it as deist, a charge Ramsay vehemently denied. As a result of his fame, Ramsay was invited to England in 1729, where he was initiated into the Grand Lodge and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.97
Ramsay's biggest impact on European Freemasonry came through his “Discourse,” written in 1736 and published, in an altered version, the following year. In it, Ramsay calls the world “a great Republic” in which the Masons attempt “to revive and spread those ancient maxims, fixed in the nature of man.” They form “a spiritual nation” that will bind those of diverse backgrounds into a new people, cemented “by the bonds of virtue and of science.”98 What more enlightened sentiments could be imagined? Ramsay affirmed the origins of Freemasonry in the ancient mysteries, “the famous celebrations of Ceres at Eleusis … as well as those of Isis in Egypt, of Minerva at Athens, of Urania among the Phoenicians and of Diana in Scythia.”99 It was his references to “our ancestors, the Crusaders,” however, that drew the most attention. During the Crusades, he maintained, “several Princes, Lords and Citizens … engaged themselves by oath to use their talents and their goods to bring architecture back to its primitive institution.” This led to a union of the Masonic order with the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. Kings and nobles returning from the Crusades duly set up Masonic lodges in their own countries, starting with the Kilwinning lodge of Scotland, founded in 1286.100
Ramsay's “Discours” was designed to welcome men of all social ranks into Freemasonry, but it had the effect of enticing French and German noblemen to join what was now seen as a distinguished fraternity with the pedigree of a knightly order. Although Ramsay had said nothing about adding further degrees or rituals, aristocratic European Masons were eager to distinguish themselves from the common herd by adding to Freemasonry a dazzling variety of new grades. This was already happening in England and Scotland, in circles that were not necessarily aristocratic. The shadowy existence in London of a Masonic order of “Scotch H[ere]d[o]m, or Ancient and Honorable Order of K[ilwin]n[in]g” can be traced through newspaper advertisements dating back as far as 1743. William Mitchell, a Scot living in the Dutch Republic, received a patent from an English grand master in 1750 allowing him to form a lodge of Heredom in The Hague. The original five Heredom lodges, located in and around London, were probably Jacobite associations, within which the exiled Stuarts were regarded as hereditary grand masters. They initiated Masons into mysterious “higher” degrees that conferred priestly or knightly status—the term “Heredom” or “Harodim” may refer to a Temple priest, and masters of the order claimed the title “Sir.”101 A Scottish version of the rite, known as the “Royal Order” and including both a Heredom and a “Rosy Cross” degree, is known from the 1750s, although it may well have preceded the English lodges.
English and Scottish Masonry, in other words, was moving towards Ramsay's vision of Christian and hierarchical knighthood just as surely as was French or German Masonry—and, apparently, more rapidly. To be sure, the most astonishing system of Masonic novelty was created outside Britain. This was Strict Observance, concocted around 1754 by the Lusatian nobleman Karl, Baron Hund, a counsellor to the king of Poland. His initiation into a French Jacobite lodge in the early 1740s led Hund to conclude that the Stuart Pretender was the hidden grand master of the whole Masonic Brotherhood. He also reckoned that the Freemasons were descended from the Knights Templar, suppressed by the papacy and the French crown for heresy and necromancy in the early fourteenth century, rather than from the Knights of St John, as Ramsay had suggested. The connection of the Templars with ritual magic was particularly exciting to many German Masons. Hund managed to convince a 1767 Convent of German Masons to adopt Strict O
bservance, and it remained dominant among lodges in German-speaking lands until it was debunked at the Convent of Wilhelmsbad in 1782. Even after that debacle, the system retained supporters. Throughout its existence, however, Strict Observance had to compete with a number of other rites, including a priestly system that was supported by the ruling family of Sweden and the Order of the Golden or Rosy Cross, which flourished at the Prussian court. The fervent preoccupation with alchemy that accompanied all of these rites was endemic to German Masonry and probably owed little to the inventions of Baron Hund.102
In France as well, new versions of Freemasonry appeared that were resolutely Christian and aristocratic. They included the Chapter of Clermont, a Jacobite organization founded in 1754, which had higher “Temple” grades, and the Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Elus-Coëns de l'Univers, founded around 1760 by the mysterious Martinez de Pasqually, who became known for his fixation with the supernatural. Several of these movements came from southern France, where the authority of the official Grand Orient lodge seems to have been weak. The most innovative of them, from an occult point of view, was the Scots Philosophic Rite of Avignon, initiated by the Abbé Pernety, a runaway Benedictine monk who had served as librarian to Frederick II of Prussia.103 Pernety was best known for compiling a dictionary of mythic and Hermetic terms, which was essentially a guide to alchemy.104 Not surprisingly, his lodge would become known for its occult practices. In 1784, Benedict Chastanier presented a plan for an occult Swedenborgian rite to a Parisian convent of Freemasons. Although it was not adopted, the assembled Brothers declared that the occult sciences “had a striking relationship with Masonic usages, documents, ceremonies, rites and other materials.”105
None of these movements or trends established itself securely in England or Scotland, but they did have an influence on prominent British Masonic figures. Among them was the printer William Preston, perhaps the most important historian of English Masonry of the late eighteenth century. Born in Edinburgh, Preston had been apprenticed to Thomas Ruddiman, the Jacobite grammarian and printer. He had later been employed in London by another Scot, William Strahan, the king's printer, whose presses he superintended. Preston was initiated in 1763 into a Scots lodge of Antients in the English capital, but he soon joined the Moderns of the Grand Lodge of England.106 He became famous among Freemasons for an address that he gave at a Grand Gala in 1772, published as Illustrations of Masonry. In a second edition three years later, he added considerable amounts of material pertaining to Masonic history. Preston claimed that Masonry was a “progressive science” based on the study of the liberal arts. At the same time, the rites of the Craft corresponded with those of the ancient Egyptians and Druids, as well as with the philosophy of Pythagoras. He affirmed that the grand master of the Knights Templar had supervised the Masons under Henry II, and that they continued under the patronage of the Templars until the end of the twelfth century.107 The combination of Newtonianism with ideas derived from occult Masonry was typical of Preston's eclectic viewpoint.
Preston rose within English Masonry to the position of assistant secretary to the grand master, but he was apparently dissatisfied with the direction being taken by the Modern Grand Lodge, especially its attempts to impose rules on member lodges. A dispute over whether Masons needed the permission of the Grand Lodge to wear regalia in public led the Lodge of Antiquity, of which Preston was a member, into open secession.108 It reaffiliated in 1779 with the independent Grand Lodge of York, an archaic institution that had recently been revived, to establish a branch “South of the River Trent.” Preston became a leading figure in this breakaway organization, which quickly opened itself to the influence of European Masonry. The first lodge chartered by the “Grand Lodge South of the River Trent” took the title “Perfect Observance.” Its members were mostly foreign, and its grand master was the dynamic French engraver Peter Lambert de Lintot. In 1782, Lambert de Lintot successfully petitioned the Scottish Grand Lodge for permission to create a “Rite of Seven Degrees,” probably modelled on that of the Chapter of Clermont. It included the stages of Heredom, Knight Templar and “Rose Croix” within the sixth degree, which required alchemical knowledge. Lambert de Lintot was also responsible for designing the symbol of the Perfect Observance Lodge, inspired by Leuchter's illustrations of Boehme—it included magic circles and astrological signs as well as various Masonic emblems.109
William Preston must have been aware of the growing occult influence within the new Grand Lodge. His own attitude towards higher degrees may be judged by his service, first as “Scribe Nehemiah” and then as “Joshua” or high priest, in the Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons in 1781–3. He resigned from the latter position, possibly under pressure from the Grand Lodge of England.110 His apostasy from that organization, however, lasted only a decade, when he decided to return to official Masonry. He brought back with him the concept of a priestly Masonic order, to be titled “the Chapter of Harodim.”
Some foreign observers did not think the English would easily adopt the occult predilections of the German Freemasons. The Prussian officer and Freemason Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz, who lived in England in the 1760s and 1770s, was of this opinion. “Magic, contented with exercising its despotism over the ten circles of High Germany,” he wrote contemptuously, “has not as yet, by a bold flight, attempted to cross the ocean.” If it did, he argued, the results would be “very uncommon,” as in England “every thing is in extremes.” Nonetheless, he admitted that “the English have a high opinion of the German alchymists,” which allows foreign projectors to “dupe them of their guineas.” Archenholz also observed that among the Jews of London, who he thought were rightly hated by the English for “roguery,” was a man “called Cain Chenul Falk, but better known by the name of Doctor Falkon, who for thirty years has been famous for his cabalistical discoveries.” Falk lived in a large house and, according to Archenholz, gave a great deal to the poor—a comment that complicates his otherwise anti-Semitic tone. “It is most probable that he is a very great chymist,” proposed the curious traveller, “and that he has, in that occult science, made some extraordinary discoveries, which he does not choose to communicate.”111 Samuel Falk, a German immigrant known as a “Ba'al Shem” or spiritual healer, resided in England for forty years after 1742. He spoke with angels, discovered hidden treasure and treated a number of illustrious non-Jewish patients, including Baron Theodore de Neuhoff, an adventurer who for a few months in 1736 had reigned as elected king of Corsica. Falk is supposed to have had extensive Masonic connections throughout Europe. Archenholz should perhaps have asked himself: in a diverse, commercial society that could maintain Samuel Falk in wealth and security, was it so unlikely that occult Freemasonry would find an audience?
In concluding this chapter, however, we should turn Archenholz's scepticism northwards, and ask why an occult revival was developing in London, Bristol and other English towns, but not, apparently, in Edinburgh or Glasgow. The commercial prospects for publishing works of occult thinking were more limited in Scotland than in England, due in part to competition with the London press. While the sentimental novel made a considerable splash north of the Tweed—the success of Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling, provides evidence of this—the Gothic genre does not seem to have been as popular, perhaps because Scots still took the Devil seriously. Evangelical religion certainly made inroads in the north, especially through mass revival meetings like the celebrated Cambuslang Rant in 1742, but not on the same scale or with the same intensity as in England. Swedenborgianism gained converts very slowly there. Finally, and most significantly, the dominance of the Moderate Presbyterian connection from the 1740s until the 1780s, within both the universities and the Kirk, meant that any attempt at occult thinking would meet with formidable opposition from a relatively united intellectual establishment, which condemned such wrong-headedness as “superstition” or diabolism.112 Outside Freemasonry, Scots with an interest in occult matters were likely to feel isolated, so they ten
ded to migrate south or to publish their works in London.
This point should remind us that there was no single British Enlightenment. The English variety had roots in the empirical philosophy of the late seventeenth century, which was established as orthodoxy after 1715. Those who continued to “think for themselves” were often placed in a position of antagonism to what resembled a semi-official English culture. Newton and Locke were firmly rooted national icons, so it was difficult to re-examine their premises without seeming to question the whole basis of post-revolutionary English society. The speculative discussions of science, moral judgment and “common sense” that marked the Scottish Enlightenment were more difficult to initiate in England without inviting the accusation of scepticism or enthusiasm. At the same time, English culture in the late eighteenth century allowed enormous scope to thinking that was on the margins of respectability—so long as it posed no immediate threat to conventional ideas. In part, this reflected an absence of effective means of internal suppression or censorship. England also lacked the structural coherence among academic and clerical institutions that gave unity and direction to Scottish intellectual life. As a result, the Enlightenment that emerged in England during the late eighteenth century was more oppositional, more splintered, more varied and, in some ways, weaker than its Scottish counterpart. On the one hand, it did not generate radical philosophies that supplanted old suppositions; on the other, it permitted the flourishing of a multiplicity of different critical viewpoints, including occult ones. Tolerance of marginal ideas was less likely to happen in the smaller, more homogeneous world of Scottish culture. Yet, as will be seen, no matter how marginal they were, the denizens of the English occult revival showed little intention of actually opposing the Enlightenment. On the contrary, they would do their best to accommodate it. The next chapter will consider how successful their efforts were.
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