The Scottish connection
As regards the formation of the Royal Society in England in 1660, all historians agree that the initial driving force of this institution was Robert Moray. We've already seen how, in 1641, Moray was the first Freemason to be initiated on British soil. This event occurred two years after Cardinal Richelieu founded the Académie Française in 1638. In that same fateful year of 1638 the future Sun King Louis XIV was born and the Hermetic philosopher Tommaso Campanella, who had prophesied the unexpected birth, dedicated his famous City of the Sun to Richelieu.80 The connection is that Robert Moray had spent many years in Paris where he had joined the Scots Guard of Louis XIII in 1633. In 1638 he had been elevated to the command of the guard by Richelieu who greatly admired this rather bold and refined young Scotsman.81
Twelve years later, in 1652, Moray married the lady Sophia Lindsay,82 daughter of Sir David Lindsay, the first Earl of Balcarres. Lindsay was a learned man who enjoyed the private life. He had a keen interest in alchemy, and in his library were to be found many alchemical works which Lindsay himself had translated and copied in Scottish colloquial in his own handwriting, including some ‘Rosicrucian literature’.83 It was also in 1652 that Moray sponsored the very first English-language edition of the Rosicrucian Manifestos which was published by the famous Welsh alchemist Thomas Vaughan (brother of the poet Henry Vaughan), who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Eugenius Philalethes’.84 Anthony Wood, a contemporary, was to describe Thomas Vaughan as ‘a zealous brother of the Rosie-Crucian fraternity’, and then also Moray, his sponsor, as a ‘most renowned chymist [and] great patron of the Rosie-Crucians.’85 With such keen sustained interest in all things Rosicrucian, one wonders if a contact did not take place between Moray and Campanella, both of whom were at the French court in 1638, both of whom were sponsored by Richelieu and, more importantly, both of whom had acted as patrons to the Rosicrucian movement.
There is yet another Royal Society founder to consider, the diarist John Evelyn, who also was no stranger to Paris in those troubled times. In 1643, after the outbreak of the Civil War in England, Evelyn left for Paris, then travelled to Rome, Venice and Padua. He was back in Paris in 1646, where a year later he married Mary Browne, the daughter of the British ambassador. Evelyn stayed in Paris till 1652. Was he, too, exposed to the ‘Rosicrucian’ and Hermetic ideas that hovered at the French court? It would be odd, indeed, if he was not.
According to Masonic historian Robert Lomas, the Jacobean court-in-exile in Paris was rife with Freemasons. Many of the Scots Guards, for example, were Masons from Scottish lodges including, of course, their leader, Robert Moray. The Masonic historian and Master of the famous Lodge of Antiquity, William Preston, who is known among Freemasons for having published the very popular book Illustrations of Freemasonry in 1772, even believed that Charles II himself might have been a member of the brotherhood.86 Early Freemasons with a great appetite for illumination and arcane knowledge would have been particularly receptive to such ‘Rosicrucian’ ideas and the Hermetic-Christian utopian vision that Campanella preached. It is not impossible that these influences in Paris might have prompted Moray to seek out the Invisible College when he returned to England.
But we are now going to examine the connection of yet another Royal Society founder who deserves even closer scrutiny. For this particular English gentleman was to play a pivotal role in the events that were soon, quite literally, to reshape the old city of London …
Blazing star of doom
Towards the end of 1664 rumours spread that a ‘blazing star’ had been seen in the southeast sky from London. It was a comet. And these rare and impressive cosmic visitors were believed in those days to be the harbingers of ‘famine and plague’ and other such calamities.87 Martin Luther, the German Protestant leader, even believed comets to be the signs of God's wrath or tokens of the Second Coming.88 On 15 December 1664, Robert Hooke, a senior member of the Royal Society, reported the ‘blazing star’ to his colleagues. On 17 December Robert Moray spotted it from his observatory at Whitehall, and soon others saw it from other locations.
It vanished from view about the end of January 1665 but then just two months later in March 1665 a second comet appeared.89 Amongst the general public and the erudite alike this was taken as the ultimate herald of doom. And they were not to be disappointed. In May 1665 the bubonic plague hit the city of London. The nightmarish disease was first noticed in the parish of St. Gilles in the Fields. With its narrow, dirt infested alleys, its virtually nonexistent drainage, and its total lack of public hygiene, London in the mid-1660s was the perfect environment for the Great Plague to strike and take hold. To make matters worse, the month of June that year was unusually hot, giving more impetus to the deadly epidemic. Within a few months people began to die in droves.
Predictably many attributed the Great Plague to the wrath of God. Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, went as far as to claim that ‘when we have purged our foul sins this horrible evil will cease.’90 Alarmed by the rising number of deaths, Charles II moved his court to Oxford in July, leaving the Londoners to their grim fate.91 All those who could afford it followed suit, moving either into the country or, better still, across the Channel to the safety of continental Europe. It was at this time that Christopher Wren took the opportunity to travel to France …
Christopher Wren's esoteric pedigree
Christopher Wren was educated at Westminster School and completed his studies at Wadham College, Oxford, where he attained the prestigious Fellowship of All Souls in 1653. Within a few years he was appointed professor of astronomy at Gresham College in London and, after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, he was given the prestigious chair of Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford. He was only 29 when he took up this post, but even then was regarded by his peers as one of the most learned men in England.
Wren developed a close friendship with Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, who also held the title of Duke of Cumberland. Prince Rupert, like John Evelyn and Robert Moray, spent some time in Paris with Charles II during his exile. And like Moray, he had been very well received by Richelieu. On his return to England after the Restoration Rupert developed a keen interest in ‘natural science’ and became an active member of the Royal Society, often travelling to Oxford to visit Wren and see him at work in his laboratory.
It will be remembered that John Wilkins, one of the original founders of the Invisible College, was chaplain to Rupert's older brother, Prince Charles Louis, the elector palatine-in-exile. Wren, in fact, had probably known Prince Charles Louis in his childhood, when both were at the deanery at Windsor where Wren's father had been stationed as registrar of the Order of the Garter. In those early days Wren himself had been a protégée of Wilkins.92 When we recall how much Frederick V of the Palatinate, the ill-fated father of Rupert and Charles Louis, had been indirectly entangled in the Rosicrucian movement in Germany, and also the many Rosicrucian connections that can be traced to the founding members of the Invisible College, it is tempting to consider the possibility that Wren too might have been influenced by the same Rosicrucian ideologies.
In 1663 Wren began to develop a keen interest in architecture, and it was becoming clear to him that this career, rather than one in mathematics or astronomy, was his true and natural vocation. Although Wren was a brilliant geometrician and had a talent for model-making and design, one cannot help but wonder if it was not his contact with the Invisible College in 1660, and more particularly the Masonic attachments of individual members of the Invisible College, that might have inspired him to make such a switch at this rather advanced stage of his academic career. We have seen how Freemasons hold architecture and geometry in the highest esteem. After all, the legendary hero of Freemasonry, Hiram Abiff, was allegedly the architect of Solomon's Temple. Likewise Freemasons also refer to God, who they prefer to call the Supreme Being, as the ‘Grand Architect of the Universe’.
Since many, if not all, the protagonists who playe
d a part in the formation of the Royal Society were Freemasons we ought not be too be surprised to find that Wren was a member of the brotherhood as well. According to Anderson's Constitutions of Freemasons (second edition) published in 1738, Christopher Wren was already a Master Freemason in 1673 and later, in 1685, became the Grand Master of all English Freemasons.93 Other documents suggest that Wren may have joined the Freemasons by 1663, perhaps even earlier.94 It is also thought that Wren was a regular member of one of the four original Masonic lodges that were amalgamated in 1717 to form the Grand Lodge of England.95 This lodge was originally located at St. Paul's in London, and it is almost certain that Wren was at one time its Master.96
Pausing to deposit Wren in Paris we make an excursion to Rome to study a mysterious obelisk
When Christopher Wren arrived in Paris in late July 1665, he was in for a great treat.
Louis XIV was in the process of launching a massive revival in classical and baroque architecture in Paris and Versailles. He had invited the great Italian baroque architect, Gian Lorenzo Bernini to be advisor and witness to these events and, specifically, to design the new façade for the Louvre Palace. At the time Bernini, whose reputation in architecture had reached almost heroic levels, had just begun the design of the great plaza in front of the Vatican Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, at the centre of which still stands today an intact ancient Egyptian obelisk surmounted by a golden cross.97
We shall digress briefly to tell a little of the story of this ‘Vatican Obelisk’ and of Bernini's role in its final decoration, since these matters have a bearing on our primary theme – namely the survival of secret traditions that have carried ancient Egyptian religious concepts and symbolism through time and lodged them in the Western heartlands of orthodox Christian power.
The Vatican Obelisk, which stands more than 25 meters tall and weighs 320 tons, is hewn from a single block of solid granite. One of 13 original Egyptian obelisks that can still be seen in Rome today,98 it is somewhat unusual in that none of its faces bear inscriptions telling us anything about its origins. We know for certain, however, that it was brought to Rome from Egypt on the orders of Emperor Caligula (AD 12 – 41). It was transported across the Mediterranean in a special ship and set in place in AD 37 in the ‘Vatican Circus’, which Caligula had built for chariot racing.
As to the ancient Egyptian provenance of the obelisk, we learn from the Roman historian Pliny, a contemporary of Caligula, that it had been made originally for one ‘Nuncoreus, the son of Sesostris’.99 The reference here is to the 12th dynasty Pharaoh Sesostris I (1971 – 1926 BC) who carried out extensive restoration at ancient Egypt's most sacred city, Anu, which the Greeks would later call Heliopolis – literally the ‘City of the Sun’. Heliopolis was itself a sort of ‘Vatican City’ in the sense that it held the same powerful symbolic significance to the ancient Egyptians as the Vatican does to devout Roman Catholics today. But on the actual site of ancient Heliopolis, in the suburbs of modern Cairo, almost nothing is left to show of former glories. The magnificent Sun Temple that once formed the sacred heart of ancient Egyptian spirituality is nowhere to be seen and the only remnant of any size is a lone obelisk raised by Sesostris I.100 On this and other evidence scholars have concluded that the Vatican Obelisk also originally stood at Heliopolis and may perhaps even have formed one of a pair with the obelisk that remains on site.
Historian Christopher Hibbert, in his book Rome: the Biography of a City, asserts simply that ‘the obelisk of Saint Peter's Square was transported by Caligula from Heliopolis in 37 AD.’101 Likewise in their book Roma Egizia (‘Egyptian Rome’) Italian scholars Anna Maria Partini and Boris de Rachewiltz accept Pliny's statement that the Vatican Obelisk was originally from Heliopolis and belonged to a son of Sesostris. But they establish additionally that it was not brought directly from Heliopolis to Rome but was first taken by Emperor Augustus Caesar to Alexandria and raised there in the Julian Forum, where it remained until it was shipped to Rome by Caligula in AD 37.102
As we've seen Caligula had the obelisk raised in the Vatican Circus as the centrepiece of his private chariot-racing grounds. There it was to remain for the next 1600 years while the Vatican Circus – where Saint Peter was believed to have been martyred in AD 64 – was redeveloped to become the heart and centre of the Roman Catholic world. Begun in AD 334 by Constantine the Great (but not completed until the 16th century by the architects and sculptors Bramante, Raphael and finally Michelangelo himself)103 the Basilica of Saint Peter was built half over the top of, and overlapping with, the Vatican Circus.
The result was that Caligula's obelisk ended up close to the south wall of the Basilica. It was observed in that spot in the 14th century by a certain Master Gregorius, an English prelate who made a journey to Rome and left us an account. He describes the obelisk as standing in a dark alley, its base and pedestal completely covered by rubbish, flanked by crumbling old houses up against the wall of the Basilica.
In the 15th century the plan was first conceived to move the ancient Egyptian relic to the position of honour it occupies today in the centre of Saint Peter's Square. The idea came from Pope Nicholas V (1447 – 1455) who intended that the base of the obelisk should stand on four life-size bronze statues of the Evangelists and that its tip should be surmounted by a huge bronze Jesus with a golden cross in his hand. Nicholas died before he could commission the work and the project lapsed.
It fell to Pope Sixtus V (1585 – 1590) to complete the plan. Dubbed the ‘Last of the Renaissance Popes’, Sixtus was: … intent on making Rome Europe's finest city, and St. Peter's its grandest basilica. He was responsible for redesigning the city's entire layout, chiefly by the construction of immense avenues which opened up a series of vistas anchored in obelisks radiating from the core of the built-up area immediately across the Tiber from the Vatican towards the hills in the east.104
Sixtus dispensed with the four figures of the Evangelists proposed by Nicolas V for the base of the Vatican Obelisk and replaced them with four lions around a stone pedestal. He also dispensed with the idea of a statue of Jesus balanced on the tip of the obelisk. A bronze sphere, popularly believed to contain the ashes of Julius Caesar – the first ‘divine’ emperor of Rome and also ‘pharaoh’ of Egypt – had been positioned there by Caligula but proved on examination to be empty. Deciding to retain the sphere, Sixtus placed inside it fragments of Christ's supposed ‘True Cross’ that were in the possession of the Vatican. He then ordered that the heraldic symbol of his own family, a star over three small mountains, be placed above the bronze sphere, and, above the star, a golden cross. It was in this form, therefore, surmounted by a cross, that the ancient obelisk from Heliopolis was finally raised in the heart of the Vatican on 27 September 1588.105
The first thing Sixtus did after the obelisk was safely upright was to have it exorcised. With all the usual bells and incense a bishop stood before it and solemnly cried out: I exorcise you, creature of stone, in the name of omnipotent God, that you may become an exorcised stone worthy of supporting the Holy Cross, and be freed from any vestige of impurity or shred of paganism and from any assault of spiritual impurity.106
To make sure that the point was properly driven home, Sixtus had the same formula carved permanently into the western and eastern sides of the base of the obelisk.
Ironically, however, the anti-pagan message was flatly contradicted by a secret or ‘invisible’ message that the obelisk itself had begun to pulse forth from the moment that a cross was fixed to its apex. The message was secret because it was written in three dimensions in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs which no one in the 16th century is supposed to have been able to read. Whether by pure coincidence, or by design, however, it is a fact that an obelisk surmounted by a cross is a symbol that would have had a meaning for ancient Egyptian priests. The meaning is the name of the most sacred ‘pagan’ city of antiquity – Anu-Heliopolis – the ancient Egyptian ‘City of the Sun’. Not only is the Sixtus arrangement of the obelisk meaningful in th
e ancient Egyptian language, in other words, but also, and much more impressive, the meaning is correct – since Anu-Heliopolis was the very place where this obelisk originally came from!
One small detail might spoil this otherwise intriguing picture. Although it is true that a hieroglyph showing an obelisk surmounted by a cross would have been understood as Anu (Heliopolis) by an ancient Egyptian priest, the symbol is nevertheless incomplete. It should normally be accompanied by a circle or ellipse divided into eight parts – the standard hieroglyphic indicator of a city. The failure of Sixtus and his architects to include such a circle in the plan for Saint Peter's Square seems to rule out any notion that some secret Hermetic game was being played here.
Or it would if things had been left the way they were when Sixtus died in 1590.
Instead, more than 70 years later, the architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned by Pope Alexander VII (1655 – 1667) to redesign Saint Peter's Square. He chose to surround it with elegant freestanding colonnades, creating a huge elliptical space centred on the obelisk. Bernini's work on the project, as we noted above, was interrupted in 1665 when he took up Louis XIV’s personal invitation to visit Paris. But he completed it on his return to Rome by marking out on the plaza, around the base of the obelisk, the beautiful geometrical pattern of a gentle ellipse divided into eight parts that can be seen there to this day.
The Master Game Page 46