booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

but more likely borrowed from the Rosicrucians a part of their system and symbols which they adapted to
their own purpose. Moreover, the incontrovertible fact is that in the list of English Freemasons and Rosicrucians
we find men who belonged to both Orders and a amongst these two who contributed largely to the constitutions
of English Freemasonry.
The first of these is Robert Fludd, whom Mr. Waite describes as " the central figure of Rosicrucian literature,...
an intellectual giant,... a man of immense erudition, of exalted mind, and, to judge by his writings,
of extreme personal sanctity. Ennemoser describes him as one of the most distinguished disciples of
Paracelsus... ."(64) Yarker adds this clue: " In 1630 we find Fludd, the chief of the Rosicrucians, using architectural
language, and there is proof that his Society was divided into degrees, and from the fact that the
Masons' Company of London had a copy of the Masonic Charges ' presented by Mr. fflood ' we may suppose
that he was a Freemason before 1620."(65)
A still more important link is Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, astrologer, and alchemist, founder of the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, who was born in 1617. An avowed Rosicrucian, and as we have seen, also a
Freemason. Ashmole displayed great energy in reconstituting the Craft; he is said to have perfected its organization,
to have added to it further mystic symbols, and according to Ragon, it was he who drew up the
ritual of the existing three Craft decrees-Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason-which was
adopted by Grand Lodge in 1717. Whence did these fresh inspirations come but from the Rosicrucians? For,
as Ragon also informs us, in the year that Ashmole was received into Freemasonry the Rosicrucians held
their meeting in the same room at Mason Hall !(66)
How, then, can it be said that there was " no traceable connexion between Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism
"? and why should it be the part of a " malignant reviler " to connect them? It is not suggested that
Rosicrucians, such as Fludd or Ashmole, imported any magical elements into Freemasonry, but simply the
system and symbols of the Rose-Croix with a certain degree of esoteric learning. That Rosicrucianism form
an important link in the chain of the secret tradition is therefore undeniable.
The Seventeenth-century Rabbis
There is, however, a third channel through which the Judaic legends of Freemasonry may have penetrated
to the Craft, namely, the Rabbis of the seventeenth century. The Jewish writer Bernard Lazare has declared
that " there were Jews around the cradle of Freemasonry,"(67) and if this statement is applied to the
period preceding the institution of Grand Lodge in 1717 it certainly finds confirmation in fact. Thus it is
said that in the preceding century the coat-of-arms now used by Grand Lodge had been designed by an Amsterdam
Jew, Jacob Jehuda Leon Templo, colleague of Cromwell's friend the Cabalist, Manasseh ben Israel.
(68) To quote Jewish authority on this question, Mr. Lucien Wolf writes that Templo " had a monomania
for... everything relating to the Temple of Solomon and the Tabernacle of the Wilderness. He constructed gigantic
models of both these edifices."(69) These he exhibited in London which he visited in 1675, and earlier,
and it seems not unreasonable to conclude that this may have provided a fresh source of inspiration to the
Freemasons who framed the masonic ritual some forty years later. At any rate, the masonic coat-of-arms still
used by Grand Lodge of England is undoubtedly of Jewish design.
" This coat," says Mr. Lucien Wolf, " is entirely composed of Jewish symbols," and is " an attempt to
display heraldically the various forms of the Cherubim pictured to us in the second vision of Ezekiel-an Ox,
a Man, a Lion, and an Eagle-and thus belongs to the highest and most mystical domain of Hebrew symbolism."(70)
In other words, this vision, known to the Jews as the " Mercaba,"(71) belongs to the Cabala, where a particular
interpretation is placed on each figure so as to provide an esoteric meaning not perceptible to the uninitiated.(72)
The masonic coat-of-arms is thus entirely Cabalistic as is also the seal on the diplomas of Craft
Masonry, where another Cabalistic figure, that of a man and woman combined, is reproduced.(73)
Of the Jewish influence in Masonry after 1717 I shall speak later.
To sum up, then, the origins of the system we now know as Freemasonry are not to be found in one
source alone. The twelve alternative sources enumerated in the Masonic Cyclopædia and quoted at the beginning
of this chapter may all have contributed to its formation. Thus Operative Masonry may have descended
from the Roman Collegia and through the operative masons of the Middle Ages, whilst Speculative Masonry
may have derived from the patriarchs and the mysteries of the pagans. But the source of inspiration
which admits of no denial is the Jewish Cabala. Whether this penetrated to our country through the Roman
Collegia, the compagnonnages, the Templars, the Rosicrucians, or through the Jews of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, whose activities behind the scenes of Freemasonry we shall see later, is a matter of
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
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