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Contemporaries, however, take him less seriously and represent him rather as an expert charlatan whom thewits of the salons made the butt of pleasantries. His principal importance to the subject of this book consists,however, in his influence on the secret societies. According to the Mémoires authentiques pour servirà l'histoire du Comte de Cagliostro, Saint-Germain was the " Grand Master of Freemasonry,"[50] and it washe who initiated Cagliostro into the mysteries of Egyptian masonry.Joseph Balsamo, born in 1743, who assumed the name of Comte de Cagliostro, as a magician far eclipsedhis master. Like Saint-Germain, he was generally reputed to be a Jew-the son of Pietro Balsamo, aSicilian tradesman of Jewish origin[51]-and he made no secret of his ardent admiration for the Jewish race.After the death of his parents he escaped from the monastery in which he had been placed at Palermo andjoined himself to a man known as Altotas, said to have been an Armenian, with whom he travelled to Greeceand Egypt.[52] Cagliostro's travels later took him to Poland and Germany, where he was initiated into Freemasonry,[53]and finally to France; but it was in England that he himself declared that he elaborated hisfamous " Egyptian Rite," which he founded officially in 1782. According to his own account, this rite wasderived from a manuscript by a certain George Cofton-whose identity has never been discovered-which hebought by chance in London.[54] Yarker, however, expresses the opinion that " the rite of Cagliostro wasclearly that of Pasqually," and that if he acquired it from a manuscript in London it would indicate thatPasquilly had disciples in that city. A far more probable explanation is that Cagliostro derived his Egyptianmasonry from the same source as that on which Pasqually had drawn for his Order of Martinistes, namelythe Cabala, and that it was not from a single manuscript but from an eminent Jewish Cabalist in London thathe took his instructions. Who this may have been we shall soon see. At any rate, in a contemporary accountof Cagliostro we find him described as " a doctor initiated into Cabalistic art" and a Rose-Croix; but afterfounding his own rite he acquired the name of Grand Copht, that is to say, Supreme Head of Egyptian Masonry,a new branch that he wished to graft on to old European Freemasonry.[55] We shall return to his furthermasonic adventures later.In a superior category to Saint-German and Cagliostro was the famous Swabian doctor Mesmer, who hasgiven his name to an important branch of natural science. In about 1780 Mesmer announced his great discoveryof " animal magnetism, the principle of life in all organized beings, the soul of all that breathes." Butif to-day Mesmerism has come to be regarded as almost synonymous with hypnotism and in no way a branchof occultism, Mesmer himself-stirring the fluid in his magic bucket, around which his disciples wept, slept,fell into trances or convulsions, raved or prophesied[56]-earned not unnaturally the reputation of a charlatan.The Freemasons, eager to discover the secret of the magic bucket, hastened to enrol him in their Order, andMesmer was received into the Primitive Rite of Free and Accepted Masons in 1785.[57]Space forbids a description of the minor magicians who flourished at this period-of Schroeder, founderin 1776 of a chapter of " True and Ancient Rose-Croix Masons," practising certain magical, theosophical,and alchemical degrees; of Gassner, worker of miracles in the neighbourhood of Ratisbonne; of " the JewLeon," one of a band of charlatans who made large sums of money with magic mirrors in which the imaginativewere able to see their absent friends, and who was finally banished from France by the police,-all theseand many others exploited the credulity and curiosity of the upper classes both in France and Germanybetween the years of 1740 and 1790. De Luchet, writing before the French Revolution, describes the partplayed in their mysteries by the soul of a Cabalistic Jew named Gablidone who had lived before Christ, andwho predicted that " in the year 1800 there will be, on our globe, a very remarkable revolution, and therewill be no other religion but that of the patriarchs."[58]How are we to account for this extraordinary wave of Cabalism in Western Europe? By whom was it inspired?If, as Jewish writers assure us, neither Martines Pasqually, Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, nor any ofthe visible occultists or magicians were Jews, the problem only becomes the more insoluble. We cannot believethat Sanhedrims, Hebrew hieroglyphics, the contemplation of the Tetragrammaton, and other Cabalisticrites originated in the brains of French and German aristocrats, philosophers, and Freemasons. Let usturn, then, to events taking place at this moment in the world of Jewry and see whether these may providesome clue.Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I— 95 —
1. Gould: History of Freemasonry, III. 241.2. See the very important article on this question that appeared in The National Review for February 1923,showing that Carlyle was assisted gratuitously throughout his work by a German Jew named JosephNeuberg and w0 supplied with information and finally decorated by the Prussian Government.3. Executed in 1746 as a partisan of the Stuarts.4. Gould, op. cit., III. pp. 101, 110; A.Q.C., XXXII. Part I. p. 31.5. A.E. Waite: The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, I. 296, 370, 415.6. Clavel (Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie, p. 185) says it was afterwards discovered that " thePretender, far from having made de Hundt a Templar, on the contrary was made Templar by him." But otherauthorities deny that Prince Charles Edward was initiated even into Freemasonry.7. Canteleu: Les Sectes et Sociétés Secrètes, p. 242; Clavel, op. cit., p. 184.8. Gould, op. cit., III. 100.9. Ibid., III. 99, 103; Waite: Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, I. 289: " The Rite of the Stricte Observancewas the first masonic system which claimed to derive its authority from Unknown Superiors, irresponsiblethemselves but claiming absolute jurisdiction and obedience without question."10. Histoire de la Monarchie Prussienne, V. 61 (1788).11. Les Sectes et Sociétés Secrètes, p. 246.12. Gould, op. cit., III. 102. Waite (Encyclopædia of Freemasonry, II. 23.) says Johnson was " in realitynamed Leucht, an Englishman by his claims-who did not know English and is believed to have been a Jew."13. Mackey, op. cit., p. 331.14. Gould: History of Freemasonry, III. 93. A.Q.C., XXXII. Part. I. p. 24.15. Lévitikon, p. 8. (1831); Fabré Palaprat: Rechercher historiques sur les Templiers, p. 28 (1835).16. M. Grégoire, Histoire des Sectes Religieuses, II. 401. Findel says that very soon after Frederick's returnhome from Brunswick " a lodge was secretly organized in the castle of Rheinsberg " (History of Freemasonry,Eng. trans., p. 252). This lodge would appear then to have been a Templar, not a Masonic Lodge.17. Oliver: Historical Landmarks in Freemasonry, II. 110.18. Findel: History of Freemasonry p. 290.19. On this point see inter alia Mackey, Lexicon of Freemasonry, pp. 91, 328. In England and in the GrandOrient of France most of the upper degrees have fallen into disuse, and this rite, known in England as theAncient and Accepted Rite and in France as the Scottish Rite, consists of five degrees only in addition to thethree Craft degrees (known as Blue Masonry), which form the basis of all masonic rites. These five degreesare the eighteenth Rose-Croix, the thirtieth Knight Kadosch, and the thirty-first to the thirty-third. The EnglishFreemason, on being admitted to the upper degrees, therefore advances at one bound from the third degreeof Master Mason to the eighteenth degree of Rose-Croix, which thus forms the first of the upper degrees.The intermediate degrees are, however, still worked in America.20. Scottish Rite of Freemasonry : the Constitutions and Regulations of 1762, by Albert Pike, SovereignCommander of the Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree for the Southern Jurisdiction of the UnitedStates, p. 138 (A.M. 5632).21. R.O. State Papers, Foreign, France, Vol. 243, Jan. 2 and Feb. 19, 1752.22. John Morley: Diderot and the Encyclopædists, Vol. I. pp. 123-147 (1886).23. Gould, op. cit., III. 87. Mr. Gould naïvely adds in a footnote to this passage: " The proposed Dictionaryis a curious crux-is it possible that the Royal Society may have formed some such idea? " The beginningalready made in London was of course the Cyclopædia of Chambers, published in 1728, and Chambers, whoin the following year was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, if not himself a Mason numbered manyprominent Masons amongst his friends, including the globe-maker Senex to whom he had been apprenticedand who published Anderson's Constitutions in 1723. (See A.Q.C., XXXII. Part I. p. 18.)24. Papus, Martines de Pasqually, p. 146 (1895).Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I— 96 —
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Nesta H. WebsterSecret Societies an
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That the author was right in his de
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1. Moniteur for the 14th Fructidor,
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and that " the priests did not shut
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Is the Cabala, then, as Gougenot de
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system of the Jewish hierarchy and
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traditions woven into a coherent na
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This passage would alone suffice to
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itive innocence of the garden of Ed
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1. August le Plongeon, Sacred myste
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ah was not that of ' a light to lig
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110. Matter, op. cit., II. 364.111.
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By means such as these the extraord
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policy. A system which, with no oth
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devoted his life to murder. Thus by
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CHAPTER IIITHE TEMPLARSIN the year
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nesses, says the official report, "
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As to the Pope, we have already see
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The Paulicians who flourished about
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regard to the miracles of Christ is
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ing homage to the powers of darknes
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27. Ibid., p. 384.28. F. Funck-Bren
Page 46 and 47: CHAPTER IVTHREE CENTURIES OF OCCULT
Page 48 and 49: from this source. Indeed Eliphas L
Page 50 and 51: ment of physics by which the mystic
Page 52 and 53: It will be seen that, according to
Page 54 and 55: Moreover, towards the end of the ce
Page 56 and 57: existence to the world under the na
Page 58 and 59: the true and indisputable facts con
Page 60 and 61: legia in Scotland, at Kilwinning, M
Page 62 and 63: Apprentices, Fellow Crafts, and Mas
Page 64 and 65: Moreover, according to a masonic tr
Page 66 and 67: sider one more link in the chain of
Page 68 and 69: but more likely borrowed from the R
Page 70 and 71: 1. A Free Mason's answer to the Sus
Page 72 and 73: Les Sociétés Secrètes en Allemag
Page 74 and 75: ment, but in the transformation tha
Page 76 and 77: middle of the eighteenth century sp
Page 78 and 79: Freemasonry traced to the Crusades:
Page 80 and 81: Cross; and finally, that a degree o
Page 82 and 83: claimed to be not merely a part of
Page 84 and 85: 1. Histoire de la Monarchie Prussie
Page 86 and 87: 41. A.Q.C., XXXII. Part I. p. 17.42
Page 88 and 89: Convallium, von Haugwitz (Cabinet M
Page 90 and 91: thentic they were the work of Volta
Page 92 and 93: speech had reached the ears of Fred
Page 94 and 95: 1782 an English Freemason writes: "
Page 98 and 99: 25. Evidently a reference to the se
Page 100 and 101: CHAPTER IIXTHE JEWISH CABALISTSIT h
Page 102 and 103: Podolia, known as Ba'al Shem Tob, o
Page 104 and 105: applied to Falk in his quest for th
Page 106 and 107: und Falk: Gespräche für Freimaure
Page 108 and 109: 1. L'Antisémitisme, p. 335.2. Ibid
Page 110 and 111: CHAPTER IXTHE BAVARIAN ILLUMINATITH
Page 112 and 113: mancers, would authorize us in decl
Page 114 and 115: merce by customs, excise duties, an
Page 116 and 117: day.Weishaupt, however, admits hims
Page 118 and 119: and the world the abode of reasonab
Page 120 and 121: ing esteemed and " respectable " pe
Page 122 and 123: mother dead ! Corpse, wedding, chri
Page 124 and 125: way of duplicity and imposture.More
Page 126 and 127: isted, whereat he gave me his word
Page 128 and 129: 100. It has several times been stat
Page 130 and 131: But in the year before these events
Page 132 and 133: terested in supporting the system o
Page 134 and 135: Amongst these others were not only
Page 136 and 137: attempt on the part of the Jews to
Page 138 and 139: been and will be the authors of pre
Page 140 and 141: ressorts]."Two years later, on Janu
Page 142 and 143: derstood that there may be uniformi
Page 144 and 145: ectory of the Carbonari and was led
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1. Henri Martin, Histoire de France
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