Internationalism is an understanding between the decadent elements in each country--the conscientious objectors, the drawing-room Socialists, the visionaries--who shirk the realities of life and, as the Socialist Karl Kautsky in a description of Idealists has admirably expressed it, "see only differences of opinion and misapprehension where there are actually irreconcilable antagonisms." This is why at times of crisis Idealists are of all men the most dangerous and Pacifists the great promoters of wars. Understanding between nations is wholly desirable, but the destruction of the national spirit everywhere can only lead to the weakening of all countries where this process takes place and the triumph of the nations who refuse to accept the same principle.
It will perhaps be answered that Freemasons do not believe in the doctrine of brotherhood between all men, but only between Masons of all races. But this may lead no less to national disintegration if it creates a nation within each nation, an international fraternity independent of the countries to which its members belong. The logical outcome of this may be that a man will refuse to fight for his country against his brother Masons--it is what has happened in France. The Grand Orient was before the recent war the great breeding-ground of anti-patriotism, where all schemes for national defence were discouraged. Before 1870 the same thing took place, and it was in the masonic lodges that Germany found her most valuable allies.
In the same way the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature lends itself to perversion. Nothing could be more desirable than that man should strive after perfection. Did not Christ enjoin His disciples: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect"? Man is therefore acting in accordance with Christian principles in seeking after divine perfection. But when he comes to believe that he has already attained it he makes of himself a G.o.d. "If I justify myself," said Job, "mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse." And St. John: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." More than this, if we seek perfection in others we deceive ourselves equally and make G.o.ds of men. This is precisely the conclusion at which perverted Freemasonry and the forms of Socialism deriving from it arrive. Human nature, they say, is itself divine; what need then for other divinities? The Catholic Church is consequently quite right in declaring that the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature leads to the deification of humanity in that it puts humanity in the place of G.o.d. The Grand Orient, which definitely accepts this doctrine, has therefore logically erased the name of the Great Architect of the Universe from its ritual and has become an a.s.sociation of Freethinkers and Atheists.
Is it necessary to point out the folly as well as the crime of this delusion--the ludicrous inconsequence of men who divinize humanity yet revile what they call "society"? All the evils of the world, they declare, are not to be found in nature but in "man-made laws," in the inst.i.tutions of "society." Yet what is society but the outcome of human wills, of human aspirations? Society may be, and no doubt is, in need of reformation, but are not its imperfections the creation of imperfect beings? It is true that to-day the world is in a state of chaos, industrial chaos, political chaos, social chaos, religious chaos.
Everywhere men are losing faith in the causes they are supposed to represent; authority questions its own right to govern, democracy is rent with divisions, the ruling cla.s.ses are abdicating in favour of unscrupulous demagogues, the ministers of religion barter their faith for popularity.
And what has brought the world to this pa.s.s? Humanity! Humanity, that all-wise, all-virtuous abstraction that needs no light from Heaven.
Humanity that was to take the place of G.o.d! If ever there was a moment in the history of the world when the futility of this pretension should be apparent it is the present moment. All the ills, all the confusion, what are they but the outcome of human error and of human pa.s.sions? It is not Capitalism that has failed, nor yet Democracy, nor yet even Socialism as a principle, it is not monarchy that has broken down, nor Republicanism, nor again religion; _it is humanity that has broken down_. The ills of Capitalism arise from the egoism of individual capitalists; Socialism has failed because, as Robert Owen discovered, the idle, the quarrelsome, the selfish have prevented its success. If men were perfect, Socialism might succeed, but so might any other system. A perfect capitalist would love his employee as himself, just as a perfect Socialist would be willing to work for the common good. It is the imperfections of human nature that prevent, and will always prevent, any system from being perfect. There will never be a Millennium of man"s making. Only the application of Christian principles to human conduct can bring about a better order of things.
Grand Orient Masonry, in deifying human nature, thus not only builds upon the sand, but by its rejection of all religion takes away the sole hope of human progress. Meanwhile, by the support it lends to Socialism it encourages the cla.s.s war instead of the brotherhood between men of all ranks and conditions which it professes to advocate. British Freemasonry, on the other hand, whilst not interpreting brotherhood in a political sense, nevertheless contributes to social peace. At the annual conference of the Labour Party in 1923 a proposal was made by the extreme section that "any person who is a Free mason should be excluded from any kind of office," it being suggested that "in cases where an understanding has been reached between Trade Union leaders and employers, thus preventing or limiting industrial trouble, the secret has been the bond of Freemasonry."[693] Whether this was the case or not, British Masonry, by taking its stand on patriotism and respect for religion, necessarily tends to unite men of all cla.s.ses and therefore offers a formidable bulwark against the forces of revolution. Any attacks on British Masonry as at present const.i.tuted and directed are therefore absolutely opposed to the interests of the country. But at the same time it behoves Masons to beware of the insidious attempts that are being made by irregular secret societies to infiltrate the Craft and pervert its true principles. The present satisfactory condition of Freemasonry in England is owing not only to its established statutes, but to the character of the men who control it--men who are not, as in eighteenth-century France, mere figureheads, but the real directors of the Order. Should the control ever pa.s.s into the wrong hands and the agents of secret societies succeed in capturing a number of the lodges, this great stabilizing force might become a gigantic engine of destruction. How insidiously these efforts are being made we shall see in the next chapter.
12
SECRET SOCIETIES IN ENGLAND
We have seen that from the Illuminati onwards subversive societies have always sought recruits amongst orthodox Freemasons. The reason for this is obvious: not only do the doctrines of Freemasonry lend themselves to perversion, but the training provided in the Lodges makes an admirable preparation for initiation into other secret systems. The man who has learnt to maintain silence even on what may appear to him as trivialities, who is willing to submit to mystification, to ask no questions, and to recognize the authority of superiors whom he is in no way legally obliged to obey, who has, moreover, become imbued with the _esprit de corps_ which binds him to his fellow-members in a common cause, is naturally a better subject for the secret society adept than the free lance who is liable to a.s.sert his independence at any moment.
Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the nature of the masonic oaths. These terrible penalties, which many Freemasons themselves regret as a survival of barbarism and which have in fact been abolished in the higher degrees, have done much to create prejudice against Freemasonry, whilst at the same time they provide an additional incentive to outside intriguers. In the opinion of M. Copin Albancelli, the abolition of the oath would go far to prevent penetration of British Masonry by the secret societies.
Now, by their obligations British Freemasons are forbidden to join these irregular societies, not only because their principles are in conflict with those of orthodox Masonry, but because in most cases they admit women. According to the ruling of Grand Lodge, "any member working under the English Jurisdiction ... violates his Obligation by being present at or a.s.sisting in a.s.semblies professing to be Masonic which are attended by women." Warnings to this effect have been frequently given in the Lodges; on September 3, 1919, the Board of General Purposes issued the following report:
The Board"s attention is being increasingly drawn to sedulous endeavours which are being made by certain bodies unrecognized as Masonic by the United Grand Lodge of England, to induce Freemasons to join in their a.s.semblies. As all such bodies which admit women to membership are clandestine and irregular, it is necessary to caution Brethren against being inadvertently led to violate their Obligation by becoming members of them or attending their meetings.
Grand Lodge, nine years since, approved the action of the Board in suspending from all Masonic rights and privileges two Brethren who had contumaciously failed to explain the grave Masonic irregularity to which attention is now again called; and it is earnestly hoped that no occasion will arise for having again to inst.i.tute disciplinary proceedings of a like kind.
The idea of women Masons is, of course, not a new one. As early as 1730 lodges for women are said to have existed in France, and towards the end of the century several excellent women, such as the d.u.c.h.esse de Bourbon and the Princesse de Lamballe, played a leading part in the Order. But this _Maconnerie d"Adoption_, as it was called, retained a purely convivial character; a sham ceremonial, with symbols, pa.s.s words, and a ritual, was devised as a consolation to the members for their exclusion from the real lodges. These mummeries were, as Ragon observes, "only the pretexts for a.s.semblies; the real objects were the banquet and the ball, which were their inevitable accompaniments."[694]
But this precedent, inaugurated as a society pastime and accompanied by all the frivolity of the age, paved the way for Weishaupt"s two cla.s.ses of women members, who, although never initiated into the secrets of the Order, were to act as useful tools "directed by men without knowing it."
For this purpose they were to be divided into two cla.s.ses, the "virtuous" to play the part of figureheads or decoys, and the "freer-hearted," who were to carry out the real designs of the Order.
The same plan was adopted nearly a hundred years later by Weishaupt"s disciple Bakunin, who, however, did admit women as actual initiates into his secret society, the Alliance Sociale Democratique, but, like Weishaupt, divided them into cla.s.ses. The sixth category of people to be employed in the work of social revolution is thus described in his programme:
The sixth category is very important. They are the women, who must be divided into three cla.s.ses: the first, frivolous women, without mind or heart, which we must use in the same manner as the third and fourth categories of men [i.e. by "getting hold of their dirty secrets and making them our slaves"]; the second, the ardent, devoted and capable women, but who are not ours because they have not reached a practical revolutionary understanding, without phrase--we must make use of these like the men of the fifth category [i.e. by "drawing them incessantly into practical and perilous manifestations, which will result in making the majority of them disappear while making some of them genuine revolutionaries"]; finally, the women who are entirely with us, that is to say completely initiated and having accepted our programme in its entirety. We ought to consider them as the most precious of our treasures, without whose help we can do nothing.[695]
The first and only woman to be admitted into real Masonry, if such a term can be applied to so heterogeneous a system, was Maria Deraismes, an ardent French Feminist celebrated for her political speeches and electioneering campaigns in the district of Pontoise and for twenty-five years the acknowledged leader of the anti-clerical and Feminist party.[696] In 1882 Maria Deraismes was initiated into Freemasonry by the members of the Lodge _Les Libres Penseurs_, deriving from the Grande Loge Symbolique ecossaise and situated at Pecq in the Department of Seine-et-Oise. The proceeding being, however, entirely unconst.i.tutional, Maria Deraismes"s initiation was declared by the Grande Loge to be null and void and the Lodge _Les Libres Penseurs_ was disgraced.[697] But some years afterwards Dr. George Martin, an enthusiastic advocate of votes for women, collaborated with Maria Deraismes in founding the _Maconnerie Mixte_ at the first lodge of the Order named "Le Droit Humain." The _Supreme Conseil Universel Mixte_ was founded in 1899.
The Maconnerie Mixte was political and in no way theosophical or occult, and its programme, like that of the Grand Orient, was Utopian Socialism, whilst by its insistence on the supremacy of reason it definitely proclaimed its antagonism to all revealed religion. Thus in the involved language of Dr. George Martin himself:
The Ordre Maconnique Mixte Internationale is the first mixed, philosophic, progressive, and philanthropic Masonic Power to be organized and const.i.tuted in the world, placed above all the prooccupations of the philosophical or religious ideas which may be professed by those who ask to become members.... The Order wishes to interest itself princ.i.p.ally in the vital interests of the human being on earth; it wishes above all to study in its Temples the means for realizing Peace between all nations and social Justice which will enable all human beings to enjoy during their lives the greatest possible sum of moral felicity and of material well-being.... Claiming no divine revelation and loudly affirming that it is only an emanation of human reason, this fraternal inst.i.tution is not dogmatic, it is rationalist.[698]
Into this materialist and political club, erected under the guise of Freemasonry, entered Annie Besant with all the strange conglomeration of Eastern doctrines now known as Theosophy.
Theosophy
Before entering on this question it is necessary to make my own position clear. Although I should much prefer not to introduce a personal note into the discussion, I feel that nothing I say will carry any weight if it appears to be an expression of opinion by one who has never considered religious doctrines from anything but the orthodox Christian point of view. I should explain, then, that I have known Theosophists from my early youth, that I have travelled in India, Ceylon, Burma, and j.a.pan and seen much to admire in the great religions of the East. I do not believe that G.o.d has revealed Himself to one portion of mankind alone and that during only the last 1,900 years of the world"s history; I do not accept the doctrine that all the millions of human beings who have never heard of Christ are plunged in spiritual darkness; I believe that behind all religions founded on a law of righteousness there lies a divine and central truth, that Ikhnaton, Moses and Isaiah, Socrates and Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mohammed were all teachers who interpreted to men the aspect of the divine as it had been vouchsafed to them and which in harmony with the supreme revelation given to man by Jesus Christ.
This conception of an affinity between all great religious faiths was beautifully expressed by an old Mohammedan to a friend of the present writer with whom he stood watching a Hindu procession pa.s.s through an Indian village. In answer to the Englishman"s enquiry, "What do you think of this?" the Mohammedan replied:
"Ah, sahib, we cannot tell. We know of three roads up the hill of endeavour to the gates of Paradise--the way of Mousa [Moses], the way of Issa [Jesus], and the way of Mahmoud, and there may be other roads of which you and I know nothing. I was born in the way of Mahmoud, and I believe it to be the best and the easiest to follow, and you were born in the way of Issa. And of this I am very sure: that if you will follow your guide on your road and I follow my guide on my road, when we have climbed the hill of endeavour, we shall salute one another again at the gates of Paradise."
If, then, in the following pages I attempt to show the errors of Theosophy, it is not because I do not recognize that there is much that is good and beautiful in the ancient religions from which it professes to derive.
But what is Theosophy? The word, as we have already seen, was used in the eighteenth century to denote the theory of the Martinists; it was known two centuries earlier when Haselmeyer in 1612 wrote of "the laudable Fraternity of the Theosophists of the Rosy Cross." According to Colonel Olcott, who with Madame Blavatsky founded the modern Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, the word was discovered by one of the members "in turning over the leaves of a Dictionary" and forthwith unanimously adopted.[699] Madame Blavatsky had arrived in America two years earlier, before which date she professed to have been initiated into certain esoteric doctrines in Thibet. Monsieur Guenon, who writes with inside knowledge of the movement, indicates, however, the existence of concealed superiors on the Continent of Europe by whom she was in reality directed.
What is very significant ... is that Madame Blavatsky in 1875 wrote this: "I have been sent from Paris to America in order to verify phenomena and their reality and to show the deception of the Spiritualist theory." Sent by whom? Later she will say: by the "Mahatmas"; but then there was no question of them, and besides it was in Paris that she received her mission, and not in India or in Thibet.[700]
Elsewhere Monsieur Guenon observes that it is very doubtful whether Madame Blavatsky was ever in Thibet at all. These obvious attempts at concealment lead Monsieur Guenon therefore to the conclusion that in the background of Theosophy there existed a mysterious centre of direction, that Madame Blavatsky was simply "an instrument in the hands of individuals or occult groups sheltering behind her personality," and that "those who believe she invented everything, that she did everything by herself and on her own initiative, are as much mistaken as those who, on the contrary, believe her affirmations concerning her relations with the pretended Mahatmas."[701]
There is some reason to believe that the people under whom Madame Blavatsky was working at this date in Paris were Serapis Bey and Tuiti Bey, who belonged to "the Egyptian Brothers." This might answer M.
Guenon"s question: "By whom was she sent to America?" But another pa.s.sage from Madame Blavatsky"s writings, on the person of Christ, that M. Guenon quotes later, indicates a further source of inspiration: "For me, Jesus Christ, that is to say the Man-G.o.d of the Christians, copy of the Avatars of all countries, of the Hindu Chrishna as of the Egyptian Horus, was never a _historical_ personage." Hence the story of His life was merely an allegory founded on the existence of "a personage named Jehoshua born at Lud." But elsewhere she a.s.serted that Jesus may have lived during the Christian era or a century earlier "_as the Sepher Toldoth Jehoshua indicates_" (my italics). And Madame Blavatsky went on to say of the savants who deny the historical value of this legend, that they--
either lie or talk nonsense. _It is our Masters who affirm it_ [my italics]. If the history of Jehoshua or Jesus Ben Pandera is false, then the whole of the Talmud, the whole of the Jewish canon law, is false. It was the disciple of Jehoshua Ben Parachia, the fifth President of the Sanhedrim since Ezra, who re-wrote the Bible....
This story is much truer than that of the New Testament, of which history does not say a word.[702]
Who were the Masters whose authority Madame Blavatsky here invokes?
Clearly not the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood to whom she habitually refers by this term, and who can certainly not be suspected of affirming the authenticity of the Toldoth Yeshu. It is evident, then, that there were other "Masters" from whom Madame Blavatsky received this teaching, and that those other masters were Cabalists.
The same Judaic influence appears more strongly in a book published by the Theosophical Society in 1903, where the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu are quoted at great length and the Christians are derided for resenting the attacks on their faith contained in these books, whilst the Jews are represented as innocent, persecuted victims. One pa.s.sage will suffice to give an idea of the author"s point of view:
The Christ [said the mystics] was born "of a virgin"; the unwitting believer in Jesus as _the_ historical Messiah in the exclusive Jewish sense, and in his being _the_ Son of G.o.d, nay G.o.d Himself, in course of time a.s.serted that Mary was that virgin; whereupon Rabbinical logic, which in this case was simple and common logic, met this extravagance by the natural retort that, seeing that his paternity was unacknowledged, Jesus was therefore illegitimate, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d [_mamzer_].[703]
It is obviously, then, less from Thibetan Mahatmas, Hindu Swamis, Sikh Gurus, or Egyptian Brothers than from Jewish Cabalists that these leaders of Theosophy have borrowed their ideas on Jesus Christ. As the Jewish writer Adolphe Franck has truly observed: "Des qu"il est question de theosophie, on est sur de voir apparaitre la Kabbale."[704] And he goes on to show the direct influence of Cabalism on the modern Theosophical Society.
Mrs. Besant, without endorsing the worst blasphemies of the Toledot Yeshu, nevertheless reflected this and other Judaic traditions in her book _Esoteric Christianity_, where she related that Jesus was brought up amongst the Essenes, and that later He went to Egypt, where He became an initiate of the great esoteric lodge--that is to say, the Great White Lodge--from which all great religions derive. It will be seen that this is only a version of the old story of the Talmudists and Cabalists, perpetuated by the Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, and the nineteenth-century _Ordre du Temple_.[705] But according to one of Mrs.
Besant"s Theosophical antagonists, her doctrine "rests on a perpetual equivocation," and whilst allowing the English public to believe that when she spoke of the coming Christ she referred to the Christ of the Gospels, she stated to her intimates what Mr. Leadbeater taught in his book _The Inner Life_, namely, that the Christ of the Gospels never existed, but was an invention of the monks of the second century.[706]
It should be understood, however, that in the language of the Theosophists, led by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater, Jesus and "the Christ" are two separate and distinct individualities, and that when they now speak of "the Christ" they refer to someone living in a bungalow in the Himalayas with whom Mr. Leadbeater has interviews to arrange about his approaching advent.[707] Portraits of this person have been distributed amongst the members of "The Star in the East," an Order founded at Benares in 1911 by Mr. Leadbeater and J. Krishnamurti for the purpose of preparing the world for the coming of the Great Teacher.
But it is time to return to the alliance between Theosophy and the Maconnerie Mixte. Whether Mrs. Besant, who had begun her career as a Freethinker, retained some lingering belief in her earlier creed at the time she entered into relations with the Order, or whether she saw in this materialistic society a valuable concrete organization for the dissemination of her new esoteric theories, it is impossible to know. At any rate, she rose rapidly through the succeeding degrees and became before long Vice President of the _Supreme Conseil_, which appointed her its national delegate to Great Britain. It was in this capacity that she founded the English branch of the Order under the name of Co-Masonry (that is, admitting both s.e.xes) at the Lodge "Human Duty" in London, which was consecrated on September 26, 1902, and later founded another lodge at Adyar in India, named "The Rising Sun." The number of lodges on the Grand Roll of Co-Masonry, including those abroad, is now said to be no less than 442.
Co-Masonry thus receives a two-fold direction, for whilst remaining in constant correspondence with the _Supreme Conseil Universel Mixte_, situated at 5 Rue Jules-Breton in Paris and presided over by the Grand Master Piron, with Madame Amelie Gedalje, thirty-third degree, as Grand Secretary-General, it receives further instructions from "the V? Ill?
Bro? Annie Besant 33" at Adyar. In order not to shock the susceptibilities of English adepts who might be repelled by the rationalist tendencies of the Maconnerie Mixte, Mrs. Besant has, however, borrowed the formulas of British Masonry together with its custom of placing the V.S.L. on the table in the lodges. These conflicting doctrines are blended in an amusing manner on the certificates of the Order, where at the top we find the French motto and initials:
Liberte egalite Fraternite a? L? G? D? L"H?
(i.e. a la gloire de l"Humanite)
and below, for the benefit of English members, the initials of the British masonic device, that does not of course appear on the diplomas of the French Order, which, like the Grand Orient, has rejected the Great Architect:
T? T? G? O? T? G? A? O? T? U?
(To the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe).
Our Co-Masons therefore enjoy the advantage of being able to choose whether they shall render glory to G.o.d or to Humanity. That the two devices are somewhat incompatible does not appear to strike the English initiates, nor do they probably realize the imposture practised on them by the further wording of the certificate, which, after announcing in imposing capitals "To all Masons dispersed over both Hemispheres, Greeting," goes on to say "We therefore recommend him (_or_ her) as such to all Freemasons of the Globe, requesting them to recognize him (_or_ her) in all the rights and privileges attached to this Degree, as we will do to all presenting themselves under similar circ.u.mstances."