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Subject: Freemasonry
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   Essay #2
   by Wor. Bro. Dennis Stocks, Barron Barnett Lodge.
   
   Following the release of Humanum Genus in 1884 by the Pope, Leo
   Taxil (one of many pseudonyms used by Gabriel Jorgand-Pages - a
   pornographer who had previously attacked the Roman Catholic
   Church in his works) turned his literary talents against
   Freemasonry. In 1886 he produced five exposures and eight bitter
   attacks against the Craft. These included The Three-Point
   Brothers (or The Brethren of the Three Points), The Cultus of the
   Great Architect, Sister Masons (published in 1886), Freemasonry
   Unveiled and Explained, The Vatican and the Masons, The
   Anti-Christ and the Origin of Masonry, The Masonic Assassins and
   The Legend of Pope Pius IX as a Mason. Later, as "Paul Rosen,"
   he published The Social Enemy and Satan and Company. This last
   work was dedicated to Leo XIII and purported to be all the
   secrets of Freemasonry as revealed by a M.Ill. S.G.I.G. of the
   33rd and Last Degree of Freemasonry. A presumably satisfied Leo
   XIII granted him a private audience in 1887.
   
   At this time in France, people had never talked so much about the
   Devil. Numerous books, plays and songs all dealing with Satan
   were flooding the market such as Abbe Decanu's History of Satan,
   and Meyerbeer's Robert the Devil. It may be argued that this was
   coupled to the coming new century lurking on the temporal
   horizon. For Taxil not to involve Satan in his works would have
   appeared to make him ill-informed.
   
   In 1891, Taxil expanded on an earlier work on Adoptive Masonry
   (Les Soeurs Maconnes - Sister Masons) and published Are There
   Women in Freemasonry? (Y a-t-il des femmes dans la
   Franc-Maconnerie?) Answering his own question, Taxil proceeded to
   reveal intimate (in every sense of that word) details of an
   androgynous rite called the "New and Reformed Palladium" which
   was directed from Charleston by one Albert Pike, the "Sovereign
   Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite". This presumed Satanic rite
   had been imported into France by one Phileas Walder who founded
   the Mother-Lodge of the Lotus with the aid of the occultist
   Eliphas Levi who claimed to have, on 24 July 1854, raised the
   spirit of Apollonius of Tyre. Beyond the first three degrees are
   two virulently anti-Christian grades which involve the initiate
   in blasphemy, sacrilege and - in the Temple-Mistress Grade -
   ritualised sex to show "that the sacred act of physical
   generation is the key to the mystery of being".
   
   On the basis of this absurd misinformation, Bishop Fava, the
   impetuous Bishop of Grenoble, published a booklet in which he
   stated that women's lodges constituted a sort of harem for the
   men's lodges.
   
   Taxil (as Dr Bataille) claimed that the virulently anti-Christian
   and satanic Palladium had been brought to France by Phileas
   Walder with the aid of occultist disciples. The Palladium ritual
   involved blasphemy, sacrilege and ritualised sex. However absurd
   this was, the Catholic hierarchy took it seriously and it led to
   another surge of anti-Masonic books. Other authors such as
   Adolphe Ricoux confirmed the existence of the Palladium and
   expanded on Taxil's background. Ricoux went on to describe Pike
   as the "Pope of the Freemasons" sending secret messages to his
   followers. Other anti-Masonic authors, such as Father Leon
   Meurin, a Jesuit bishop who had come from Mauritius, began
   seeking Taxil out to confirm their theories as to the satanic
   nature of Freemasonry. In his book Freemasonry, the Synagogue of
   Satan, the pious Bishop Meurin, who was an erudite Orientalist,
   was quite sure Freemasons worshipped the Devil, having discovered
   satanic allusions in everything pertaining to Freemasonry:
   passwords, aprons, collars etc. Taxil gave him everything he
   wanted. As late as 1957, this work was still being published in
   Spanish translation.
   
   Of course there was no primary source material to support all
   this. There never could be since the whole thing was a
   premeditated and carefully planned hoax on the part of Taxil.
   
   Taxil embellished his creation with lurid illustrations showing
   not only fictitious Palladists in their full Luciferian glory,
   but portraits of real, living Freemasons together with a fine
   collection of both true and invented Masonic documents as well.
   No bureaucratic detail was omitted with the Palladium reported to
   have seven organisational centres - Berlin, Rome, Washington,
   Monte Video (sic), Naples, Calcutta and Charleston. (Note that
   Waite in his encyclopedia's citation on the Pall adium adds Port
   Louis in Mauritius for African control).
   
   Not satisfied with having regained the pinnacle of the
   anti-Masonic crescendo, Taxil now introduced to the world his
   most complicated and ingenious deception -- a reformed and
   repentant ex-Palladist who would reveal the full depths of
   wickedness, depravity and perversions practised by the
   Freemasons.
   
   This quisling, Miss Diana Vaughan, was "born" in July 1895 and
   her story appeared in twenty-four monthly issues of "her" Memoirs
   of an Ex-Palladist. The story recounted how, on Albert Pike's
   death, control of the Palladium and the position as the Supreme
   Dogmatic Director of Universal Freemasonry had passed to Adriano
   Lemmi, the first post-revolutionary Italian Grand Master in Rome
   -- which came, no doubt as a surprise to that worthy Brother!
   After a quarrel with Sophie Walder, Miss Vaughan had gone her own
   way, forming her own "Free and Regenerated Palladium" before
   being, finally, converted to Catholicism.
   
   Her revelations did not match the satanic wonders of "Dr
   Bataille", but she clearly outdid him in libelling living English
   Freemasons. Many harmless Freemasons were implicated during the
   course of her revelations including Dr William Wynn Westcott, the
   head of the English Rosicrucian Society.
   
   Westcott was accused of being "the actual chief of the English
   Luciferians" and the "actual custodian of the diabolical rituals
   of Nick Stone; it is he who is the Supreme Magus of the Socinian
   Rose-Cross for England." Diana Vaughan claimed to have visited
   Westcott's home and made copies of the rituals.
   
   Dr William Wynn Westcott (1848-1925) came to London in 1889 after
   a career as a country doctor. He became a coroner for Central
   London and finally retired from public life in 1918. In 1921 he
   went to Durban, South Africa where he died four years later.
   Although a regular Freemason and a leading member of the SRIA,
   Westcott had a love of fringe societies especially the
   Isis-Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn in the Outer or, more
   commonly, "The Order of the Golden Dawn" which he, G. Samuel
   Liddel Mathers (1854-1918) and Dr William Robert Woodman
   (1829-1891) had formed in 1887-1888.
   
   Westcott and Mathers devised the Order's rituals and liturgy
   allegedly from secret Rosicrucian cipher manuscripts. At its
   height, the society numbered approximately 200 members and became
   influential in certain artistic circles in the 1980's when its
   membership included Algernon Blackwood, W.B. Yeats, Constance
   Wilde (wife of Oscar) and Florence Farr (actress and lover of
   Yeats and Shaw).
   
   One reason for suspecting Westcott and the others was a spurious
   claim that the Ripper murders were ritual sacrifices. Ellic Howe
   has written that, at the time of the murders, the Society was
   "nothing more than a kindergarten for would-be occultists." In
   1897 the authorities had threatened to eject Westcott (who had
   written sixteen books on the occult) from public office due to
   his membership of The Golden Dawn. He immediately left the order
   and severed all ties with his former colleagues. Probably just as
   well, for The Golden Dawn turned somewhat nasty. In 1898,
   Aleister Crowley joined and the Order turned to demonic magic,
   but far removed from ritual murder. Mathers's most aggressive
   magical act was to baptise a number of dried peas with the names
   of his enemies in order to shake them fiercely in a sieve. On the
   other hand, Crowley baptised a frog "Jesus Christ," flogged it
   and crucified it.
   
   On 19 April 1897 when Diana Vaughan was scheduled to present an
   address at the Paris Geographical Society, Taxil appeared alone
   on stage (after ensuring his audience had all left their sticks
   and umbrellas in the cloakroom) and explained how he had been
   hoaxing the intolerant world for twelve years!; how his sole
   purpose had been to discomfort the Roman Catholic Church by
   confronting and feeding it with its own intolerance.
   
   The Catholic world lived isolated from the ordinary world.
   Sheltered behind specially edited newspapers with a style all of
   their own, careful not to read books that were not endorsed or
   recommended, kept in almost complete ignorance of the mechanism
   of their society, they were ready made for the deception in that
   their means of verification of Taxil's claims were almost
   entirely absent.
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   Copyright © 1998 Stephen P. Ryder and John A. Piper. All rights
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