TRACES OF A HIDDEN

TRADITION IN
MASONRY AND
MEDIEVAL MYSTICISM

BY
ISABEL COOPER-OAKLEY

1900
 Traces of a Hidden Tradition by Isabel Cooper-Oakley.
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Contents
Introduction
Towards The Hidden Sources Of Masonry
The Traditions Of The Templars Revived In Masonry
The Troubadours, The Singing Messengers From East To West
THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
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Introduction
THE series of sketches which are now brought together appeared originally as detached
articles in the pages of the Theosophical Review, written, however, with the object of
demonstrating to students of Theosophy that a definite design could be traced beneath
the apparently disconnected mystic doctrines held by the many occult brotherhoods,
heretic sects and mystic associations which cluster so thickly together as we glance
along the historical by-ways of religious thought during the Middle Ages. That object
becomes clearer when they appear as they do now in closer juxtaposition.
To those who wish to understand the reason of this steady recurrence of mystic
tradition in every century, these studies may be of some use. They will serve as literary
landmarks to guide the seeker to those distant sources whence flow faint echoes of
divine truths—the heritage of the divine human race; truths that bring dim memories to
the soul which are its highest impulse, and give the clue that guides it to the inner
"science of the soul"—the mystic quest of all the saints, and the hidden truth that all
religions have tried to teach, and which only a few in each religion have ever realized.
Mystics, visionaries, dreamers of vain dreams have been the names which the scoffers
have always thrown at those who counted the world as nought compared with the
treasure of the unseen life, and who devoted their lives to this divine science, and tried
to reach an understanding of its laws. And as we trace out the records of the past it will
be clearly seen that the Theosophical development is but another link in a wondrous
chain of mystic teaching which stretches far back into the night of time.
Such a claim must be proved and its pretensions shown to be accurate, but it is only by
careful researches in the historical dust-bins of the middle-ages that these data can be
disinterred, and the chain of evidence rendered complete. Then it becomes evident that
Theosophy is that glorious wisdom-religion which includes in its scope all religions and
all philosophies.
And as we piece together the fragments of these historical relics, they waken delicate
memories of the divine dreamer Dionysius the Areopagite, hallowed echoes of John
Scotus Erigena, and thus we come face to face with the holy secrets of tender mystical
souls who sought the true meaning of life. We get strange glimpses of the intense
devotion of the scholastic divines, and monks to whom the unseen life was an intense
and vital reality. The thoughts of Averroes and the Arabian mystics emerge—they who
brought much of the Eastern truth and who founded the great occult schools of the once
glorious Toledo, whence flowed a stream of thought, which formed the very life and soul
of the heresies—so-called—of the Middle Ages. Nor may we omit the lore of the Eastern
and Syrian monasteries to whom the books of Dionysius had taken the wisdom of
Plotinus. Nor can the troubadours be passed by, the singers of mystic songs, and
carriers of occult knowledge.
Singers, scholars, saints, and martyrs, a goodly array of men and women, all seeking the
soul, and the soul's true world. Looked at from without, such a view appears like a worn
mosaic pavement, broken, defaced, with many gaps lacking to make a perfect picture,
and yet as we search and piece the apparently broken fragments the design begins to
unfold itself, and finally the picture may be traced in perfect outline. For at the back of
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all these varying streams of thought there may be found one centre whence all diverge,
and that great fount was named in ancient India, Brahma-Vidyâ, the Theosophia of the
Neo-Platonists.
This ancient Wisdom Religion is the "thread-soul" on which are strung all the various
incarnations and encasements of the religious life, adapted to the changing conditions
and developments of humanity in its growth from childhood to manhood.
Begotten by that spiritual Hierarchy in whose guardianship is the evolution of the
human race, brought forth from them, they, the guardians of the mystic tradition, give to
those children of men who are strong enough for the burden, a portion of the real
teaching of the Divine Science 1 concerning God and man, and the wonderful relationship
that exists between the two.
With the passing of time the old orders changed, old forms perished, and the divine Sun
that shone on the ever-changing screen of time veiled itself in new hues, and gathered
into new groupings the humanity of the Western races, and each century which rolled
by evolved a new phase of the ancient mystic tradition.
In the olden days men fought for their faiths, for they identified the form with that
divine Life which lies at the back of all forms, and the changing of an outward veil shook
their belief in the Holy Spirit, which it did but shroud. They feared change and sought to
crystallize the Spirit, and this fear of change gave rise to that tenacious hold on outward
ceremonies which has wrought so much evil in all the religions of the world.
Religious parties, secret societies, sects of every description, such is the shifting
panorama of the religious life of Europe during the last eighteen hundred years, and as
we glance back from our present standpoint, it is difficult at times to discern the mystic
traditions, so loud is the clamour of contending sects over their formal doctrines, the
outward expressions of their inner faith.
A word may here be said to guard against one error that might arise with regard to the
spiritual Hierarchy before mentioned, the guardians of the world's religions. It is from
this great communion that the World-Saviours have from time to time come forth, and
from this centre have sprung all the "Sons of God."
The inception of all religions is from them, but lesser men build up the body; like wise
teachers, they do not force dogmas on a child humanity. We see ordinary mankind
prolific in building moulds for their faiths, heaping dogma upon dogma; but in tracing
back all the religions to their founders, it may be seen that at the beginning the outward
observances were ever subordinated to the inner life, the forms and ceremonies in fact,
were merely organized in order to turn the attention of man to the inner and spiritual
aspect of life. This method of training receives its completest exposition in the ancient
code of Manu, where the whole daily life of ancient India was directed, by its very
organization, towards the religious aspect. In the West this ideal was revived under the
monastic orders, but since it was chiefly done under the rigid doctrinal supervision of
the Catholic Church, the ideal of the simple spiritual life was crushed.
For the building of form—even religious form—is materializing in its tendency, and
thus we see that in all the centuries subsequent to the inception of Christianity, the

1This "Science of the Soul" is the fact against which the Roman Church waged such bitter war, and formed
the basis for the attack upon the various sects such as the Albigenses, Patarini, and Vaudois, all remnants
of Gnostic sects.
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tendency of every "reformation" has been to throw back, if possible, to the original
standard erected by the Founder. On careful investigation, for instance, the Christ
appears responsible only for certain high and pure ideals, insistence being made on a
holy life leading to a divine goal. The doctrines and elaborations which were later
introduced arose in every case from the followers, who brought in their more worldly
aims, and transformed thereby the purity and simplicity of the early ideal into an ornate
body, 2 with worldly passions and constant strivings for mundane power.
Hence we find at the end of the nineteenth century, on one side the Catholic Church, on
the other the Protestant, and between the extremes of these doctrinal communities, a
fluctuating, ever-increasing body of thinkers, formed by the mystics and idealists of
both parties, who from century to century have been at variance with their "orthodox"
brethren, seeking a higher truth, a purer ideal, than those offered by the dogmatists.
The doctrines hidden in the secret fraternities have been handed down in regular
succession from first to last. We can see that the esoteric teachings in Egypt, in Persia,
and in Greece, were kept from the ears of an illiterate multitude precisely because it was
known that they could not, in their then uneducated and ignorant condition, understand
the deeper truth of Nature and of God. Hence the secrecy with which these pearls of
great price were guarded and handed on with slight modifications into the possession of
those grand early Christians, the Gnostics, the so-called heretics; then straight from the
Gnostic schools of Syria and Egypt to their successors the Manichæans, and from these
through the Paulicians, Albigenses, Templars and other secret bodies—these occult
traditions have been bequeathed to the mystic bodies of our own times. Persecuted by
Protestants on one side and by Catholics on the other, the history of mysticism is the
history of martyrdom.
It is sometimes said that modern Theosophy is of sporadic growth and can show no sure
basis, no line of religious or spiritual ancestry. But very little research proves the
contrary, proves indeed that in spite of the many forms—religious bodies, secret
societies, occult groups, Protestant reforms, and Catholic heresies—there is distinct
evidence that there are certain points on which all of the various orders meet in accord,
and that when these points are brought together, there appear self-revealed the same
underlying teachings which form the basis of the great Wisdom Religion, parent and
children standing out in unmistakable relation. For as King truly remarks:
Hippolytus . . . . . was right in calling all these heresies nothing better than the old
philosophies disguised under new names; his only error lay in not going back far
enough to find their ultimate source. 3
Let us turn to that great conception, the doctrine of reincarnation, sometimes less
correctly termed metempsychosis or transmigration. This tenet is the basis of the old

2 "The favour and success of the Paulicians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries must be imputed to the
strong, though secret, discontent which armed the most pious Christians against the Church of Rome. Her
avarice was oppressive, her despotism odious; less degenerate, perhaps, than the Greeks in the worship
of saints and images, her innovations were more rapid and scandalous."—Gibbon (E.), Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, Vol. IX., chap. liv., p. 289. In Italy the descendants of the Manichæans were termed
Cathari, sometimes Gazari, or "The Pure." A good account, with many references, is to be found in
Fuesslins (Johann Conrad), Neue and unpartheyische Kirchen and Ketzerhistorie der Mittlern Zeit.
Frankfurt u. Leipzig, 1770.
3 King (C. W.), The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 13. London, 1887.
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Wisdom Religion, or Brahma-Vidyâ, and can be distinctly traced in all those mystic
societies which draw their spiritual life from Gnostic sources. As Lecky 4 says:
The doctrine of transmigration was emphatically repudiated by the Catholics; the
human race was isolated by the scheme of redemption, more than ever from all other
races, and it was against this isolation that the mystics, or so-called heretics, struggled;
this ancient doctrine of the transmigration of the soul was one of the heretical opinions
for which the Cathari 5 were persecuted by the Catholic Church. It was very freely taught
by the Troubadours in their mystic poems; a monk in his attack on Troubadour heretics
mentions this doctrine with much scoffing and ridicule. We owe a debt of thanks to
many such opponents, for they often show us where traces of the "Secret Doctrine " are
to be found. For instance, it is to the orthodox and pious Catholic, Eugène Aroux, that we
owe a mass of most important and valuable information on the Troubadours and their
religious mission; their connection with mystic bodies, and the esoteric interpretation
of their poems. Information as to their tenets which is not divulged by the mystics
themselves is often given to us by their opponents, whose dissertations provide us with
much evidence.
Such research indeed reveals a new phase, for out of the dim obscurity which shrouds
the early centuries, undoubted historic evidence can be found of a wide-spread occult
fraternity, which under various names has introduced into many societies the hidden
aspect of spiritual truths, striving to avert the materializing tendency by turning the
eyes of men to the inner instead of the outer life.
Three principal streams of religious thought can be distinctly traced as we struggle
through the labyrinth of evidences, and these may not inappropriately be termed the
Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine doctrines, the last being the fountain-head of all the
later Christian mystical heresies. The Johannine doctrine caused great excitement in the
fourteenth century, the details of which will be given when we come to that period. It
must be borne in mind that the true occultism, the real mysticism, is essentially
religious in its nature, and students of Theosophy must not be surprised to find that
some of the historical religious sects 6 have had their foundation in occultism and
Theosophy. Such for instance are the Albigenses and the Waldenses, the forerunners of
the Wesleyans, the Quietists and Quakers. These appear side by side with the
Rosicrucians, the Knights Templars, the Fratres Lucis and many other sects who hold
the same religious tenets.
This view will necessarily arouse some criticism, for the standard orthodox works on all
the sects and heresies studiously omit every reference to occultism, and in some cases
the real tradition can scarcely be found, so carefully is every reference to it extirpated
from ordinary history.

4 Lecky (W. E., M.A.), History of European Morals, Vol. II. p. 167. Third Edition. London, 1877.
5 Says Lea: "Transmigration provides for the future reward or punishment of deeds done in life." Lea
(Henry Charles), A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Vol. I., p. 91, 98. Schmid (C.), Histoire et
Doctrine de la Secte des Cathares ou Albigeois, Vol. II., p. 256. Paris, 1849. Says: "La Metempsycose
enseignée par l’une les écoles Cathares se retrouve également dans le Manichéisme."
6 The principal secret societies take St. John as their patron saint as we shall see when dealing with the

details of many of these bodies. Notably is this the case with many of the Masonic bodies. See the articles
on "Johannesbrüder" and "Johanneschristen" in Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, Zweite völlig
umgearbeitete Auflage; ii. p. 68. Leipzig, 1865.
 5

It is only by searching into the records themselves that the real evidences of such
esoteric doctrine are discovered, and it is in truth somewhat startling to find so many,
while the outside public is in total ignorance of the very existence of a mystic tradition
or a secret doctrine, or a spiritual Hierarchy. On this point a well-known writer on
mysticism says:
The publication of the life and times of Reuchlin, who exercised so marked an influence
over Erasmus, Luther, Melancthon, and the chief spirits of his age will, I trust, afford a
key to many passages of the German Reformation which have not yet been understood
in this country. They will reveal many of the secret causes, the hidden springs, which
were moving the external machinery of several ecclesiastical reforms, which were
themselves valuable rather as symbols of a spiritual undercurrent than as actual
institutions and establishments. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Fortunate is it
for the student of truth when he can thus discover the causes of effects, when he is
allowed to examine the origin of those changes and revolutions, which but for this
intelligible process would look like monstrous and unaccountable abortions, obeying no
law and owning no reason. Fortunate is he who is thus allowed to step behind the
scenes of the world's drama and hear the plans proposed and the pros and cons of the
councillors which give rise to lines of action. 7
Truly one could almost think a Theosophist was writing the paragraph just quoted. The
whole of Reuchlin's period will, we hope, be dealt with in due course, and a digest of the
mysticism of this period made.
As already said, the occult doctrines of the Gnostics were heirlooms and sacred
traditions from a very distant past, and when the early Christian era dawned, the human
race had long been plunged in the darkening and materializing tendencies of the Black
Age. 8 Soon indeed, the Gnosis was rejected by the orthodox church, and the sacred and
secret teachings of the great Master Jesus became materialized; they have, however,
never been lost, and traces of them can be discerned from epoch to epoch.
Says Marras 9 in his interesting study:
When therefore we speak of the continuation of their doctrines during the Middle Ages,
we mean only a secret transmission of certain opinions, either in a number of families
whose inner doctrines did not correspond to their outward profession of faith, or in the
midst of certain sects which had had relations with the Gnostics The vitality of the
Manichæans was wonderful; notwithstanding the severe persecution they endured in
the heathen as well as the Christian Roman Empire, they survived both in the East and
in the West, and often reappeared in the Middle Ages in different parts of Europe.
Manichæism dared to do what Gnosticism had never ventured upon: it openly entered
the lists against the Church in the fifth century, but the civil authority came to aid the
religious authority in repressing it. The Manichæans wherever they appeared were
immediately attacked: they were condemned in Spain in the year 380, and at Trèves in
385, in their representatives the Priscillianists; the Empire seems determined to

7 The Life and Times of John Reuchlin or Capnion, by Francis Barham (editor of the Hebrew and English
Bible. London, 1843), p. 17.
8 The Kali-Yuga of the Hindus.
9 Marras (P.), Secret Fraternities of the Middle Ages, pp. 19-21. London, 1865.
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annihilate Manichæism 10, as well as Gnosticism when suddenly the latter arose under a
new form and under a new name—that of Paulicianism.
In order that our readers may follow this line of. study more clearly, it will be well to
group the evidences of each century together. We must bear in mind that many of these
societies stretch back through several centuries, and are not limited to one date or
confined to one period. The consequent overlapping makes one of the difficulties of
following these evidences of the secret tradition. Sometimes a body will remain the
same, changing only its name, but keeping the same tenets. This is markedly the case
with the Albigenses, the Paulicians, the Waldenses, and many of the middle age
bodies—the Rosicrucians and others. Then again, we find that the same terms are
sometimes used for the highest spiritual sciences and at others debased by the usage of
charlatans. Theurgy, alchemy, mysticism, occultism, theosophy, yoga, all these names
have been alternately used to indicate the purest and highest ideal of development for
man, and then adopted by those who sought in them but their own selfish ends. To
discriminate between these extremes, to find the true and leave the false mysticism, is
then the aim in view. It is perhaps simplest to begin with the present era and trace the
way back through the darkness of the middle ages to the period when the Gnostic
schools still preserved to a great extent the sacred Eastern traditions. 11 The details of
that period must be left to hands more skilled to treat the subject.
Let us then take a survey of the last nine centuries of the Christian era, and in a series of
sketches substantiate with historical facts the proposition here but briefly outlined: that
the ancient Wisdom Religion, or Theosophia, has had throughout these periods its
votaries, teachers, messengers and followers, that the Great Lodge has never been
without its representatives, and in truth that the guidance of the spiritual evolution of
the world by this body of teachers can be discerned by those who search the records.
The wave of gross materialism which swept over the Western world is now but slowly
rolling away. The deplorable scepticism of our own day is but the result, and the natural
result, of the methods adopted by the Catholic and Protestant Churches in the struggles
of the Middle Ages. It has already been pointed out as one of the basic teachings of
Theosophy that part of the evolutionary progress is the breaking up of forms in order
that the spiritual nature of man may find wider conditions. In both of these Churches
the extremes of dogmatic limitation were reached, the result being an ever increasing
irritation of the more highly educated people against dogmas which were contrary to
reason, and forms of faith which degraded the God they were supposed to uphold. For
the Protestants believed in the verbal inspiration of an inaccurately translated Bible,

10 In his last years the Pope had leisure to turn his arms against the Manichæan heretics, who, starting

from the mountains of Bulgaria, carried their pure but stern religion westwards in a constant stream
which never lost touch with its fountain-head, and under the names of Paterini, Ketzer, and Albigenses,
earned the execration of their contemporaries, and the respect of posterity. Browning (Oscar), Guelphs
and Ghibellines: a short History of Mediæval Italy from 1250-1409, p. 10, 1893.
11 One curious fact which makes a further identity between these bodies is given by H. C. Lea, in

his History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Vol. I., p. 92. London, 1888. "A further irrefragable
evidence of the derivation of Catharism from Manichæism is furnished by the Sacred thread and garment
which were worn by all the Perfect among the Cathari. This custom is too peculiar to have had an
independent origin, and is manifestly the Mazdean kosti and saddarah, the sacred thread and shirt, the
wearing of which was essential to all' believers, and the use of which by both Zends and Brahmins shows.
that its origin is to be traced to the prehistoric period anterior to the separation of those branches of the
Aryan family. Among the Cathari the wearer of the thread and vestment was what was known among the
inquisitors as the hæreticus indutus or vestitus, initiated into all the mysteries of the heresy."
 7

claiming that their God gave his fiat in books whose historical basis is now shown to be
unreliable. All who refused the letter of the law and sought the spirit which lay behind
were cast out. We have but to search the records of the Puritans and some other
Protestant bodies to see how rigid were their dealings with those who rejected their
narrow theological dogmas. 12
The Catholic Church permitted no education, no freedom of religious thought, and,
knowing the unstable basis on which she stood, the Dominicans in the early middle ages
took up the very simple position of entirely forbidding the reading of the Bible, except in
such scamped versions as were authorized; and all who did not obey were removed by
the Church. Indeed, the bloodiest and blackest records that history can show us are the
attacks of the Catholic Church on the mystics of all these centuries.
"We do condemn to perpetual infamy the Cathari, the Patarines, the Leonists, the
Speronists, and the Arnoldists circumcised, and all other heretics of both sexes by what
name soever they are called. . . . And in case any man by a presumptuous attempt, being
instigated thereto by the enemy of mankind, shall in any way endeavour the infraction
of them [i.e., the laws against the heretics] let him be assured, that by so doing, he will
incur the indignation of Almighty God, and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul!"
Thus thundered Pope Honorius III. in the fourteenth century. 13 To give one solitary
instance out of the numerous condemnations that fluttered about the mystic path.
Indeed it is hardly credible, even with the records open before us, that such inhuman
tortures as were perpetrated on some of the mystic sects enumerated could have been
devised in the name of a Saviour of mercy and love. Such fiendish barbarity, however,
brought its own karma, a rich reward of hatred, scepticism and unbelief. The education
and knowledge that the Church discountenanced and withheld were reached by natural
evolution; the priests who should have been the spiritual leaders were overthrown and
cast down, and the result was that education fell into the hands of materialistic and
rationalistic thinkers, and the spiritual aspect . of life was crushed out.
During the dark days of the revolution in France, it was the mystics who most bitterly
deplored the growing scepticism. The materialists were the enemies of mystics,
occultists and religionists of every kind, Catholic and Protestant. The Catholic party
tried to father the outbreak of the revolution on the mystics. The Abbé Barruel in his
book on Jacobinism 14 has taken every pains to do this, as also have the Abbé Migne and
many others. But the appalling corruption of the Catholic Church, conjoined with her
insistence on the ignorance of the people, was one of the great factors in that terrible
outbreak.
In a very interesting correspondence between the Baron Kirschberger de Liebesdorf
and Louis Claude de St. Martin, 15 the situation is most clearly described, and the
following important extract shows the insidious method of work adopted by the
German materialistic school, the enemy alike of mystics and Churches.
The Baron writes:

12 See the execution and trial of Servetus, 1553, Willis (R., M.D.) Servetus and Calvin. A Study of an
important Epoch in the early History of the Reformation; p. 480. London, 1877.
13 History of the Christian Church, by the Rev. Henry Stebbing, A.M. (London, 1834), ii., 301.
14 Barruel: Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire du Jacobinisme, 4 vols. London, 1797.
15 Le Philosophe Inconnu, the leader of the Martinists.
 8

"MORAT, June, 1795.

". . . . Unbelief has actually formed a well-organized club; it is a great tree which
overshadows a considerable portion of Germany, bearing very bad fruit, and pushing its
roots even into Switzerland. The enemies of the Christian religion have their affiliations,
their lookers-out, and a well-established correspondence; they have a provincial for
each department, who directs the subaltern agents; they control the principal German
newspapers; these newspapers are the favourite reading of the clergy who do not like to
study; in them they puff the writings which air their views, and abuse all besides; if a
writer ventures to rise against this despotism, he can hardly find a publisher who will
take charge of his manuscript. This is what they can do in the literary way; but they have
much more in their power than this. If there is a place vacant in the public instruction
department . . . they have three or four candidates all ready, whom they get presented
through different channels; . . . in this way is constituted the University of Göttingen. . . .
Another grand means which they employ is that of . . . calumny. This is all the easier for
them, that most of the Protestant ecclesiastics, are, unhappily, their zealous agents; and
as this class has a thousand ways of mixing everywhere, they can at pleasure circulate
reports which are sure to hit their mark, before one knows anything about it, or is able
to defend oneself. This monstrous coalition has cost its chief, an old man of letters at
Berlin and at the same time one of the most celebrated publishers of Germany, thirty
years' labour. He has edited the first journal of the country ever since 1765; his name is
Frederick Nicolaï. This Bibliothèque Germanique has, by its agents, taken hold also of the
spirit of the Literary Gazette of Jena, which is very well got up, and circulates wherever
the German language is known. Besides this Nicolaï influences the Berlin Journal, and
the Museum, two works of repute. Political organization and affiliated societies were
established, when these journals had sufficiently disseminated their venom. Nothing
can equal the constancy with which these people have followed their plan. They have
moved slowly, but surely; and, at the present hour, their progress has been so
enormous, and their influence become so frightful, that no effort can now avail against
them; Providence alone can deliver us from this plague.
At first, the march of the Nicolaïtes was very circumspect; they associated the best
heads of Germany in their Bibliothèque Universelle, their scientific articles were
admirable, and the reviews of theological works occupied a considerable portion of
every volume. These reviews were composed with so much wisdom that our professors
in Switzerland recommended them in their public discourses to our young Churchmen.
But they let in the poison [of materialism] a little at a time and very carefully. 16
This organized conspiracy was the result of the methods adopted by the Catholic
Church. Men demanded knowledge, sought knowledge, and attained knowledge, but
only of the material side of life. Shocked by the barbaric superstitions and illogical
dogmas insisted on by the Church, the revolt of reason threw men back into a
dogmatism which was scarcely less rigid than the one they had left. The study of history,
the knowledge of science, all tended to show the superficiality of that basis on which the
Catholic Church had reared herself, and the leaders of thought who led this revolt, the
Encyclopædists in France and the Nicolaïtes in Germany, were the bitter fruit of Catholic
karma. They banded themselves together, and it was this body of sceptics and their
organized conspiracy for which the Abbé Barruel and others tried to make the mystics

16 La Correspondance inédite de L. C. Saint-Martin et Kirchoerger, Baron de Liebistorf (1792-1797). Paris,

1862; pp. 195, 196.

 9

responsible. The Church blamed others for the results of her own work, and the poison
of unbelief and deadly materialism was meantime being slowly spread in Europe by the
Nicolaïtes.
They tried to crush out all belief in or investigations into the unseen life and its forces.
Hence their bitter and criminal attacks upon the Comte de St. Germain, Cagliostro, Saint
Martin, and also upon the various mystical secret societies and Freemasonry in general.
Keeping this powerful and malignant organization 17 in view, we shall better understand
the charges brought against the various mystics above mentioned. It is only in the
course of research that it is possible to realize the vindictiveness and argus-eyed
watchfulness with which these Nicolaïtes pursued mysticism and Freemasonry. Article
after article, book upon book, was produced, one and all from the same source, each
teeming with the same poisonous intent, the destruction of mysticism and the crushing
out of the spiritual life.
The eighteenth century is perhaps the most difficult in which to sift the true tradition
from the spurious; mushroom-like, semi-mystical societies sprang up on all sides,
claiming occult knowledge and mystic teaching; but when these claims are sifted for
verification they lack the stamp of high morality and purity which is the ineffaceable
mark of all that emanates from the Great Lodge; hence in selecting the societies and
bodies which will be dealt with and studied in detail, only those have been chosen in
which outer and inner investigation proves their unmistakable origin to be from a
source whose ideals are pure and holy.
That there was definite connection between the various sects, societies, and heresies, is
evident; they had moreover a common language of signs, by which they could make
themselves known to each other. Says Rossetti, speaking of the fourteenth century:
There are some events in history, whether literary, or political, or ecclesiastical, which
at first sight appear to us quite enigmatical; but when once aware of the existence of the
marked language of the secret Anti-papal Sects (especially of the Society of the
Templars, and the Patarini, or Albigenses, or Cathari, with whom the learned in Italy
were then so strictly connected), we find them very intelligible and clear. 18
I
So that Rossetti speaks in the same manner as Barham in the passage already cited
about a secret force 19 permeating the outer society. Again he says:
Why were the Templars, who were members of the most illustrious families in Europe,
sacrificed by hundreds in different countries? Why were the Patarini burned alive in
almost every city? History tells us: they belonged to secret societies, and professed

17 The Nicolaïtes.
18 Disquisitions on the Anti papal Spirit which produced the Reformation, by Gabriele Rossetti, Prof. of
Italian Literature at King's College (London, 5834), ii. 156. He is here referring to a secret language, the
existence of which was known to many writers.
19 Says Lea in speaking of Calabria: "The Heretics sought and obtained in 1497 from King Frederic the

confirmation by the crown of agreements. . . . They were visited every two years by the travelling pastors
or barbes, who came in pairs, an elder known as the reggitore, and a younger, the coadiutore, journeying
with some pretence of occupation, finding in every city the secret band of believers whom it was their
mission to comfort and keep steadfast in the faith Everywhere they met friends acquainted with their
secret passwords, and in spite of ecclesiastical vigilance there existed throughout Italy a subterranean
network of heresy disguised under outward conformity."—Lea (H. C.), History of the Inquisition of the
Middle Ages; II., pp. 268, 269. New York; 1888.
 10

doctrines inimical to Rome. What those doctrines were is well known, as far as regards
the Patarini. 20
Rossetti then proceeds to mention the Albigenses as a sect emanating from the
Templars, who themselves held Eastern doctrines, a fact not found in the ordinary
standard dictionaries of heresies, for the connection between those religious bodies, the
Templars, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons is entirely suppressed, yet the
historical links are all to be found by the unprejudiced student.
The rough enumeration which now follows of the mystical societies and so-called
heresies serves only as a guide to where the evidence can be found.
They are, moreover, selected from many other bodies simply because in their inception
they fulfil the before-mentioned conditions of purity and morality combined with occult
knowledge. Some few societies, or groups rather, have been omitted simply because
they are so occult that very little outer historical evidence is forthcoming. Facts are
known about them by a limited number of people; but they stand more as the inspirers
of the bodies here enumerated than in their ranks. A few names of leading mystics are
also given, so that students may be able to trace the groups to which they are related.
Eighteenth century: The Fratres Lucis, or The Knights of Light; The Rosicrucians; The
Knights and Brothers Initiate of St. John the Evangelist from Asia, or the Asiatische
Brüder; The Martinists; The Theosophical Society 21; The Quietists; The Knights-
Templars; Some Masonic Bodies.
Seventeenth century: The Rosicrucians; The Templars; The Asiatische Brüder;
Academia di Secreti, at the home of John Baptista Porta; The Quietists, founded by
Michael de Molinos; and the whole group of Spanish mystics.
Sixteenth century: The Rosicrucians became widely known; The Order of Christ, derived
from the Templars; Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, in connection with a secret
association; Saint Teresa; St. John of the Cross; Philippe Paracelsus; The Fire
Philosophers; Militia Crucifera Evangelica, under Simon Studion; The Mysteries of the
Hermetic Masters.
Fifteenth century: The Fratres Lucis at Florence, also the Platonic Academy; The
Alchemical Society; Society of the Trowel; The Templars; The Bohemian Brothers, or
Unitas Fratrum; The Rosicrucians.
Fourteenth century: The Hesychasts, or the precursors of the Quietists; The Friends of
God; German Mysticism, led by Nicholas of Basle; Johann Tauler; Christian Rosencreutz;
The great Templar persecution; The Fraticelli.
Thirteenth century: The Brotherhood of the Winkelers; The Apostolikers; The Beghards
and the Beguinen; The Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit; The Lollards; The
Albigenses, crushed out by the Catholic Church; The Troubadours.
Twelfth century: The Albigenses appear, probably derived from Manichæans, who
settled in Albi; The Knights Templars, publicly known; The Cathari, widely spread in
Italy; The Hermetists.

20 Op. Cit., I. 148.

21 Founded in London, 1767, by Benedicte Chastamer, a mystic mason.
 11

Eleventh century: The Cathari and Patarini, condemned by the .Roman Church, both
derived from Manichæans; The Paulicians with the same tradition, also persecuted; The
Knights of Rhodes and of Malta; Scholastic Mystics.
Tenth century: Paulicians: Bogomiles; Euchites; Manichæans.
From the Ninth century to the Third century the following organisations and sects
appear: Manichæans; Euchites; Magistri Comacini; 22 Dionysian Artificers; Ophites;
Nestorians; Eutychians.
In the Fourth century the central figure for all occult students is the great Iamblichus;
the forerunner of the Rosicrucians; and in the Third century we find Manes, the widow's
son, the link for all of those who believe in the great work done by the "Sons of the
Widow" and the Magian Brotherhood.
The various sects and bodies here detailed should not, of course, be understood as
belonging exclusively to the century under which they appear in the above
classification. All that this list is intended to convey is that such sects were more
markedly prominent during the century in which they are placed.
The possibility of dealing with mysticism and the real mystic societies consists in the
fact that we are dealing with a certain definite teaching, its difficulty consists in the fact
that the outward presentation is constantly changing according to the exigencies of the
period. New teachers are sent to build new forms, for the tendency to crystallize and to
petrify is the natural inclination of the human mind; the emotional nature clings fondly
to familiar conditions, but these belong to the "natural body" and we are following the
evolution of the "spiritual body." Through forms and phases many and painful does the
soul acquire experience. Hence all these many societies have been but the schools
through which the souls have been passing, and wherein they have acquired knowledge.
Thus the study of mysticism in the Middle Ages places before us a landscape flickering
with shadow and with light, and the people who travel across that tract are alternately
in light and shade, and their experiences, bitter as well as sweet, belong to all pilgrims
who are seeking truth in the perplexities of the changing phases of human life.

22Llorente (J. A.). Hist. of the Inquisition. London, 1826. Merzario (Giuseppe, Prof.); I Maestri
Comacìni; Milano; 1893. This author says: "In this darkness which extended over all Italy, only one small
lamp remained alight, making a bright spark in the vast Italian necropolis. It was from the Magistri
Comacini. Their respective names are unknown, their individual works unspecialized, but the breath of
their spirit might be felt all through those centuries, and their name collectively is legion. We may safely
say that of all the works of art between 800 and 1000, the greater and better part are due to that
brotherhood—always faithful and often secret—of the Magistri Comacini."
 12

Towards The Hidden Sources Of

Masonry
As researches into its history are pursued, it appears more and more probable that the
Masonic movement, to state it generally, was a sort of broad, semi-mystic and largely
moral movement, worked from certain unknown centres, and deriving its origin from
some ancient and not generally known basis. That is to say, its basis was, and is,
unknown to all of those who do not recognise a definitely spiritual guidance in the
practical, mental, and moral developments which from time to time change the surface
of society by the introduction of new factors into the evolving processes of which life
consists. Researches into Masonic literature must be made in many languages and
countries before this view can be firmly established for the general world, but to the
student of Theosophy who is also a student of Masonry it becomes more and more
apparent that the movement which is generally termed Masonic had its roots in that
true mysticism which originated, as an ideal effort, from the spiritual Hierarchy which
guides the evolution of the world; and that, however much the branches may be
separated from the root-idea, there is nevertheless a mystic teaching in Masonry for
those who will seek below the surface.
One such searcher into the origin of Masonry gives the following interesting and
suggestive passage in his study on the discoveries respecting the obelisk made by
Commander Gorringe, which tend to "prove that an institution similar to Freemasonry
existed in Egypt," and the writer proceeds:
According to our reading of history, the priesthoods of Belus, or Baal in Assyria, of Osiris
in Egypt, of Jehova in Palestine, of Jupiter in Greece and Rome, of Ahura-Mazda in Persia,
of Brahma in India, and of Teutates in Britain, were primitive secret societies, who
instructed and governed the primitive families and races. It little matters whether we
call the members of those
priesthoods Belites, Pastophori, Levites, Curetes, Magi, Brahmins, or Druids; they were
connected by secret ties, and intercommunicated from the Indus to the Tiber, from the
Nile to the Thames. Hence there ever has been, is, and ever will be Freemasonry on our
planet. Masonry was ever more or less connected with priesthoods till about the
thirteenth century of our era, when Masons declared
themselves Freimaurer (Freemasons). Since about that period priesthoods have ever
denounced and persecuted Freemasonry. 23
The evidences of the basic mystic teaching can be largely traced by watching the eddies
and undercurrents which constantly break the smooth stream of ordinary Masonry.
Frequently do we find other and smaller bodies, whose mystic aim was more marked
and whose occult tendencies were more decidedly definite, springing up within the
larger organization. Some few members with deeper insight gather round themselves
others with the same tendencies, and thus we find formations of smaller societies
constantly taking place. It is the main features of some of these that we are now going to
outline, and after we have briefly reviewed the sources from which some of the leading

23 Weisse, M.D. (John A.), Obelisk and Freemasonry, p.p. 94, 95. New York; 1880.
 13

Masons draw their historical Masonic tradition, we can pass from the general outline to
the smaller societies, and it will be seen that the same traditions reappear in them.
And in corroboration of the hypothesis just enunciated, the words of a well-known
Mason may be quoted, who in summing up an admirable lecture which had just been
delivered by a Brother Mason spoke as follows:
A thoughtful consideration of our principal ceremony irresistibly leads us to the
doctrine that was typified by the pastos in the King's Chamber of the great Pyramid, and
connects with the main characteristic of all the mysteries, which embodied the highest
truths then known to the illuminated ones.
. . . The twelfth century witnessed an outbreak of mystic symbolism, perhaps
unparalleled in our era, and gave us the religious legends of the Holy Grail, which point
to an eastern origin; this period coincides with the greatest popularity of the Templars,
whose fall is contemporaneous with the decadence noticed by the lecturer.
Without pressing the argument, I may suggest that some portion, at least, of our
symbolism may have come through a Templar source, Romanist yet deeply tinged with
Gnosticism; while at a later date the Lollards (supposed to be inheritors of Manichæism)
and who were but one of the many religio-political societies with which Europe was
honeycombed, possibly introduced or revived some of these teachings. . . . One thing is
certain, that satisfactory renderings of our symbols can only be obtained by a study of
eastern mysticism: Kabalistic, Hermetic, Pythagorean and Gnostic.
Down the centuries we find enrolled the names of philosophic teachers who veiled their
doctrines in figures similar to those in vogue among the Rosicrucians and still more
recent students, and often identical with the signs we blazon on the walls of our Lodges
and Chapters. 24
Many Theosophical students will find such utterances of immense value, as showing the
view held by a Masonic authority of such well-known repute as Mr. E. Macbean, I.G.,
with regard to some, at any rate, of the Eastern links with modern Masonry. 25 Mr. Gould,
the lecturer, also made the following suggestive remarks:

24 Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. Transactions of the Lodge Quatuor Coronati, No. 2076. III., Part i., p. 31.
London; 1890.
25 Another Masonic authority says:—"A little later, or about the year 200 A.D., the most noteworthy

Gnostic sect was a Persian branch, the Manichees; it was divided into three classes—Auditors, Elect, and
Perfect, and the sect was ruled by twelve Apostles, with a thirteenth as President. Manicheism was always
a source of trouble to the Church, and St. Augustine between the years 374 and 383 A. D., was an
"Auditor," but for some reason p. 35 could not obtain advancement, and so abandoned the system. The
Rite had a Theosophical Gospel which taught that the basis of all religion was one. In 657 they had
changed their name to Paulicians, and later Cathari (purified), Euchites, Bogomiles, and in more recent
times still, Lollards. We could quote numberless authors of the early period of the Church to prove the
origin of these sects from the Eastern Magi, but it is unnecessary and space forbids. In a few words, they
were a secret speculative society with degrees, distinguished by signs, tokens and words like
Freemasonry, and the Church of Rome from the 4th to the 19th century has hated them with the hatred of
death, butchering and burning them by tens of thousands; for Christianity has shed more blood than any
other faith. Yet the fathers often admit their great purity of life, but that was their sin against a corrupt
priesthood and unpardonable. The Templars were Gnostics, on the evidence of the Papal trials in 1313,
and Hugh, G.M. 1118, is said to have received initiation from Theocletus, Patriarch of St. John the Baptist
and the Codex Nazareus." The Kneph, Vol. V., No. 4, 1885. "Records and Documents relating to
Freemasonry as a speculative society," by John Yarker, P.M., P.M.M.K., P.Z., P.E.C., P.R.G.C., &c. Chapter
IV.—"Secret Theosophical Societies." (Continued from Page 41.)
 14

With regard to the derivations of Masonry, there are, briefly, three possibilities.
It may have come down to us
I. Through a strictly Masonic channel.
II. Through the Rosicrucians.
III. Through a variety of defunct societies, whose usages and customs have been
appropriated, not inherited, by the Freemasons.
The views thus put forward by these two authorities coincide perfectly with those of
many German and Italian mystic writers of the last century and those preceding it. We
will, therefore, investigate the early traditions in order to trace the links which bind
them together, and join the chain to the yet more remote spiritual centre hidden, though
not lost, in the clouds of time, and in piecing together the fragments of these esoteric
links it is better to begin with the views of a well-known Italian Mason, for it is to the
"Sons of the Widow" we must look for help in revivifying the ancient spiritual truths of a
once esoteric Masonry. The writer from whom we quote believed profoundly in
Masonry and writes of it as one who knows that it was a vehicle for conveying spiritual
mysteries to the people: Thus he writes 26 of the early history of Masonry:
Three centuries had passed since the origin of Christianity when at this epoch of
barbarism there arose in the same Persia whence so many teachings had gone forth, a
philosopher who wished to lead back the confused spirit of men to the cult of the only
true God. He was called Manes. Some of the uninstructed have regarded him as the first
originator of our Order, and the creator of our doctrines.
Manes lived under the Persian King Sopares. He endeavoured to recall to life in their
entire purity the mysteries and the religion of Zoroaster, uniting them with the pure
compassionate teachings of Jesus Christ. The teachings of Manes were liberal, whereas
superstition and despotism governed Europe. It is easy to believe that those who
professed demagogic principles and a religion free from all that was chimerical would
be persecuted. Thus the Manichæans from about the fourth century were persecuted to
the fullest by all the despots and by the Romish Priests. . . . The Holy Augustine, brought
up in the mysteries of Zoroaster adapted to the holy teaching of Jesus, became his
bitterest persecutor and the greatest enemy to the teaching of Manes which was known
under the name of the religion of the Child of the Widow.
This hatred shown towards Manes by St. Augustine, and his zeal for the Christian Trinity
doctrine, may have originated in the vexation which Augustine experienced at having
been only admitted into the first degree of the mysteries of Manes. The Magi, who had
recognized in him an ambitious and restless spirit, were thereby induced to refuse to
him all advancement, and this in spite of his nine years study, which he made in order to
be raised to the higher degree. This fact is sufficiently confirmed by Fleury, Baronius,

26The quotations are taken from the German edition of the work of Reghellini da Schio, La Maçonnerie
considérée comme le Résultat des Religions Égyptienne, Juive et Chrétienne. Paris, 1883.
See also Eckert (Edward Emil), Die Mysterien der Heidenkirche erhallen and fortgebildet im Bunde der alten
and der neuen Kinder der Wittwe. Schaffhausen, 1860. Chap. vi., p. 77. "Die Manichäer oder die Kinder der
Wittwe in Abendlande als Johannes-Brüder-und Schwesternschaft."
In this chapter Eckert traces the connection of the Manichæans or the "Children of the Widow" to the
Johannes-Brüder of the West, and links them also to the German Building Corporations and Societies.
Chap. vii., 307. In this chapter he links them by their signs and symbols to the Cologne Masonic body of
1535.
 15

and by Augustine himself in his confessions. After the death of Manes, twelve of his
pupils went forth into all the parts of the earth and imparted his teachings and his
mysteries to all people. They illumined as with a lightning-flash Asia, Africa, and Europe,
as may be seen from Baronius, Fleury, Bayle, and others. . . . . . We have already said that
still in the lifetime of Manes, his pupil Herman had spread his teaching in Egypt, where
the Coptic priests and other Christians mingled it with the mysteries adopted from the
Jews. . . . . It was through these same Coptic priests and the Eastern Christians that both
the mysteries of the Children of the Widow, and the cult of the great Architect came to
us in consequence of apparently unforeseen events, and it will be seen that it was
principally by means of the Crusades that they obtained a secure footing in the West.
The mysteries maintained their existence under the name of the cult of the Great
Architect of the Universe, a name that has its origin in the allegory of Hiram, which
represented, in the mysteries, "the unknown God," the Eternal, and sole creator of all
things and the Regenerator of all beings.
Thus does Reghellini da Schio write, as he traces the Masonic ancestry back to the pre-
Christian period, and he continues:
Bossuet in his Histoire des Variations, IV., says that in the middle ages the Christian sects,
and especially the Manichæans and Gnostics, had concealed themselves as much as
possible in the Orthodox Church itself: the remainder of the Manichæans who had
maintained themselves only too well in the east, crowded into the Latin Church.
Montfaucon, VII., p. 271, says when he speaks of the religion of the Egyptians, that the
heresy of the good and evil principles which had been upheld by Manichæans, had at
various times brought forth in the Church great disorder, and he asserts that in the East
. . . . . . these doctrines existed at the time of the Crusades, . . . . the long time that elapsed
during the wars of the Crusaders gave them the opportunity of being admitted into all
the mysteries of the Children of the Widow, the teachings of the Great Architect of the
world, and of both principles . . . . the Crusaders who had been admitted to the mysteries
of the Children of the Widow and initiated therein, imparted them, on their return
home, to their pupils in Europe . . . . during the sojourn of the Crusaders with the
Mussulmans, all kinds of theological investigations were instituted. These led the
Crusaders deeper into the faith in the Great Architect of the world..
And again in another passage (p. 46) he adds:
In spite of the religious and political changes that followed upon the conquests of the
Saracens in Asia, Africa, and Europe; in spite of the persecutions introduced by them,
the doctrines as to the unity of God was able to maintain itself by means of the Mysteries
in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, more especially, however, in the neighbourhood of
Thebes; for here the Christians and Coptic priests preserved, in the lap of their solitude,
the teachings communicated to them by Hesman, the pupil of Manes, a teaching which
later passed over into Europe. 27
Passing on from these important and interesting indications to the more detailed aspect
of our subject we find that at a later period many of the semi-Masonic bodies had
"Unknown Heads," and more especially those whose aims were avowedly occult, this
being the term which was applied in Germany, Austria and Hungary to those
organizations that did not make public the sources from which their teachings were

27"Acerrellos" Rössler (Karl) Die Freimaurerei in ihrem Zusammenhange mit den Religionen der alter
Aegypter, der Juden, and der Christen: II., p. H. Leipzig, 1836.
 16

derived, nor say from whom their inspiration came. To find the origin of such secrecy
we must turn back to the early history of the Masonic tradition and sketch briefly what
is told us by a Mason of the early part of this century, when dealing with this historic
secrecy. He tells us:
We find among all the priests of ancient peoples, and in order that none but really
capable and worthy men should be associated with their offices and studies, they
instituted forms of probation and examination upon which followed some kind of
initiation. Now as the oldest writers ascribed such mysteries and initiations to the
Egyptian Priests, it is very probable that they already 'existed before the downfall of
that people, for we find traces of them in equally ancient nations and perceive from the
likeness of their fundamental principles and of the teaching and customs of their priests,
that they must have had a common origin. Among the Chaldeans the Magi dwelt on the
summits of the mountains, and among the Celtic races the Druids lived in the quiet
solitude of the forests. Among the Indians and Ethiopians the Brahmins and
Gymnosophists had localities specially dedicated to them, and among the Egyptians the
Priests had intricate dwelling-places far beneath the surface of the earth. All had their
symbols and distinctive signs, and owed their fame only to the secrecy of their initiation.
The secrets of Antiquity had a twofold aim. In the first case religion was chosen as the
object of care; the greater the mysteries the more eternally secret were they to be kept
from the people. The aim in the second case was to guard the Wisdom of all things. He
who would be initiated must be a man of upright character and true mental power. The
sacred mysteries fell into decay with the Roman Empire, the flourishing and spread of
the Christian religion being the chief cause of this decadence. The initiation into the
mysteries of the Wisdom was however of much longer duration. They changed only
from time to time either the name, the inner constitution, the degrees and various kinds
of knowledge bound up in these, or even the nature of the union itself. The men, who
were known under the name of Magi, or the White Masters, made one of their most
important aims the true knowledge of the human heart, which lay always open before
their eyes. To them alone was entrusted the bringing up of Kings and the great of the
earth, for they alone could understand science as well as art, and careless of all
prejudice taught a simple and natural theology, which based itself upon the worship of a
Supreme Being.
Because, however, their method of teaching was symbolical, many errors of which they
were entirely incapable were ascribed to them on account of their numerous
hieroglyphics. The Magi of Memphis and Heliopolis were held in such esteem, and their
renown was so widespread that the greatest heroes of war, philosophers, and strangers
of the highest rank journeyed to Egypt and sought to be initiated by the Priests in order
to learn the secrets of the Priesthood. From among these priests Lycurgus and Solon
drew a part of their system of philosophy; and Orpheus was also initiated by them, and
by this means enabled to introduce into his own land, festivals from which the Greek
mythology afterwards arose. Thales also was instructed by them, Pythagoras received
from the same source his doctrine of Metempsychosis, Herodotus obtained much
information, and Democritus his secrets. Moses also, who was brought up by the Magi,
used his knowledge of the mysteries to free the Israelites from Egyptian bondage and
lead them to the service of the true God. It is well known that Moses prescribed certain
 17

probation for his Levites, and that the secrets of the Priesthood were inaccessible to the
rest of the Israelites, and this principle ruled till the time of Solomon. 28
And this policy of silence was a wise one, for the bitter vituperations which were
showered on the heads of the few who were the exoteric leaders in such organizations,
demonstrated the wisdom which guarded the personalities of the real leaders. Such
work was better done by small groups, and this appears to have been the view held by
those leaders with whom the student does come into contact. Some few of these groups
in the last century have already been cited, 29 but it will be as well to repeat their titles,
which run as follows:
The Canons of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Canons of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem.
The Beneficent Knights of the Holy City (The Strict Observance).
The Clergy of Nicosia in the Island of Cyprus.
The Clergy of Auvergne.
The Knights of Providence (The Order of the Knights of St. Joachim).
The African Brothers.
The Knights of Light (The Order of Fratres Lucis).
The Asiatic Brothers (The Order of the Knights of St. John of Asia).
These Societies do not belong to any one country in particular, for we find ramifications
of them appearing, disappearing and re-appearing, like beacon lights, in Austria,
Hungary, Italy, France, Sweden, and Russia. England was the least prolific soil in the
early centuries for the implanting of this mystic seed. In Scotland and Ireland, however,
that light shone more clearly than in England. But in Austria and the Danubian
Provinces mysticism grew apace for a short and happy while, and so a few words about
Austria in particular may be said before passing on.
Says Ludwig Abafi, in his Introduction to Pre-Historic Freemasonry in Austria and
Hungary:30
It is proved that the Emperor Rudolph I., even in the year 1275, authorized an Order of
Masons, whilst Pope Nicholas III., in the year 1278, granted to the Brotherhood of
Stonemasons at Strassburg, a letter of Indulgence which was renewed by all his
successors down to Benedict XII. in 1340. The oldest order of German Masons arises in
the year 1397; next follow the so-called Vienna Witnesses of 1412, 1430, and 1435; then
the Strassburg Order of Lodges of 1495; that of Torgau of 1462, and finally sixteen

28 Sarsena, oder der Volkommene Baumeister, enthaltend die Geschichte and Entstehung des Frei-
Maurerordens. Bamberg, 1816. The author of this work is not definitely known, but another Mason, Herr
Z. Funck, wrote, in 1838, the Kurze Geschichte des Buchs Sarsena, Bamberg, and said of the above work:
"There are few books which on their publication caused so great a sensation as did this one. . . . the author
of this work was an old experienced Freemason." The publisher says that 1500 copies were sold in the
first month, and it went through five editions; it caused, moreover, a miniature Masonic warfare. Written
by one who knew what Freemasonry should be, it naturally raised the violent opposition of those who
wished to drag it away from its mystical standpoint.
29 The Theosophical Review, xxii. 311.
30 Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Oesterreich tend Ungarn. Buda-Pest, 1890-1891. Pt. I., p. S.
 18

different Orders on to 1500, and to the following centuries for Spires, Regensburg,
Saxon-Altenburg, Strassburg, Vienna, and the Tyrol.
At this period the Roman Church appears to have made various futile efforts to retain a
hold upon these Masons, but without tangible result. For the forces at the back of these
movements prevented the destruction of a new free spiritual growth by the Roman
power. At this period also came those great souls, burning for freedom, who worked the
Reformation, 31 and although that work and those reforms were dwarfed of their full
growth by the natural crudity and narrowness of the human mind, nevertheless the
dogmatic and mind-killing power of Rome was materially thwarted, and the spirit in the
teaching of the Master Christ set free from those trammels. At all events, Abafi proceeds:
Equally important in the formation of Freemasonry . . . . were certain religious
communities and brotherhoods of the Middle Ages, which for the most part aimed at a
return to the pure teaching of Christ, and at making its ethical form familiar to their
adherents. One of these brotherhoods was that of the Waldenses, established by Peter
Waldo in the year 1170 at Lyons. Their aim was the restitution of the original purity of
the Church through the adoption of voluntary poverty, and other ascetic practices. But
because of the doctrine of Transubstantiation they soon came into conflict with the
Catholic Church, and as early as 1134 Pope Lucius III. excommunicated them, and
Sextus IV. in 1477 proclaimed a Crusade against them. In spite of these attacks they
have kept alive up to the present day, and have spread into several countries, namely
into Italy, France and Bohemia, and in this latter country we shall meet them again
under the name "Bohemian Brothers."
A few words may be summarised from the same writer about some of the other mystic
bodies in Bohemia and Hungary, lands full of occult tendencies. Among them are the
following: "Die Brüder von Reif and Hammer," or the "Brothers of the Circle and
Hammer," "Die Hackebrüdershaft," "The Brotherhood of the Hatchet," "Die Freunde
vom Kreuz," or the "Friends of the Cross." This last society spread into the Netherlands,
and had its greatest success in the latter part of the 17th Century. The "Brothers of the
Cross" 32 were still holding their meetings in 1785: they had many members in
Wallachia, and still more in Transylvania. 33 Brabbée in his Masonic studies says: It
consisted principally of
Older men and those who were generally reputed wise, and therefore of the prominent
leaders of the Brotherhood, who here, in the Metropolis of the Kingdom, formed a kind
of stronghold of the "inner East."
The last expression is worthy of our notice, for it shows how the minds of men were
turning, even in Masonic circles, to the Eastern teachings. Abafi also says that a great
and moulding force was exercised at this period on the form of Freemasonry by Jan

31 Such, for instance, as John Tauler, the famous Dominican (born 1290, died 1361), who formed a
mystical fraternity, the members of which recognized each other by secret signs. Then we have Nicholas
of Basle, with his four disciples, the beginning of the "Friends of God." These men kept a watch on all that
was going on in the world, and they had special messengers who had certain secret signs, by which they
recognized each other; Nicholas was burned as a heretic. Much information concerning this sect is given
in a MS. called The Book of the Five Men. (1377). See for details, Jundt (A.), Les Amis de Dieu au XIVme Siécle.
Paris 1879.
32 Sometimes called Fratres de Cruce.
33 Brabbée (Gustav), Sub-Rosa Vertrauliche Mittheilungen aus dem Maurerischen Leben unserer

Grossväter, p. 25. Wien, 1879.

 19

Amos Komensky (latinized Comenius) who was born at Brünn, in Bohemia, in 1592, and
who became a chaplain of the Bohemian Brothers in 1618. When the civil wars began
Komensky lost wife, child, and property, and was exiled from Austria like all other non-
Catholics. He escaped to Poland, turned his thoughts to educational matters, and
became famous in Sweden, Hungary, and England.
Komensky was actively interested in the Rosicrucian movement, and joined John
Valentinus Andreas in his work in that body. In 1650 Komensky was invited to Hungary
and Transylvania by the Prince Ragozcy, where he stayed four years. It is doubtless
partly owing to his influence that the Rosicrucian movement spread so widely in these
countries. His philosophical and metaphysical views were so widely spread, that when
Anderson 34 wrote his book on Freemasonry, he, according to Abafi, incorporated in his
work a compilation of the most essential portions of the plans of Komensky. As Abafi
phrases it:
It was reserved for an Austrian, a Moravian schoolmaster, the Chaplain of the Bohemian
Brothers, to bestow ethical treasures upon a brotherhood in proud Albion, the home of
the boldest intellects; to formulate the ideas, and to point out the way for a league
which—after its transformation—was destined to embrace the noblest of all nations,
and being brought to perfection by them, ordained to influence the whole of humanity.
The spread of mysticism in Austria and Hungary during the last century was
astoundingly rapid; according to one authority 35 about five per cent. of the entire
population belonged to the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, and other allied societies.
The vast majority of these Lodges must, he thinks, have been secret, for at the death of
the Empress 36 only three legitimate and perfect Lodges existed. That is to say, only
three Lodges in which Freemasonry as such existed without any more extended search
into occultism. Another authority, Dr. Otto Henne-am-Rhyn, 37 promptly doubles this
number, saying that there were 20,000 mystic students in Vienna. As this writer was an
avowed enemy of mysticism, his views may be taken as not likely to exaggerate the
numerical value of occult students.
In Austria mysticism had been aided by the kindly interest taken in such subjects by the
Emperor Francis I. He had protected and favoured a very remarkable man called
Seefels—or Sehfeld—a Rosicrucian and Mason, who had an alchemical laboratory at
Rodaun, a small village about a mile from Vienna. This man was loved and respected by
the whole neighbourhood for his kindliness, as well as feared for his powers, which
were most remarkable. Seefels is mentioned by Schmieder in his valuable History of
Alchemy, 38 as one of the "Seven true Adepts" who should appear in Europe in the course
of the century. Schmieder also gives some very interesting proofs of his powers. But in
spite of the Emperor's protection he was seized by the police and placed in the fortress
at Temeswar in Hungary. A careful study of Schmieder's work would more than repay
any student who desires to have evidences for occult powers made certain by history.

34 James Anderson, D.D„ whose work was published in 1723, under the title The Constitutions of the
Freemasons; containing the History, Charges, Regulations, etc., of that Most Ancient and Right Worshipful
Fraternity, for the use of the Lodges. A second edition, revised, was published in 1738.
35 Freimaurer; Heft. I., p. Jo, ed. by von Andrée. Gotha, 1789.
36 Maria Theresa, wife of Franz I., and the mother of Joseph II. of Austria.
37 Henne-am-Rhyn (Otto), Kulturgeschichte des Zeitalters der Aufklärung, v., p. 244. Leipzig, 1878.
38 Schmieder (C. C.), Geschichte der Alchemie, pp. 527-542, 1832.
 20

The following interesting notes 39 are quoted as showing the connecting link between
the Continental mystic Masonry and England, of which but little has been heard in the
outer world.
In a German tract, printed about 1803, and bound up with another tract of Fessler's,
called Geschichte der Freimaurerei, occur the following startling statements, which I give
to Masonic students for what they are worth.
1. The Templars worked with the so-called "Magical Brethren" at an early period of
their existence.
2. A Rosicrucian MS. states that at Cologne, with the motto, "non omnis moriar," this
Magical Union was created there in 1115.
3. A MS. of Michael Mayer's still exists in the University Library at Leyden, which sets
forth that in 1570 the Society of the old Magical Brethren, or "Wise Men" was revived
under the name of Brethren of the Golden Rosy Cross.
4. It is asserted that in 1563 the statutes of the Brotherhood were, on the 22nd of
September, at Basle, at a meeting of seventy-two Masters of Lodges, revised, set forth,
and printed; that the Lodges of Swabia, Hesse, Bavaria, Franconia, Saxony, Thuringia,
and those on the Moselle acknowledged the headship of the Grand Lodge of Strassburg.
That in the eighteenth century the Lodges of Dresden and Nuremberg were fined by the
Grand-Master of Strassburg, and that the Grand Lodge of Vienna, of Hungary, and
Stirrmark, the Grand Lodge of Zürich, which ruled the Swiss Lodges, referred to the
Mother Lodge of Strassburg in all difficult and doubtful matters.
To these notes by a "Masonic Student" the following editorial note is appended:
There can be no doubt that the Theosophical and Magical Union above mentioned did
exist as an organized Secret Society. The correspondence of Cornelius Agrippa von
Nettesheim shows that he was a member of such a secret society, and it is further
asserted that when he was in London he established a branch of it in that city. Fludd, as
showing that secret societies existed in the Universities, has the passage
"notwithstanding any allegiance which I may have vowed by a ceremonial Rite to
Aristotle 40 in my youth." These societies used the double Triangles, or Seal of Solomon,
and in the ruins of one of the old Temple Preceptories in France was found a copper
medallion with the Lamb surmounted by this Cabalistic symbol.
Two points in this interesting note can be corroborated by further evidence. The
Rosicrucian MS. mentioned in para. 2, is also mentioned on page 56 of a most valuable
German book (to which reference has already been made) by Friedrich Gottlieb
Ephraim Weisse, or Magister Pianco; it is called Der Rosenkreutzer in seiner
Blösse (Amsterdam; 1781). Some extracts from it will not be without interest, for it
refers to the older body of "Wise-Men," who were known as the "Unknown Heads" of
many of the small societies. The conditions of entrance are briefly given as follows:
3. Whosoever wished to be admitted to the secrets, and afterwards to be initiated, must
be a man of honour and of true spiritual power; and he must be already of considerable

39See The Kneph, vol. iv., 3. August, 1884. "Masonic Notes."

40Says Accelleros (Dr. Karl Rössler): ''The Gnostic principles were spread under the form of Aristotelean
Philosophy at Paris and elsewhere."—Die Freimaurerei in ihrem Zusammenhange mit den Religionen der
alten Aegypter, der Juden and der Christen, II., p. 63. Leipzig, 1836.
 21

learning; for only those were accepted, of whom it could be hoped that they would be of
great service to the Sacred Alliance. . .
10. The Initiates wore a triangle, symbolical of the three qualities of the Demiurgos—
Power, Wisdom and Love. . . .
The Masters of the second secret were Masters in the knowledge of all nature, and her
forces, and divisions.
11. They were called Philosophers or the World-Wise. Their science was called the
World-Wisdom. . . .
12. These World-Wise occupied themselves in secret. No one knew where they met, or
what they did.
14. But they had also secret sciences known only to the highest among them—called
Magos, Mage, or the Wise Master, who taught the people of Divine things. He could do
things which appeared quite supernatural. 41
The author, speaking of the relation of Masonry to this older and more secret body,
says:
Those Brother Masons (of the highest degrees) knew that they owed their brotherhood
to the Initiations of the old Wise-Men; that the great part of their (the Masons')
knowledge came from Them, and that without Their help they could do nothing. 42
In another passage he says:
Long before the year 1115, there was a society which in the mysteries of the ancients
took the place of the last and youngest grade, and which had the same position with the
Tempelherren, who had adopted it with the other teachings of the Wise Ones.—They
were the novices from all time. As in the time of the Inquisition against the Templars no
one knew anything about the lower and last grades, and those who belonged to them
had no public connection with them and thus lived without attracting any attention,
they were overlooked in the cruelties of the time. One did not think of them. As the
members of the Templars who escaped were few in number and died one after the
other, the remaining members drew together to form a bond of friendship, to which end
they drew up certain rules. This new society appeared in different forms and under
different names, Cross Society or Brothers of the Cross, Noaites, and in later days
adopted the name of Freemasons.
Length of time and the involved issues consequent thereon made those initiated into the
Mysteries at length perceive that they must introduce an entirely different organization
into the community, in order to bring it into line with Christianity.
Those associates who still remained over from the collapse 43 of the community of
Initiates, and who were scattered about the world, began to make fresh projects for a
general union. They took the laws of their community and the laws of the Christians,
which are known under the name of the Bible, into a real assimilation. They began to
institute a parallel between the books of Moses and the memorials of the Magi, and from

41 Op. cit., pp. 28, 30-32.

42 Op. cit., p. 54.
43 The writer is referring to the persecutions of the "Magian Brothers," who followed Manes the reformer.
 22

all this they evolved a kind of association, provided with certain laws, which could fit in
with the Christian.
The association was, as is always the custom with innovations, in the beginning
somewhat dark and involved; it was saddled with various meanings and names, which it
would be quite unnecessary to repeat here, but which were all of short duration, so that
the first ones called it the association of Magi and its members the Magi Brotherhood
and associates. And this first association was formed in the year 1115 and lasted till the
year 1117, though it underwent changes from time to time. The Crusaders had given
rise to many societies and orders amongst the profane, and associations had sprung up
which had quite differing objects. Amid innumerable ones there arose in the year 418
the Knights, with whom the Magi Brotherhood united and shared their principles and
secrets with them.
The writer speaks "as one having authority'' and knowledge also.
Turning to the particular date mentioned in the notes from The Kneph, we find that
about this period, or a few years earlier, the first documentary evidence of the
appearance of the Asiatische Brüder is mentioned by the Baron Hans Ecker von
Eckhoffen in his treatise, Authentischen Nachrichten von den Ritter-und Braider-
Eingeweihten aus Asien (Hamburg; 1788). These writings, he says, date from 1510;
showing that a body of mystics was known at that period; these Knights of Asia also
called themselves the Knights of St. John, and it is a curious fact to notice that one of the
Masonic records which has caused an infinity of discussion, and also of dissension,
amongst Masons, is the celebrated "Cologne Record" which is dated 1535, and in which
an Order of St. John is noticed. This charter has been a veritable bone of contention
between materialistic and mystic Masons, and much polemical literature has been
published on the subject. The mystics hold it to be true on external and internal
evidences; while the materialists reject it, as they reject all such evidence.
In the record there is the name of Philip Melancthon—the friend and co-worker of
Martin Luther—who appears as a Brother in the Order of the Freemasons. This
document bears witness also that a secret society was known in various parts of the
world, which existed before 1440 under the name of the "Brotherhood of St. John," and
since then, and up to 1535, under the title, the "St. John's Order of Freemasonry" or
"Masonic Brotherhood."
This Society 44 was reformed and re-arranged in the year 1717, the generally accepted
modern date of the materialistic and non-mystic Masons. It became more atheistic in its
views, and more democratic in its tendencies. Amongst other deeply interesting matter,
the "Charter of Cologne" contains the following passage:
The Brotherhood, or the order of Freemason Brothers, bound together according to St.
John's holy rules, traces its origin neither from the Templars nor from any other
spiritual or temporal Knightly Order, but it is older than all similar Orders, and has
existed in Palestine and Greece, as well as in various parts of the Roman Empire. Before
the Crusades our Brotherhood arose; at a time when in consequence of the strife
between the sects teaching Christian morals, a small number of the initiated—entrusted

44 The present Freemason body.

 23

with the true teaching of virtue, and the sensible exposition of the secret teaching—
separated themselves from the mass. 45
According to the record, the following reason was given for the adoption of the name:
The Masters of this confederation were called the St. John's Brethren, as they had
chosen John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Light of the World . . . as their original and
example. 46
There is a curious similarity between this document in its phrasing and style, and the
remarks made in the book by Weisse, in his Der Rosenkreutzer in seiner Blösse, some
passages of which have already been summarised.
Yet another well-known Masonic authority bears witness to the value of the Cologne
Record. Thus Mackenzie writes:
The documents are still preserved in one of the Lodges at Namur. They have been very
hotly debated. On the one hand, Oliver, Reghellini, and some others treat them as
authentic, and the antiquaries of the University of Leyden certify that the paper on
which the register of the Lodge at the Hague is written is of the same kind as that used
in Holland in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Now this register refers to the
Charter of Cologne as being in existence, so that the fraud, if a fraud, is two centuries
old. 47
Our chief interest in all this detailed evidence lies in the ever-recurring testimony that it
bears to that older Fraternity, which was the inspiring body at the back. But we must
now turn to some of the societies which had " Unknown Heads," as given in our list.
J. M. Ragon, in his Orthodoxie Maçonnique, gives the following interesting account of one
of these bodies, more information on which will be added from other sources.
Order of the Architects of Africa, or the African Brothers
(1767).
This Order was composed of educated and well-principled brothers. Their lodges, in
Europe, were all closed, excepting perhaps that of Constantinople (at Berlin).
Only one of their Grand-Masters was known; this was the councillor of war, Köppen.
Their first degree offered a more extensive and complete instruction than all the
degrees of the Scotch systems together. They said that the Lodges of St. John neglected
the great end, and that instruction was hardly to be had there, and that the Strict
Observance did not know the grounds of the continuation of the Masonic Order. They
occupied themselves with hieroglyphics, especially with those relating to Freemasonry,
which they sought to know well. They made a mystery of their goal up to the seventh
degree, which could only be gained by zeal, perseverance and discretion. Their
secondary occupations were the sciences, especially history and antiquities, the study of
which they considered indispensable for the true Freemason.
Their first degree was symbolically called the Architect or Apprentice of Egyptian
secrets.

45 Freimaurer Lexicon, Gädicke (J. C.). Berlin; 1818.

46 J. G. Findel's History of Freemasonry, p. 721. Translated from 2nd German ed. with preface by G. von
Dalen. London; 1866.
47 The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, p. 126. London; 1877.
 24

They called themselves the Africans, 48 because their studies began with the history of
the Egyptians, in whose mysteries they found indications of Freemasonry, although they
placed its origin much later, as to which the Crusades gave them no light.
Their customs were simple and noble. They never laid any stress on decorations,
aprons, ribbons, jewels, etc., but they liked a certain luxury, and sententious inscriptions
with a sublime but hidden meaning. In their assemblies they read treatises and
communicated to each other the result of their researches.
Their banquets were simple, decorum prevailed, and instructive and scientific
discourses were given at them.
Admissions were given without any fees. Earnest brothers who fell into distress
received much assistance.
They have published many important documents in Germany on Freemasonry.
This Order was established in Prussia, in 1767, with the assent of Frederick II., called
the Great.
Its degrees, to the number of eleven, were divided into two temples, viz.:
First Temple.
1. Apprentice.
2. Companion.
3. Master.
Second Temple.
4. Architect, or Apprentice of the Egyptian secrets (Manes Musæ).
5. Initiate in the Egyptian secrets.
6. Cosmopolitan Brother.
7. Christian Philosopher (Bossinius).
8. Master of the Egyptian secrets, Aléthophilote . (Friend of Truth).
Higher Degrees.
9. Armiger.
10. Miles.
11. Eques.
The Grand Chapter gave each year, during the life of Frederick II., a gold medal of so
ducats as a prize for the best treatise or discourse.
In 1806 only one Chapter of this system remained, that of Berlin ('Constantinople').
On the supposed origin of the Order, Ragon writes as follows:
When Frederick II. came to the throne, seeing that Freemasonry was no longer what it
had been, and appreciating what it might be, he conceived the plan of an Inner Order
which might at the same time take the place of a Masonic Academy. He made choice of a
certain number of Masons capable of comprehending his ideas, and charged them with
the organization of this body. Among these were to be noticed the brothers Stahl, de

48This tradition came from Egypt and passing along North Africa, swept over into Spain, and was at the
foundation of the great Arabic mystic development which has made Spain immortal. The true name of this
African tradition is Manichaeism, and in the Church of North Africa the Gnostic teaching lived for many a
century: and among the Copts the tradition yet endures.
 25

Gone, Meyerotto and du Bosc. They instituted the Order under the name of an extinct
society, The Architects of Africa, and established statutes in accordance with the views
of the King, who on his side granted privileges, and in 1768 had erected in Silesia, by his
architect Meil, a building specially designed for the Grand Chapter, and endowed it with
an ample fund, with a choice library and rich furniture, the whole being of an elegance
worthy of the Order and of the King.
This Order, without pretending to dominion, teaching tolerance, professing the
primitive principles of Freemasonry, and making a special study of its history,
prospered in silence and in complete freedom. Its chief statutes were to fear God only,
to honour the King and to be discreet, to exercise universal tolerance towards all
Masonic sects without ever affiliating itself to any. It was for this reason that they never
submitted to the act of obedience of the Baron de Hund, notwithstanding all the
entreaties that were made to them to do so. In the admission of candidates they
observed the strictest caution. It is said that Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick was refused
because he meddled with sectarian affairs. They devoted themselves to active
researches into the history of the mysteries, of secret societies and their various
branches, and cultivated the sciences, chiefly mathematics. In their works, carried on
often in Latin, reigned morality, a high tone, a solid and unostentatious teaching.
Their library and their archives obtained through the protection of the King and of
persons of distinction, among others the Prince von Lichtenstein at Vienna, some real
treasures of manuscripts and documents, which no Masonic branch can boast.
(Découverte sur le Systéme de l’Ordre des Architectes Africains, Constantinople. Berlin; in
8vo, 51 pp., 1806.) This article is taken from the Masonic library of the very kind
brother, Th. Juge. 49
Few monarchs have more thoroughly protected the Mystic Schools within the Masonic
body than Frederick II., King of Prussia, well named "The Great." Not only did he protect
them, but he also actively sympathised with them. While still Crown Prince, he was
initiated as a Mason at Brunswick in August, 1738, and was from that period the
staunch protector of the Masonic Fraternity; nor did he omit to penetrate very deeply
into the early traditions of Masonry, far more so, indeed, than many who have fewer
duties to engage their time.
Frederick the Great was, however, by no means the vague and dreamy mystic of popular
representation; his academy and schools were the centres of the
most brilliant intellects of the period, while the choice of his friends, literary,
philosophical, and mystic, testifies to the breadth of his knowledge, and it also
illustrates the manifold sympathies of his nature, both as soldier and mystic,
philosopher and scholar; though not saintly, by any means, he was thoroughly
appreciative of ideals that were beyond him.
His sympathy with mystics is evidenced by his selection of a librarian, for he gave that
post at the Royal Public Library in Berlin, with the title of Academician, to Dom Antoine
Joseph Pernetty (or Pernety), a man who had been a Benedictine monk, 50 but having
become—like many others—dissatisfied with the Order, he applied to the Pope for a

49Ragon, op. cit., pp. 239, et seq.

50Benedictine Monk of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, Abbot of Burgel in Thuringia, Librarian of the
King of Prussia: author of Les Fables égyptiennes et grēcques devoileés et réduites au même Principe, Le
Dictionnaire Mytho-Hermétique, and other treatises on Alchemy.
 26

dispensation from his vows. This was no obstacle in the eyes of the King, deeply
interested as he was in the researches of this well-known Hermetist and Alchemist.
That the opinions of Dom Pernety were publicly known is demonstrated by a writer of
the period, who says:
A remarkable trait in the character of this Academician was, that he believed in the
philosopher's stone, the mysteries of the Cabala, apparitions, patagonians, witcheries,
enchantments, the race of giants, etc. But, notwithstanding this inconceivable and
ridiculous weakness, he was beloved by everyone, and the more as, to his other
excellent qualities, he joined that of the most perfect discretion in regard to such affairs
as were at any time confided to his secrecy; never did a word from his lips give room for
the smallest explanation or disagreement. 51
Such is the comment on this mystic's character by one who, while adverse to his
opinions, nevertheless renders justice to a personality which some traduced.
Dom Pernety was for some time in personal relationship with M. de St. Germain; and
later on, he founded the Académie des Illuminés d’Avignon, which was essentially
Hermetic in its aims, and had also a close connection with the Swedish system. This was
a secret body, but it was also under the general Masonic regulations. It was also in close
union with the followers of Martinez Pasquales, and that bond has been kept up, for
some of the treatises written by Dom Pernety are now being published by the Martinists
in America. To pursue this interesting topic would, however, lead us too far from our
"Afrikanische Bauherren" and their protector, the King of Prussia, with whom our
attention is at present engaged.
The most succinct account of the opinions held by the leading Freemasons in Germany
at this juncture is given by Findel, who, although a pronounced antagonist, shows very
lucidly the underlying mystic basis on which the outward Masonic forms were
supported, and it is of value to these researches to quote his testimony in full,
illustrating, as it unwittingly does, the hypothesis put forward, namely, that all the
societies similar to the African Brothers, the Fratres Lucis and others of like calibre,
were but the outward manifestations of hidden forces which were attempting to
indoctrinate the whole Masonic body with true spiritual, mental and moral mystic
knowledge. Says Findel:
The Grand Lodge of Germany 52 further assumes, 53 that in the Building Fraternities54 of
the Middle Ages, besides their art, a secret science was carried on; the substratum of

51 Original Anecdotes of Frederic II., King of Prussia, translated from the French of Dieudonné Thiébault,
Professor of Belles-Lettres in the Royal Academy of Berlin, II., p. 383. London, 1805.
52 This Lodge "Zu den drei Weltkugeln" (The Three Globes) was established by Frederick II., who was its

first Grand Master. It became the Grand Mother Lodge of Germany in 1744. It was also the protectress of
the mystic element in Masonry for many years.
53 Findel had been disputing the point held by the "Grand Lodge," viz., that the links of true Masonry are to

be found not in England, but in Scotland.

54 "It has been argued with much force and apparent truth, that the building art was, in times of remotest

antiquity, regarded as sacred, and existed under special concession and care of the native priesthood
where it was practised, but this allegation cannot be accepted without qualification." Fort (George F.), The
Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry. Philadelphia, U.S.A., 1875, p. 363. And again, Mr. Fort tells us
(p. 374) that in the years 643 and 729, "the inhabitants of Como had already attained to so high a degree
of skill as to be designated Magistri Comacini, or Masters of Como." He further points out that their
knowledge was obtained from the East, and directly from Byzantium, and then goes on to say " the secret
 27

which was a real Christian mystery, serving as a preparatory or elementary school and
stepping-stone to that and the St. John's Masonry, which latter was not a mere system of
moral philosophy, but closely allied and connected with this mystery. It was conceded
that the Freemasonry of our days (St. John's Freemasonry) sprang from the Building
Fraternities of the Middle Ages, but at the same time asserted that in the early ages
there existed a secret society which strove to compass the perfecting of the human race,
precisely in the same manner, and employing similar means, as did the Swedish system,
which in fact only followed in the wake of its predecessor, being concealed in the
Building Fraternities, so that our society did not rise from them, but made itself a way
through them. The secret science, the mystery, was very ancient indeed. This mystery
formed the secret of the Higher Degrees of the Rite, which were not merely kept hidden
from the rest of the confederation, but also from the members of the inferior degrees of
the system itself. This mystery was fully confirmed by documents, which the Grand
Lodge of Germany had in its keeping. . . . . This secret legend is the same as that of the
Carpocratians, which is that Jesus chose some of the Apostles and confided to them a
secret science, which was transmitted afterwards to the priests of the Order of the
Knights-Templars, and through them to the Building Fraternities, down to the present
Freemasons of the Swedish Rite. . . . The Swedish system teaches that there have been
men of all nations who have worshipped God in spirit and in truth, and surrounded by
idolatry and superstition have yet preserved their purer faith. Separate from the world,
and unknown to it, this Wisdom has been preserved by them and handed down as a
mystery.
In the time of the Jews they had made use of the Essenes, in which sect Jesus was
brought up, and had spent the greater part of his life. Having been instructed by him in a
more perfect knowledge of holy things, they had amidst persecution taught in silence
that which had been committed to their keeping. 55 At the period of the Saracens and the
Crusades they were so greatly oppressed that they must ultimately have sought for
protection from without. As fate, however, would have it, seven of them, Syriac
Christians, pursued by unbelievers near Bastrum, were rescued by the Knights-
Templars, and afterwards taken. under their protection. When they had lived there for a
certain time they begged for permission to dwell with the Canons or Prebendaries of
Jerusalem, as the life there led agreed better with their own inclinations and habits. This
was accorded them, and Andreas Montebarrensis effected a union of these Syrians with
the Canons, to whom, out of gratitude, they imparted all their science, and so completely
did they make the priests of the order the depositories of their secrets that they kept
them and handed them over to others under certain conditions.
Thus, this secret knowledge, which was continually being added to, lived on in the very
heart of the Order of Knights-Templars till its abolition. The clergy were dispersed with
the persecution that ensued, but as the secular arm did not touch them as it did the
Knights, they managed to rescue many of their secret writings, and when the Knights
sought refuge in Scotland, they founded a chapter at Aberdeen, the first Prior of which
was Petrus de Bononia. The science was disseminated from this place, but very

arts thus obtained by the Teutonic races were perpetuated in fraternities or Guilds, whose existence
ascends to the oldest forms of Germanic government."
55 Compare with this statement, that a comparatively small body of men had received the inner teaching,

and had a mission to hand it on, what was quoted about the "World-Wise Men" in the Theosophical
Review, xxiii. 354.
 28

cautiously, first to Italy, then to the extreme North (Sweden and Russia) and France. In
Italy Abbot Severin had been the guardian of the True Science. 56
Findel quotes all this history in a purely sceptical way, with adverse remarks of his own
of doubt and derision. Nevertheless the history of this ancient secret teaching is true,
and it coincides in its details with accounts which come to us from other sources. In
order that the "hidden sources" may thus be more clearly kept in view, we will quote
the words of a well-known Masonic writer, Mr. Lawrie:
Although it will be acknowledged by every unbiased reader, that Freemasonry has a
wonderful resemblance to the Eleusinian and Dionysian mysteries, the fraternity of
Ionian architects and the Essenian and Pythagorean associations, yet some may be
disposed to question the identity of these institutions, because they had different
names, and because some usages were observed by one which were neglected by
another. But these circumstances of dissimilarity arise from those necessary changes
which are superinduced upon every institution, by a spirit of innovation, by the caprice
of individuals, and by the various revolutions in civilized society. Every alteration or
improvement in philosophical systems, or ceremonial institutions, generally produces a
corresponding variation in their name, deduced from the nature of the improvement, or
from the name of the innovator.
The different associations, for example, whose nature and tendency we have been
considering, received their names from circumstances merely casual, and often of
trifling consideration; though all of them were established for the same purpose, and
derived from the same source. When the mysteries of the Essenes were imported by
Pythagoras into Italy, without undergoing much variation, they were there denominated
the mysteries of Pythagoras; and, in our own day, they are called the secrets of
Freemasonry, because many of their symbols .are derived from the art of building, and
because they are believed to have been invented by an association of architects, who
were anxious to preserve, among themselves, the knowledge which they had acquired. 57
The Dionysia, or Mysteries of Bacchus, were intimately connected with those of Ceres
and perhaps still more with Freemasonry, says Mr. Lawrie; the rites came from Egypt,
and there according to Plutarch Ceres was the Egyptian Isis, and Bacchus was Osiris.
The Dionysian artificers or architects were an association of scientific men, who were
incorporated by command of the Kings of Pergamus into a corporate body, some three
hundred years B.C. They had the city of Teos given to them. The members of this
association which was intimately connected with the Dionysian mysteries, were
distinguished from the uninitiated inhabitants of Teos, by their science, and by words
and signs by which they could recognize their Brethren of the Order. Like Freemasons
they were divided into Lodges which were characterised by different names.
From some circumstances which are stated in these inscriptions, but particularly from
the name of one of the Lodges, it is highly probable that Attalus, King of Pergamus, was a
member of the Dionysian Fraternity.

56 Findel (J. G.), History of Freemasonry, translated from the second German edition, by C. von Dalen, pp.
316-318. London, 1866.
57 Symbols derived from the art of building, were also employed by the Pythagoreans, for conveying

instruction to those who were initiated into their fraternity. See Proclus in Eucl. lib. XI. def. 2, etc.
 29

Such is the nature of that association of architects, who erected those splendid edifices
in Ionia, whose ruins even afford us instruction, while they excite our surprise. If it be
possible to prove the identity of any two societies, from the coincidence of their external
forms, we are authorized to conclude that the Fraternity of the Ionian architects and the
Fraternity of Freemasons, are exactly the same; and as the former practised the
mysteries of Bacchus and Ceres, several of which we have shown to be similar to the
mysteries of Masonry, we may safely affirm, that, in their internal as well as external
procedure, the Society of Freemasons resembles the Dionysiacs of Asia Minor.
The opinion, therefore, of Freemasons, that their Order existed, and flourished at the
building of Solomon's Temple, is by no means so pregnant with absurdity, as some men
would wish us to believe.
We have already shown, from authentic sources of information, that the mysteries of
Ceres and Bacchus were instituted about four hundred years before the reign of
Solomon; 58 and there are strong reasons for believing that even the association of the
Dionysian architects existed before the building of the Temple.
It was not, indeed, till about three hundred years before the birth of Christ, that they
were incorporated at Teos, under the Kings of Pergamus; but it is universally allowed,
that they arose long before their settlement in Ionia, and, what is more to our present
purpose, that they existed in the very land of Judea.
The difference in the ceremonial observances of these institutions, may be accounted
for nearly upon the same principles. From the ignorance, or superior, sagacity of those
who presided over the ancient fraternities, some ceremonies would be insisted upon
more than others, some of less moment would be exalted into consequence, while;
others of greater importance would be depressed into obscurity. In process of time,
therefore, some trifling; changes would be effected upon these ceremonies, some rites
abolished, and some introduced. The chief difference, however, between the ancient and
modern mysteries, is in those points which concern religion. But this arises from the
great changes which have been produced in religious knowledge. It cannot be supposed
that the rites of the Egyptian, Jewish, and Grecian religions should be observed by those
who profess only the religion of Christ; or that we should pour out libations to Ceres
and Bacchus, who acknowledge no heavenly superior, but the true and the living God. 59
The connection 60 of the Afrikanische Bauherren with the Templars and their secret
traditions is common to all those mystic associations 61 who claimed, like them, to have
deeper truths and more spiritual knowledge in charge for the human race.

58 According to Playfair's Chronology, the Temple of Solomon was begun in 1016 and finished in 1008,

B.C. The Eleusinian mysteries were introduced into Athens in 1356, B.C., a considerable time after their
institution.
59 Lawrie, (Alexander), The History of Freemasonry, drawn from authentic sources of information, with an

account of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, p. 28 et seq. Edinburgh, 1804.

60 They have both a common bond in Manichæism, the Templars were "Sons of the Widow" in the earlier

times, as well as the African Brothers. Both bodies again hold the Egyptian line of tradition, and were
versed in its grand symbology and hieroglyph.—Lenning (C.). Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, I.,
p. 7. Leipzig, 1863.
61 "There is no portion of our annals so worthy of investigation as that which is embraced by the middle

ages of Christendom when the whole of Europe was perambulated by our Brethren, in associations of
travelling artizans, under the name of 'Free and Accepted Masons,' for the purpose of erecting religious
edifices. There is not a country of Europe, which does not at this day contain honourable evidences of the
 30

Seeing, then, that the African Brothers have this link with other mystic bodies, we can
investigate the details of their system with interest, and we find that the members of
this school were almost without exception learned men and persons of position and
rank, often selected by the King as suitable members. Devoted to mystic research, in
general they paid the closest attention to symbolism and hieroglyphs.
The description given of them by Ragon differs somewhat in detail to that given by
Lenning, which runs as follows:
The double character of the Order confirms what we know about the tendency and
ritual of the first four grades. They are as follows:
Grade I. Pupil of the Egyptian secrets (Menes Musæ). 62 Here the doctrines of the true
Religion, as concealed under the hieroglyphs which were already in the Egyptian
Mysteries, were brought forward for the pupil. The first degree shows already that
Moses was held as an important teacher of these doctrines even to the Egyptians.
Grade 2. The Initiates of the Ægæic secrets. Here Moses was presented as one of the
greatest of the Wise Men of the world, who instructed the Jews in the doctrines of
religion from his knowledge of nature and the world.
Grade 3. The Cosmopolitans (or citizens of the world) had for its object the necessity for
self-knowledge, because most ethical teachers failed in teaching this, for they depicted
all human nature as being utterly corrupt, while instead of this, human nature was
capable through self-knowledge of, and self-respect for, its destiny, of becoming a great
instrument for the work of God.
Grade 4. The Christian world-wise men (or Bossonians)—was the expounding of the
intimate connection between man and the world, so that to call each of them the
Temple,' and to call Christ the Foundation Stone was the True Religion.
Grade 5. Was practically that of the Alethophiles, or Friends of Truth, which was
identical with the society of that name, and whose tendency is expressed in the name.
After these five, or lower student-grades, there follow three higher, or inner grades, of
which, however, only the names are known in the outer world. According to what is
told, they were the same as the Freimaurerei Ritterwesen. . . . The names are variously
given and are of but little consequence, this Order was never a very large one, for the
qualifications as to learning and education were somewhat restrictive at that period. It
appears to have had its Lodges in Berlin, and also in Oberlavsitz; there were some of the
same Lodges in Cologne, Worms, and also in Paris under the guidance of a certain Kühn.

skill and industry of our Masonic ancestors. I therefore propose, in the present article, to give a brief
sketch of the origin, the progress, and the character of these travelling architects. Clavel, in his Histoire
Pittoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie, has traced the organization of these associations to the collegia
artificum, or colleges of artisans, which were instituted at Rome by Numa, in the year B.C. 714, and whose
members were originally Greeks, imported by this law-giver for the purpose of embellishing the city over
which he reigned. These associations existed in Rome in the time of the Emperors. They were endowed
with certain privileges peculiar to themselves, such as a government by their own statutes, the power of
making contracts as a corporation, and an immunity from taxation. Their meetings were held in private,
like the esoteric schools of the philosophers. Their presiding officers were called p. 68"magistri." They
were divided into three classes, corresponding with the three degrees of Freemasonry, and they admitted
into their ranks as honorary members persons who were not by profession operative Masons. Finally,
they used a symbolic language drawn from the implements of masonry, and they were in possession of a
secret mode of recognition."—Mackey's Lexicon of Freemasonry. Charleston, 1845, p. 316.
62 Ragon gives "Manes" where Lenning uses "Menes."
 31

He came into contact with Baron von Hund and his system of 'The Strict Observance' of
which Von Köppen was a devoted member. 63
The brief mention of the highest grade, the Knights of Silence, or Everlasting Silence, is
interesting, for it has reference to an edict which was published from the "Unknown
Heads" suspending all studies and all work for a time—the limit of time was not
specified. There will be more, however, to be said on this point at a later date. The
Minister of War, Herr von Köppen, was aided in his work of organisation in the African
Brothers by Herr von Hymmen, a Councillor of Justice in Berlin; both men were
Rosicrucians, and von Hymmen was an adherent of the Baron von Gugomas, another
celebrated mystic in the last century.
Von Köppen and von Hymmen published the well-known work, Crata Repoa, or
Initiation in the Ancient Secret Society of the Egyptian Priests. 64
Another leader of this confraternity was Karl du Bosc, one of the chamberlains at the
Prussian Court. He was also connected with the Rosicrucians and some of the other
mystic sects. It confirms the accuracy of our hypothesis when we find all these public
officers working harmoniously in different organizations, aiding all for the general weal,
knowing well that each Society represented, as it were, one facet of the precious stone
of truth which lay hidden securely beneath the surface.
Turning now to the links which connect the African Brothers with other mystic
fraternities we shall find the Deutsche Ritter, or Kreuz-Herren, akin to them; the origin
of the last-mentioned association can be traced back to the year 1190, where their
history is closely allied with another interesting body, viz., the Maltheser-Ritter, or
Knights of Malta; coalescing again with these we find the well-known Johanniter-Ritter,
or Knights of St. John, whose history is so intimately interwoven with the Johannite
Masonry, dedicated as it was to the two St. John's, the Baptist and the Evangelist.
Further, we find a curious secret sect existing in Africa of which Mollien gives a most
interesting sketch. He calls this sect "Les Almousseri," and connects their community
with the Freemasons as follows:
In Foutatoro, and among the Moors, there exists a sort of freemasonry, the secret of
which has never been revealed; the adept is shut up for eight days in a hut, he is allowed
to eat but once a day, he sees no person excepting the slave appointed to carry him his
food; at the end of that period a number of men in masks present themselves, and
employ all possible means to put his courage to the proof; if he acquits himself with
honour he is admitted. The initiated pretend that at this moment they are enabled to
behold all the kingdoms of the earth, that the future is unveiled to them, and that
thenceforward heaven grants all their prayers. In the villages where persons of this
fraternity reside, they perform the functions of conjurors, and are called Almousseri.
One day Boukari told me, after attesting the truth of what he was about to say by the
most solemn oaths, that being in a canoe with one of these men, there fell such a heavy
shower of rain that he would not depart; yielding, however, to the wishes of the
Almousseri, he set sail; "torrents of rain fell on all sides," added Boukari, "but our bark
remained perfectly dry, and a favourable wind swelled our sails. I asked this Almousseri

63 Lenning (C.), Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, pp. 7-8. Leipzig, 1863.
64 Crata Repoa, oder Einweihungen in der alten geheimen Gesellschaft der Aegyptien Priester. Berlin, 1770.
 32

to explain his secret, but he answered that if he revealed it his brethren would infallibly
destroy him." 65
From many sources it is evident that scattered communities 66 with mystic knowledge,
existed in various parts of Northern Africa. Such communities having nothing to do, of
course, with the fetish-worship of the negro tribes, but adhere to the Egyptian tradition
of mystic teaching, for they are off-shoots of the Manichæan and Coptic teachers who
spread the secret doctrines of Manes in Northern Africa; his disciples carried on this line
of work immediately after his death. They kept up also a communication with the
mystics in Europe, for M. de St. Germain at one period of his travels was in Northern
Africa.
Some reference has been made to the fifth grade of the African Bauherren system,
namely the "Master of the Egyptian Secrets"; "Alethophilote" or "Friend of Truth." This
grade is given as the eighth by Ragon, 67 and Lenning in his encyclopædia says:
There appears to have been some connection between this grade and the little known
society of the "Alethophilotes" in Berlin. This is probably the earlier sect which is
alluded to sometimes, and it was founded, so far as is known, by the Graf von Manteuffel
in 1736. 68
The details of this system will be of interest to students, as it throws some light upon the
older association, of which very little is told; they are given by Kundmann as follows:
I. Let Truth be the sole aim of your understanding and of your will.
II. Consider nothing true, consider nothing false, if you are not convinced about it by
adequate reasons.
III. Be satisfied with this, that you know and love the Truth; seek to impart it, that is to
make it known and agreeable to your fellow-citizens. He who buries his experience,
buries a thing which has been committed to his care for the furtherance of the glory of
the Highest; and he thus diverts its use from humanity, which might have profited
therefrom.
IV. Do not deny your love and help to those who know the Truth and are seeking it
themselves, or who are honestly trying to defend it. It would be too disgraceful and
contrary to the actual vocation of an Alethophilote (Friend of Truth) if you were to deny
protection and defence to those whose object is one with yours.
V. Never contradict a truth when you see that you are being overborne by others whose
insight is more keen than yours. An Alethophilote would be unworthy of his name if he
undertook to combat the Truth out of pride or conceit, or from any other unreasonable
cause.
VI. Be pitiful with those who either are ignorant of the Truth, or who have incorrect
perceptions of it; instruct them without bitterness, and seek to bring them into the right
way solely by the strength of your arguments and by no other way. You would disgrace

65 Mollien (G.), Travels in the Interior of Africa, translated from the French, edited by T. E. Bowdich, p. 161.
London, 1820.
66 These communities were chiefly Moors and Arabians, and we touch the Sufite mystic tradition along

this line.
67 See The Theosophical Review, xxiii., 358.
68 Lenning (C.), Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, i., 15. Leipzig, 1863.
 33

the Truth and make it appear suspicious if you were to fight for it and defend it with any
other weapons but those which Reason gives into your hand. 69
It is an interesting, but somewhat difficult, matter to understand the reason why such
bitter war was carried on against bodies of men with tenets so high and aims so pure. As
each of these semi-Masonic sects is investigated the astonishment of the student
increases at the groundless accusations with which the ordinary historian is content.
In the passage quoted from Findel, he gives the traditions and Masonic tenets held by
the Grand Lodge of Germany, and also by the Afrikanische Bauherren, these bodies
being practically identical, the latter being but a more advanced and occult section of
the Mother-Lodge. In the passage just referred to the Carpocratians are particularly
alluded to; this Gnostic sect is of especial interest to students of Theosophy, seeing that
metempsychosis—or re-incarnation—was one of their tenets; and if we summarise a
well-known authority on the subject we get an identity of view which is remarkable.
These sectarians called themselves Gnostics. In most respects the teaching of their
Founder coincides with that of Basilides. He held there was one principal virtue from
whom proceeded all other virtues and angels who founded this world; that Jesus Christ
was not born of a virgin, but a man truly born of the seed of Joseph, though better than
other men in integrity of Life. . . Virtue was given Him by the Great First Cause whereby
He retained the recollection of things seen in a former state of existence. . . .
Metempsychosis and the pre-existence of the soul was an integral part of the system. 70
There is much more of interest in the summary given for the student of Modern
Gnosticism or Theosophia, and it can also be readily seen that if the tenets of the
Carpocratians were held by the African Brothers, the Templars and other mystic sects,
then there was indeed a vital necessity for secrecy and silence, since these heretical
views brought about the destruction of the Templars in the Middle Ages, and would
have called forth the direst wrath not only of the Catholic, but also the Protestant
authorities.

69Kundmann, Die höhen and niedern Schulen Deutschlands, p. 769. Breslau, 1741.
70Blunt (John Henry, D.D.), Dictionary of Sects and Heresies, p. 102. London, 1891. See also Mead (G. R. S.),
"Among the Gnostics of the First Two Centuries," Lucifer, xx. 207.
 34

The Traditions Of The Templars

Revived In Masonry
THE RITE OF THE STRICT OBSERVANCE.
ANCIENT history is like a night-landscape, over which we grope, vaguely discerning a
few outlines in the general gloom, and happy if here or there the works of a particular
author or a ruin or work of art momentarily illumine, like a lightning flash in the dark,
the particular field which we are exploring.—Philo about the Contemplative Life, p. 349,
F. C. CONYBEARE.
DUPES or charlatans! Such is the stricture of the Masonic authorities on the leading
spirits of the Strict Observance; but as the student wades through the pile of polemical
literature which has heaped itself round this particular body, he is moved to ask: Is it
possible that all the honesty and wisdom is with the critics; and is it rational to suppose
that in this widespread development of mystic Masonry there existed no one clear-
sighted enough to do within the body the work which the "enemy at the gate" ever
arrogates to himself as his special function, the work of healthy investigation?
One well-known authority opens fire with the following critical broadside:
Of all the wonderful perversions of Freemasonry which owe their origin to the fervid
imaginings of our brethren of the last century, none can compare in point of interest
with the system of the "Strict Observance." 71 . . . The whole system was based upon the
fiction that at the time of the destruction of the Templars, a certain number of Knights
took refuge in Scotland, and there preserved the existence of the Order. The sequence of
Grand-Masters was presumed never to have been broken, and a list of those rulers in
regular succession was known to the initiates, but the identity of the actual Grand-
Master was always kept during his life-time a secret from everyone except his
immediate confidants—hence the term "Unknown Superiors."
In order to secure their perfect security these Knights are said to have joined the Guilds
of Masons in Scotland, and thus to have given rise to the Fraternity of Freemasons. 72
The trail of the materialistic serpent is traceable in his valuable work, although the
author is in advance of some German critics by giving credit for honest motives to one at
least of the leaders of this Rite. But even with this extension of generosity it is evident
that "dupes or charlatans" is the summing up by at least two-thirds of the Masonic
writers in the last century and in the present one, of the mental and moral condition of
the members of the Strict Observance.

71 "The mysteries of Mithras were solemnized in a consecrated cavern, on December 25th, which was the
date fixed for the celebration. They began from the moment that the priests at midnight saw the
constellation of Virgo appear, which on setting ushered in the year by calling forth the sun, which
appeared as a son supporting itself on its Mother's lap.
"Some Masonic Systems have preserved the Magian degree, it is the last in the Strict Observance."
Acerrellos (R. S.), Die Freimaurerei in ihrem Zusammenhange mit den Religionen der alten Aegypter, der
Juden, und der Christen, I., p. 293. Leipzig, 1836.
72 Gould (R. F.), Hist. of Freemasonry. V., p. 99. London, 1886.
 35

The evidences of the position—mental, moral and worldly—of many of the members,
however, preclude such a hasty generalisation, for it should not be overlooked by critics
who thus stigmatise the students of mysticism that more royalties, members of reigning
families, scholars and officers, belonged to this Order, than were enrolled on any other
Masonic list. And among these princes and grand-dukes were earnest students, good
and wise rulers, men respected by all who knew them both for their judgment and their
probity. With them we find scholars, nobles and officers of high standing, with stainless
records; these again cannot be swept up into one category or the other, and even
allowing for a residue of members whose principles were not of the highest, and making
a generous allowance for such persons, who are found in every society, even then there
remains too large a body of honest members devoted to mystic research to allow of any
hasty generalisations, and the fact remains of a widespread feeling that within Masonry
was hidden that occult and mystic tradition which is the true history of spiritual
evolution.
In reading the merciless and shallow criticisms upon those members of the Strict
Observance who were trying to re-assert the mystic doctrine, it is amusing to note the
cool assumptions of honesty and clear-sightedness which—from their own stand-
point—appear to have been the sole prerogatives of an all-knowing few who had
sounded—as they thought—mysticism and its supernatural follies with an illuminated
wisdom that angels might envy.
Before passing to the system itself, however, it will be well to note some of the members
who have fallen under the "mangling tooth of criticism." We find in the year 1774 no
less than twelve reigning princes were members of this Rite, and in the list which
follows—in which by no means all the royal members are cited—we find that in some
cases whole families joined the Society. They cannot all have been dupes, and they were
certainly not charlatans; they were also in too responsible positions for them to have
taken up with what was doubtful. The list stands as follows:
Karl George, Landgraf of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Friedrich, Landgraf and Prince of Hesse-Kassel.
Ludwig, Grand-Duke and Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Christian Ludwig, Landgraf and Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Friedrich George August, Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Ludwig George, Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Friedrich Karl Alexander, Markgraf of Brandenburg, Onolzbach and Baireuth.
Karl I., Duke of Brunswick, and his three sons:
Friedrich August, Maximilian Julius Leopold, Wilhelm Adolf.
Karl, Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
Karl, Prince of Hesse-Kassel.
Karl, Prince of Courland.
These are a few of those who joined this much decried Rite, and the same class of
members may be found in Austria, Italy, France, Russia, and Sweden. All, moreover,
were real lovers of mysticism; many of them were members of the Rosicrucian and
other allied bodies, all were seeking in various systems for the old narrow path which
 36

leads to wisdom; not seeking by one way alone, but testing all ways that presented
themselves. A sketch, therefore, of some of the leading spirits in this interesting Order
may perhaps be of interest, and it will serve to bring the leading spirits more clearly
before our readers.
The most important personage is Charles Gotthelf, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, of
Hund and Alten-Grotkare, a Lusatian nobleman, born in 1722. He became, in 1753, a
Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Chamberlain, and in 1755 was elected senior of the
nobility of Upper Lusatia. The seven years' war brought great misfortune to him, his
estates being occupied and plundered by the war-waging armies. He had himself, as an
adherent of Austria, to flee to Bohemia, where he remained until the end of the war.
King Augustus of Poland appointed him a Privy Councillor in 1769, and Maria Theresa
in that year did the same; but he did not accept the post in Vienna, being desirous of
accomplishing the contemplated reform of Masonry.
He entered the Masonic Order in 1742, when at Frankfurt-am-Main. In the next year he
is said to have established a Lodge at Paris, and while staying with the French Army he
became acquainted with the heads of a Rite which pretended to be, in its higher degrees,
the continuation of the famous Order of Knights Templars. According to his repeated
declarations, maintained even on his death-bed, he was received into this Order in Paris
by Lord Kilmarnock, Grand-Master of Scotland, a Jacobite nobleman, on which occasion
Lord Clifford acted as Prior. He was presented to a very high member of the Order, a
mysterious personage called only "the Knight of the Red Feather." Perhaps this was
Prince Charles Edward himself. Von Hund supposed him to be the Supreme Grand
Master of the Order, and was appointed by him coadjutor of the Seventh Province of the
Order (Germania Inferior). Hund visited Scotland also, where he was bidden to raise the
Order in Germany, together with the then Master of the Seventh Province, de Marschall,
whom he always considered his predecessor. Marschall had founded Lodges at
Altenburg and Naumburg, but found only in the latter men worthy of being led
further, viz., to be received into the Templar degrees. He did not care for the rest of the
German Lodges, and on his return to Germany (about 1751) Hund placed himself in
connection with Marschall, who, unfortunately, was very ill already, and died soon
afterwards.
Before his death he destroyed nearly all his Templar papers, only a very few of which he
had given to Hund. He (Hund) hoped to find the missing rituals, etc., with the Naumburg
Lodge, but was disappointed. He, therefore, sent two brethren of that Lodge to England
and Scotland, in order to acquire the missing documents. They returned, carrying with
them only a patent to him as Master of the Seventh Province, written in cypher, and
nothing more. 73
A full account of the working arrangements of the Order is given by the writer from
whom we summarise, and he tells us these were changed from time to time according to
the conditions that arose incident upon the constant attacks that were being made on
this and all other occult societies by the group of materialists in Germany, Herr Dr.
Biester and his colleagues, of whom mention has already been made, 74 and there will be

73 This summary is taken from an interesting study on the Baron yon Hund, written by a well-known
Hungarian mason, which appeared in the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, "Transactions of the Lodge Quatuor
Coronati," No. 2076. VI., part ii., p. 89. Margate, 1893.
74 The Theosophical Review, xxii. p. 431.
 37

necessity to refer to these critics again a little later on. Another interesting sketch of the
Baron von Hund by Reghellini runs as follows:
In 1756 the wars had caused the Prussian (Masonic) Lodges to be abandoned. Baron de
Hund, who had received the High Templar's Degree in the Chapter of Clermont at Paris,
on returning to Berlin declared that he had been raised to the dignity of Grand-Master of
the Templars by M. Marschall, who called himself the successor of the G.·. G.·. Master-
Templars by uninterrupted transmission from the time of Jacques Molay; that Marschall
on his death-bed had delegated this high dignity to him, and had declared him his
successor, transmitting to him all his powers and dignities. He did not omit to give Hund
a list of all the names of the Templar Grand-Masters, which must therefore have been a
curious contrast to the list of the Order of the Temple of Paris.
Hund placed himself at the head of the German reformers: he persuaded them that his
Rite would restore Freemasonry .·. to its ancient brilliancy and its former splendour; he
was even bold enough to establish, at his own expense, a Lodge at Kittlitz, near Löbau.
At the same time he caused a Protestant church to be built. It was the Brother Masons of
this Lodge who laid the first stone; Baron de Hund placed upon this stone a copper plate
on which he had his Masonic .·. opinions engraved, and if we except that of the
continuation of the Ancient Templar Order in the Masonry .·. to which he especially
belonged (for in order to be received into the Rite of the Clerks of the Strict Observance
he had even become a Catholic 75)—if we except, as we say, this opinion, we believe that
his principles were altogether philosophical. In the doctrines of his Eques Professus, the
eighth rung which he added to the Templar ladder of the Strict Observance, he
maintains that these Pontiffs are the only Priests of the True Light, the Worshippers of
God, and the disciples of the pure doctrines of Jesus and of John. 76
There are very many details about the work done by Von Hund in his efforts to draw the
mystic side of Masonry into prominence; details which can be read in the work of any
real authority on the history of Masonry, and which cannot, for want of space, be
entered into in these pages. Most of the German Masonic authorities, such as Keller,
Rebold, Krause, Lenning, Findel, and others, concede his personal asceticism and
moreover his entire honesty of purpose, but he is usually summed up as a dupe.
Passing on to another aspect of this much-tangled web of Masonic evolution, we find
that about 1770 events of great importance transpired in Germany; Duke Ferdinand of
Brunswick had become a Mason, and he induced his brother, the reigning Duke Charles,
and his nephews—the sons of Duke Charles—to enter the Masonic Fraternity, and they
all joined the Rite of the Strict Observance. It was at this juncture that there appeared
also on the scene Johann Augustus Starck, a profoundly striking personality from all
accounts.
He had been in St. Petersburg from 1762-65 as teacher of Oriental languages, and was
also a deep student of theology and philosophy. Starck had held many public positions
of trust and importance, amongst others that of interpreter of Oriental MSS. at the Royal
Library in Paris. He had travelled in England, Scotland, Italy and Russia, and was an
ardent searcher after hermetic and theosophic mysticism. In St. Petersburg he had come

75This is contradicted by some authorities.

76Reghellini da Schio (Par le F .·. M .·. R .·. da S .·.), La Maçonnerie considerèe comme le Resultat des
Religions égyptienne, juive et chrétienne, II., pp. 374, 375. Paris, 1833.
 38

into contact with the Melesino System, which was both hermetic and theosophic in its
tenets.
Starck held that the mystic traditions of the Knights-Templars, derived by them from
those still older fraternities with whom they had been in contact in the East, were
preserved amongst the clericals of that Order who had cherished their unbroken
continuity until his days, and he announced that he was in communication with certain
Superiors, or chiefs of the Order.
Our well-known English authority, writing on the Strict Observance, says:
On February 17th, 1767, some Masons, chief amongst whom may be mentioned Von
Vegesack, Von Bohnen and Starck, founded at Wismar the Lodge of the "Three Lions,"
and added thereto a Scots Lodge, "Gustavus of the Golden Hammer."
Shortly afterwards they added a hitherto unknown body, a "Clerical Chapter." To these
brethren we are indebted for the historical fiction (sic) that the Knights-Templars were
divided into military and sacerdotal members; that the latter possessed all the secrets
and mystic learning of the Order; and that they had preserved a continuous existence
down to the eighteenth century. Starck claimed to be the emissary of these Clerical
Templars, asserted their and his superiority over the Secular Knights, and offered, on
his claims being acknowledged, to impart their valuable secrets to Von Hund and his
disciples. Starck (1741-1816), was a student of Göttingen, and a very learned man, an
Oriental linguist of great attainments, and had held scientific appointments in St.
Petersburg, Paris, Wismar, and elsewhere. 77
The author of this work—a standard work on Masonry—regards Starck as a charlatan,
although he brings no proofs, other than his assertions, which are upheld by many
modern materialistic critics, that there were no leaders, or unknown Superiors, that the
tradition was false, and that no real connection existed between the Templars and the
Masons. Unfortunately for many of these critics this tradition was not " written in the
stars " but preserved on stones, and we find the eminent archæologist Baron Joseph von
Hammer 78 demonstrating the connection between the Masons and the Templars. He
traces the Eastern origin of both by means of engraved symbols, showing the
extraordinary identity between those used by the Masons, and those of the Templars,
and practically makes them identical in their inception, that is to say, developed from
the same original stock of mystic Eastern lore, and when we have to sketch the history
of the Knights-Templars we shall turn to these researches for their monumental
records, proving the Eastern sources from which the secret traditions of the Templars
were derived; justifying the claim of all those later societies which based their
assertions on the same tradition.
At present we must confine ourselves to the Strict Observance, and so we pass on to
what Johann Starck says in his own writings on the subject. One of his works deals
entirely with the accusation brought against the Strict Observance and other secret
societies, namely that they were derived from the Jesuit order. 79

77 Gould, Hist. of Freemasonry, V., p. 104. London, 1886.

78 Fundgruben des Orients, VI., p. 445 (Wien, 1818), "Gegenrede wider die Einrede der Vertheidiger der
Templer."
79 See his long dissertation on the subject in Uber Krypto Katholicismus, Proselyten-Macherey, Jesuitismus,

Geheime Gesellschaften, etc. Frankfort and Leipzig, 1787.

 39

He was particularly attacked on his belief that the Knights-Templars could have
continued in existence for four hundred and fifty years, unknown to the world at large.
To this charge he replied that
If he [Dr. Biester 80] had been somewhat better acquainted with ecclesiastical history, he
would have found not only one, but several religious bodies, which under far more
violent oppression and persecution than those endured by the Knights-Templars, have
secretly continued to exist for a longer period than four hundred and fifty years.
Starck's view is upheld by a modern writer of note, who, speaking of the Templars says:
Considering how widely the Order had spread its branches, obtained possession and
affiliated to itself multitudes both male and female amongst the laity all over Europe, it
would be a mere absurdity to believe that all its traditions were swept away at one
stroke by the suppression of the Templars in the year 1307. 81
Thus we find this view supported a century later than the time when Starck penned his
defence of the tradition. Starck proceeds, moreover, to show how many scholars were of
the same opinion. He writes:
How great are the number of scholars who joined it [the Strict Observance] and
accepted the opinion that the order of the Templars had continued to exist for four
hundred and fifty years, secretly truly, but uninterruptedly! There are Professor
Dähmart at Greifswalde, Eques ab abiete, Doctor and Professor Rehfeld, Eques à caprea,
Doctor and Professor Rölpen, Eques à tribus specis, Professor and Preacher Ruhlenkamp
at Göttingen, Eques à gallo cantante, Professor Schwarz at Reval, Eques à rota, Professor
Eck at Leipzig, Eques à noctua, etc.
These men are scholars and students holding responsible public positions and as such
would hardly be all fools or charlatans. Space will not permit us to follow at present all
the arguments brought forward by Starck, in order to show the absurdity of the
accusations of Jesuitism, an accusation which was freely brought against many of the
societies of the period; we must pass on to the condition of the society itself, and trace
even this but briefly.
Ragon, in speaking of the Strict Observance, says that in Germany a society was formed
of Reformed Masons, that is to say:
Approaching more nearly to the true institution than the ordinary Freemasons. The
study of the Kabala, of the Philosopher's Stone, and of Necromancy or the invocation of
spirits, occupied them chiefly, because according to them all these sciences formed the
system and the object and end of the ancient mysteries of which Freemasonry is the
sequel. 82
The studies enumerated in this quotation appear to have been carried on chiefly in one
of the higher grades of the Strict Observance called Clerici Ordinis Templariorum. It was
this branch that took up the study of Alchemy, and which was under the particular
direction of Starck, Herr von Raven, and others, who were entirely devoted to the mystic
side of Masonry. Ragon gives the following divisions and grades into which the System
was divided, namely:

80 Editor of the Berliner Monatschrift.

81 King (C.W.), The Gnostics and their Remains, Ancient and Mediæval, p. 399, 2nd ed. London, 1887.
82 Ragon (J. M.), Orthodoxie Maçonnique, p. 210. Paris, 1853.
 40

1. Apprenti

2. Compagnon

3. Maître Symboliques.

4. Maître Écossais

5. Novice

6. Eques.
Templier, divisé en 3 classes sous les noms de Socius.
Armiger.

Between 1768 and 1770 the Baron von Hund added a seventh grade, which he called:
7. Eques Professus.
It is also stated by Ragon 83 that the largest portion of this society became Martinists,
and were known later by the name of the "Knights of the Holy Sepulchre." This change
was made at the convention at Lyons, which took place in 1778. The Duke Ferdinand of
Brunswick and the Baron von Raven also joined this division. Another group took the
name of the "Beneficent Knights of the Holy City," and amongst them we find the two
mystics, the Comte de St. Martin and Willermoz.
It will be better to add here a few details about the Knights Templars, since they are so
intimately connected with the Masonic Order just mentioned; details which will also
serve to show the inner aspect of their tradition. Much has been written about them and
their history—from one aspect—is better known than that of almost any other mystic
organisation, but the fact of a secret teaching is not sufficiently clear. That there was a
secret doctrine 84 amongst the Templars is shown by Neaf 85; he points out that the
Knights Templars considered that the Roman Church had failed in its ideal, and that
when the terrible persecutions fell upon them that they divided and joined two different
associations, one the body of Freemasons and the other a body named the Johannites.
Another writer 86 points out the connection between the Templars and the Bogomiles,

83 Op. cit., p. 230.

84 If these facts already point to the existence of secret statutes in the Order of the Knights Templars, this
will also be proved by a number of other notes and finally substantiated by some quite positive
statements which are most explicit.
A great number of witnesses, who give information on the p. 90 ceremonies of admission in question refer
the same to certain definite phrases which describe them. It then furthermore transpires that these secret
statutes were not only received by means of oral tradition but also existed in manuscript form. Gervais de
Beauvais saw at one of the Heads of the Orders, a little book with the Statutes of the Order of 1128, which
was shown without thinking, and he knew that the same man had also possessed another book about
which he was very mysterious and which he "would not show anyone for all the world." Prutz (Hans
Dr.), Gehemelehre des Templherren Ordens, p. 45. Berlin, 1879.
85 Naef (F.), Recherches sur les Opinions religieuses des Templiers, pp. 25 to 41. Nismes, 1890.
86 Loiseleur (Jules), La Doctrine Secrète des Templiers, pp. 35, 48. Paris, 1872.
 41

who were the Manichæans of the Balkan Provinces, and the Gnostics of the early
Christian period and their descendants, the Cathari of the mediæval ages. Dr.
Simrock 87 suggests a deeply interesting idea with regard to the connection between the
tradition of the Holy Grail and the secret teachings of the Templars; he appears to
consider that the Grail tradition, which is drawn in some parts from the Apocryphal
Gospels, is the basis of the secret teaching of the Templars. Some of the early sources of
the tradition are given by the author of Sarsena, and also the connection between the
Templars and the Essenes.
All these links are of importance if we wish to understand the close connection between
these various organizations, and also how one developed out of the other. Another
writer says:
Taking the rules of their Order and of the Christians in equal division, they (the
Kabalists) began to draw a parallel between the books of Moses and the records of the
Magi, and formed from all this material a new Brotherhood into which they imported
certain rules that could exist together with those of the Christians. During the Crusades
there were several orders of widely different views; and among numerous others in the
year 1118, the Knights of the Temple, with whom the Magi joined themselves, and to
whom they imparted their principles and mysteries. The fall of the Templars and the
entire demolition of the Order by the Council held in Vienna in 131i, is due to the fact
that all the knowledge which we may consider as part of the Wisdom of the ancient
Magi, and also the Natural Sciences, had at this time begun to be lost. There is one
section of Freemasons which finds in Freemasonry the restoration of the Order of the
Knights Templars, and the systems of the Great German Lodge and that of the Swedish
Brothers are certainly pre-eminently connected with the former. According to this
system, and in especial according to all the various systems which obtain in this
particular Order, Freemasonry is a mystical conception of the principle doctrines of
Christianity, the slain Master no other than the Christ! And here the question fairly
arises, had the teachings of the Christ in truth mysteries, unsearchable,
incomprehensible doctrines, which were only to he made comprehensible to a small
number of specially chosen disciples, and were not the Essenes that body among whom
He had learned those mysteries, for the Essenes demanded of those initiated,
moderation, justice, avoidance of injury, love of Truth and detestation of evil; holy water
belonged to the ritual of admission to their highest grade, and John said " Repent and be
baptized." Christ who led the blameless life, suffered himself to be baptized. Does not
this lead us to the almost certain conclusion that Christ, and even more John, were
initiated members of the Essenes? Were sufficient documents available to prove the
historic truth of this statement, it would be perfectly obvious why John (the Baptist)
who bled for Truth and Goodness, should have been chosen as the Patron of the present
Order and of nearly all that precede it. The keeping of John the Baptist's Day as a
Festival by the Freemasons is adduced in confirmation of this idea that the Freemasons
had for over six hundred years identified themselves with the "Johannrittern" and St.
John the Baptist had been chosen Patron by both Orders. And as it is certain that much
of the ritual of the form of Reception means something quite other than that which has
been substituted latterly, it may very easily be that there is some truth in this assertion.
For it is just as little true that the Freemasons identified themselves six hundred years

87 Simrock (Dr. K.), Parzifal u. Titurel, Rittergedichte von Wolfram von Eschenbach, I., 497. Stuttgart und

Tübingen, 1842.
 42

ago with the "Johannrittern" as that they now crown the Master, Hiram, in the Lodge in
real earnest. Christ, as has been said above, founded no secret society, and yet He gave
out His teaching only by degrees as regarded its inner significance, for he said "I have
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." After His death the pure
doctrine was falsified by additions, but yet it may be possible that its pristine purity and
simplicity may have been preserved, and where else than in some kind of Order? In the
early Christian Church there was a disciplina arcani, and in this manner were the
mysteries transmitted among the few, and even in the time of the Crusades there were
still living descendants of the Essenes. The Order of Knights of the Temple was founded
in the year 1113 by Gottfried von St. Omar, Hugo de Paiens, and seven others whose
names are not known. They consecrated themselves to the service of God according to
the form of the Canonicorum Regularium, and took solemn vows before the Bishop of
Jerusalem. Baldwin the Second, in consideration of the office of these seven servants of
God, lent to them a house near the Temple of Solomon. They bound themselves (as we
are told by the author of the book called Die theoretische Brüder U.S.V.) with certain
Essenes who formed a secret society consisting of virtuous Christians and true seekers
after Truth in Nature, and learned also their secrets. That the Templars had mysteries in
their keeping is beyond contention. The Order had secret ceremonies of admission,
gloried in possessing such, and for this reason several of its members endured
martyrdom. The Order of Knights Templar contained many of the best and most far-
seeing minds among the parents of Freemasonry; and, as is well-known, there were
whole branches of Freemasonry specially devoted to the restoration of the Templars.
And the Johannine and other systems taught this descent, even before the "Strict
Observance" became generally known, which insisted on the restoration of the
Templars as the highest aim of the mysteries. If we consider closely the similarity
between the customs of both Orders we shall find that the Reception and other
ceremonies of the Order of Freemasonry relates to that of the Knights of the Temple
exactly in so far as to enable us to say with positiveness that the Freemasons preserve in
their midst the mysteries of the Templars and transmit them. That the Templars
possessed secrets is witnessed by the evidence in their procedure: the Freemasons
claim the like procedure for themselves, for from grade to grade the Aspirant is told that
later he shall experience yet more. More what? Also a secret. Nine Brothers founded the
Order of the Templars; the chief and hieroglyphic number of the Freemasons is three
times three. The Templars held Divine Service in places which were interdicted. By the
strictest observances they reserved these for themselves (or set these aside) they
appealed to the rights of their forefathers.
In the general organization, Roessler tells us:
The Brother Templars were, according to their statutes as Hospital Brothers divided
into three classes: 1, into the class of the serving who, without distinction, nursed sick
pilgrims and Knights Templars; 2, into that of the spiritual Brothers destined for the
service of pilgrims; 3, into that of Knights who went to war.
We find in the Instructions of the Chevalier d’Orient where are celebrated the
foundation of the Knights Templars and the spread of their teachings in Europe the
following declaration on the matter is given:
 43

"Eighty-one Masons 88 under the leadership of Garimonts, the Patriarch of Jerusalem,

went, in the year 1150, to Europe and betook themselves to the Bishop of Upsala who
received them in very friendly fashion and was consequently initiated into the
mysteries of the Copts which the Masons had brought with them; later he was entrusted
with the deposit of the collection of those teachings, rites and mysteries. The Bishop
took pains to enclose and conceal them in the subterranean vaults of the tower of the
'Four Crowns' which at that time, was the crown treasure chamber of the King of
Sweden. Nine of these Masons, amongst them Hugo de Paganis, founded in Europe the
Order of the Knights Templars; later on they received from the Bishop the dogmas,
mysteries and teachings of the Coptic Priests, confided to him.
"Thus in a short time the Knights Templars became the receivers and depositors of the
mysteries, rites and ceremonies which had been brought over by the Masons from the
East—the Levites of the true Light.
"The Knights Templars, devoted entirely to the sciences and to the dogmas brought
from the Thebaid, wished, in course of time, to preserve this doctrine in solemn fashion
by a token. The Scotch Templars served as pattern in the matter, they having founded
the three degrees of St. Andreas of Scotland, and adapted them to the allegorical legend
to be found in the instructions referred to.
"Scotch Templars were occupied in excavating a place at Jerusalem in order to build a
temple there, and precisely on the spot where the temple of Solomon—or at least that
part of it called the Holy of Holies—had stood. During their work they found three
stones which were the corner stones of the Solomon temple itself. The monumental
form of these excited their attention; this excitement became all the more intense when
they found the name Jehovah engraved in the elliptical spaces of the last of these
stones—this which was also a type of the mysteries of the Copt—the sacred word
which, by the murder of the Master Builder, had been lost, and which, according to the
legend of the first degree, Hiram had had engraved on the foundation stone of
Solomon's temple. After such a discovery the Scotch Knights took this costly memorial
with them, and, in order eternally to preserve their esteem for it, they employed these
as the three corner stones of their first temple at Edinburgh." 89
Our author further tells us that:
The works began on St. Andreas' day; and so the Templars who had knowledge of this
fact, of the secret of the three stones, and of the re-discovered word, called themselves
Knights of St. Andreas; they appointed degrees of merit in order to attain, and these are
present in the apprentice, companion, and master degrees known under the name of the
Little Master-Builder, the Great Master-Builder, and the Scotch Master.
By the instruction common to all Knightly Orders the Crusaders were under obligation
to make many journeys and pilgrimages where, as is said, they had to see themselves
surrounded by dangers. Therefore they founded those degrees in order to recognize
each other and to assist each other in need. For these journeys they took signs, words,
and particular touches or grips, and imparted to all Brothers a principal sign in order to
find help in case of a surprise.

88 "These Masons are always in the figurative sense Knights of the Cross who had been admitted to the
mysteries of the working in the mystic Temple, and to the religion of the Children of the Widow."
89 The legend of these three stones has a striking resemblance to that of the three mysterious stones

which the Nymphs found and brought to Minerva—the Goddess of Wisdom.

 44

In order to imitate the Christians of the East and the Coptic Priests, these Knights
preserved among themselves the verbal law which was never written down, and took
care that it should remain concealed to the initiated of the lower degrees. All this is
preserved with exactitude in the philosophic rite of our days, although this rite does not
precisely seek to derive its origin from the Knights Templars.
The Knights Templars united the possessions of the Old Man of the Mountains under
their rule, as they had perceived the supernatural courage of his pupils, they admitted
these into their order. Some historians have thus come to the opinion that the Knights
Templars had been induced themselves to accept the institutions of those admitted.
Gauthier von Montbar was acquainted with these teachings, and transplanted them into
Europe.
All these circumstances were very detrimental to the religion of Rome; it lost many of
those who had belonged to it; more especially many Crusaders who were sojourning in
Syria, Palestine and Egypt, where all the forms of belief of the first Christians were
preserved and tolerated by the Saracens.
Eastern Christians regarded the dogma of the unity of God as a mystery and saw in it a
divine manifestation. They, therefore, only imparted the knowledge thereof at initiation
which they held very secret. They practised the morality commanded by the Son of
Mary, but did not believe in his divinity; for all those who followed Gnostic and
Kabalistic traditions considered him to be their Elder Brother.
The Knights of the Cross who had come to know these dogmas and mysteries of the
Christians of the East, were obliged, when they had returned to Europe, to hold this
initiation still more secret, for the mere suspicion of such a faith would have been
sufficient to bring these new religious professors to the rack and the stake. 90
We will now pass on to some of the religious and philosophic views held by the Knights
Templars which are summarized from the Abbé Grégoire and which show the link with
the Gnostic teachings.
The Order of the Temple is cosmopolitan; it is divided into two great classes: 1, the
Order of the East; 2, the Order of the Temple.
The Order of the Temple sprang from the Order of the East, of which ancient Egypt was
the cradle. The Order of the East comprised different orders or classes of adepts. The
adepts of the first order were at once legislators, judges, and pontiffs.
Their policy was opposed to the propagation of metaphysical knowledge and the
natural sciences, of which they made themselves the sole depositories; and whoever
should have dared to reveal the secrets reserved for the initiates in the order of the
sacerdotal hierarchy, would have been punished with most dire severity. They gave to
the people only unintelligible emblems constituting the exoteric theology, which was a
compound of absurd dogmas and extravagant practices tending to give more
ascendency to superstition, and to consolidate the government.
Moses was initiated in Egypt. He was profoundly versed in the theological, physical, and
metaphysical mysteries of the priests. Aaron, his brother, and the other Hebrew chiefs
became the depositories of these doctrines. These chiefs or Levites were divided into
several classes, according to the custom of the Egyptian priests.

90 Accerrelos (Roessler, Dr. Karl), History of Freemasonry, Leipzig, 1836. II., p. 85 et seq.
 45

Later on, the Son of God was born into the world. He was brought up in the Alexandrian
school. Filled with a spirit altogether divine, endowed with the most marvellous
intelligence, he succeeded in attaining all the degrees of Egyptian initiation.
On returning to Jerusalem, he presented himself before the chiefs of the Synagogue, and
pointed out to them the numerous alterations that the Law of Moses had undergone at
the hands of the Levites; he confounded them by the power of his spirit and the extent
of his knowledge; but the Jewish priests, blinded by their passions, persisted in their
errors.
However, the moment had come when Jesus Christ, directing the fruit of his lofty
meditations towards the universal civilization and welfare of the world, tore down the
veil which hid the truth from the people, preached the love of one's neighbour and the
equality of all men before the common Father. Finally, consecrating by a sacrifice
worthy of the Son of God the heavenly doctrines which he had come to spread, he
established for ever on the earth, by his gospels, the religion inscribed in the Book of
Eternity.
Jesus conferred on his disciples the evangelical initiation, caused his spirit to descend
upon them, divided them into different orders, according to the custom of the Egyptian
priests and Hebrew priests, and placed them under the authority of St. John, his beloved
disciple, and whom he had made supreme pontiff and patriarch.
John never quitted the East; his doctrine, always pure, was not altered by the admixture
of any other doctrine.
Peter and the other apostles, on the contrary, carried the teachings of Jesus Christ to
distant peoples; but as they were often forced, in order to propagate the faith, to
conform to the manners and customs of these different nations, and even to admit other
rites than those of the East, slight variations and changes crept into the different
gospels, as well as into the doctrines of the numerous Christian sects.
Down to 1118, the mysteries and the hierarchical order of the Egyptian initiation,
transmitted to the Jews through Moses and afterwards to the Christians through Jesus
Christ, were religiously preserved by the successors of the apostle John. These
mysteries and these initiations regenerated through the evangelical initiation or
baptism formed a sacred deposit which, thanks to the simplicity of primitive customs
from which the brothers of the East never departed, never underwent the slightest
alteration.
The Christians of the East, persecuted by the infidels, appreciating the courage and piety
of those valiant crusaders who, sword in one hand and cross in the other, flew to the
defence of the holy places; doing justice, above all, to the virtues and the ardent charity
of Hugh of Payens, considered it their duty to entrust to hands so pure the treasures of
knowledge acquired during so many centuries, and sanctified by the cross, the teachings
and the ethics of the Man-God.
Hugh was then invested with the patriarchal apostolic power, and placed in the
legitimate line of the successors of John the Apostle or Evangelist.
Such is the origin of the foundation of the Templars, and of the introduction amongst
them of the different modes of initiation of the Christians of the East designated by the
name of Primitive or Johannite Christians. It is to this initiation that belong the various
 46

degrees consecrated by the rules of the Temple, and which were so much called in
question in the famous but terrible action brought against this august Order.
Jacques de Molay, foreseeing the misfortunes that threatened the Order, appointed as
his successor Brother Jean Marc Larmenius, of Jerusalem, whom he invested with full
patriarchal apostolic authority, and with magisterial power.
This Grand Master passed on the supreme power to Brother Theobald, of Alexandria, as
is evidenced by the charter of transmission, etc.
Let us come finally to the Levitical doctrines:—God is all that exists; every part of all
that exists is a part of God, but is not God.
Immutable in his essence, God is mutable in his parts, which after having existed under
the laws of certain combinations more or less complex, live again under laws of fresh
combinations. All is increate.
God being supremely intelligent, every one of the parts which compose him is endowed
with a portion of his intelligence, in virtue of its destiny, whence it follows that there is
an infinite gradation of intelligences resulting from an infinity of different compounds,
the union of which forms the entirety of the worlds. This entirety is the Great All, or
God, who alone has the power to modify, change, and govern all these orders of
intelligences, according to the eternal and immutable laws of an infinite justice and
goodness.
God—infinite Being—is composed of three powers; the Father, or Being; the Son, or
action; the Spirit, or mind, proceeding from the power of the Father and the Son. These
three powers form a trinity, a power infinite, unique and individual.
There is but one only true religion, that which acknowledges one only God, Eternal,
filling the infinity of time and space.
The Order of Nature is immutable; therefore all doctrines that any one would attempt to
build up on a change of these laws would be founded only on error. . .
Eternal life is the power with which every being is endowed, of living in his own life and
of acquiring an infinity of modifications by combining himself unceasingly with other
beings, according to what is ordained by the eternal laws of the wisdom, the justice and
the infinite goodness of the supreme Intelligence.
According to this system of modification of matter, it is natural to conclude that all its
parts have the right of thought and free-will, and therefore the power of merit and
demerit; hence there is no longer anything of what is called inorganic matter; if,
however, any must be admitted, where is the limit, for instance, among mineral,
vegetable, and animal substances?
However, the high Initiates do not profess to believe that all the parts of matter possess
the faculty of thought. It is not thus that they profess to understand their system. They
certainly admit a series of intelligences from the elementary substance, the most simple
molecule, or the monad, up to the reunion of all these monads or of their compounds, a
reunion which would constitute the great All, or God, which, as the Universal
Intelligence, would alone have the power of comprehending Itself. But the manner of
being, of feeling, and of using the intelligences, would be relative to the hierarchical
order in which they found themselves placed; consequently the intelligence would differ
according to the mode of organization and the hierarchical place of each body. Thus,
 47

according to this system, the intelligence of the simple molecule would be limited to
seeking or rejecting union with certain other molecules. The intelligence of a body
composed of several molecules would have other characters, according to the mode of
organization of its elements, and the higher or lower degree that it occupied in the
hierarchical scale of compounds. Man, for example, among the intelligences 1 which
form part of the earth, would alone have that modification or organization which would
fully give the " I " consciousness, as well as the faculty of distinguishing good from evil,
and consequently which would procure the gift of free-will.
Such is a summary of the version given by the Abbé Grégoire 91 of some of the inner
philosophy held by the Knights Templars. There is a distinctly Eastern tone of thought
in even these few fragments, fragments which indicate quite clearly to many students
the sources from which these traditions were drawn.
The Strict Observance endeavoured to reconstitute a Gnostic teaching when it sought to
revive the Traditions of the Templars.

91 Grégoire (Abbé), Histoire des Sectes Religieuses, II., pp. 292 et seq. Paris, 1828.
 48

The Troubadours, The Singing

Messengers From East To West
OH, these are voices of the Past,
Links of a broken chain.—PROCTER.
MYSTERIOUS songsters of the Middle Ages, messengers who were burdened—by right
of the royal gift of song—with a knowledge that transcended that of their fellow-men—
such were the Troubadours, who formed an integral portion of the mystic thread, and
thus served in the weaving of the glorious traditions of eastern arcane lore into the
young web of the western child-life.
Much has been already set down by many competent writers on this most complicated
and interesting period of the Middle Ages; here and there some few frankly
acknowledge that in the study of the writings and poems of the Troubadours, traces of
hidden knowledge on their part become revealed, a knowledge which pertains to some
more ancient tradition than that of the Catholic Church.
It is these traces that must be collected, in order to demonstrate that these "Messengers
of Love," as they were often termed, were inheritors of a "Kingdom of Heaven "—a
mystic heaven, indeed, of pure doctrine, noble life, and holy aspirations.
It is but slightly that we need touch on their general history, for the outer aspect of their
work can be easily followed by students; our chief attention must be centred on the
most important part of their mission, and the part but little known in the general world,
namely, that of their work as spiritual teachers, their secret language, and above all
their secret doctrine.
Rossetti 92 in his valuable book gives many proofs of the existence of a mystic language
in the "Secret Schools," and of the "double" and even "triple language" used by these
Troubadours in communicating with each other. These details must be investigated if
we desire to arrive at any clear comprehension of the extent to which these Secret
Schools were organized and developed during the Middle Ages, and on this point
Rossetti writes as follows:
The existence of such a style of language is an historical fact affirmed by many, and
denied by none; it is a not less notorious fact that the persecuted sect conformed in
public to the language and ceremonies of the persecuting religion; while they give in
secret to every sentence of that language, and to every act of those ceremonies, an
arbitrary and conventional meaning, corresponding with their own designs. There is
scarcely a contemporary or succeeding historian who does not tell us that the Patarini,
or Cathari, or Albigenses, were Manicheans; and we know that Silvanus, one of the
successors of the murdered Manes, so artfully used that doctrine "that it seemed all
drawn from the Scriptures, as they are received by catholics. He affected to make use of
Scriptural phrases and he spoke like the most orthodox among us, when he mentioned
the baptism, death, burial or resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ." And he and his

92 Rossetti (Gabriele), Disquisitions on the Anti-papal Spirit which produced the Reformation, ii, 1I2, 170.

London, 1834.
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proselytes did all this so cunningly that "the Manicheans seduced numbers of people;
and their sect was considered by the simple-minded to be a society of Christians, who
made profession of an extraordinary perfection." These are the words of the Abbé
Pluquet (Dict. des Hérés., art., Silvan and Manicheans), who traced the existence of this
sect in Italy as far back as 1022, when many of them were discovered and burned for
the love of God. Let us hear the same author describe the actions of later sectarians after
other innumerable examples of inhuman cruelty. "The Clanculars were a society of
anabaptists who taught that on religious subjects it was necessary to speak in public like
other men, and only in secret to express the thoughts." And the Albigensis and
Manicheans show the best means of succeeding in this design with the following fact.
Persecuted incessantly by the remorseless Inquisition, one of their chiefs had recourse
to a cunning device. He knew that he and his friends were accused of refusing to
worship the saints, and of denying the supremacy of the Romish Church, and that they
would be forced to make a profession of faith and to swear by the Holy Mary to have no
other religion than that of the Holy Church. He was resolved not to betray his inward
sentiments, but he desired if possible, to escape death. "O, muses! O, high genius! Now
vouchsafe your aid!" He shut himself up in a cave with two aged females of his own sect,
and gave the name of Holy Church to the one and Holy Mary to the other, "In order, that,
when the sectarians were interrogated by the Father Inquisitors, they might be able to
swear by the Holy Mary that they held no other faith than that of the Holy Church."
Hence, when we desire to estimate properly the devout and holy things written in those
times, we must first consider who composed them; and thus we shall be able to
reconcile the frequent contradictions which are apparent between the verses and the
actions of the Troubadours and Trouveurs." 93
It is remarkable that this secret language should have remained so little known, since it
gives a clue of almost unmeasured importance to many a hidden mystery in the
Troubadour life of the Middle Ages. It is to Eugène Aroux that we owe the largest debt of
gratitude for unveiling this mysterious bye-way of mystic studies; he denounces, with
the wrath of a good, but bigoted Catholic, the teachings of Dante, and he unveils for us
the real reason of his wrath: and from his standpoint he is right, Dante was not an
orthodox Catholic; he was a true mystic, and his church was composed of all those great
and liberated souls who have existed in every clime: without distinction of race, religion
or caste. Aroux draws the attention of the student to the following important points:
with relation to the real views of Dante, thus he says, in commenting on the poet:
Though we may seem to have gone back quite beyond the deluge, it is evident that we
are really completely in the Middle Ages. And in fact, though people may talk to us of the
origin of the human species and of its dispersion over the earth, the question is really

93Rossetti, Gabriele, Disquisitions on the Antipapal Spirit which produced the Reformation, ii., 113-115.
London, 1834.
Another writer makes the following comment:—"D’après les idées de M. Rossetti, il y aurait encore dans
les poésies de Dante et de Pétrarque, ainsi que dans les romans de Boccace, quelque chose que ces
hommes n’ont jamais entièrement exprimé dans leurs écrits latins. Il semblerait, à entendre le nouveau
commentateur de la Divine Comédie, qu’une grande et éternelle vérité, partie de la bouche des Orphées,
des Thalés, des Pythagores, et bondissant d’écho en écho jusqu’a nous, par l’intermédaire des prophètes,
de Platon, des Sibylles, de Virgile et de Boétius, a été recueillie enfin, tenue voilée, mais exactement
transmise aux générations modernes, par une succession de sectaires, comme les manichéens, les
templiers, les patarins, les gibelins, les rosecroix, les sociniens, les swedenborgiens, les francs-maçons, et
enfin les carbonari."—Delécluze (E. J.), Dante Alighieri, ou la Poésie Amoureuse; pp. 605-606. Paris, 1848.
 50

that of the starting-point of the Manichean-Gnostic doctrine and of its course from East
to West. Let the following lines be carefully considered: "We do not readily believe that
men were, immediately on the confusion of tongues, dispersed all over the world. The
root of the human race was first planted in the countries of the East, then OUR RACE
spread itself by putting forth numerous shoots on one side and another, [like] PALM-
TREES, and it finally reached the extreme boundaries of the West, whence it resulted
that rational throats quenched their thirst for the first time at the streams of Europe, at
some at least, if not at all. But whether they were foreigners coming there for the first
time, or whether, born in Europe, they had returned there, they brought with them
a triple language."
Here is the text of this passage, so singular as it is, understood in a literal sense:
"Ex præcedenti memorata confusione linguarum non leviter opinamur per universa mundi
climata . . . tunc homines primum fuisse dispersos. Et cum radix humanæ propaginis
principaliter in oris orientalibus sit plantata; nec non ab inde ad utrumque per difusos
multipliciter PALMITES. NOSTRA fuit extensa PROPAGO; demumque ad fines occidentales
protracta, unde primitus tunc vel totius Europæ, vel saltem quædam, RATIONALIA
GUTTURA potaverunt. Sed sive ADVENÆ tunc PRIMITUS ADVENISSENT, sive ad
Europam INDIGENÆ REPETISSENT, idioma secum TRIFARIUM homines attulerunt."
However little it may now be remembered that, according to Dante, those only are men
who make use of their reason, others being brutes in his eyes; that, further, he has taken
care to explain to us in the Vita Nuova that the name of palms, palmieri, was affected by
those who had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, it will be acknowledged that the true
meaning of this passage is quite different from that which we have given it, and that it
conceals another which is as follows:
Our doctrine had its origin in the East; its votaries, constituting the true human race,
were not at first spread all over the earth: it was by slow degrees that our Sectarian
race, nostra propago, multiplied itself with the help of Syrian pilgrims, palms palmieri,
who brought the light to the confines of the West, and then rational throats, men using
their reason, quenched their thirst at the streams of Europe. These missionaries of the
sect being either Orientals or Europeans returning to the country of their birth, they
brought with them a language of threefold meaning, allegorical, moral, and mystical.
To reject an interpretation so plain and so thoroughly in accordance with all that we
have previously seen, it would have to be explained how it could have come into Dante's
head that men were born in Europe, when no rational throat had as yet drunk of its
streams, that these Europeans had been to the East to learn a triple language, to bring it
back into their own country, which no doubt had one of its own, and that the human
race born in the East had to people the West, already inhabited by men, whether
rational or not. Now this explanation is none of the easiest.
It is always the case that these importers of the triple language are divided into three
bands, having each their own idiom; to one was allotted the south of Europe, to another
the north, to the third the part of Asia and of Europe occupied by those who are now
called Greeks, quos nunc Græcos vocamus, as if they did not bear this name ages ago. But
let us explain: here it is a question of the refugees of the sect, of the Sinon of the party,
whom we have seen so ill-treated in hell, who are also spoken of in the Monarchy under
the name of Greek pastors. These hold to white and yellow, as one of the aspects of
Lucifer; they have one foot on the European soil of the Catholics, the other on the
eastern land of the Manicheans, and, which is very disturbing, they understand for the
 51

most part the artifices of the conventional vocabulary. The three idioms were then
subdivided in each of the regions mentioned; but those of the north, such as the
Hungarians, Slays, Teutons, Saxons, and English kept the monosyllable is as the sign of
their common origin. For the rest of Europe there was a third idiom, "though it may not
be perceived that it is triple, licet nec videatur trifarium." Among the inhabitants of this
region, "some say, as affirmation, oc, others oil, and others again si; that is to say,
Spaniards, French, and Italians. But what proves the common origin of their idiom is
that they use some of the same words to express many things, such as Dieu, ciel, amour,
mer, terre, vivre, mourir, aimer, and others besides. [God, heaven, love, sea, earth, to live, to
die, to love.]"
Dante knew very well that the Spaniards did not use oc as an affirmation, that they
used si like the Italians, but he desired to call attention to the chief centre of the
Albigensian doctrine, to the land of the langue d’oc, and not venturing to name Toulouse,
he made use of this very visible artifice, especially when it is recognized that the words
which he mentions as revealing the common origin of the language in the three
countries are precisely those which the sectarian poets so frequently use in their
mysterious compositions.
Aroux 94 further explains that these "importers" of the "triple language" were divided
into three bands, each having its own idiom: one set traversed the south of Europe,
another the north, another the part of Asia and Europe occupied by those now called
Greeks. Then Aroux breaks out in wrath: ''They have one foot on the European soil of
the Catholics, the other on the eastern land of the Manichæans."
But it is from another of his interesting works 95 that we get the most intimate details
about the organization of these Troubadour heretics, and their spiritual teaching; the
passages are so important that it is better to give them in full. 96
The eminent professor 97 whom we follow untiringly because he is an authority on the
subject, had no suspicion, when making researches into the elements composing the
personnel of Provençal literature, that he was digging into the archives of the
Albigensian Church. So it is, however, as will be shown by a rapid estimate of these
elements in the light of common sense. One may believe with him that previous to the
XIth century there were in the south of France men, who under the name of
jesters, joculatores, made it their profession to recite or to sing romantic fictions. But it
was precisely because the apostles of the dissenting doctrine found this custom
established in the countries where it had survived the Roman domination, that they
eagerly adopted it for the furtherance of their propaganda. For just as they excelled in
turning to account the heroic traditions, the religious fables of the various peoples in
order to engraft their ideas on this national foundation, they displayed exceeding skill in
adapting themselves, according to times and places, to the manners and customs of the

94 Aroux (Eugene), Dante Hérétique, Révolutionnaire et Socialiste, Révélations d’un Catholique, p. 388. Paris,
1854.
95 Aroux (E.), Les Mystères de la Chevalerie, pp. 161-169. Paris, 1858.
96 The phrases "True human race" and "Sectarians" are generally applied to Mystics, also to the

Manichæans, Albigenses, Troubadours, Palmers, and Palmieri; it meant those men and women
throughout the world, of every nation and in every clime, who were seeking the inner life in its true sense;
and who will be the "first fruits" of the "Redeemer," in the mystical sense.
97 Aroux is here referring to Fauriel (M.P., Paris), whose works on the Provençal literature have been so

often quoted in these pages.

 52

countries in which they carried on their ministry. Thus they became minnesingers in
Germany, bards and skalds in Scandinavia, minstrels in England, trouvères in northern
France, troubadours and jugglers in ancient Aquitaine, giullari, men of mirth, in Italy—
leaving everywhere monuments of their genius and a' most popular memory.
The missionaries of the heresy certainly preached the religion of love long before the
time when William of Poitiers spoke of them, towards 1100, by the name of
Troubadours, for before winning over the higher classes of society, their doctrines must
have taken a long time to filter through the lower ranks.
At the time of the complete organization 98 of the sectarian propaganda, that is to say
from 1150 to 1200, the most brilliant period of Provençal literature, Fauriel rightly
distinguishes different orders of troubadours and jesters, the very necessity of things
having obliged their division into two distinct classes. The one in fact addressing
themselves more especially to social parties, singing only for courts and castles; the
other, appealing more to popular instincts, composed for public places, for the
mercantile and working classes, for the country population. We have said that the
former were the dissenting bishops, combining the qualities of the Perfect Knights and
the Perfect Troubadours. We have explained how, having no less courage than skill,
knowing how at need to employ cunning, and giving constant evidence of a patience and
humility proof against everything, they were of the type of Renaud de Montauban, the
chivalrous figure in contrast to Maître Renard, the symbolical representative of the
Roman clergy.
The latter, no less useful on account of the recruits that they unceasingly made amongst
the most numerous classes, amongst those who had most to suffer from clerical
oppression and exactions, furnished the model of the knights errant, as also that of the
wild knights ["chevaliers sauvages"], personified in the romance of which Guido the Wild
is the easily to be recognized hero.
Lastly, above these two orders of knights and troubadours, there was that of the barons
and feudal lords, who, having embraced the Albigensian faith, having become its
protectors or godfathers, carried on the propaganda in their own way and in their own
social sphere. These men often cultivated poetry, and used it to impress on the nobility,
and still more on the bourgeoisie, ideas hostile to pontifical omnipotence. Not only did
they encourage the people to shake off the theocratic yoke by setting them the example,
but they further upheld them and resolutely took up their defence against prelates,
inquisitors and legates, the Estults, Galaffrons, giants and necromancers that abound in
the romances of Geste. Thence, we have that heroic personage Roland, in contrast to
Master Issengrin; that son of Milo, whose powerful words, under the name of Durendal,
made an enormous breach in the granite of the mountains, a breach through which an
invasion was made on to Spanish soil, where it could exclaim, long before Louis XIV.,
"The Pyrenees exist no longer!"
These noble sectaries, of the type of the chivalric Roland, were, as a matter of fact,
feudal lords, true knights. As such, they did not hesitate to confer in case of need, in
accordance with the ideas of the time, and especially in masonic [? "masseniques"]
lodges, the order of knighthood on distinguished members of their communion whom
religious or political interest drew into foreign countries.

98 This was just before the most deadly persecutions began. There was an extraordinarily extended

organization of this so-called heretical church.

 53

On another side, observe how generously certain German Emperors—such as a Conrad,

an Otho, the two Fredericks—once came down into Italy, lent themselves to bestowing
the order of knighthood on the bourgeois of Milan, on merchants and bankers of Genoa
and Florence. For them it was a means of recruiting their forces against the papacy, and
of strengthening in Italy an opposition which they well knew to be not simply political.
And Dante also is careful not to forget the families who quartered on their shields "the
arms of the great baron," vicar of the Emperor Otho; and it is with pride that he recalls
the promotion of his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida, knighted by Conrad.
As to the jesters, properly so-named jesters of song, of sayings, of romance, as they were
called—they must be distinguished from the mimic jesters, that is to say, from the
mountebanks and buffoons. The clerical jesters were, as has already been said,
evangelical ministers, still subject to the preliminary discipline of the priesthood.
Holding the rank of deacons in the sectarian church, they were with regard to the
pastors to whom they were attached, in a position analogous to that of squires to
knights, and it is under this title that they figure in the romances.
If distinguished troubadours are spoken of, and, among others, Giraud de Borneil, as
always accompanied by two jesters, it is unquestionably that these troubadours
were Albigensian bishops, whose dignity and functions required the assistance of two
deacons. This is why it is said of them that "They never went on a tour (episcopal)
without having both of them in their retinue."
It would be a great mistake to think that the first corner could be admitted to the
functions of a jester. Fauriel will tell you that it was necessary to have "an extraordinary
memory, a fine voice, to be able to sing well, to play well on the accompanying
instrument, and also to have a knowledge of history, of traditions, of genealogies.
Several jesters indeed are cited for their historical knowledge." The learned member of
the Institute thinks that this knowledge could not have been very great, at a time when
all history was reduced to barren chronicles; but is it quite certain that their blunders,
their anachronisms, their confounding of personages, countries, and dates, may not be
voluntary? Would they not on the contrary be a proof that their knowledge in this
respect was much greater than one is willing to suppose? As to the genealogies, it is a
question of those of Geste's romances.
Besides the jesters attached to the person of the bishop or of the mere pastor, were
those who, having already completed their probation, went forth, furnished with the
recommendation of the one or the other, to give instruction or carry consolation into
courts and castles. It was these who were called elder sons [of age? "fils majeurs"],
deacons of the first-class. The others, designated younger sons [under age? "fils
mineurs"], performed the same functions in towns and villages; but for the most part
their own special aptitudes marked them out for the kind of service expected from
them.
These two classes of one and the same priesthood were recruited from all ranks of
society, on the sole condition of uniting to a true vocation the natural gifts and the
knowledge necessary for success in so difficult and dangerous a mission.
One curious matter, to state precisely, would be how many personages came down into
these poetic classes from a station generally considered superior. Nothing was more
common in the 12th and 13th centuries, in the countries of the Provençal tongue, than
to see knights, castellans, canons, clerics, become troubadours or simple jesters. Several
of the most distinguished among both had begun by being considerable personages in
 54

society. Peyrols had been a knight; Pierre Cardinal was born of a noble and wealthy
family; Pierre Roger had been a canon at Clermont; Arnaud de Marueilh had been a
clergyman, and the famous Arnaud Daniel was a noble who had received a first-rate
education. Assuredly these men did not consider that they were lowering themselves by
embracing the apostolate, but on the contrary were raising themselves in their own
eyes and in those of their brethren. The mysterious Sordello was a noble lord.
Moreover, how should knights such as Sordello, such as the Dauphin of Auvergne and so
many others, have hesitated to become troubadours out of zeal for their faith, when
kings like Richard of England and Peter of Aragon, powerful suzerains like William of
Poitiers, had declared themselves professors of the Gay Science; when they added their
voices to those of the servants of love, to exalt, in interests perhaps less religious than
political, the mysterious and Perfect lady who under various names—as star, flower,
light—was appealed to, to cast down to hell the Roman she-wolf, to crush the pontifical
serpent? The Infamous dates not from Voltaire.
Just as episcopal mandates, days for the sermons of preachers, and the order of the
offices, &c., are affixed to the doors of churches, so did the troubadours give out their
notices in the castles by a kind of poetical programme, thus making known the lyric,
pastoral or romantic compositions which were to serve as the text for their teachings. In
how many places was not the Divine Comedy thus recited and commented on before a
select audience? Fauriel cites as a specimen a whimsical piece by Pierre Cardinal, "in
which the author," he says, "envelops himself in veils of allegory of the most fantastic
kind till it appears to him unintelligible." These veils would have appeared to him
transparent if he had understood the true composition of the balsam of Fierabras.
As this famous balsam, the unguent proclaimed by the troubadour knight and probably
bishop, Pierre Cardinal, the unguent which heals all kinds of wounds, even the bites of
the venemous reptiles (in the orthodox ranks, be it understood)—is in fact none other
than the word of the Gospel; so also the golden vessel in which it is contained, the vessel
adorned with the most precious stones, is none other than the Holy Grail itself, or the
book of the Gospels, as the Albigenses had adopted and translated it; the golden book, the
vessel containing the true light, visible only to the initiated, to the professors of the gay
science ["du gay saber"]. Now, among the romances given out by Pierre Cardinal, we find
in the nick of time that of Tristan of Léonois, so well-known to Dante, and which,
celebrating the conquest of England by the law of love, should have more than one claim
to the interest of the people of Provence.
We have seen, on the one hand, that the Albigensian clergy, so skilful and so full of zeal,
were recruited from the ranks of the priesthood as well as from those of the nobility and
the bourgeoisie; on the other hand we have become convinced, from the interpretations
that we have given of the decrees of the Courts of Love and of the decisions in the
amorous casuistry, that ecclesiastics converted to the faith of Love could not continue
their cure of souls in the parish where they had performed their vicarial functions.
What then became of those fresh recruits enrolled under the banner of heresy when
once dispossessed of their cure or of any other sacerdotal function?
Like the other aspirants to the sectarian priesthood, they went into seminaries or lodges
to receive instruction; then, having become deacons or squires, having undergone tests
and given the required pledges, they were admitted to the rank of Perfect Knights, or
Perfect Troubadours. Having thus graduated, they started in the character of
missionaries or of pilgrims of love ("pellegrini d’amore") as Dante says, sometimes
 55

undertaking long and dangerous journeys. And so we find traces of them everywhere,
from the icy north and the depths of Germany even to the east, in France and the low
countries, in England, Spain and Italy. Then it was that, in the symbolical language of the
faithful in love, they were called by the name of Knights-errant.
Preaching the doctrine of love, the true law of the Redeemer, their mission was to
redress the wrongs of Rome, to take up the defence of the weak and oppressed; they
were also represented and celebrated as the true soldiers of the Christ, the champions
of the poor, attacking under all their forms the monstrous abuses of theocratic regime;
as comforters of the widow Rachel, that Gnostic church so cruelly tried by the pontifical
Herod; as the devoted supporters of the sons of the widow, those humble members of
the "massenie" of the Holy Grail; as the terror of ogres, dragons, and giants.
Fauriel must then believe in them, writing: "It is unquestionable that in all the countries
in Europe in which there were Knights, there was one particular class known by the title
of Knights errant; " and he cites in proof of this the tax which was levied upon them in
1241 by Henry III. of England, who was in great need of money and would naturally
turn to his best allies to obtain it; would he necessarily call them by their true name of
Albigensian missionaries?
"It is in the poetical monuments of southern France, he adds, that I find the most ancient
traces of knight-errantry. What may be gathered from them as a whole, is that the
condition of Knight errant was rather accidental and transitory than fixed and
permanent." Where else indeed than in Provence could one find more traces of their
pilgrims of love since Provence was their native soil? And was it not the least that could
be expected, after the trials of a wandering life, that these zealous missionaries, called
back to sedentary functions, might rest after their prolonged fatigue?
Contrary to the romances which represent them as always solitary, and running about
in search of adventures, "the Provençal poets depict them to us as usually travelling
several together, and to all appearance temporarily associated for some enterprise or
common quest." Yes, indeed! Exactly like the missionaries of our own times, and they
were always accompanied by their socius, whom the Troubadours, their colleagues,
turned into their squire.
One of the most illustrious among these knights-errant—an authentic personage, at
least as a Troubadour—was Raimbaud de Vaqueiras, whose platonic amours with
Madame Beatrice, who called him her beautiful knight ("beau chevalier"), are extremely
curious, but would make too long an episode. We will merely say that Boniface, Marquis
de Montferrat, whose sister Raimbaud's Beatrice must have been, was one of the nobles
of the south of Europe who most especially occupied the attention of the Troubadours,
for the very simple reason that, sharing their faith, he sheltered under his protection the
Vaudois, whose cradle was in the valleys of Piedmont.
Other knights are mentioned at the same period in the historical monuments of the
south of France and of the Catalogue, under the name of the "Chevalier Sauvages"—Wild
Knights. The romance entitled "Guido, the Wild," presents the poetical personification of
these guides or pastors of Alpine districts. He figures in Ariosto's "Roland," which we
shall probably annotate some day, with some heroes whose symbolical value is not
more difficult to estimate.
An article of certain constitutions of James I., of Aragon, who wanted to treat with Rome,
forbade in 1234, the making of Wild Knights; another article, says Fauriel, "seems to
 56

establish a connection between this class of Knights and the jesters; it prohibits the
giving of any gratuities to a jester or to a Wild Knight." I can well believe it, and such a
connection was a matter of course. Was not the jester the squire, the socius of the Wild
Knight, and the King of Aragon wishing to give pledges to Rome, how could he separate
them in the prohibition he was issuing? Would not the gratuity given to one have been
given to the other? The Wild Knights had in reality the closest relations with the Knights
errant; like them they were ministers of the proscribed worship, forced to disguise their
character carefully. They differed from them on one point only, and that was that
instead of going to a foreign land to catechise and convert the orthodox population, they
had to fulfil their own ministry in their own native country. Further, instead of
exercising sedentary functions in a single parish, they had to move over a much more
extensive area. They were obliged to go up hill and down dale, in Alpine districts, to
carry the words of peace and consolation to the isolated populations, who were too few
in number to have a resident pastor; and also to those whom persecution or the stake
had deprived of their own.
Unlike the ministers of towns, boroughs and castles, the gentle knights, as titularies of
this or that church, their lady-love—they themselves were the pastors of the woods and
mountains, compelled, in order to feed their sheep, to travel through the wildest
districts; hence the name given to them by their co-religionists, who caused it to be
taken, like so many other conventional terms, outside their church, in a totally different
sense.
The most bitter feeling on the part of the Catholics was aroused from the fact that the
teachings they denounced were so closely allied to those inculcated by themselves, and
that the lives of the heretics shone out as stars against the blackness of the mediæval
monastic life. 99 Indeed, the majority of the higher classes became Troubadours, and
when prevented by persecution from speaking, they took refuge in song, 100 and treated
their subjects sometimes seriously, sometimes lightly, but ever was there, as we have
seen, a dual meaning in La gaie saber, or the "Art of loving": for the true "union of love,"
as Aroux points out, meant the attachment of the "Perfect Chevalier" to the "celestial
chivalry," for such were those knights 101 called who gave themselves to the service of
the "Holy Grail," or the "Mystic Quest," i.e., to the inner service, or initiation, of their
secret body. They were indeed:
The soldier-saints who, row on row,
Burn upward each to his point of bliss.
The perfect passion of self-sacrifice was theirs, and moved those men of the Middle Ages
to martyrdom and suffering in their zeal for the spreading of the knowledge of the
mystic doctrine. Such, for instance, was Peter Waldo, 102 who became the founder of the
powerful groups of Waldensians, 103 or the "Poor of Lyons," a secret body with masonic
connections. He was first attracted to serious subjects by a Troubadour who was
reciting a poem in the streets of Lyons—a chant in favour of the ascetic life; Waldo
invited the Troubadour in, and from that time became one of them.

99 Lecky (W. E. H., M.A.), History of European Morals, ii. 217. London, 1877.
100 Thus we have the "Bible" of Guiot von Provins; and the whole cycle of the "Grail legends."
101 Wolfram von Eschenbach was one of these.
102 See Gilly, D.D. (W. S.), The Romaunt version of the Gospel according to St. John; from MSS. preserved in

Trinity College, Dublin. Introduction, pp. xc. xcix.

103 Also called Valdès, Valdernis, Valdensis, and then Waldensis.
 57

We must here digress from the mystic aspect, in order to give a slight outline on the
general organisation, which can be taken from Baret's admirable work on the
subject; 104 he gives a chart of the chief School of Troubadours as follows: 105
All these were again sub-divided into groups.
The School of Aquitaine
The School of Auvergne
The School of Rodez
The School of Languedoc
The School of Provence
The general compositions of the Troubadours may be classified under the following
heads:
"The Gallant," "The Historical," "The Didactic," "The Satirical," and the purely
"Theological"; then further, others we may term "The Mystical," or even "Hermetic"; the
"Satirical" were often theological from an essentially belligerent standpoint. Baret
emphasizes the fact that theological matters occupied the attention of the Troubadours
much more than history. Nostradamus enumerates several works of this kind. 106 In the
Vatican Library, says Baret, there, are four anonymous treatises which belong to the
Provençal literature.
But the object which was the special search of the Inquisition was the translation of the
Bible into the Catalonian tongue, and very carefully was this work concealed; for the
organization of these mystic schools was admirable and their bishops and deacons were
disguised as Troubadours. Throughout Spain, Germany, Italy and Central Europe, this
powerful "secret organization" extended with its mystic traditions. Aroux, in connecting
the Troubadours with the Albigenses on one side, links them also to the Manichæan
religion on the other, that most pernicious—according to the Roman Church—of all
heresies, because the most vital; 107 and, indeed, nothing but the wholesale bloodshed
undertaken by the Dominicans could have crushed out its public organization; still, it
lived again in other forms and under other names, and when Rutherford and other
writers connect the Manichæans with the Freemasons they are touching a deeper truth
than perhaps they know. As the above-mentioned writer points out, the Troubadours
and the "Steinmetzen or Bridge-Builders" were connected, and "among them, too, the
Freemasons found ample occupation"; this is accurately true, for from Manes108 " the

104 Baret (Eugène), Les Troubadours et leur Influence sur la Littérature du Midi de l’Europe, p. 64. Paris,
1867.
105 These are the French Schools only; Germany, Italy, Austria, and the Danubian Provinces contained as

many.
106 There is one of importance, Traité sur la Doctrine des Albigeois et Tuschius, by Raoul de Gassin.
107 Says Lea: "When to Dualism is added the doctrine of transmigration as a means of reward and

retribution, the sufferings of man seem to be fully accounted for. . . . Manes had so skilfully compounded
Mazdean Dualism with Christianity and with Gnostic and Buddhist elements, that his doctrines found
favour with high and low, with the subtle intellects of the Schools, and with the toiling masses." Hist. of the
Inquisition, i. 89. London, 1888.
108 Mani—or Cubricus—was the pupil of Terebinthe (who was afterwards called Buddas). He was an

Egyptian Philosopher, and from him Manes received the Hermetic tradition; Manichæism was based on
the Ancient Babylonian religion with Christian, Persian and Egyptian elements introduced. The Gnostics
 58

widow's son," descends the tradition which was common to Troubadour and
Freemason; their hieroglyphs were in many cases identical and the signs common to
both. Manes went into Egypt and brought back from thence the ancient tradition, he
who was crucified for reforming the Magian priesthood, became the originator of the
powerful symbolic phrase used among "the sons of the widow" with its corresponding
sign. It is this tradition which underlies the well-known societies of the Knight
Templars, the Fratres Lucis, the Asiatische Brüder, and many others who have kept alive
the mystic teaching, and handed it on.
From the death of Manes, 276 A.D., there was an intimate alliance 109—even a fusion—
with some of the leading Gnostic sects, and thence do we derive the intermingling of the
two richest streams of oriental Wisdom: the one, directly through Persia from India; the
other, traversing that marvellous Egyptian period, enriched by the wisdom of the great
Hermetic teachers, flowed into Syria and Arabia, and thence with added force—
garnered from the new divine powers made manifest in the profound mystery of the
blessed Jesus—into Europe, through Northern Africa, finding a home in Spain, where it
took deep root. From this stock sprang into full flower that richness of speech and song
for which the Troubadours will live for ever, Manichæans, who sang and chanted the
Esoteric Wisdom they dared not speak.
Next we see them dispersed in sects, taking local names—separated in name only, but
using the same secret language, having the same signs. Thus, everywhere they
journeyed, and, no matter by what name they were called, each knew the other as a
"widow's son," bound together on a Mystic Quest, knitted—by virtue of a secret
science—into one community; with them came from the East the chivalric ideal, and
they chanted of love and sang of heaven: but the love was a "Divine Love," and their
heaven was the wisdom and peace of those who sought the higher life. As Aroux 110 says,
the chief object which dominated the work of these "Trouveurs" [Troubadours] was
chivalry—"not the feudal, fighting, iniquitous chivalry, as corrupt as it was ignorant,"
but that tone of thought which is well termed mystic, and which sees in all life only a
manifestation of the Divine power; they fought for the purity of their ideal against the
ever-increasing corruption of the Roman Church.
A word must here be added on the origin of chivalry which is mistakenly supposed to be
of Christian inception. Viardot says:
In recalling what Christian Europe owes to the Arabs with regard to knowledge, we
must not omit what she owes to them with regard to manners. The high civilization to
which they had attained bore its natural fruit, and the Arabs were no less distinguished
by the advance and the gentleness of their manners than by the extent and variety of
their knowledge. The humanity, the tolerance that they displayed towards conquered
nations, to whom they generously left their possessions, their religion, their laws, and

who joined the Manichæan stream were the Basilideans, Marcionites, and Bardesanites. See Beausobre
(M. de), Histoire critique de Manichée, 2 vols. Amsterdam, 1734.
109 Says Lea: "Of all the heresies with which the early Church had to contend, none had excited such

mingled fear and loathing as Manichæism." And again: "The Manichæism of the Cathari, Patarins, or
Albigenses, was not a mere speculative dogma of the schools, but a faith which aroused fanaticism so
enthusiastic that its devotees shrank from no sacrifices in its propagation." Lea (H. C.), op. cit., i. 89.
110 Aroux (Eugène), Les Mysterès de la Chevalerie, pp. 69-71. Paris, 1858.

"Every Knight has the power to create Knights. There is in the hand and in the sword of every Knight a
power (I nearly wrote 'a fluid,' but I did not dare) which is really capable of creating other Knights."—
Gautier (Léon), Chivalry, trs. Henry Frith, p. 223. London, 1891.
 59

mostly their civic rights, bore a striking testimony on this point, which was thoroughly
confirmed by their whole history. This high civilisation appeared under two chief
aspects—gallantry in private manners, chivalry in public manners. Gallantry (as we will
call the delicacy of social relations) arose among them from the extreme reserve
imposed on the two sexes, from the severity of the laws and of opinion, in fine, from the
cultivated mind of the women, who knew how to inspire love and to command respect.
In all social relations, in all family customs, the Arabs showed extreme austerity. "Those
people," they said of the Spaniards, "are full of courage, and endure privations with
fortitude; but they live like wild beasts, washing neither their bodies nor even their
clothes, which they only take off when they fall into rags, and going into each other's
houses without asking permission."111
Chivalry was the virtue of warriors. Founded on justice, it corrected the abuses of force,
which is the right of war; founded on humanity, it tempered the excesses of hatred,
reminding men of their brotherhood even in the midst of combat; it was a kind of
association or confraternity between men of arms which drew together and united all
its members when politics or religion separated them, and which imposed on them
noble duties when all rights were t disowned. Chivalry was the most powerful
correction of feudalism by giving to the weak and the oppressed, protectors and
avengers . . .
Bravery, however, the sole virtue of German soldiers, was neither the only one nor even
the first, required of an Arab Knight. Ten qualities were indispensable to give him a
right to this name, namely: goodness, valour, courtesy, poetry, elegance of speech,
strength, horsemanship, skill in the use of lance, sword and bow. 112
This "Celestial Chivalry"—Aroux demonstrates—was derived from the "Albigensian
Gospel," whose "Evangel" or "Gospel" was again derived from the Manichæan-Marcion
tradition. 113 These Albigenses were identical with the Cathari, and the Troubadours
were the links bearing the secret teaching from one body to another. " Thus one sees
them taking every form: by turns, artizans, colporteurs, pilgrims, weavers, colliers . . .
deprived of the right to speak, they took to singing."

111 "O believers! enter not into a strange house without asking permission to do so." (Koran, Sour. XXIV.,
v., 27). Jos. Conde, Part I., cap. 18.
112 "Fue muy buen caballero, y se decia de él que tenia las diez prendas qué distinguen à los nobles y

generosos, qué consisten en p. 127 bondad, valentia, caballeria, gentileza, poesia, bien hablar, fuerza,
destreza en la lanza, en la espada, y en el tirar del arco." (J. Conde, perto II., cap. 63.)
He was an excellent Knight, and it was said of him that he possessed the ten accomplishments that
distinguish nobles and honourable men, which consist in goodness, valour, horsemanship, courtesy,
poetry, excellence of speech, ability, skill in lance, sword, and in drawing the bow.
The word "gentileza" or "gentillesse," which has greatly changed in meaning with the lapse of time, means
charming manners, the good tone of a man well born and well bred, of one whom the English call
a gentleman. Viardot (L), Histoire des Arabes et des Mores d’ Espagne, ii., pp. 197, 199. Paris, 1851.
113 Lea (H. C.), op. cit., i. 92: A further irrefragable evidence of the derivation of Catharism from

Manichæism is furnished by the sacred thread and garment which were worn by all the Perfect among the
Cathari. This custom is too peculiar to have had an independent origin, and is manifestly the
Mazdean kosti and saddarah, the sacred thread and shirt, the wearing of which was essential to all
believers, and the use of which, by both Zends and Brahmins, shows that its origin is to be traced to the
prehistoric period anterior to the separation of those branches of the Aryan family. Among the Cathari the
wearer of the thread and vestment was what was known among the inquisitors as the 'hæreticus indutus'
or 'vestitus,' initiated into all the mysteries of the heresy."
 60

It must be remembered that simultaneously with the inflow of this Manichæan Oriental
wisdom into Spain, there had been the same development in Italy from Sicily, and all
through the Danubian Provinces into Hungary, over the Caucasus to Russia, and along
the shores of the Caspian Seas; just as the legend of the Holy Grail was everywhere, so
also was this stream of thought, for the two were one.
The most prominent public development takes place, as we see, in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, but the enormous spread of the teaching was the result of centuries of
quiet work. Travel was slow, and nearly all communication was from person to person.
Hence when we see in the twelfth century the "flowering of the plant," it must be
remembered that this result was the work in each country of small bands of—even
isolated—-travelling mystics who were true missionaries in life and heart.
To turn to another aspect it is curious to think of the Troubadours as authorities in
dress and etiquette. Rutherford says: 114 "They prepared the youth of both sexes for
society, and they drew up rules for their guidance therein," and then he gives a most
interesting quotation from a Troubadour, Amanieu des Escas, who instructed a young
man of rank while he was a Page or Esquire as follows: "Shun the companionship of
fools, impertinents, or meddlers, lest you pass for the same. Never indulge in
buffoonery, scandals, deceit, or falsehood. Be frank, generous, and brave; be obliging
and kind; study neatness in your dress, and let elegance of fashion make up for
plainness of material. Never allow a seam to remain ripped and gaping; it is worse than
a rent; the first shows ill-breeding, the last only poverty, which is by far the lesser evil of
the two. There is no great merit in dressing well if you have the means: but a display of
neatness and taste on a small income is a sure token of superiority of spirit," etc., etc.
There is much more of the same kind, but this citation serves to show how eminently
practical was the advice given to the young men in olden days.
Very bitter and violent were the attacks made upon these men by the monks, who were
jealous of the real purity and asceticism of these heretical Troubadours, and who were
infuriated at the publicity given to their own misdeeds; such an attack is graphically
described by Hueffer in his thoughtful work on the Troubadours. The writings of "Izarn
the Monk," for instance, he well describes as a "striking specimen of monkish
effrontery" and he proceeds to criticise the "unctuous self-laudation" of his work,
the Novas del Heretge, or the Tale of a Heretic, a dialogue between the author and a
bishop of the Albigeois sect.
"The opening lines," says Hueffer, "are important to the historian of theology. They
prove that the Neo-Manichæan heretics believed, or at least were said by the Catholics
to believe, in something very like metempsychosis. 'Tell me,' the monk begins, 'in what
school you have learned that the spirit of man, when it has lost its body, enters an ox, an
ass, or a horned wether, a hog, or a hen, whichever it sees first, and migrates from one to
the other until a new body of man or woman is born for it? . . . This thou hast taught to
deluded people, whom thou hast given to the devil and taken away from God. May every
place and every land that has supported thee perish!'" 115
It is curious and suggestive to find that St. Francis of Assisi had been a Troubadour;
Görres 116 speaks of him as a "genuine Troubadour," and there is no doubt that he and

114 Rutherford (John), The Troubadours, their Loves and Lyrics, p. 4. London, 1893.
115 Hueffer (Francis), The Troubadours, p. 32. London, 1878.
116 Görres (J.), Der heilige Franciskus von Assisi, ein Troubadour. Strassburg, 1826.
 61

some of his Franciscans were at one time members of the heretical Cathari: indeed it is
questionable whether he was at any time an orthodox Churchman, though—like that
other Troubadour, Dante—the Church has ever claimed him as a "faithful son."
A few words must now be devoted to what may be termed the general position of the
Troubadours, the place and functions of some of them at least. Among the most
illustrious of the Troubadours was Alfonso the Second, King of Arragon (1162-1196).
Ticknor 117 says: "From 1209 to 1229, the shameful war which gave birth to the
Inquisition was carried on with extraordinary cruelty against the Albigenses, a religious
sect in Provence, accused of heresy, but persecuted rather by an implacable political
ambition. To this sect—which in some points opposed the pretensions of the See of
Rome, and was at last exterminated by a crusade under the Papal Authority—belonged
nearly all the contemporary Troubadours, whose poetry is full of their sufferings and
remonstrances. 118 In their great distress, the principal ally of the Albigenses and
Troubadours was Peter the Second of Arragon, who in 1213 perished nobly fighting in
their cause at the disastrous battle of Muret. When therefore the Troubadours of
Provence were compelled to escape from the burnt and bloody ruins of their homes, not
a few of them hastened to the friendly Court of Arragon, sure of finding themselves
protected, and their art held in honour, by princes who were at the same time poets."
These passages and the accompanying notes are of importance to students, for they
show how intimate a part was played by the Troubadours in the religious movements of
the period; and how they were instruments in keeping the mystic teaching alive, and in
handing on the Wisdom of the east clothed in this, its latest, poetical disguise.
In Germany also the Troubadours dwelt in high places, for, according to M. de Saint-
Peloie, the Baron Zurlandben had just (1773) found a MS. in the library of the King,
containing the sonnets of princely Troubadours, written about the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Among these royal writers were the Emperor Henry VI., Conradin,
King of Bohemia, and other Princes, Electors, Dukes and Margraves.
The emotional life of the young European nations was largely educated by means of the
chivalric romances, based, as they were, on the highest religious and mystic teaching;
and later, in 1400-1500, the Celestial Chivalry was the great standard set before the
people, as a national ideal.
Says Ticknor: 119 "Religious romances were written . . . in the form of Allegories, like the
'Celestial Chivalry,' the 'Christian Chivalry,' 'The Knight of the Bright Star'"; and this
author remarks that the object of that interesting book—the Celestial Chivalry, written
by Hierónimo de San Pedro (at Valencia, in 1554) was to drive out of the world "the
profane books of chivalry."
The titles he uses are worth attention, the first part being called "The Root of the
Fragrant Rose"; the second, "The Leaves of the Rose." The names are suggestive, for it
was just at this period, when, owing to bitter persecution, the Cathari and Albigenses

117 Ticknor (George), History of Spanish Literature, i., p.p. 284 285. 1849.
118 The following note is given by this author: "Sismondi (Hist. des Français, Paris, 8vo. tom. vi. and vii.
1823, 1826), gives an ample account of the cruelties and horrors of the war of the Albigenses, and
Llorente (Histoire de l’ Inquisition, Paris, 1817, tom. i., p. 43), shows the connection of that war with the
origin of the Inquisition. The fact that nearly all the Troubadours took part with the persecuted
Albigenses is equally notorious. Histoire Litt. de la France, tom. xviii., p. 588.
119 Ticknor (George), Hist. of Spanish Literature, i. 220, 221. London, 1849.
 62

were nearly exterminated, 120 that the Rosicrucians began to revive the same old Eastern
tradition, and the blessed Christian Rosencreutz turned his steps eastwards, and in
Arabia spent three years fitting himself for the work to come.
The Rose was one of the ancient traditional mystic symbols, re-adapted by the
Rosicrucians, and used, indeed, by all sectaries and mystics Aroux 121 asserts that the
famous Roman de la Rose 122 was not only a satire against the Pontifical Court, but also
the apotheosis of heresy, for it contained the Hermetic Science under the guise of a
religious poem.
Rossetti 123 is as emphatic about this symbolic language, and Warton 124 gives us the
following suggestive hints: "In the preface of the edition [to this poem,] printed in the
year 1583, all this allegory is turned to religion. The Rose is proved to be a state of grace
or divine wisdom, or eternal beatitude, or the Holy Virgin to which heretics cannot gain
access. It is the White Rose of Jericho, . . . . the chemists made it a search for the
Philosopher's Stone." There is ever a mystery in the crucified Rose, typical of light and
glory springing from the blood of Adonis, himself Dionysus, the best of heavenly beings.
Endless are the exquisitely beautiful and refined symbolic meanings of the sacred Rose.
Thus as we study the Troubadours it becomes evident that an enormous under-current
of secret teaching was being carried on, and Rutherford gives us some important hints
on this point which have been previously noticed 125 but may again be usefully referred
to since they illustrate this particular fact and verify much that is said by Aroux.
The body of the learned in the Middle Ages—or the inner circle of that body—seems to
have formed a secret society, whose purpose was to keep as much knowledge as
possible confined to itself, after the manner of the Druids, or of the Egyptians and
Chaldæn Sages; when compelled to put the more occult portions of their scientific
acquirements into a more permanent form they adopted one perfectly unintelligible to
the vulgar. Some wrapped up their more valuable secrets in parables, others threw
them again into the shape of illuminations, and others again adopted the device of
Roger' Bacon, who, giving the name of an important ingredient of gunpowder in an
anagram, rendered the whole receipt for the composition of the substance a complete
mystery to the uninitiated.
It has been said that Rutherford has allied the Troubadours with the Freemasons, and
the latter body has an undoubtedly Manichæan tradition. For confirmation on this point
we can refer to what is said by a very well-known Masonic authority, 126 whose
knowledge about Masonry is unquestionable:

120 "By order of the same François I., his General Almeida extirpated with a cruelty unusual even in those
times, the remnant of the Albigenses still lurking in the villages of Provence, a sect, it should be
remembered, p. 133 of genuine Manichæans, transplanted thither from the east at a comparatively recent
date. As Manichæans, they would naturally have preserved the symbols and tokens for mutual
recognition so much in vogue, as history and existing monuments attest." King M.A. (C. W.), The Gnostics
and their Remains, p. 399. London, 1887.
121 Aroux (Eugène), Dante, Hérétique, Révolutionnaire et Socialiste, p. 83. Paris, 1854.
122 Begun by Guillaume de Loris—a Troubadour-1260, finished by Jean de Meung, Poet, Alchemist, and

Astrologer. It is a Hermetic treatise of much value.

123 Rossetti (Gabriele), Il Mistero dell’ Amor Platonico del Medio Evo, ii. 411-414. London, 1840.
124 Warton (Thomas), Hist. of English Poetry, II., p. 149, note d. London, 1840.
125 The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 202. London, 1899.
126 Mackenzie (Kenneth R. H., ix°), The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, p. 768. New York, 1898.
 63

Sons of the Widow 127—a powerful society founded by Manes, a Persian slave . . . . and
continued to the present day; it consisted of two degrees: 1. Auditor. 2. Elect. It was at
peace under the Mother of the Emperor Anastasius (A.D. 491-518), but was persecuted
by Justin. In the course of time, its agents secretly instigated the Crusades; but being
betrayed, had to veil their mysteries under many names. In Bulgaria and Lombardy it
was known as the Society of the Paterini, in France as the Cathari and Albigenses, and
from it originated the Hussites, Wyckliffites, and Lollards. The Dutch sect of the Family
of Love also sprang from it.
Such is the statement of a high Mason on this connection, corroborating the links that
have already been outlined, and many more might be instanced, showing that all the
tenets of these mediæval sects of Troubadours are traceable to Gnostic and
Manichæistic doctrines. Very wonderful is the part filled by the "Messengers of Love" in
the spiritual evolution of Europe during the Dark Ages. Martyrs many, and Saints not a
few—such will be the roll-call of the Minniesängers, Troubadours, and Bards of these
olden days, when in the future the Ancient Wisdom once more reigns supreme.

127 This term is applied to the Albigensian Troubadours; and it was employed amongst themselves.
 64

THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM OF

THE HOLY GRAIL
 65

Part One
AND like a flying star
Led on the gray-haired Wisdom of the East.
. . . . .
I saw the spiritual city and all her spires
And gateways in a glory like one pearl
No larger, tho’ the goal of all the Saints
Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot
A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there
Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail,
Which was an image of the mighty world.
—The Holy Grail and The Passing of Arthur,
TENNYSON.
THE legend of the founding of the City Spiritual—the Kingdom of the Holy Grail 128 or
San Grëal—is so interwoven with myth and superadded tradition that to trace its origin
is as difficult as to see through a dense fog the delicate outline of some fair gothic spire
whose lofty head towers beyond the mists towards the blue heights above. But as we
gaze with straining effort, slowly through the gloom line upon line reveals itself, and
finally the whole structure takes form most definite before us. Thus is it with the
priceless "Legend of the Holy Grail," and as we trace it back from Western lands to its
Eastern home, gradually from the mists of time's obscurity there stands revealed once
more the glorious tradition of the Wisdom Religion, another messenger from East to
West bringing the ancient mystic teaching from the old worlds to the new.
In this case the gracious message is vestured, not as usual in religious forms, but veiled
in garb of chivalry, so that it may, perhaps, in this new presentation more readily touch
the hearts of men, and draw them to seek for the Kingdom Spiritual, the " house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
Gathered round the " Holy Grail" are the Knights—the guardians of the "Grail Kingdom,"
led by Titurel, 129 the mystic King, to whom is entrusted the charge of the Holy Teaching.
Then later we find the knights Templars taking up the sacred mission. 130 But
everywhere and always is there the inner doctrine for the few who seek the Holy Grail,
for it is invisible to all but those who form the "Ingesinde" 131 (inner circle).

128 See The Theosophical Review, xxiii., pp. 9-16. Hardcastle (Miss A. L. B.), "The Secret of the Holy Grail."
129 Hammer-Purgstall (Baron J. von), Fundgruben des Orients, vi. 24., n. 33. Vienna, 1818.
130 See Naef (F.), Opinions religieuses des Templiers, p. 36. Nismes; 1890. "The cult with which this

mysterious chalice is surrounded far surpasses in grandeur and exaltation the worship paid by the
Church even to the most sacred relics, and it is just this exaltation of mystery and of holiness which
unveils so clearly the symbol and the allegory." And again p. 38, "In the Grail does one not see the p.
139 striking symbol of Mystic Wisdom (Sagesse mystique) and of the communion which is established
between God and man?"
131 J. Rutherford writes (The Troubadours, their Loves and Lyrics, p. 43. London, 1873):

"The body of the learned in the Middle Ages—or the inner circle of that body—seems to have formed a
secret society, whose purpose was to keep as much knowledge as possible confined to itself, after the
manner of the Druids, or of the Egyptians and Chaldean Sages; when compelled to put the more occult
portions of their scientific acquirements into a permanent form, they adopted one perfectly unintelligible
 66

The chief function of the Grail Kingdom was to supply a constant type of a divinely
governed society, a society ruled from the inner and spiritual planes, and to train in "the
kingly art of ruling" leaders for such communities as needed them. It was destined to be
a practical civilizing power as well as a Palace Spiritual, not a passive force only, but
active and powerful for the suppression of all evil on earth. Titurel 132 is the type and
ideal leader round whom revolves the whole of mystic or celestial chivalry. 133 The Grail
kingship is indeed the paradigm of the highest perfection, "the goal of all the saints," but
the goal cannot be reached except by the conquest of the lower nature; every human
being must struggle and must suffer ere he sees
…those shores
Where tideless sweep the waves of time
Hard by the city of the saints of God.
Let us now trace the origin of this time-honoured tradition, the stock from which
developed all the "Arthurian" legends, all the "Graal-sagas" of Germany, and the
"Romans" of Provence. Two dominant variants of the earliest traditions have come to
us.
1. The Grail as a Secret Gospel 134 or Tradition.
2. The Grail as a Mystic Cup 135 with miraculous power.
Both variants are of vital interest to the theosophic student; we must here, however,
confine ourselves to tracing.
I. The earliest sources of the Grail Legend.

to the vulgar. Some wrapped up their more valuable secrets in parables, others threw them again into the
shape of illuminations, and others again adopted the device of Roger Bacon, who, giving the name of an
important ingredient of gunpowder in an anagram, rendered the whole receipt for the composition of the
substance a complete mystery to the uninitiated.
"Our reading shows us that much more was known to the few, six or seven hundred years ago, than
modern savants are inclined to think. Strange and startling glimpses of this knowledge flicker over the
pages of the poets and romancists of the Middle Ages. Selecting but two examples from many, we may
remark that no one could have written that passage in the Inferno of Dante (Canto xxxiv., lines 70-84),
descriptive of the transit of Virgil and his follower through the centre of the earth, who was not well
acquainted with the leading principles of the theory of gravitation, as elaborated by Newton. Nor could
any one have evolved from the depths of his internal consciousness a passage so singularly anticipative of
the discovery of America as that contained in Stanzas 228-230 of the twenty-fifth canto of the Morgante
Maggiore—precisely the Canto in which it is said that the author, Pulci, was aided by the erudite Marsilio
Ficino." See Cantù (Cesare), Gli Eretici d’ Italia, i. 178. Torino, 1865.
132 There are two Titurels; the poem Titurel of Wolfram von Eschenbach; and, later, Der Jüngere Titurel, by

Albrecht von Scharffenberg, written about 1270. An interesting notice on the subject is given by Vilmar
(A. F. C.), Geschichte der deutschen National-Literatur, 147, Marburg u. Leipsig, 1870.
133 Chivalry was divided into Heavenly and Earthly orders during part of the Middle Ages, especially in

Spain.
134 Aroux (E.), Les Mystères de la Chevalerie, p. 166. Paris, 1858. Paris (A. Paulin), Les Romans de la Table

Ronde, Addenda to p. 102. Vol. I. Paris, 1868. Helinandi Op., Ed. Migne, Patrol., Vol. CCXII., col. 814. Fauriel
(C. C.), Histoire de la Poésie Provençale, ii. 332, et seq. Paris, 1846.
135 Burnouf (Émile) writes as follows: "La vraie légende du Vase Sacré est celle qu’on peut suivre dans le

passé en remontant d’aujourd’hui même par les textes chrétiens, grecs, perses et bouddhiques jusqu’ aux
hymnes du Véda, où elle trouve son explication." Le Vase Sacré et ce qu’il contient—dans l’Inde, la Perse, la
Gréce, et dans l’Eglise chrétienne avec un appendice sur le Saint-Graal, p. 189. Paris, 1896.
The Theosophical Review, xxiii. pp. 12-15. London, 1899. Hammer-Purgstall (Baron J. von), Fundgruben des
Orients, vi. p. 24. Rio, L’ Université Catholique, i. p. 241.
 67

II. The history of Titurel, the type of divine kingship and spiritual knighthood.
III. The links which prove this popular mystic legend to be part of the great Wisdom
tradition which is guarded by the " Masters of Wisdom " yet on this earth.
I.
THE ORIGIN OF THE TRADITION.—I.
This can be definitely followed through Arabia to India; for according to a large number
of authorities, 136 the tradition is mainly Eastern in origin, especially that of the Gral-king
and Founder, with which are linked most intimately those of Parsifal and Lohengrin.
Rosenkranz divides them as follows: Titurel is Oriental in its inception; Parsifal is Gallic
(from Anjou); and Lohengrin 137 is Belgian.
The most sympathetic and interesting version perhaps, is that given by Görres 138 in his
introduction to the translation of the oldest MS. which is in the Vatican Library. This
manuscript was seen by von Hagen, 139 who gives an interesting account of it in his
letters; another sketch of the Gral-saga, but less sympathetic, is given by Dr. Bergman in
a small pamphlet printed in 1870. From all these various sources must be gathered the
important fragments which will help us to find those details which are a necessity to the
student for a clear understanding of the real meaning of this grand old legend.
Our attention must first be directed to what may be termed the "setting" of the
tradition, that is to say the channel by which it comes to the Western world. The record
of Titurel was first made known by Wolfram von Eschenbach, a Troubadour of a noble
but poor family; born within the last thirty years of the twelfth century, he died about
1220; his monument was still existing at Eschenbach in Bavaria in the fifteenth century.
He was one of a brilliant circle of Troubadours or Minnesänger 140 who at that period
were gathered at the then famous Court of Herman, Landgraf of Thuringia. Wolfram
began a history in verse of Titurel, the old Gral-king, which was however left in an
unfinished and fragmentary condition at his death. Then about the year 1270, Albrecht
von Schaffenberg wrote a poem upon Titurel which for long passed as the work of von
Eschenbach. It was called Der Jüngere Titurel, to distinguish it from the original poem of
Wolfram. Speaking of it San Marte 141 says:
Titurel—two fragments to which, according to the opening lines of the first piece, this
title has been given, should according to Wolfram von Eschenbach's own assurances
have formed part of a history of Sigune and Schiantulander, for it stands in close
relation to Parzifal, the material having been drawn from the same source—remained

136 Rosenkranz (Dr. Karl), Handbuch einer Allgemeinen Geschichte der Poesie, ii., 84. Halle, 1832. Hagen (F.
H. von der), Heldenbilde aus dent Sagen Kreisen, II., iii. 8. Breslau, 1823. Simrock (Dr. K.), Parzifal und
Titurel, p. 484. Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1842. Bergmann (Dr. F. G.), The San Grëal; an Enquiry into the
Origin and Signification of the San Grëal. Edinburgh, 1870. Bartsch (Karl), Wolfram von Eschenbach—
Parzifal und Titurel, pt. i. p. xxiv. Leipzig, 1870. Vilmar (A. F. C.), Geschichte der Deutschen National-
Literatur, i. 129-130. Marburg and Leipzig, 1870.
137 The history of Lohengrin, or Garin-le-Loherain was first treated by Hugo Metullus, in 1150.
138 Görres (Joseph), Lohengrin, ein altdeutsches Gedicht nach der Abschrift des Vaticanischen Manuscriptes,

von Ferdinand Glöckle herausgegeben. 1813.

Koberstein (A.), Grundriss zur Geschichte der Deutschen National-Literatur, p. 50. Leipzig, 1830.
139 Hagen (F. H. von der), Briefe in die Heimat, ii. 305. Breslau, 1818.
140 Trouvères in Northern France; Troubadours in the South of France; Minnesänger in

Germany; Skalds or Scalds in Norway; Bards in Wales and Ancient Britain.

141 San Marte (A. Schulz), Leben and Dichten von W. v. Eschenbach, xiv. Magdeburg, 1836.
 68

unfinished. That work, however, and especially the sayings of the Holy Grail contained
therein, aroused such excitement, that after Wolfram's death an unknown poet decided
to write, in strophe form, the history of the Gral and its race of kings (Titurel), in
accordance with the same source. . . . This also remained unfinished until about 1270,
when a certain Albrecht completed it. This so-called Jüngere Titurel and the Parzifal,
both of which come from the same source, contain pretty well the whole history of the
Holy Grail and in many passages they supplement one another. 142
These form undoubtedly the most authentic versions of the Gral legend, but there is
another line of tradition written down by Chrestien de Troyes, which eliminates the
oriental and gives the purely Christian version of the vision of Joseph of Arimathæa. Of
this Wolfram was cognizant, or, as Nutt 143 tells us,
He knew Chrestien's poem well, and repeatedly refers to it, but with great contempt, as
being the wrong version of the story, whereas he holds the true version from
Kyot 144 the singer, a "Provenzal," who found the tale of Parzifal written in a heathen
tongue at Dolêt (Toledo) by Flegetanis, a heathen, and who first wrote concerning the
Grail, put it into French, and after searching the chronicles of Britain, France, and
Ireland in vain, at length found the information in the chronicle of Anjou.
Later on we shall see why it was found in these chronicles to the exclusion of the rest.
The basis of the Christian legend is from the Gnostic tradition, and said to have been
founded on the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which was translated into Provençal
verse, a "mystical Gospel" in every sense, says Paulin Paris, 145 who, in referring to the
MS. in the Vatican, further writes: "This latter text was of great antiquity and evidently
mystical, showing a profound knowledge of the Apocryphal 146 Gospels containing the
secret teachings of the Eucharist." 147 This of course refers to the Christian aspect, and
had to do with the Christian arcane doctrines, but this aspect must be left for treatment
at some future time.
A digression, however, must be here made, the subject of which is so intimately
interwoven with the mystic foundation of the Grail that it is necessary to go into some

142 The fragments of "Titurel" written by Wolfram were first made known by Docens (1810). They are in
Karl Lachmann's edition of Wolfram v. Eschenbach (1833). The only edition of the Jüngere Titurel, which
exists in a good many MSS., is that of Hahn (1842).
143 Nutt (Alfred), Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, p. 6. London, 1888. See The Theosophical Review,

xxiii. 10.
144 Many materialistic critics have tried to disprove the very existence of Kyot (or Guiot de Provins), and

further have tried to prove that the tradition was invented by Wolfram. But research shows definitely that
at this very period there was a Jongleur, or singer, of this name. He is mentioned by the Abbé de la Rue in
his Essais historiques sur les Bardes, les Jongleurs, et les Trouvères, i. 216. Caen, 1834. In this passage is
mentioned a Satire written by Guiot de Provins; Rosenkranz also mentions him in his Handbuch einer
Allgemeinen Geschichte der Poesie, ii. 114. The same conclusion has also been arrived at by San Marte in an
interesting article "Der Mythus vom Heiligen Gral," which appeared in the Neue Mittheilungen aus dem
Gebiet historisch antiquarischer Forschungen. Herausgegeben von dem Thuringisch-Sæchsichen p.
145 Verein für Erforschung des Vaterländischen Alterthums. (III., pt. iii., pp. I-40). The author identifies
the supposed mythical Guiot von Provence with the historical character Guiot von Provins (the town in
Brie?) which is called Provîs by Wolfram.
145 Paris (A. Paulin), Les Manuscrits françois de la Bibliothèque du Roi. Paris, 1848. Vol. vii., p. 377.
146 "Books withdrawn from public perusal, or in other words, hidden or secret." See Mead (G. R. S), "The

Secret Sermon on the Mountain," The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 26.

147 See Fauriel (C. C.), Histoire de la Poésie Provençale, iii. 5. Paris, 1846.
 69

important details in order to form a clear conception of the many forces which were at
play during this epoch.
It has been said that Wolfram von Eschenbach, 148 the writer of Titurel, was a
Troubadour, and according to some authorities Guiot (or Kyot) de Provins was a
Jongleur. Who, then, are these Troubadours and Jongleurs who played a part so
important in the so-called dark ages? On another occasion we hope to take up this
subject separately, forming as it does an important link between eastern mysticism and
western development; it will be enough for the present to cite one important Catholic
writer, who makes a very clear statement as to the hidden functions of these
Troubadours. 149 Says Aroux:
The Troubadours, hostile to Rome, were, to say the truth, the journalists of the period;
and in this way constituted one of the powers of society and took up sides for
republican liberty in the towns of the south, for the feudal suzerainty and its patrons—
that is to say chivalry—against the church or authority. . . . for chivalry itself had become
a machinery of war on the side of the Albigensian 150 heresy.
Strange and striking statements, but they can be tested and verified by testimony from
all sides. Through these secret mystical channels came pouring the old teachings from
the East, and Wolfram von Eschenbach and Guiot de Provins were but instruments or
channels for that tradition.
A few words must here be said about Guiot, or, as Wolfram von Eschenbach calls him in
his German tongue, Kyot. As we have seen from the Abbé de la Rue, he was a Jongleur,
and Aroux has given a clue as to the real métier of the true Jongleur at that period. He
appears to have been a native of the Duchy of Anjou, and was not a noble but a lay
commoner, for Wolfram terms him simply Meister. Guiot studied literature and
philosophy in the south of France in the Province of Saint Giles—a centre of Albigensian
mystic tradition, and in constant communication with northern Spain, which was
permeated, at this period, with Arabian mysticism. He also studied for some time in
Spain at Toledo under the learned Arabian philosophers, to whom the Western world
owes a heavy debt. Meister Guiot le Provençal found at Toledo an Arabian book
compiled by an astrologer and philosopher named Flegetanis, 151 containing the story of
the Holy Grëal. This volume was written in a foreign character, of which Guiot was
compelled to make himself master. After reading this Guiot began to search the records

148 Mysticism was "in the air" at this epoch; in Calabria the Abbate Gioachimo di Flor was preaching
his Evangelio Eterno. Educated at the Court of the Duca di Puglia, a pilgrim to the Holy Land, a monk at
Mount Tabor, he became a mystic and was according to Cantù deeply tinged with Buddhistic views (Gli
Eretici d’Italia, i. 120-135. Torino, 1865). He had a large following. A quantity of important writings were
left by this great mystic. His prophecies were known even in England, for we find an English Cistercian,
Rudolph, Abbot of Coggeshall, coming to Rome in 1195, had a conference with him, and left an account of
it (Martène, Amplissima Collectio, v. 837), and Felice Tocco (L’Eresia nel Media Evo, i. 261-409. Florence,
1884) writes: "The works of Joachim were printed at Venice in the years 1517-19, and his life was written
by a Dominican named Gervaise in 1745. A full summary of his opinions, and those contained in The
Everlasting Gospel, may be found in Natalis Alexander's Ecclesiastical History, VIII., pp. 73-76."
149 Aroux (Eugène) Dante, Hérétique, Révolutionnaire et Socialiste; Révélation d’un Catholique sur le Moyen

Age, p. 14. Paris, 1854.

150 The mystic doctrines of the Albigenses will be treated later. They believed in re-incarnation and other

fundamental theosophic doctrines.

151 Flegetanis was both an astronomer and an astrologer. Both Görres and Warton (Thomas Warton, The

History of English Poetry, Vol. I., London, 1824) consider that Flegetanis is a corruption of the Arabic name
Felek-daneh, an astronomer.
 70

of other countries, Brittany, France, Ireland, and he found the legends of this in some
old Chroniques d’ Angevin (Anjou). These he used as corroboration, and introduces the
Western elements into his history, but, as Warton and Görres both insist, the scene for
the most part is laid in the East, and a large proportion of the names are of oriental
origin. Then, again, the Saracens are always spoken of with consideration; Christian
knights enroll themselves under the banner of the Caliph, 152 and no trace of hatred is to
be found between the followers of the crescent and the cross. Speaking of the
widespread development of this mysterious legend, or tradition of the Holy Grail,
Görres 153 says:
From the waters of the Ganeas (Ganges) in the land of Tribalibot, that is Palibothra 154 in
Tricalinga, the Sanskrit name of the Ganges Provinces, it has spread itself over the
Caucasus, or as the poem more correctly says, Kukkhasus, or again, as Titurel says,
Kaukasus, where the red gold grows, from which the heathen weave many a beautiful
coat (Wat) and over the mountains Agrimontin, where the warm Salamanders weave
their glittering uniform amid the fire-flames' dance, and where the Queen Gekurdille
rules.
Everywhere can be found the tradition of a sacred cup, 155 and it is said by Flegetanis,
who had carefully recorded the result of his nocturnal studies at Toledo, that this
mysterious cup 156 with the name of Graal emblazoned on it was left behind on earth by
a band of spirits 157 as they winged their way to their celestial abode.
This holy vessel is delivered by an angel to Titurel, at whose birth an angel had
announced that God had chosen him to be a defender of the faith 158 and the guardian of
the Sangrëal. He became, in fact, one of the custodians of that Secret Wisdom which has
been left in the charge of the elect, the group of humanity's perfected sons.

152 It can be proved from various sources that there was a friendly interchange of visits between the
Caliph at Cairo and the Templars. (King, C. W., The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 418. London, 1887.)
153 Lohengrin, p. ix.
154 "Pâtaliputra (Palibothra des Grecs) qui est aujourd’hui Patna." Burnout, op. cit. p. 109.
155 In the Persian tradition a similar miraculous and mystical vessel was given to Jemshad, the pattern of

perfect kings, in whose reign the Golden Age was realised in Iran. He was the favourite of Ormuzd and his
legitimate representative on earth; he discovered the "Goblet of the Sun" when digging the foundation of
Persepolis, and from him it passed to Alexander the Great. It is a symbol of the world. See Burnouf
(Émile), Le Vase Sacré et ce qu’il contient. Dans l’Inde, la Perse, la Grèce et dans l’Eglise chrétienne, p. 189.
Paris, 1896.
156 In Grecian mythology Apollo, or Helios, rises out of a golden-winged cup.
157 Blavatsky (H. P.) The Secret Doctrine, ii. 379: "The beneficent Entities who . . . brought light to the

world, and endowed Humanity with intellect and reason."

158 The Gnosis, or Wisdom Mysteries.
 71

Part Two
THE ORIGIN OF THE TRADITION.—II.
. . . THE Grail, throughout all Ages, may never by man be known,
Save by him God calleth to It, whose name God doth know alone.
And the tale shall be told in all lands . . . .
Parzival, translated by J. L. WESTON, i. 162.
WE must trace the history of the World-Religion, alike through the secret Christian sects
as through those of other great religious subdivisions of the race; for the Secret Doctrine
is the Truth, and that religion is nearest divine that has contained it with the least
adulteration. Our search takes us hither and thither, but never aimlessly do we bring
sects, widely separated in chronological order, into critical juxtaposition. There is one
purpose in our work to be kept constantly in view—the analysis of religious beliefs, and
the definition of their descent from the past to the present.
BLAVATSKY (H. P.), Isis Unveiled, ii., 292.
IT is now necessary to add some more important details to the question of the origin of
the tradition of the Holy Grail. Too much care cannot be given by students to the most
fundamental portion of this research.
It has already been said that many German 159 and French writers, in their zealous
efforts to prove the Grail tradition to be a myth, have made efforts to disprove the
existence of Guiot von Provins, but owing to the careful researches of San Marte 160 there
is evidence of his existence so conclusive that no further doubt can remain; in the
review from which we quote he gives a careful résumé of the evidence, and he has made
a thorough study of Guiot's Bible, which was written as a denunciation of the priests of
that period, and of the iniquities of the Roman Church: "Guiot was, without doubt, a
learned man, and had been a monk as well as a courtier," says San Marte, from whose
article the following summary is made.
He was present in the year 1184, at Mainz, at the great court day of the Emperor
Frederick I., at which the French nobility were also present in great numbers. He further
assures us that he had seen the Hospitaliers at Jerusalem; the information he gives us as
regards the Knight Templars in Syria will consequently rest likewise on first-hand
observation. In the east 161 he saw King Amalrich of Jerusalem, who died in the year
1173, in the flower of his age and his glory. But in the year 1147 there was the second,
and in the year 1190 the third Crusade . . . . it may be inferred from his writing that he

159 Lachmann (K.), Wolfram von Eschenbach, xxiv., and Gervinus, Deutsche National Literatur, i., 358, 1835,
are both of this opinion.
160 San Marte (A. Schulz), "Wolfram von Eschenbach and Guiot von Provins"; Germania, iii. 445. Wien,

186e.
161 This fact that Guiot von Provins was himself in the East, that he was, moreover, a Troubadour, gives us

those links which were needed to prove the direct connection of this Grail Tradition with the Eastern
Wisdom; as a Troubadour he was one of the Secret Society already mentioned both by Rossetti in
his Disquisitions on the Anti-papal Spirit which produced the Reformation, (ii., 115. London, 1834), and by
Aroux; see The Theosophical Review, xxiv., p. 207. San Marte added a footnote stating that he was
preparing an edition of Guiot's Bible and Lyric Poems, in French and German, to which Professor G.
Wohlfart was adding notes.
 72

journeyed into the Holy Land, not as a warrior, but in the retinue of a Prince or Baron,
and we learn that Guiot was also in the monastery of Clairvaux, 162 and moreover, when
he wrote his Bible he had already worn the black cowl for more than twelve years; thus
his denunciations would rest on personal observations, and not on any mere gossip or
scandal.
Guiot shows himself, in this writing, to be a man of scholarly education, of penetrating
mind, keen observation and full of biting sarcasm. His comparisons and examples are of
incisive acuteness, he has an exact knowledge of the Bible, and brings forward passages
from the Scriptures in confirmation of his judgment, and in justification of his
reproaches of the clergy. To quote again from San Marte:
His language is incisive and severe . . . . . pouring out his noble anger, galling blame and
bitter sarcasm, over priests and nobles, higher and lower clergy, and over pretended
erudition, he nevertheless loves to add that, of course, there are glorious exceptions. . . .
We perceive in him a mind which, formed in the school of life, has seen and experienced
much; a man who with keen vision and solid judgment watched and weighed the crimes
of all positions. . . . . He very clearly distinguishes genuine piety from the hypocritical
appearance of holiness the true faith from professional sanctity. . . . . Truth is for him
beyond all else; it is his light.
Such is the judgment of this well-known German author upon the man through whom
the tradition comes. Miss Weston, another authority, says:
Such a man would have been thoroughly familiar with the legends that had gathered
round the early Angevin Princes, as well as with the historical facts connected with their
successors; he would have come into contact with the Order of the Knights Templars . . .
. he would be familiar with many a legend of precious stones, the favourite talismans of
the East, and would know the special virtue ascribed to each. . . . In fact, if we will allow
the existence of such a writer as a travelled Angevin might well have been, we shall find
all the principal problems of the Parzifal admit of a rational explanation. Even the
central puzzle, Wolfram's representation of the Grail, is explicable on such a hypothesis.
We know how very vague Chrêtien's 163 account of the Grail is; how much in the dark he
leaves us as to Its outward form, Its influence and its origin. A writer before Chrétien is
scarcely likely to have been more explicit; what more likely than that a man long
resident in the east, and familiar, as has been said above, with eastern jewel talismans,
and the legends connected with them, when confronted with this mysterious Grail, of
which no definite account was given, yet which apparently exercised a magical life-
sustaining influence, should have jumped to the conclusion of Its, at least partial,
identity with the precious stones of the power of which he had heard so much?
Then later on the same writer says:
To sum up the entire question, the drift of the internal evidence of the Parzival seems to
indicate that the author of Wolfram's Source was a warm partisan of the House of

162 S. Bernard of Clairvaux was one of the Church Mystics of the twelfth century; he gave the first rules to
the Order of the Knights-Templars, the regulations having been arranged at the Council of Troyes in 1118.
The great Abbey of Clairvaux was one of the chief centres of education at this period. S. Bernard
considered the contemplative life as the highest, and he was himself a contemplative mystic.
163 Troyes (Chrêtien de), Li conte del Graal. 1189.
 73

Anjou, 164 sometime resident in the East, familiar with the history of the House whose
fortunes he followed, and with much curious oriental lore, and thoroughly imbued with
the broader views of life and religion inspired by the crusades. That he wrote his poem
after 1172 seems most likely from the connection between England, Anjou and Ireland
noted in Book IX; . . . if we grant the correctness of the Angevin allusions to be found in
the earlier parts of the, poem, we must logically grant that these two first books, and as
a consequence the latter part of the poem which agrees with them, are due to the
French source rather than the German redaction; that it was Kiot (Guiot de Provins)
who introduced the characters of Gamuret, Belakané, Feirefis and Lâhelein; that to Kiot
is due the first germ of the ethical interpretation amplified by Wolfram. It was probably
in a great measure owing to the unecclesiastical nature of Kiot's teaching, and the
freedom with which he handled the Grail myth, that his work failed to attain the
popularity of Chrêtien's. When the Grail legend was once definitely stamped with the
traditional Christian character which it finally assumed and retained, the semi-pagan
character of Kiot's treatment would cause his version to be regarded with disfavour by
the monkish compilers of his day. 165
There is no difficulty in perceiving that the Christian version has become the more
popular, almost to the extinction of the oriental tradition, but the suggestion here made
by the writer is of importance—for Guiot, having been in contact with the Secret and
Mystical Societies in the East, would certainly bring that doctrine into his work, which
accounts for what Miss Weston terms the "unecclesiastical nature of Kiot's (Guiot)
teaching."
It is an important fact for the students of this tradition to bear in mind, that the Roman
Church monopolized and adopted this Legend of the Holy Grail, laying stress upon the
version given by Chrêtien de Troyes, ignoring its oriental descent, and popularizing the
idea that the Legend was founded on a purely Christian basis; hence many of the
contemporaries of Wolfram von Eschenbach were writing solely from the Christian
standpoint; but we have also many writers who took a broader view, and who
recognized that the tradition had descended from some earlier doctrine. In San Marte
(A. Schulz), for instance, we have a German scholar of profound research adopting
practically the same view as that of Eugene Aroux in his Mystères de la Chevalerie, to
which book reference was made in the last number. We must now summarize some
important passages from this new source, relating as they do to the same view, namely,
that the Legend of the Holy Grail is, in truth, part of the mystical tradition of those so-
called heretical sects, the Albingenses, the Cathari, and others of that date, descendants
of the older Gnostic Sects. Says San Marte:
The conflicts of the Hohenstaufen with Rome bear witness to the strength of this
movement in Germany; princes, knights and poets accepted 166 it with fullest
consciousness [of its significance]. Guiot's Bible, and other similar writings, the
Provençal poets, the numerous heretical sects of Southern France, of Northern Italy and
Spain prove the same thing regarding these countries. Among the Waldensians there

164 He was in the retinue of Fulk of Anjou, who, in 1129, became the son-in-law of Baldwin, King of
Jerusalem, and eventually became its King. There is, however, a much earlier connection of the House of
Anjou with the East, for in 987 Fulk Nerra, or Fulk the Palmer, went to Jerusalem. See Croniques des
Comtes d’Anjou, par M. Émile Mabille, p. lxxviii. Paris, 1856.
165 Weston (Jessie L.), Parzival, ii. 191, 197, 198. London, 1894.
166 The writer is referring to the enormous spread of these mystical and heretical teachers. See San Marte

(A. Schulz), "Wolfram's Parzival and seine Beurtheiler," in Germania, vii., p. 60. Wien, 1862.
 74

even gradually arose, under the influence of the Provençal poets, a literature, the
content of which was chiefly spiritual, and which, in a poetical form, made the peculiar
principles of the sect current and familiar among the people. 167 We may mention the
celebrated didactic poem, written about 1180, La nobla Leyczon, which leads up to
Waldensian through sacred history, and other poems such as La Barca, Lo novel
Sermon, Lo novel Confort, Lo Payre Eternal, Lo Desprecza del Mont (Contentio Mundi)
and L’Avangeli de li quatre Semenez, which deals with the parable, Matthew xiii. 5, of the
different seeds. They all possess peculiarly strong anti-papistic elements and belong to
those products of anti-hierarchy, which transplanted the conflict against Rome from
ecclesiastical domain to the ground of popular life. How wrathful is Bernard of Clairvaux
against Abelard; 168 he says that, thanks to him, the street-boys of Paris are to be heard
discussing the doctrine of the Trinity! It was a storm which raged through the whole of
western Christendom in all strata of the population, a process of fermentation which,
originally repressed by force, repeated itself in the Reformation and forced itself to the
forefront. When, therefore, Reichel 169 reproaches me with having introduced far more
theological elements than the poem itself justifies, into my interpretation of the oracle
of the Grail and of Parzival's refraining from questions, I reply that, on the contrary, not
nearly enough of the theology of the twelfth century has been applied to the
understanding of our poem, and my attempt to examine it from that standpoint is only a
first beginning on those lines.
For that which we now after the lapse of centuries can only laboriously and yet
imperfectly discover about the explanation of the external historical phenomena of
those religious conflicts—all that surround the then existing world like a fiery
atmosphere in which it breathed, and which penetrated all the pores of its life, the
elements of religious discord which can now hardly be understood and methodically
arranged by the scholars who make the subject their special study—was formerly in the
minds and mouths of the masses and urged them on to action; and if the poems 170 of
that period afford us in almost every other respect a faithful mirror of contemporary
phenomena in action and thought, the same must be true of a work which has a

167 This was the secret language to which Aroux refers so often. In one passage he says: "Let the
philologists make as much outcry as they will, our old Troveurs knew more about it than they do, and
when they adopted certain names they thought far more of the hidden meaning than of the actual
etymology, for which they cared very little"; again, referring to the well-known legend of Amadis, "the
Knight of the Lion, "he adds: "We may easily recognize him, by these various signs, as a 'Poor-man of
Lyons.' Like his colleagues, this Apostle of the Albigensian Gospel leaves Aquitanian Gaul, his own
country, to go into Spain and win over that country to the Religion of Love, as in other romances. What
gives an account of his acts and deeds is the journal, the record of his apostolic feats, of his triumph over
the agents of Rome. What could be easier to recognise? Amadis, the 'Perfect Knight of Lyons,' under p.
158 disguise of person and language is enamoured of the beautiful Oriane. This name, derived from the
East, also indicates the close connection established between the local Vaudism and the oriental
Albigensianism typified by the beautiful lady, Flower, Rose, Star of the East. All light, all good, was in this
literature reputed to come from the East." Aroux (E.), Les Mystères de la Chevalerie, pp. 175, 176. Paris,
1858.
168 One of the Scholastic mystics, a heretic, and condemned by the Pope about 1140; he opposed the view

of those who extol the faith that yields an unreasoning assent, without examination, to whatever is heard.
See Blunt, D.D. (J. H.), article, "Schoolmen"; Dictionary of Sects and Heresies, p. 530. London, 1874.
169 Reichel, Studien zu Wolfram's Parzival, p. 6. Wien, 1858. San Marte (A. Schulz), Parzival Studien, Heft ii.

Halle; Waisenhaus, 1861.

170 The poems of the Troubadours, which contained the mystical teaching, as we have seen from Aroux, in

his Mystères de la Chevalerie, and also from Rutherford in his Troubadours, their Loves and Lyrics, p. 43.
London, 1873. See for quotation, The Theosophical Review, xxiv., p. 202.
 75

predominatingly religious tendency, that finds expression even in the first two lines [of
the poem].
It is very desirable that the Church historians of to-day should, in their writings and
academic lectures, pay greater attention than they do to the investigations and the
treasures which have been brought to light in the ever-increasing study of the early
German and French literatures, indeed they would then find much which preceded and
led up to the Reformation, and would recognize more clearly the forms taken by the
dogmatic theses in the practical faith and opinions of the people, and the special
expression which they there received. For there is a difference between the doctrinal
formulation of an article of faith and its acceptance and transmission by the laity.
The position taken up by Wolfram, whether Guelph or Ghibelline, Apostolic-Evangelical
or Roman-Hierarchic, must determine the standpoint from which his poem must be
judged and understood. And even if we condemn the poet as a heretic, we must not
demand of his poem that it should teach what he rejects, 171 but in order to do it justice
we must enter into his religious tendency, which it brings quite clearly and candidly to
light. In view of the historical situation and the religious stream of tendency at the end
of the twelfth century the intention of our poet can no longer be open to doubt. He
wished, namely, to depict in the institution of the Templars a Christian
brotherhood, 172 a kingdom of the faithful and the elect of the Lord, without a Roman
hierarchy, without a Pope and a privileged priesthood, without ban, interdict or
Inquisition, where God Himself, through the revelation of the Grail, is, in the spirit of the
pure Gospel, Ruler and Judge of His people. He considered the real priesthood to belong
to the individuals struggling towards a true knowledge of God, not to an exclusive class,
however highly he may have esteemed the latter; finally, he borrowed from the order of
the Templars, at that time still flourishing and immaculate, the poetical symbol of the
ideal constitution of this brotherhood.
This idea, plainly heretical from the Roman point of view, necessarily implied that the
Kingdom of the Grail, which alone led to salvation, stood in quite as sharp a contrast to
Roman orthodox Christianity, as represented by the existing visible Church, as it did to
paganism; 173 but it is a fine trait in the poet that he is neither led away into open
polemic against the ruling Church nor into fanatical hostility to Paganism. There is,
therefore, small ground for astonishment at the facts 'that no trace is to be found in the
poem of any subordination of the Templars to clergy or Pope,' that Parzival attains to
the kingdom of the Grail without any ecclesiastical mediation, and that he did not gain
the crown of martyrdom in the conflict, as the fundamental thought of the poet logically
demanded. 174
This fundamental thought, however, is not based on the Dictatus Gregorii VII. nor on the
saying of Innocent III., 'Papa veri Dei vicem gerit in terra,' but directly on the Gospel and
on the saying of the Apostle: 'But ye are a chosen generation—a royal priesthood—a
holy nation—a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath

171 This is precisely what the dogmatic Christian writers have tried to do by eliminating the Gnostic traces,
and the yet more eastern sources of the grand old tradition.
172 This is the true Christian Brotherhood open to every soul, the Elect of Humanity, that "Communion of

Saints" of which the Great White Lodge is the sole earthly representative.
173 Even San Marte, in spite of his frankly acknowledged change of position, is still bound by the obsolete

views about paganism.

174 See Studies, l.c., pp. 20 et seq.
 76

called you out of darkness into his marvellous light'; 175 which saying is repeated almost
literally in strophes 44 and 45 of Wolfram's Titurel-fragments. It is, therefore,
inadmissible to regard the Grail as 'a Christian relic,' to make it the representment of the
pre-cosmic genesis of Evil, and to speak of 'the spiritual side of the poem' as 'weighed
down by the fetishism of the impersonal relic'; this view could only arise through the
introduction of evidence regarding Lucifer's fall and the Holy Grail much later than
Wolfram's poem, or which—in the cases when this [evidence] is earlier, he does not
himself introduce, and which, therefore, must be treated as non-existent in the criticism
of our poem. Wolfram makes no special allusion to the dish of Cæsarea 176 used in the
Lord's Supper, never speaks of Joseph of Arimathea, nor does he mention the Stone of
the Grail having been originally in the crown of Lucifer; on the contrary, according to
him, it is the lapis exilis, 177 the Stone 178 of the Lord, which at the beginning of all things
was with God.
The symbolism of man as a stone, is the idea that is being expressed by the writer; an
ancient idea, and one that is found in almost every religion.
There is one beautiful tradition connected with this legend of the Grail, supposed to
have had its origin in Great Britain, and therefore of peculiar interest to us. It is said to
have been inscribed in the Chronicles of Helinandus, who was "well-known at the time
the Romance was written, not only as a historian but as a Troubadour, at one time in
high favour at the Court of Philip Augustus, and in later years as one of the most ardent
preachers of the Albigensian Crusade."179 He lived about 1229. The passages here
summarized are from Paulin Paris's charming work; the marvellous vision was revealed
to a hermit in Britain about 720, and runs thus:
On Holy Thursday of the year 717, after concluding the office of the Tenebrae, I fell
asleep, and presently methought I heard in a piercing voice these words:—"Awake!
Hearken to three in one, and to one in three!" I opened my eyes—I found myself
surrounded by an extraordinary brightness. Before me stood a man of most marvellous
beauty: "Hast thou rightly understood my words?" he said. "Sire, I should not dare to say
so." "It is the proclamation of the Trinity. Thou didst doubt whether in the three Persons
there were only one God, one only Power. Canst thou now say who I am?" "Sire, my eyes
are mortal; Thy great brightness dazzles me, and the tongue of man cannot give
utterance to that which is above humanity."
The Unknown bent towards me and breathed upon my face. Thereupon my senses
expanded, my mouth was filled with infinity of speech. But when I would fain have
spoken I thought I saw bursting forth from my lips a fiery brand which checked the first
words I would have uttered.

175 I Peter, ii., 9, 10.

176 The "dish of Cæsarea" belongs to the other version, Joseph of Arimathea, by Sires Robiers de Borron,
which was "englisht" in 5450, by Henry Lonelich. See The Grand St. Graal, from Furnivall's edition. Early
English Text Society. Trubner, 1874.
177 Writers vary in their spelling of the stone; Lapis, Lapsit or Jaspes, exilles, exilexor, exillis, and other

variants are given. Lapis Electrix is given by William Hertz in his Parzival, pp. 160, 528. Stuttgart, 1898. He
draws attention to the fiery and life-giving properties of the stone. This to some students of Theosophy
will be a valuable suggestion.
178 In the old symbolism, "Man," chiefly the Inner Spiritual Man, is called a "stone." Christ is called a corner

stone, and Peter refers to all men as "lively" (living) stones. Blavatsky (H. P.), The Secret Doctrine, ii. 663,
3rd edition. London, 1893.
179 Evans (Sebastian), The High History of the Holy Grail, II., p. 293. London, 1898.
 77

"Take courage," said the Unknown to me; "I am the source of all truth, the fount of all
wisdom. I am the Great Master, he of whom Nicodemus said: 'We know that thou art
God.' I come, after confirming thy faith, to reveal to thee the greatest secret in the
world."
He then held out to me a book which could easily have been held in the hollow of the
hand; " I entrust to you," he said, "the greatest marvel that man can ever receive. This is
a book written by my own hand, which must be read with the heart, no mortal tongue
being able to pronounce the words without affecting the four elements, troubling the
heavens, disturbing the air, rending the earth, and changing the colour of the waters.
For every man who shall open it with a pure heart, it is the joy of both body and soul,
and whosoever shall see it need have no fear of sudden death, whatever be the enormity
of his sins."
The great light that I had already found so hard to endure then increased until I was
blinded by it. I fell, unconscious, and when I felt my senses returning, I no longer saw
anything around me, and I should have taken what I had just experienced for a dream,
had I not still found in my hand the book that the Great Master had given me. I then
arose, filled with sweet joy; I said my prayers, then I looked at the book, and found as its
first title: This is the beginning of thy lineage. After reading until Prime, 180 it seemed to
me that I had only just begun, so many letters were there in these small pages. I read on
again until Tierce, and continued to follow the steps of my lineage, and the record of the
good life of my predecessors.
Beside them, I was but the shadow of a man, so far was I from equalling them in virtue.
Continuing the book, I read: Here beginneth the Holy Grail. Then, the third heading: This
is the beginning of Fears. Then, a fourth heading: This is the beginning of Wonders. A flash
of lightning blazed before my eyes, followed by a clap of thunder. The light continued, I
could bear its dazzling brightness no longer, and a second time I fell unconscious.
How long I remained thus I do not know. When I arose, I found myself in profound
darkness. Little by little, daylight returned, the sun resumed its brightness, I felt myself
pervaded by the most delicious scents, I heard the sweetest songs that I had ever
listened to; the voices from which they proceeded seemed to touch me, but I neither
saw them nor could I reach them. They praised Our Lord, and repeated: Honour and
glory to the Vanquisher of death, to the source of life eternal.
Having repeated these words eight times, the voices ceased; I heard a great rustling of
wings, succeeded by perfect silence; nothing remained but the perfumes whose
sweetness entered into me.
The hour of Nones came, and I thought myself yet at the earliest dawn. Then I closed the
book and commenced the service for Good Friday. We do not consecrate on this day,
because our Lord chose it for His death. In presence of the reality one should not have
recourse to symbol; and if we consecrate on other days, it is in commemoration of the
real Sacrifice of the Friday. 181

180 Six o'clock in the morning. Tierce corresponds to 9; Sexte, Nones, and Vespers to noon, 3 o'clock and 6
o'clock.
181 "For where the truth is, the symbol should be put in the background. On other days we consecrate in

remembrance of his being sacrificed. But on that day of Good Friday he was veritably sacrificed; for there
is no meaning whatever in it when the day comes on which he was actually sacrificed."
 78

As I was preparing to receive my Saviour, and had already divided the bread into three
portions, an angel came, took hold of my hands and said to me: "Thou must not make
use of these portions until thou hast beheld what I am about to show thee." Then he
raised me into the air, not in the body but in the spirit, and transported me to a place
where I was immersed in a joy such as no tongue could tell, no ear could hear, no heart
could feel. I should speak no untruth in saying that I was in the third heaven, whither St.
Paul was caught up; but that I be not accused of vanity I will merely say that there was
revealed to me the great secret which, according to St. Paul, no human speech could
utter. The angel said to me: "Thou hast seen great wonders, prepare thyself to see still
greater." He carried me higher yet, into a place a hundred times clearer than glass, and a
hundred times more brilliant in colouring. There I had a vision of the Trinity, of the
distinction between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and of their union in one
and the same form, one and the same Deity, one and the same power. Let not the
envious here reproach me with going against the authority of St. John the Evangelist, in
that he has told us that mortal eyes never will or can behold the Eternal Father, for St.
John meant the bodily eyes, whereas the soul can see, when it is separated from the
body, that which the body would prevent it from perceiving.
While I was thus contemplating I felt the firmament trembling at the sound of the
loudest thunder. An infinite number of heavenly Virtues surrounded the Trinity, then
fell down as if in a swoon. The angel then took me and brought me back to the place
whence he had taken me. Before restoring its ordinary covering to my soul, he asked me
if I had beheld great marvels. "Ah!" I replied, "so great that no tongue could recount
them." "Then resume thy body, and now that thou hast no longer any doubts as to the
Trinity, go, and receive worthily him whom thou hast learnt to know."
The hermit, thus restored to the possession of his body, no longer saw the angel, but
only the book, which he read after he had communicated, and which he laid in the
reliquary where was kept the box for the consecrated wafers. He locked the coffer,
returned to his binnacle, and would not touch the book again until after he had chanted
the Easter service. But what were his astonishment and grief when, after the office, he
opened the reliquary and found that it was no longer there, though the opening had
never been unclosed! Presently a voice spoke these words to him: "Wherefore be
surprised that thy book is no longer where thou didst lay it? Did not God come forth
from the sepulchre without removing the stone from it? Hearken to what the Great
Master doth command thee! To-morrow morning, after chanting mass, thou shalt break
thy fast, and then thou shalt take the path leading to the high road. This road will lead
thee to that of the Prise, near the Perron. Thou shalt turn a little aside and take the path
towards the right which leads to the cross-roads of the Eight Paths, in the plain
of Valestoc. On reaching the Fountain of Tears, where the great slaughter formerly took
place, thou wilt find a strange beast commissioned to be thy guide. When thy eyes lose
sight of him, thou wilt enter into the land of Norgave, 182 and that will be the end of thy
quest. 183
This vision is perhaps one of the most spiritual expressions of the Grail legend that can
be found, and whoever the hermit was to whom the angel came, or the chronicler who

182 I have not discovered a trace of any of these names of places; I am much inclined to think them
disguised.
183 Paris (A. Paulin), Romans de la Table Ronde, i., pp. 156-162. Paris, 1868.
 79

wrote the vision down, the imagination of the person was pure and holy, and the
teaching has the ring in it of a high and holy truth.
Yet one more version of this many-leaved book must we glance at before passing on. We
have seen the Gnostic Eastern tradition, and the purely Christian, now must be seen the
Druidic, or the so-called pagan tradition. Mr. Gould says that there exists a "Red Book," a
volume of Welsh prose begun 1318 and finished in 1454, which contains "a Welsh tale
entitled Pheredur, which is indisputably the original of Perceval." This book is
preserved in the library of Jesus College, Oxford.
Pheredur is mentioned as well in the Annales Cambriæ, which extend from the year 444
to 1066. Mr. Gould says:
Pheredur is not a Christian. His habits are barbarous. The Grail is not a sacred Christian
vessel, but a mysterious relic of a past heathen rite.
Taliesin ben Beirdd, the famous poet says: "This vessel inspires poetic genius, gives
wisdom, discovers the knowledge of futurity, the mysteries of the world, the whole
treasure of human sciences."
That this vessel of the liquor of Wisdom held a prominent place in British mythology is
certain from the allusions made to it by the bards. Taliesin, in the description of this
initiation into the mysteries of the basin, cries out, "I have lost my speech!" because on
all who had been admitted to the privileges of full membership secrecy was imposed.
This initiation was regarded as a new birth; and those who had once become joined
members were regarded as elect, regenerate, separate from the rest of mankind, who
lay in darkness and ignorance.
This Druidic mystery was adapted to Christianity by a British hermit A.D. 720. . . . It is
likely that the tradition of the ancient druidic brotherhood lingered on and gained
consistency again among the Templars. Just as the Miles Tempi fought for the holy
sepulchre, so did the soldier of Montsalvatsch for the Holy Grail. Both orders were
vowed to chastity and obedience, both were subject to a head, who exercised regal
authority. 184
One more link with the ancient Wisdom Religion is forged for us by another author, one
perhaps more sympathetic 185 and he connects the Grail-cult with that Gnostic body
named "Mendæens" or the "Christians of St. John"; 186 this is a point of extreme interest
to students of Theosophy, for it makes a direct connection between the legend of the
Holy Grail and the "Order of the Knights Templars," who were so closely allied with this
body.
Mackenzie, 187 moreover, includes the "Johannite Christians," as he terms them, among
other bodies connected with Masonry, and indeed many of the Masonic Lodges were
dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and looked on him as their patron saint. Simrock builds
his theory on the solid fact that Prester John, a mysterious Priest-King of the east (with

184 Baring-Gould (S), Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 617, 622-3-4. London, 1881.
185 Simrock (R., jr.), Parzival and Titurel, p. 776. Stuttgart and Augsberg, 1857.
186 See Blunt (J. H.), Dictionary of Sects and Heresies, p. 309. London, 1874. He says: "An ancient Eastern

Sect found in Persia and Arabia, but chiefly at Bussara . . . who profess to be Mendai-Ijahi or disciples of St.
John the Baptist! They are called 'Christians of St. John' by many European writers, and Sabians or
Tzabians by the Mahometans."
187 Mackenzie (R. R. H.), The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, p. 386. New York, 1877.
 80

whom we shall deal next time), was himself a leader of one of the Gnostic sects, a heretic
of course; but, as the author points out, the Grail Legend is too intimately interwoven
with him for him to be left out. It is to India 188 indeed, that the Grail goes when the
western world becomes too cold for worship, too dead for ideals to stir it to a higher life.

188Weston (Jessie L.), Parzival, ii., notes 184, line 589, p. 223. "The belief in a Christian Kingdom in the
east, ruled over by a king who was at the same time a priest, was very widely spread in the middle ages,
but it is very curious to find it thus connected with the Grail Legend. Simrock takes this connection to be a
confirmation of his theory, that the Grail Myth was originally closely connected with St. John the Baptist.
According to Der Jüngere Titurel, a poem which, professedly written by Wolfram and long supposed to be
his, is now known to be the work of a certain Albert von Scharffenberg, the Grail, with its guardians,
Parzival, Lohengrin, Konwiramur, and all the Templars, eventually left Monsalväsch and found a home in
the domains of Prester John, but the story seems to be due rather to the imagination of the writer than to
any real legendary source."
 81

Part Three
II.
THE HISTORY OF TITUREL.
The fairest of old men ancient whom ever his eyes had seen,
Grey was he as mists of morning.
Parzifal, i. 137. by JESSIE WESTON.
And the Grail, it chooseth strictly, a: its Knights must be chaste and pure.—Ibid., i. 283.
TO the founding of the Palace Spiritual, and to Titurel, the noble ancestor of the Grail-
Kings, our attention must now be turned. Many and varied are the versions which may
be found of the history of this Grail-Race, and each interpretation of its traditional
history differs according to the writer's sympathy with and comprehension of the
mystical history of the human family. Few and far between are those clear-sighted
critics who recognize, in this fascinating tradition of Oriental generation, a link which
relates the outer life of man to its hidden basis, and sets forth the type of an ideal life
which had its inception on this earth when the "Sons of God" still trod its paths, and the
"Children of the Fire-mist" had not withdrawn from the outer world, but yet dwelt
among the children of men.
From the despised mental dust-bins of the "Dark Middle Ages"—as they are termed—
precious gems of rarest literary worth are being disinterred, of quality so pure, with
richness so wondrous, that the geniuses of the 19th century show poor and forlorn
when measured by the power and mental strength of their predecessors of that
despised time. No peers are the modern poets of those noble singers who created the
chivalric virtues in the hearts of the men and women of their time, and who sent their
burning words ringing through the centuries fraught with love ideals both pure and
true, and religious fervour at once self-sacrificing and humble. Their ideals of noble
manhood and pure womanhood are still the ideals of the present time, for the "Legend
of the Holy Grail" is yet potent, nor can time destroy its "infinite variety." Titurel, the
Perfected One, who
Like a flying star
Led on the gray-haired Wisdom of the East,
is in modern days deemed to be but the poetical creation of a more than usually fertile-
brained troubadour of the Middle Ages; but it is the chronicle of this first spotless Grail-
King which must now be studied, for he was the type of the model ruler, pure in life, just
in action, living for his people, with his heart set on a higher kingdom than his earthly
realm.
The most detailed description of the descent and genealogy of Titurel that we can
briefly summarize is given by a group of German authors 189 in a careful and laborious
study of the "Jüngere," 190 which runs as follows: Among the princes who gathered round

189 Hagen (Dr. H. von der), Docen (B. J.), Büsching (J. G.), Museum für Altdeutsche Literatur und Kunst, i.,
502 et seq. Berlin, 1809.
190 Scharffenberg (Albrecht von), Der Jüngere Titurel; circa 1270. Vilmar (A. F. C.), Geschichte der

deutschen National-Literatur, i, 147. Marburg u. Leipzig, 1870.

 82

Vespasian at the siege of Jerusalem were Sennabor, a Prince of Cappadocia 191 and his
three sons, Parille, Azubar and Sabbilar. After the fall of the city these three brothers
went to Rome, and were overwhelmed with gracious gifts by the Emperor. Parille
received his daughter Argusilla 192 for wife, and some provinces in France were also
given to him. To the brothers Azubar and Sabbilar were given Anschowe (Anjou) and
Kornwaleis (Cornwall). To Parille and Argusilla was born a son whom they named
Titurisone, who became the stem of the Grail-Race. Parille tried to reform and
Christianize his pagan provinces, which had fallen into degraded superstitions, but he
was poisoned by the people and Titurisone reigned in his place.
He married Elizabel of Arragonia, and the royal couple went on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. There it was they received the prophecy about the great future of the son
who should be born to them. He was to be under the special protection of God, and he
would be dowered with, great gifts. His name was to be formed from those of his father
and mother; thus Titurel was he called, which includes a part of Titurisone and Elizabel.
He grew in grace and in "favour with God and man." In him was embodied the true type
of the ideal Knight, noble, pure, tender and chivalrous. Such was Titurel, the first Grail-
King; and—say some accounts—he conquered the rebellious heathen of Auvergne and
Navarre, with the help of the Provençals, and the people of Arles and Lotheringen. These
combined forces—so runs the tradition—conquered the Saracenic union, and put down
the degraded remnants of the old Druidical worship. It was after these long struggles
were completed that Titurel was bidden to prepare and build the Temple for the
reception of the Holy Grail—that perfect treasure which was to be entrusted to his
charge. Amongst the "powers" and "gifts" with which Titurel was dowered was that of "
length of days," for when the temple was builded, and he was commanded to marry, in
order that the Grail-Race might be continued, Titurel had reached four hundred years of
age. The site where the sacred Shrine, or Grail-Temple, was to be founded was shown to
him by an angel-guide; so carefully secluded was the spot, that it could not be
discovered but by the aid of a higher Power.
It is without doubt on the far side of Pyrenees 193 that we find this legend most deeply
engrafted, though the name of its abiding place is differently rendered by various
writers. Thus the name Mon Salväsch, 194 or Mont Salvat, may from its wild and
inaccessible position only mean the uncultivated mountain, Mont Salvatge or Sauvage. It
is said that between Navarre and Arragon there is still a place named Salvaterra.
The site of the Temple was shown to Titurel, and the "Invisible Helpers" brought him
materials for the building; the description is marvellously elaborate, full of symbolical

191 Cappadocia was at this time a Roman Province. Sennabor is rendered by some authorities as "Senbar."
Says San Marte: "The first forerunners of Christianity in the west were demigods; and in Asia is rooted the
main stem of the Senaboriden. (Bóreaden) Senebar der Reiche—Senber, in Arabic a sage—he came from
Cappadocia, from the Caucasus, and Colchis, whence Odin also brought his bloody worship." See "Der
Mythus vom Heiligen Gral" in the Neue Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiet historisch antiquarischer
Forschungen. Herausgegeben von dem Thüringisch-Sächsichen Verein für Erforschung des
vaterländischen Alterthums, III., iii., 5.
192 Sometimes given as Orgusille.
193 Says Görres: "The Temple of Mont Salvatsch stands in Salvatierra, and not as people thought in distant

Gallizein, but in Arragonia just at the entrance into Spain, and close to the Valley of Ronceval and the great
road which leads from France towards Gallicia and Compostella."—Lohengrin. Koblentz, 1812.
194 Sometimes called San-Salvador, or Salvez.
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detail, 195 entirely oriental in its whole construction, both material and ideal, but it
cannot here be given, as our sketch is limited to Titurel himself. When the building of
the Temple was completed he was four hundred years old, but such was the power of
the Holy Grail that he looked—says the tradition—only forty. And now he gathered
around himself that goodly company of knights—the Knights of the Temple Holy—and
gradually their influence and their power spread into other lands; first Arragon and
then Navarre were drawn to this spiritual society, then followed Catalonia, Grenada and
Gallicia; the chief town of this great alliance was concealed in the forests on the
boundaries between Navarre and Arragon, on the ridge of the Pyrenees. The centre of
the spiritual supremacy of the new faith reached from Gallicia beyond Provence,
towards Burgundy and Lorraine. All of this was done during the four hundred years of
Titurel's reign. San Marte speaks of it as a " similar institution to that which existed in
the Pythagorean Alliance."
The Sacred Grail was enshrined in the Temple, and the instructions to the King and his
knights appeared on its surface, remained there for a while, then faded slowly away.
And now was given the order for Titurel to marry, and the wife chosen for him was
Richonde, a maiden consecrated to God. Her father's name was Frimutelle, a king of a
Spanish province; messengers were sent to her, and she came to Mon Salvatsch
accompanied by a great suite of maidens and of warriors, all of whom returned to Spain
except those whom the Grail ordered to remain. Titurel had to select two hundred
knights from amongst those who came; moral qualifications alone fitted them to enter
the service of the Grail. Two children were born to Titurel. His son Frimutel, who
married the daughter of the King of Grenat, became the next Grail-King, and they had
five children—Amfortas, who succeeded him as Grail-King; Herzeloide, the mother of
Parzival; Treverizent, the hermit; Tchoysiane, and Urepanse. This was the male line. The
daughter of Titurel married Kailet, King of Spain, the capital of which was, at this time,
Toledo, and this marriage connected the Kings of Spain with the Kings of the Grail-Race.
It must be remembered that it was at Toledo that the manuscript on the Holy Grail
legend was found by Flegetanis, the contents of which gave the Eastern sources of this
tradition.
By daily contemplation of the Grail Titurel's life 196 had been prolonged for five hundred
years, and when he knew his forces were beginning to fail him, he gathered his children
round him to instruct them on the spiritual significance of the Holy Grail.
Thus he taught: no one may ever see the Grail but the elect; those who do not live a holy
life, and guard themselves in purity and from all strife, are not fit to gaze upon that
holiness; no tongue may ever tell the Grail's true form.
Titurel also instructed his knights as to the inner meaning of the symbols and
ceremonial they used, particularly the spiritual significance and power of the twelve
precious stones. He sorrowed that his son Frimutelle had not been "called" by the Grail
to be the Grail-King. Shortly after this, we are told, the name of Frimutelle appeared on
the Grail, and then followed the names of the Knights who were to enter the Grail
service. Titurel was also warned that his son, and his grandson, Amfortas, would suffer
bodily injuries, as the result of their ungoverned natures. Finally, Titurel died in India,

195 See Boisserée (Sulpiz), Über die Beschreibung des Heiligen Grals. Munich, 1834. Also Transactions of the
Munich Academy, i. 30. The description is in the Jüngere Titurel, edited by Hahn, strophe 311, 5842. San
Marte (A. Schulz), Leben and Dichten Wolfram's van Eschenbach, ii., 357. Magdeburg, 1836.
196 In Persian history the life of Jemshad was extended to nearly seven centuries from a similar cause.
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more than five hundred years old. 197 Of his journey thither we know nothing, but the
tradition runs, that there is a "waiting place,"198 whence the return of these knightly
souls is expected, in that region of peace, where they dwell and watch over the human
race. Thus passes the Founder of the Grail-Kingship from our immediate view; he had
but to strike the keynote of a higher purity and a nobler manhood, and his work in the
material world of that period ended.
He still holds, we are told, communication with the world, and occasionally despatches a
faithful champion to grant assistance in cases of momentous need. There also the Grail
maintains the sanctity of its character, and becomes at once the register of human
grievances and necessities, and the interpreter of the will of heaven as to the best mode
of redressing them.
Immense stress is laid on the necessity for a perfect purity, but so corrupt did the court
grow, that at one time only the infant children of Perceval and Lancelot, and the
daughter of Gawain, were considered worthy to step within the sacred shrine.
Warton speaks quite frankly in his book of "esoteric doctrines" which belonged to the
"heathen world" (sic), and which have been transplanted into Christendom, a new name
having therein been given to the old teachings of the East. 199
But we must pass on to the other aspects of this legend, and one of the most curious is
the connection traced by many authors between the Holy Grail and the traditions of the
Knights Templars. 200
Aroux is very definite on this point:
"It must be acknowledged," says he, "that the romances of the Sangreal (the legend of
which is borrowed from the Apocryphal Gospels) composed, according to an essentially
Albigensian idea, in glorification of the Templars, mark the period when the poets of the
South felt the need of procuring auxiliaries in the North." 201
It is Aroux to whom we are chiefly indebted for the secret thread which guides us
through much of the tangled maze of the struggles of the mystics during the Middle
Ages. He points out that the Holy Grail was a mystic Gospel 202 as well as the Holy

197 One of the few definite dates is given to us by Görres in his Lohengrin, p. lxiii. where, speaking of
Lohengrin's death, he says: "It was known now to the murderers who this Prince was . . . . they became
monks . . . these events took place five hundred years after the birth of Jesus Christ."
198 Here we have a clear and most definite hint given that the doctrine of re-incarnation was taught by this

Troubadour, who is handing down the Secret Wisdom of the Holy Grail.
199 Warton (Thomas, B.D.), The History of English Poetry, i., 85, London, 1824.
200 "Le Temple du Graal une fois bâti dans les Pyrénées, Titurel institua pour sa defense et pour sa garde

une milice, une Chevalerie spéciale, qui se nomme la Chevalerie du Temple, et dont les membres prennent
le nom de Templiens, ou de Templiers. Ces Chevaliers font vœu de chasteté, et sont tenus à une grande
pureté de sentimens et de conduite. L’objet de leur vie, c’est de défendre le Graal, ou pour mieux dire, la
foi chrétienne, dont ce vase est le symbole, contre les infidèles. Je l’ai déjà insinué, et je puis ici l’affirmer
expressément, il y a dans cette milice religieuse du Graal une allusion manifeste à la milice des Templiers.
Le but, le caractère religieux, le nom, tout se rapporte entre cette dernière Chevalerie et la Chevalerie
idéale du Graal: et l’on p. 179 a quelque peine à comprendre la fiction de celle-ci, si l’on fait abstraction de
l’existence réelle de l’autre." Fauriel (C.), "Romans Provençaux," Revue des Deux Mendes; Première série,
viii. 185. Paris, 1832.
201 Aroux (E.), La Comédie de Dante, i. 39. Paris, 1857.
202 Aroux (E.), Les Mystères de la Chevalerie, p. 166. Paris, 1858.
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Chalice, containing a mysterious power. Another German 203 thinker connects the legend
of Titurel with the origin of the Masonic Orders, and the early Ritter-Orden in Germany.
It is Herr Doctor Simrock who has given us much detail with regard to the tradition of
the Holy Grail and its connection with the "Order of the Knights Templars"; it is his
view, and that of other serious students, that that Holy Grail tradition, which is termed
by Aroux the "book of the Gospels," was in reality the Secret Doctrine of the Templars,
for which they suffered so bitterly. Founded in 1118 on the base of the old Society of the
Magian Brothers, drawn together by the same guiding powers, the Templars did but
develop the ideal seed which Titurel had sown. Let us see what Simrock says on these
points.
It seems our duty to bring forward here that which has already been shown to hold
good as regards this view. Fauriel, who finds in the Templeisenthum—or the Knighthood
of the Grail—that there is only a play on the Knights Templars, appeals to the evidence
given by the power and the riches which that Order had already obtained in Southern
France and the South-East of Spain, but especially in the Pyrenees, where since the
founding of the Temple-lands as the first in Europe, by Roger III. Graf von Foix, castles,
churches, temples, and chapels had rapidly increased. San Marte lays stress on the
agreement of the name as well as on the different rules and customs of the Order which
coincided [with those of the Grail]: for instance the Templars at the Lord's Supper,
diverging from the Roman Liturgy, made use of the opening words of the Gospel of St.
John, which change also occurs at the baptism of Feirefis; 204 but he bases his arguments
chiefly upon the heresies of which the Templars are known to have been accused: the
worship of certain idols . . . . their belief in spirits and demons, which recall the "
Heavenly Host " [around the Grail]—angels who, according to Trevrezent's statement
had to serve the Grail as they hovered around it. The fact remains, however undecided
[to San Marte] whether the accusers took their incriminating charges from the
Romances of the Grail, or from the scraps which had been published of the real
teachings of the Templars. 205 Other authorities 206 think that by these Templeisen are to

203 Rosenkranz (Karl), Doctor der Philosophie, zu Halle. Uber den Titurel und Dante's Komödie mit einer
Vorerinnerung über die Bildung der Geistlichen Ritter-Orden, pp. 52-70. Halle u. Leipzig, 1829.
204 Baptism had a much deeper meaning among the Gnostic sects than among the orthodox church people.

A "true baptism is only that which takes place in the living water;" and again, speaking of S. John the
Baptist, "He . . . baptised with the living baptism and named the Name of Life." Brandt (A. J. H. W.), Die
Mandäische Religion, ihre Entwickelung and Geschichtliche Bedeutung, pp. 98 and 100. Leipzig, 1889. It
was an Initiation into the Real Mysteries, and is so still.
205 Simrock (K. Dr.), Parzifal and Titurel, Rittergedichte von Wolfram von Eschenbach, p. 793, third edition.

Stuttgart u. Augsburg, 1857.

206 Hagen (Dr. H. von der), Docen (B. J.), Büsching (J. G.), Museum für Altdeutsche Literatur and Kunst; i.,

507. Berlin, 1809. Shallow J. (J. Y. A. Morshead), The Templer's Trials, p. 62. London, 1888. "M. Loiseleur
considers that the Temple compiled its heresy from the principles of three contemporary sects—
Bogomiles, Euchetes, Luciferians. The actual history of these sects, however, rather gives one the
impression that each was suggested to some heresiarch by some particular phase of that Manichæan
feeling which always existed in Bulgaria or Asia Minor." Mignard (Monographie du Coffret de M. le Duc de
Blacas, Paris, 1852), proves that the Templars were Cathari—another name for Albigenses—who
believed in the doctrine of reincarnation. Says Aroux: "How did Walther of Aquitaine, how did the
romance of Perceval, the Perfect Knight of the Saint-Graal, accurately translated by a Templar—Wolfram
von Eschenbach, after the poem of the Troubadour Guiot—become transplanted into Germany, if the
Provençal missionaries had no relations with that country, if their romances, their symbols were not
understood there? . . . . Who but themselves and their disciples conveyed thither the ideas and romances
of chivalry, and by turning to account the national traditions, worked on the foundation of the ancient
sagas and impressed on the modern ones the very visible stamp of Albigensianism? Traces are again to be
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be understood the Knights of San Salvador de Mont Real, who were, however, founded
at a much later date, in the year 1120. Another Knightly Order was founded at this
period, who wore a "five-pointed star" upon their breasts; they were the Knights of
Monfrac in Castille and Knights of Mongoia, on Mont Gaudii in Catalonia. There had,
moreover, been a close connection between the Order of the Templars and the House of
Anjou, for a tax on his dominions for the benefit of the Templars had been imposed by
Fulk. V. of Anjou, on his return from Jerusalem in 1120. It is, however the learned Baron
von Hammer-Purgestall 207 who gives the most detail on the connection of the Templars
with the Holy Grail, by tracing its history from the identity of hieroglyphs which he
found on the old churches and buildings in the Danubian Provinces. He unfortunately is
for ever trying to find the most unsavoury interpretation for all the ancient symbolism;
with his views we are not concerned, but to the work of research which he carried on
with such ability we are profoundly indebted. His statement is very decided, for on p.
88, in note 33, of his article, he says: The whole poem T8 Titurel, is nothing but the
allegory of the Society and the doctrines of the Templars.
Upon these details we cannot dwell, for we must trace the passing of the Holy Grail to
India, and this will bring to view another mysterious personage, whose name was
Prestre John—a man about whom legends were rife in both East and West during the
early Middle Ages. Colonel Yule speaks of his history as "that of a phantom taking many
forms." 208 The so-called apostate Nestorians, and the personage called Presbyter
Johannes, appear to have been Manichæan Buddhists; the country of Prestre John was
Indian Tartary, and the real Prestre John was the Grand Lama, the incarnation of
Wisdom or Gnyâna. 209 Every authority joins in admitting that there was some
mysterious and powerful individual of this name, some identifying him with Gengis-
Khan. 210

found not only in Europe, but even as far as Asia. True Knights errant of the Church Militant, in open war
(but more often war secret and hidden) with Roman Catholicism, they journeyed unceasingly . . . .
sometimes they went as bearers of secret messages or were charged with transmitting verbally important
information from Prince to Prince." Thus was the secret mystical teaching preserved through the dark
ages. Aroux (E.), Mystères de la Chevalerie, p. 189. Paris, 1858.
207 Hammer-Purgestall (J. Baron von), "Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum; seu fratres militiæ Templi, quâ

Gnostici et quidem ophiani, apostasiæ, idololatriæ et quidem impuritatis convicti per ipsa eorum
monumenta." See Fundgruben des Orients, vi. p. 3. Vienna, 1818. Nell (M. von) writing on Hammer's
"Baphometum," says that Hammer insists that the Cup of the Holy Graal is Gnostic, and of the same set as
the Baphometo of the Templars, which all have Gnostic-Ophite symbols on them. But Nell says they are
theosophical and alchemical: in both cases these authors trace the Grail legend to heretical sects.
208 Yule (Col.): see sub voce, Encyclo. Brit.
209 "Prestre John" seems to have been the title of an office, for the periods of time at which we hear of this

curious person are various. The person who succeeded to the position took the designation Prestre John.
210 Sir John Maundeville, an old knight, writing in the fourteenth century, relates (Cassell's National

Library, The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Maundeville, p. 169) the following: "This Emperor Prester
John takes always to wife the daughter of the great Chan, and the great Chan also in the same wise the
daughter of Prester John. For they two are the greatest lords under the firmament. . . . And Prester John
has under him seventy-two provinces, and in every province is a king, all which kings are tributary to
Prester John, and in his lordships are many great marvels, for in his country is the sea called the Gravelly
Sea. . . . Three days from that sea are great mountains, out of which runs a great river which comes from
Paradise, and it is full of precious stones without a drop of water. . . . Beyond that river is a great plain, and
in that plain every day at sunrise small trees begin to grow, and they grow till midday, bearing fruit; but
no man dare take of that fruit, for it is a thing of fairie. . . This Emperor Prester John when he goes to battle
against any other lord has no banners borne before him, but he has three large crosses of gold full of
precious stones, and each cross is set in a chariot full richly arrayed. . . . And when he has no war but rides
 87

We must now return to the Grail Legend and trace the connection which is therein made
between this cryptic entity and that tradition.
"The passage of the Grail to India," says San Marte, "and the transformation of Parzival
into Prestre John is important for us to notice; according to the version of Wolfram, this
curious and interesting person is the son of Urepanse, 211 hence a cousin of Parzival; no
details are given to us about this mysterious personage, whose existence, however,
cannot be denied. The Monk Wilhelm von Rubruquis, 212 passing through the East about
1253, told of a ruler in the northern regions of India, in 1057, called Ken-Khan. The
Turks sought his help against the Christians. The Nestorians called him King Johannes.
Interior Asia was peopled by numerous sects; besides the Nestorians were the Jacobites,
Monophysites, and the Zaböer or Johannes Christians. All travellers of the thirteenth
century speak of a widely-spread Christianity in the East, and the information thereof
may have come to the West with the first crusade—confused with vague intelligence
about the Hierarchy of the Dalai Lama, of whom Kiot may have heard." 213
Writing on the " Disciples of St. John," Madame Blavatsky 214 says:
Glancing rapidly at the Ophites and Nazareans, we shall pass to their scions which yet
exist in Syria and Palestine, under the name of Druzes of Mount Lebanon; and near
Basra or Bassorah, in Persia, under that of Mendaeans, or Disciples of St. John. All these
sects have an immediate connection with our subject, for they are of kabalistic
parentage and have once held to the secret "Wisdom-Religion," recognizing as the One
Supreme, the Mystery-God of the Ineffable Name. Noticing these numerous secret
societies of the past, we will bring them into direct comparison with several of the
modern.
Our object is not to write the history of either of them; but only to compare these sorely-
abused communities with the Christian sects, past and present, and then, taking
historical facts for our guidance, to defend the secret science as well as the men who are
its students and champions against any unjust imputation.
One by one the tide of time engulfed the sects of the early centuries, until of the whole
number only one survived in its primitive integrity. That one still exists, still teaches the

with a private company, he has before him but one plain cross of wood, in remembrance that Jesus Christ
suffered death upon a wooden cross. And they carry before him also a platter of gold full of earth, in token
that his nobleness and his might and his flesh shall turn to earth. And he has borne before him also a
vessel of silver, full of noble jewels of gold p. 184 and precious stones, in token of his lordship, nobility
and power . . . the frame of his bed is of fine sapphires, blended with gold to make him sleep well. This
Emperor Prester John has evermore seven kings with him to serve him, who share their service by certain
months."
211 Urepanse was one of the grand-daughters of Titurel.
212 In the account of the travels of Rubruquis, in the Geography of the Middle Ages, Book III., p. 270,

London, 1831, we read: "There is reason to believe that the Nestorians had penetrated into China as early
as the sixth or seventh century, and carried into that kingdom the civilization of the Bactrian Greeks."
Rubruquis says, that in his time they "inhabited fifteen cities in Cathay. . . . The Nestorians of Tartary had
imbibed the specious doctrine of the transmigration of souls." They then told him of a child about three
years old who could write and reason, and who stated "that he had passed through three several bodies."
William de Rubruquis—or more properly, Van Ruysbroek—was a Minorite Friar, from a village of that
name near Brussels. He started on his travels in 1253. He also said (p. 273), "that he had been told by
Baldwin de Hainault at Constantinople some facts about the direction of the rivers in Tartary which he
afterwards found to be true."
213 Neue Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiete Historisch. Antiquarischer Forschungen, ii. 36.
214 Blavatsky (H. P.), Isis Unveiled, ii.; pp. 289, 290. New York, 1884.
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doctrine of its founder, still exemplifies its faith in works of power. The quicksands
which swallowed up every other outgrowth of the religious agitation of the times of
Jesus, with its records, relics, and traditions, proved firm ground for this. Driven from
their native land, its members found refuge in Persia, and to-day the anxious traveller
may converse with the direct descendants of the "Disciples of John," who listened, on
the Jordan's shore, to the "man sent from God," and were baptized and believed. This
curious people, numbering thirty thousand or more, are mis-called "Christians of St.
John," but, in fact, should be known by their old name of Nazareans, or their new one of
Mendaeans.
The poem entitled Der Jüngere Titurel 215 deals most minutely with the passing of the
Grail-Kings to the realms of Prestre John; and in this work it is not Parzival around
whom the chief interest is grouped, but Titurel and his race, as they follow the Founder;
then—when the darkening of the spiritual fervour begins, and the falling away from the
standard of purity grows more general—then with prayer and fasting do the few
sorrowing knightly souls, the Templeisen, make preparations to return to that east
whence had come their early inspiration. Led by Parzival they pass from West to East.
The description of the kingdom of Prestre John far surpasses, however, in splendour
that of the Holy Grail. There, we are told, the whole of nature is sanctified; it is a land
free from crime, perfidy, scoffing, and lack of faith.
Prestre John is described as a man holy before God and man, perfect in virtue, and
glorified with humility: he gives honour to Parzival, who comes bringing the Holy Grail
to its Indian home, and the Priest-King of that land offers his crown and kingdom to the
king of the Grail-Race; Parzival desires, in his humility, to give himself to the service of
Prestre John, and finally it is the Grail which decides the noble strife of these two great
souls. The decree was given that Parzival should accept the kingship, but his name was
to be changed into that of Prestre John.
Then was fulfilled a prophecy, formerly made by an angel, that Prestre John should
receive a son who should be a more powerful ruler than himself. But it was also decreed
that Parzival should only wear the crown for ten years, since he was not entirely
purified from the sin that his mother, Herzeloide, had died of grief for him. As San
Marte 216 points out, the sin was entirely unintentional on his part; nevertheless, it was
still unexpiated and stained that spotless purity of a perfect life which was demanded of
every knight who entered the service of the Holy Grail. Thus it appears that even a more
perfect condition was required in the office of the Priest-King Johannes than in that of
the Grail-Kingship. The holders of both offices were nominated by the Holy Grail.
III.
THE LINKS OF THE MYSTIC CHAIN.
The strongly Eastern tinge that characterises this tradition may be noticed in many
different points. The knowledge, for instance, of the occult properties of precious stones

215 Scharffenberg (A. von), Der Jüngere Titurel, 1270, line 5893 et seq.
216 San Marte (A. Schulz), "Vergleichung von Wolfram's Parzival mit Albrecht's Titurel in Theologischer
Beziehung," Germania, viii., 454. Wien, 1863. This writer also remarks in the same interesting article that
" the poem appears as a mirror of those religious movements at the end of the twelfth century which were
struggling towards freedom from the compulsion of the Church . . . . the fundamental appreciation of both
poems, 'Titurel' and 'Parzival,' is only obtained by comparing them from the theological standpoint. . . .
Titurel is full of learned and varied reminiscences brought from afar." Op. cit. supra, pp. 421, 422.
 89

and metals and their powers; the stone that enables the wearer to make himself
invisible, the condition being that he should do nothing dishonourable. Then we have
the mysterious land of mist, where people 217 are neither dark nor light, but have lost all
ordinary human colour. Again, there is the magic column brought from India, in which
all that happens for miles around is represented; and one of the most important links is
the clear reference made to reincarnation in the belief held that Titurel and his knights
may return, and that the Perfect King still holds communication with the earth and its
sorrows.
The moral and mystic teaching of the Grail tradition is the most vitally interesting to the
student of Theosophy and mysticism, for the resemblances between the present laws of
spiritual development and those given to the Knights of the Grail are strikingly identical:
The knight who watched the Grail—the highest office—had to be entirely pure; all
sensual love, even within the bounds
of marriage, was forbidden; one single thought 218 of passion would obscure the eye and
conceal the mystic vessel; the only marriage that was permitted amongst those who
stepped on to this "Path" was the marriage of the King, and even that was not based on
personal attractions or attachments; the Grail alone decided whom the Grail-King
should take as wife. Not for himself, not for gratification, but for the service of the race
was he to marry.
As we search into the mystic chalice symbolism of the Grail myth does it not become
clear that we are face to face with a symbol of man: man who is the temple of the Holy
Spirit. The chalice or cup is but another way of denoting the "coats of skin," the "veils" or
"vestures" which garment man on earth; robes woven by the nature powers, in which
and through which the divine spark has to dwell, until in process of time the vestures or
chalice become permeated through and through by the divine light within. Says one
writer on this subject:
"In that marvellous relic of Gnostic philosophy called the Pistis-Sophia, the three
vestures of the Glorified Christos or perfected man—what we may all be in some future
birth—are thus described:
"And the disciples saw not Jesus because of the great light with which he was
surrounded, or which proceeded from him. For their eyes were darkened because of it.
But they gazed upon the Light only, shooting forth great rays of light. Nor were the rays
equal to one another, and the Light was of divers modes and various aspect, from the
lower to the higher part thereof, each ray more admirable than its fellow in infinite
manner, in the great radiance of the immeasurable Light. It stretched from the earth to
the heaven. . . . It was of three degrees, one surpassing the other in infinite manner. The
second, which was in the midst, excelled the first, which was below it, and the third, the
most admirable of all, surpassed the other twain."
The Master explains this mystery to his disciples as follows:
"Rejoice, therefore, in that the time is come that I should put on my Vesture.
"Lo! I have put on my Vesture and all power has been given me by the First Mystery. Yet
a little while and I will tell you every Mystery and every Completion; henceforth from

217 Some of the Kâmalokic planes might be thus described.

218 "One single thought about the past that thou hast left behind will drag thee down." Blavatsky (H.
P.), The Voice of the Silence, p. 23. London, 1892.
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this hour I will conceal naught from you, but in Perfectness will I perfect you in all
Completion, and all Perfectioning and every Mystery, which indeed are the End of all
Ends, and the Completion of all Completions, and the Wisdom (Gnosis) of all Wisdoms.
Hearken! I will tell you all things which have befallen me.
"It came to pass, when the sun had risen in the places of the East, a great Stream of Light
descended, in which was my Vesture." 219
The vesture of the Self in its perfect glory is of a purity of transcendent perfection. No
mortal stained with earthly passion can gaze upon that garment of the soul.
And as the upward striving soul struggles to free itself from the bondage of the lower
bodies and their subtle forces, and as it purifies one vehicle after another pertaining to
the three lower planes of matter, finally it reaches that step on the Path whereof the
substance is perfect purity, and the soul perceives that "Light vesture" which is the
garment—spoken of in theosophic terms as the buddhic body—veiling the divine
mysterious Self.
This is the great reality which is typified by the Holy Grail, the symbolic Cup or Chalice,
the first container of the Holy Life of the Logos. In all religions is this myth to be found;
truly an "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." Titurel had told his
knights that no tongue may ever tell the Grail's true form. This shows that some mystery
was concealed behind the outward symbolism of the Cup and Chalice, or Gospel.
Burnouf says: "In spite of the difference produced by the influences of the place, the
study of the legend of the Vase permits us to understand and discover that esoteric
teaching which has never ceased to animate or ensoul the five great Aryan religions.
This theory—which in the Christian churches was transmitted under the name of the
Secret Doctrine, disciplina secreti—is of a Fire as the universal force under different
names, always the same at the basis, and manifesting itself by the same words and
symbols." 220
This Fire is the true Spirit of life, the living Word, which inflames the soul of man, and
gives it that force by which it can conquer the kingdoms of the lower world, and,
crossing the ocean of births and deaths, can finally land itself on the further shore, a
holy, purified "Son of God," a Saviour of Worlds to come.
Thus runs the Legend of the Holy Grail.

219Mead (G. R. S., B.A.), The World-Mystery, pp. 102, 104. London, 1895.
220Burnouf (É.), Le Vase Sacré et ce qu’il contient: dans l'Inde, la Perse, la Grèce, et dans l’Église
Chrétienne; avec un appendice sur le Saint Graal, p. 172. Paris, 1896.