CHAPTER
XXXIX
CAMISARDS
OF THE CEVENNES
(Originating
1688)
The
Camisards were actually a survival of the Waldenses and the Pastoureaux.
Calmeil,
an authority on mental aberrations quoted by Madden in Phantasmata , thus
describes the characteristics of the Camisard movement: — " The prophetic madness
(of the Camisards) made its appearance in Dauphine and Vivarais in 1688 ; it
very soon spread itself over a vast number of places, and continued without any
interruption among the Calvinists for nearly twenty years.
"
It was especially in the course of the year 1689, that the phenomena of
theomania excited the greatest astonishment and rose to the height of its
violence. The theomaniacs could then be counted by hundreds ; men, women,
girls, boys, young children, all of them believed they were inspired and imbued
with the breath of the Holy Spirit.
"
The punishment of fire, the rack, the torture of the pendaison, even the
massacres performed by armed troops, whose efforts were directed to the
extermination of the pretended prophets, the military executions, all the
torments that it was possible to invent, to repress the violence of this
religious fanaticism, only augmented the force of the evil which they were employed
to abate or suppress.
"
When, towards the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Calvinists rose up
in good earnest to constitute small bodies of troops, and to dispute inch by inch
the soil which had given them birth, with the king's soldiery, by whom they
were confronted, this war of extermination was preceded by the apparition of a
sort of swarm of pretended prophets and prophetesses. Towards 1701, at one time
two hundred of the inspired, who had fallen into the hands of their enemies, were
sent to the galleys.
"
The madness of the theoma,niacs was less talked of during the years 1703 and
1704 than it had been previously; but it is certain that all the armed bands who
contended with the royal troops for those two years, never took the field
except at the instance of some inspired celebrities. And it is certain that the
words of those prophets were listened to as if they had emanated from the mouth
of the Holy Spirit; that the inspirations of these monomaniacs habitually
decided either the life or death of the Catholics who fell into the power of
the Protestants ; and there was often at that time to be seen the same person
fulfilling among the Camisards the functions of a prophet, and the functions of
a commander.
"
It was not till the year 1704 that the Marechal de Villars had the charge of
the command in Langueidoc; this Marechal saw, nevertheless, entire cities infested
with theomania. "
"
It was towards the latter end of 1706 that they (the Camisards) came to
England, from the mountains of the Cevennes, where their countrymen had for a considerable
time maintained a contest with the troops for the persecuting Louis XIV. As
exiles for conscience ' sake, they were treated with respect and kindness ; but
they soon forfeited all claim to respect by the folly or knavery of their
conduct. Of this group Elias Marion was the prominent figure ; the others
acting only subordinate parts. He loudly proclaimed that he was the messenger
of Heaven, and was authorised to denounce judgments, and to look into futurity.
All kinds of arts were employed by Marion and his associates to excite public
attention — sudden droppings down as though death-struck; sighs and groans, and
then shrieks and vociferations, on recovering; broken sentences, uttered in
unearthly tones ; violent contortions ; and desperate stragglings with the
spirit, followed by submission and repentance ; were all brought into play. The
number of the believers in their power soon became considerable...
"
After a time the sect which they had formed died away, but its ruin was less to
be attributed to the punishment of the prophets, or the recovery of reason by
their votaries, than by a report which was spread that they were nothing more
than the instruments of designing men, who wished to disseminate Socinianism,
and destroy orthodoxy. "
.
For root
of this movement see Chapter XXIII, Waldenses. For development of this movement
see Chapter XLII.
ASSOCIATIONS
OF THE 18TH CENTURY
CHAPTER
XL
THE RITE
OF SWEDENBORG OR ILLUMINATI OF STOCKHOLM
(Founded
1721)
Emmanuel
Swedenborg was born on Jan. 29, 1688, at Stockholm. His father, Jasper
Swedberg, was the son of Daniel Isaksson of Fahlun, Sweden. In 1719, Jasper
Swedberg's family was ennobled by Queen Ulrika and his name was altered from
Swedberg to Swedenborg. '
Emmanuel
Swedenborg was initiated at Lund in 1706 and progressed to the higher degrees
of the Temp- ars as practised in Sweden.
In 1718,
Colonel Baltzer Wedmar, in a Stockholm Lodge Lecture, said that Swedenborg was
a Mason and that he had seen his signature at the Lodge at Lund. These
assertions were confirmed by King Gustavus III.
Founded
in 1721, * the Rite was first introduced into England by Chastanier, Springer
(Swedish Consul), C. F. and August Nordenskjold and others who were
members
of the first Swedenborgian Society in London known as the Theosophical Society
of the New Jerusalem, not to be confused with the Rite of French Theosophists.
The rite
was carried from London to the Americas by a Swedenborgian Minister, Brother
Samuel Beswick. He lived at Strathroy, Canada, and was the author of a work
upon the Swedenborgian Rite. This rite, called the Illuminati of Stockholm, was
well known until the middle of the 18th century when it amalgamated with that
of Zinnendorf.
What is
properly known as the rite of Swedenborg was another modification of the order
of the Illuminati of Avignon effected by the Marquis de Thome, in 1783, wherein
he endeavoured to restore the true meaning of the doctrine of the Swedish
mystic. '
CHAPTER
XLI
SUPREME
CONSEIL AND GRAND ORIENT DE FRANCE
(Founded
1725)
SOVEREIGN
GRAND COMMANDER,
SUPREME
CONSEIL 1929,
M. RENE
RAYMOND.
Freemasonry
was introduced in France in about 1730, some say 1725.
Its
implantation bore a singular character. Due to the time of exile spent in
France by Queen Henrietta, widow of Charles I (1649), English ways and customs had
become fashionable among the members of the French aristocracy. The exiled
English Royal Family and their adherents, warmly welcomed by the Jesuits of
France, plotted in secret to regain the throne for Charles II. Later, when the
Catholic King James II was also overthrown in 1688, he found refuge in France and
his son, The Pretender, and later his grandson, Charles Edward, headed numerous
plots fomented to enable them to regain their father's and grandfather's throne
from William of Orange.
Meanwhile
Masonry had been instituted in England (1717) and introduced in France in 1730.
The Jacobites, partisans of the Pretender, secretly plotting as they constantly
were, found the newly created Masonic lodges a ground no less well adapted to
serve their ends than the Jesuits' colleges whence all their schemes emanated.
Lodges,
having thus become fashionable resorts for French aristocrats, presented a
double aspect, one which might almost be termed theatrical, inasmuch as the
comedy of equality between the lord and his varlet was enacted in the Lodge,
and the other far more serious was of a political character. This latter aspect
of budding English symbolic Freemasonry in France was anxiously watched by the
minister Cardinal de Fleury who ordered its suppression in 1737. Up to that
time the French lodges that had been formed considered themselves as depending
from the English Grand Lodge, had an English Grand Master and were confining
their activities to the practice of the three grades of Blue Masonry.
Then
appeared the would-be reformers of Masonry. At their head, in France, was the
Chevalier de Ramsay, and with their advent came the innovation of a fourth grade
followed by others. This was the beginning of Scotch Masonry whose unavowed aim
seems to have been to interpose itself between the existing Lodges and the
governing Grand Lodge of France.
De
Ramsay, who was one of the foremost exponents of Scotch Rites and already
dreamed of the Universal Masonry of Albert Pike, exposed some of his theories in
his famous Discourse made in 1740.
By that
time, the Grand Lodge of France, known as the Grand English Lodge of France,
was no longer headed by an English Grand Master, but by the Due d'Antin who was
succeeded by Louis, Prince de Bourbon, Comte de Clermont, who held the office
of Grand Master from 1743 until 1771. During his Grand Master-ship, in 1754,
the name Chapter of Clermont was given to what might be called an offshoot of
the Primitive French Masonry on which, later, the Chevalier de Bonneville
grafted some additional degrees. This name " Chapter of Clermont "
has been the cause of much confusion arising from the fact that a Jesuit
college founded in Paris, in 1550, also bore the name of Clermont College and
had been a centre for Jacobite secret plotting against the Protestant rulers of
England.
This
grafting of higher degrees on those of Symbolic or Blue Masonry gave Scotch
Masonry its vitality and strength and a continual superposition and absorption of
one rite, to and by another, took place.
The
period during the Grandmastership of the Comte de Clermont was eventful for the
craft. A masonic writer, William H. Peckham, in his work on Scottish rites,
gives a succinct but clear sequence of some of the changes undergone by Masonry
in France mentioning Thory, Le Blanc, de Marconnay, Ragon and Clavel as his
sources. Thus we learn that the English Grand Lodge of France became the "
Grande Loge du Royaume " in 1756, and declared itself independent; further,
that an inner body known as the Supreme Council of the Emperors of the East and
West had been founded in 1754 by the Chevalier de Bonneville.
It had
its chamber in the Grand Lodge of France and, likewise, was under the authority
of the Grand Master
Comte de
Clermont whose substitute Chaillon de Joinville was also that of the Council.
The
Supreme Council of the Emperors of the East and West practised twenty-five
degrees.
As to
the disorders in the bosom of Masonry they are attributed to the negligence of
the Comte de Clermont who, in 1744, had ceased to take much interest in the
Lodges and delegated his authority to two appointees, one a banker named Baure
and the other a dancing master by the name of Lacorne who sold charters and
degrees. The latter caused a scission in the Grand Lodge whose members rejected
him and he formed an independent Grand Lodge. Both these Grand Lodges, as also
the Council of the Emperors of the East and West, constituted Lodges and
granted charters throughout the kingdom, but in 1772, the Council united again
with the primitive Grand Lodge as of yore, and becoming one body they practised
the right of perfection of twenty-five degrees. At that time, the Grand Master
was the Due de Chartres, later Philippe Egalite, Due d'Orleans, who had
succeeded the Comte de Clermont in 1771.
But ten
years previously, on August 29, 1761, a Jew, Stephen Morin, had obtained a
charter from the Council of the Emperors of the East and West and had gone to
America as Grand Inspector General. There he founded what is now known as
Scottish Bites. Morin held his authority from the Comte de Clermont who, at the
request of Lacorne, charged him with establishing Masonry in all parts of the
world. His patent was signed by Chaillon de Joinville, Prince de Rohan, Lacorne,
Savalette de Buckolay, Taupin, Brest De La Chaussee, Count de Choiseul,
Chevalier de Lenon court and D'Aubertin .
The
early history of French Freemasonry is a maze of quarrels, but finally, in
1766, under the auspices of a new Grande Loge Nationale de France, afterwards called
the Grand-Orient, a representative system was at last adopted but the quarrels
continued, the Orient and the original Grand Lodge being each supported by a
separate Rosicrucian organization besides its own proper lodges.
In
contradiction to other masonic authorities, Yarker makes the assertion that the
primitive Scottish Rite of 33 degrees was established at Namur in 1770 by Marchot
and in 1787 united with the Grand Orient.
In he
Culte de la Nature dans la Franc-magonnerie Universelle (page 143) D. Margiotta
states that Adam Weishaupt and his favorite, Baron von Knigge, introduced the
organization of the Holy Vehm as well as certain legends of Illuminism into
Masonry in 1783. The only persons exempted from the jurisdiction of this
terrible court of " Justice ", the Holy Vehm, were the clergy, women
and children, Jews and heathens and certain members of the higher nobility.
The
Revolution issued from the Masonic Lodges, said Lombard de Langes. France, in
1789, counted over 2,000 lodges affiliated to the Grand Orient : The adepts
numbered over 100,000. The first events of 1789 were but Masonry in action. All
the Revolutionaries of the Constituent Assembly were 3rd degree initiates.
In the
Viennese Freemasonic newspaper of December 1927, the Freemason Arthur Singer of
Budapest publishes the following interesting document which he claims to have
taken from a book by Comte Vogt d'Hunolstein, which appeared in 1864 under the
title Unpublished letters of Marie-Antoinette.
It is a
letter from the unhappy queen to her sister Marie Christine.
Translation.
" I
believe that as far as France is concerned, you worry too much about
Freemasonry. Here, it is far from having the significance that it may have
elsewhere in Europe ; here everything is open and one knows all. Then, where
could the danger be ?
"
One might well be worried if it were a question of a political secret society.
But on the contrary the government lets it spread, and it is only that which it
seems : an association, the objects of which are union and charity. One dines,
one sings, one talks, which has given the king occasion to say that people who drink
and sing are not suspect of organizing plots. Nor is it a society of atheists,
for, we are told, God is on the lips of all. They are very charitable. They
bring up the children of the poor and dead members, they endow their daughters.
What harm is there in all that ?
" A
short time ago the Princess de Lamballe was named Grand Mistress of a Lodge.
She told me all the charming things they said to her. Many glasses were emptied,
many verses sung. Then two good young maidens were endowed. Admitted. One can
do good without all that fuss : but one must let everyone act according to
their wishes, the more so when good only only results. "
The
letter sounds as if it had been written yesterday by one of our good English
Masons concerning English Freemasonry.
Masonry
in France became dormant during the French Revolution, but in 1799, a national
union was effected by Roettiers. No sooner, however, was this done, and the
statutes, originally based on the English constitutions thoroughly revived,
than French masonry again suffered from an invasion of mysticism, — first in
the form of the Scottish Philosophic Rite (including such profundities as the
luminous ring and the white and black Eagle), and secondly in the American
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of 33 degrees, which the charlatan De
Grasse-Tilly expounded with great success but which in 1804 was amalgamated
with the Grand Orient, the great Marshals Massena and Kellerman being then the
leading members of the two bodies. The union did not last, as Napoleon disliked
the constitution of the Supreme Council which was largely influenced by the
aristocracy. His brother, Joseph, assisted by Murat and Cambaceres, was allowed
to take office in the older organization. During the reactionary Catholic
policy of the Grand Master Murat the younger (1852-62), the liberties of the Orient
were greatly interfered with and its funds almost exhausted. Since then it has
slowly recovered.
Murat
was succeeded by General Magnan who had been appointed by Napoleon III to group
all Masonic bodies into one. This he succeeded in doing in 1862 with the
exception of Scottish Rites, then under Jean Baptist Viennet, which still held
aloof.
In 1868,
the Supreme Conseil (of Scottish Rites) and the Alliance Israelite Universelle
became merged in the person of the Jew Adolphe Cremieux who was president of
both.
We must
not omit to mention that Cremieux was also a member of the Rite of Mizraim
which in 1862 was absorbed by the Grand Orient of France.
On
attaining the 1 8th degree, a Grand Orient Mason automatically becomes a member
of the Alliance Israelite Universelle.
The
Grand Orient ceased to require belief in a personal God as a test of membership
in the year 1877.
From the
political movements, the origins of which can be traced to the influence of the
Grand-Orient de France, one is forced to believe it to be a political orga- nization.
The
following quotations from the speech made by Domenico Anghera, Grand Master of
the Supreme Council of Scottish Rites when conferring on General Giuseppe
Garibaldi the 33rd degree and administering his oath of allegiance, are here of
interest in view of the connection of the two masonic powers in France.
Translation
:
"...
Our first step, as builders of the new temple to the felicity of human glory,
must be destruction. To destroy the present social state, we have suppressed
religious teaching and the individual rights of persons. As we have overthrown
the temporal power of the Pope, our most terrible and infamous enemy, by means
of France and Italy, we must now break France, the strongest prop of the
spiritual power. That we must do with the help of our own power and that of
Ger- many. " (This speech was made before the Franco Prussian War of
1870).
"
Brother, thou hast finished thy instruction as chief of Freemasonry. Pronounce
thy supreme oath.
' I
swear to recognize no fatherland but that of the world. I swear to work hard,
everywhere and always, to destroy frontiers, borders, boundaries of all
nations, of all industries, no less than of all families. I swear to dedicate
my life to the triumph of progress and universal unity and I declare to profess
the negation of God and the negation of the soul'.
"
And now, Brother, that for thee, fatherland, religion and family have disappeared
for ever in the immensity of the work of Freemasonry, come to us, illustrious, most
puissant and very dear Brother and share with us the boundless authority, the
infinite power that we hold over humanity.
"
The only key of progress and happiness, the only rules of good, are thy
appetites and instincts " (Compare with 0. T. 0. Chapter CX).
(For the
Esoteric explanation of the Masonic Motto " Deus Meumque Jus " and
the Masonic three dots .■. see chapter on Symbolism).
On the
4th Sept. 1870, the Second Empire fell at the battle of Sedan. The
International and Freema- sonry seized power, calling their government "
The Government of National Defence ", and that same day the handpicked
ministry of Freemasonry was constituted with Leon Gambetta as Minister of the Interior.
Its eleven members, all deputies of Paris had, according to him, been acclaimed
by the people.
They
were : — Emmanuel Arago, Cremieux, Jules Favre, Ferry, Gambetta, Garnier-Pages,
Glais-Bizoin, Pelletan, Picard, Rochefort, Jules Simon.
Nine of
them at least were Freemasons, three were Jews — Cremieux, Glais-Bizoin and
Gambetta. The Mayor of Paris, Etienne Arago, nominated twenty other mayors to
provincial posts, twelve of whom were prominent Freemasons, the others being
merely nonentities.
The
fourth of September was the nominal proclamation of the Republic, but that date
marked the actual seizure of power in France by Freemasonry just as the 20th of
September of the same year marked its seizure of power in Italy.
Then
came the " Commune ", famous through history for its revival of the
atrocities of the first French Revolution of 1793.
Slaughter,
ruin, torture, all again perpetrated in the name of the people who mutely
suffered and died that the Men of Destiny might rule upon the earth I
For root
of this movement see Chapter XXVI.
For
development of this movement see Chapter LIII.
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