| Arthur Edward Waite | |
THE TEMPLAR ORDERS IN FREEMASONRY
An Historical Consideration of their
Origin and Development
HAVING regard to the fact that Emblematic Freemasonry, as it is known
and practised at this day, arose from an Operative Guild and within
the bosom of a development from certain London Lodges which prior to
the year 1717 had their titles in the past of the Guild and recognised
its Old Charges, it would seem outside the reasonable likelihood of
things that less than forty years after the foundation of Grand Lodge
Knightly Orders should begin to be heard of developing under the aegis
of the Craft, their titles in some cases being borrowed from the old
institutions of Christian Chivalry. It is this, however, which
occurred, and the inventions were so successful that they multiplied
on every side, from 1754 to the threshold of the French Revolution,
new denominations being devised when the old titles were exhausted.
There arose in this manner a great tree of Ritual, and it happens,
moreover, that we are in a position to affirm the kind of root from
which it sprang. Twenty years after the date of the London Grand
Lodge, and when that of Scotland may not have been twelve months old,
the memorable Scottish Freemason, Andrew Michael Ramsay, delivered an
historical address in a French Lodge, in the course of which he
explained that the Masonic Brotherhood arose in Palestine during the
period of the Crusades, under the protection of Christian Knights,
with the object of restoring Christian Churches which had been
destroyed by Saracens in the Holy Land.
For some reason which does not
emerge, the foster-mother of Masonry, according to the mind of the
hypothesis, was the Chivalry of St. John. Ramsay appears to have left
the Masonic arena, and he died in the early part of 1743, but his
discourse produced a profound impression on French Freemasonry. He
offered no evidence, but France undertook to produce it after its own
manner and conformably to the spirit of the time by the creation of
Rites and Degrees of Masonic Knighthood, no trace of which is to be
found prior of Rainsay.
Their prototypes of course were extant, the
Knights of Malta, Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, Knights of St.
Lazarus, in the gift of the Papal See, and the Order of Christ in
Portugal, in the gift of the Portuguese Crown. There is no need to say
that these Religious and Military Orders have nothing in common with
the Operative Masonry of the past, and when their titles were borrowed
for the institution of Masonic Chivalries, it is curious how little
the latter owed to the ceremonial of their precursors, in their
manners of making and installing Knights, except in so far as the
general prototype of all is found in the Roman Pontifical. There are,
of course, reflections and analogies:
(1) in the old knightly
corporations the candidate was required to produce proofs of noble
birth, and the Strict Observance demanded these at the beginning, but
owing to obvious difficulties is said to have ended by furnishing
patents at need;
(2) in the Military Order of Hospitallers of the Holy
Sepulchre of Jerusalern, he undertook, as in others, to protect the
Church of God, with which may be compared modern Masonic injunctions
in the Temple and Holy Sepulchre to maintain and defend the Holy
Christian Faith;
(3) again at his Knighting he was "made, created and
constituted now and for ever," which is identical, word for word, with
the formula of another Masonic Chivalry, and will not be unknown to
many.
But the appeal of the new foundations was set in an6ther
direction, and was either to show that they derived from Masonry or
were Masonry itself at the highest, in the proper understanding
thereof. When the story of a secret perpetuation of the old Knights
Templar- outside the Order of Christ- arose in France or Germany, but
as I tend to conclude in France, it was and remains the most notable
case in point of this appeal and claim.
It rose up within Masonry, and
it came about that the Templar element overshadowed the dreams and
pretensions of other Masonic Chivalries, or, more correctly, outshone
them all. I am dealing here with matters of fact and not proposing to
account for the facts themselves within the limits of a single study.
The Chevalier Ramsay never spoke of the Templars: his affirmation was
that the hypothetical building confraternity of Palestine united
ultimately with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem; that it became
established in various countries of Europe as the Crusaders drifted
back; and that its chief centre in the thirteenth century was
Kilwinning in Scotland. But the French or otherwise German Masonic
mind went to work upon this thesis, and in presenting the Craft with
the credentials of Knightly connections it substituted the Order of
the Temple for the chivalry chosen by Ramsay.
The Battle of Lepanto
and the Siege of Vienna had invested the annals of the St. John
Knighthood with a great light of valour; but this was as little and
next to nothing in comparison with the talismanic attraction which for
some reason attached to the Templar name and was obviously thrice
magnified when the proposition arose that the great chivalry had
continued to exist in secret from the days of Philippe le Bel even to
the second half of the eighteenth century. There were other
considerations, however, which loomed largely, and especially in
regard to the sudden proscription which befell the Order in 1307. Of
the trial which followed there were records available to all, in
successive editions of the French work of Dupuy, first published in
1685; in the German Historical Tractatus of Petrus Puteamus
published at Frankfort in 1665; in Gurther's Latin Historia
Tempiarsorum of 1691; and in yet other publications prior to 1750.
There is not a little evidence of one impression which was produced by
these memorials, the notion, namely, of an unexplored realm of mystery
extending behind the charges.
It was the day of Voltaire, and it
happened that a shallow infidelity was charactersed by the kind of
licence which fosters intellectual extravagance, by a leaning in
directions which are generally termed superstitious- though
superstition itself was pilloried- and in particular by attraction
towards occult arts and supposed hidden knowledge. Advanced persons
were ceasing to believe in the priest but were disposed to believe in
the sorcerer, and the Templars had been accused of magic, of
worshipping a strange idol, the last suggestion- for some obscure
reason- being not altogether indifferent to many who had slipped the
anchor of their faith in God. Beyond these frivolities and the foolish
minds that cherished them, there were other persons who were neither
in the school of a rather cheap infidelity nor in that of common
superstition, but who looked seriously for light to the East and for
its imagined traditional wisdom handed down from past ages. They may
have been dreamers also, but they were less or more zealous students
after their own manner; within their proper measures, and the Templar
Chivalry drew them because they deemed it not unlikely that its
condemnation by the paramount orthodoxy connoted a suspicion that the
old Knighthood had learned in Palestine more than the West could
teach.
Out of such elements were begotten some at least of the Templar
Rites and they grew from more to more, till this particular aspect
culminated in the Templar dramas of Werner, in which an Order
concealed through the ages and perpetuated through saintly custodians
reveals to a chosen few among Knights Templar some part of its secret
doctrine-the identity of Christ and Horus, of Mary the Mother of God,
and Isis the Queen of Heaven. The root of these dreams on doctrine and
myth transfigured through the ages- with a heart of reality behind it-
will be found, as it seems to me, in occult derivations from Templar
Ritual which belong to circa 1782 and are still in vigilant
custody on the continent of Europe. I mention this lest it should be
thought that the intimations of a German poet, though he was an active
member of the Strict Observance, were mere inventions of an
imaginative mind.
There is no historical evidence for the existence of any Templar
perpetuation story prior to the Oration of Ramsay, just as there is no
question that all documents produced by the French non-Masonic Order
of the Temple, founded in the early years of the nineteenth century,
are inventions of that period and are fraudulent like the rest of its
claim, its list of Grand Masters included.
There is further- as we
have observed- no evidence of any Rite or Degree of Masonic Chivalry
prior to 1737, to which date is referred the discourse of Ramsay. That
this was the original impetus which led to their production may be
regarded as beyond dispute, and it was the case especially with
Masonic Templar revivals. Their thesis was his thesis varied. For
example, according to the Rite of the Strict Observance the proscribed
Order was carried by its Marshal, Pierre d'Aumont, who escaped with a
few other Knights to the Isles of Scotland, disguised as Operative
Masons. They remained there and under the same veil the Templars
continued to exist in secret from generation to generation under the
shadow of the mythical Mount Heredom of Kilwinning. To whatever date
the old dreams ascribe it, when Emblematic Freemasonry emerged it was-
ex hypothesi-a product of the union between Knights Templar and
ancient Scottish Masonry. Such is the story told.
The Strict Observance was founded by Baron von Hund in Germany
between about 1751 and 1754 ot 1755, and is usually regarded as the
first Masonic Chivalry which put forward the story of Templar
perpetuation. I have accepted this view on my own part, but subject to
his claim at its value- if any- that he had been made a Knight of the
Temple in France, some twelve years previously. The question arises,
therefore, as to the fact or possibility of antecedent Degrees of the
kind in that country, and we are confronted at once by many stories
afloat concerning the Chapter of Clermont, the foundation of which at
Paris is referred to several dates. It was in existence, according to
Yarker, at some undetermined period before 1742, for at that date its
Masonic Rite, consisting of three Degrees superposed on those of the
Craft, was taken to Hamburg.
A certain Von Marshall, whose name
belongs to the history of the Strict Observance, had been admitted in
the previous year, Von Hund himself following in 1743- not at Hamburg,
but at Paris- for all of which no authority is cited and imagination
may seem to have been at work. But some of the statements, including
those of other English writers, are referable to a source in Thory's
Acta Latamorum. When Woodford speaks of Von Hund's admission
into Templar Masonry at Clermont as not a matter of hypothesis, but of
certain knowledge, he is dependent on the French historian, according
to whom the German Baron was made a Mason at Paris in 1742. The
Chapter of Clermont was founded in that city so late as 1754, and some
time subsequently Von Hund retunied thither, with the result that he
derived Templar teaching from Clermont, on which he built up the
Observance system. But, whatever the point is worth, this story is not
only at issue with that of Von Hund himself, but with the current
chronology of the Observance.
To involve matters further, the Chapter
is reported otherwise to have derived its Templar element from
something unspecified at Lyons which is referred to 1738. The utmost
variety of statement will be found, moreover, as to the content of the
Clermont Rite, the Templar character of which has been also
challenged. It is proposed otherwise that the Chapter was founded on a
scale of considerable magnitude, that it was installed in a vast
building, and that it attracted the higher classes of French
Freemasons, which notwithstanding it ceased to exist in 1758, being
absorbed by the Council of Emperors established in that year for the
promulgation of a different Grade system.
I am in a positiori to reflect some light for the relief of these
complications by reference to Dutch archives which have come to my
knowledge. The date of the Chapter's foundation remains uncertain, but
it was in activity between 1756 and 1763, so that it was not taken
over- as Gould suggests- by those Masonic Emperors to whom we are
indebted for the first form of the Scottish Rite, Ancient and
Accepted. It is not impossible that its foundation is referable to the
first of these dates, when it superposed on the three Craft Grades as
follows: (I) Grade of Scottish Master of St. Andrew of the Thistle,
being the Fourth Grade of Masonry, "in which allegory dissolves"; (2)
Grade of Sublime Knight of God and of his Temple, being the Fifth and
Last Grade of Free Masonry. At a later period, however, it became the
Seventh Grade of the Rite, owing to the introduction of an Elect
Degree which took the number 5 under the title of Knight of the Eagle,
followed by an Illustrious Degree, occupying the sixth place and
denominated Knight of the Holy Sepulchre. The Grade final in both
enumerations- otherwise Knight of God- presented a peculiar, as it was
also an early version of the perpetuation story, from which it follows
that the Clermont Rite was Templar.
I have so far failed to trace any copy of the Ritual in this
country with the exception of that which has been placed recently in
my hands, an example of the discoveries that await research in
continental archives. The Templar element- which may be called the
historical part- is combined with a part of symbolism, for though
allegory is said to be abandoned in the Fourth Degree, its spiritual
sister is always present in Ritual. The aspect which it assumes in the
present case is otherwise known in Masonry, the Chapter representing
the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, with its twelve gates, as a
tabernacle of God with men.
The Candidate is represented therefore as
seeking the light of glory and a perfect recompense, while that which
he is promised is an end of toils and trials. He is obligated as at
the gates of the City and is promised the Grand Secret of those who
abide therein. The City is- spiritually speaking- in the world to
come, and the reward of chivalry is there; but there is a reward also
on earth within the bonds of the Order, because this is said to be
divine and possessed of the treasures of wisdom. The kind of wisdom
and the nature of the Great Secret is revealed in the Perpetuation
Story, and so far as I am aware offers the only instance of such a
claim being made on behalf of the Templars, in or out of Masonry. It
belongs to a subject which engrossed the zeal of thousands throughout
the seventeenth century and had many disciples- indeed, they were
thousands also- during the Masonic Age which followed. The story is
that the Templars began in poverty, but Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem,
gave them a house in the vicinity of the site where Solomon's Temple
was built of old.
When it was put in repair by Hugh de Payens and the
rest of the first Brethren, their digging operations unearthed an iron
casket which contained priceless treasures, and chief among all the
true process of the Great Work in Alchemy, the secret of transmuting
metals, as communicated to Solomon by the Master Hiram Abiff. So and
so only was it possible to account for the wealth of adornment which
characterised the First Temple. The discovery explains also the wealth
acquired by the Templars, but it led in the end to their destruction.
Traitors who knew of the secret, though they had not themselves
attained it, revealed the fact to Clement V and Philip the Fair of
France, and the real purpose of the persecution which followed was to
wrest the transmuting process from the hands of its custodians.
Jacques de Molay and his co-heirs died to preserve it, but three of
the initiated Knights made their escape and after long wandering from
country to country they found refuge in the caves of Mount Heredom.
They were succoured by Knights of St. Andrew of the Thistle, with whom
they made an alliance and on whom they conferred their knowledge. To
conceal it from others and yet transmit it through the ages they
created the Masonic Order in I340; but the aichemical secret, which is
the physical term of the Mystery, has been ever reserved to those who
can emerge from the veils of allegory- that is to say, for the chiefs
of St. Andrew of the Thistle, who are Princes of the Rosy Cross, and
the Grand Council of the Chapter.
The alchemical side of this story is in a similar position to that
of the perpetuation myth, of which it is an early version. There is
nothing that can be taken seriously. But this is not to say that in
either case there is no vestige of possibilities behind. Modern
science tends more and more to show us that the transmutation of
metals is not an idle dream and- speaking on my own part- there are
well-known testimomes in the past on the literal point of fact which I
and others have found it difficult to set utterly aside. So also there
are few things more certain in history than is the survival of Knights
Templar after their proscription and suspension as an Ordeer. With
this fact in front of us it is not as a hypothesis improbable that
there or here the chivalry may have been continued in secret by the
making of new Knights.
It is purely a question of evidence, and this
is unhappily wanting. The traditional histories of Knightly Masonic
Degrees- like those of the Chapter of Clermont, the Strict Observance
and the Swedish Rite- bear all the marks of manufacture; the most that
can be said concerning them- and then in the most tentative manner- is
that by bare possibility there may have been somewhere in the world a
rumour of secret survival, in which case the root matter of their
stories would not have been pure invention. The antecedent material
would then have been worked over and adapted to Masonic purposes,
inspired by the Oration of Ramsay.
It is to be presumed that when this speculation is left to stand
at its value, there is no critical mind which will dream of an
authentic element in Hugh de Payen's supposed discovery of the Powder
of Projection at or about the site of the Jewish Temple. This romantic
episode stands last in a series of similar fictions which are to be
found in the history of Alchemy. When we are led to infer therefore by
the records before me that the Chapter of Clermont reached its end
circa 1763, we shall infer that it was in a position no longer to
carry on the pretence of possessing and being able to communicate at
will the Great Secret of Alchemy.
It is evident from the Ritual that
this was not disclosed to those who, being called in their turn, were
admitted to the highest rank and became Knights of God. It was
certainly promised, however, at a due season as a reward of merit.
From a false pretence of this kind the only way of escape would be
found by falling back upon renounced and abjured allegory. Now, we
have seen that the Chapter in its last Degree represented the New
Jerusalem, and therefore its alchemy might well be transferred from a
common work in metals to the spiritual side of Hermeticism. Those who
have read Robert Fludd and Jacob Bohme will be acquainted with this
aspect; but it may not have satisfied the figurative Knights of God,
who had come so far in their journey from the Lodge of Entered
Apprentice to a Temple of supposed adeptship. The Chapter therefore
died.
I HAVE met with another French Ritual in a great manuscript collection
and again- so far as ascertained- it seems to be the sole copy in
England, though it is not unknown by name, in view of the
bibliographies of Kloss and Wolfsteig. It is called Le Chevalier du
Temple, and is of high importance to our subject. The collection
to which I refer is in twelve volumes, written on old rag paper, the
watermark of which shows royal arms and the lilies of France: it is
pre-French Revolution and post 1768- say, on a venture, about 1772.
The Ritual to which I refer extends from p. 73 to 202 of the fifth
volume, in a size corresponding to what is termed crown octavo among
us. The hand is clear and educated. The particular Templar Chivalry is
represented as an Order connected with and acknowledging nothing else
in Freemasonry except the Craft Degrees. In respect of antiquity it
claims descent by succession from certain Canons or Knights of the
Holy Sepulchre, who first bore the Red Cross on their hearts, and were
founded by James the First, brother of the first Bishop of Jerusalem.
These Canons became the Knights Hospitallers of a much later date. On
these followed the Templars, from whom the Masonic Knights of the
Temple more especially claimed derivation, though in some obscure
manner they held descent from all, possibly in virtue of spiritual
consanguinity postulated between the various Christian chivalries of
Palestine. The traditional history of the Grade is given at unusual
length and is firstly that of the Templars, from their foundation to
their sudden fail, the accusations against them included; it is a
moderately accurate summary, all things considered. There is presented
in the second place a peculiar version of the perpetuation story which
is designed on the one hand to indicate the fact of survival in
several directions, and on the other to make it clear that Templar
Masonry had in view no scheme of vengeance against Popes and Kings.
After the proscription of the chivalry it is affirmed that those who
remained over were scattered through various countries, desolate and
rejected everywhere. A few in their desperation joined together for
reprisals, but their conspiracy is characterised as detestable and its
memory is held in horror. It fell to pieces speedily for want of
recruits. Among the other unfortunate Knights who had escaped
destruction, a certain number entered also into a secret alliance and
chose as time went on their suitable successors among persons of noble
and genfle birth, with a view to perpetuate the Order and in the hope
at some favourable epoch that they would be restored to their former
glory and reenter into their possessions.
We hear nothing of
Kilwinning or Heredom, and indeed no one country is designated as a
place of asylum; but it is affirmed that this group of survivors
created Freemasonry and its three Craft Degrees to conceal from their
enemies the fact that the Chivalry was still in being and to test
aspirants who entered the ranks, so that none but those who were found
to be of true worth and fidelity should be advanced from the Third
Degree into that which lay beyond. To such as were successful the
existence of the secret chivalry became known only at the end of seven
years, three of which were passed as Apprentice, two as Companion or
Fellow Craft, and two as Master Mason. It was on the same conditions
and with the same objects that the Order in the eighteenth century was
prepared to receive Masons who had been proved into that which was
denominated the Illustrious Grade and Order of Knights of the Temple
of Jerusalem.
The Candidate undertakes in his Obligation to do all in his power
for the glorious restoration of the Order; to succour his Brethren in
their need; to visit the poor, the sick and the imprisoned; to love
his King and his religion; to maintain the State; to be ever ready in
his heart for all sacrifice in the cause of the faith of Christ, for
the good of His Church and its faithful. The Pledge is taken on the
knees, facing a tomb of black marble which represents that of Molay,
the last Grand Master and martyr-in-chief of the Order. Thereafter the
inward meaning of the three Craft Degrees is explained to the
Candidate.
That of Apprentice recalls the earliest of Christian
chivalries, being the Canons or Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, who for
long had no distinctive clothing and hence the divested state of the
Masonic Postulant. But this state signified also that his arm is ever
ready to do battle with the enemies of the Holy Christian Religion and
his heart for the sacrifice of his entire being to Jesus Christ. The
alleged correspondences and meanings are developed at some length, but
it will be sufficient to mention that the Masonic Candidate enters the
Lodge poor and penniless, because that was the condition at their
beginning of the Templars and the other Orders of Christian
Knighthood.
The Candidate is prepared for the Second Craft Degree in a
somewhat different manner from that of the First, and this has
reference to certain distinctions between the clothing of a Knight of
the Holy Sepulchre and that of a Knight of St. John.
The seven steps
are emblematic of the seven sacraments of the Holy Church, by the help
of which the Christian Chivalries maintained their faith against the
infidel, and also of the seven deadly sins which they trampled under
their feet. The Blazing Star inscribed with the letter Yod, being the
initial letter of the Name of God in Hebrew, signified the Divine
Light which enlightened the Chivairies and was ever before their eyes,
as it must be also present for ever before the mind's eye of the
Masonic Templars, a sacred symbol placed in the centre of the
building. In French Freemasonry the Pillar B belonged to the Second
Degree and was marked with this letter, which had reference to
Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, who provided a House for the Templars in
the Holy City.
The Traditional History of the Master Grade is that of the
martyrdom of Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Temple.
The three assassins answered to Philip the Fair, Pope Clement V and
the Prior of Montfaucon, a Templar of Toulouse, who is represented as
undergoing a sentence of imprisonment for life at Paris on account of
his crimes, by the authority of the Grand Master. He is said to have
betrayed the Order by making false accusations and thus secured his
release. The initials of certain Master Words are J.B.M., and they are
those also of Jacobus Burgundus Molay.
The Chevalier du Temple has unfortunately no history, so
far as I have been able to trace. I have met with it as a bare title
in one other early collection, which has become known to me by means
of a Dutch list of MSS., and there is no need to say that it occurs in
the nomenclature of Ragon.
It is numbered 69 in the archives of the
Metropolitan Chapter of France, and 8 in the Rite of the Philalethes:
they may or may not refer to the same Ritual as that which I have
summarised here. There is no means of knowing. In any case the 36th
Grade of Mizraim and the 34th of Memphis, which became No. 13 in the
Antient and Primitive Rite, is to be distinguished utterly: it is
called Knight of the Temple, but has no concern with the Templars and
is quite worthiess. It should be added that in one of the discourses
belonging to Le Chevalier du Temple there is a hostile allusion
to the existing multiplicity of Masonic and pseudo-Masonic Grades, and
this may suggest that it is late in the order of time. A great many
were, however, in evidence by and before the year 1759. We should
remember Gould's opinion that there was an early and extensive
propagation of Ecossais Grades, and the source of these was
obviously in the Ramsay hypothesis. It is certain also that Elu
Grades were not far in the rear.
The date of the particular
Collection Maconnique on which I depend is, of course, not that
of its contents. On the whole there seems nothing to militate against
a tentative or provisional hypothesis that Chevalier de Temple
was no later and may have been a little earlier than the Clermont
Knight of God, thus giving further colour to the idea that Templar
Masonry and its perpetuation story arose where it might have been
expected that they would arise, in France and not in Germany.
I have
said that the Grade under notice has no reference to Scotland or to
any specific place of Templar refuge after the proscription. But the
chivalrous origin of Masonry is not less a Ramsay myth, and it
characterises almost every variant of Templar perpetuation which has
arisen under a Masonic aegis, from that of the Knights of God and the
Chevalier du Temple to that of Werner and his Sons of the
Valley, belonging to the year 1803. There stand apart only the
English Religious and Military Order and the late French Order of the
Temple which depends from the Charter of Larmenius, but this was not
Masonic, though its pretence of Templar perpetuation and succession is
most obviously borrowed from Masonry. In conclusion, I shall think
always that Baron von Hund drew from France, whether directly at Paris
or via Hamburg in his own country.
We have seen that the Strict Observance appeared in Germany
between 1751 and 1755, a development according to its founder of
something which he had received in France so far back as 1743. No
reliance can be placed on this statement, nor is the year 1751 in a
much better position. Hund is supposed to have founded a Chapter of
his Templar Rite about that time on his own estate at Unwurdi, where
the scheme of the Order was worked out. We hear also of a later
scheme, belonging to 1755 and dealing with financial matters. But the
first evidential document is a Plan of the Strict Observance,
laying claim on January 13, 1766, as its date of formulation, and
there is a record of the Observance Master Grade, with a Catechism
attached thereto, belonging to the same year. But as 1751 seems too
early for anything in the definite sense so 1766 is much too late. A
memoir of Herr von Kleefeld by J. C. Schubert bears witness to the
former's activities on behalf of the Strict Observance between 1763
and 1768.
The Rite, moreover, was sufficiently important in 1763 for
an impostor named Johnson to advance his claims upon it and to summon
a Congress at Altenberg in May, 1764, as an authorised ambassador of
the Secret Headship or Sovereign Chapter in Scotland. His mission was
to organise the Order in Germany, and for a time Von Hund accepted and
submitted, from which it follows that his own Rite was still in very
early stages.
I make no doubt that it made a beginning privately
circa 1755, and that a few persons were knighted, but Von Hund
had enough on his hands owing to the seven years' war, so that from
1756 to 1763 there could have been little opportunity for Templar
Grades under his custody, either on his own estates or elsewhere.
Meanwhile the Clermont Rite was spreading in Germany and in 1763 there
were fifteen Chapters in all.
There is hence an element which seems
nearer certitude rather than mere speculation in proposing that the
Templar claim on Masonry was imported from France into Germany, that
Von Hund's business was to derive and vary, not to create the thesis.
Of the great success which awaited the Strict Observance, once it was
fairly launched, of its bid for supremacy over all continental Masonry
and of the doom which befell it because no investigation could
substantiate any of its claims, there is no opportunity to speak here.
It may be said that a final judgment was pronounced against it in 1782
when the Congress of Wilhelmsbad set aside the Templar claim and
approved the Rectified Rite, otherwise a transformed Strict
Observance, created within the bosom of the Loge de Bienfaisance at
Lyons and ratified at a Congress held in that city prior to the
assembly at Wilhelmsbad.
The Grades of the Strict Observance
superposed on the Craft were those of Scottish Master, Novice and
Knight Templar; those of the revision comprised a Regime
Ecossais, described as Ancient and Rectified, and an Ordre
Interieur, being Novice and Knight Beneficent of the Holy City. It
laid claim on a spiritual consanguinity only in respect of the Templar
Chivalry, apart from succession and historical connection, but it
retained a certain root, the poetic development of which is in
Werner's Sons of the Valley already mentioned, being the
existence from time immemorial of a Secret Order of Wise Masters in
Palestine devoted to the work of initiation for the building of a
spiritual city and as such the power behind the Temple, as it was also
behind Masonry.
In conclusion as to this part of my subject, the combined
influence of the Templar element in the Chapter of Clermont and that
of the Strict Observance which superseded it had an influence on all
Continental Masonry which was not only wide and general, but lasting
in the sense that some part of it has persisted there and here to the
present day. The eighth Degree of the Swedish Rite, being that of
Master of the Temple, communicated its particular version of the
perpetuation myth, being
(1) that Molay revealed to his nephew
Beaujeu, shortly before his death, the Rituals and Treasures of the
Order;
(2) that the latter escaped, apparently, with these and with
the disinterred ashes of the master, and was accompanied by nine other
Knights, all disguised as Masons;
(3) that they found refuge among the
stonemasons. It is said that in Denmark the history of Masonry, owing
to the activity of a Mason named Schubert, became practically that of
the Observance, until 1785, when the Rectified Rite was introduced as
an outcome of the Congress of Wilhelmsbad. It was not until 1853 that
the Swedish Rite replaced all others, by reason of a royal decree. So
late as 1817 the Rectified Rite erected a central body in Brussels. In
1765 the Observance entered Russia and was followed by the Swedish
Rite on an authorised basis in 1775. Poland and Lithuania became a
diocese of the Observance Order in 1770, and it took over the Warsaw
Lodges in 1773.
The story of its influence in Germany itself is beyond
my scope. It is written at large everywhere: at Hamburg from 1765,
when Schubert founded an independent Prefectory, to 1781 (when the
Rectified Rite was established for a brief period by Prince Karl von
Hesse); at Nuremberg in 1765, under the same auspices; in the Grand
Lodge of Saxony from circa 1762 to 1782; at Berlin, in the Mother
Lodge of the Three Globes, from 1766 to 1779, when the Rosicrucians
intervened; at Konigsberg from 1769 to 1799 in the Provincial Grand
Lodge; in the Kingdom of Hanover, at the English Provincial Grand
Lodge, from 1766 to 1778; and even now the list is not exhausted. The
explanation of this influence through all its period and everywhere is
(I) that which lay behind the romantic thesis of Ramsay, as shown by
his work on the Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed
Religion, published in 1748- I refer to the notion that there was
a Mystery of Hidden Knowledge perpetuated in the East from the days of
Noah and the Flood; (2) that which lay behind, as already mentioned,
the talismanic attraction exercised on Masonic minds in the eighteenth
century by the name of Knights Templar, because the Church had accused
them.
They had learned strange things in the East: for some it
corresponded to the view of Ramsay, for others to occult knowledge on
the side of Magic, and for the Chapter of Clermont to Alchemy. The
collapse of the Strict Observance was not so much because it could not
produce its hypothetical unknown superiors, but because it could not
exhibit one shred or vestige of the desired secret knowledge.
I have now accounted at length for that which antecedes the
present English Military and Religious Order of the Temple and Holy
Sepulchre, so far as possible within the limits at my disposal. The
Clerical Knights Templar, which originated at Weimar with the Lutheran
theologian, J. A. von Starck, and presented its claims on superior and
exclusive knowledge to the consideration of the Strict Observance
about 1770, represent an intervention of that period which has been
judged- justly or not- without any knowledge of the vast mass of
material which belongs thereto and of which I in particular had not
even dreamed.
The fact at least of its existence is now before me, and
I await an opportunity to examine it. I can say only at the moment
that it was devised, as my reference shows, to create an impression
that an alleged Spiritual Branch of the old Knights Templar possessed
their real secrets and had been perpetuated to modern times. It was,
therefore, in a position to supply what the Strict Observance itself
wanted; but the alleged Mysteries of the Order appear to be those of
Paracelsus and of Kabalism on the magical side. I have left over also:
(1) Les Chevaliers de la Palestine, otherwise Knights of Jerusalem,
because although it is a Templar Grade, it is concerned with the old
chivalry at an early period of its history, and not with its
transmission to modern times;
(2) the Grade of Grand Inspector,
otherwise Kadosh, though I am acquainted with a very early and unknown
Ritual, because it does not add to our knowledge in respect of the
Templar claim on Masonry. In the earliest form it shows that the
judgment incurred by those who betrayed, spoliated and destroyed the
Order had been imposed Divinely; that the hour of vengeance was
therefore fulfilled, and that the call of Kadosh Knights was to
extirpate within them those evil tendencies which would betray,
spoliate and destroy the soul.
(3) Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret,
because in the sources with which I am acquainted it recites the
migrations of Templars and only concerns us in so far as it reproduces
and varies the Ramsay thesis in respect of Masonic connections. It is
important from this point of view.
(4) Sovereign Grand Inspector
General, because I have failed so far to meet with any early codex,
and that of Ragon is a Templar Grade indeed but concerned more
especially with wreaking a ridiculous vengeance on the Knights of
Malta, to whom some of the Templar possessions were assigned.
(5)
Knight Commander of the Templar, because, according to the plenary
Ritual in manuscript of Albert Pike, it is exceedingly late and is
concerned in his version with the foundation and history of the
Teutonic Chivalry, which is beside our purpose.
In respect of the English Military and Religious Order I have met
with nothing which gives the least colour to a supposition of Gould
that it arose in France: the Chevalier du Temple is its nearest
analogy in that country, but the likeness resides in the fact that
both Orders or Degrees have a certain memorial in the centre of the
Chapter or Preceptory: we know that which it represents in at least
one case and in the other, as we have seen, it is the tomb of the last
Grand Master. But failing an origin in France it is still less likely
that it originated elsewhere on the continent, as, for example, in
Germany. I conclude, therefore, that it is of British birth and
growth, though so far as records are concerned it is first mentioned
in America, in the Minutes of a Royal Arch Chapter, dated August 28,
1769. I have sought to go further back and so far have failed. It was
certainly working at Bristol in 1772, and two years later is heard of
in Ireland. It is a matter of deep regret that I can contribute
nothing to so interesting and vital a question, which appeals
especially to myself on account of the beauty and spiritual
significance of the Ritual in all its varied forms.
The number of
these may be a source of surprise to many, and I have pointed out
elsewhere that however widely and strangely they differ from each
other they have two points of agreement: there is no traditional
history presenting a perpetuation myth or a claim on the past of
chivalry, while except in one very late instance, there is no
historical account whatever; and they are concerned with the one
original Templar purpose, that of guarding the Holy Sepulchre and
pilgrims to the Holy Places.
They offer no version of Masonic origins,
no explanation of Craft Symbolism, no suggestion of a secret science
behind the Temple, no plan of restoring the Order to its former glory,
and, above all, to its former possessions. The issue is direct and
simple, much too simple and far too direct for a Continental source.
Moreover, the kind of issue would have found no appeal in France; for
example, or Germany, because there was no longer any need in fact to
guard the tomb of Christ, and there were no pilrims in the sense of
crusading times. Finally, they would not have allegorised on subjects
of this kind.
I am acquainted personally with nine codices of the Ritual,
outside those which belong to Irish workings, past and present, an
opportunity to examine which I am hoping to find. The most important
are briefly these:
(1) That of the Baldwyn Encampment at Bristol,
which is probably the oldest of all: the procedure takes place while a
vast army of Saracens is massing outside the Encampment.
(2) That of
the Early Grand Rite of Scotland, subsequently merged in the Scottish
Chapter General: the Pilgrim comes to lay the sins and follies of a
life-time at the foot of the Cross, and he passes through various
symbolical veils by which the encampment is guarded.
(3) That
connected with the name of Canongate Kilwinning under the title of
Knight Templar Masonry, in which there is a pilgrimage to Jericho and
the Jordan.
(4) That of St. George Aboyne Templar Encampment at
Aberdeen, a strange elaborate pageant, in which the Candidate has a
searching examination on matters of Christian doctrine.
(5) That of
the Royal, Exalted, Military and Holy Order of Knights of the Temple,
in the library of Grand Lodge. It represents a revision of working and
belongs to the year 1830. It is of importance as a stage in the
development of the English Military Order.
(6) That which Matthew
Cooke presented to Albert Pike, by whom it was printed in the year
1851. It is practically the same as ours and was ratified at Grand
Conclave on April 11 of that year.
(7) That of the Religious and
Military Order, of the grace and beauty of which I have no need to
speak. The two that remain over are Dominion Rituals of the Order of
the Temple, being that in use by the Sovereign Great Prior of Canada
prior to 1876, and that which was adopted at this date under the
auspices of the Grand Master, Wm. J. B. MacLeod Moore.
They are of
considerable interest as variants of the English original, but the
second differs from all other codices by the introduction of three
historical discourses, dealing with the origin of the Templar
Chivalry, its destruction and its alleged Masonic connections, which
are subject to critical examination, the conclusion reached being that
the Templar system is Masonic only in the sense that none but Masons
are admitted. The appeal of the entire sequence is one and the same
throughout, an allegory of human life considered as pilgrimage and
warfare, with a reward at the end in Christ for those who have walked
after His commandments under the standard of Christian Chivalry.
We have very little need to make a choice between them, either on
the score of antiquity or that of Ritual appeal. A descent from the
Knights Templar is of course implied throughout, but it is possible to
accept this, not indeed according to the literal and historical sense,
but in that of the relation of symbols. The old Chivalry was founded
and existed to defend the Church and its Hallows, and Masonic Knights
Templar are dedicated to the same ends though official obediences
alter and Hallows transform.
The Holy Sepulchre for them is the Church
of Christ, however understood, and if there is anything in the old
notion that the Christian Chivalry in the past had sounded strange
wells of doctrine, far in the holy East, there are such wells awaiting
our own exploration, to the extent that we can enter into the life
behind doctrine, and this is the life which is in Christ. Finally the
modern chivalry is of Masons as well as Templars, because in both
Orders there is a quest to follow and attain. But this Quest is one, a
Quest for the Word, which is Christ, and a Quest for the Abodes of the
Blessed, where the Word and the Soul are one.
Scanned from the periodical "The Occult Review", Volume XLV, nos.
1 and 4, January and April, 1927.
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