FROM MACKEY'S REVISED ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF
FREEMASONRY VOL.1:
Brother George Fleming Moore printed articles
entitled Notes from India and Co-Masonry in the
October, 1910, and February, 1911, issues of the
New Age, of which he then was the editor. These
essays examined various assertions that have been
circulated, one being that made in the columns of the
Cherag, of July, 1910, this being a journal published
at Bombay, India, in the interests of a society calling
itself Masonic and using the name Universal Masonry.
This magazine published a claim that Madame H.P.
Blavatsky was a Thirty-third Degree Mason. In
proof of this statement reference is made to the
Franklin Register of February 8, 1878, for a copy of
her Diploma which is reprinted as follows:
We, the Thrice-Illustrious Sovereign Grand Master
General, and we, the Sovereign Grand Conservators,
thirty-third and Last degree of the Sovereign Sanctuary
of England, Wales, etc., decorated the Grand Star of
Sirius, etc., Grand Commanders of the Three Legions of
the Knights of Masonry, by virtue of the high authority
with which we are invested, have declared and proclaimed
and by these presents do declare and proclaim our illus-
trious and enlightened Brother, H. P. Blavatsky, to be
an Apprentice, Companion, Perfect Mistress, Sublime
Elect Scotch Lady, Grand Elect, Chevaliere de Rose
Croix, Adoniramite Mistress, Perfect Venerable Mistress,
and a crowned Princess of Rite of Adoption.
Given under our hands and the seals of the Sovereign
Sanctuary for England and Wales, sitting in the Valley
of London, this 24th day of November, 1877, year of
true light 000,000,000.
John Yarker, 33º Sovereign Grand
Master.
M. Caspari, 33º Grand Secretary.
A. D. Loewenstark, 33º Grand
Secretary.
Brother Moore comments on the above document
thus :
A paper signed by John Yarker, M. Caspari, and A. D.
Loewenstark, which shows on its very face that it is
merely a certificate of membership in the Rite of Adop-
tion. The very names of the Degrees given in this
diploma show that it was and is not a Masonic document,
and that the men who gave it had no intention of creating
any such false impression by it. If Brother Wadia had
known anything of Masonry he would have seen and
known that the Rite of Adoption was made for women and
is only an adjunct to regular Masonry and not in any
sense a part of it.
The degrees which Madame Blavatsky
received according to thia paper were those of Apprentice
Companion Perfect Mistress, Sublime Elect Scotch Lady,
etc., etc., of the Rite of Adoption. To put forward such
a document as evidence that a woman is a Mason is the
veriest trifling and seems to us unworthy of serious com-
ment. Thousands of women have been members of the
Rite of Adoption and have not claimed to be Masons
because they knew better, and it has been reserved for a
man to put forward such an utterly absurd claim for a
woman who is dead and whose good friends say that she
never claimed to be a Mason.
When we say the good friends of Madame Blavatsky
assert that she never claimed to Mason we refer to
members of the Theosophical Society. Shortly after the
issuance of our article, Notes from India, we received
a letter from Brother J. H. Fussell of Point Loma
California, taking us to task for intimating that Madame
Blavatsky ever claimed to be a Mason and urging us in
the strongest terms to correct what he deemed an error
and one that is unfair to the memory of H. P. Blavatsky.
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