For well over a century the larger part of Freemasonry in the French republic has not been recognised as regular by the United Grand Lodge of England, and by most other adherents to what has been described as “the American-English” style of Freemasonry. The reasons for this are largely well-known, and are chiefly connected with the abandoning, in 1870, by The Grand National Orient de France, the oldest and largest masonic group in France, of a requirement to believe in a Supreme Being as a prerequisite for Initiation into the Order. Further problems of recognition have continued to crop up in more recent times, right up to 2007.
Related to this is the fact that whereas our institution has sedulously ensured its apolitical nature over the past three centuries – we can all recollect being adjured in the Charge After Initiation to “refrain from all political and religious discussion” – French Freemasonry has been characterised by a readiness to express, as a body, official lines on all manner of political, social and cultural issues. This preparedness to put their heads above the parapet in such an open way has, I fear, led to a feeling in some quarters that the persecution of such a conspicuous organisation was inevitable under a totalitarian dictatorship, and almost courted.
I hope that the present paper will redress some of that neglect, and I would like to think that it may serve Freemasons of whatever background two useful functions: firstly, it will preserve the memory of the many thousands of French Freemasons who were brutally persecuted during the German occupation of France and secondly it will provide us with a picture of what would have happened had our island been invaded by Nazi Germany, a picture which is an extension of the fate of Freemasonry in the Channel Islands which has previously been described eloquently in this lodge.
Background: the Fall of France
France declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939, at the same time as Britain, in accordance with the terms of the Franco-Polish Military Alliance of 1921, which, like the Anglo-Polish Alliance, required French support against the invasion of Poland by Germany on 1st September.
There followed some eight months of what is now referred to as the “Phoney War”, (Drole de Guerre or Sitzkrieg) during which neither Britain nor France launched any significant land offensives against German forces.
This ended on 10th May 1940, with the invasion by Germany of the Low Countries, drawing in the British Expeditionary Force which had been stationed on the French side of the border of neutral Belgium since October 1939. Over the next few days, German armour and troops poured into France on two main fronts, supported by the Luftwaffe, and in spite of initial stiff resistance by some French divisions, they easily overwhelmed the less well-equipped and trained French. The B.E.F. retreated to Dunkirk, and was of course evacuated in Operation Dynamo between 27’” May and 4th June.
The French government was in a crisis of indecision: Prime Minister Paul Reynaud wanted the government to flee abroad, to French North Africa, and to continue the war from there, supported by the formidable French Navy.
He was opposed by the Commander in Chief of French forces, General Weygand, and the Deputy Prime Minister Marshall Philippe Petain. Churchill flew to France on 11th June to meet Reynaud, Petain and Weygand; he discussed with them the defence of Paris by guerrilla warfare and house-to-house fighting, not knowing that Weygand had already ordered that Paris, which by now was almost deserted, be surrendered to the Germans. Petain and Weygand, who shared right-wing, anti-republican authoritarian and vehemently anti-communist views, were concerned that if the government went abroad the country would be broken up and easy prey for German and Italian colonisation. They wanted the French forces to retain enough power to repel communist overthrow. When Churchill returned to England that evening, it was clear that France was about to fall. He returned to Tours on 13th June, and Reynaud asked for a release from a previous agreement that he would not seek an armistice with the Germans without Britain’s consent.
German troops entered Paris unopposed on 14th June. Reynaud was in Bordeaux with the rest of the fleeing government, and resigned as Prime Minister. On 16th June, President Albert Lebrun appointed Marshal Pertain as his successor.
On 22nd June an Armistice, the Second Compiegne Agreement, was signed with Germany. The Northern and Western parts of France, constituting about 60% of the country, were occupied by Germany. The remainder was under the direct French control of a new government based in the town of Vichy. Both the Zone Libre (Vichy) and the Zone Occupee (North and West) were nominally under the control of the Vichy government. One of the conditions of reaching the armistice was that France would not have its territory divided up between Germany and Italy. The demarcation lines existed until the invasion of North Africa by the Allies in Operation Torch on 8th November 1942, when Germany took control of the whole of France.
On the 10th July the government in Vichy voted Marshal Petain “extraordinary powers” effectively making him President and an absolute ruler. Petain appointed Pierre Laval as his Prime Minister.
The Germans in many ways “left the French to it”. Much of the Vichy administration comprised of men like Petain, who were reactionary, anti-republican, anti-democratic, and vehemently anti-Semitic, and favoured an authoritarian and Draconian regime. Without specific instructions from the Germans, they instituted policies of persecution, internment and deportation of Jews, Gypsies, Protestants, homosexuals and Freemasons.
Persecution of Freemasons
The Third Reich already had a long history of anti-Masonic activity, and this was quickly expoused by the Vichy government. In addition to the belief that Freemason and Jews were involved in plots for world domination, there was also a conviction that lodges were the owners of untold treasures, which would be confiscated by the Reich.
In Freemasonry the term lodge has at least three meanings. It can be a room or a building in which Freemasons meet , the society of Freemasons that meets or it may be the actual gathering of that body of Freemasons. In the days of the operative masons, our ancestors, the lodge was a structure erected on a building site , where the workmen spent their break, stored their tools and received instructions for the execution of the architect’s plans and designs.
The Ancient Charges tell us that “A Lodge is a place where Masons assemble and work” to improve themselves in the mysteries of their ancient art. Nowadays, it is a place where like-minded men meet to work altogether ,in peace and love, towards a common goal, thus turning the lodge into a living organism, a creative body. The lodge should also be a place for the instruction and improvement of man, a place where the Freemason learns the ideals enshrined in the charges and lectures of our rituals and ceremonies. In other words the Lodge should be like a classroom wherein , at every meeting , a mason can attain a small advancement into masonic knowledge.
The lodge is constituted by a minimum number of members, it is rectangular in shape – although we have examples of it being circular and even triangular in the days gone – has the principal entrance facing east and can only be held in a venue sanctioned by its Grand Lodge. But I will not expand further on this aspect for it is not in the scope of this article – which may be considered controversial by the time you finish reading it – to unveil all about a Masonic Lodge. So I will close this section by enouncing that the word lodgeis clearly just an aphorism for defining the gathering of a group of men who share a common purpose and who believe in a common ideal.
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At the opening of the second degree assembly, the Worshipful Master declares that the purpose of the meeting is the improvement and instructions of Craftsmen. With those words he is reminded that it is his duty to “employ and instruct the Brethren in Masonry” and his success or failure depends entirely on his leadership ability and the support he will received from the Officers of his Team.
The 18th century was an age of wars and social changes. In Europe in particular it was also the time that marked the birth of the Enlightenment – or “Age of Reason” – which inspired the drama of the French Revolution. To that bloody upheaval there followed a revolution of a different kind and one that saw the beauty and terror of science sweeping through Britain and Europe, producing a new vision of the world, of nature and religion.
The whole Era was one of revelation and vision for man.
London was then a European Capital city which shockingly and generously also provided entertainment of a sophisticated and extraordinary sexual nature. In his book entitled “The Secret History Of Georgian London” the historian Dan Cruickshank writes: “Although Georgian London evokes images of elegant buildings and fine art, it was, in fact, the Sodom of the modern age…Teeming with prostitutes – from lowly street walkers offering a ‘ threepenny upright’ to high-class courtesans retained by dukes – Georgian London was a city built on the sex trade“.
Georgian London hosted many whorehouses, “Bagnios”, flagellation brothels and homosexual clubs called “Molly houses”. The latter were dwellings were young men, or “mollies”, dressed as women and assumed effeminate voices and mannerism. They addressed each other as “my dear” and sold unnatural sex to wealthy male patrons. They even enacted, for entertainment, childbirth scenes in which a “molly” delivered a doll at the end of the proceedings.
The Molly Houses were frequented, indifferently, by both intellectuals and randy rascals; they were mostly inner city inns but parties were also held in private houses, the most famous being “Mother Clap’s” in Holborn. It catered, every night, for up to 40 mollies!
England ‘s society was renown to be one of the most tolerant in Europe and it was one where cross-dressing and homosexuality were not just exclusive to the wealthy and bored gentry. It is therefore not surprising to find in such scenario that sexually and morally deviated individuals, after they had come to visit England, were unwilling to return home and choose instead to remain.
One such individual – the Chevalier – is the subject of this essay. He was a Frenchman and a diplomat who, whilst living in London, was even allowed to join the Order of the Freemasons, albeit for all the wrong reasons. His life can be described as extraordinary in every respect and separating facts from fiction in it remains, to this day, still a huge task.
THE EARLY LIFE
Born in Tonnere, Burgundy, on 5th October 1728, D’Eon was baptised with a string of mixed male and females names: Charles Genevieve Louis Auguste Andre’ Thimothee de Beaumont. It was almost as if his life had been sealed with ambiguity from birth!
His father Louis was a penniless lawyer and his mother – Francoise de Chevanson – came from a noble family and stood to inherit a large estate at the birth of a male heir from her union. For unknown reasons Francoise dressed up Charles-Genevieve as a girl and kept calling him Marie for the first seven years of his life, after which Louis took charge of the child and started treating him as a boy. Had Francoise behaved that strangely because she considered her husband unworthy of inheriting her wealth, or had she simply recognised and accepted the effeminate features and nature of her offspring? We shall never know.
Charles-Genevieve was a clever child and at the age of twelve was sent to the College Mazarin in Paris, where he received an education that included the Classics and where he learned to hold himself against the bullies who would target him for his girlish appearance.
At college he also cultivated the art of fencing in which he later excelled and which became the principal passion of his life. Charles-Genevieve was blond, of medium height and slim but with unusually developed breasts and with a pair of small feminine hands and feet.
A document found in the French Foreign Ministry describes him so: “(He) stood out because of his blue eyes, unusual high pitched voice and especially because of his youthful and fresh face complexion”, the latter characteristic being rather rare in an age when the populations were vexed by smallpox, venereal diseases and illnesses of other kind and also suffered from the side effects of the dangerous pot-pourri of chemicals used in the makeup products. Charles-Genevieve left college in August 1748 and a year later he obtained a degree in Common Canon Laws.
Charles Genevieve D’Eon
A good orator, fluent in foreign languages, excellent in the art of fencing and blessed with an exceptional memory, Charles-Genevieve possessed all the abilities that make a good diplomat and an excellent spy. Soon he was brought to the attention of King Louis XV who recruited him in his personal secret service called “Le Secret du Roi”. It was a private network of spies who answered solely to the King.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN RUSSIA
Since 1684 Russia had been co-jointly ruled by Peter the Great and his brother Ivan V. After the death of the former, his brother became the sole sovereign of all Russia in 1696. But when the latter also met his maker in February 1725, it was Anna Ivanovna [1] – Duchesse of Courtland [2] and second daughter of Ivan V – who became Empress of Russia over the head of her cousin Elizabeth Petrovna[3].
Elizabeth was the young daughter of Peter – who had been the real artificer of Russia’s greatness – and thought the she was the rightful heir to the throne. When she discovered in 1740 that she was again going to be overlooked by Anna’s choice of heir in Ivan de Brunswick [4],she begun to plot. A year later, aided by two hundred faithful grenadiers, Elizabeth stormed the Royal Palace and declared herself Empress of all Russia.
Meanwhile in France Louis XV was being concerned by the fate of Poland, the Country of birth of his Queen, on whose throne he was hoping to place his cousin the Prince de Conde and thus take that geopolitical area away from Russia’s control.
Elizabeth had always been an admirer of France and liked its Ambassador, M. De La Chetardie. But when the pro-England Chancellor, Alexis Bestucheff, intercepted a letter in which De La Chetardie criticised Elizabeth, all Frenchmen were barred from Court.
The way things were shaping up in Europe, Russia had to be prevented from aligning itself with England or it would have become too strong an adversary. It was imperative that France retained someone at the Court of Saint Petersburg who would report back on any political and military development; but after Bestucheff’s exclusion order, only French females were allowed in the presence of the Tsarina. This was a setback for France‘s intelligence but not for King Louis XV whose next move proved to be a stroke of genius!
Elizabeth Petrovna, Empress of Russia
Fully aware of the physiognomies and brilliant social skills of Charles-Genevieve, the King sent him on a mission to Russia in a female role, to play the part of the clever and flirting Lea de Beaumont. D’Eon won the trust of the frail forty-six years old Tsarina and persuaded her to write a letter to her cousin King Louis XV in which she promised to continue supporting France. With that accomplished, D’Eon returned to Paris and personally delivered that letter to Louis XV, expecting some recompense in return. But the King ignored him and, instead, sent him straight back to St. Petersburg to continue the negotiations. Except that this time Charles-Genevieve D’Eon was to play the part of Lea de Beaumont’s own brother (or uncle, some say) as the Secretary to the French Ambassador!
D’Eon’s permanence in Russia lasted a total of four years and required a number of return trips to Paris together with a long and extenuating game of cross-dressing; D’Eon had to appear as Lea de Beaumont when she attended the Russian Court and himself when he had to report matters to the French Ambassador.
In the end a treaty between England and Russia was never signed, much to the satisfaction of Louis XV!
Charles-Genevieve D’Eon’s last trip from St Petersburg to Paris took place in 1760. He was feeling exhausted and with his health weakened by his repeated extenuating journeys and the stressful game of spying , fell seriously ill with smallpox just outside Paris. The King realized it was time to withdraw the character of Lea Beaumont
Lea Beaumont (akas Chevalier D’Eon)
character of Lea Beaumont from stage and he retired Charles-Genevieve from his private spy network. The cross-dressing game had been going on for too long and now that D’Eon had been struck by an illness that would have, no matter how superficially, scarred his face and body for life, the risk of detection had increased exponentially. Louis appointed D’Eon captain of his elite troops the Dragoons, and sent him to fight with them in the Severn Years War that was raging in Europe. Perhaps D’Eon’s detractors were hoping that the effeminate but brilliant individual would have found life difficult on the battlefields and in the war camps. Hopefully he could have been killed or he would evaded the responsibilities and rigors of military action by fleeing abroad to live incognito.
But despite all expectations Charles-Genevieve distinguished himself in battle – D’Eon was wounded a number of times – and later he even displayed great skills in conducting the diplomatic role that he played in the Anglo-French peace negotiations.
It was the year 1761. This time King Louis rewarded D’Eon with a handsome sum of money and retired him from the Dragoons. D’Eon’s military career was over, much to his displeasure. But in the meantime the political European events had begun to take a different turn!
LONDON
By the year 1762 France was bankrupt and had lost most of its colonies to the English who were ruled by the Hanoverian King George III. Elisabeth of Russia had died and had been succeeded by Peter of Holstein [5] who reversed all her policies and allegiances. Louis XV wanted to have peace and in order to know England’s intentions with regards to the negotiations he sent D’Eon to London as the Secretary of the French Ambassador, the Duke de Nevers or Nivernais [6]. Both men arrived in September of 1762.
According to D’Eon, His Majesty’s undersecretary Mr Wood – who was said to be very fond of the wine from Burgundy – naively accepted the Duke’s invitation to dine at the French Embassy one night. Nivernais was just another character considered to have very little manhood.
On his arrival in England the newspapers had sarcastically commented that France had sent “a preliminary of a man to conduct the preliminary negotiations”.
Duc de Nivernais
By now the dinner at the French Embassy , to which even the cross-dresser D’Eon took part , appears as some excuse licentious games to take place , albeit it was undoubtedly accompanied by some very good food and by an interrupted flow of the excellent Burgoigne wine , Tonnere. D’Eon recorded in his memoirs that whilst the meal was being consumed’ , he noticed in Mr Wood’s diplomatic bag an official document of great importance. Taking advantage of the situation in which the inebriated English diplomat and the Duke were engaged, he copied the missive and dispatched it to Versailles on the following morning. That document detailed the way England intended to conduct the peace negotiations and it proved to be of an extraordinary importance for France.
King Louis XV this time rewarded D’Eon with a life annuity and invested him with the Cross of Saint-Louis which gave the right to call himself “Chevalier”, the equivalent of “Sir”.
After the treaty of Paris[7] was signed in 1763, the King appointed the aristocrat de Guerchy as the new France Ambassador to London. Nivernais was recalled and D’Eon was sent to London with the title of Ministre Plenipotentiary, to manage the Embassy whilst awaiting the arrival of the Comte de Guerchy.
DISMISSAL
The Comte de Guerchy was from Burgundy like D’Eon and a wealthy nobleman. He was a snobbish, mean and ambitious man who had been nominated Ambassador by the King only on the insistence of Madame de Pompadour who was jealous of and wanted him disgraced. Charles-Genevieve would later describe Guerchy as and individual: “timid in war, brave in peace, ignorant in the City, tricky at Court, generous with other people’s money but stingy with his own” [8] .
Comte de Guerchy
The two men never got on well together and became mortal enemies. To expect that they should work closely together was pure illusion.
D’Eon arrived in London in May 1763 and immediately started acting as if he was the Ambassador for France.
Both Charles-Genevieve and his imaginary sister Lea de Beaumont soon became regular and welcomed visitors at the English Court although, for obvious reasons, they never made an appearance together. D’Eon even spent long evenings in the company of Queen Charlotte as her French reader and always wore the Cross of Saint-Louis on his female dresses. D’Eon also organised galas at the French Embassy, bought expensive wines, took on servants. In short, he lived on a grand scale whilst earning only 25,000 livre. He worked zealously and at all hours of day and night. He did so only for the love and interest of France, often at the cost of his own health; but when he fell in debt by 20,000 livres and asked the French Ministry for a refund, his letters went unanswered. In contrast to D’Eon’s salary, Guerchy’s emoluments as Ambassador had been set at 150,000 livres a year plus another 50,000 for gratuities. For D’Eon this represented an injustice and an insult and in retribution he continued spending lavishly. Except that he would no longer use his own money, but that from the French Embassy’s chest.
When Louis XV officially wrote to George III to inform him that D’Eon was being removed from his diplomatic post – which to D’Eon meant the loss of his title of Ministre Plenipotentiary with all the privileges that came with it – and that the Comte de Guerchy was to take charge of the Embassy’s affairs, Charles-Genevieve realised that, for his safety, he needed to double play.
He left his apartment at the Embassy and retrieved in a house in Dover Street with all his secret and important correspondence, refusing to return to France as he had been ordered. He never accepted that he had de facto been “deposed” as Ministre Plenopotentiary. The “Ordre de Congede” bore a royal stamp but not the King’s original signature and D’Eon considered it to be a fake for as long as he lived. He believed that the document had been forged by Guerchy himself.
One day, whilst Guerchy was away, D’Eon had dined at the Embassy and fallen ill for two lengthy weeks. He believed that an attempt to poison him had been perpetrated and when he discovered that his locksmith had taken an impression of the locks of his Dover Street residence, he suspected that kidnapping was also on the cards. In a letter to King Louis XV D’Eon wrote: “Subsequently I discovered that M. Guerchy caused opium – if nothing worse – to be put in my wine, calculating that after dinner I should fall into a heavy sleep onto a couch and instead of my being carried home, I should be carried down to the Thames where probably there was a boat waiting ready to abduct me”.
For the next six year D’Eon went to live at 38 Brewer Street, Golden Square and kept his secret documents locked up in the basement, constantly guarded by some faithful grenadiers who had fought with him in the Dragoons. He mined the rooms and he kept a lamp burning day and night to show that the premises were constantly occupied. When the King of France wrote to George III to ask him to seize those papers from D’Eon, the Chevalier openly complained of his treatment to a number of his influential friends. But nobody helped him and he decided to retaliate. He gathered all his secret documents and correspondence – minus France’s plans to invade England, of course – and published them in a book which he called “Lettre , memoires et negotiations particulieres”. It became a best seller in Europe and made the Chevalier famous.
Although for different reasons – D’Eon accused Guerchy of attempted poisoning and Guerchy accused D’Eon of libel – they both began litigation in Court and both lost. But whereas Guerchy was able to call upon his diplomatic indemnity and carry on with his official duties, it cost D’Eon an exile from France of fifteen years.
Whilst he lived in London, Charles-Genevieve was initiated into Freemasonry in May of either 1766 or 1768. He joined the London based French speaking “Loge de l’Immortalite de l’Ordre” also known as the “Lodge of Immortality No. 376”, which met at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand. The records show that he served the office of Junior Warden in the Masonic year 1769-70.
Charles-Genevieve joined the Order because he was searching for a safe heaven from a society that was pushing him to a reclusive life but also to seek protection from France’s repeated plots to have him killed or kidnapped.
D’Eon always mentioned the Craft in a most flattering manner and there are many portraits of him dressed in female attire, wearing both the Freemason’s apron and the Cross of St Louis. However the initiation of by the Moderns in the Masonic Order, gave the traditional Ancients Freemasons room for ample criticism. The Modern’s practice of “initiating women” was seen as a clear sign of extravagance and allowed the Ancients to claim that they were the only faithful preservers of the traditional usages and customs of Freemasonry.
But the phenomenon of women joining Freemasonry was nothing new. From the early part of the 18th century women had attempted to be initiated or to obtain the secrets of Freemasonry. The Grand Lodge of Scotland has posted on its website some of the cases of women who were initiated in the Craft. For example:
Case 1 – In 1710 the Viscount Duneraile , a Freemason, was carrying out some repairs to Donaraile Court. One night the Viscount’s daughter, Elizabeth St Leger, awakened by the voices of the masons who were engaged in a meeting, decided to peep through a hole made in the wall , whilst at the same time causing noises herself and be found out. On trying to escape, she was caught by the Tyler and to ensure that the Freemason’s secret did not became public, she was initiated there and then. From thereafter she was sworn to silence.
Case 2- Melrose Lodge No. 1Bis, preserves a tradition that Isabella Scoon “had somehow obtained more light upon the hidden mysteries that was deemed at all expedient and after due consideration, it was resolved that she must be regularly initiated into Freemasonry”. She later distinguished herself for her charity work.
In France, on the other hand, women were freely allowed to join the Order; a tradition that continues to these days. Although the French Brotherhood initially remained within the letter of Anderson’s constitution – which excluded women from joining – it saw no reason to ban women from their banquets or religious services. During the 1740s, there appear to have been Lodges which were attached to regular ones (i.e. for men only) but which allowed women, although those admitted were mainly wives or relatives of Freemasons. The lodges were called Lodges of Adoption and in 1774 they fell under the jurisdiction of The Grand Orient of France. The system was made up of four degrees:
Apprentie, or Female Apprentice.
Compagnonne, or Journeywoman.
Maîtresse, or Mistress.
Parfaite Maçonne, or Perfect Masoness.
The idea of women Freemasons spread widely in Europe, but whereas the practice never established itself either in England or in America, it flourished in France at the start of the French Revolution. Even Napoleon’s wife Josephine presided over one of those Lodges of Adoption in Strasburg in 1805.
The English Freemasons never forgot D’Eon and allowed him to remain a member even after he had been legally declared a woman. There is evidence that the Master of the London Lodge of the Nine Sisters, who enlisted famous English and foreign respectful characters, invited him to celebrate the departure to the Gran Lodge above of a one of their Brothers.
The Master wrote this note to D’Eon :
“I endorse an invitation to this fete where you have a place reserved for you, as Mason, as belletrist (intellectual) as one who is an honour to her sex after having been an honour to ours. It is permissible only for Mlle to surmount the barrier which forbids access to our work to the most beauteous (charming) half of humanity. The exception begins and finishes with you; do not refuse to enjoy you right” [9]
It is not recorded whether D’Eon ever took part.
THE HELL FIRE CLUBS
In the 18th century there were a number of clubs in the British Isles which engaged in violent and sometimes murderous pranks. Drinking and whoring were regular activities for their members. The clubs were frequented by Aristocrats as well as by members of the political world and often they also enlisted Freemasons. Indeed it is reported that none other than the Grand Master of the English Grand Lodge from 1722/23 – the Duke of Wharton – had co-founded the first Hell Fire Club in 1719. After Wharton’s Club was closed down by Walpole’s government Proclamation against “obscene” associations in 1721, the Duke set up a so called “Schemers Club” in 1724. The latter being just another assembly of mischievous men who proclaimed themselves dedicated to the “advancement of flirtation”.
There was a Hell Fire Club also in Dublin and it too had been founded by an aristocrat – the 1st Earl of Rossen – another Freemason and Ireland’s Grand Master in 1725. But the most well known of the Hell Fire Clubs was the one called “The Order of St. Francis” , which was founded around 1740s by Sir Francis Dashwood, a member of the Parliament as well as a Freemason.
Hellfire Caves (West Wycombe, Bucks)
It met initially in a disused Cisternian Abbey in the village of Medmenham (Buckinghamshire) but later moved to some caves situated above the village of West Wycombe (Buckinghamshire), not far from the Estate of the Dashwoods. Secret meetings and week-end parties are said to have been held in that underground labyrinth of caves which led to a chamber called the Inner Temple , situated directly beneath the local Church of St.Lawrence where mass is still being celebrated on Sundays to these days.
Some of those “Franciscans” were notable Freemasons like John Wilkes, William Hogarth, Benjamin Franklin and our intriguing Chevalier .
The sexual games, orgies and perverted acts that went on in those underground vaults must have appealed to the ambiguous genre of the Chevalier who later had the boldness to claim that he had joined Freemasonry only for a chivalric reasons!
RETURN TO FRANCE
Following the death of Louis XV, D’Eon was recalled to France by his successor Louis XVI who was anxious to gather back all those secret and dangerous documents that the Chevalier had been guarding back in London, as well as removing for good from the scene the embarrassing character of Lea de Beaumont.
But D’Eon dumbfounded France by deciding to blackmail the King. He declared he would not give up any of those sensitive documents – among which were the plans to invade England – unless His Majesty paid him an enormous amount of money and promised to protect him from his enemies. Louis XVI wanted to stop waging wars and heal the financial state of his Kingdom, so in 1775 he sent over his top secret agent Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaunarchais, to negotiate with the Chevalier.
An agreement was reached whereby , when back on France soil, D’Eon would have been publicly and legally declared a woman and be in receipt of a sum of money large enough to pay off all his debts and to provide him with a comfortable living. At the age of forty seven, with a pension and a debt free status, Charles-Genevieve D’Eon deemed himself to live the rest of his life as an individual of the opposite sex; but at least he could again attend the French Court and be allowed in the company of the Queen Marie Antoinette. Indeed the Queen even helped Charles-Genevieve with the choice of a female wardrobe, his wigs and make up. D’Eon lived in Versailles for many years and whilst there he wrote his autobiography: “La vie militaire, politique et privee de Mademoiselle ”.
However when France joined the American War of Independence against the English, D’Eon’s love for the military life resurfaced and he wrote to the French Minister for permission to re-enter service. He was immediately arrested and put into a dungeon from where he was released only after he solemnly promised never to wear male clothes again, abandon Versailles and return to his home in Tonnerre, Burgundy, to live with his mother.
Yet in 1785, D’Eon appeared once again to betray his promise and he was seen riding in his estate dressed in a dragoon uniform. The King, noting Charles-Genevieve’s restlessness and unwillingness to settle down in an anonymous life, decided to send him back to England to continue the work of gathering and returning to France his compromising documents. This time, however, D’Eon never returned to France. It was the dawn of the French Revolution and he did not share those ideals, nor would anyone who saw all of his friends guillotined by the Jacobins !
Chevalier D’Eon
Furthermore, the Revolution deprived him of his annuity and he had to spend seven months in prison for debts.
On his return to London in 1785 , D’Eon had declared that England was “a Country more free (sic!) than Holland and well worth visiting by any man (who is) a lover of liberty. …” and libertinage, I would add!
He had returned as Lea de Beaumont and was never to dress as a man again. He had made his final choice of gender and perhaps done so at the wrong time of his life, when his voice had turned deep and cavernous and his mannerism vulgar and noisy. The writers Horace Walpole and James Boswell were never taken in by feminine attire and portrayed him as a transvestite, a cross-dresser ante litteram in total contrast to the great philander Giacomo Casanova who wrote in his memoirs: “It was at that ambassador’s table that I made the acquaintance of the Chevalier , the secretary of the embassy, who afterwards became famous. This Chevalier was a handsome woman who had been an advocate and a captain of dragoons before entering the diplomatic service; she served Louis XV as a valiant soldier and a diplomatist of consummate skill. In spite of her manly ways I soon recognized her as a woman; her voice was not that of a castrato, and her shape was too rounded to be a man’s. I say nothing of the absence of hair on her face, as that might be an accident.”
Later on in his memoirs the great lover took the opposite view and recounted the story of a 20,000 guinea bet placed on the gender of the Chevalier. The bet was never either won or lost because the Chevalier refused to be examined.
LATER YEARS
D’Eon supported his income whilst living in London by challenging men at duel for monetary prizes. On April 9th 1787, at Charlton House, Lea Beaumont confronted a French sword champion twenty years his younger and won. The publicity he gained from that event enabled him to set up a successful fencing Academy which toured the Country and performed in packed public halls.
Life was again good to Charles-Genevieve until on a tragic day at Southampton in August 1796, an opponent wounded him and made him bedridden for two long years.
D’Eon never recovered from that mishap and spent the last years of his life in misery and poverty, sharing a house with a Mrs Mary Cole, an admiral’s widow he had met in 1795. D’Eon passed away peacefully in his bed on May 21 1810 having spent forty nine years of his life passing as a man and thirty three as a woman. At his death, Mrs Cole’s priest – Father Elysee – made the following account of the body of the Chevalier as he laid on the bed:
“The body presented unusual roundness in the formation of the limbs; the appearance of a beard was very slight, and hair of so light a colour as to be scarcely perceptible was on the arms, legs and chest. The throat was by no means masculine; shoulders square and good; breast remarkably full; arms, hands, fingers those of a stout female….and she has a cock”.
Later on a cast was taken of his body and a thorough examination carried out in the presence of the Prince de Conde, the Earl of Yarmouth Sir Sidney Smith and a number of surgeons, lawyers and former regimental friends of D’Eon . Afterwards, the witnesses signed a declaration that certified that “the body is constituted in all that characterises man , without any mixture of sex”.
How mystifying !
Charles-Genevieve ‘s body was buried in St Pancras’s cemetery and his tombstone is still present there today.
It is curious to note that now the phenomenon of transgenderism is in the open, a Society called “The Beaumont Society” has been set up in UK to support the cross-dressing and transsexual’s community. In its website it is stated that the Society “keenly promotes the better understanding of the conditions of transgender, transvestism and gender dysphoria in society, thereby creating and improving tolerance and acceptance of these conditions by a wider public.” The same tolerance that even the United Grand Lodge of England has displayed by declaring in August 2018 that if transgenders had joined the Order as men, they should be allowed to remain Freemasons. The UGLE’s guidance warns that using a mason’s transition as a reason for excluding him/her from a man-only Lodge, would constitute “unlawful discrimination”. A decision that only time will tell whether it has been harmful to the image of the Order and cause it a downfall.
The Chevalier told the world that he was a woman who had disguised herself as a man. In fact he was a man pretending to be a woman who was now admitting to be a man. – by Richard Bernstein, New York Times
By W.Bro. Leonardo MonnoAnglisani– IPM of NHL 6557 in the Prov. of Middlesex, England
The author forbids any reproduction or publication of this article, in full or in part, without his explicit authorization.
[1] Moscow 7/2/1693 – St Petersburg 28/10/1740
[2] Now western Latvia
[3] Moscow 29/12/1709 – St Petersburg 5/1/1762
[4] Anna Ivanovna ‘s German grandnephew. Born in Saint Patersburg 23.08.1740, he died in Shisselburg 16.07.1764. Only two months old when he was proclaimed Emperor and after Elizabeth Ivanovna seized power in 1741 he was put into prison and killed twenty three years later, whilst still confined.
[5] Born in Kiel in the Dukehy of Holstein in February1728 and died in July 1762 in Ropsha. He reigned as Peter III, Emperor of Russia for only six months in 1762.
[6] Louis-Jules Barbon Mancini-Mazarin, Duke de Nevers (16 December 1716 – 25 February 1798)
[7] The Treaty of Paris in 1762 ended the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the United States, recognized American independence and established borders for the new nation.
[8] Royal Spy by Emma Nixon, page 80
[9] « La Femme du Grand Conde’ » by Octave Homberg et Fernand Jousselin and a mentioned by Edna Nixon in « Royal Spy » page 222.
Sources
- “Royal Spy” by Emma Nixon
- “Initiation in male Lodges” – Grandscottishlodge.com
- “The strange destiny of the Chevalier ” by Wm E. Parker – The Northern Light magazine, June 1983
- “Hell Fire and Freemasonry” – angelfire.com
- “Sir Francis Dashwood “by David Harrison, The Square magazine, March 2014
- Noonobservation.com
- BeaumontSociety.org.uk
- Gay.it/cultura
- Lastampa.it/2006/08/17/cultura
From our initiation into Freemasonry we are made very aware of the story of the First Temple, the building which is the very basis of the rituals that permeate our entire Craft. In the three degrees of Craft Masonry we learn that it was built on land acquired by King David, by his son, Solomon, aided by his friend King Hiram of Tyre and the Architect, Hiram Abiff.
On reaching the dizzy heights of Master Mason, we are then encouraged to complete our three degrees by joining the Royal Arch which deals with the rebuilding of the Temple that had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Other aspects of the actual building work occur in the Mark degree which some of us also join. As far as I know, there is no reference in our rituals to the rebuilding of the Second Temple by King Herod -the Temple which the Romans destroyed.
Little is known of King Herod despite the fact that he was one of the most glittering figures of one of the spectacular periods of human history. There are few characters of the time of which so much is recorded but who are so little remembered. As the stories of the first and second Temples form the basis of the Craft and the Royal Arch it is perhaps surprising that the story of the “Third Temple” – for, that is what it really was – and its builder, has never been told in Freemasonry.
Certainly neither he nor his works have ever been the subject of an extension to an existing degree or a separate degree in Masonry, but as I hope I will show, Herod was undoubtedly a Master Mason. He not only rebuilt the Temple but he also organised much rebuilding of Jerusalem and in many other parts of the Kingdom of Judaea which he ruled on behalf of the Romans. What is more, whereas there is absolutely no trace of the First Temple and only a little of Second Temple, some of Herod’s building is available for inspection today, 2000 years after his death.
Of course, one of the reasons for Freemasonry ignoring this final aspect of the Temples in its rituals, is the nature of the man himself. For all of us, the name Herod immediately indicates cruelty. He was the man who massacred the Innocents, he was the one before whom Christ appeared for trial, and who procured the death of St. John the Baptist to satisfy the adulteress, Salome.
Not a good example for moral and upright Masons. Can you imagine our enemies’ joy if it were shown that the Heroes in our Masonic Rituals included not only Solomon, Hiram, Zerubbabel, and the rest, but also Herod?
The massacre of the Innocents of which Herod is considered the perpetrator, however, is only mentioned in one of the four Gospels – the one written by Mark – and is almost certainly not true, or perhaps relates to a minor incident. There is no mention of it either in the other Gospels or in the writings of Josephus, who hated Herod, and would certainly have included such a story in his History of the Jews. It is possible that it relates to an incident from one of the succeeding generations because of the custom of sons being named after their fathers, and it is easy to blur all the Herods into one. It is possible that it was an invention of Mark, to make Herod seem even more wicked than he was. The balance of opinion in the researches I have made on this particular subject leaves me thinking that it possibly never happened, and if it did, it was to a very small number (probably not more than ten) of boys in the small town of Bethlehem.
The following words of warning by the Editor of a Masonic magazine two centuries old , show how transcendent the danger for our Order is. Freemasonry membership is a privilege that should be bestowed on an aspiring man who is not only of good character but who can demonstrate to be a resourceful individual , able to apply himself to the the study and understanding of our symbology . It should not be enough for the candidate to be a “buddy”. If Freemasonry continues to open its doors and disclose its secrets to the vain, casual, trivial, curiousity seeker , then the eternal teaching will be wasted on the unworthy and lost.
The Test of Time
The privileges of Freemasonry have been made too common ! They have been bestowed upon the worthless and the wicked and the reputation of the Society has been injured.
Only true and good men of good report ought to be honored with them.
Every Freemason should be particularly careful to recommend none as Candidates for our mysteries but such whose characters will answer the description.
The following is a combination of theories as to the design of the Apron used in English Craft Freemasonry, and therefore does not take into account the many variants found in other countries and side orders. It is also important to note that the shapes and symbols are used in many esoteric arenas, and not just confined to Freemasonry, save that their significance are often similar.
In 1814, the Board of Works of the new United Grand Lodge of England, brought in the regulations for the uniformity of Masonic regalia, and particularly in relation to material, design, and decoration of aprons. It is interesting to note that in all three degrees, it is conferred by the Senior Warden and not by the Master. This is because symbolically, the Master represents the spirit of man, and the Senior Warden the soul. It is the soul which registers the spiritual advance of man, and is the link between body and spirit; therefore the outward sign of the spiritual progress made by the Initiate, is conferred by that Officer who represents the soul. Continue reading The Apron – its symbolism and mysticism
The use of allegory and symbolism is a method of teaching that is still applied in Freemasonry today.
The allegory is a figure of speech that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically of a moral nature and symbolism, in the words of Albert Pyke [1] is: “(…) the soul of Masonry. Every symbol of a lodge is a religious teacher, the mute teacher also of morals and philosophy. It is in its ancient symbols and in the knowledge of their true meanings that reposes the pre-eminence of Freemasonry over all other Orders”.
Even our name – Freemason – is symbolical and it literally means “builder in stone”. Of course,that is not what we do. We are engaged in building work only in a figurative sense of the word and so we describe ourselves “speculative” Freemasons. We allegorise the development of human character to the erection of a structure and we equal the virtues which constitute the finished character of man, to the strengths of a stone which contributes to erect the perfect finished structure.
In biblical times the earth was thought to be square. Isaiah (xi, 12) speaks of gathering “the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth” and in the Apocalypse (xx, 9) there is a vision of four angels, “standing on the four corners of the earth”. Of course the meaning that the cube had in ancient times can never be shared by our modern minds but so grounded was that belief that it made the square a Masonic symbol to represent the Lodge. Continue reading The pointed cubic stone in Freemasonry
Simón Bolívar fue el héroe de más de 200 batallas que liberaron a América del Sur de España, liberando a Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru y Bolivia. Obtuvo sus 3 primeros grados en la Logia San Alejandro de Escocia en Paris; y fundó y se desempeñó como Maestro de la Logia Protectora de las Vertudes No. 1 en Venezuela; fundó la Logia Orden y la Libertad No.2 en Perú. Recibió sus titulos de Rito escocés en París en 1807 y también se convirtió en Caballero de los Caballeros Templarios en Francia en 1807.
Las mentes de las almas conscientes de libertad de América del Norte y del Sur volteó a la hermosa ciudad pequeña, Bolivar, Missouri, el 5 de iulio, 1948. Allí la imponente figura de bronce de 7 pies de Simón Bolívar , El Libertador de América del Sur y un masón, de pie sobre una base de mármol 11 pies altos, el regalo de Venezuela, se dio a conocer. Ahí la vida, el carácter y logros del George Washington de seis países de America del Sur se conmemoraron adecuadamente en los discursos del presidente Harry S. Truman, el presidente Romulo Gallegos de Venezuela, y el gobernador de Missouri, Philip M. Donnelly, y por la presencia del Sr. Gonzalo Carnevali, Embaiador de Venezuela, otros notables y miles de ciudadanos estadounidenses.
” La vida de Bolívar presenta uno de los personajes más coloridos de la historia lienzos de aventura y tragedia, gloria y derrota ” , dijo Wallace Thompson.
Aquí presentamos un breve esbozo de la imagen de su vida, y expresamos la esperanza de que nuestros lectores no solo busquen aprender 200 batallas que luchó mientras movía a sus tropas sobre un no rastreado desierto bajo un sol ecuatorial, y en el clima severo en la cima los Andes, de las naciones que liberó del yugo del español opresión, pero que estudiarán el trabaio de su vida y su escritos para conocer sus motivos, sus ideales de libertad en todo su fases, sus logros y sus conceptos de arte de gobernar. Para el seis repúblicas: Venezuela, Colombia, Panamá, Ecuadon Perú y Bolivia – y la base establecida para las relaciones panamericanas para el Hemisferio Occidental son monumentos a su habilidad militar y visión de estadista.
Nacido de la nobleza y la riqueza en Caracas, 24 de julio de 1783, Simón Bolívar abandonó la lujosa vida de las cosas materiales y el posición social para la nobleza del espíritu, y murió en la pobreza extrema. El padre del Libertador fue Juan Vicente Bolívar y Ponte, y su madre fue María de la Concepción Palacios y Blanco. Ambos de él los padres eran de familias nobles y ambos murieron antes de los quince años de edad.
Después de adquirir una educación liberal en el hogar, en gran parte de privado tutores, Simón fue enviado a Europa a la edad de diecisiete años bajo el orientación de su tutor favorito, Simón Rodriguez, un conocido filósofo que fue recibido entre los estudiosos de Europa como tal y que era sospechoso de ‘inclinaciones radicales’ ya que simpatizaba con las enseñanzas de los grandes filósofos franceses del siglo XVIII , siglo que se celebraron en aborrecimiento por la gente demasiado agradable de España, Francia, Italia y la clase dominante de su lengua nativa.
Con un ingreso de $ 20,000 al año, un gran ingreso para ese período, y el esposo, a la edad de dieciocho años, de un rico gastado que tenía alcanzado su decimosexto año, las atenciones sociales fueron derramadas en joven Bolívar por las cortes de Europa, el grande y el cercano grande, mucho de lo que él consideró con arrogancia. Su esposa murió de fiebre amarilla en menos de un año después de ella matrimonio, y Bolívar unos años más tarde regresó a Europa para estudiar condiciones allí. Mientras estaba en Madrid, fue presentado a Su Majestad el Rey y Su Majestad la Reina, con una condescendencia que su agudo sentido de tales relaciones percibidas como etiqueta social vacía extendido a una rica y joven Colonia de sangre noble. Como era debido uno de su posición social, Bolívar fue recibido en audiencia por el Papa. Pero una costumbre ancestral en la Santa Sede, siempre expuesta de los visitantes en tales audiencias, es besar el pie del Papa. Este Bolivar se negó a hacerlo, ‘mirando para otro lado’. Preguntado por el Embajador español, que lo había llevado al Vaticano, por qué tenía no se ajustaba a la costumbre, respondió secamerrte que su respeto por el alto cargo del Pontífice no debe medirse por un acto de servilismo.
Al igual que Thomas Iefferson, que había visitado Europa, Bolívar vio mucho y refleja mucho sobre las causas de la desesperación, la miseria y degradación de las masas en Roma y las ciudades más grandes de Francia, Italia y España, donde el romanismo prevaleció en gran medida. Teniendo observó las mismas condiciones en su propio país, él, algunas mañanas después de su audiencia con el Papa, subió a la cima del Monte Aventin con su fiel Rodriguez. Allí , mientras meditaba en medio las ruinas causadas por el desafio del poder de la aristocracia por el personas, Bolívar de repente vio una gran luz y, arrojando sus manos hacia el cielo, se dice que hizo un voto para dedicar su vida a liberando su propia tierra del poder opresivo de España.
Bolívar había pasado mucho tiempo en París y allí se convirtió en un Masón en el rito de York y recibió los títulos de rito escocés en cuanto a la 30 ° Grado. Volviendo a Venezuela por el camino de los Estados Unidos de América, donde visitó a muchas celebridades en las ciudades del este, él regresó a Caracas a fines de 1809, a la edad de veintiséis años. Pronto ofreció sus servicios a la junta de la que era miembro y que, el 19 de abril de 1810, se habia rebelado contra la corona de José Bonaparte, rey de España, a favor de Fernando VII, hijo de Carlos IV, que había sido depuesto por el gobierno francés, y ellos obligó al virrey a abdicar. Por lo tanto, Venezuela fue el primero Colonia de España para declarar su independencia, un evento que tomó coloque el 5 de julio de 1811.
El espíritu de rebelión fue participado temprano por el General Miranda, un Mason, què habia servido bajo George Washington en la Guerra para la Independencia, Bolívar fue enviado por la junta a Inglaterra para llamar él regresó del exilio a los colores de los Revolucionarios. Él regresó y encabezó las fuerzas revolucionarias con Bolívar como uno de sus generales. Derrotado por las fuerzas españolas, Bolívar se convirtió en un refugiado en la isla de Curacao. Pero, en septiembre de 1812, él era en Cartagena, donde obtuvo una victoria contra los españoles en Nueva Granada (ahora Colombia). Luego, a la cabeza de unos 500 hombres, él marchó sobre los Andes a Venezuela y, junto con muchos reclutas en ruta allí, derrotó a una gran fuerza española y, aunque él entró en Caracas triunfalmente el 4 de agosto de 1813, fue derrotado año después. Al regresar a Nueva Granada, ganó una victoria en Bogotá. Pero, fallando en Santa Marta, renunció a su comisión y fue a Jamaica y luego a Haití.
A partir de ahí, con la ayuda del presidente Peton, organizó una pequeña fuerza y navegó hacia Venezuela en Marzo de 1816, donde durante tres años varió su suerte de guerra entre la derrota y la victoria. Ofrenda para renunciar al final de tres años, fue convencido de continuar la guerra. Esto fue en 1819. Habiendo reorganizado el ejército, Bolívar cruzó por tercera vez el Cordilleras de los Andes a Nueva Granada. Allí se unió a las fuerzas del general Santander, un masón y un líder republicano y en Agosto, ganó la batalla fundamental de Boyaca. Cuatro meses después Venezuela se unió con Nueva Granada y formó la nueva República de Colombia y, después de la victoria en Bambona, Ecuador fue incluido como parte de la nueva república.
Con la victoria sobre el los Españoles en Carabobo, el 25 de junio de 1821, España perdieron el control de este zona. El poder español aún no había desaparecido de esa vasta región de Perú superior e inferior (ahora Perú y Bolivia) que se extendió desde el fronteras de Chile y Argentina a Ecuador. General José de San Martin, un masón, y el general Bemardo O`Higgins, también un masón, tenían liberó a Argentina y Chile del poder español, y el primero, ahora “Protector” de Perú, llegó a Guayaquil el 26 de julio de 1822, donde él consultó con Bolívar. Qué procedimientos se decidieron, con respecto a Perú, en esa conferencia entre los dos grandes Los Líberators españoles, que eran masones, probablemente nunca ser conocida. San Martín renunció a su ‘Protectorado” de Perú y regresó a Argentina. En cualquier caso, Bolívar se hizo cargo y, llegando en Callao, el 1 de septiembre de 1823, fue investido con el título de “Libertador” de Perú. Entrenó a unos 4,000 peruanos y, con el ejército que había venido a Perú con él, tenía unos 9,000 hombres. Con estos contrató a un número igual de españoles en Junin en una sangrienta batalla de caballería con sables, donde no se disparó un solo tiro, y ganó un victoria que, con la de Ayacucho el 9 de diciembre dc 1824, bajo El general Antonio José de Sucre, terminó para siempre con el poder colonial de España en el Nuevo Mundo.Habiendo planeado estas batallas con el general Sucre, un masón, Bolívar fue a Lima para organizar un gobiemo cívico y llamar a un Convención Constitucional. Cuando, el 8 de febrero de 1825, tuvo efectuado el nuevo gobierno, renunció al poder supremo en Colombia y Perú. Rechazo de un regalo de 1,000,000 de pesos (aproximadamente $200,000) de Perú y por haber asistido a algunos asuntos cívicos en Perú superior (Bolivia), Bolívar dejó al general Sucre a cargo y se dirigió a Bogotá, Colombia, para calmar los conflictos civiles que habían surgido entre sus antiguos camaradas. Al llegar allí en noviembre de 1826, él pronto pasó a Venezuela, convocando una convención constitucional en ruta para reunirse en Valencia, el 15 de enero de 1827. Aunque él no tuvo sido capaz de ajustar la desafección, ingresó a Caracas en triunfo. Finalmente, después de catorce años en el mando supremo. La renuncia de Bolívar fue aceptada por el Congreso a petición suya, frente a la intriga y el abuso de sus enemigos que fueron hambriento de poder.
Volviendo a Bogotá en septiembre de 1828, llamó una convención general, pero, a pesar de sus apelaciones, la mayoria de sus viejos amigos se retiraron, sin dejar quórum. En septiembre, escapó asesinato en Bogotá. El problema estalló en Perú, que, con el ayuda de Sucre, se aquietó en 1829. Se reanudó el problema en Venezuela y Colombia y, a pesar de que se estaba recuperando de una enfermedad crítica en Guayaquil, regresó a Bogotá. Su convención ha fallado de organización, la desafección entre sus viejos seguidores no habiendo sido asentado, y estando en mal estado de salud, finalmente volvió a diseñó el poder supremo, el 27 de abril de 1830, que había tomado temporalmente, y salió de Bogotá, festejó y honró a medida que avanzaba lugar para colocar en su camino a Cartagena. Allí se enteró de la asesinato de su general Sucre más confiable y eficiente, en junio 4°, cuyo efecto, junto con su estado avanzado de tuberculosis, causó su muerte el 17 de diciembre de 1830, a la edad de cuarenta y siete, en un lugar mral a pocos kilómetros de Santa Marta,Colombia, donde emitió su última proclama.
lntrepido, esperanzado, clarividente, indomable y profundo en su pensando para el bienestar de la humanidad, proclamó Bolívar, para aquellos quien tuvo la visión de ver, los siguientes principios masónicos como su la vida descendió a las costas más allá:
“ Todos ustedes deben trabajar por el bien inestimable de la Unión; personas que obedecen al gobiemo para evitar la anarquía; el ministros rezando al cielo por guía; y el uso militar su espada en defensa de las garantías sociales. . . . Si mi muerte contribuye al final del partidismo y la consolidación de la unión, seré bajado en paz a mi tumba “.
Among the interesting characters that populated Georgian England and spiced it with many anecdotes is the Rev. Dr. William Dodd [1] ; a clergyman with a very unmistakable nickname whose weakness in money matters sent him to the gallows for the crime of forgery on 27th June 1777.
His life history resembles a middle-class melodrama and is a fascinating reading.
———– ~~~~~~~ ———–
William Dodd was born in Bourne, Lincolnshire, in 1729, the son of the local vicar. He attended the University of Cambridge from 1745 to 1750 and achieved academic success by graduating with first class honours. He then moved to London where he impulsively married Mary Perkins, the daughter of a penniless domestic servant, on 15th April 1751. To secure his family a steady income, William took the holy orders in 1771. Two years later he was ordained priest and thereafter his career in the Church took him to serve as a Curate and a preacher of some success.
by John Russell, oil on canvas, 1769
He devoted a lot of his time to charitable work and is accredited to have written over fifty books. However he also mixed with friends of dubious reputation and infamous public fame such as the Freemason John Wilkes, a member of the Parliament who had been arrested for his radical political ideas and for his opposition to George III.
In 1763 Dodd became the vicar of Chalgrave and three years later he gained a doctorate in law from Cambridge University.
The other offices that he filled in life were: Honorary Canon of Brecon, Rector of Hocliffe, King’s Chaplain in Ordinary and tutor to Philip Stanhope who later became the 5th Earl of Chesterfield. All these various church and academic appointments rewarded him with a good income, but Dodd lived well beyond his means and money was always in short supply.
In 1774 Dodd, in an attempt to bolster his earnings, endeavoured to bribe Lady Apsley, the wife of none other than the Lord Chancellor! He had incautiously offered her £ 3,000 if she would secure him the appointment as Rector of St George’s, Hanover Square, London. In those days Vicars could be in control of more than one Church and so tot up their salary.
The dishonourable proposition to Lady Apsley proved fatal for the fortunes of the Reverend Dodd as it led to the dismissal from all his academic and religious positions and compelled him to flee abroad.
His exile lasted two years and was made the more unbearable by the fact that whilst he was spending time in foreign lands – Switzerland and France – he was regularly being made an object of public ridicule in London by the dramatist and actor Samuel Foote who taunted him as the character Dr Simony in a play he staged at the Haymarket Theatre.
WILLIAM DODD THE FREEMASON
It is bizarre to notice that in Georgian England whenever an individual of some reputation became the target of defamation, the recipient of life threats or had his freedom restricted by accusation of unlawful behaviour, Freemasonry would step in to offer protection, support and sometime even rehabilitation.
As a matter of fact, nothing strange was taking place because, as far as the Craft was concerned, it was applying its principle that “he who is on the lowest spoke of fortune’s wheel, is equally entitled to our regard”.
Therefore what William Dodd decided to do at that point of his life and on his return to England in 1755, was no more unusual than what many of his contemporaries in similar situations were doing: he joined Freemasonry.
Dodd was initiated into the St. Albans Lodge No. 29 where, after briefly occupying the office of Junior Deacon, he rose to the rank of Grand Chaplain of the Order and in May 1755, on the occasion of the laying of the cornerstone for the Grand Lodge of England in Queen Street, London, the Rev. Dr. William Dodd even delivered an oration which was widely pubblicised.
The St Alban’s Lodge [2]had been founded in 1728 and was meeting at the Castle and Leg Tavern in Holborn, London. Today it is one of nineteen Lodges that have received the privilege by Grand Lodge of nominating one of its members – every year – to the office of “Grand Steward”. It has therefore become known as a “Red Apron Lodge”.
THE NICKNAME OF THE MACARONE PARSON
Dodd’s constant presence at the race horse tracks had made him a well known public figure and the extravagant style of his clothes, led him to become known as “The Macarone Parson”!
Some sources describe the Macarone as “a fashionable fellow in the mid-18th-century England who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected and epicene manner” and also as a person “who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion in terms of clothes, fastidious eating and gambling”.
But the Macarone was also the caricature of an upper-class effeminate practitioner of sodomy, recogneasable by an extravagant hairstyle, effeminate mannerism and the small tricorn hat that he wore on top of a big wig. The early 1770s saw a series of scandals in the fashionable circles of London society that further linked the term of Macarone to a queer inclination and the homosexual man. A certain Captain Robert Jones, a “Macarone” , was convicted in July 1772 at the Old Bailey for sodomizing a thirteen-year-old boy and was sentenced to hang in October. A letter published in The Public Ledger on August 5th 1772, warned those men like the Captain : “(…) therefore, ye Beaux, ye sweet-scented, simpering He-She things, deign to learn wisdom from the death of a Brother”.[3]
But Jones obtained a royal pardon on the condition that he left the country after new evidence suggested that the boy’s testimony may have been unreliable. The pardon was of course greeted with accusations of an establishment cover-up.
Which of the above two mentioned categories of men – the fashionable fellow or the effeminate molly – our Reverend Doctor belonged to, however, can only be speculated on.
THE REVEREND DODD’S CRIME
By 1776 Dodd was living in Argyle Street, London and was regularly in need of money.
Years earlier he had been the tutor of the current 5th Earl of Chesterfield who had just come of legal age ; this gave Dodd the idea of defrauding a large sum of money by borrowing it in the name of his former pupil.
He went to a money broker and told him that the Lord urgently needed funds whilst he was in waiting for his inheritance to come through. However the Lord – explained Dodd – desired to keep the transaction private and had authorised him to conduct the negotiations.
The means of financing the loan was by a Bond issued in the Earl’s name. Being a man of the Church and a former tutor of the aristocrat, Dodd thought nobody would suspect the arrangement to be a fraud. He also no doubt flattered himself to believe in his heart that the Lord, warm of his feeling towards him, would have generously paid the money rather than see Dodd suffer the dreadful consequences of violating the law.
But finding Banks or individuals prepared to lend against a Bond that was not going to bear the actual borrower’s signature and was not going to be witnessed either, was proving difficult.
Even though forgery and fraud carried a sentence of death by hanging in those days, many fortunes were lost and many gained through such games of tricks.
Eventually the Broker Lewis Robertson came forward and persuaded the firm of solicitors Messrs Fletcher & Pitch to advance the sum of money. A bond was drafted in the name of the Earl of Chesterfield and released to Lewis Robertson who passed it on to Dodd.
The Reverend affixed his signature where that of the Lord should have been , the broker endorsed it further by placing his own signature under that of Dodd and the money changed hands.
Except that when the note fell due and was presented to the Lord for redemption, it was disowned. The law representatives immediately called at Dodd’s house to inform him of the accusation of forgery and advise him that if he wanted to save himself from prosecution and incarceration he was to return all of the money forthwith. The Rev. Dodd explained that he had been obliged to commit the fraud by a debt which had fallen due at a time when he was short of money and he could not meet his obligation. In any case, said Dodd he always intended to return the sum he had borrowed. And indeed, true to his word, he immediately handed a great part of the sum in cash to them , signed a few promissory notes and allowed a charge to be raised on his house belongings for the remaining balance.
He then pleaded forgiveness with the Earl of Chesterfield
but to his mortification he found that his noble pupil showed no clemency and later he will even appear in Court to testify against him.
The matter became of public knowledge; the Rev. Dodd was remanded in custody and soon found himself at the centre of a scandal with fatal consequences for him.
THE TRIAL
On February 19th 1777, Dodd appeared at the Old Bailey.
With no lawyer to defend him, he pleaded for mercy with the Court and delivered a speech from which we have extracted the following:
“My Lords and Gentlemen of the Jury, (…) there is no man in the world who has a deeper sense of the heinous nature of the crime for which I stand indicted, than myself.
(…) I humbly apprehend, though (I am) no lawyer, that the (…) malignancy of a crime – always both in the eyes of the Law and of Religion – consists in the intention.
(But) such intention (to defraud), my Lords and Gentlemen of the jury, has not been sufficiently proven on me (…), for ample restitution has been made.
I leave it to you, my Lords and Gentlemen of the Jury, to consider that if an unhappy man ever deviates from the Law and yet in (a) moment of recollection does all that he can to make full and perfect amends, what (…) can God and man desire further ?”
Dodd then went on to cry out that he had been “perused with excessive cruelty” and “persecuted with a scarcely parallel cruelty” even though reassurances had been given to him after he had made restitution. His death, he said, did not matter to him but it was the loss caused to those he would have left behind that concerned him.
“I have, my Lord, ties which render me desirous even to continue this miserable existence.
I have a wife who for 27 years has lived as an unparalleled example of conjugal attachment and fidelity (…) I have creditors, honest men, who will lose much by my death. (And so) I hope for the sake of justice towards them, that some mercy will be shown to me”.
It was a preposterous defence. The jury returned a guilty verdict and the judge pronounced his sentenced in these words:
“Dr William Dodd, you have been convicted of the offence of publishing a forged and counterfeit bond (…) and you have had an impartial and attentive trial. The jury to whose justice you have appealed have found you guilty and (…) the judges have found no grounds to impeach the justice of that verdict.
(…) your application for mercy therefore must be made elsewhere.
(…) I am now obliged to pronounce the sentence of the law, which is that you, Dr William Dodd, be carried from hence to the place from whence you came, that from thence you are to be carried to the place of execution where you are to be hanged by the neck until you are dead”.
DR SAMUEL JOHNSON INTERCEDES
The XVIII century diarist James Boswell wrote in his diary that on Monday September 15th 1777 he went with his lifetime friend Dr Samuel Johnson to visit the garden of the school of Ashbourne; a very pretty place on a bank of the river. It was a hot day and they sat on a bench for a little rest, whereupon Johnson – Boswell reports in his diaries – told him of his “humane interference” on behalf of the Rev. Dr Dodd whom he barely knew. Knowing Johnson’s persuasive power of writing Dodd had asked him, through the interception of the late Countess of Harrington, to employ his pen in his favour by writing a letter of supplication to the King so that “(the King) may spare me the ignominy of public death which the public itself is solicitous to waive, and grant me in some distant part of the globe to pass the remainder of my days in penitence an prayer (…)”.
Dr Johnson, who had only been once in the company of the Rev. Dodd many years earlier and never visited him at Newgate prison, wrote these lines for Dodd to use in his letter to the King:
“May I not offend your Majesty that the most miserable of men applies himself to your clemency (…) a clergyman whom your laws and judges have condemned to the horror and ignominy of public execution.
I confess the crime …but humbly hope that sparing the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets to a death of infamy, justice may be satisfied with irrevocable exile, perpetual disgrace and hopeless penury.
My life, Sir, has not been useless to mankind. I have benefited many. (…)Preserve me, Sir, by your prerogative of mercy (…) permit my to hide my guilt in some obscure corner of a foreign country (…) I am, Sir, your Majesty’s, &c. “
In a post scriptum Johnson recommended Dodd never to disclose who the real author of such words was: “Tell nobody” stressed the Doctor and with it he also advised Dodd not to indulge in hope.
Samuel Johnson also wrote many petitions and letters on the Rev. Dodd’s behalf and was the author of the errant Mason’s sermon called “The Convict’s address to his unhappy Brethren” [4] whose lines Dodd read in the Chapel of Newgate Prison as perhaps a last attempt to sway matters in his favour! The sermon suggested in so many words that if one sincerely repents of a crime he has committed , God (and therefore by association, the King ) should pardon him and set him free to go and repent for the rest of his life, rather than be sent to death.
Although Johnson never admitted that such sermon was the product of his mind, when challenged by a friend he answered: “Depend on it, Sir, that when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, he concentrates his mind wonderfully”.
Having lost any hope of a royal pardon, Dodd wrote a final letter to Johnson to thank him for all that he had done for him: (…) as I shall be admitted to the realm of bliss before you, I shall hail your arrival there with transports, and rejoice to the knowledge that you were my comforter, my advocate and my friend! God be ever with you!”
Dr Johnson was moved by such words and wrote back: “may God (…) accept your repentance” and “in requital of those well-intended offices which you so emphatically acknowledge, let me beg you that you make (in your devotions) one petition for my eternal welfare.”
These lines, so full of irony and wit, bring a smile on my face whenever I read them.
At the time, Dr Johnson’s health was deteriorating and he had become particularly scared at the thought of dying. One night Boswell was struck by the expression of horror on Johnson’s face at the mention of the word “death” and of the Rev. Dodd during conversation. Boswell was expressing his full of admiration for the determination with which Dodd had met his creator a few days earlier. “Dr Dodd seemed to be willing to die and was full of hopes and happiness”, said Boswell. But Johnson retorted that hardly any man dies in public with apparent resolution: “Sir” –said Johnson – “Dr Dodd would have given both his hands and both his legs to have lived because the better a man is, the more afraid is he of death, having a clear view of infinite purity”.
THE EXECUTION
The Rev. Dr. Dodd was allowed to be driven to his place of execution by a private coach and his father is said to have accompanied him on the journey. Every face in the crowd expressed sadness for the fate of that popular preacher who was also a respectful author of books, poems, theological works and newspaper articles and for whom a twenty three pages long petition full of signatures had been presented to the Authorities in the hope that it would spared him from the gallows.
The death-by-hanging technique improved only in the 20th century when mathematical formulas begun to be applied to determine the length of the rope and the height of the drop required to break the person’s neck, quickly. But in the days when such factors – height, weight and neck size of the condemned – where never taken into consideration , the condemned’ s death would have occurred only by a long and inhumane process of strangulation.
Often the family members of the executed person would run under the gibbet and pull his or her legs so as to hasten asphyxiation.
However, it is also the case that the shorter the drop was, the highest the chance of the condemned surviving and being revived if freedom from the noose could be secured within a few minutes.
The latter is just what was attempted on Rev. Dodd’s body as it is recorded that no sooner the cart driver had run forward to cause him to hang, that the same driver returned to steady Dodd’s legs, stop his convulsions and cut the rope.
The Rev. Dodd’s family had pre-arranged and paid for the body of Dodd to be transported from the place of execution in Tyburn to a barber-surgeon’s shop near Oxford Street where an attempt would have been made to resurrect Dodd with hot and cold water baths.
But the mobbing crowd which lined and blocked parts of the journey caused such a delay that the short transit of about eight minutes took over two hours.
By the time the coach reached the barber’s shop, any sign of life in Dodd’s body had of course extinguished.
However the myth of this unfortunate Freemason and man of the Church lived on for many more years because the Northampton Mercury edition for Saturday 18 October 1794 , reported that the Reverend Dodd ‘s body had been successfully revived and that he had escaped to France.
CONCLUSION
All Master Masons are sworn to form, metaphorically speaking, a “column of mutual support and defence” when it is necessary to defend a Brother’s honour. But in the case of this reckless clergyman it is clear that Freemasonry wanted to have no part.
The Reverend Dr. Dodd had insulted the integrity of the wife of the King’s Chancellor, had been keeping a lifestyle little akin to that of a man of the cloth and had been gambling and losing money he did not have. Furthermore as a “Macarone” he might, for all we know, have belonged to that crowd of dandified men who were no strange to the rumours of vice and sodomy which was a serious crime at the time.
The Rev. Dodd had claimed to have been the author of many books – almost 50! – of translations and newspaper articles and yet we know for almost certain that he could not himself write a supplication letter to the King but had to ask Samuel Johnson to do so for him.
He had also fully confessed his crime and naively undertaken to defend himself in a Court of Justice. In short, his weaknesses had disgraced him sufficiently to have pushed the boundary of intervention by his Brethren in his “support and defence” well out of reach. The Right Rev. Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol in 1777, on hearing of the execution of the Rev. Dodd for the crime of forgery, was reported to have exclaimed: “He has hanged for the least of his crimes”.
As for Philip Stanhope, the 5th Earl of Chesterfield [5], he was no common Brother but a nobleman who descended from a family of Freemasons and was destined , within a few years, to become an important Peer of the Kingdom.
He recognised that the only right thing for him to do was to uphold the Masonic principle that “murder, treason, felony and all other offence against the laws of God and the ordinances of the realm” – perpetrated by a Freemason and confessed to another – “must at all time be most especially excepted” from being kept a secret. And so the Lord chose neither to excuse nor to pardon the Rev. Dodd but by even testifying in Court for the Prosecution, he sealed Dodd’s fate.
In closing, we must not think that the outcome of this story is indicative of a society and of a Masonic Order which were upholders of rule and justice. They were not, particularly in that epoch.
In society – and by reflection in the Craft – then like now, all are equal but some are and will always be “more equal than others”!
ByW.Bro. Leonardo Monno Anglisani – NHL 6557 ,Middlesex, England
The author forbids any reproduction or publication of this article, in full or in part, without his explicit authorization.
SOURCES
The Masonic Square (UK)
“Dr William Dodd Grand Chaplain” by Bernard Williamson
“Reverend William Dodd” - article published in the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon’s website
“The sad case of Dr. Dodd” – from “Everybody’s Boswell”
[2] The Lodge was named St Alban’s Lodge in the year 1771
[3] From “Oscar Wilde prefigured: Queer Fashioning and British Caricature, 1750-1900” by Dominic Janes
[4] A twenty four pages long text that is remarkable for the amount of lexicon used. The Rev. Dodd dedicated it to the Reverend Mr Villette, Ordinary of Newgate Prison
[5] Philip Stanhope (10.11.1755-29.08.1815) became the British Ambassador to Spain (1784-1787) and Master of the Mint (1789-1790), Joint Postmaster General (1790-1791) and Master of the Horse (1798-1804).
Masonic research can be divided into two main groups: the mainstream one that prefers a strict academic approach that considers 1717 as the official beginning of Freemasonry; and that which is mystical and prefers a spiritual approach, connecting Freemasonry with the Ancient Mysteries, Egypt, the Templars, Gnosticism, Alchemy and other spiritual and initiatic traditions.
Two examples of the former are the Quatour Coronatorum Lodge of Research, probably the most famous Lodge of Research at present, and the Bristol Masonic Society. Two examples of the latter are the Cornerstone Society and the Dormer Masonic Study Circle. Their esoteric approach is maybe not to everyone’s taste; however it is without doubt that their papers are hugely interesting and thought-provoking to say the least.
Perhaps for fear of being perceived as a religious Organisation – which we absolutely are not – Freemasonry publicly tends to underline the charitable, social and moral sides but never the spiritual one which should really be its fulcrum.
As Bro Darren Lorente states in his paper called “The spiritual dimension of Freemasonry” : We cannot deny the fact that our ritual is full of spiritual references and compels us to reach out to God and to acquire self-knowledge and self-improvement. These are spiritual quests. Unless we really absorb the meaning of the ritual, we will just be a club like any other with the sole difference of having some particular eccentricities, i.e. wearing aprons and sashes. Will we not be doing ourselves and the candidates that follow us a disservice by ignoring the spiritual dimension of Freemasonry? I somehow think this will be the case”.
There are wealth of documents in existence and coincidences which are far too consistent not to be considered seriously. Although we do not have definitive proof about how much older than 1717 we really are, research is quite strongly indicating that our history is very ancient indeed and most likely connected to spiritual traditions as far back as the Ancient Mysteries.
The Ancient Mysteries promoted self-improvement and self-knowledge. They required initiation. They had degrees to be obtained progressively. It was a journey of the spirit, a “journey towards light, as the Masonic writer Julian Rees calls it.
Or, as the influential Masonic writer Walter Leslie Wilmshurst described it:
These mysteries were formerly taught (…) in circumstances of the greatest seclusion and secrecy (. . .) All the great teachers of humanity, Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Moses, Aristotle, Virgil, the author of the Homeric poems and the great Greek tragedians, along with St John (…) were initiates of the Sacred Mysteries.
The Greek historian Plutarch, a Mystery initiate himself, describes how the candidate was left in complete and utter darkness. At the end of this darkness period, the initiate would receive a heavy blow to the forehead to open up his skull and set the spirit free.
The oldest known Masonic text in existence is The Halliwell Manuscript, or Regius Poem, written between 1390 and 1425.The Regius Poem ‘s introduction stated that the ‘craft of masonry, began with Euclid in Egypt, and came to England in the reign of King Athelstan (927-939). Around the year 1450, the second oldest Masonic text – the Cooke Manuscript – traces Masonry back to Jabal, son of Lamech (from Genesis) and tells how this knowledge came to Euclid, from him to the Children of Israel (while they were in Egypt), and so on through an elaborate path to Athelstan. This myth formed the basis for subsequent manuscript constitutions, all tracing Masonry back to biblical times, and fixing its institutional establishment in England during the reign of Athelstan.
In France, the 1737 lecture of Chevalier Ramsay maintained that Crusader Masons had revived the Craft with secrets recovered in the Holy Land, under the patronage of both the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitaller – also known as Knights of St John.
Much more recently, several authors have linked the Templars to the timeline of Freemasonry through the imagery of the carvings in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, where the Templars have sought refuge after the violent dissolution of the order started on the 13 October 1307 and completed by 1314 with the execution of their last Grand Master Jacques De Molay. In the very successful and controversial book The Hiram Key, Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight describe a timeline starting in ancient Egypt and taking in Jesus, the Templars, and Rosslyn before arriving at modern Freemasonry.
Rosslyn Chapel was built by the later William St Clair, who brought Europe’s finest masons to Scotland for the purpose, building the nearby village of Roslyn to house them. Even a quick tour of this amazing chapel is enough to show its strong connections to Freemasonry when in the 1400s, Freemasonry was not supposed to be anywhere to be seen, if we believe the historical “orthodox” version. Rosslyn Chapel is not at all Christian, as it is usually described: the symbolism is profusely Egyptian, Celtic, Jewish, Templar and Masonic. The only Christian symbols are Victorian modifications.
In the eastern side of Rosslyn we can see two splendid pillars called the Mason’s pillar and the Apprentice pillar. The official story tells that a Rosslyn master mason went to Rome in order to gather inspiration for the design of the pillars.
But in the meantime, an apprentice in Rosslyn built one on his own. When the master came back and found that his pupil’s pillar was much better than anything he could have ever conceived, he killed the apprentice. .. with a mallet hit to his forehead. There is clear evidence that this story is false. William St Clair masterminded and personally supervised any detail of the work. Any carving was to be created in wood first, in order for him to approve it. So it is utterly unthinkable that an apprentice was able to build one of the most important pillars of the chapel out of his own initiative.
Continuing to walk in the chapel, we find the Indian maize arch. There wouldn’t be anything special with this, if it were not that the Indian maize plant was only known in North America and unknown in Europe until the 1600s; but unbelievably there it is, clearly sculpted in Rosslyn in the year 1440. This does make sense though, considering there seems to be evidence that the first St Clair Earl of Orkneys had, with Templar money, commissioned a fleet of twelve ships to a voyage to the “new world’ prior to 1400. And a medieval knights image has been found in Westford, Massachusetts; although medieval knights were not around at the time of Christopher Columbus’ discovery, let alone the fact that Christopher Columbus did not even reach the USA. How do we explain that image?
Talking about the American continent, it is impressive what can be found while researching the concept of America: it is actually a very old concept among the Mandaeans.
The Mandaeans are an ethno-religious group of Southern Mesopotamia also known, among Iraqi and Iranian Muslims, as Sabians. The Mandaeans are the last surviving baptising sect; they follow the Gnostic belief called Mandaeism. Their belief regularly mentions the star called “Merika` which they placed west, across the ocean, marking a land. The amazing point here is that Mandaeism said so a good 2000 years ago! These are the same Mandaeans who believed St John the Baptist, a Mystery initiate, to be their great prophet, the last prophet in fact; they called him “Son of Man”.
It is certainly only a coincidence that the Templars, during their time in the Middle- East, met the Mandaeans; and that the Knights Hospitaller were also called Knights of St John.
It is a coincidence that St John the Baptist’s life is celebrated on 24 June, which is when the first Grand Lodge met in 1717, the “official” beginning of Freemasonry. It certainly is another coincidence that Freemasons were known, until a short time ago, as “St John’s Men’; and that the Antients installed their Masters during St John’s Day.
So, let’s see what we have so far;
The Gnostic Mandaeans worship St John the Baptist, a Mystery initiate, and were known by the Templars.
The Templars have visited America much earlier than its official discovery, which makes sense if we consider their knowledge of Mandaeism and its “Merika” concept.
The Templars’ American expedition has been organised by St Clair who created Rosslyn, a safe haven for Templars escaping persecution.
Rosslyn features a Wealth of Gnostic and Masonic symbolism, to include the Hiram Abif legend.
St Clair and Rosslyn are historically connected to Freemasonry (the St Clair family has been ‘hereditary Scottish Grand Masters’ for three centuries, having given up this right only in 1736).
Freemasonry officially, started on 24 June, St John’s Day, 1717; which is the same day of the year the Antients installed their Grand Masters.
Now: it is starting to become quite difficult to believe that a bunch of gentlemen met in a pub on whatever random 1717 date, drank beer and created our Fraternity’s first Grand Lodge just out of few random lodges, adapting whatever ritual from cathedral builders they knew and without any spiritual or esoteric connection.
How comes it is that the mythology, the symbolism, the very name and legend of the Master Builder are borrowed from every imaginable source – Kabbalistic, Gnostic, Neo-Platonic, Buddhist, and Egyptian?
I personally believe (and many others like me) that Freemasonry is part of an esoteric line of thought, a stream of spiritual truth passed in a straight line through time immemorial using symbols which are eternal human archetypes.
Borrowing again W.L. Wilmshurst’s words from his enlightening book Meaning of Masonry:
Masonry is a modern perpetuation of great systems of initiation that have existed for the spiritual instruction of men in all parts of the world since the beginning of time. Whether in ancient India, Egypt, Greece, Italy or Mexico, or among the Druids of Europe, temples of initiation have ever existed (…). Our rituals and doctrines are an authentic embodiment of a secret doctrine and a secret process that have always existed (…)
Can we trace this exact line with 100% irrefutable proof? We will probably never be able to. But the evidence we already have is pointing quite clearly to the fact that Freemasonry is very ancient and is a path of the spirit, a way of spiritual and personal betterment. Experiencing our rituals more deeply and progressing in Freemasonry with open hearts and minds, makes us sense the depth of the message, makes us feel it. The Masonic experience becomes so much more alive! It should make us think that retention is a negligible problem for Masonic lodges and organisations oriented towards the spiritual and the esoteric. I think this happens because Freemasonry experienced with such a deeper and all-encompassing approach is far more interesting and fulfilling to the Brethren.
Lord Northampton, former Pro Grand Master and charismatic leader of English Freemasonry for 14 years before his retirement in 2010, said the following at the inauguration of the esoteric study circle called Cornerstone Society:
It is important that at the centre of Freemasonry there is a core of brethren who do understand the spiritual message that our rituals contain. I am sure that like me there are many who joined Freemasonry as earnest seekers after light and wisdom, only to find that much of the masonry as practiced today in many parts of the world, has forgotten [its] destiny. Nevertheless, it has survived for nearly 400 years and possibly more – and as far as I am concerned, carries the torch for what could loosely be described as the hermetic tradition. It is my fervent hope that through this Society and other similar initiatives it will rediscover its spiritual heritage and become an active catalyst for the transformation of Man’s consciousness.
Published by courtesy of the author WB Corrado Canonici
, and the Deputy Prime Minister Marshall Philippe Petain. Churchill flew to France on 11th June to meet Reynaud, Petain and Weygand; he discussed with them the defence of Paris by guerrilla warfare and house-to-house fighting, not knowing that Weygand had already ordered that Paris, which by now was almost deserted, be surrendered to the Germans. Petain and Weygand, who shared right-wing, anti-republican authoritarian and vehemently anti-communist views, were concerned that if the government went abroad the country would be broken up and easy prey for German and Italian colonisation. They wanted the French forces to retain enough power to repel communist overthrow. When Churchill returned to England that evening, it was clear that France was about to fall. He returned to Tours on 13th June, and Reynaud asked for a release from a previous agreement that he would not seek an armistice with the Germans without Britain’s consent.
On 22nd June an Armistice, the Second Compiegne Agreement, was signed with Germany. The Northern and Western parts of France, constituting about 60% of the country, were occupied by Germany. The remainder was under the direct French control of a new government based in the town of Vichy. Both the Zone Libre (Vichy) and the Zone Occupee (North and West) were nominally under the control of the Vichy government. One of the conditions of reaching the armistice was that France would not have its territory divided up between Germany and Italy. The demarcation lines existed until the invasion of North Africa by the Allies in Operation Torch on 8th November 1942, when Germany took control of the whole of France.
the secrets of Freemasonry. The Grand Lodge of Scotland has posted on its website some of the cases of women who were initiated in the Craft. For example:
despite the fact that he was one of the most glittering figures of one of the spectacular periods of human history. There are few characters of the time of which so much is recorded but who are so little remembered. As the stories of the first and second Temples form the basis of the Craft and the Royal Arch it is perhaps surprising that the story of the “Third Temple” – for, that is what it really was – and its builder, has never been told in Freemasonry.
Zerubbabel, and the rest, but also Herod?
hijo de Carlos IV, que había sido depuesto por el gobierno francés, y ellos obligó al virrey a abdicar. Por lo tanto, Venezuela fue el primero Colonia de España para declarar su independencia, un evento que tomó coloque el 5 de julio de 1811.
General José de San Martin, un masón, y el general Bemardo O`Higgins, también un masón, tenían liberó a Argentina y Chile del poder español, y el primero, ahora “Protector” de Perú, llegó a Guayaquil el 26 de julio de 1822, donde él consultó con Bolívar. Qué procedimientos se decidieron, con respecto a Perú, en esa conferencia entre los dos grandes Los Líberators españoles, que eran masones, probablemente nunca ser conocida. San Martín renunció a su ‘Protectorado” de Perú y regresó a Argentina. En cualquier caso, Bolívar se hizo cargo y, llegando en Callao, el 1 de septiembre de 1823, fue investido con el título de “Libertador” de Perú. Entrenó a unos 4,000 peruanos y, con el ejército que había venido a Perú con él, tenía unos 9,000 hombres. Con estos contrató a un número igual de españoles en Junin en una sangrienta batalla de caballería con sables, donde no se disparó un solo tiro, y ganó un victoria que, con la de Ayacucho el 9 de diciembre dc 1824, bajo El general Antonio José de Sucre, terminó para siempre con el poder colonial de España en el Nuevo Mundo
.Habiendo planeado estas batallas con el general Sucre, un masón, Bolívar fue a Lima para organizar un gobiemo cívico y llamar a un Convención Constitucional. Cuando, el 8 de febrero de 1825, tuvo efectuado el nuevo gobierno, renunció al poder supremo en Colombia y Perú. Rechazo de un regalo de 1,000,000 de pesos (aproximadamente $200,000) de Perú y por haber asistido a algunos asuntos cívicos en Perú superior (Bolivia), Bolívar dejó al general Sucre a cargo y se dirigió a Bogotá, Colombia, para calmar los conflictos civiles que habían surgido entre sus antiguos camaradas. Al llegar allí en noviembre de 1826, él pronto pasó a Venezuela, convocando una convención constitucional en ruta para reunirse en Valencia, el 15 de enero de 1827. Aunque él no tuvo sido capaz de ajustar la desafección, ingresó a Caracas en triunfo. Finalmente, después de catorce años en el mando supremo. La renuncia de Bolívar fue aceptada por el Congreso a petición suya, frente a la intriga y el abuso de sus enemigos que fueron hambriento de poder.
as “a fashionable fellow in the mid-18th-century England who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected and epicene manner” and also as a person “who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion in terms of clothes, fastidious eating and gambling”.
Earl of Chesterfield
With no lawyer to defend him, he pleaded for mercy with the Court and delivered a speech from which we have extracted the following:
to visit the garden of the school of Ashbourne; a very pretty place on a bank of the river. It was a hot day and they sat on a bench for a little rest, whereupon Johnson – Boswell reports in his diaries – told him of his “humane interference” on behalf of the Rev. Dr Dodd whom he barely knew. Knowing Johnson’s persuasive power of writing Dodd had asked him, through the interception of the late Countess of Harrington, to employ his pen in his favour by writing a letter of supplication to the King so that “(the King) may spare me the ignominy of public death which the public itself is solicitous to waive, and grant me in some distant part of the globe to pass the remainder of my days in penitence an prayer (…)”.
Boswell was expressing his full of admiration for the determination with which Dodd had met his creator a few days earlier. “Dr Dodd seemed to be willing to die and was full of hopes and happiness”, said Boswell. But Johnson retorted that hardly any man dies in public with apparent resolution: “Sir” –said Johnson – “Dr Dodd would have given both his hands and both his legs to have lived because the better a man is, the more afraid is he of death, having a clear view of infinite purity”.
The death-by-hanging technique improved only in the 20th century when mathematical formulas begun to be applied to determine the length of the rope and the height of the drop required to break the person’s neck, quickly. But in the days when such factors – height, weight and neck size of the condemned – where never taken into consideration , the condemned’ s death would have occurred only by a long and inhumane process of strangulation.
Dormer Masonic Study Circle. Their esoteric approach is maybe not to everyone’s taste; however it is without doubt that their papers are hugely interesting and thought-provoking to say the least.
King Athelstan (927-939). Around the year 1450, the second oldest Masonic text – the Cooke Manuscript – traces Masonry back to Jabal, son of Lamech (from Genesis) and tells how this knowledge came to Euclid, from him to the Children of Israel (while they were in Egypt), and so on through an elaborate path to Athelstan. This myth formed the basis for subsequent manuscript constitutions, all tracing Masonry back to biblical times, and fixing its institutional establishment in England during the reign of Athelstan.
. In the very successful and controversial book The Hiram Key, Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight describe a timeline starting in ancient Egypt and taking in Jesus, the Templars, and Rosslyn before arriving at modern Freemasonry.
aster came back and found that his pupil’s pillar was much better than anything he could have ever conceived, he killed the apprentice. .. with a mallet hit to his forehead. There is clear evidence that this story is false. William St Clair masterminded and personally supervised any detail of the work. Any carving was to be created in wood first, in order for him to approve it. So it is utterly unthinkable that an apprentice was able to build one of the most important pillars of the chapel out of his own initiative.
The Mandaeans are an ethno-religious group of Southern Mesopotamia also known, among Iraqi and Iranian Muslims, as Sabians. The Mandaeans are the last surviving baptising sect; they follow the Gnostic belief called Mandaeism. Their belief regularly mentions the star called “Merika` which they placed west, across the ocean, marking a land. The amazing point here is that Mandaeism said so a good 2000 years ago! These are the same Mandaeans who believed St John the Baptist, a Mystery initiate, to be their great prophet, the last prophet in fact; they called him “Son of Man”.
Lord Northampton, former Pro Grand Master and charismatic leader of English Freemasonry for 14 years before his retirement in 2010, said the following at the inauguration of the esoteric study circle called Cornerstone Society: