Una Birch, writing in her book Secret Societies: Illuminati, Freemasons, and The French Revolution (Edited, Enlarged and introduced by James Wasserman, 2007; originally entitled Secret Societies and The French Revolution, Together With Some Kindred Studies, first published in 1911), wrote the following about “Chevalier Ramsay” (Sir Andrew Michael Ramsay, 1686-1743):

“He professed to have derived his elaborate and numerous rites from Godfrey de Bouillon, and managed to popularise masonry and exalt it into a fashionable pursuit.”

The question about this fable surely must be: How was it missed by Pierre Plantard in his fictitious List of Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion?

1.PHILANTHROPY, OR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY IN GENERAL.

2.MORAL HEALTH.

3.THE SECRET.

4.THE TASTE FOR SCIENCE AND THE LIBERAL ARTS.

5.ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE ORDER. THE LEGEND AND THE STORY.

6.ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ORDER BY THE CRUSADERS.

7.PASSAGE OF THE ORDER FROM THE HOLY LAND INTO EUROPE.

8.FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE REFORM DEGENERATION OF THE ORDER. 

CONCLUSION

9.REGENERATION AND FUTURE OF THE ORDER IN FRANCE.

The noble enthusiasm that you show, Gentlemen, to enter into the very ancient and very illustrious Order of Freemasons, is a sure test that you already possess all the qualities required to become one of its members. These are quiet Philanthropy, moral rectitude, the inviolate secret and the taste for fine arts.

1.PHILANTHROPY, OR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY IN GENERAL.

Lycurgus, Solon, Numa and all the other political Legislators were unable to make their institutions last; however wise their laws might have been, they could not extend to all countries nor agree with the likings, the spirit, the interests of all Nations. Philanthropy was not their foundation. The love of country ill understood and pushed to excess often destroyed the love of humanity in general in these warlike Republics. Essentially men are not distinguished by the difference in the language they speak, the clothes they wear, the countries they occupy, nor the dignities that they assume.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS BUT ONE REPUBLIC, OF WHICH EACH NATION IS A FAMILY, AND EACH INDIVIDUAL A CHILD.

It is to revive and expand on these ancient maxims on the nature of man, that our society was established. We want to bring together men of an enlightened mind and an agreeable temper not only by the love of fine arts but just as much by the grand principles of virtue, where the interests of the brotherhood becomes that of the whole of humanity, where all Nations can draw on real knowledge, and where all the subjects of the different kingdoms can agree together without jealousy, live without discord, and look after each other without renouncing their Homeland. Our Ancestors, the Crusaders, having gathered together in the Holy Land from all parts of Christendom, wanted to unite the subjects of all Nations into a single brotherhood. What an obligation we owe to these superior Men who, without uncivilized interests, heeding the natural desire to dominate, devised an institution the only aim of which was the union of hearts and minds for their improvement and to form in the course of time a spiritual nation where, without detracting from the duties that the different states demand, a new people would be created who, in maintaining their several nations, would cement them all together in some way by means of virtue and science.

2.MORAL HEALTH.

Moral health is the second requirement of our society. The Religious Orders were established to make men into perfect Christians; the military Orders, to inspire the love of honour and glory; the Order of Freemasons was instituted to make men worthy, good citizens and good subjects, inviolable in their promises, faithful worshippers of the God of Friendship, loving virtue more than recompense.

Polliciti servare fidem, sanctumque vereri.

Numen amicitiae,mores,non munera amarare

It is not that we should be content with purely civic virtues. We have among us three types of brothers, Novices or Apprentices, Companions or the Professed, Masters or the Perfect. To the first we explain moral and philanthropic virtues, to the second heroic virtues, to the third the virtues of the superhuman and the divine. In this way our establishment encompasses the whole Philosophy of feelings and the whole theology of the heart. That is why one of our most venerable brothers says in an Ode of enthusiasm:

Free Masons,

Illustrious grand Master,

Receive my first assignments,

In my heart the order has created them

Oh Bliss! If from these noble efforts

I merit your esteem

I am raised to this very sublime

To the first truth

To the pure and divine essence

Of the original celestial soul

The source of life and of light

As a harsh, uncivilized, sad and misanthropic Philosophy disgust men of virtue, our Ancestors, the Crusaders, wanted to make it agreeable by the attraction of simple pleasures, pleasant music, innocent delights and moderate gaiety. Our feelings are not that which the profane world and the common uneducated herd imagine. All the vices of the heart and of the mind have been banished along with irreligion, libertinism, incredulity and debauchery. It is in that spirit that one of our Poets says:

Today we follow little beaten paths,

We seek to build,

and all our edifices are dungeons for vices

or temples of virtues

Our meals resemble those virtuous suppers of Horace, where one is entertained with all that enlightens the mind, perfects the heart and inspires the taste for truth, goodness and beauty:

O! noctes coeneaque Deum...

Sermo ontur non de regnis domibusque alienis;

Sed quod magis ad nos

Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus; utrumne

Divitis homines, an sint virtute beati;

Quidve ad micitias usus rectumve trahat nos,

Et quae sit natura boni, summumque quid ejus.

Here the love of all desires is strengthened. From our Lodges we banish all disputes, which might alter the tranquility of the spirit, the sweetness of morals, the feelings of friendship, and this perfect harmony that is only found in the suppression of all indecent excesses and of all discordant passions. The obligations that the Order imposes on you are to protect your Brothers by your authority, and to enlighten them by your understanding, to strengthen them by your virtues to help them in your needs, to sacrifice all personal resentment and to seek all that contributes to the peace, concord and union of the Society.

3.THE SECRET.

We do have secrets, these are characteristic signs and sacred words, which comprise a language that is as eloquent as it is mute to communicate to the furthest distance and to recognize our Brothers in whatever language or country they may be. To all appearances, it was words of war that the Crusaders used with each other to defend themselves against the surprises of the Saracens, who often slipped amongst them in disguise to betray them and assassinate them. These signs and words are reminders of some part of our knowledge or some moral virtue or some mystery of the faith. It happens to us, it hardly occurs in any other society. Today our Lodges are established and have expanded in all governed nations and yet among such a great number of men, not one Brother has ever betrayed our secrets. The lightest, most indiscreet of minds and the least educated in the way of keeping silent, learn this great knowledge after they enter our Society. So much sway does the idea of Brotherly Union have over their minds. This inviolable secret contributes powerfully to the linking of the subjects of all the Nations, and to make the communication of benefits easy and mutual between them. We have several such examples in the annals of our Order, our Brothers who travelled in the different countries of Europe, having found themselves in need, made themselves known to our Lodges and immediately they were given all the help they needed. Even in the bloodiest of wartimes, illustrious prisoners found Brothers when they thought they would only find enemies. If someone fails to honour the solemn promises which link us, you know, Gentlemen, that the greatest punishments are the remorse of his conscience, the shame of his perfidy, and the exclusion from our Society, according to the fine words of Horace:

Est et fideli tuta silentio

Merces; vetabo qui Cereris sacrum

Vulgarit arcanae, sub isdem

Sit tragibius, fragilemque mecum

Solvat Phaselum...

"There is a sure reward for trusty silence, too. I will forbid the man who has divulged the sacred rites of mystic Ceres, to abide beneath the same roof or to unmoor with me the fragile bark." Horace Odes III, ii.

Yes, Gentlemen, the famous feasts of Ceres at Eleusis of which Horace spoke as well as those of Isis in Egypt, of Minerva at Athens, of Urania at Phoenicia, and of Diana in Scythia bear some relation to our solemnities. Here mysteries were celebrated where there were several vestiges of the ancient religion of Noah and the patriarchs. They ended with meals and libations, but without the excesses, the debauches and the intemperance into which the Pagans fell bit by bit. The source of all these infamies was the admission of persons of both sexes to the nocturnal assemblies, contrary to the original institution. It is to guard against similar abuses that women are excluded from our Order, it is not that we quite wrongly regard the sex as being incapable of keeping the secret, but because its presence might gradually alter the purity of our maxims and our customs.

If the fair sex is banned then let that be no cause for alarm,

it is in no way intended as an insult to their faithfulness;

But because one fears that Love, entering with all its charms,

Will cause one to forget the ideals of brotherhood,

the names 'Brother' and 'Friend' being but feeble weapons

for keeping hearts safe from rivalry.

 

4. THE TASTE FOR SCIENCES AND THE LIBERAL ARTS.

The fourth quality required to enter our Order is the taste for useful sciences and the liberal Arts of all types; thus the Order requires each of us to contribute by our protection, by our liberality or by our work to a vast Work to which no Academy and no University can be adequate because individual Societies being composed of a very small number of men, their work cannot embrace so immense an object. All the Grand Masters in France, in Germany, in England, in Italy and throughout all of Europe, exhort all the scholars and all the artists of the Brotherhood to get together to provide the materials for a universal Dictionary of all the Liberal Arts and for all the useful sciences, Theology and Politics being the only exceptions. The work has already been commenced in London; but through the assemblies of our Brothers it can be completed in a few years. Therein will be explained not only the technical word and its etymologies, but also its history in science and in art, its main principles and how it is used. In this way the knowledge of all nations will be united in a single work, which will be like a general magazine, and a Universal Library of all that is fine, enlightening, substantial and useful in all the natural sciences and in all the noble arts. This work would grow each century, according to the augmentation of knowledge; thus a noble emulation would be expanded for the taste of literature and the fine Arts in the whole of Europe.

5. ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE ORDER. LEGEND AND STORIES.

Each family, each Republic, and each Empire the origin of which is lost in obscure antiquity, has its fable and has its truth, its legend and its history, its fiction and its reality. Some take our institution back to the times of Solomon, of Moses, of the Patriarchs, even of Noah. Others claimed that our founder was Enoch, the grandson of Protoplastus, who built the first town and called it by his own name. I shall pass rapidly over this fabled origin, to come to our true history. Here then is what I have been able to find in the ancient Annals of the History of Great Britain, and the Acts of the Parliament of England, which often speak of our privileges, and in the living tradition of the British Nation, which has been the center and the seat of our Brotherhood since the eleventh century.

6. INSTITUTION OF THE ORDER BY THE CRUSADERS.

From the times of the Holy Wars in Palestine, several Princes, Lords and Citizens entered into the Society, vowing to re-establish the Temples of the Christians in the Holy Land, and made a solemn declaration to use their talents and their goods to restore the Architecture to its original state. They agreed on several ancient signs, symbolic words drawn from a religious base, to distinguish them from the Infidels, and recognize each other among the Saracens. The signs and words were only communicated to those who promised solemnly, and often at the foot of the Altar, never to reveal them. This promise was not the deplorable oath, as has been reported, but a respectable link to unite men of all nations in this same Brotherhood. Some time afterwards, our Order became closely linked with the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. Afterwards and ever since our Lodges bore the name of the Lodges of St John in all countries. This agreement was made in imitation of the Israelites, when they rebuilt the second Temple, as in one hand they held the trowel and the mortar, and in the other they carried the Sword and the Shield. As a result, our Order should not be regarded as the renewal of the Bacchanals, and a source of frenzied dissipation, of unbridled libertinism, and scandalous intemperance, but as a moral Order, instituted by our Ancestors in the Holy Land as a reminder of the most sublime truths, in the middle of the innocent pleasures of the Society.

7. PASSAGE OF THE ORDER FROM THE HOLY LAND INTO EUROPE.

The Kings, the Princes and the Lords, returning from Palestine to their countries, established different Lodges there. From the time of the last Crusades several Lodges have already been established in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, in France and from there in Scotland, because of the close alliance which already existed between these two Nations. James Lord Steward of Scotland was Grand Master of a Lodge established at Kilwinning in the West of Scotland in the year 1286, not long after the death of Alexander III King of Scotland, and one year before John Baliol mounted the Throne. This Scottish Lord received as Freemasons in his Lodge the Counts of Gloucester and Ulster, Lords of England and of Ireland. Little by little our Lodges, our celebrations and our solemnities were neglected in the majority of countries where they had been established. This is why the Historians of nearly all Kingdoms are silent about our Order, except those of Great Britain. However they are kept in all their splendour among the Scots to whom for several centuries our Kings have entrusted the security of their sacred person.

8. FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE REFORM DEGENERATION OF THE ORDER.

After the deplorable misfortunes of the Crusades, the ruin of the Christian armies and the triumph of Bendocdar Soudan of Egypt, during the eighth and last Crusade, the son of Henry III of England, the Grand Prince Edward, seeing that he could no longer assure the safety of his brothers in the Holy Land, when the Christian troops withdrew from there and brought them all back, and so this Colony of brothers was established in England. As the Prince was endowed with all the qualities of heart and mind from which heroes are formed, he loved the fine Arts, he declared himself protector of our Order, he accorded it several privileges and freedoms, and as a result members of this Brotherhood took the name of Freemasons. From this time on, Great Britain became the seat of our knowledge, the conservators of our laws, and the depository of our secrets. The fatal discords of religion that set Europe on fire and tore it apart in the sixteenth century, caused our Order to degenerate from the grandeur and nobility of its origins. It altered, disguised, or suppressed several of our rights and customs that went against the prejudices of the time.

CONCLUSION

9. REGENERATION AND FUTURE OF THE ORDER IN FRANCE.

Because several of our Brothers forgot the spirit of our laws, and only observed the letter and the surface, our Grand Master, whose respectable qualities again exceeded his distinguished birth, wanted us to remember everything right back to its original institution, in a country where the religion and the state protect our laws. From the British Isles, the ancient knowledge began to pass back into France under the reign of the most agreeable of Kings, whose humanity made the soul of all the virtues, and under the ministry of a Mentor who put into practise everything that can be imagined from the most extraordinary. In these happy times when the love of Peace has become the virtue of Heroes, the most spiritual Nation in Europe became the center of the Order; it bestowed on our Works, our Statutes and our customs, the graces, the refinements and the good taste, essential qualities in an Order, the base which is wisdom, strength and the beauty of spirit. It is in our Lodges in the future, as in the Public Schools, that the French will discover, without traveling, the characters of all Nations, and it is in these same Lodges that from foreign parts will learn by experience, that France is the true Homeland of all Peoples. 

Patria gentis humanae