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The true freemasonry. – ‘This’, as Joseph de Maistre so rightly pointed out in his ‘Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg’, ‘is nothing more than transcendental Christianity, a doctrine made up of Platonism, Origenianism and Hermetic philosophy, on a Christian foundation.’ Origen, one of the Fathers of the Christian Church, who was strongly influenced by Platonism before gravitating towards the ideas of Aristotle, had been initiated into Platonism by Clement of Alexandria. His name is strangely predestined by the words ‘Aor-Agni’. He tried to unite the philosophy of Antiquity with Christianity and thereby restore the Great Tradition. He saw the Word penetrating the whole of Nature and found the Trinity in Plato. For him, metaphysical speculation was the true religion, the domain of the Gnosis, of the Knowledge reserved to an elite. The profane could content themselves with mere historical details and faith. Another canvas of Botticelli, a contemporary of Leonardo and, like him, an initiate of the traditional teachings (as represented by the ‘Mona Lisa’) is very important in this respect. This is the painting called ‘Moses and Jethro’s daughters’. This shows Moses standing near a well into which he is pouring water to enable some rams to drink. The well is the symbol of the Truth, the water that flows from it represents doctrine, and the rams – the leaders of the flock – depict the leaders of men (1).  [(1) The zodiacal sign of the Ram (Aries) is one of the four Christic signs (Taurus, Aries, Pisces, Aquarius). In terms of the precessional year, it extends from 2160 before our era to the year 1, and in the calendar year from 22 March to the 22 April, its centre being the 5 April. The astrologers claim that those born under this sign are ‘born leaders’, just as the ram is the leader of the flock. (The signatory of this article, by the way, was born on 5 April). In masonry, the ram is the emblem of the Master of the Lodge.] How, therefore, can such people be led towards a life of peace, justice and truth, when not only is there no longer any training leading to initiation for the ‘kings’ (this term is used here in the figurative sense) but also when those who are their leaders devote themselves to a materialistic form of occultism. (See our issue: L’occultisme, fléau du monde, (‘Occultism, the scourge of the world’). As we have said, after the dissolution of the Templars we encounter Christian masonry again in England. Here is some proof of its existence and an insight into its character. In 1733, in the ‘Defence of Masonry’, we read: ‘Religion, and only the Christian religion, is present within our Order, and it is so difficult to separate it from masonry that it is fair to say that it is, as it were, masonry’s foundation and support.’ Nothing could be clearer than this. In France before the Revolution, masonry brought together within its lodges both the nobles and the self-made middle class, and thus helped bring about a state of affairs in which the idea of equality was married to that of brotherhood. All that remained was to acquire the notion of Liberty. In this way there was worked out within the lodges the revolutionary ideal, which was to find its culmination on the night of 4 August 1789, the first clarion call to justice. At that time the freemasons numbered in their ranks two men of exceptional moral and intellectual calibre: Claude de Saint-Martin and Joseph de Maistre, both perfect examples of Christian masons. ‘Claude de Saint-Martin, known as the Philosophe inconnu (the Unknown Philosopher), was one of the purest and most spiritual beings ever to walk this Earth’, wrote Henri Martin in his Histoire de France. He left numerous writings. ‘He falls’, says Martin, ‘into that category of mystics who base their lives on the search for the highest truth and the purest morality’ (which corresponds to the two pillars of the temple). Joseph de Maistre called him ‘the most learned, the most wise and the most elegant of modern theosophists’. This was the true theosophy, which is simply Christian masonry (2). [(2) The present Theosophical Society is a creation of masonry. Its teachings are based partly on unverifiable statements emanating, it is said, from India, partly on ‘precipitated messages’ (a well-known procedure resorted to by the denizens of the spirit world) and partly on the development of a clairvoyant ability latent in man. In one of its published works (‘The Book of the Masters’) we find a denial of the idea of a personal and transcendent God. In fact, we find ourselves in the presence of a teaching in which God does not yet exist, as it is through humanity that He becomes God. This ‘neo-theosophy’ is therefore very different from the movement that bore that name in the XVIII century. ] As for Joseph de Maistre, regarding whom it has been said that he was the greatest of all Catholics (Canon Davin, Saint Grégoire) and whom the Reverend Father Pascal, a Doctor of Theology, described as ‘quite simply a genius’, was a freemason from the age of 21 to the age of 36. He embraced Christian esotericism, searched in it for the solution to the problems of belief and envisaged a transcendent Christianity, which is the objective of 3rd degree masonry. In the 1st degree: acts of charity; In the 2nd degree (30 years of age): the belief in Christ and in the Revelation; In the 3rd degree: transcendent Christianity or Christian esotericism (3). [(3) See de Maistre’s Memoir of the Duke of Brunswick, grandmaster of the F... M... At this time there were close links between the German and the French thinkers, who shared an interest in the spiritual life. We no longer have such links! Why?] It is extraordinary that the Church so vehemently rejects a belief in this form of esotericism, while the Renaissance Popes were perfectly familiar with it and the teachings of Jesus himself allude to a knowledge reserved to a few and to a teaching intended for the multitude. Like Saint Augustine, J. de Maistre believed that the true religion had existed for more than eighteen centuries – ‘It was born’, he said, ‘when the world was born’ – and he foresaw a forthcoming revelation, a new spiritual influx as important as that of the present Christian era. This was already to be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Claude de Saint-Martin and Joseph de Maistre withdrew from freemasonry when it became politicised and agnostic. ‘The whole Masonic set-up’, wrote Saint Martin, ‘became for me more and more incompatible each day with my way of life and with the simplicity of my lifestyle’ (Strasbourg, 1790). He had been a member since 1785. So what had happened? There had been the Masonic Congress of Wilhemsbad in 1782, and the malign influence of a German Jew called Weischaupt, who set in train the rationalist movement in the lodges and brought about the bloody revolution of 1793 (4). [(4) See Atlantis, no. 46, Le XVIIIe siècle et le monde primitif (The 18th century and the primitive world).] It is since that time, it would seem, that the Jewish influence has prevailed in masonry (The English lodges did not admit either Jews or Muslims). If the first temple was Jewish (the Temple of Solomon), the second, after the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders, was Christian. It would therefore be a retrograde step only to reconstruct the Jewish temple. Very close to our own era, however, we find lodges with Catholic names like the Lodge of Saint Vincent de Paul, and we note that religious rites have sometimes been solemnly celebrated for dead Masons. In the Bibliothèque Nationale there are medallions that were struck on such occasions. A Christian Mason of modern times, Abbé Paul Lacuria, who has been called the ‘French Pythagoras’, examined in his work Les harmonies de l’Être (‘The Harmonies of Being’) the relationships between light and sound, along with the three principles of the Trinity, the mystical properties of numbers, etc. One day his colleagues, who viewed his preoccupations with an somewhat jaundiced eye, told him that he was now forbidden to continue searching for the key to the secrets of the mysteries. ‘God knows perfectly well how to keep to himself’, Paul Lacuria replied, ‘the secrets that He does not want Man to know.’ We should recall the curious attempt at establishing an order at Paray-le-Monial undertaken fifty years ago by a Jesuit, Father Drevon (the word ‘drew’ means druid in the Celtic tongue). It bears the name ‘Hiéron du Val d’Or’. The members of it regarded themselves as members of a Christian form of freemasonry – the Grand Occident. In their order they taught that the Christian religion goes back to Atlantis via the Druidic, Jewish and Egyptian religions. They spoke of the Christian Cabbala and of hermeneutics, taught the sacred word of Aor-Agni, and said that if, today, the Church favoured Saint Thomas it was only after eradicating from his work everything that related to the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone. On the buildings of the ancient Benedictine abbey of Paray the principal pointed out the symbol of this Philosopher’s Stone, and they studied this symbolism while strictly practising the Catholic religion. After the death of Father Drevon their work was supervised by a Spanish Basque, Baron de Sarachaga. It was approved of by Leo XIII, but encountered hostility at the hands of certain bishops. It finally disappeared as a result of the increasing hostility of the ecclesiastical authorities and through the death of its principal (in 1918). As for the Anglo-Saxon masonry (Scotch Rite), if it still honours the Great Architect of the Universe and if the Bible is still to be found on its altars, if it has suppressed all links with our Grand Orient because this order is no longer based upon belief in the Great Architect, if it has remained truly Christian, it is, in fact, Protestant, while under the Stuarts it was Catholic (5). [(5) We find evidence of this in the fact that all the great dignitaries of English masonry are Protestant bishops, in the same way that, in Sweden, Scotch Rite masonry is Protestant and the grandmaster is the King of Sweden. This explains why, at the League of Nations, which was instituted by Protestant masonry, there are no symbols and no sculptures, but only a few cold, rigid structures. It also helps to explain why the English bishops rose up with such vehemence against the violators of the pact of the League of Nations.] Protestantism, by banning images, has also proscribed symbols. It has therefore deprived itself of the means of penetrating the secret of the mysteries. In the creation of the League of Nations by Anglo-Saxon masonry we find the old dream of the Templars of establishing a United States of Europe (see the extract from V.-E. Michelet below). If the French Templars saw the United States of Europe as being under the hegemony of France, then their English heirs have sought to place it under the hegemony of England. But, as in the Middle Ages, this dream has been thwarted by the hostility of the anti-Masonic forces. And we see these trying, in their turn, to dominate Europe by imposing on it, by force, a peace of which they themselves will be the beneficiaries. The drama through which we are currently living has hidden depths, where forces of an entirely spiritual nature are arrayed one against the other, and it is that fact that explains its immensity. The weakness of Templar power is due to the loss of their spiritual strength, because they have become materialistic. We are currently witnessing two antagonistic blocs, one based on anti-Christian occultism, the other lacking the illumination of Hermeticism and thinking that it can establish the Brotherhood of Man outside the framework of the true traditional religion, losing sight completely in the process of the initiatic teachings of the Order of the Temple and the secrets of the sacred Tradition. More than ever the need is being felt for a restoration of the Christian masonry of Saint John in order to fight the forces of evil. The red cross of the Templars should not designate the ambulances where people are trying to patch up the damage caused by war, but should, above all, be leading the fight against the warmongers and be trying to frustrate their nefarious work. Will we see a resurrection of the true Christian masonry? At the present time, the Church forbids all incursions into esotericism, but there are illumined Catholics who deplore this. They know that the great traditional religion united faith and science, and they feel that what is causing the present weakness of the Church is the prohibition of any explanation of its rites and its symbols or rather a toning down of them, a deflection of them from their profound meanings in order to reduce them to gestures without meaning and allegories without value. So much so that in the world today the blind is leading the blind and everything is collapsing around us because the invisible infrastructure of society no longer exists. One hope and one hope alone remains to us: the Great Tradition, which is once again today trying to rise from the ashes, just like the phoenix that is its symbol, and we are approaching a new era, a new revelation. Since no structure can be built without builders initiated in the art of building, it is fair to say that a renaissance of Christian masonry will accompany the appearance of the new social and religious order currently in gestation as it passes through its current birth pangs. Paul LE COUR. P.S. – A Christian masonry of this kind should be the natural culmination of the Scout Movement, the rituals of which, starting from the ‘cubs’ (a Masonic term) so often recall that of the lodges. Allow me to repeat here what I wrote in our issue on Scouting and Atlantism : ‘The venture scouts are searching for their path, but they are not finding it. The chivalric ideal that they pursue would be happily completed through initiation into the doctrines of Christian Hermeticism’. In this way we could reconstitute the Grand Occident, which is alone capable of restoring the mediaeval Templar tradition rediscovered in the XVI century and once again lost to us. On the terrace of the Pont-Neuf, at a point downstream of the Île de la Cité, between the two branches of the Seine, an expiatory monument should have been raised at the spot where, on 13 March 1314, the Grandmaster Jacques de Molay, from the top of his already burning pyre, summoned to accompany him in death and to appear with him before the eternal tribunal Pope Clement V within forty days and King Philip the Fair before the end of the year. The statue is there, sitting alert on his bronze horse, but it is not a statue of Jacques de Molay but, by a curious coincidence, that of a king who was assassinated because he proposed implementing ‘the grand design’ that had been suggested to him in 1606 by an heir to the Templar spirit, the mysterious Rosicrucian Irenaeus Agnostus. The famous ‘grand design’ of Henri IV, which involved establishing by force a United States of Europe under the hegemony of France, was going to be realised. Who was it therefore that put a knife into the hand of a stupid schoolmaster called Ravaillac? During the entire year preceding the event, attempted assassination was a subject of conversation in certain European courts. Before this last Bourbon succeeded the last Valois, this same ‘grand design’ had been the jewel in the crown of a plan of Franciscan inspiration, which was to have been executed by Louis and Henri de Guise, one of whom became Pope and the other King of France. But two or three thrusts of the dagger in the halls of the Château de Blois destroyed a plan that is completely unknown to the historians. (V.E. Michelet, Le secret de la chevalerie)
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