Secret societies and subversive movementsWebster, Nesta Helen
History
Secret societies and subversive movements
Webster, Nesta Helen
Secret societies
Unconcerned about politics: hostile to the insane dreams of
Socialism and Communism, which it abhors--as both are but disguised
conspiracies of brutal force and selfishness against honest
labour; the Society cares but little about the outward human
management of the material world. The whole of its aspirations are
directed towards the occult truths of the visible and invisible
worlds.[711]
It will be seen that this declaration is diametrically opposed to that
of the Maçonnerie Mixte. Nevertheless, Madame Blavatsky so far departed
from her purely occult programme after her arrival in India in 1879 as
to reconstruct the society on the basis of "Universal Brotherhood." This
idea was completely absent from her first scheme; "the Brotherhood plank
in the Society's future platform," wrote her coadjutor Colonel Olcott,
"was not thought of."[712] It was over this plank, however, that Mrs.
Besant was able to walk to the Supreme Council of the Maçonnerie Mixte,
and adding Liberty and Equality to the principle of Fraternity to
establish Co-Masonry on a definitely political basis as a preparation
for the Socialist doctrines her teacher had "abhorred."
In the matter of esoteric doctrines Mrs. Besant again departed from the
path laid down by Madame Blavatsky, whose aim had been to rehabilitate
Buddhism in India, representing the teachings of Gautama Buddha as an
advance on Hinduism.[713] Mrs. Besant, however, came to regard the
doctrines of the Brahmins as the purer faith. Yet it was neither
Buddhism nor Hinduism in a pure form that she introduced to the
Co-Masons of the West, but an occult system of her own devising, wherein
Mahatmas, Swamis, and Gurus were incongruously mingled with the
charlatans of eighteenth-century France. Thus in the Co-Masonic lodges
we find "the King" inscribed over the Grand Master's chair in the East,
in the North the empty chair of "the Master"--to which, until recently,
all members were required to bow in passing--and over it a picture,
veiled in some lodges, of the same mysterious personage. Should the
neophyte enquire, "Who is the King?" he may be told that he is the King
who is to come from India--whether he is identical with the young Hindu
Krishnamurti adopted by Mrs. Besant in 1909 is not clear--whilst the
question "Who is the Master?" will probably be met with the reply that
he is "the Master of all true Freemasons throughout the world," which
the enquirer takes to mean the head of the religion to which he happens
to belong--Christ, Mohammed, or another. But in the third degree the
astonishing information is confided with an appearance of great secrecy
that he is no other than the famous Comte de Saint-Germain, who did not
really die in 1784, but is still alive to-day in Hungary under the name
of Ragocsky. In yet a higher degree, however, the initiate may be told
that the Master is in reality Prince Eugene of Austria.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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