Secret societies and subversive movementsWebster, Nesta Helen
History
Secret societies and subversive movements
Webster, Nesta Helen
Secret societies
The first of these societies to be founded in England was the _Societas
Rosicruciana in Anglia_, founded in 1867 by Robert Wentworth Little on
instructions received from abroad. Only Master Masons are admitted--a
procedure not condemned by Grand Lodge of England, which regards the
S.R.I.A. as a perfectly innocuous body. Although neither polical nor
anti-Christian, but, on the contrary, containing distinctly Christian
elements and claiming to descend from Christian Rosenkreutz--a claim
which must be dismissed as an absurdity--the S.R.I.A. is nevertheless
largely Cabalistic,[722] dealing with the forces of Nature, alchemy,
etc. If its progenitors are really to be traced further back than the
Rosicrucians of the nineteenth century--Ragon, Eliphas Lévi, and Kenneth
Mackenzie--they must be sought amongst certain esoteric Masons in
Hungary and also amongst the French Martinistes, whose rituals doubtless
derived from a kindred source. It will be remembered that Marlines
Pasqually bequeathed to his disciples a large number of Jewish
manuscripts which were presumably preserved in the archives of the
Martiniste Lodge at Lyons. The Order of Martinistes has never ceased to
exist, and the President of the Suprême Conseil, Dr. Gérard Encausse,
well known as "Papus," an avowed Cabalist, only died in 1916. To these
archives another famous Cabalist, the renegade Abbé, Alphonse Louis
Constant, who assumed the name of Eliphas Lévi, may well have had
access. It is said that one of Eliphas Lévi's most distinguished
disciples, the occultist Baron Spedalieri of Marseilles, was a member of
the "Grand Lodge of Solitary Brethren of the Mountain," an "Illumined
Brother of the Ancient Restored Order of Manicheans," a high member of
the Grand Orient, and also a "High Illuminate of the Martinistes."
Before his death in 1875 Eliphas Lévi announced that in 1879 a new
political and religious "universal Kingdom" would be established, and
that it would be possessed by "him who would have the keys of the East."
The manuscript containing this prophecy was passed on by Baron
Spedalieri to Edward Maitland, who in his turn gave it to a leading
member of S.R.I.A., by whom it was published in English.[723]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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