A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult (7 page)

In the years that followed, a mass of evidence - some credible, most of it hysterical rubbish - appeared, linking freemasonry in general and the Illuminati in particular to a number of plots to subvert European civilization using, among other methods, violent means. Weishaupt's declaration that the revolution he had in mind would be a moral one and that the old regime would "disappear without violence" was, not surprisingly, ignored in the mass paranoia. By the time of the Revolution, if any had ever paid heed to this proclamation, they now saw the real outcome of Illuminist politics. Conspiracy theories are not limited to our own time and place. By 1789, for the popular mind, secret societies were behind the convulsions rocking France.

The most influential proponent of the conspiracy theory approach to the Revolution was the splenetic Abbe Barruel, a priest and ex-mason who had escaped the Terror by taking refuge in England. In a daunting four volume work, Memoires pour sevir a 1'historie dujacobinism (Memoirs Illustrating the History ofJacobinism) (1797), Barruel revealed the secret sinister plots against the monarchy and Church hatched in Masonic lodges across the continent. For most readers the sensational style, impressive detail and persuasive conviction obscured the fact that the Abbe was, for the most part, making it all up. Years later, in Nightmare Abbey (1818), poking fun at the Gothics, Thomas Love Peacock would use Barruel as the source of Scythrop Glowry's ludicrous "passion for reforming the world." Peacock's friend Percy Shelley, however, was enthralled by Barruel, reading the Memoirs repeatedly, and in another historical irony, developing a passionate belief in Weishaupt's ideals, the condemnation of which was the aim of Barruel's book.

Shelley's fascination with Barruel grew out of his love for secret societies - a long fragment remains of a story about the Assassins - and he was more than likely moved by passages such as:

The name of Illuminee which this Sect ... has chosen, is of ancient standing in the annals of disorganizing Sophistry. It was the name which Manes and his disciples first affected, gloriantur Manichaei se de caselo illiminatos. The first Rosicrucians also, who appeared in Germany, called themselves Illuminees ...

Later Romantics like Gerard de Nerval and Fernando Pessoa would also trace this occult family tree, and a species of mystical genealogy remains a standard trope in popular books of the genre.

Barruel's masterwork is no dry factual account:

At an early period of the French Revolution there appeared a sect calling itself Jacobin, and teaching that all men were equal and free! In the name of their equality and disorganizing liberty, they trampled under foot the altar and the throne; they stimulated all nations to rebellion, and aimed at plunging them ultimately into the horrors of anarchy ... Whence originated these men, who seem to arise from the bowels of the earth, who start into existence with their plans and their projects, their tenets and their thunders, their means and ferocious resolves; whence, I say, this devouring sect? Whence this swarm of adepts, these systems, this frantic rage against the altar and the throne, against every institution, whether civil or religious, so much respected by our ancestors?

The answer is out of the bosom of freemasonry. We've seen that to some degree, freemasonry in some forms housed some elements of radical politics, or rather that some Freemasons were also enlightened in a social and political sense. Also, in the years running up to the Revolution, enlightened intellectuals like Voltaire, d'Alembert, Diderot, and Helvetius (a central source for Weishaupt's worldview) did meet in a kind of secret academy, modelled to some degree on a Masonic lodge. Masonic lodges provided a milieu in which members of different social strata could meet on equal terms, the aristocracy with the bourgeoisie, a characteristic that the impecunious Mozart in Vienna appreciated greatly. And freemasonry in the late 18th century was characterized by a high intellectual prestige, freedom of thought, and a curiosity about new ideas. The Grand Orient Lodge of France numbered Voltaire, Bailly, Helvetius and Danton among its members. But freemasonry en masse was not an agent of the Revolution. Likewise, at the time of the Illuminati scandal, secret societies with the opposite intent existed as well. In Prussia, for example, Masonic Rosicrucianism sought to distinguish itself from the Illuminati and its radical politics, warning of its roots in deism, and calling for a renewed resistance to rationalism, egalitarianism and irreligion. And Weishaupt was not the only character eager to appropriate the Masonic network for his own ends. The Jesuits wanted to as well, as did the followers of Mesmer, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin and other occultists; it was not until their influence was felt that freemasonry took on its mystical character. Yet for the average citizen, these distinctions made little impact. The hidden hand of freemasonry was the evil genius behind the collapse of the ancien regime, and its sinister agents were still at work, plotting further mayhem.

Barruel was aware that Weishaupt's association with freemasonry was purely mercenary, and that the Illuminati's occult trappings were a kind of sheep's clothing cloaking the radical wolves. Yet, Barruel seemed to believe that although antithetical, Weishaupt's and the original Illuminati housed identical threats:

He must have had some notion of the antient Illuminees, for he adopted their name, and the disorganizing principles of their horrid system. These notions were strengthened, without doubt, by his favourite application to the disorganizing mysteries of Manichaeism ... But, perfect atheist as he was, and scorning every idea of a God, he soon despised the twofold God, an Antient Illuminism, and adopted the doctrines of Manes only in as much as they threatened every government, and led to universal anarchy ...

Among other fascinating, if unbelievable, accounts, Barruel tells his readers of his own harrowing experiences in his confrontation with the order. "During the last twenty years," he writes, "it was difficult, especially in Paris, to meet persons who did not belong to the society of Masonry." He goes on:

I was invited to a dinner at a friend's house and was the only profane in the midst of a large party of Masons. Dinner over and the servants ordered to withdraw, it was proposed to form themselves into a lodge, and to initiate me. I persisted in my refusal, and particularly refused to take the oath of keeping a secret, the very object of which was unknown to me. They dispensed with the oath, but I still refused. They became more pressing, telling me that Masonry was perfectly innocent and that its morality was unobjectionable: In reply I asked whether it was better than that of the Gospel. They only answered by forming themselves into a lodge, when began all those grimaces and childish ceremonies which are described in books of Masonry, such as Jachin and Boaz. I attempted to make my escape, but in vain ...

Fearing he would not be allowed to leave unless he submit, Barruel gave way, but not before he was assured that he would not be asked to do anything that would go against his conscience. At that point the brethren gathered round him, and the initiation began:

At length the Venerable with the utmost gravity put the following question: `Brother, are you disposed to execute all the orders of the Grand Master, though you were to receive contrary orders from a king, an emperor, or any other sovereign whatever?' My answer was `No.' `What? No?,' replies the Venerable with surprise! `Are you only entered among us to betray our secrets! Would you hesitate between the interests of Masonry and those of the profane? You are not aware then that there is not one of our swords but is ready to pierce the throat of a traitor.'

At which point, Barruel tears off his blindfold and shouts his defiance.

Immediately the whole lodge clap their hands in sign of applause, and the Venerable compliments me on my constancy. `Such men are for us, men of resolution and courage!'

`What,' said I, `men of resolution! And who do you find who resist your threats! You, yourselves, gentleman, have not all said YES to this question: and if you have said it, how is it possible that you can persuade me that your mysteries contain nothing against honour or conscience?'

The tone I assumed had thrown the lodge into confusion. The brethren surrounded. me, telling me I had taken things too much in earnest, and in too literal a sense: that they had never pretended to engage in anything contrary to the duties of every true Frenchman, and that in spite of all my resistance I should nevertheless be admitted. The Venerable soon restored order with a few strokes of his mallet. He then informed me that I was passed to the degree of Master, adding, that if the secret was not given to me, it was only because a more regular lodge, and held with ordinary ceremonies, was necessary on such an occasion. In the meanwhile he gave me the signs and passwords for the third degree, as he had done for the other two. This was sufficient for me to be admitted into a regular Lodge, and now we were all brethren. As for me, I had been metamorphosed into apprentice, fellowcraft, and master, all in one evening ...

At some later point in his membership, Barruel did receive the final initiation, and was made privy to the central Masonic secret. He describes the revelation in the third person. After an apprentice had taken his oath, the Abbe tells us, "the Master said the following words to him: `My dear brother, the secret of Masonry consists in these words EQUALITY AND LIBERTY; all men are equal and free; all men are brethren." This formula, he tells us, was later expanded to mean "the twofold principle of liberty and equality is unequivocally explained by war against Christ and his Altars, war against Kings and their Thrones!"

William Blake

William Blake (1757-1827) is not usually considered an occultist. For a long time, the standard view of Blake was that he was a natural mystic, naive in the Romantic sense, unintellectual, primitive, and uninfluenced by book learning of any sort. Although his `prophetic books' were thought incomprehensible, in some ways he was considered a `simple' poet; poems like "The Tyger" and others from Songs of Innocence and of Experience still turn up regularly in anthologies of childrens' poetry. Yet the image of Blake as a kind of unlearned genius, singing his songs as unselfconsciously as a bird, is wrong. Even if we plump for Blake as an 18th century shaman, we are still somewhat off the mark. He was, of course, inspired; Blake considered himself a prophet, and accounts of his visionary experiences, both by himself and those by others, are clear evidence that he had some strange faculty for perceiving what he called the spirit world, and which we today would consider expressions of the unconscious. Yet, as the late poet and Blakean scholar Kathleen Raine makes clear, it is a mistake to think of Blake as "an example of the spontaneous manifestation of archetypes." In books like Blake and Tradition (1968), Raine argues persuasively that Blake saw himself as a poet in the hermetic tradition, drawing on the rich underground stream of ancient magical and occult knowledge, and hammering out in his didactic and aphoristic verse a new synthesis of what she calls the "perennial philosophy." Yet Blake was not only an astute student of the occult thinkers of the past. The London Blake lived in was awash in the same currents of magical thought and radical politics that flooded France, and the research of scholars like Marsha Keith Schuchard suggests that the image of Blake as a kind of holy man, aloof from the influences of his own time, is inaccurate. Though not mad, as some of his contemporaries believed, Blake certainly confessed to some eccentric beliefs, and it would not be wholly mistaken to see him in the company of those we might consider crackpots, cranks and charlatans.

Blake's natural affinity to mystical visions and paranormal events surfaced early; as a young boy he was beaten by his father for saying he saw angels in a tree, and on another occasion he was saved from a second beating only through the solicitations of his mother. Throughout his life friends and associates commented on Blake's distracted air; there is evidence that at times his visions interfered with his capacity for work (as an engraver) and he may, like other visionaries (C.G. Jung comes to mind), have experienced at least one nearpsychotic episode. Blake's confidence in the truth of his visions (the earliest perhaps a sighting of God at the age of four in Soho) led him to reject the rationalist psychology that would label such things madness and to explore alternative accounts of reality. Blake is important in the history of occultism because he stands at the threshold of the radical split between the scientific and hermetic worldviews that ushered in the 19th century. Unlike his contemporary Goethe, Blake did not try to keep united these sundering visions of mankind and the world. Blake was not anti-intellectual, but he knew that the rise of scientism - the belief that the methods and vocabulary of science can eventually account for the whole of reality - spelled disaster for the spiritual in man. Against the rising trend to explain man's interior world in terms of sensory impressions and associative psychology - Locke's tabula rasa - Blake declared instead that the imagination was the source of all, and that the physical external world of the senses was a mere shadow of the infinite realms within. In different ways in the 19th century writers as disparate as Bulwer Lytton, Eliphas Levi, Arthur Rimbaud, W.B. Yeats, Blake's first editor, and many others would carry on this struggle, basically restating in their individual ways Blake's original hermetic insight. It is, in fact, the central Romantic theme. Blake is doubly interesting in this sense because, although a man of the Enlightenment, he was practically unknown during his own life, and only came to prominence in 1898 through the efforts of Yeats and his fellow editor, E .J. Ellis. Thus, as we will see, Blake, the forerunner of the Romantics, became a public figure and prophet at a time when the inheritors of his visionary flame had nearly burned themselves out, and his great cause of the imagination had dwindled to a decadent withdrawal from the world.

Blake's earliest influence - aside from the visitations of angels - was the Bible, but growing up in a family of dissenters, it was not unusual for him to be drawn to interpretations of holy script that ran counter to the orthodox account. His first introduction to Swedenborg may have been through his older brother James; in any case, in a dissenting household a variety of unorthodox beliefs were probably readily available. That Swedenborg spoke soberly and persuasively about visits to heaven and hell no doubt interested the young mystic. It is even possible that Blake may have seen Swedenborg; in 1772, the last year of his life, the magus of Stockholm lived in a lodging house in Clerkenwell. Blake would have been fifteen then, and could very easily have come across the philosopher.