Mysteria

History of the Secret Doctrines & Mystic Rites of Ancient Religions & Medieval and Modern Secret Orders

MYSTERIA Otto Henne am Rhyn

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Mysteria Mysteria, History of the Secret Doctrines & Mystic Rites of Ancient Religions & Medieval and Modern Secret Orders Author: Otto Henne am Rhyn

Cover image: W anderer above the sea of fog, Caspar David Friedrich Lay-out: www.burokd.nl

ISBN 978-94-92355-22-5 Š 2017 Revised publication by:

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History of the Secret Doctrines & Mystic Rites of Ancient Religions & Medieval and Modern Secret Orders

MYSTERIA Otto Henne am Rhyn

VAMzzz

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Otto Henne am Rhyn Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, August 26 1828 – Weiz, Styria, Austria-Hungary, May 1 1914

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contents Translator's note 9 PART FIRST: Mysteries of the East and of Barbarous Nations 11 1. Introduction 11 2. The Gods 15 3. Egypt 19 4. The Higher Development of Egyptian Religion 23 5. A Reformation in the Land of Nile 27 6. The Egyptian Realm of the Dead 29 7. The Secret Teaching of the Priests of Nileland 31 8. Babylon and Ninive 37 9. Zoroaster and the Persians 43 10. Brahmans and Buddhists 45 11. Secret Leagues of Barbarous Peoples 48 PART SECOND: The Grecian Mysteries and the Roman Bacchanalia 51 1. Hellas 51 2. Hellenic Divine Worship 54 3. The Hellenic Mysteries 59 4. The Eleusinian Mysteries 63 5. The Mysteries of Samothrace 71 6. The Mysteries of Crete 73 7. The Dionysia 74 8. The Roman Bacchanalia 77 9. Debased Mysteries from the East 80

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PART THIRD: The Pythagorean League and Other Secret Associations 87 1. Pythagoras 87 2. The Pythagoreans 94 3. The Orphici 99 4. Mysterious Personages of Ancient Times 102 PART FOURTH: Son of Man. Son of God 107 1. Hellenism and Judaism 107 2. The Essenes 111 3. Christianism 114 4. Jesus 118 5. The Early Christians 124 6. The New Testament 127 7. The Elements of the Church 132 PART FIFTH: A Pseudo-Messiah. A Lying Prophet 135 1. Apollonius of Tyana 135 2. Alexander, the False Prophet 142 PART SIXTH: The Knights Templar 149 1. The Middle Age 149 2. The Templars 152 3. The Secrets of the Templars 156 4. The Downfall of the Knights Templar 160

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PART SEVENTH: The Femgerichte 169 1. Courts of Justice in the Middle Age 169 2. The Secret Tribunal 174 3. The End of the Feme 183 PART EIGHTH: Stonemasons’ Lodges of the Middle Ages 185 1. Medieval Architecture 185 2. The Stonemasons' Lodges of Germany 187 3. French Craftsmen 192 4. The English Stonemasons 196 ASTROLOGERS and ALCHEMISTS 197 PART NINTH: Rise and Constitution of Freemasonry 201 1. Rise of Freemasonry 201 2. Constitution of the Order 207 3. The Lodge 211 PART TENTH: Secret Societies of the Eighteenth Century 217 1. Miscellaneous Secret Societies 217 2. Obscurantist Influences 221 3. The ''High Degrees" Swindle 224 4. Apostles of Nonsense 227 5. The Swedish Rite 235 6. The New Rosicrusians 236

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PART ELEVENTH: The Illuminati and Their Era 243 1. The Illuminati 243 2. Imitations of Illuminism 253 3. Freemasonry and The French Revolution 255 PART TWELFTH: Secret Societies of Various Kinds 259 1. Societies of Wits 259 2. Imitations of Ancient Mystic Leagues 261 3. Imitations of Freemasonry 263

Post Scriptum

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Translator's note

THE MYSTERIES OF the Ancient Grecian religions; the cryptic teach-

ings and occult interpretations of the popular religious beliefs communicated to disciples by the priests in the temples of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and India: the interesting, half fabulous, half historical episode of Pythagoras and the Pythagorean League in Magna Graecia; the mystic, ascetic, and semi-monastic communities of the Therapeutae and the Essenes in Palestine a century before the birth of Jesus Christ; the later developments of Mysticism in the time of the Roman Empire, as seen in the history of Apollonius of Tyana and in Isis worship, Mithras worship, worship of the Great Mother, etc.; the secret creed and rites of the Knights Templar and the usages of the lodges of the Stonemasons in the Middle Age; the constitution and procedure of the Femgerichte of Westphalia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the origin and history and the aims of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Illuminism, and a swarm of honest and fraudulent secret organizations in modern’ times: all these topics 9

have before been made subject-matter of numerous learned tractates or of popular compends; but hitherto these doctrines, rites, associations, have not been studied in their unity, in their mutual relation. One service which the author of this work renders to the student of this particular phase of human psychology the longing for mystery and secret associations is that he develops this relationship, thus enabling the reader to get a clear understanding of the whole subject.

But the author does very much more than to coordinate the facts of mystic associations. He is both a scholar and an artist. Having amassed whatever information regarding the Mysteries and allied phenomena is accessible in universal literature, he handles his materials with the skill of a consummate master of style and of the art of popular exposition. The result is a history of the ancient Mysteries and of their counterparts and imitations in later times, as authentic as the most painstaking research could make it, yet possessing all the charm and grace of a literary masterpiece.

Joseph Fitzgerald

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PART NINTH

Rise and Constitution of Freemasonry

1. Rise of Freemasonry

THE REFORMATION AND the events connected with it had given

people much matter of meditation. But the intolerance shown by the authorities and by the members of both creeds, in maltreating and persecuting their opponents, so alienated all humane minded men that secretly people began to care neither for the interest of Protestantism nor for that of Catholicism, and in the common brotherhood of mankind to disregard all differences of creed. Illuminism, which had been “good form” though in a frivolous sense among the Templars, and in a satiric sense among the Stonemasons, took a more dignified shape, not of incredulity but of earnest desire to build up, and to this consummation the English masons contributed materially.

In England people had had enough of strife over creeds, enough of persecution of Protestants under “Bloody Mary” and of Catholics under the inflexible Elizabeth, and they longed for tolerance. They derived the principles of tolerance from renascent literature and art, which made such impression that as in an earlier age the Romanic architecture, so now the Gothic, as the expression of a definite phase of belief, lost its following, and the so-called Augustan or “Renais201

sance” style an imitation of the ancient Grecian and Roman styles won the day with all who knew anything of art. The Renaissance style was brought to England by the painter Inigo Jones, who had learned his art in Italy, and who, under James L, became in 1607 superintendent general of royal constructions, and at the same time president of the Freemasons, whose lodges he reformed. Instead of the yearly general meetings he instituted quarterly meetings: such masons as adhered to the manual craft and cared nothing, for intellectual aims were permitted to go back into the trade gilds; while, on the other hand, men of talent not belonging to the mason’s trade, but who were interested in architecture and in the aspirations of the time, were taken into the lodges under the name of “accepted brethren.”

Under the altered circumstances a new, bold spirit awoke among the Freemasons, and it found support in the sentiment of brotherliness, irrespective of creeds, then everywhere prevalent This disposition of minds was promoted in an incalculable degree by the pictures drawn by Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia,” and by Sir Francis Bacon in his “New Atlantis,” of countries existing, indeed, only in their imagination, but which presented ideal conditions, such as enlightened minds might desire to realize upon this earth; also by the writings of the Bohemian preacher, Amos Komensky (latinized Comenius), who, during the Thirty Years’ War was expelled from his country by the partisans of the Emperor, and came to England in 1641 writings that condemned all churchly bigotry and pleaded for cosmopolitanism.

As men of the most diverse views, political and religious, were in the lodges, the order suffered severely during the civil commotions of the first and second revolution, but on the return of peace it 202

PART NINTH: Rise and Constitution of Freemasonry

more than recovered lost prestige. The rebuilding of London, and in particular St. Paul’s Cathedral (1662), added greatly to the fame of English masonry: Sir Christopher Wren, builder of Saint Paul’s, was of the brotherhood. But about the time of the death of William III. (1702), owing to slackness of occupation, in the building trades, the Freemason lodges became conscious of a serious defect in their organization. The members who were practically connected with the operative craft of masonry were steadily declining in number, and the “accepted” masons had become the majority. The lodges, therefore, had come to be ai sort of clubs, and this transformation spread rapidly in London.

Another influence that came in to affect the development of English freemasonry was the diffusion of deistical opinions by Locke’s school in philosophy. Though the lodges then, as now, made loud protestations of orthodoxy, they could not withdraw themselves out of the deistical atmosphere of the period.

The resultant of these different influences gained the upper hand in the clubs or lodges of the quondam masons, now Freemasons. They now aimed at a more thorough betterment of morals on a conservatively deistical basis. But the necessity of a closer organization was recognized. Two theologians, Theophilus Desaguliers (who was both a naturalist and a mathematician) and James Anderson, together with George Payne, antiquary, were the foremost men of those who, in the year 1717, effected the union of the four lodges of masons in London in one Grand Lodge, and procured the election of a Grand Master and two Grand Wardens, thus instituting the Freemasons’ Union as it exists at this day. What Jerusalem is to Jews 203

and Mecca to Mohammedans, and Rome to Catholics, that London is to Freemasons.

Henceforth the masons of England were no longer a society of handicraftsmen, but an association of men of all orders and every vocation, as also of every creed, who met together on the broad basis of humanity, and recognized no standard of human worth other than morality, kindliness and love of truth. The new Freemasons retained the symbolism of the operative masons, their language and their ritual. No longer did they build houses and churches, but the spiritual temple of humanity; they used the square no more to measure right angles of blocks of stone, but for evening the inequalities of human character, nor the compass any more to describe circles on stone, but to trace a ring of brother-love around all mankind. It was, perhaps, a picture of the young league of the Freemasons that Toland drew in his “Socratic Society” (1720), which, however, he clothed in a vesture the reverse of Grecian. The symposia or brotherly feasts of this society, their give-and-take of questions and answers, their aversion to the rule of mere physical force, to compulsory religious belief, and to creed hatred, as well as their mild and tolerant disposition and their brotherly regard for one another, remind us strongly of the ways of the Freemasons.

Though differences of creed played no part in the new masonry, nevertheless the brethren held religion in high esteem, and were steadfast upholders of the only two articles of belief that never were invented by man, but which are borne in on the mind and heart of every man, the existence of God, to wit, and the soul’s immortality.

Accordingly every lodge was opened and closed with prayer to the 204

PART NINTH: Rise and Constitution of Freemasonry

“Almighty Architect of the universe”; and in the lodge of mourning in memory of a deceased brother, this formula was used: “He has passed over into the eternal East” to that region whence light proceeds. Political parties, also, were not regarded among Freemasons: one principle alone was common to them all love of country, respect for law and order, desire for the common welfare.

Inasmuch as the league must prize unity, one of the first decrees of the Grand Lodge was one declaring illegitimate all lodges created without its sanction. Hence to this day no lodges are recognized as such which are not founded originally and mediately from London. Despite this restriction there sprung up even in the first years after the institution of the Grand Lodge a multitude of new lodges, which received authorization from the Grand Lodge.

With these numerous accessions the need of general laws became pressing, and at request of the Grand Lodge, Anderson, one of the founders, undertook to compare the existing statutes of the order with the ancient records and usages of the, Stonemasons, and to compile them in one body of law. The result was the “Book of Constitutions,” which is still the groundwork of Freemasonry. It has been printed repeatedly, and is accessible to everyone. Another foundation stone of Freemasonry was laid by the Grand Lodge in 1724, when it instituted the “committee for beneficence,” thus giving play to one of the most admirable features of the order that of giving help to the needy and unfortunate, whether within the order or without.

The inner organization of the order, finally, was completed by the introduction of the Degrees. Brothers who had filled the post of Masters, on retiring from office, did not return to the grade of 205

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A History of Missing Conspiracy Links...

Today, a tsunami of totally erroneous information about Freemasons, Illuminati, Rosicrucians and secret societies cut & pastes its way on the Internet. Spread by people with as much knowledge of the subject, as of Chinese music.

Within this context, Mysteria is like an oasis in a desert.

A must read for everyone who is curious about the facts behind the disinformation-hysteria, or who wants to explore the roots and history of still existing “secret” societies.

This book was composed by a Swiss freemason – an insider and historian in 1869 – who was posthumously banned by the Nazis. Yet despite this time span, in our days, it is more nurturing for the critical reader than ever before. Otto Henne am Rhyn takes you on a journey, back to the Mystery cults of ancient Egypt, Babylon and Greece, passes the Essenes, Orphics, Templars, the secret medieval tribunals and stone masons. This is followed by the rise of Freemasonry, insight in masonic organizations, structures and lodges who imitate Freemasonry or invented glamorous but meaningless degrees. Mysteria is also one of the very few publications, available in the English language, which offer reliable information about Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminati and the “role” of Freemasons and Illuminati in the French Revolution. www.vamzzz.com