CHAPTER XXXVIII

FREEMASONRY AND THE GNOSTICS

HE hypothesis which seeks to trace a connection between Gnosticism and Freemasonry, and perhaps even an origin of the latter from the former, has been repeatedly advanced, and is therefore worthy of consideration.

The latest instance is in a work of Mr. C. W. King, published in 1864, under the title of The

Gnostics and their Remains, Ancient and Mediaval.

Mr. King is not a Freemason, and, like all the writers non-Masonic, such as Barnell, Robison, De Quincey, and a host of others, who have attempted to discuss the history and character of Freemasonry, he has shown a vast amount of ignorance. In fact, these self-constituted critics, when treating of subjects with which they are not and can not be familiar, remind one of the busybodies of Plautus, of whom he has said that, while pretending to know everything, they in fact know nothing-" Qui omnia se simulant scise nec quicquam sciunt."

Very justly has Mr. Hughan called this work of King's, so far as its Masonic theories are concerned, one of an "unmasonic and unhistoric character."

But King, it must be admitted, was not the first writer who sought to trace Freemasonry to a Gnostic origin.

In a pamphlet published in 1725, a copy of which has been preserved in the Bodleian Library, among the manuscripts of Dr. Rawlinson, and which bears the title of Two Letters to a Friend. The First concerning the Society of Free-Masons. The Second, giving an Account of the Most Ancient Order of Gormogons, etc., we find, in the first letter, on the Freemasons, the following passage:

"But now, Sir, to draw towards a conclusion; and to give my opinion seriously, concerning these prodigious Virtuosi ;-My belief is, that if they fall under any denomination at all, or belong to any

sect of men, which has hitherto appeared in the world, they may be ranked among the GNOSTICS, who took their original from Simon Magus; these were a set of men, which ridiculed not only Christianity, but even rational morality; teaching that they should be saved by their capacious knowledge and understanding of no mortal man could tell what. They babbled of an amazing intelligence they had, from nobody knows whence. They amused and puzzled the hair-brained, unwary crowd with superstitious interpretations of extravagant talismanic characters and abstruse significations of uncommon Cabalistic words; which exactly agrees with the proceedings of our modern Freemasons.'

Although the intrinsic value of this pamphlet was not such as to have preserved it from the literary tomb which would have consigned it to oblivion, had not the zeal of an antiquary preserved a single copy as a relic, yet the notion of some relation of Freemasonry to Gnosticism was not in later years altogether abandoned.

Hutchinson says that "under our present profession of Masonry, we allege our morality was originally deduced from the school of Pythagoras, and that the Basilidian system of religion furnished us with some tenets, principles, and hieroglyphics." Basilides, the founder of the sect which bears his name, was the most eminent of the Egyptian Gnostics.

1

About the time of the fabrication of the High Degrees on the continent of Europe, a variety of opinions of the origin of Masonry -many of them absurd-sprang up among Masonic scholars. Among these theorists, there were not a few who traced the Order to the early Christians, because they found it, as they supposed, among the Gnostics, and especially its most important sect, the Basilidians.

Some German and French writers have also maintained the hypothesis of a connection, more or less intimate, between the Gnostics and the Masons.

I do not know that any German writer has positively asserted the existence of this connection. But the doctrine has, at times, been alluded to without any absolute disclaimer of a belief in its truth.

Thus Carl Michaeler, the author of a Treatise on the Phoenician

1" Spirit of Masonry," lect. x., p. 106.

Mysteries, has written some observations on the subject in an article published by him in 1784, in the Vienna Journale für Freimaurer, on the analogy between the Christianity of the early times and Freemasonry. In this essay he adverts to the theory of the Gnostic origin of Freemasonry. He is, however, very guarded in his deductions, and says conditionally that, if there is any connection between the two, it must be traced to the Gnosticism of Clement of Alexandria, and on which simply as a school of philosophy and history it may have been founded, while the differences between the two now existing must be attributed to changes of human conception in the intervening centuries.

But, in fact, the Gnosticism of Clement was something entirely different from that of Basilides, to whom Hutchinson and King attribute the origin of our symbols, and whom Clement vigorously opposed in his works. It was what he himself calls it, "a true gnosis or Christian philosophy on the basis of faith." It was that higher knowledge, or more perfect state of Christian faith, to which St. Paul is supposed to allude when he says, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, that he made known to those who were perfect a higher wisdom.

Reghellini speaks more positively, and says that the symbols and doctrines of the Ophites, who were a Gnostic sect, passed over into Europe, having been adapted by the Crusaders, the Rosicrucians, and the Templars, and finally reached the Masons.1

Finally, I may refer to the Leland MS., the author of which distinctly brought this doctrine to the public view, by asserting that the Masons were acquainted with the "facultye of Abrac," by which expression he alludes to the most prominent and distinctive of the Gnostic symbols. That the fabricator of this spurious document should thus have intimated the existence of a connection between Gnosticism and Freemasonry would lead us to infer that the idea of such a connection was not wholly unfamiliar to the Masonic mind at that period-an inference which will be strengthened by the passage already quoted from the pamphlet in the Rawlinson collection, which was published about a quarter of a century before.

But before we can enter into a proper discussion of this im

1 "Maçonnerie consideries comme re Resultat des Relig. Egypt. Juive et Chretienne," tom. i., p. 291.

portant question, it will be expedient for the sake of the general reader that something should be said of the Gnostics and of the philosophical and religious system which they professed.

I propose, therefore, very briefly to reply to the questions, What is Gnosticism, and Who were the Gnostics?

Scarcely had the light of Christianity dawned upon the world before a multitude of heresies sprang up to disturb the new religion. Among these Gnosticism holds the most important position. The title of the sect is derived from the Greek word yvuois (gnosis), "wisdom or knowledge," and was adopted in a spirit of ostentation, to intimate that the disciples of the sect were in possession of a higher degree of spiritual wisdom than was attainable by those who had not been initiated into their mysteries.

At so early a period did the heresy of Gnosticism arise in the Christian Church, that we find the Apostle Paul warning the converts to the new faith of the innovations on the pure doctrine of Christ, and telling his disciple Timothy to avoid "profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called." The translators of the authorized version have so rendered the passage. But, in view of the greater light that has since their day been thrown upon the religious history and spirit of the apostolical age, and the real nature of the Gnostic element which disturbed it, we may bet ter preserve the true sense of the original Greek by rendering it "oppositions of the false gnosis."

There were then two kinds of Gnosis, or Gnosticism—the true and the false, a distinction which St. Paul himself makes in a passage in his Epistle to the Corinthians, in which he speaks of the wisdom which he communicated to the perfect, in contradistinction to the wisdom of the world.

Of this true Gnosticism, Clement declared himself to be a follower. With it and Freemasonry there can be no connection, except that modified one admitted by Michaeler, which relates only to the investigation of philosophical and historical truth.

The false Gnosis to which the Apostle refers is the Gnosticism which is the subject of our present inquiry.

When John the Baptist was preaching in the Wilderness, and for some time before, there were many old philosophical and religious systems which, emanating from the East, all partook of the mystical character peculiar to the Oriental mind. These various systems were

then, in consequence of the increased communication of different nations which followed the conquests of Alexander of Macedon, beginning to approximate each other. The disciples of Plato were acquiring some of the doctrines of the Eastern Magi, and these in turn were becoming more or less imbued with the philosophy of Greece. The traditions of India, Persia, Egypt, Chaldea, Judea, Greece, and Rome were commingling in one mass, and forming out of the conglomeration a mystical philosophy and religion which partook of the elements of all the ingredients out of which it was composed, and yet contained within its bosom a mysticism which was peculiar to itself.

This new system was Gnosticism, which derived its leading doctrines from Plato, from the Zend-Avesta, the Cabala, the Vedas, and the hieroglyphs of Egypt. It taught as articles of faith the existence of a Supreme Being, invisible, inaccessible, and incomprehensible, who was the creator of a spiritual world consisting of divine intelligences called aons, emanating from him, and of matter which was eternal, the source of evil and the antagonist of the Supreme Being.

One of these aons, the lowest of all, called the Demiurge, created the world out of matter, which, though eternal, was inert and formless.

The Supreme Father, or First Principle of all things, had dwelt from all eternity in a pleroma, or fullness of inaccessible light, and hence he was called Bythos, or the Abyss, to denote the unfathomable nature of his perfections. "This Being," says Dr. Burton, in his able exposition of the Gnostic system, in the Bampton Lectures, "by an operation purely mental, or by acting upon himself, produced two other beings of different sexes, from whom by a series of descents, more or less numerous according to different schemes, several pairs of beings were formed, who were called aons, from the periods of their existence before time was, or emanations from the mode of their production. These successive cons or emanations appear to have been inferior each to the preceding; and their existence was indispensable to the Gnostic scheme, that they might account for the creation of the world, without making God the author of evil. These aons lived through countless ages with their first Father. But the system of emanations seems to have resembled that of concentric circles, and they gradually deteriorated as they