75-24,957 SCHUCHARD, Marsha Keith Manatt, 1940- FREE4ASONRY, SECRET SOCIETIES, AND THE CONTINUITY OF THE OCCULT TRADITIONS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. The University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D., 1975 Literature, general Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Afbor, Michigan 48106 @ Copyright by Marsha Keith Manatt Schuchard 1975 TUIC niCCCOTATirtM LI AC DCCM MIPRnCII Men CYAPTI V AC RCPCIX/CR Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FREEMASONRY, SECRET SOCIETIES, AND THE CONTINUITY OF THE OCCULT TRADITIONS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE by MARSHA KEITH MANATT SCHUCHARD, B.A., M.A. DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN MAY 1975 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FREEMASONRY, SECRET SOCIETIES, AND THE CONTINUITY OF THE OCCULT TRADITIONS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FREEMASONRY, SECRET SOCIETIES, AND THE CONTINUITY OF THE OCCULT TRADITIONS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE Publication No. ___________ Marsha Keith Manatt Schuchard, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 1975 Supervising Professor: Charles Rossman This dissertation examines the role of Freemasonry and related secret societies in the trans­ mission of the occult traditions in English literary history from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. The study draws upon recent Renaissance and Hebrew scholarship to define those elements of vision-inducement and magical theories of art which were developed into the syncretic Renaissance tradition of Cabalistic and Hermetic symbolism. After the publication and subsequent suppression of this occult tradition during the Rosicrucian agitation in Germany, Rosicrucianism was assimilated into the secret traditions of Freemasonry in England in the mid-seventeenth century. Many English literary figures, such as John Dee, Francis Bacon, Elias Ashmole, and John Milton, were involved in this theosophical, millenial reform movement. From the merging of the neo-Rosicrucian '•invisible college" into the Royal Academy of Science in the 1660's, Freemasonry became the repository of contradictory strains of thought— rational egalitarian iv.. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. deism and occultist hierarchical theism. Both strains influenced Samuel Butler, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and their contemporaries in France. The 1753 splitting of English Freemasonry into radical "Ancient" lodges and conservative "Modern" lodges, and the proliferation of occultist "high degrees" in European Masonry, are shown to he major factors in the scholarly lacunae and confusion about what happened to Rosicrucian occultism after it went "underground" from the 1630's to 1860’s, Swedenborg and Mesmer developed Cabalistic visionary techniques which were practiced in occultist lodges in Europe. This study analyzes for the first time the impact of these Masonic theories of Animal Magnetism and psycho-political regeneration on English secret societies. Special emphasis is given to William Blake from 178O to 1827, showing the involvement of Blake*s Swedenborg Society with the occultist, revolution­ ary "Illuminism" of European Masonry. Materials from Swedenborgian and Masonic archives and publications document the Masonic activities and Mesmeric practices of Blake and his associates in the arts world, Wolsh Druid societies, astrological groups, and British Israelite movement. The study traces the role of John Varley and Bulwer-Lytton in transmitting documents, oral instructions, and ritual practices from Blake’s societies through Victorian Rosicrucian-Masonic orders to Yeats’s Cabalistic society, Blakean occultism influenced the Rossetti family and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Tennyson family, and the English colony at Florence. The differences between the "spiritualism" of Mrs. Browning and Harriet Martineau and the Rosicrucian "magic" of V,. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Bulwer-Lytton and Richard Burton are discussed in order to define the complex theosophical milieu which emerged by the 1880’s. Yeats revitalized the artistic significance of this neo-Masonic occult tradition. He drew upon Masonic archives and oral materials in order to accurately place Blake in an occultist, millenial tradition, rooted in seventeenth-century Rosicrucianism and carried on in Blake’s day by fellow Masonic Illumines in Europe, such as Goethe, Lavater, Cagliostro, Mozart, Grabianka, Lafayette, Saint-Martin, and the Duke of Orleans. Thus, for nearly three centuries, Freemasonry provided a continuous reservoir of occultist philosophy, visionary training, and political radicalism, which linked many English writers with an international world of ideas. vi.. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Pages Introduction 1 - 9 Chapter I: The Cabala, Sexual Magic, and the Jewish Visionary Traditions 10- 58 Chapter II: The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance, and the Development of the Syncretic Occult Tradition............................ 59 - 93 Chapter III: The Rosicrucian Furore in Seventeenth- century Germany and England .......... 9k - 120 Chapter IV: Freemasonry and the 11 Invisible College" in Seventeenth-century England 121 - 165 Chapter V: Eighteenth-century Freemasonry— Deism versus Occultism .............. 166 - 229 Chapter VI: Freemasonry in England in the late Eighteenth Century— the "Iiluminized Lodges" end the Occult Traditions .... 230 - J06 Vii.. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pages Chapter VII: William Blake and the Swedenborgian, Masonic Milieu in London in the 17SO's and 1790;s 307 - 373 Chapter VIII: Cabalistic and Magnetic Visions among the London Swedenborgians in the and 1790's 37^ - 391 1 7 8 0 's Chapter IX: William Blake and the "Illuminized" Prophets—-Hichard Brothers, Joanna Southcott, and their Followers 392 - hZh Chapter X: The Visionary Years, 1790-1803: Blake's Work at Lambeth and Felpham b25 - ^75 Chapter XI: Blake in London, 180^-1827: Rosi- crucians, Astrologers, and John Varley h76 - 505 Chapter XII: The Nineteenth-century Tradition of Blakean Occultism: the German Connection and the English Line of Descent ............................... 506 - 550 Chapter XIIIs The Nineteenth-century Masonic and Rosicrucian Channel of Occultism 551 - 598 Chapter XIV: The Victorian Magnetisers ..... 599 - 618 Chapter XV: W.B, Yeats and Fin de Siecle Occultism 619 “ 670 Conclusion 671 - 672 viii. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Freemasonry, Secret Societies, and the Continuity of the Occult Traditions in English Literature When W.B. Yeats suggested in 1893 that William Blake was probably a member of a Rosicrucian Society— the "Hermetic Students of the G. D."^— and held up his work on Blake to Madame Blavatsky as proof of his own 2 "obedience" to the "work of theosophy," he was widely ridiculed or patronized by most literary critics. Among the "great deluge" of Yeats and Blake scholarship since then, there has still been no serious study of Yeats's ground-breaking critical edition of Blake's works or any thorough scholarly investigation of why Yeats believed in Blake's association with an occultist secret society. But any objective examination of Yeats's occultist milieu and of his active participation in secret societies, which had handed down from generation to generation a corpus of ritual instruction and magical theory, soon makes clear that Yeats knew much more about Blake and his era than he has been given credit for. When the historical antecedents and lines of transmission which issued in the theosophical societies of the nineteenth-century fin de siecle are traced back to their origins, a verifiable, consistent, and complex picture of actual secret societies— with oral traditions, private archives, and hereditary instruction— emerges as an important "non-literary" source for many of the ^ Edwin Ellis and W.B. Yeats, eds. The Works of William Blake (London: Quaritch, 1893)t 2k. A W.B. Yeats, Memoirs. ed, Denis Donoghue (New York: Macmillan, 1973)» P» 281. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. preoccupations and themes of major works of English and Continental literature. The omission of this historical phenomenon from English literary research has left many gaps and theoretical red herrings in the scholarly in­ formation available on a wide range of English writers— from Milton to Blake to Bulwer-Lytton to Yeats, with a host of figures in between. The reasons for the inadequate research on the role of secret societies in English literary history are many, but the predominant ones are, first, a rationalist bias on the part of scholars against occultism in general, and, second, the difficulty of access to the documents and archival materials of groups which maintained strict vows of secrecy. Thus, Yeats's statement that Blake would have said nothing about his Rosicrucian initiation, "even if he had received it" (Ellis and Yeats, I, 2k), was not as lame as it seemed to rationalist critics, but it did point to a major area of scholarly difficulty. Fortunately, the probing work of many contempor­ ary Hebraic and .Renaissance scholars is beginning to shed much light on the origins and nature of the occult tradi- 3 tions and their impact on Renaissance art, and works in progress by George Harper and William O'Donnell on the unpublished occult journals and autobiographical novel of Yeats should yield new material on late nineteenth-century "schools" of occultism. But the major gap between these areas of ongoing investigation occurs in the eighteenth century, a gap which has left Blake's 3 Especially valuable are the works of Gershom Scholem on the Cabala and traditions of Jewish mysticism, and of Francis Yates, D.P. Walker, and Robert J.W, Evans on Renaissance occultism and secret societies. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.