Ordo ab Chao Volume Two: The Grand Lodge David Livingstone Sabilillah Publications Copyright © 2021 David Livingstone All rights reserved The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America Contents Title Page Copyright 1. Elizabethan Age 2. The Great Conjunction 3. The Alchemical Wedding 4. The Rosicrucian Furore 5. The Invisible College 6. 1666 7. The Royal Society 8. America 9. Redemption Through Sin 10. Oriental Kabbalah 11. The Grand Lodge 12. The Illuminati 13. The Asiatic Brethren 14. American Revolution 15. Haskalah 16. The Aryan Myth 17. The Carbonari 18. American Civil War 19. God is Dead 20. Theosophy 21. Shambhala 1. Elizabethan Age Faerie Queene As demonstrated by Frances Yates in The Occult of the Elizabethan Age, Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi exercised a very great influence on the era of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603), which was “was populated, not only by tough seamen, hard-headed politicians, serious theologians. It was a world of spirits, good and bad, fairies, demons, witches, ghosts, conjurors.”[1] Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII—a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece—and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who provided the occasion for Henry VIII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and declare the independence of the Church of England from the Catholic Church. Henry VIII famously had Anne beheaded for treason when Elizabeth was two years old. Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. In 1544, when she was eleven, Elizabeth gave her step-mother Catherine Parr, a manuscript book titled The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul. Elizabeth translated the poem into English from the French work Miroir de l'âme pécheresse by Marguerite de Navarre, the sister of Francis I of France, wrote the manuscript with her own hand, dedicating it with the words, “From Assherige, the last daye of the yeare of our Lord God 1544… To our most noble and vertuous Quene Katherin, Elizabeth her humble daughter wisheth perpetuall felicitie and everlasting joye.” Catherine Parr, was the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII, and the final queen consort of the House of Tudor, when she assumed the role of Elizabeth’s guardian following the king’s death. Catherine’s mother was a close friend and attendant of Catherine of Aragon, her godmother, after whom she was named.[2] Catherine was influential in Henry VIII’s passing of the Third Succession Act in 1543, which superseded the First Succession Act (1533) and the Second Succession Act (1536), which declared Henry’s daughters Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate and to remove them from succession to the throne. This third act returned both Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession behind their brother Edward (1537 – 1553), his children and any potential children of Henry VIII by Catherine Parr, or any future wife he might have. Edward reigned as Edward VI until his death, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Roman Catholic Mary, infamous of “Bloody Mary,” and the young Elizabeth, in spite of statute law to the contrary. Edward’s will was set aside and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey. During Mary’s reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels. Upon Mary’s death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement, that brought the English Reformation to a conclusion, would evolve into the Church of England. The Act of Supremacy of 1558 re-established the Church of England’s independence from Rome, and Parliament conferred on Elizabeth the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The royal astrologer to Elizabeth was the infamous sorcerer John Dee, who possessed copies of Francesco Giorgi’s work.[3] According to Yates, Giorgi’s influence might have had its roots when he was consulted along with the Jewish Rabbis of Venice by Richard Croke, in support of Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, an affair that ultimately led to the English Reformation and the establishment of the Church England, which separated itself from the Catholic Church in Rome. As Yates suggests, “Queen Elizabeth I might have been favorably disposed towards the philosophy of Francesco Giorgi if she knew that the Friar of Venice had supported her father's divorce, to which she owed her own existence.”[4] Under Elizabeth’s successor, James VI of Scotland (1512 – 1542), later King James I of England, the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture, who laid the groundwork for the advent of Freemasonry. Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed two-and-a-half years after Elizabeth’s birth. When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558, there was a great revival of the Order of the Garter, including its ceremonies, processions and ethos, which she regarded as a means of drawing the nobles together in common service to the Crown.[5] As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor. A cult grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history, representing the height of the English Renaissance with the flowering of poetry, music and literature.[6] The occult philosophy was the dominant influence of the Elizabethan Age.[7] As Yates has indicated, “Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi, with its ‘Judaising’ tendency, might have provided a bridge to conversion for the English Marrano.”[8] There is little evidence for the existence of Marranos in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. However, as elsewhere, their surreptitious presence was felt through the influence of the Christian Kabbalah. Christopher Marlowe wrote Doctor Faustus, a play developed from the Faust legend in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge. Marlowe’s Faustus says, possibly referring to Giorgi, as Yates suggests, “Go and returne an old Franciscan Frier; That holy shape becomes a devill best.” After the appearance of the diabolical Franciscan Friar, Faustus rejects Christ and the Trinity, as Mephistopheles has demanded. The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser, who was heavily influenced by Giorgi.[9] Spenser inherited not only Neoplatonic influence from Ficino and Pico, but the Christian Kabbalism of Reuchlin, Giorgi, Agrippa.[10] As Elizabeth aged her image gradually changed, and she was portrayed as characters from Spenser’s magical and Neoplatonic poem The Faerie Queene, including Belphoebe or Astraea, and after the Armada, as Gloriana, the eternally youthful Faerie Queene. Spenser’s poem and his Neoplatonic hymns in Elizabeth’s honor, published in the 1590’s, were a direct challenge to the Counter Reformation and their attitude to Renaissance philosophy. The poem, inspired by the Order of the Garter, describes the allegorical presentation of virtues through Arthurian knights in the mythical “Faerieland,” and follows several knights, like the Redcrosse Knight, the hero of Book One who bears the emblem of Saint George. Spenser was in contact with Philip Sidney and Edward Dyer, pupils of Queen Elizabeth I’s royal astrologer, the infamous sorcerer John Dee. Dee and his pupil Edward Kelley’s acquaintances included the famous alchemist Michael Sendivogius, a friend of the Scottish alchemist Alexander Seton, who was closely associated with William Schaw, King James’ Master of Works, an important figure in the development of Freemasonry in Scotland as the author of the Schaw Statutes of the Mother Lodge of Kilwinning. In his own time, Dee was one of England’s most sought-after scholars, recognized for his opinions on a wide range of topics. Dee was influenced not only by Giorgi but also by Lull, Pico, Reuchlin and Agrippa. immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermeticism, and believed that he found the secret of conjuring angels by numerical configurations in the tradition of the Kabbalah. In 1588, in his capacity as royal astrologer, he was asked to choose the most favorable date for the coronation of Elizabeth, and subsequently tutored the new queen in the understanding of his mystical writings. Dee believed that he found the secret of conjuring angels by numerical configurations in the tradition of the Kabbalah. He claimed to have gained contact with “good angels from whom he learned an angelic language composed of non-English letters he called Enochian. It has been suggested that Dee used Enochian as a code to transmit messages from overseas to Queen Elizabeth in his alleged capacity as a founding member of the English secret service. Dee was among the first to merge his career as a sorcerer with that of a spy, a tendency that would then come characterize almost all leading occultists ever since. As such, Dee was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond character. Dee would sign his letters to Elizabeth with 00 and an elongated 7, to signify they were for her eyes only. Lord Bacon As Elizabeth did not marry, and as she had no direct heir she was therefore succeeded by King James IV of Scotland (1473 – 1513), who became King James I of England in 1603, who brought the Scottish heritage of Freemasonry to his new kingdom. King James continued to reign in all three kingdoms for twenty-two years, a period known after him as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625. James’ Daemonologie is believed to be one of the main sources used by Shakespeare’s Macbeth.[11] Shakespeare attributed many quotes and rituals found within the book directly to the Weird Sisters, yet also attributed the Scottish themes and settings referenced from the trials in which King James was involved. A commentary on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by Daniel Banes, published in 1975–6, suggests the play was written with full knowledge of Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi and other Kabbalistic works.[12] Occult tradition firmly believes that Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) was the real author of Shakespeare’s plays, but the original father of Rosicrucianism, and by extension, of Freemasonry. Francis Bacon is typically celebrated by Masonic historians as having been a Rosicrucian. As early as 1638 a hint as to a connection between Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, was published, with the earliest known reference to the “Mason Word” published in a poem at Edinburgh in 1638: For what we do presage is not in grosse, For we be brethren of the Rosie Crosse: We have the Mason word and second sight, Things for to come we can foretell aright…[13] Bacon was the first recipient of the Elizabeth’s counsel designation, which was conferred in 1597 when she reserved Bacon as her legal advisor. There are also theories that Bacon was the illegitimate son of Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, the First Earl of Leicester, a Knight of the Garter.[14] Bacon is considered the father of modern science, having emphasized the importance of experimentation in his landmark work, The Advancement of Learning. However, recent scholarship has shown that he was committed to the Renaissance occult tradition, and his survey of science included a review of magic, astrology, and a reformed version of alchemy.[15] Bacon would later become chancellor of England in the reign of King James, and supervised the translation of the King James Bible. It was the King James Bible which translated the verse from the Song of Solomon as the “rose of Sharon” although previous translations had rendered it simply as “the flower of the field.” Bacon was also suspected of being the true author of Shakespeare’s plays. Bacon was elected to Parliament in 1581. In 1597 Bacon became the first Queen’s Counsel designate, when Queen Elizabeth reserved him as her legal counsel. After the accession of King James in 1603, Bacon was knighted. In 1613, he was finally appointed attorney general, after advising the king to shuffle judicial appointments. Bacon continued to use his influence with the king to mediate between the throne and Parliament, and in this capacity he was further elevated in the same peerage, as Viscount St Alban, on 27 January 1621. Bacon’s public career ended in disgrace in 1621. After he fell into debt, a parliamentary committee on the administration of the law charged him with 23 separate counts of corruption. Bacon did not marry until the late age of forty-eight, and contemporary accounts claim that he was a homosexual. John Aubrey in his Brief Lives asserted that Bacon “He was a Pederast. His Ganimeds and Favourites tooke Bribes.”[16] In Greek mythology, Zeus falls in love with Ganymede’s beauty and abducts him to serve as cup-bearer in Olympus. In poetry, Ganymede thus became a symbol for the beautiful young male who attracted homosexual desire and love. King James and his lover the Duke of Buckingham were referred to in similar terms in anonymously authored street pamphlets: “The world is chang’d I know not how, For men Kiss Men, not Women now;… Of J. the First and Buckingham: He, true it is, his Wives Embraces fled, To slabber his lov’d Ganimede.”[17] The Jacobean antiquarian Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Bacon’s fellow Member of Parliament, in his Autobiography and Correspondence discusses Bacon’s love of his Welsh male servants, stating that