Thursday, January 24, 2008
FROM THE ASIATIC BRETHREN TO SWEDENBORGIANISM
This is actually not a long jump. But before I make it, what is Swedenborgianism?
Reliable information on the esoteric rites is not easy to come by. As Christopher McIntosh tells it: "The role of secret and semi-secret societies in history is a theme that has only recently come into its own as a subject for serious historical inquiry. Its previous neglect by most professional historians was in part a reaction against the lurid credulity with which the subject has so often been treated in the past." (McIntosh, THE ROSE CROSS AND THE AGE OF REASON, Introduction)
McIntosh is a primary source, as is Peter R. Koenig. Another source of information on secret societies is Michigan State University's Esoterica, "A peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the transdisciplinary study of Western esotericism". It is there that I will start.
Dr. Marsha Keith Schuchard has written a book titled WHY MRS. BLAKE CRIED: SWEDENBORG, BLAKE, AND THE SEXUAL BASIS OF SPIRITUAL VISION. A portion of the book is online. Before I provide the link, I should warn you that she is quite graphic in her descriptions. With that warning in mind, here is the website. The story is quite an eye-opener since this is the first account I have seen of the details of the technique of sexual magic. I will leave the graphic descriptions out of this blog, however. Schuchard writes:
In early 1790, Nordenskjöld became so frustrated by the prudery of the Eastcheapers that he travelled to France, where he prsented a French version of his "Form of a New Society" (Tableau d'une Constitution incorruptible) to the National Assembly in Paris [105]. In autumn of that year, Blake moved to Lambeth, where he became the close neighbor of several Swedenborgians who supported the radical agenda of Nordenskjöld and the illuminist Masons (J.A. Tulk, Frances Barthelemon, Jacob and Thomas Duché). Moreover, they were sympathetic to the even more radical sexual notions of the frères at Avignon, who featured ritual nudity, communal sex, and worship of the Shekhinah (a Kabbalistic version of the Virgin Mary) in their arcane ceremonies. ...
Even Nordenskjöld was distressed when the Avignon society decided that Swedenborg's Conjugial Love was not divinely inspired and adopted instead the kind of free-love agenda promulgated by the "Asiatic Brethren," a Masonic rite developed by Sabbatian Jews and Cabbalistic Christians [109]. At this time, emissaries from the "Asiatics" were in London, and several Swedenborgians collected their writings [110]. When Blake declared that Swedenborg "is the Angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up," he suggested his own movement towards the Sabbatian position.
If Mrs. Blake shared Thel's hesitations about the plunge into sexuality, she must have been even more distressed by her husband's increasing advocacy of free love. In the powerful erotic paean of Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), Blake targeted "the frozen marriage bed," which needed "wanton play" in "happy copulation" (preferably in groups) in order to thaw [112].
According to Swedenborg and the liberated J.A. Tulk (an admirer of Grabianka), the divine innocence of conjugial love is best expressed in daylight nakedness, rather than furtive couplings under the covers [113].
There you have the jump from the Asiatic Brethren to the Swedenborgians. She adds further:
Swedenborg also described a secret mystical society, in which "spirits from Asia" teach inititiates how to meditate on emblems of love"works of art and some small images as though cast in silver" that represent "the many qualities, attributes, and delights which belong to conjugial love."[81]...
These Kabbalistic rites were in turn exported to India and China by initiated captains sailing for the Swedish East India Company, who opened lodges in their ports of call [83]. The merging of Jewish and Asiatic rituals would thus have significant earthly as well as heavenly relevance. The Royal Order of Heredom survived through the l790's, when Swedish and Swedenborgian Masons in London continued to join it.
(Included in Swednborgian ideas are concubinage and polygamy, causing me to wonder if perhaps Frankists are behind Mormonism. But that's another subject I won't get into here.)
The source of these ideas for Swedenborg, according to Schuchard, is a Sabbatean Rabbi and Baal Shem.
In l779-80 and l783-86, the Universal Society was visited by Augustus Nordenskjöld, a Swedish Mason and son of Moravian parents, who was an eager student of Kabbala and a practicing alchemist. During his first visit, Nordenskjöld met Dr. Messiter and then moved into the home of the latter's friend, Dr. Gumpertz Levison, a Jewish physician and alchemist [89]. Levison had been a youthful protégé of Rabbi Jonathon Eibeschütz, a crypto-Sabbatian, who perhaps informed him about the Kabbalistic and Masonic activities of Falk and Swedenborg in London [90]. After his arrival in London in l770, when he undertook medical studies with the Hunter brothers, he became a Swedenborgian Mason. Like Zinzendorf's and Falk's disciples, Levison was accused of antinomian sexual and religious practices [91]. ...
In his diaries, Swedenborg recorded many of the lurid sexual ceremonies of the Moravians, which initially attracted but later repelled him. Like Zinzendorf, Swedenborg sought out Jewish Kabbalists in the East End, and he soon came under the spell of Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk, known as the "Baal Shem" of London (master of the magical names of God). Falk was a crypto-Sabbatian, who collaborated with a network of fellow "Zoharites" in England, Holland, Poland, and Germany. (It was W.B. Yeats who first argued that Falk had an influence on Blake's knowledge of Kabbala) [29]. Following the Sabbatians' advocacy of "holy sinning," some members of the network pretended conversion to Christianity and assimilated Kabbalistic notions of the Shekhinah into Christian notions of the Virgin Mary.
Moving on to Peter R. Koenig, I found the following in his description of the early years and the development of the Ordo Templi Orientis:
Q. How was Reuss's group of Orders structured in 1905-06?[bolding mine]
A: Kellner's 'Inner Triangle' (supposedly a European offshoot of
the American 'Hermetic Brotherhood of Light') had already
disintegrated by 1904, when Hartmann was busily distancing
himself from both Reuss and the yogic activities of his friend
Kellner. It should also be borne in mind that Reuss was not "au
fait" with Kellner's ideas about Yoga. The latter's "Occult
Circle" was quite different and distinct from all the other
Orders around Reuss, Kellner and Hartmann, although it was
possible to belong to both; but the "Occult Circle" or "Inner
Triangle" were merely conventional names, and only had a
rhetorical connotation, being linked to something else.
Kellner's death also meant the death of the informal private
group, even though its members were at his funeral.
Anyway, Hartmann had got rid of Reuss by 1904, which meant that
Reuss had to use a rubber-stamp facsimile of Hartmann's
signature for the charters he was issuing. Left to his tender
mercies there were the Swedenborg Rite, the AASR, MM, the SRIA,
Martinism and several completely mysterious knightly Orders; but
it's still almost impossible to say where any of these started
or ended, because Reuss constantly changed their names and
structures as he took the fancy. It's possible to get a
'freeze-frame' picture of the state of play for October 1905:
Kellner's "Inner Triangle" no longer existed; in Germany, Reuss
was leading the "Sovereign Sanctuary" of the AASR (which was an
old Scottish rite of Templar-Masonry), as well as the MM. But
AASR and MM were autonomous bodies, and were kept strictly
separate after August 1905. In January 1906 Reuss is alleged to
have re-constituted the O.T.O. - at least on paper - from the
"Hermetic Brotherhood of Light" (and not from the AASR or MM).
Reuss was obviously referring to a different HBL than the one
Kellner mentioned - several passages in rituals and texts hint
broadly at certain "Asiatic Brothers of the Light" (and not to
the MM). I doubt very much if the O.T.O. of this era consisted
of more than one member - that being Reuss himself. On 24 July
1907 Reuss further separated the Rite of Memphis from that of
Misraim; they too became autonomous bodies. Only in 1908 did
Reuss re-constitute a Sovereign Grand Council of the MM in
Germany, when he'd found enough suitable potential members in
Paris. Reuss's activities in other organisations (Martinism,
Illuminati, etc.) are no longer discernible by this time. In the
various issues of the 'Oriflamme' up to 1912 only MM, the
Swedenborg Rite, and the AASR are mentioned; there's not a trace
of the O.T.O.. His O.T.O. rituals, if they do date from before
1912, are a crude mixture of rituals deriving from the Scottish
Rite, the Rite of Cerneau, the Royal Arch, Rose Croix,
Pike-de-Ladebat, and Memphis-Mizraim. For once Reuss clearly if
clumsily committed himself: "The mere possession of these
various Masonic degrees does not constitute a Member as an:
O.T.O." In fact, he seems to have thought the reverse true:
membership of the O.T.O. meant membership of the AASR, MM and
the like, but membership of the MM was not equal with membership
of the O.T.O..
After Hartmann's death in 1912, the O.T.O.'s structure was
defined like this: the first three degrees were the equivalent
of Craft Masonry; the IV° was a mutated version of the AASR; In
the V° Hartmann's obscure 'Esoteric Rosicrucianism' was combined
with the AASR's eleventh and eighteenth degrees; both the name
and the lection for the VII° were taken from the fourth degree
of the Fratres Lucis ('Knights of the True Light' or 'Order of
the Asiatic Brethren', and therefore Reuss's and maybe Crowley's
'Hermetic Brotherhood of Light') although the VII° seems to have
been only a purely administrative degree; and then real O.T.O.
membership started at the VIII°; the IX° corresponded to the
Illuminati Order, and the X° was Reuss himself. The sex-magic
only entered Order teachings at the IX°.
One more source also makes the connection between the Asiatics/Frankists and Swedenborgianism. That source is Henry Makow, Ph.D. Makow has a conspiracy theory website that is extensive. Wikipedia says he in a Canadian non-fiction writer and the inventor of the board game Scruples. His doctorate was earned in English Literature at the University of Toronto in 1982. Since he confirms what others are saying, I'll include it here:
It's becoming increasingly evident to me that the Illuminati is an extension of the Frankist heresy, and that Hegel was the one to articulate its vision.
The Frankist heresy begins even before Jacob Frank, whose activity was in
the eighteenth century, with the beginnings of the Lurianic Kabbalah, or
"Modern Kabbalah", developed by Isaac Luria in the sixteenth century.
The one to articulate Lurianic Kabbalah for Christian audiences was Jacob
Boehme, who became active in Bohemia, at the turn of the seventeenth
century, where the Rosicrucian movement was coming to light.
According to Frances Yates, in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Prague, the capital of Bohemia, "was a great center of Jewish Cabalism". She points out
a possible reference to Lurianic Kabbalah, in that Christian Rosenkreuz, the
hero of the Rosicrucian texts, "describes in the Fama travels in the east
whence he has returned with a new kind of "Magia and Cabala" which he
incorporates into his own Christian outlook."...
Jacob Frank began his mission, claiming to be a
reincarnation of the false Jewish Messiah, whose imposture shook the entire
Jewish world during the seventeenth century. The Frankists rejected the
Talmud in favor of the Zohar, the chief Kabbalistic text of the Middle Ages,
and were known to practice orgiastic rites.
Many followed Frank to his conversion into Christianity, and intermarried
with the Habsburg aristocracy of Bohemia.
There is evidence to suggest that Meyer Rothschild was a Frankist, and that
it was he who financed and directed Adam Weishaupt to organize the
Illuminati.
Finally, it was the Duke of Orleans, the great grandson of Elizabeth and
Frederick, who was a member of the Illuminati, and Grand Master of Grand
Orient Freemasonry, during the French Revolution.
Behind the Illuminati at this stage, was an order known as the Asiatic
Brethren, who were headed by Frank's successor, his nephew Dobruschka.
Though the order was comprised mostly of Jews, Persian, Syrians and Turks,
characters like Swedenborg, St. Germain, St. Martin, Pasqualy and
Cagliostro, all leading proponents of the Illuminati, were also members.
Lastly, an article by Brian Talbot, a minister in the Swedenborgian church called Conference of the New Church in Great Britain has attempted to refute Schuchard's claims. It appeared in the July-December 2007 issue of New Philosophy Online The article is titled "Schuchard's Swedenborg" and can be accessed from the home page.
Talbot makes a weak attempt to refute Suchard's claims about sexual rites. He does not address the Frankist background of the philosophy though he does admit that Swedenborg's instructor "Rabbi Johan Kemper, a lecturer at Swedenborg's university" "had converted to Christianity before" he taught Swedenborg, as though this would exempt him from any culpability, and completely ignoring the fact that the Frankists "converted" to Christianity enmasse while remaining crypto-Sabbateans. He does, however, indicate that there were divisions in the Swedenborgians that could account for a moral side as well as a libertine side to the religion.
Why does all this matter? Well, that is too complicated to go into until tomorrow. Stay tuned.
