Still Running Off at the Keyboard

"THE TRUE HISTORY OF SCOTTISH ESOTERIC FREEMASONRY"

Returning to the paper online at The Masonic Trowel, Wynants continues with the Sabbatian link:

The perceived linkage between Sabbatians and Protestant subversives possibly spurred Solomon Franco to publish a royalist panegyric, Truth Springing Out of the Earth, which he dedicated to Charles II on 2 July 1668.

As Hebrew instructor of Ashmole, Franco may have learned that Ashmole's friend Evelyn was now undertaking a study of Sabbatai Zevi and similar radical enthusiasts. In his pamphlet, Franco announced his conversion to the Church of England, which he credited to the miraculous nature of Charles II's restoration and to the arguments of Christian friends that the Cabala proved that Jesus was the Messiah. He stressed that the ancient Jews were devoted to monarchy and that rebels against the king were punished with death. Franco was also determined to defend Cabalistic traditions against critics like Samuel Parker, who two years earlier had ridiculed Rosicrucian exponents of Cabala.

Perhaps Franco also hoped to forestall Evelyn's potential criticism of Sabbatai Zevi's Cabalistic pretensions. Thus, he gave detailed expositions of Cabalistic traditions of the male and female Cherubim, the role of the Shekinah in reception of divine influx, the architecture of the Temple, etc. In a passage with Masonic resonance, Franco affirmed: "The Temple, which is the Heart of the World, whose Influence is communicated to all parts of the Body, which now is of Stone, after the coming of the Messias shall be of flesh. (56)

With Cabalistic study reclaimed by Franco as permissable for royalist Christians, Evelyn's expose of the Sabbatian movement was rendered less threatening to Jews (and Marranos) who enjoyed the protection of the king.

Yo Arlington, Evelyn linked Christian partisans of the Sabbatians with Cromwellian radicals, who still posed a threat to the Stuart regime:

But whil'st the Time is not vet accomplish'd, I could wish our modern Enthusiasts, and other prodigious sects amongst us, who Dreame of the like Carnal Expectations, and a Temporal Monarchy, might seriously weigh how nearly their Characters approach the Style and Design of these Deluded Wretchcs [Jewish Sabbatians], least they fall into the same Condemnation, and the Snare of the Devil. (57)

Despite the attacks by militant Protestants, Charles II continued to welcome pacific Rosicrucians and Cabalists to his court. (pp. 18-19)

The Jesuits are mentioned in the article as well.

The sect of Assassins lived in the mountains near Tyre...

Having studied the Assassins, the Jesuits then adopted their methods in order to destroy Protestantism.

Rather than giving their agents hashish, the Jesuits used charms and exorcisms, performed in "Chambers of Meditation and other Recesses of Darkness": they "conjured up gradually to that prodigious fury, as to think that in bloody assassinations of Kings and Princes, and merciless blowing up of Kingdoms, they do acceptable service to God, and merit everlasting Life." Through their magical meditation techniques, the Jesuit agents become angelized and divinized to prepare for their deadly work. (p. 21-22)

Returning to the Jewish-Masonic connection, Wynants writes:

A decade later, Ramsay revealed to the Ecossais lodge in Paris a Jacobite version of Masonic history that echoed and colaborated many of Swift's revelations in A Letter from the Crand Mistress.

Swift stressed the Jewish roots of Masonry, noting that it was originally called Cabala, and he revealed the initiates' preoccupation with Cabalistic gematria and notarikon. (115)

For their Masonic relationship, see M.K. Schuchard, "Ramsay, Swift, and the Jacobite-Masonic Version of the Stuart Restoration," in Esoterisme, Gnosis et Imaginaire Symbolique (2001), 491-50.

Ramsay similarly stressed the Jewish origins and Cabalistic descent, noting that "The secret Science can be preserved pure only amongst God's people," the Jews, because the Masons' traditions... are founded on the annals of the most ancient race in the, world, the only one, still in existence with the same name as of old and not intermingled with other nations although so widely dispersed and also the only one that has preserved its ancient books, whereas those of almost all other races are lost." (116)

While Swift referred to the preservation of Jewish secrets in lodges of "the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem or the Knights of Maltha," Ramsay described the concealment of Solomon's hieroglyphic writing ("the original Code of our Order") in the foundations of the Second Temple and its subsequent discovery by the crusading knights who liberated Jerusalem.

According to Swift and Ramsay, when the crusaders returned to Europe, they infused the Solomonic secrets of Cabalism and Temple building into their lodges. More explicitly than Swift, Ramsay named "James, Lord Steward of Scotland" as "Grand Master of a Lodge established at Kilwinning" in 1286, when he also initiated the English Earl of Gloucester and the Irish Earl of Ulster. Obliquely identifying early Masonry with the Templars, Ramsay noted that "an intimate union" was formed with the Knights of St. John of jerusalerd (the Hospitallers'). Unlike Swift, he did not mention the Knights of Malta, who subsequently absorbed Templar and Hospitaller traditions and who underwent a short-lived revival in Ireland during James II's residence there in 1690. Since the merging of the chivalric orders into Masonry, the brothers continued to imitate their Jewish forefathers: "The union was made after the manner of the Israelites when they built the Second Temple, whilst some handled the trowel and the compasses, others defended them with sword and buckler." (p. 34)

Throughout the eighteenth century, the "ancient" Stuart traditions were maintained in clandestine Jacobite lodges in Britain and in the lodges of the Stuart diaspora. The Jewish associations were carried on by Francis Francia (the 'Jacobite Jew"), Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk (the "Baal Shem of London"), Martines de Pasqually (the "Elu Cohen"); the Swedish-Stuart loyalties were preserved by Carl XIL Carl Gustaf Tessin, Carl Gyllenborg, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Gustaf III.

For footnote citations go to the website. There are 116 of them.