Class of Grand Mysteries; the Mage or the Philosopher, and the Man King | Chapter 12 Part 1

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acquainted with the Sect. The certificate at the head of the degree of Epopt and Regent, for a more perfect knowledge of which the public is indebted to him, I look upon as undoubtedly genuine. I know a person who has seen and read this certificate in the original, in Philo-Knigge’s own hand-writing, and who has seen the seal of the Order attached to this certificate. I thus particularize because the public is entitled, in discussions of this importance, to know how far I have extended my researches, and how far the grounds I work upon deserve to be credited.—The passage I am about to quote is looked upon as fundamental by all German authors; it is from Biederman, and occurs near the end of his Critical History:

“With respect to the two degrees of Mage and of Man King, there is no reception, that is to say, there are no ceremonies of initiation. Even the Elect are not permitted to transcribe these degrees, they only hear them read; and that is the reason why I do not publish them with this work.”

“The first is that of Mage, also called Philosopher. It contains the fundamental principles of Spinosism. Here every thing is material; God and the world are but one and the same thing; all religions are inconsistent, chimerical, and the invention of ambitious men.” 16

“Divers principles,” continues the author, “thrown out in the preceding degrees might in some measure point out the object the Sect had in view.” Certainly nothing could be better grounded than such a surmise—Nature, so often united with God, represented active like God, following with the same immensity of power, the same wisdom as God, the course which it had traced; a hundred such expressions in the mouth of the Hierophant evidently indicated, that the God of Weishaupt was that of Spinosa or Lucretius, no other than matter and the universe; in fine, the God of Atheism. Let the Sieur D’Alembert assert, that nothing can be more opposite to Atheism than Spinosism; 17 or let Spinosa say, that, so far from being an Atheist, he converts every thing into God; will such an excuse raise pity or indignation in the reader? To deny that there is any other God than the world, is evidently denying the only being that can justly be called God. It is laughing at men, to wish to make them believe, that the person is preserved because they do not dare destroy the name, at the very time that the name of God is only used as an agent for the annihilation of every idea of a Deity.

I think I have sufficiently demonstrated, that the first object of these grand mysteries of Illuminism, prepared with so much art and cunning, is no other than to plunge the adepts into a monstrous Atheism, to persuade all nations that religion is but an invention of ambitious impostors, and that to deliver nations from this despotism of imposture, and recover the famous rights of man, Equality and Liberty, they must begin by annihilating every religion, every worship, every altar, and cease to believe in a God.

Let us continue the declaration of Biederman, and the object of the last part of the mysteries (or the degree of the Man king) will be equally clear.

“The second degree of the grand mysteries,” he says, “called the Man King, teaches that every inhabitant of the country or town, every father of a

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family, is sovereign, as men formerly were in the times of the patriarchal life, to which mankind is once more to be carried back; that, in consequence, all authority and all magistracy must be destroyed.—I have read these two degrees, and have passed through all those of the Order.” 18

How well authenticated soever this testimony may be, still one is loth to think that there could have existed men at once so absurd and so wicked as to take such exquisite pains to educate their adepts merely to address them in the end to the following purpose: “All that we have done for you hitherto was only to prepare you to co-operate with us in the annihilation of all Magistracy, all Governments, all Laws, and all Civil Society; of every Republic and even Democracy, as well as of every Aristocracy or Monarchy It all tended to infuse into you and make you insensibly imbibe that which we plainly tell you at present—All men are equal and free, this is their imprescriptible right; but it is not only under the dominion of Kings that you are deprived of the exercise of these rights. They are annulled wherever man recognises any other law than his own will. We have frequently spoken of Despotism and of Tyranny; but they are not confined to an Aristocracy or a Monarchy: Despotism and Tyranny as essentially reside in the Democratic sovereignty of the people, or in the legislative people, as in the legislative King. What right has that people to subject me and the minority to the decrees of its majority? Are such the rights of nature? Did the sovereign or legislative people exist any more than Kings or Aristocratic Legislators at that period when man enjoyed his natural Equality and Liberty?—Here then are our Mysteries—All that we have said to you of Tyrants and Despots, was only designed insensibly to lead you to what we had to impart concerning the despotism and tyranny of the people themselves. Democratic governments are not more consonant with nature than any others. If you ask, How it will be possible for men assembled in towns to live in future without laws, magistrates, or constituted authorities,—the answer is clear, Desert your towns and villages, and fire your houses. Did men build houses, villages, or towns in the days of the Patriarchs? They were all equal and free; the earth belonged to them all, each had an equal right, and lived where he chose. Their country was the world, and they were not confined to England or Spain, to France or Germany; their country was the whole earth, and not a Monarchy or petty Republic in some corner of it. Be equal and free, and you will be cosmopolites or citizens of the world. Could you but appreciate Equality and Liberty as you ought, you would view with indifference Rome, Vienna, Paris, London, or Constantinople in flames, or any of those towns, boroughs, or villages which you call your country. Friend and Brother, such is the grand secret which we reserved for our Mysteries!!!”