THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHY AND THE ORIGIN OF FREEMASONRY
by Giuliano Di Bernardo
The journey of humanity into esoteric societies begins with Orphism in Greece in the 6th century BCE at a time of profound transformations of society that coincides with the fall of ancient monarchies and the rise of democratic states, of which Athens is the outstanding example. Orphism represents the yearning for freedom from oppression of oligarchical regimes, the sacred refuge of the elected spirits, a way to reach moral perfection within a rigid religious cosmogony. The god at the center of the Orphic cult is Dionysus, who was known for his sufferings and his unjust death. Dionysus was also known as Eleutherius (the Liberator or the Free One), because he represented the wine or life blood in nature and the subversion of rationality, social order and power. Thus, the gods of Olympus, who had glorified the old warrior aristocracies sung by Homer, begun to rapidly suffer a loss of meaning.
Orphism presents itself, therefore, as the theology of the mysteries of Dionysus. The murder of Dionysus ignites the divine spark that hides in the body of man that only the Orphic rites can free, allowing it to rise to its eternal principle. For Orphism, the soul (the daemon) is of divine origin while the mortal body is its prison, which is evil and impure and because of its a primordial guilt.
Guilt can be expiated according to two modalities: rebirth in other bodies and ritual purification. To expiate original guilt, one lifetime is not enough, which means that the soul is forced to migrate from one body to another in a succession of lives that turns in on itself as in a circle: the circle of necessity or the inexorably wheel of destiny. The highest aspiration for the followers of Orphism is to end the cycle of generation in order to return to the original source.
The second modality is that of living a pure life of asceticism and purification. In this manner, Orphism allows followers to shorten the period of expiation by living a life inspired by the highest moral values and by subjecting oneself to ceremonial rituals in a sacred site.
Orphism has had a considerable influence on the nascent philosophy not so much over the doctrine of reincarnation as for the dualistic conception of man. For the first time, man is understood as personifying two opposed principles: the immortal soul and the mortal body. This gives rise to a dualism that will cross the entire span of the history of philosophical thought up to our own days. Without Orphism, we would be unable to explain Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and all the philosophers who draw upon them.
Orphism, with its cosmogony and its rites, is the first esoteric society to hold initiatory practices. It is esoteric in that its mysteries are only revealed to its followers. It is initiatory in that it is accessed through a ceremony of death/resurrection in which the candidate must support and overcome certain tests.
Orphism exercised a profound influence on the Pythagorean School founded by Pythagoras in Crotone, in the Magna Grecia around the year 530 BCE. The Pythagorean School, despite its specificity, is based on an esoteric and initiatory foundation.
Orpheus and Pythagoras are enlightened expressions of the nascent philosophy that gives way to a secret tradition of human thought that is reserved to a few elected individuals; that tradition, except for the Middle Ages, continues into the present.
In the Christian Middle Ages, faith was dominating over reason and religion pervaded all the dimensions of human existence. Not until the Renaissance does reason regain possession of the hegemonic role that Greek philosophy had assigned to all human knowledge from science to the arts.
While this was taking place in Christian Europe, the Muslim world, radically transformed by the teachings of Mohammed, was undergoing a deeper transformation based on an emphasis upon esoteric concepts of knowledge. This was especially the case in Sufism which combines a mystical and gnostic, intellectual approach in the search for the knowledge of God. Its doctrines derive from the Qur’an, even if it has undergone some Greek, Persian, Hindu and other influences. Nonetheless, the essence of Sufism is Islamic.
Meanwhile, the Christian West was being lifted out of the fog of faith that enveloped it during the Middle Ages. In a short period of time, outstanding events would take place that radically changed not only the knowledge we have of the universe but also the way man relates to God.
It is the age of the great geographical discoveries: the discovery of America in 1492 marks the beginning of profound changes in the politics and the economy of old Europe.
In the same year, the Jews were expelled from Spain, an event that gives way to the Jewish diaspora, which continues today.
Copernicus, who, contrary to what the Sacred Scriptures predicated, created a model of the universe that placed the Sun at the center rather than the Earth. In so doing, he revolutionized the conception of the solar system itself. This change not only had scientific relevance, but a religious one as well inasmuch as the heliocentric model fundamentally altered the sense of man as a creature privileged by God. With the passing of centuries and the acquisition of new scientific knowledge, man becomes a product of natural evolution.
Copernicus’s astronomical revolution announces the birth of a new science that will find in Galileo its most authoritative representative. After Galileo, scientific research breaks all limits and spreads in all areas of knowledge to arrive at the modern knowledge on the origin of life and the universe.
All these events reach their apex by bringing us back to the conception of the man in Greek philosophy where man is no longer understood as a creature of God but as a thinking individual who is free to investigate, without any religious limitations, the dimensions of all that is knowable. This represents a return to the humanism.
The passage from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance appears to be easy to understand as historians have held up to now. Nonetheless, if we ask ourselves if there are other reasons for the emergence of the Renaissance besides the ones examined, and as we consider the recent research of Frances Yates, we will see that new in-depth studies are absolutely required.
To be able to fully understand the origins of the Renaissance and its relationship with the Middle Ages, it will be necessary to shed light on what has been defined as “the occult philosophy.” It’s a movement that was practically unknown, even if its supporters were very well known. I am referring to Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola in Italy, Francis Bacon, John Dee and William Shakespeare in England and Albrecht Dürer and Johannes Reuchlin in Germany. The thread of Ariadne that unifies their thinking is precisely occult philosophy.
Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola are the founders and popularizers of the movement known as “Neo-Platonism in the Renaissance,” which takes inspiration from the works of Plato and the Neo-Platonists in addition to an amalgam of archaic visions of the occult.
In such a vast literature, one text entitled Corpus Hermeticum attracted the interest of both, a text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a mythical Egyptian wise man considered to be the keeper of an ancient wisdom from which Plato himself drew inspiration. It was thought that Hermes Trismegistus lived at the time of Moses, if not earlier, and that such a text held a sacredness equal to the book of “Genesis”.
Florentine Neo-Platonism (Ficino and Pico della Mirandola both lived at the court of the Medici in Florence) was intent on researching ancient wisdom texts. In addition to the Corpus Hermeticum, the Kabbalah, also considered to be part of the ancient wisdom tradition which originated at the time of Moses, was of special interest.
It was Pico della Mirandola, a fervent Christian, who introduced the Kabbalah to the emerging Neo-Platonists, convinced as he was that the Hebrew doctrines could amplify and broaden our understanding of Christianity by revisiting the ancient Hebrew truths but also by confirming the truth of Christianity. His aim, in essence, was to create a bridge between Judaism and Christianity by demonstrating the continuity between the two. His approach consisted in letter combination techniques for the Hebrew alphabet as a means by which to show that Jesus is the name of the Messiah as it appears to figure in the sacred Tetragrammaton.
This conviction of Pico della Mirandola is included in the seventy-two Kabbalistic Conclusiones which he presents as confirmation of the Christian religion starting with the fundamentals of the Hebrew Wisdom. The Conclusiones, on the other hand, are part of the nine hundred theses in which Pico expresses his synthesis of all the philosophies that culminate in the famous discourse on the dignity of man, Oratio de hominis dignitate, through which he expresses the renaissance vision of man and his position in the world.
The man that is mentioned in the discourse on dignity is to be considered the renaissance “magician,” a very high figure equipped with the power to be able to intervene in the world for the purpose of making it a better place.
In conclusion, the Christian Kabbalah is the true keystone of Renaissance thought whose influence on religion cannot be overlooked. Failing to see its relevance, it will be very difficult to understand the “hidden” causes of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Between one and the other stood the Rosicrucian “universal reformation of mankind.”
The “Confraternity of the Rosicrucians” was initiated in Germany in the first years of the 17th century. Its manifesto, which promulgates the mystical regeneration of the world, was published anonymously in Kassel in 1614, with the title of Fama Fraternitatis. The manifesto narrated the life of Christian Rosenkreuz, who after many journeys founded the esoteric fraternity in Germany. In 1604, 120 years after his death, his tomb was discovered, containing magical formulas and rules for living.
The Rosicrucians continued to assert their presence in 1615, when a second manifesto was published in Frankfort with the title of Confessio Fraternitatis, which announces the return of the light lost after the fall of Adam. The following year in Strasbourg there appeared the third and most important document of the Rosicrucians bearing the title of The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, written by Johann Valentin Andreae, a Lutheran theologian of Tübingen, who described the way to salvation through ecstasy and enlightenment. Andreae’s work immediately attracted the attention of the alchemists, theosophists, doctors, and astrologers who found the confraternities of the Rosicrucians not only in Germany but also in France, Austria, England and the Netherlands.
The Confraternity of the Rosicrucians that appeared in Germany in early 17th century, when compared to other esoteric societies, presents characteristics that are quite special. There is no doubt that the confraternity existed. Nonetheless, except for Andreae, who signed one of the three manifestos, the other members are shrouded in mystery. It is possible that, after the sensationalism that the manifestos created all over Europe and the reaction of the Catholic Church, the Rosicrucians may have thought it opportune not to attract attention for fear of persecution.
Do the manifestos they circulated in Europe express an original project of theirs, or do they take inspiration from a project other had elaborated? The answer is to be found in England, in the occult movement that characterized the Elizabethan Era. Everything began with Pico della Mirandola, the renaissance philosopher whose work on the Christian Kabbalah was synthesized with hermeticism and magic. A Franciscan priest from Venice, Francesco Giorgi accepted the philosophical formulation of Pico della Mirandola and intensified it along Christian lines in his De harmonia mundi totīus cantica tria (1525). The result was a project aimed at the renewal of Christian theology, which remained anchored to medieval scholasticism and had become static and sterile. In Giorgi’s time, there was no Rosicrucian philosophy. The Christian Kabbalah, elaborated by Giorgi, takes on this name when it becomes associated with the Elizabethan currents of thinking, to the Rose of the Tudors, British imperialism, the science of John Dee and the messianic movement to unify the European states against the power of the Catholic Habsburg.
It is precisely during the Elizabethan Renaissance that the European occult philosophy becomes “Rosicrucianism,” and it is that vision that inspires the Rosicrucian Confraternity in Germany in the beginning of the 17th century.
The spiritual movement of the Rosicrucians represents a form of evangelical Christianity supported by an eclectic philosophy that was more adequate to the times than scholasticism. This blend of occult philosophy, and other religious beliefs and practices represented an ideal, powerful force tied to Christianity, but counter opposed to the reactionary forces of both Catholics and Protestants. As such, it was violently detested and persecuted as diabolical and worthy of extermination.
The persecutions led against the renaissance philosophers who had supported the Christian Kabbalah and its occultist implications reach their highest expression in the works of the Dominican Marin Mersenne in 1623, in which he launches a violent attack against renaissance Neo-Platonism, citing by name Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and, above all the Franciscan Giorgi. During the time Mersenne was writing, a time of witch hunts, trials and execution, the Elizabethan renaissance was over, along with the Rosicrucian movement in Germany, which had been annihilated. The counter-reformation guided by the Jesuits expanded and triumphed over all of Europe. The renaissance philosophers from Pico to Ficino, from Giorgi to Reuchlin and Agrippa, from Dee to Bacon, who had conceived a new occult philosophy to replace the sterile scholasticism as the foundation of Christianity, have been definitively defeated by the Counter-reformation. Thus, Europe lost the chance to live free without fanaticism and oppression.
The Confraternity of the Rosicrucians was the first post medieval esoteric society, the expression of renaissance humanism. After 150 years following its disappearance, there appears in Germany the most powerful esoteric society: The Order of the Illuminati, which was founded by Adam Weishaupt on May 1, 1776, in Bavaria. Its declared purpose was to aid its followers to reach the highest degree of morality and virtue, liberating the mind from prejudices and superstition in order to reform the world by defeating the evils that afflict it.
As far as Freemasonry, which was triumphing all over Europe, is concerned, Weishaupt was convinced that the Order of the Illuminati must remain separate because the mysteries of Freemasonry were too infantile and easily accessible to outsiders. Consequently, the rituals of the Illuminati must be different from those of Freemasonry.
The Order of the Illuminati experiences an unforeseeable development when, in 1780, Baron Adolf Franz Friederich Knigge is admitted to the Order. He is given the task of perfecting the vision already delineated by Weishaupt. Meanwhile, Knigge brings to the Order important modifications by developing some of Weishaupt’s ideas and introducing some new ones of his own. In particular, his innovations consist of the following: a) collaboration with the Freemasonry; b) the introduction of other Degrees in addition to the three already in existence; c) the abandonment of the rule that only particularly gifted men be admitted to allow for men with life experiences to enter the order; and d) the renunciation of political and religious controversies in order to concentrate on the fight against superstition and ignorance.
After 1780, the Order spread widely in Germany but also in Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary and Italy. Among its members figured illustrious men like Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, Duke Ernest of Gotha, Duke Karl Albert of Saxe-Weimar, Prince August of Saxe-Gotha, Prince Karl of Hesse, Baron Dalberg, Baron William von Busche, the Count of Saint Germain, the Marquis de Costanzo, the philosopher Herder, the poet Goethe, the composer Mayr, the pedagogue Pestalozzi. At the end of 1784, the Illuminati numbered around 3,000 and represented the best of European society at the time.
Nonetheless, just as it looked as if the future of the Order was solidly assured, it started to decline. There were two principal causes for the decline: an internal one and an external one. The admission of Knigge had not only brought about radical innovations in the principles of the Order and its relations with other Orders, Freemasonry, but had also caused the Order to grow qualitatively with illustrious individuals. All of this conferred on Knigge great authority and the control of the Order. Initially, Weishaupt had left him free to follow his plans, but when he noticed that his own prestige was declining, he reacted critically to Knigge’s leadership. The controversy between the two erupted violently and involved supporters on both sides. Shortly thereafter, Knigge resigned from the Order and left Weishaupt absolute ruler over the fortunes of the Order.
Weishaupt, however, had very little time to rejoice. On June 22, 1784, the Bavarian Prince of the Palatinate Carl Theodore delivered his first edict against secret societies, such as Freemasonry, that had been constituted without his authorization. The general character of the edict made the Illuminati believe that it was not directed against them. But on March 2 of the following year, a second edict was issued specifically striking the Order of the Illuminati by designating it a branch of Freemasonry. On August 16, 1787, the Prince of Bavaria issued a third edict in which he confirmed all the accusations made in the previous edicts and listed the sanctions to be leveled against the Illuminati if they continue to meet. Shortly thereafter, the Order of the Illuminati ceased to exist. All this happened because of Knigge’s error in connecting the Order to the Freemasonry.
Freemasonry also belongs to the esoteric tradition of humanity. In modern times, Freemasonry was born on June 24, 1717, in London where four lodges formed the Grand Lodge of London. In 1723, the Masonic Constitutions drafted by J. Anderson were published. By 1750, Freemasonry had already spread in the principal countries of the world. Today, it remains one of the most important esoteric societies, even if it begins to show signs of a crisis that derives from its difficulties in understanding the factors that are bringing about a globalized society.
It is easy to find texts and documents that detail the history of Freemasonry. But to understand masonic thinking, I recommend my volume Freemasonry: A Philosophical Investigation (Pittsburgh, Dorrance, 2020), in which the reader will be able to find answers to questions such as: What is Freemasonry? What are the symbols of Freemasonry? What is Masonic morality? What are the Masonic constitutions? What is the relationship between Freemasonry and religion? How is Mysticism related to Freemasonry? How are the relations with the Roman Catholic Church delineated?
The Order of the Illuminati and the Freemasonry present both analogies and differences.
The comparison can be carried out on different planes: a) the principles; b) the divinity; c) the initiatory principle of its foundation and d) the organization.
As far as the principles are concerned, the differences are not substantial. Both societies share the same philosophical anthropology, made up of the five principles of freedom, tolerance, fraternity, transcendence, and initiatory secret. Any difference probably arises in their actual historical expression.
It’s on the meaning of divine that the major differences arise. In order to understand those differences correctly, it is necessary to reflect on certain aspect of Freemasonry. First, it must be said that the authentic Freemasonry is the one of the United Grand Lodge of England. All the others are actually more or less the offspring of the English one. The one referred to here is English Freemasonry. As far as the divine is concerned, English Freemasonry has always been unequivocal: the Mason believes in a Supreme Being in all his manifestations. That means that in order to enter and be a Mason, you are required to have a religious faith. Freemasonry, though it is not a religion, requires its followers to believe in God in all the names by which he is known. Therefore, admission to the Freemasonry precludes those who are atheists. The prescription to believe in God runs throughout the whole history of the English Freemasonry. The god of operative English masons preexisting the birth of speculative Freemasonry at the start of the 18th century is the Christian god. In Anderson’s Masonic Constitution of 1723, the Christian God is replaced by the Supreme Being understood as the intersection of all possible divinities (deism). In 1985, English Freemasonry confirms in the Declaration on Freemasonry and Religion that one cannot be a Mason if he does not believe in God. The requirement to believe in God finds its expression in the Emulation ritual and in the ritual of the Royal Arch, which represents the highest level of the initiatory life for English masons. The Mason takes on his obligations by swearing on the sacred book of his own religion (the Bible, the Qur’an, and others). The universality of the Freemasonry is limited to all those who have a religious faith. In other words, English Freemasonry refuses any form of atheistic materialism.
The Order of the Illuminati differs profoundly from the Freemasonry precisely based on its relationship with the divinity. For Freemasonry, such a relationship is essential, whereas for the Illuminati it is not. It follows that the Illuminati, contrary to the Masons, may share all conceptions of life from the religious ones to those based on atheism. The universality of the Order is therefore limitless. Men of qualities can belong to the Order regardless of their gender, skin color, religion, language or culture. And here we capture another important difference: in Freemasonry, women are excluded from membership; in the Order of the Illuminati, they are admitted in total equality to men.
As far as the initiatory foundation is concerned, between the Freemasonry and the Order of the Illuminati there are no differences: they are both heirs of the ancient Orphic and Pythagorean mysteries. The differences when compared to the present practices can pertain to the symbols, the rituals and the ceremonies.
The organizational structure of Freemasonry and the Order of the Illuminati presents fundamental differences that started after two World Wars. In all the initiatory societies, authority is pyramidal in the sense that it stems from the top down. Only the individual at the top of the pyramid can be fully cognizant of the mysteries, which will be revealed to the followers in accordance to a precise path of perfection going from one lower degree to the upper ones. The societies that draw inspiration from the esoteric and initiatory foundation accept that pyramidal structure as just described, the methodology, which has to do with the reaching of perfection of one’s knowledge, and the finality, which is the ethical improvement of the initiate. This was the case for Freemasonry and the Order of the Illuminati of Bavaria. Freemasonry, in fact, in its modern beginnings, presents precisely these characteristics, which come not only from the operative Freemasonry prior to 1717, but also and especially from the occult philosophy of the Rosicrucians. The occult philosophy, which continues throughout the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th, influences the birth of Freemasonry through authoritative exponents of the Royal Society, particularly with Elias Ashmole.
Modern English Freemasonry accepts the principles, the methodology and the finality of the esoteric societies. It is also a society of men that pursues ends that are not esoteric. Since its inception, there existed in Freemasonry two foundations: the initiatory one, made up of symbols, rituals and ceremonies that are carried out in the Temple, and the profane one made up of rules for its organization. The first one is secret, the second transparent. The problem of the two foundations surfaces from the very beginning as does the search for a just coexistence between the two.
In English Freemasonry, the problem of the coexistence of the two foundations is only theoretical. The pyramidal structure of the initiatory foundation matches perfectly the monarchical structure of English society. In both cases, the authority descends from on high, and the initiatory pyramid overlaps the profane one. Such coexistence will be further strengthened when the king is also the Grand Master of Freemasonry. The identity between the two foundations in English Freemasonry has been holding to this day.
In other Freemasonries, the identity between the two pyramids, with the passing of time, has broken with the result that, while the initiatory pyramid has held and remains in place, the profane one has been overturned, thereby causing a profound contradiction. The causes of such overthrow of the profane pyramid are many and can be explained with the passage from a monarchical conception of Freemasonry to a democratic one. In democracy, authority flows from the lower ranks to the top.
The democratic conception, introduced in Freemasonry after World War II, has brought about serious problems that could compromise its very existence. What has happened can be defined as a schizophrenic situation. Think, for example, of the figure of the Grand Master who is at the top of the initiatory pyramid as well as at the top of the profane pyramid. By capsizing the profane pyramid, he finds himself in a paradoxical situation: while he is the holder of the sovereignty of the initiatory pyramid, in the profane pyramid, whose sovereignty belongs to the people, he is subject to the will of those who elect him. The initiatory authority descends from above while profane authority rises from below. His role is thus weakened, and the organization is suddenly on the road to anarchy, which undermines the foundation of the Masonic edifice.
When one finds himself in such a situation, if radical changes are not desirable (the only one would be to go back to the modern origins), one tries the solution of weakening one of the two terms of the contradiction. In this specific case, what has been weakened is the initiatory pyramid, and that has caused the start of the desecration and the counter-initiation of Freemasonry.
In this brief historical and philosophical excursus, I have presented some of the major passages of the esoteric and initiatory journey of mankind. The esoteric societies here characterized, though they operate in different times and places, all have the same formal structure and the same methodology: a sacred place, the Temple, where one enters following an initiation and where one perfects him by passing from lower degrees to superior degrees based on a ritual in order to acquire knowledge of self, of society and of God.
The millennial esoteric tradition of humanity has two pillars: a) one that expresses its absolute foundation; and b) one that expresses its historical and contingent foundation. If the first is immutable, it follows that the second is variable in accordance with the periods of history. For this reason, an esoteric Order must have both an immutable base that makes it identical to all the others, and a historical basis that differentiates it from all the others and expresses its specificity. Let us remember that all esoteric Orders throughout the history of humanity are interpretations of the same absolute foundation.
The Order of the Illuminati and that of the Freemasonry have in common the universal morals. They are esoteric societies that propose to improve man by educating him to live a life inspired by ethical values.
The traditional definition of Freemasonry (and it applies to the Order of the Illuminati as well) is generally accepted as follows: “Freemasonry is a conception of man (a philosophical anthropology) that requires following ends that have an ethical finality oriented to transcendence according to initiatory modalities.” Hence, it is clearly affirmed that Freemasonry is a moral system. But which morals are we referring to? Because Freemasonry is not a religion, the morals cannot be those specified by religions. In essence, its moral is a universal one made up of principles and rules that apply to all men.
