The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his073/othr29.arj/OTHR29.TXT

Text File | 1990-02-24 | 8KB | 152 lines

                      A CURIOUS CASE OF FRAUD
                       by Wesley P. Walters


 Freemasonry, like all religions that depart from the Bible, must
be considered by Christians to be satanically influenced, even if
we know the adherents of those religions don't believe they are
serving Satan.

 However, for more than a century Freemasonry has been charged
with knowingly worshiping Satan, teaching satanic doctrine and
having secret satanic rites. One of the main quotations support-
ing such a claim is taken from a French publication of Abel
Clarin de la Rive titled The Woman and Child in Universal French
Masonry (La Femme et L'Enfanti Dans La Franc-Maconnerie Univer-
selle, Paris: Delhomme et Briguet, 1894).

 The quote is purported to have come from American Freemason
Albert Pike, whose book Morals and Dogma ... of Freemasonry is a
standard reference for Scottish Rite Masons. He is reported to
have made the statements of the Luciferian nature of Masonry in
an encyclical hand-carried to Paris by the "noted Diana Vaughan".
A footnote at the end of the quotation in Clarin de la Rive's
publication verifies this point. It states:

 This was sister Diana Vaughn whom Albert Pike - in order to give
her the greatest mark of confidence - entrusted to carry his
Luciferian encyclical to Paris during the Universal Exposition.

 The pertinent parts of this communique from Pike

 The Masonic Religion should be ... maintained in the purity of
the Luciferian Doctrine ... Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunate-
ly Adonay is also God. ... but Lucifer, God of Light and God of
Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of
Darkness and Evil. (de la Rive, pp. 488-589)

  This citation is depended upon to establish the Luciferian
nature of Freemasonry by writers such as J. Edward Decker Jr.,
author of The Question of Freemasonry (pp. 12-14); William J.
Schnoebelen and James Spencer, authors of Mormonism's Temple of
Doom (p. 24, borrowing from Decker), and Jack Harris, writer of
Freemasonry: The Invisible Cult in our Midst. There is no doubt
about the translation of these quotations nor about the nature of
the assertions they carry, namely, that at least the Freemasonry
that Pike was associated with was Luciferian in its teachings and
its rites.

 The only problem with the assertions is that they are part of a
hoax that grew out of the mind of one Gabriel Antoine Jogand-
Pages, who had a vendetta against both the Masons and the Roman
Catholic Church.

 Jogand-Pages, who spent his early years in a Jesuit reform
school, had come to hate the Roman Catholic Church. Adopting the
pen name of Leo Taxil, he vented his anger against the papacy
with the publication of his salacious The Secret Loves of Pius
IX.

 He joined the Masonic Lodge but was expelled before he could
begin work on the second Masonic degree (there are 33 degrees in
Freemasonry, with 33rd degree being the highest.  Angered now
also at the Masons, he pretended to return to Catholicism and
started carrying out a plan by which he could get revenge both on
the Masons and the Catholics. In 1884, Pope Leo XIII had issued
an encyclical, Humanus Genus, in which he said the human race was
divided into two camps - those who served God and Christ, and
those who served Satan. The satanic forces, the encyclical main-
tained, were headed by the Freemasons.

 Taxil seized upon this papal utterance and set about manufactur-
ing fictitious exposes of Masonic rites so he could have the dual
joy of duping the Catholics and ruining the Masons. In 1885-86,
he published his Complete Revelation upon Freemasonry and fol-
lowed it immediately with Brothers Three Points.

 Building upon an obscure French lodge for both males and females
thought to have been founded in 1737 and called the Order of
Palladium, Taxil invented fictitious rites that were labeled
Luciferian. Soon he asserted that Satan was both worshiped in
these lodges and on occasion made appearances during lodge ritu-
als.

 Taxil's lurid imagination painted scenes of immoralities and
orgies carried on by Palladian initiates. In 1886 he published
The Masonic Sister (Les Soeurs Maconnes) and in 1891 Are There
Women in French Masonry? By now others began to join him in his
conspiracy. Later, he and a partner published the pamphlet "Are
There Lodges for Women?"  It is apparently here that the forged
instructions of Albert Pike first appeared. In it Pike was made
to assert that Lucifer was to be worshiped as the true God, and
the practice of illicit sexual intercourse was endorsed. Pike had
just died in 1891 and therefore could not dispute these asser-
tions.

 In 1892 Taxil and Charles Hacks, launched a periodical, The
Devil in the Nineteenth Century (Le Diable au Dix-Neuvieme Sie-
cle), which ran for two years under that title. They wrote joint-
ly under the pseudonym of Dr. Henri Bataille. Here Taxil was able
to focus upon his most brilliant fabrication -- Diana Vaughan.
Diana was presented as the daughter of a satanist of Louisville,
Ky. Her father was depicted as being in league with Albert Pike,
the head of a secret Masonic order which controlled Freemasonry
worldwide from Pike's headquarters in Charleston, S.C.

 To make Diana a more believable character, Taxil and Hacks had
her convert to Roman Catholicism, but remain hidden in a convent
for fear of being murdered by the Masons. Her revelations about
Freemasonry continued to flow from the publishing house of Del-
homme and Briguet, the same publishers who also printed the book
by Clarin de la Rive. In 1894 appeared Memoires d'une Ex-Palla-
dist (Memoires of an Ex-Palladist). Her notoriety stirred a
clamor for those who were publishing her sensational revelations
to produce her in the flesh.

 An Italian ex-Mason, Domenico Margiotta, gave some support to
Diana's existence when he claimed in 1896 that he had known her
in Naples in 1889, but he proceeded to undercut the whole story
when he claimed that the Diana of the Memoires was a false Diana.
Suddenly, two Dianas were in the public light, but Margiotta soon
backed down and confessed in print (La France Libre of Lyons)
that the whole Diana affair was Taxil's and his invention.

  Meanwhile, Hacks had abandoned Taxil, and subsequently con-
fessed his part in the hoax to a staff writer of La Libre Parole.
This left Taxil extremely vulnerable, and at the Anti-Masonic
congress of Roman Catholics at Trent in January 1897 he was
pressured to produce the elusive Diana Vaughan, which he promised
to do on the following day.

  The next day he appeared before an audience of 1000, including
36 bishops, 50 episcopal delegates and 61 representatives of the
press, and confessed that there was no real Diana Vaughan and
that the whole affair had been a gigantic hoax. He added that
some in the highest ranks of the Roman hierarchy, including the
Pope, knew of the fraud about Diana but had chosen to remain
silent for their own evil purposes. The audience was so infuriat-
ed at the revelation of this hoax that Taxil had to seek a police
escort from the building.

 Taxil thus had his revenge, both upon the Masons and upon the
papacy, and had enjoyed the profits of a decade of publishing his
fictitious works and selling them to an eager buying public. The
fraud ended as abruptly as it began, but its effects have lin-
gered. Christian writers still fall prey to Taxil's hoax by
believing and repeating his tales.

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