‘Four Crowned Martyrs Day’

    

Today is the Feast Day of the Four Crowned Martyrs, namesakes of the famous Quatuor Coronati Lodge 2076 in London, the first lodge of Masonic research.

Like so much in embryonic Masonic letters, the legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs vexes the reader. In short, there are competing stories about them which not only render divergent narratives, but even tell of different martyrs! What all these saints do share in common is being murdered on the orders of Emperor Diocletian. Not how you want to go.

Today, I’ll share a short piece written by one of the lodge’s first members, Bro. Adolphus Frederick Alexander Woodford, a Past Master of Lodge of Antiquity 2 and a Past Grand Chaplain of the United Grand Lodge of England. (More of his amazing biography at bottom.) This explanation of things appears in Vol. 1 of Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, the research lodge’s book of transactions for the period of 1886 to 1888. (I’ll also add that the Arundel Manuscript mentioned below has no originative connection to the Codex Arundel, Leonardo da Vinci’s writings on geometry and other subjects. However, both batches of papers were collected by the Earl of Arundel during the early seventeenth century.)

The Quatuor Coronati.

The Legend of the Quatuor Coronati is very interesting to Freemasons because in the legend, as in the Arundel MS.—a transcript of the more important portions of which follows—the Quatuor were originally four Craftsmen by name Claudius, Castorius, Simphorianus, and Nicostratus, “mirificos in arte quadrataria,” which though it is translated the “art of carving,” is literally “the stone-squarer’s art,” or the art of stone-squaring. They are distinctly called “artifices” artificers, although as the legend shows us, to the four artificers are joined four milites; whilst one Simplicius, converted to Christianity by the four during the progress of events narrated by the legend, is added to the stone-squarers, making nine in all. They are declared to have been Christians, “occulte,” secretly. Diocletian ordered an image of Æsculapius to be made, and after a contest and dialogue with “quinque Philosophi” Simphorianus, who appears to be the leader and spokesman, adds Simplicius to the number —now five—and refuses, on their behalf and with their consent, to make the image. They are brought before Lampadius the Tribune, who after reference to Diocletian, orders them to be stripped and beaten with scorpions, “scorpionibus mactari,” and then, by Diocletian’s order, they were placed in “loculi plumbei,” leaden coffins, and cast into the Tiber.

A certain Nicodemus is said to have raised the coffins and taken them to his own house; levavit says the legend.

Two years afterwards, Diocletian ordered the soldiers to pay homage to a Statue of Æsculapius, but four “Cornicularii,” or wing-leaders of the city militia, refused. They were ordered to be put to death in front of the image of Æsculapius by strokes of the Plumbata, “ictu plumbatarum,” and their bodies cast into the streets to the dogs, where they lay five days.

Then Sebastianus, with Pope Melchiades, is said to have taken up the bodies and buried them in the cemetery on the road to Lavica. By the use of the word “Arenaria,” allusion is made to the sandpits in which slaves and criminals were buried, but Christians never. But in order to conceal the catacombs from their persecutors, opening and entrances were made and used in the Arenaria to deposit the bodies of martyrs and the like in the catacombs. Here they seemed to have remained till the ninth century.

For though Melchiades appointed the day, 8th November, in the fourth century, and it is recognized as such in the Sacramentary of Gregory 200 years later, and Pope Honorius in the seventh century built a church to their especial honor, it was not until the ninth century apparently that Pope Leo translated the relics of the nine worthies to the restored and embellished church on the Cœlian Hill, now called the Church of the “Santi Cuatro Incoronati,”—Incoronati in modern Italian being identical with Coronati in mediæval and classic Latin.

It will be seen that the names have become confused as time has run on, and various appellations have been given to the four and the five. Originally the legend gives Claudius, Castorius, Simphorianus, and Nicostratus, and to these Simplicius is added. The remaining four in one of the earliest legends are said to be Severus, Severianus, Carpophorus, and Victorinus. This makes nine in all—nine worthies—concerning whom there is no reason to disbelieve, no a priori objection to, the perfect truth of the legend. Clear it is that in process of time the facts of the story itself have become a little confused and the names intermingled, but there is no doubt from very early days the four or five have been commemorated on the same one day. In one martyrology, November 8th is thus commemorated “Senas ornantes idus merito atque cruore, Claudi, Castori, Simplicii, Simphoriani, et Nichostrate pari fulgetis is luce coronæ.” One early writer terms them fratres, but whether he means fratres in blood, in confession, or fratres collegii does not clearly appear.

From Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. 1

As is well-known, the Sarum Missal of the 11th century gives the names as in the Arundel Hagiology, but the names vary much in different legends and service books. Some of these differences are no doubt scribal errors, and some attest remarkably the variability and the uncertainty of tradition. For instance we find Castulus, Semphorianus, Christorius, Significanus, Clemens, and Cortianus, all applied to some of the nine. In some MSS. the five are found, not the four; in some, the four are mentioned, not the five. Nothing can be decided from such mutability of the legend, or even safely argued.

In one of the Steinmetz Constitutions, they are simply described as Claudius, Christorius, and Significanus, while in the beautiful illumination from the Isabella Missal, four only appear—with the emblems of Craft Masonry one and all: the square, the plumb rule, the trowel, and the gavel—though five are mentioned in the commemoration prayer, Simphorianus, Claudius, Castorius, Simplicius, and Nichostratus. This is explained in the Arundel legend by the fact that Simplicius was not one of the original four, but being a fellow-workman and secretly desirous of becoming a Christian, he was baptized by Quirillus, the Bishop, and so suffered martyrdom with the other four.

It may be observed here, that the legend is in itself purely Italian in its inception, though it has spread probably with the Craft Lodges into Germany, Gaul, and Britain.

There are several old Acta and Gesta Quatuor Coronatorum and several special Legends, Martyrologies, and Hagiologies, of the Coronati, and the subject still requires study and illustration, as no doubt many valuable similar MSS. remain unknown and uncollated in the Vatican Library, and the greater libraries, and even private collections of MSS. To Mr. J.0. Halliwell Phillipps, the English Craft owes its introduction to this most ancient legend and valuable link between the Freemasonry of the past and the Freemasonry of the present, as contained in the “Masonic Poem.”

The Arundel Legend is taken from a fine MS. of the 12th century, in the British Museum. Its proper reference is Ar : MSS., 91, f 2186. There is another copy of the legend in the British Museum, Harleian MSS., No. 2802, f 99. There is also a short notice of the Quatuor Coronati in Regius MS., 8, c, 7 f 165, of the 14th century.

In the Harleian MS., 2082, Simphorianus is given as Simphronius; in the Regius MS., the names are as in the Arundel, but in different sequence.

In Alban Butler’s Lives, the Four Crowned Martyrs are named Severus, Severianus, Carpophorus, and Victorinus; and he adds, “five other martyrs called Claudius, Nicostratus, Symphorianus, Castorius, and Simplicius, who had suffered in the same persecution are buried in the same cemetery.” — A. F. A. Woodford

The following biography of Woodford also comes from this first AQC volume.

Rev. Adolphus Frederick Alexander Woodford, born in 1821, gazetted Christmas Day, 1838, Ensign and Lieutenant Coldstream Guards, retired in 1841, matriculated at Durham University 1842, took B.A. degree and License of Theology in 1847, and M.A. degree some years after. Ordained Deacon in 1846, curate of Whitburn, near Sunderland, 1846-47, ordained priest July 1817, and in the same year presented to the Rectory of Swillington, Leeds, which he resigned in 1872. In 1852 he was Chaplain to Sir John Lowther, Bart., as High Sheriff of Yorkshire.

Initiated in the Lodge of Friendship, Gibraltar, No. 278, in 1842, and subsequently joined the following Lodges—Marquis of Granby, Durham, No. 124, in 1842, W.M. in 1844 and 1845; Philanthropic Lodge, Leeds, No. 304, in 1854, W.M. in 1858 and 1859; and Lodge of Antiquity, London, No. 2, in 1863, D.M. in 1878, under H.R.H. the Duke of Albany. He was exalted in Concord Chapter, Durham, No. 124, in 1848; joined the Philanthropic Chapter, Leeds, No. 304, in 1863, and its first Z.; and St. James’ Chapter, London, No. 2, in 1874, Z. thereof in 1882. Appointed Provincial Grand Chaplain of Durham in 1847, Provincial Grand Chaplain, West Yorkshire, 1860, and Provincial Grand Senior Warden, 1857, and finally Grand Chaplain of England in 1863.

Was first Chairman of the West Yorkshire Charity Committee from 1859-1870. He has been a constant contributor to the Masonic press, few names being better known than “Masonic Student,” one of his many noms de plume, and was the editor of the London “Freemason” and of the “Masonic Magazine,” from 1873 to 1886; and the author of Kenning’s Cyclopoedia, “Defense of Freemasonry,” “The Sloane Manuscript,” and other works—as well as of the learned introduction to Hughan’s Old Charges of the British Freemasons.

Bro. Woodford would die in 1887, so he didn’t see AQC Vol. 1 brought to fruition. He is one of the stars of this book, having written a variety of items in its pages, including an English translation of the legend from that Arundel Manuscript’s Latin. His name probably is familiar to you Rosicrucians, as he was among the organizers of the HOGD.

In closing, I just want to explain that a big part of my laughter at the silly notion of Templar origins of Freemasonry derives from my wish for more Masons today to learn about the Four Crowned Martyrs and thereby appreciate the connection that stonemasons Claudius, Castorius, Simphorianus, and Nicostratus have to us. I’m not at all against embracing Christian history and legend, I just think what we choose to believe ought to make some sense because Masonic Templarism is fallacious.

     

‘New Light on the Golden Dawn’

     
This just in from the Rose Circle Research Foundation:

Magpie file photo

Christopher McIntosh

On March 18, 2017, Rose Circle Fellow Christopher McIntosh will speak at our spring symposium in New York City, delivering a most disruptive lecture titled “New Light on the Golden Dawn.”

In the founding of the 19th century English occult society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a key role was played by an alleged German Rosicrucian adept called Fräulein Anna Sprengel, who had the magical motto Sapiens Dominabitur Astris (the wise person overcomes their stars). In this lecture, historian Christopher McIntosh will reveal a sensational discovery that he made about Fräulein Sprengel, and will speak on its significance in the history of the Golden Dawn.

I believe this most likely will take place at Masonic Hall, but I’ll certainly share all details as they become known.
     

‘How about a nice game of (Rosicrucian) chess?’

     
A mention of chess is sure to halt me in my tracks; add the name Rosicrucian to the word chess, and I’ll do a double take; and expose to me the notion of a Rosicrucian chess set on the anniversary of William Butler Yeats’ birth, and I’ll take a minute to blog about it. And that’s what happened today. Perusing my favorite social media site, I happened upon a link to a vendor of such chess sets, sometimes also known as Enochian Chess.

Designed by MacGregor Mathers & Co. in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the nineteenth century, Rosicrucian Chess retains all of the chess piece names that you know, and most of their freedom of movement (the queen is afforded one different capability from what we have in standard chess), but the pieces are pyramid shaped and as many as four players may compete. With sets of pieces for four players, the pieces are in four colors, and they represent the Elements. Red for fire; blue for water; yellow for air; and black for earth. The purposes of this chess variant are divination, meditation, and recreation—which some of us could say of traditional chess!

The chess board has more to offer than the two-tone surface reminiscent of the floors of Masonic lodges, as you can see in these photos borrowed from icehousegames.org that show a Golden Dawn symbol within each of the 64 squares.

Courtesy icehousegames.org

Courtesy icehousegames.org

Courtesy icehousegames.org

Don’t ask me about the rules of the game. I haven’t a clue, but Israel Regardie writes of them in his The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic.

(For the record, Golden Dawn is not my thing. While I believe intuitive acceptance complements our pursuit of the rational, most systems of esoteric teaching are beyond my abilities and interests. HOGD is one of them, but if you’re so inclined, I would steer you toward here, the order led by Chic and Tabatha Cicero, although I do not know if they play this chess.)

Well, I’m off to lodge now. Will be visiting Cincinnati Masonic Lodge No. 3 in Morristown, New Jersey to greet Chris Hodapp on his current speaking tour.
     

‘Occult Humanities Conference to return to NYU’

     
Phantasmaphile and New York University will conspire again to host the Occult Humanities Conference next February.

Pam Grossman and Jesse Bransford will welcome you at the university’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions, located at 34 Stuyvesant Street in Manhattan, February 5 through 7, for a weekend of lectures, performances, and art exhibits exploring “Contemporary Art and Scholarship on the Esoteric Traditions.”

Click here for the schedule, and click here to buy tickets.

From the publicity:


The 2016 Occult Humanities Conference is a weekend conference to be held in New York City on February 5-7, 2016. The conference will present a wide array of voices active in the cultural landscape who are specifically addressing the occult tradition through research, scholarship and artistic practice.

The arts and humanities at present are acutely interested in subjects related to the occult tradition. The tradition represents a rich and varied visual culture that displays a complex set of relations at once culturally specific and global in their transmission. Roughly defined, the occult tradition represents a series of culturally syncretic belief systems with related and overlapping visual histories. Though there are as many ways into this material as there are cultural—and personal—perspectives, universal occult concerns often include a belief in some sort of magic; a longing to connect with an immaterial or trans-personal realm; and a striving for inner-knowledge, refinement of the self, and transformation of one’s consciousness, if not one’s physical circumstances.

Intensely marginalized throughout most historical periods, these traditions persist and represent an “underground” perspective that periodically exerts a strong influence on structures of dissent, utopianism and social change. Though history is marked with several so-called “Occult Revivals,” the contemporary digital age is a perfect confluence of several factors that make this moment prime for a re-examination of all of the esoteric traditions. While the information age has allowed for easier access to previously obscure writings, imagery, and social contexts, it alternately elicits a deep desire for sensorial experiences and meaning-making when one steps away from the screen.

The presenters at the OHC represent a rich and expanding community of international artists and academics from multiple disciplines across the humanities who share an exuberance and excitement for how the occult traditions interface with their fields of study as well as the culture at large. The small scale of this conference (approximately 100 attendees) will give ticket holders an intimate look at the presenters and their views.
This year’s conference coincides with the exhibition “Language of the Birds: Occult and Art” on display at 80 WSE Gallery, the art gallery of NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions, curated by Pam Grossman.

There will be an onsite exhibition of prints from Carl Jung’s The Red Book, courtesy of DigitalFusion.

Books and editions from a variety of vendors will be available for sale throughout the duration of the conference. Vendors include Inner Traditions, Ouroboros Press, Wonderella Printed, and more.

MEMES OR SCHEMES
If we consider a consciously magical approach to art in contemporary culture, should we be fascinated by memes of potential or paranoid about manipulative schemes? History shows us that more than anything else, it is culture that defines how “posterity” will regard a certain area or region. Logically, this would extend to our times too, then. In transcending the causal and rational approaches to human existence (economy, politics, science, etc.), we find that our culture is increasingly infused with magical approaches, not only in thematics but also in attitude and content. How will this shape our immediate future and, beyond, how will later generations regard our phase of experimentation?

Carl Abrahamsson (b. 1966) is a writer, publisher, and filmmaker based in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been writing about occultural people, phenomena, tendencies and movements since the late 1980s. He is a lecturer at art institutions, colleges, and universities, and is the editor and publisher of the annual journal The Fenris Wolf, which contains material from the vital intersection between art and esotericism.

Dionysus Stardust: Theater, Masks,

and the Spectacle of Rock and Roll

Peter Bebergal, author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, will discuss the relationship between theater, ritual, and popular music, with a look at the influence of ancient religious practice, turn of the century art, and occult lodge rites on the performance and culture of rock. From Robert Plant’s Dionysian swagger to Bowie’s alchemical transformations, Bebergal will reveal the gods under the masks of rock’s most arresting moments.

Peter Bebergal writes widely on the speculative and slightly fringe. His essays and reviews have appeared in NewYorker.com, The Times Literary Supplement, Boing Boing, The Believer, and The Quietus. He is the author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood, The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God (with Scott Korb). Bebergal studied religion and culture at Harvard Divinity School, and lives in Cambridge.

Swallowing the Stone

with the Brothers McKenna:

Psychedelics, Alchemy,

and Media at La Chorrera

The “Experiment at La Chorrera,” which Terence and Dennis McKenna performed in the Columbian jungle in 1971, and which became the core of Terence’s True Hallucinations, stands as one of the most storied trips in the annals of modern psychedelia. As an exploration of what Wouter Hanegraaff calls “entheogenic esotericism,” this talk will unpack the various threads of alchemy, science fiction, and media theory that formed the matrix for the protocols, phenomenology, and after-the-fact interpretations of the McKenna’s unparalleled encounter with high weirdness.

Erik Davis is an author, podcaster, award-winning journalist, and lecturer based in San Francisco. He is the author, most recently, of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (Yeti, 2010). He also wrote The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle, 2006), Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3, 2005) and TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Crown, 1998), which has been translated into five languages and recently reissued with a new afterword by North Atlantic Books. His essays on music, technoculture, psychedelics, and esoterica have appeared in dozens of books, including A Rose Veiled in Black: Art and Arcana of Our Lady Babalon (Three Hands, 2015), Zig Zag Zen (Synergetic, 2015), Rave Culture and Religion (Routledge, 2009), and AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Μan (University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Davis has contributed to scores of publications, including Aeon, Bookforum, Wired, Salon, Slate, the LA Weekly, and the Village Voice. He has been interviewed by CNN, the BBC, Wisconsin public radio, and the New York Times, and explores the “cultures of consciousness” on his weekly podcast Expanding Mind. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, and recently earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Rice University.

Delphic Oracle - Saturday Evening Performance

Christiana Key began classical violin training on her fifth birthday, followed by piano and opera a few years later. During those formative years, she was also active in community theatre, as an actor and costume designer, and started a bespoke evening and holiday gown label for her young friends’ parties. She was accepted into the University of North Florida as a double music major in Performance Violin and Voice at 16 years old, though she left two years later to pursue her interests in punk, rock, electronic, and experimental music, first moving to London, then settling down in New York City. She began recording original compositions in her bedroom in 2006 and joined Cult of Youth in 2009, and Zola Jesus in 2012 as a touring member.

During her time in New York and as part of Cult of Youth, she met several occultists who introduced her to different and innovative ways of fusing music and magick, and through that, Delphic Oracle was born. Christiana saw there was a lack in both the accessibility of experimental magical music and the (powerful) intentions of mainstream pop and hip-hop. Delphic Oracle aims to fuse the power of magickal intent and the power of sound, and additionally, the power of spectacle into every performance. Each performance is based on astrological vibrations, current events, popular culture, and the audience's subtle emotional dynamics felt before and during the show. The intentions behind each show can range from self-love to financial stability to gratitude to wisdom, and are represented by obvious things such as the songs' timbre, lyric matter, and costume choice, down minute details such as color and number of candles, types of metals and wands used, and the planetary and elemental correspondences of the homemade incenses burned during the performance.

Delphic Oracle has self-released one EP, “Watching the Fern,” and a cassette through Popnihil, “Mirrors/Crows/Echoes.” She performs solo using only a sampler, violin, drum pad, and vocal microphone. She now lives in St. Augustine, Florida, and after a year’s forced-hiatus from touring, she is working on a full-length album to be released fall 2016.

Bohemian Occult Subculture in Britain’s 1890s: How Artists, Actors, and Writers Made the Golden Dawn

The Order of the Golden Dawn is an icon for modern occultists: it is the late Victorian ceremonial magic organization which created the template for subsequent occult magic. Western mysteries, Kabbalah, Celtic mysticism, and even Wicca would follow forms it developed in its 25 short years, c.1885-1925. It was an occult renaissance, sudden and powerful.

Historians stress the first founders’ connection with Freemasonry, giving the impression that it was a club of old establishment men with gray suits and gray beards. Their rites and study course were, one imagines, equally boring and patriarchal. But in fact, the Golden Dawn core group were a bunch of young creatives - friends working in creative collaboration, inspired by the mysterious. They were the kind of people who, if they lived today, would perhaps hang out at Observatory.

The women, first. One was a polyamorous working actress who wrote for feminist magazines. Another was a feisty trust-fund girl who staged avant-garde plays with her friends. A third was gorgeous Swedish art student who liked older men and doing portraits. The guys: a very cute poet from Irish parentage; a bright researcher with no money and a bad temper; and a rich kid who did a lot of drugs and a lot of boyfriends. They were all bright, feisty, achievers; by old age each had made real impact in their chosen fields. Together they made art, made ritual, did meditations, hung out, had romances, had breakups, studied old texts, and tried to reach into something beyond normal human experience. As we see them anew via this illustrated presentation, it is hoped we can see the Order of the Golden Dawn anew.

Dr. Christina Oakley Harrington is the founder and managing director of the legendary Treadwell’s of London, a bookshop and events center for the British pagan and esoteric community. She is co-editor of the Abraxas International Journal of Esoteric Studies. A former assistant professor of History, she feels passionately that esotericism is an important strand in Western culture, to be addressed, studied, celebrated—and, of course, practiced.

John Augustus Knapp and His Circle

Perhaps most famous for his watercolor illustrations that populate Manly P. Hall’s esoteric encyclopedia The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928) and his illustrations for John Uri Lloyd’s curious novel Etidorhpa (1895), J. Augustus Knapp was an illustrator at the center of a circle of the most influential members of the American Occult Revival. I will discuss Knapp’s personal occult interests and beliefs and his circle of friends and collaborators.

A Curtis G. Lloyd Fellow at the Lloyd Library and Museum, Ken Henson is the author and illustrator of the treatise Alchemy and Astral Projection: Ecstatic Trance in the Hermetic Tradition (LLM, 2014), the illustrated novella/grimoire HIGH GRAVITY: Werewolves, Ghosts, and Magick Most Black (Oneiric Imprint, 2015), and the illustrator of Blue Jay Slayer (Aurora Press, 2015), which is a collaboration with poet Matt Hart. He also recently collaborated with the Philosophical Research Society to restore and reissue Manly P. Hall and John Augustus Knapp’s Revised New Art Tarot. Ken’s writings and art have been published in periodicals such as Abraxas, Clavis Journal, and The Gnostic Journal, and he has presented at the Esoteric Book Conference, SCIENTIAE, Babalon Rising, and the Left Hand Path Conference. He is an Associate Professor and the Head of Illustration at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Ohio where he teaches studio courses and Art and the Occult.

Blues Magic

References to witchcraft, and magic spells appear frequently in the lyrics of popular songs, but, in general, these references are metaphoric. For example, when Frank Sinatra sings about “that sly come-hither stare” in his classic “Witchcraft,” few listeners think that the subject of that song is actually practicing dark arts.

A prominent exception exists in blues and its descendant, rhythm and blues (R&B), whose lyrics are permeated with references to actual magical practices. Magic is alive in the blues; very specifically the magical practices that first arose in the African-American communities of the southern United States, the traditions of Hoodoo and Conjure. Blues is the crossroads where music and magic meet:
• Blues songs praise and excoriate Conjure women and Hoodoo doctors.
• Songs document historical magical practitioners, like the Seven Sisters of New Orleans or Caroline Dye, the seer of Newport, Arkansas.
• Blues lyrics are studded with mention of magical practices such as mojo hands, John the Conqueror roots, hotfoot powder, and the fidelity-enforcing Nation Sack.
• An occult aura surrounds some musicians, too: reminiscent of the legend of Faust, blues stars Robert Johnson and Tommie Johnson were both reputed to have met the devil at the crossroads, so that they could barter their souls in exchange for spectacular musical prowess and success.

During this talk, we'll explore the musical genre, as well as the specific magical practices celebrated within its songs.

Judika Illes is a native New Yorker and an independent scholar and researcher. She is the author of eight books devoted to spiritual traditions, witchcraft, and the magical arts including the Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, as well as the forthcoming The Weiser Book of Forgotten and Fantastic Tales. In her younger days, Judika hosted The Low Budget Blues Show on WRSU-FM.

An Invisible Art: Maya Deren and Experiments with Absence

Experimental filmmaker Maya Deren traveled to Haiti four different times with the ultimate aim of making a film that would compare children’s games, Balinese dances, and the rituals practiced for Voudoun that she had gone there to film. In the process, her work began to focus on generating connections through which what is seen and what is unseen might traffic. She gives precedence to that which is accomplished through suggestion or association rather than through causal links, and takes pains to represent that which seems not to be present but is actually simply not visible. Such strategies underline Deren’s obsessions, including how to access inaccessible states of being and present them cinematically. The work that comes out of her Haitian experience draws on energies related to the incomplete, missing, or desired but absent object that she labored to represent.

Sarah Keller is Assistant Professor of Art and Cinema Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She co-edited the collection Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations (Amsterdam University Press, 2012), and her book Maya Deren: Incomplete Control (Columbia University Press, 2014) examines the role of unfinished cinematic works by focusing on the Maya Deren oeuvre. Keller’s current project, Cinephilia/Cinephobia, focuses on the history and theory of love and anxiety in the cinema.

Lykanthea - Opening Performance

Lykanthea is Lakshmi Ramgopal, a solo electronic musician from Chicago, IL. With lyrics rooted in ancient mythologies, a haunting voice smoked in cave-like reverb and the gauzy drone of synths, Lykanthea writes the soundtrack of thresholds. Drawing on a decade of Carnatic vocal training, Ramgopal "sings hymns of the ancients in a tale that breaks against oppressive hands to expressions and emotions that emerge from behind the veil" (IMPOSE). Her sound is ritual chanting for the electronic age.

Ramgopal began writing and performing as Lykanthea while pursuing a doctorate in Classics at the University of Chicago. She found herself drawn to the narrative of legacy and rebirth in ancient Sumerian texts about the goddess Inanna. While isolated on an uninhabited Greek island in 2013, she began writing lyrics, collecting field recordings, and laying down the soundscapes that became her debut Migration. The EP was released in July 2014 digitally and on cassette to local acclaim, with the initial physical run selling out in months.

A fixture in Chicago’s dark fashion and witch house scene, Ramgopal’s passion for atmosphere and texture has made her music an inspiration for collaborators. Her music has been featured in promotional videos for Velvit and Vespere Vintage, and her style was praised by dark fashion blog FAIIINT and Culture Magazine. She also collaborated with Hvnter Gvtherer to release a capsule collection of jewelry inspired by Migration’s lyrics. While living in Italy earlier this year as a winner of the prestigious Rome Prize, Ramgopal has performed across Europe, including Leipzig’s Wave Gotik Treffen. She also partnered up with sound artist Paula Matthusen for the sound installation “Prex Gemina” for exhibition in Rome and worked with Austrian artist Krist Mort on the video for “Parturition.”

Lykanthea has been featured in Noisey, IMPOSE, MTV Iggy, Culture Magazine, No Fear of Pop, Warren Ellis’ SPEKTRMODULE podcast, Chicago Reader, Largehearted Boy and Artribune.

Art, Technology, and the Mysterious Imagery of C.G Jung’s Red Book

In 2007, Jung’s Red Book was released from the family vault for the first time in decades and given to Hugh Milstein from DigitalFusion to evaluate and archive for future generations. This behind the scenes journey into how The Red Book was digitally captured begins in 2002 and will provide insights into the technology, process, and care undertaken in Zürich during the photographic process. Hugh will reveal the technological transformations that have occurred in the last 12 years, allowing this masterwork to be printed with amazing clarity as fine art prints. He will share conversations with Massimiliano Gioni from the Venice Biennale, where The Red Book and fine art print reproductions were exhibited in the world famous art show, making a transformative historical statement about Jung’s art into a modern reality. Hugh will also share in-depth closeups of the masterwork, revealing mystic imagery and hidden themes that were hand crafted by Jung.

Hugh Milstein, co-founder and President of DigitalFusion. DigitalFusion is a leading Creative Services company headquartered in Los Angeles. With a base in photography, and an expansion into motion, DigitalFusion is a cutting edge provider to major publications and entertainment outlets worldwide. Hugh’s expertise in image making led him to be name to the “100 Most Important People in Photography” by American Photographer. Hugh continues to design and develop new image styles and services that appear on digital newsstands, moving billboards, iPads, and mobile devices.

The Tarot and its Gifts

When I asked the Shining Tribe Tarot what it wanted to talk about at the conference, I received three cards about receiving gifts and being willing to join with the cards to utilize them. In the Gift of Trees (Queen of Wands) two snakes wind around a tree, so that the three figures, snakes and tree, form the caduceus of Hermes. Between them, the snakes hold up the alchemical Philosopher’s Stone of transformation. In the Gift of Birds (Queen of Swords), a shaman wears a bird-headed helmet and carries a feathered shield and a banner with a bird on it. However, a flute falls from the sky, and in order to play this Gift (many people believe that flutes originally were inspired by bird songs) he will have to drop the shield and banner and take off the helmet. Finally, in the Two of Rivers (Two of Cups), a dark and light fish swim head to tail, forming the famous yin-yang symbol (the card is a tribute to the I Ching). The message is clear: in order to truly work (and create) with the Tarot, whether for readings, story telling, or spiritual discovery, we need to meet it as a partner, open up to its gifts, and merge with it.

Rachel Pollack is the author of 36 books of fiction and non-fiction, including two award-winning novels, a poetry collection, a translation (with David Vine) of Sophocles’s Oidipous Tyrannos (Oedipus Rex) and a series of books about Tarot that have become known around the world. Rachel has taught and lectured in the U.S. Canada, Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and China. Rachel has designed and drawn The Shining Tribe Tarot, and recently worked with artist Robert Place to create The Burning Serpent Oracle. Her work has been translated into 14 languages. Her most recent book is a novel, The Child Eater. Until her recent retirement, Rachel was a senior faculty member of Goddard College’s MFA in Writing program. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

The Forms of Hidden Things: Surrealism Through the Mirror of Magic

Artists, like alchemists, employ matter to reveal its transformative properties as magic and metaphor. Celia Rabinovitch, artist, author, and pioneer in the field of art and religion, uncovers surrealist art as a special form of knowledge related to insight and imagination. In The Forms of Hidden Things: Surrealism Through the Mirror of Magic, she investigates the Swiss American artist, Kurt Seligmann (1900-62) who immigrated to the USA in 1938, becoming the acknowledged expert on magic in surrealism. A decade later his book, Through the Mirror of Magic, (New York: Pantheon, 1948) was welcomed into the effervescent cultural mix that included Joseph Campbell, Wallace Stevens, Carl Jung, and others. Neglected until recently, Seligmann’s art has come to the fore, while the recognition of his book in the history of religions was constant. Celia shows how Seligmann’s magical imagination arises from his personal history and experiences as well as his occult research. She illuminates how his understanding of Jewish mysticism informs his art and defines his identity, while remaining hidden from others and even from himself.

Celia Rabinovitch (Ph.D. History of Religions, McGill, Montreal; MFA, Painting, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an artist and writer and professor whose work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Her book, Surrealism and the Sacred: Power, Eros, and the Occult in Modern Art, is cited in new approaches to art, literature, and spirituality, and considered an authority in the field. Using cultural anthropology, the history of religions, and art history she uncovers a history of hidden knowledge that includes magic and the imagination. She has written for Artweek, The Dictionary of Art, American Ceramics, C Magazine, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and contributed chapters to The Spiritual Image in Modern Art, ed. Katherine Regier, and was interviewed by Louis E Bourgeois, ed., in Complete with Missing Parts: Interviews with the Avant-garde. Her atmospheric paintings have been exhibited at The Florence Biennale; Galerie Mourati, Vienna; University of California; California Institute of Integral Studies; the Winnipeg Art Gallery; the Beck Center Museum, Cleveland, and published in Cerise Press: A Journal of Literature, Arts and Culture (2012), with awards for her art from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts, New York. She has held teaching and director appointments at the University of Colorado-Denver, California College of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and at Stanford University. As a Visiting Artist at Syracuse University she co-chaired the graduate program in painting, and was Program Director for Fine Arts and Graphic Design at the University of California, Berkeley (1992-2002). Currently she is professor at the University of Manitoba (on leave) and Director of Research at the Seligmann Center for the Arts, NY.


Janaka Stucky - Saturday Evening Poetry Reading

Janaka Stucky is the author of The Truth Is We Are Perfect (2015), the first title from Jack White’s new publishing imprint, Third Man Books. He is also the Publisher of award-winning indie press, Black Ocean. Janaka’s poems are at once incantatory, mystic, epigrammatic, and spiritual. His meditative sensibilities and minimalist style create ritualized poems acting as spells-transcribed to be read aloud and performed in the service of realizing that which we seek to become. His influences draw on his Vedantic upbringing, as well as interests in Gnosticism and 20th century magickal traditions. His poems have appeared in such journals as Denver Quarterly, Fence and North American Review, and his articles have been published by The Huffington Post and The Poetry Foundation. He is a two-time National Haiku Champion and in 2010 he was voted “Boston’s Best Poet” in the Boston Phoenix.

Picture Yourself in a Burning Building

Artist Scott Treleaven talks about the furtive role of mysticism, occultism and theories of consciousness in historical abstractionism and his own work.

Scott Treleaven (born Canada, 1972) is a painter and filmmaker. He has written extensively about the intersection of art, mysticism, sexuality and marginal culture, and his influential ’90s underground publications are included in the book In Numbers: Serial Publications by Artists Since 1955. Recent solo shows include Invisible-Exports, New York, and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco. Group exhibitions include Contemporary Art Museum Houston, ICA Philadelphia, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and the British Film Institute.
     

‘Rose Circle: alchemy in the Hermetic tradition’

     

I haven’t been able to say this in a long time, so it gives me great pleasure to tell you the Rose Circle Research Foundation has a new event scheduled for next week in New York City. From the publicity:

Rose Circle Research Foundation Presents

Spiritual Alchemical Bodies

in the Hermetic Tradition

presented by Tommy Westlund

of Stockholm, Sweden

Saturday, October 24

2 p.m.

Masonic Hall

71 West 23rd Street

Manhattan

$25 per person, in advance, available here

Tommy Westlund is a trained therapist in psychosynthesis, and since 1990 has pursued studies and research in esotericism and the Western Hermetic tradition. With an academic background in psychology, the history of religion, and the history of ideas, he writes and lectures internationally on esotericism, alchemy, Golden Dawn, gnosticism, Martinism, and Freemasonry.

Tommy Westlund

He is one of the founders of the initiatic Order of the Sodalitas Rosae+Crucis & Solis Alati, which perpetuates many of the old esoteric currents and Hermetic filiations of Europe, and he is director of the Swedish Alchemical Academy, which offers alchemical courses, workshops, travels, and literature.

Tommy holds the highest degree (X°) in the Swedish Rite of Freemasonry and has held his position as Deputy Master of one of Sweden’s oldest St. John lodges (St. Erik, originated in 1756) for the past six years.

He continues to serve as archivist of the Swedish Masonic Grand Archive, a position he has held since 2009, and as secretary of the Swedish Masonic Education Committee, since 2012. He also is a member of the oldest Provincial Grand Lodge of the Royal Order of Scotland.


If you have attended previous Rose Circle events, you have experienced the pleasures of learning firsthand from some of the most knowledgeable and sharpest minds in the Western Mystery Traditions. As you can see, this commitment to excellence will continue October 24. (Consistent with the frustration that seems to govern my life, I will not be able to join you that day. I’ll be just about a mile down the street at another event.)
     

‘Swedenborg, Yeats, and Freemasonry’

     
Flashback Friday is an occasional feature on The Magpie Mind when I finally get around to writing about something I should have covered a long time ago. Today we travel to 2010 when the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Library of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of New York hosted Marsha Keith Schuchard, an authority on the subjects of Emanuel Swedenborg, William Butler Yeats, and Jacobite Freemasonry. The lecture also was sponsored by the W.B. Yeats Society of New York and the Swedenborgian New Church.

Keith Schuchard
November 8, 2010

I don’t mind admitting to being out of my element that night. I know little about Freemasonry, even less about Yeats, and less still about Swedenborg, but I had no doubt we were in caring hands when Schuchard came to speak about the relationships among the three.

She has appeared at the lecterns of several Masonic venues, including Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076. Her thesis is so original, as if to appear from out of the ether, so without further preamble, a flashback to November 8, 2010 in New York City. What follows is a greatly shortened version of the lecture. Any concerns of error by omission are attributable to me.

Swedenborg, Yeats, and Freemasonry

I am grateful to officials of the New York Yeats Society, the Livingston Masonic Library, and the Swedenborgian New Church for inviting me to give this lecture, and I will try to address the interests of all three groups. In the process, I will be moving back and forth from the 18th to the 20th centuries, as I trace the role of Freemasonry in the lives of Swedenborg, Yeats, and their contemporaries. It will be a complicated trail to follow, but I hope it does not become the dreaded Hodos Chameleontos, the “Path of the Chameleon,” which Yeats described as confusion, multiplicity, and unpredictability. With that caveat, let us head down the trail.

William Butler Yeats in 1903.

In 1888 the 23 year-old William Butler Yeats met in the British Museum Reading Room a charismatic and controversial character, MacGregor Mathers, who would draw the Irish poet into a long-running Masonic melodrama. The opening acts of this drama took place in the 18th-century world of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish seer-scientist, whose visionary theosophy fascinated both Yeats and Mathers. The English-born Mathers, whose real name was Samuel Liddell Mathers, claimed to be the descendant of Ian MacGregor of Glenstrae, an 18th-century Scottish rebel, who fled his Highland home after the English defeat of the Jacobite rebellion in 1746 and found his way to France. After serving in the French army under the Irish officer Lally Tolendal, a Jacobite Freemason, Ian MacGregor was allegedly ennobled by King Louis XV, who made him the Count of Glenstrae, a title that Mathers claimed to receive by inheritance.

This long-running melodrama was fueled by the 18th century political rivalries between “ancient” Jacobite-Tory and “modern” Hanoverian-Whig Masonic systems, with the first maintaining loyalty to the exiled Stuart royal family, and the second to the Hanoverian kings who have ruled Britain from 1714. Jacobite exiles and their multi-national supporters developed new Écossais systems, with increasingly elaborate Kabbalistic, Rosicrucian, and Templar “higher degrees,” while Hanoverian-Whig systems maintained more rationalist-Newtonian interests. Though the long dominance of Whig-Protestant historiography in the academic world meant that international Jacobite Freemasonry almost disappeared from the historical record, new generations of revisionist historians in Britain and Europe are bringing this submerged history to the surface. In the process, the important role that Protestant-Lutheran Sweden played in supporting the Jacobite cause is emerging from the historical shadows, especially from unpublished documents preserved in the Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle and international diplomatic and Masonic archives.

Though conventional academic wisdom long claimed that the Stuart cause was dead after the defeat of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” on the battlefield of Culloden in 1746, a study of Swedenborg’s political-Masonic career from 1710 to 1772 and of Mathers’ and Yeats’ political-Masonic experiences from 1888 to 1918 reveals the surprising survival of the Jacobite cause and of the old Jacobite-Hanoverian Masonic rivalries into the early 20th century. In a forthcoming book, Emanuel Swedenborg, Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven, I will argue that Swedenborg was employed as a secret intelligence agent and financial courier for the pro-French, pro-Jacobite party of “Hats” in Sweden, who opposed the pro-English, pro-Russian party of “Caps.” In undertaking this dangerous, clandestine role, Swedenborg was motivated by genuine, even heroic, patriotism, while Sweden was threatened by defeat and even dismemberment by her powerful enemies. In the process, he and his political allies utilized Franco-Scottish or Écossais Masonic networks to carry out their political, diplomatic, and military agendas.

From the time of his first visit to London in 1710-1713, when he was reportedly initiated into a Masonic craft lodge, until his death in London in 1772, Swedenborg and his family were involved in pro-Jacobite, anti-Hanoverian activities. Curiously, some of the most dramatic moments of his participation took place in 1744-1745, when MacGegror Mathers claimed that his Scottish ancestor was taking part in the same enterprise. I will now give some examples of Swedenborg’s Kabbalistic meditations and Jacobite-Masonic predictions, when he undertook a dangerous intelligence mission to London, where government agents were desperately looking for supporters of a feared Franco-Swedish-Jacobite invasion. Before he left Amsterdam for England, Swedenborg was prepared both mystically and Masonically for his Jacobite mission.

In April 1744, while living in Holland, Swedenborg recorded in the peculiar language of his dream diary his initiation into the Jacobite high degrees of Masonry: “I was first brought into association with others... I was bandaged [blindfolded] and wrapped. I was inaugurated [initiated] in a wonderful manner. And then it was said, “Can any Jacobite be more honest?” So at last I was received with an embrace. Afterwards it was said that he ought by no means to be called so, or in the way just named… It was a mystical series.”

The word “honest” was used by Jacobites to denote faithful and discreet supporters, but his initiators worried that the word “Jacobite” was too explicit, because they were worried that Hanoverian spies had penetrated their lodges. Feeling pressured by the demands for secrecy and fearful of the risks involved in his upcoming journey, Swedenborg recorded his dreams and visions about the secret enterprise: “It seemed to me that we worked long and hard to bring in a chest, in which was contained precious things which had long lain there; just as it was a long work with Troy; at last one went in underneath and eased it onwards; it was thus gotten as conquered; and we sawed and sawed...” Wilson Van Dusen, editor of the diary, observes that Swedenborg’s reference to Troy is most curious, for the Trojan horse contained soldiers who opened the enemy gates and enabled the town to be conquered: “It is the same here. The chest contains something precious that will enable the ‘town’ to be conquered.” At this time, Swedenborg was staying with his close friend, Joachim Fredrick Preis, Swedish ambassador at The Hague, who had long participated in Jacobite schemes and who was currently facilitating the shipment of Swedish cannons through Dutch canals en route to the Jacobite forces in Scotland. Preis also helped the recruitment of Swedish soldiers serving in French regiments to join Prince Charles Edward Stewart in the planned campaign. They could indeed provide a Trojan horse to conquer the city of London.

When French political bickering and fierce storms stalled the invasion, Swedenborg laid low in London. He began writing a strange messianic treatise, in which he used Scriptural passages to predict the actions of the Jacobites and their prince to restore the Temple of Jerusalem in the North. Anti-Scottish propaganda had long identified the Scots with the Jews, while pro-Jacobite propaganda utilized quotations from Hebrew scripture in their coded correspondence. The theme of exile for Jacobite and Jew was a potent reminder of a shared fate and a call to action. It would not be beyond the paranoia (now justified) of the government decipherers to read Biblical lines as referring to Jacobite forces coming from Ireland (west) and Sweden (east), with the Stuart prince landing in Scotland (north) and the invasion coming from France (south). The main Jacobite prisoner in London was Sir Hector Maclean, former Écossais Grand Master and major planner for Sweden’s participation in the projected invasion. Maclean was held in the Tower of London, close to Swedenborg’s current residence. The Swedish Hats feared that he possessed incriminating papers about their complicity, and they pressured the Jacobites to arrange his escape. At this time, in 1745, an anti-Jacobite exposé, titled The Freemasons Crushed, revealed that a new, elite grade of Jacobite Masonry included “a tapestry with the image of a ruined temple representing decayed Freemasonry which the Scottish Masters will regenerate.” Swedenborg seemed to refer to the new Écossais degree of Architécte, when he portrayed a Jewish architect who envisions the new temple:

“Upon an exceeding high mountain...was the building of a city. There he saw a man having in his hand a measuring line. A wall surrounded the temple without, and he measured all the things... The splendor of Jova came into the temple by way of the gate looking to the east—he showed the place of the throne... The prince he shall settle in the sanctuary—the northern gate.” Swedenborg’s words would soon prove prophetic. However, by late July 1745, he sensed he was in great danger in London, and he abruptly departed just before the arrival of the Stuart prince in Scotland.

Charles Edward Stuart
Bonnie Prince Charlie

As Bonnie Prince Charlie and his army marched through Scotland, the Swedish populace cheered him on, seeing in his impulsive valor a reincarnation of their great warrior king, Carl XII, who had planned a similar campaign against the Hanoverians in 1718. Acting as a military engineer, Swedenborg had accompanied Carl XII to Norway, from where the king planned a descent on Scotland in support of James III, the Stuart Pretender. For some mysterious reason, Swedenborg left the Norwegian campaign, just before the king was killed by a shot suspected to have come from a Hanoverian agent. Joining the Stuart Prince at Prestonpans was a contingent of Swedish soldiers, including Magnus Vilhelm Armfelt, who campaigned with him until the terrible defeat at Culloden. It was apparently Armfelt and his Swedish companions who carried back to Sweden the report of the Stuart prince’s secret initiation into the Masonic Order of the Temple in ceremonies held in Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. Swedenborg had envisioned just such a ceremony, with information gleaned either from the spirit world (as he claimed) or from his Jacobite associates in London.

Gustav III
King of Sweden

In the decade after Swedenborg’s death in 1772, the Swedish King Gustav III and his brothers, Duke Carl of Soudermania and Duke Adolph Fredrik of Ostrogothia (all Swedenborgian Freemasons) determined to revive Swedish Masonic links with Charles Edward Stuart, who now called himself Charles III. In 1774 the king named Duke Carl as Grand Master, replacing the elderly Count Carl Fredrik Scheffer, who had been a close friend and political collaborator with Swedenborg. Evidently based on accounts he had heard about the Templar ceremony in the “santuary” of Holyrood Palace, Duke Carl oversaw the secret construction of a similar Masonic sanctuary in the royal palace, where Swedenborgian-Kabbalistic rituals were performed. He and Gustav bestowed the elite degree of “Stuart Brother” on their most trusted supporters. As “Vicarius Salomonis,” the Grand Master began to wear elaborate robes, embroidered with the Sephirotic Tree of Life and other Kabbalistic and Hermetic symbols. In 1776 the king sent Adolph Fredrik to Italy to meet with Charles Edward, who named him as his representative in the northern lodges. Over the next seven years, Gustav and his brothers maintained a secret correspondence with Charles Edward, in which they determined to prevail over their German rivals in the Strict Observance system. In 1783, encouraged by the elderly Pretender’s good will, Gustav III travelled to Italy, and held long emotional meetings with Charles Edward, in which the king’s main motive was “the re-establishment of the sanctuary,” and he “worked with the Pretender in order to raise the Temple of Jerusalem.” Charles Edward named Gustav his successor as Grand Master of the Order, in the event of his death.

Despite the secrecy of their meetings, the British ambassador in Florence (Sir Horace Mann) was able to suborn a French member of Gustav’s entourage and thus learned about the Masonic agreements. In the 1730s, Mann had been a member of the Hanoverian lodge in Florence, which was closed down because of the Papal Ban of 1738. After that, despite Mann’s vigilant surveillance over the Jacobites, he could learn little about developments in Écossais Masonry. On December 30, 1783, he wrote to John Udny, English consul in Leghorn, a revealing letter, which expressed his scorn for “ancient” Stuart-Templar traditions of Freemasonry: “His Swedish Majesty...has taken other steps, which though they may appear ludicrous, are not less certain. It is supposed that when the Order of the Templars was suppressed and the individuals were persecuted, some of them secreted themselves in the High Lands of Scotland and that from them, either arose, or that they united themselves to the Society of Free Masons, of which the Kings of Scotland were supposed to be hereditary Grand Masters. From this Principle the present Pretender has let himself be persuaded that the Grand Mastership devolved to him, in which quality in the year 1776, He granted a Patent to the Duke of Ostrogothica [sic] by which he appointed him his Vicar in all the Lodges in the North, which that Prince some time after resigned as many of the Lodges in those parts for want of authentic proofs, refused to acknowledge the pretended Hereditary Succession to that Denomination. Nevertheless the King of Sweden during his stay here obtained a Patent from the Pretender in due form by which He has appointed His Swedish Majesty his Coadjutor and Successor to the Grand Mastership of
all the Lodges in the North, on obtaining which the French gentleman [Mann’s spy], whom I have often mentioned in my late letters, assured me that the King expressed the greatest joy.”

Mann went on to describe Gustav III’s plan to solicit funds from Templar Masons to support their Stuart Grand Master. He also noted the continuing negotiations of Baron von Wächter in favor of the rival Strict Observance German Masons. In 1788, after the death of the no-longer “bonnie” Prince Charlie, the Masonic documents were sent to Gustav III, and the temple was indeed restored in the North—just as Swedenborg envisioned 43 years earlier.

While Gustav and Carl immersed themselves in occultist studies and experiments, they also developed Swedish Freemasonry from a Jacobite support system into an instrument of state. The king’s confidante Schröderheim described this potent mystical-political brew: “In a small circle of brethren that gathered around the king and the duke more noble objects for our works occurred. They embraced religion, communion with the underworld, with spirits, politics, morals, and alchemy.”

In 1839 in Scotland, there was a revival of the Royal Order of Heredom of Kilwinning, an 18th century Jacobite Masonic order, which had maintained close relations with Swedish and French Freemasonry. The 19th century Scottish members re-established ties with Swedish Masons, and as the great occult revival emerged in the 1880s, some Irish and Scottish nationalists began to dream that the “ancient” Écossais Freemasonry, enriched with Swedenborgian rituals, could play a political role in the growing independence movements in Ireland and Scotland. Thus, we enter the theatrical epilogue of the Masonic melodrama in which Swedenborg and his collaborators earlier played such intriguing but secretive roles.

In 1843 in Edinburgh, there was also a revival of the “Religious and Military Order of the Temple,” which caused a public controversy. Arguments about the reality of the Order of the Temple provoked new interest in 18th century Jacobite Freemasonry, which was further fueled by the romantic publications of the Sobieski Stuarts, two brothers who claimed to be the illegitimate sons of Charles Edward Stuart. In Tales of the Century (1847), they reported that the prince secretly visited Sweden ca. 1750, where he was welcomed by the Freemasons, who honored him as their leader. Despite accusations of fraud, the Sobieski brothers were treated royally by staff at the British Museum, where tales of their charismatic presence may have influenced MacGregor Mathers’ Jacobite fantasies.

As the neo-Jacobite Masonic movement began to emerge among Scottish antiquarians, it was paralleled by a neo-Swedenborgian Masonic movement among a small number of British and American initiates. The driving spirit was Samuel Beswick, who was born into a Swedenborgian family in Manchester, England in 1822. Because several important Swedish Masons who were Swedenborgians had lived in Manchester in the 1790s, it is possible that Beswick’s family became privy to Swedish oral traditions about Swedenborg’s Masonic affiliation. After moving to the United States and Canada, Beswick promulgated “The Primitive and Original Rite of Symbolic Masonry,” which he claimed to be based on earlier Swedenborgian rituals. Though his book The Swedenborg Rite and the Great Masonic Leaders of the Eighteenth Century (1870) is a frustrating mix of valuable fact and unverifiable speculation, he managed to attract several British members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, which was restricted to Master Masons. From manuscripts describing the 18th century Swedenborgian rituals, Mathers would subsequently develop the elaborate symbolism and ceremonies of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the 1880s.

Through Mathers’ work for Golden Dawn, W.B. Yeats emerged onto the neo-Jacobite, neo-Swedenborgian, neo-Rosicrucian stage. Though Golden Dawn was not a Masonic organization, many of its members were Masons, and it drew heavily on Masonic symbolism and rituals. While Mathers was a Freemason, his co-worker Yeats maintained a much more ambiguous and troubled relationship with the fraternity.

Yeats was initially so attracted to the Kabbalistic expertise of Mathers that he was secretly drawn into his Jacobite activities, such as a brief association with the “White Rose” societies which worked for a Stuart restoration. He wanted to believe that his Protestant ancestors fought with the Jacobites in 1689 at the Battle of the Boyne where, he lamented, the Williamite victory had “overwhelmed a civilization full of religion and myth.” And he convinced himself that he was descended from James Butler, Second Duke of Ormonde, the Anglo-Irish Freemason who helped plan the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 and the Swedish-Jacobite plot of 1717. These fantasies were reinforced by his attendance at a Requiem service for “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” The Neo-Jacobite revival in the 1890s was strong enough to draw the attention of international journalists, who recognized the vulnerability of the German-derived dynasty in Britain.

Echoing 18th century Jacobite complaints about the Electors of Hanover who became kings of Britain, Mathers and his more militant White Rose colleagues argued that Queen Victoria and her Saxe-Coburg-Gotha line were German usurpers. They provided military training to their initiated brethren and dreamed of raising a “Celtic Empire” that would embrace Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. Newspapers all over the world carried stories on the international “legitimist” campaign, which sought to counter the rising power of secular, socialist, and communist movements. In headlines ranging from “New Kings on Old Thrones” to the more ominous “Playing at Treason,” journalists made the supposedly dead Jacobite cause seem alive and well.

For Yeats, the best way to harness nationalist energies to the Kabbalistic power of Rosicrucian and Jacobite Freemasonry was to establish an independent “Castle of Heroes” on an island in Ireland. Yeats had “an unshakeable conviction” that “invisible gates would open...as they opened for Swedenborg.” Mathers advised him on the symbolism and rituals, and Yeats worked on the plans for nearly a decade. However, Mathers’ involvement in military planning and arms procurement for the legitimist campaigns led to his ejection from Golden Dawn and his removal to Paris, where Yeats continued to respect his magical expertise but worried about his penchant for violent political action.

In 1906, Yeats visited Scotland, where he gave widely publicized lectures linking Irish and Scottish nationalist ambitions. He then accepted an invitation to stay at Castle Leod in the Highlands, a five-story tower house, originally built in 1606, and the home of the Earls of Cromartie and the seat of Clan Mackenzie. It was to this ancestral home that the old Jacobite, Count Cromartie, returned after his military service in Sweden and India. One wonders if Yeats saw his elaborate certificate of initiation into the Swedish Rite, for Cromartie definitely brought it back to Scotland. Yeats was greatly impressed by Castle Leod, and he wrote “this is a most lovely place—an old castle with wooded hills around it.” He was especially intrigued that ravens still roosted on Raven Rock where, according to Scottish folklore, Gaelic warriors found physical prowess, victory in battle, second sight, and the gift of prophecy. He wrote that the ravens got in the habit “in the time when there were so many fights at it—it is the head of a pass.” From this pass, the Scots held off rival clans and English enemies. Yeats long remembered the ancient Castle Leod and the “joyful youthfulness” of the Countess, and his experience there would color his own dreams of restoring a tower in Galway as a Jacobite-style defense against the madness of sectarian violence. Though he could not get any magical ravens, he would make do with “nine and fifty swans.”

MacGregor Mathers

Though Yeats had broken with MacGregor Mathers in 1900, because of the latter’s autocratic behavior in Golden Dawn, he continued to respect his magical expertise. In 1908 he made moves toward reconciliation, and he occasionally kept in touch with Mathers and his lovely young wife, the mystic artist Moina Bergson, who confided to Yeats that one of her husband’s mystical teachers was a Scot living in France, whom she had known only by his magical motto, “Light from the North.” During World War I, Mathers recruited hundreds of volunteers for the French Foreign Legion before dying in the global influenza epidemic of 1918. On his death certificate, his widow Moina honored his claim to Scottish ancestry, noting that he was born in Perth, Scotland. Two years later, Yeats portrayed his magical mentor as a member of “The Tragic Generation,” one who dreamed of playing a Napoleonic role in “a Europe transformed according to his fancy,” and becoming ruler of “a Highland principality.” Unfortunately, Mathers thus “mounted onto Hodos Chameleontos,” a dangerous path that led him to a Jacobite-Masonic “dream-court” and near insanity. But Yeats still admired him, noting that Mathers remained to “the end courageous in thought and courteous in manner”; in moments of adversity, he and his students would repeat, “There is no part of me that is not of the gods.” It was perhaps this re-evaluation of Mathers that led Yeats and his young wife Georgie to consider joining a Masonic lodge.

After their marriage in 1917, objections to British imperialistic Masonry no longer mattered to the Yeatses, and he and Georgie were still attracted to the symbolism and ceremonies of the Écossais higher degrees. They knew that Mathers had drawn on these when he designed the elaborate rituals for Golden Dawn. They renewed their friendship with Mathers widow, who had beautifully illustrated those Swedenborgian-Masonic rituals. When the Yeatses resided in Oxford in 1921, they may even have attended a Masonic lodge. If so, it would be an Écossais or Rose-Croix rite which admitted women. (In 1987, when my husband and I were living in Oxford, the eminent Yeats scholar Richard Ellmann confided to me that he had discovered a note in which Georgie Yeats mentioned their Masonic attendance. Unfortunately, Ellmann became terminally ill and could not locate the note among his voluminous papers. He wanted me to examine her note, because I had been helping him with information on Oscar Wilde’s earlier initiation into a Rose-Croix lodge in Oxford.)

W.B. and Georgie Yeats c.1928.

As Ireland’s struggle for independence became more violent, culminating in the Irish Civil War in 1922, Yeats worried about his own contribution to the nationalist cause which had generated so much hatred—hatred that now consumed political rivals within Ireland itself. In his great poem Meditations in a Time of Civil War, he drew upon recent, sensationalist publications which charged that 18th century Templar Freemasonry generated the French Revolution. Though Yeats rejected the anti-Semitic argument of the authors, he worried that French secularist, republican Masonry had veered far from its Jacobite and royalist roots. In the last section of Meditations, he wove imagery from architecture and stonemasonry through his lament for the internecine violence, which he summed up in cries of “Vengeance upon the murderers... Vengeance for Jacques Molay.” Referring to the martyred Grand Master of the medieval Templars, he admitted his own earlier attraction to political violence, remembering that:

I, my wits astray,
Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried
For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay.

Returning to his beloved tower home in Galway, he evoked both the destructive effects of “Loosening masonry” and “cracked masonry,” but also the constructive possibility of visionary architecture and solid masonry—emblems of his hopes for a recovering Ireland.

Nobel Prize for Literature.

Soon after writing these lines, Yeats learned in November 1923 that he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature, an award that was criticized by some English commentators who scorned him as a treasonous rebel against the British Crown. Before leaving London, he re-read Swedenborg and discussed his upcoming visit with the Swedish ambassador, Baron Erik Palmstierna, an old friend, fellow spiritualist, and admirer of Swedenborg’s theosophy. Erik Palmstierna was a direct descendant of Nils Palmstierna, a confidential friend of Swedenborg and a leading Écossais Freemason.

It is from the 18th century Nils Palmstierna’s unpublished diplomatic papers, collated with the Stuart and British diplomatic correspondence, that we piece together the context for Swedenborg’s puzzling claim that he made an important visit to Spain—a visit never mentioned by his biographers. He referred to his earlier journey to Spain in a letter to the Swedish king in 1770, when he asked for royal support against the Caps’ attempt to banish him. A possible explanation for this journey lies in his experiences in Italy in 1738-39. In February 1739, while Swedenborg was in Rome, Nils Palmstierna and Carl Gustaf Tessin, both Masonic Hats, planned a secret diplomatic mission to Spain to solicit Spanish funding for Swedish troops to join a Jacobite invasion of Britain. During Swedenborg’s five-month residence in Rome, he spent much time with Count Nils Bielke, an Écossais Mason. Named a Senator of Rome by the Pope, Bielke was close to the Stuart Pretender, James III, and his two sons. British spies reported that Bielke was the main channel for the Swedish-Jacobite overture to Spain and that he collaborated with Carl Gustaf Tessin (his brother-in-law and current Grand Master of Swedish Masonry) in dangerous Swedish-Jacobite intrigues.

In Swedenborg’s laconic travel journal, he described the Roman palace of the Pretender, and a later dream memory suggests that he met with James III and his two sons in the secret chamber arranged for foreign visitors. In March 1739, Swedenborg suddenly left Genoa, Italy, and virtually disappeared. There is no record of his activities for the next two months, until he arrived in Paris in May and sent his confidential reports in the Swedish diplomatic bag to his Hat allies. These letters have disappeared, but they apparently covered his journey to Spain. Unfortunately, his heirs tore out the final pages of his journal, which covered his experiences after leaving Genoa, for they were determined to protect his benign, apolitical public image. However, from Nils Palmstierna’s unpublished papers, we learn that Swedenborg reported to him on his secret mission. Swedenborg later recorded a dream-memory in which money was collected in Spanish chapels or monasteries, which may refer to the Spanish funds which were indeed sent for the proposed (but eventually cancelled) Swedish-Jacobite expedition of 1739-1740.

Nils Palmstierna’s 20th-century descendant, Erik, carried on the family’s diplomatic tradition, and he was a generous supporter of Swedenborgian causes in Sweden. He often collaborated with Mrs. Otto Wilhelm Nordenskjöld, a leading Swedenborgian, whose husband was a direct descendant of the Nordenskjöld brothers who joined Blake’s Swedenborg Society in London in the 1780s and ’90s. As Freemasons with interests in Kabbalah and alchemy, the Nordenskjölds participated in King Gustav III’s Swedenborgian and Hermetic enterprises. Georgina Nordenskjöld’s maiden name was Kennedy, and her own ancestors had served “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” In Stockholm, the Yeatses had tea with Mrs. Nordenskjöld, and the poet was deeply moved by this descendant of Blake’s Swedenborgian colleagues. He declared “his high estimation of Swedenborg,” whose writings made him a convinced adherent of the doctrines of the New Church.” Though he did not belong to any New Church organization in England, “he had intended, when he married, that the ceremony should take place in a New Church temple in London, but circumstances prevented this.” Grateful to his hostess and moved by her history, Yeats may have exaggerated his New Church association, but he increasingly sensed that in Stockholm he was inhabiting an older, unspoiled world, which reflected not only Stuart but Celtic values of art, imagination, and spirituality.

Yeats was especially impressed by the grand architecture of the Swedish royal palace, designed in 1690 by Nicodemus Tessin, whose kinsman, the military architect Edouart Tessin, had been initiated in an Edinburgh Masonic lodge in 1652 and subsequently served the restored Stuart king, Charles II. Nicodemus Tessin was also an early Freemason (possibly initiated during his visit to London in 1670, when he presented his architectural drawings to Christopher Wren and Charles II). Nicodemus’s son, Carl Gustaf Tessin, recalled that his father was always proud to call himself a Master Mason, and he himself was considered the leading figure in Swedish Freemasonry. Swedenborg was a great admirer of Nicodemus’ architectural designs, and he would serve Carl Gustaf in several Franco-Jacobite diplomatic missions. When Yeats viewed Nicodemus Tessin’s palace, he realized it deserved “its great architectural reputation,” for he discovered “a vast, dominating, unconfused outline, a masterful simplicity,” which he believed expressed the essence of Swedish royalism and patriotism.

The dignity and attractiveness of the Swedish royal family, the lavishness of the ceremonies, and, especially, the glittering mosaics in the Golden Hall of the new City Hall sent Yeats into reveries about Ireland’s history and on-going struggle to become an independent nation. Inspired by his feeling that he was back in an 18th-century court, he planned to write a tribute to Sweden when he returned to Ireland. The biographer Roy Foster expressed surprise at the opening lines of Yeats’ essay The Bounty of Sweden, noting that it is “disconcertingly different from anything the reader may be disposed to expect.” The surprise was provoked by Yeats’ opening reference to “the Cabbalist MacGregor Mathers,” who had encouraged the young poet to write down his first impressions of Paris, for, like those of Stockholm, he would never see it so clearly again. However, the Swedish connection with Mathers’ Jacobite and Masonic fantasies would not surprise Ambassador Eric Palmstierna, who described Yeats in Sweden as the reincarnation of a Jacobite bard, “with strong hands accustomed to harp strings and clashing swords.” The Palmstierna family was aware that Swedish Freemasonry combined Kabbalistic with Swedenborgian symbolism in its rituals and that one could still become a “Stuart Brother” in a Swedish lodge. They also knew that the Swedish king, Gustav V, whom Yeats met and admired, served as hereditary Grand Master of Swedish Masonry—a Stuart tradition transmitted to Gustav III by Bonnie Prince Charlie. Gustav V’s son, the “artist prince” who worked with the stonemasons and lapidaries on the Golden rooms, was also an Écossais Freemason.

As the Yeats critic Giorgio Melchiori observed, the poet perceived in Stockholm and its new City Hall a “symbol of the holy city of art.” Thus, in 1926 Yeats tried to emulate the architectural and Masonic accomplishments of Nicodemus Tessin and the current Swedish royal family, when he urged the Irish government to bring artisans from Sweden to teach the Irish how to improve Dublin’s great public buildings. In The Bounty of Sweden, Yeats wrote that the Golden Hall carried his mind “backward to Byzantium.” [Do click here to get an eyeful of Golden Hall!] As Roy Foster wryly remarked, “Dublin could reach Byzantium by way of Stockholm.” But, certainly, it was Yeats’ memory of Stockholm’s glittering walls that enriched his earlier impression of Ravenna’s golden mosaics, and both fueled his imagination to produce the incantatory lines of Sailing to Byzantium:

O Sages standing in God’s holy fire,
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing masters of my soul.

In that same year, in January 1926, Yeats published his philosophic treatise, A Vision, noting that he could not have written it without his study of Swedenborg. Linking his memories of royalist Sweden with the neo-Jacobitism of his youth, he dedicated A Vision to MacGregor Mathers’ widow. Seven months later, in July, in Moina’s preface to a new edition of Mathers’ translation of the Kabbala Denudata, she reaffirmed her full belief in her husband’s Jacobite ancestry. Some literary critics characterize Yeats’ praise of royalist Sweden and tribute to the Mathers as a depressing foretaste of his sympathy for Mussolini’s early Fascism. However, it is more historically accurate to view them as the nostalgic aftertaste of the Jacobite dreams of his magical mentor, MacGregor Mathers, Comte de Glenstrae, who through Swedenborgian Masonic rituals was able to “feel like a walking flame,” when all tartaned up in flamboyant Highland garb.