Masks of the Illuminati (25 page)

Sir John became aware that his poached egg and ham were growing cold on the plate. It was not at all clear to him how long he had been sitting, staring into space, the letter fallen to the floor beside him. Mourning doves were cooing softly just outside the window. He was in the real,
tangible universe and the forces of nightmare and magick were active here, too, not just in the astral dream realms.

“It wasn’t suicide,” he said aloud, not even realizing that he had succumbed to the symptom of talking-to-oneself. “It was murder.” M.M.M., whoever or whatever it was, had sent Bertrán Verey a book that drove him to choose death rather than continued existence in this universe.

Then Sir John remembered the phonograph record of the “buzzing, tittering” voices. Numbly, like one walking in a dream, he took the cylinder to the music room and inserted it into his phonograph machine.

What he heard—the voices of the creatures afflicting Loch Ness—was an insectoid parody of human speech.

The record stopped abruptly. Sir John sat in a daze, knowing that he had heard the voices of insane nightmare somehow unleashed from the darkest side of human fantasy and fear to take on substance real enough not just to torment poor Verey but to leave an impress on the record. The interpenetration of the worlds of dream and reality was complete.

Arthur Machen’s words, from
The Great God Pan
, came back to him: “There must be some explanation, some way out of the terror. Why, man, if such a case were possible, our earth would be a nightmare.”

George Cecil Jones put down Verey’s letter. His hand was trembling.

“My God,” he said.

They were in Jones’ study and Sir John could see, even in the candlelight, how pale the chemist had become.

“Do you know anything of this M.M.M.?” he asked.

“Of course,” Jones said. “It’s a bookstore. Mysteria Mystica Maxima—Occult and Mystical Books of All Ages; 93 Jermyn Street.”

“Yes, Verey mentions that the address was on Jermyn Street—but a
bookstore?”

Jones smiled thinly. “You would expect some sort of Satanic temple with gargoyles grimacing at the passersby? An occult bookstore is as good a lure as any—if your prey is the individual seeking mystical secrets and your purpose is to lead him away from the path of light onto the path of darkness. Can you imagine Scotland Yard being persuaded to place a bookstore under surveillance, in this land of liberty and constitutional rights? Oh, a bookstore is an ideal trap for fools …” He shook his head, wearily. “The Mysteria Mystica Maxima is a creature that we in the Golden Dawn have watched with great interest since it opened two years ago. It has a quite adequate stock of mystical books of all traditions, but there are more volumes there by Mr. Aleister Crowley than by any other author. It also offers lectures, quite frequently, by Mr. Crowley.”

“And was Lola Levine one of Crowley’s mistresses?”

“She was,” Jones answered, “and, I imagine, still is.”

“And is she the Lola in
Clouds Without Water?”

“I cannot doubt it any longer.”

Sir John leaped from his chair and stood over Jones. “By God!” he shouted. “A man has been driven mad by a book! Murder has been done—murder that can probably never be proven in a court, but murder, nonetheless. Bat-winged creatures that titter and talk like the delusions
of madness—malign dwarfs out of Celtic mythology—monstrous things—that abominable sacrifice on the altar—Jones, Jones, stop being the inscrutable teacher: it is too late for that. Tell me in plain words, for God’s sake, what we confront here.”

“Sit down,” Jones said quietly, “and
do
stop panting. Of course, I will tell you all that we know. Pray believe we do not engage in mystery-mongering for its own sake. It is well that beginners do not know the whole truth, just as it is well that soldiers do not have too real a picture of battle before they are sent to the front.”

Sir John sat down. “I apologize for my outburst,” he said stiffly.

“It was to be expected under the circumstances,” Jones replied reassuringly. “Now, then, to be brief and precise …”

But Jones was far from brief; he spoke, in fact, for nearly two hours.

Freemasonry, Jones said, began with the Knights Templar, as Sir John had argued in his book,
The Secret Chiefs
. Though non-Masonic historians regard this story of the origin of Masonry as a myth, that is because they only know the rituals and teachings of the public Masonic orders—like the Free and Accepted Scottish Rite and the Royal Arch. Those privy to the secrets of the more arcane orders, such as the Brethren of the Rose Croix and the Golden Dawn, can easily see, Jones said, the direct continuity from the Knights Templar to the present.

Moreover, Jones continued, there have been, ever since the destruction of the Templars by the Holy Inquisition in 1314,
two
distinct traditions of mystical Freemasonry, each denouncing the other as false and absurd.

“Yes,” said Sir John, “I believe I know what you mean. There are those who accept the guilt of the Templars and those who deny it.”

“Precisely,” said Jones. He rose to throw another log on the fire and then continued thoughtfully.

The charges against the Templars, Jones reminded Sir John, included blasphemy, sexual perversion and black magick. All historians agree that these accusations were brought by Philip II, the King of France, in order to seize the enormous wealth of the Templars. But no two historians have ever come to total agreement about which, if any, of the charges happened to be true. The whole matter is made more complicated by the inconsistent behavior of Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Templars.

“His behavior,” Sir John interjected, “is all too painfully clear to anybody who has investigated the instruments the Inquisition used in those days in order to obtain confessions.”

“Indeed,” Jones said somberly. “The fact remains that de Molay left behind a most ambiguous heritage.” After arrest, he confessed under torture to all the charges made against the Order of Templars, including even such extremities as spitting on the crucifix and every sexual excess imaginable. Brought to trial, de Molay repudiated the entire confession and stated emphatically that he had made these admissions only to escape the sadistic tools of Inquisitorial interrogation. He was then put to the torture again, confessed again, and stood trial a second time without further denials. Then, on the pyre of his execution, before the flames were lit, he again passionately affirmed his innocence and that of the Templar order, denounced the Inquisition and the Royal House of France, and—according to some sources—died with the shout,
“Vekam, Adonai!”
[Revenge, O Lord!]

“Any objective historian,” Jones went on, “however prejudiced against the claim that Freemasonry is rooted in the secret teachings of the Templars, will admit that all the Templars were not killed in the great purge of 1314. Indeed, it is documented that the Spanish lodges of the Templars were not persecuted at all and continued quite
unharmed while the French lodges were systematically exterminated. And even the more open Freemasonic orders, such as the Scottish Rite, still use de Molay’s last words—
Vekam, Adonai!
—in their Third Degree initiation, although most of them have no clear idea what the words mean or where they come from.”

A continuous series of tragedies has struck the French throne over the centuries, Jones went on. It began with the assassination of Philip II, who had denounced the Templars and seized their wealth; Philip himself was stabbed to death one year and one day after de Molay was burned at the stake. It climaxed with the beheading of Louis XVI during the French Revolution. All this was the work of one lodge of Masonic Templars who were very literal about de Molay’s cry for vengeance. “It is their aim,” Jones said somberly, “having abolished the French monarchy, to overthrow, eventually, every king in Europe, and to destroy the Papacy, also.”

Jones began rummaging in his bookshelves and produced a parchment of recent printing. “This,” he said, “is a document of the lodge to which I refer. It now calls itself the Ordo Templi Orientis—the Order of Oriental Templars—and is the owner of record of the Mysteria Mystica Maxima bookstore at 93 Jermyn Street. All members of the Ordo Templi Orientis must sign three copies of this document. It is the concise summary of the beliefs of the false Masonry which we in the Golden Dawn are pledged to oppose and vanquish.” He handed Sir John the parchment, which read:

“But this is anarchy!” Sir John exclaimed.

“Exactly,” Jones said. “It is a declaration of war against everything we know as Christian civilization.”

“And how insidious it is,” Sir John remarked. “Every person of enlightened sentiments will agree with parts of it. The incitement to promiscuity, assassination and revolution is phrased so as to seem part and parcel of an integrated philosophy of liberty. It would be particularly attractive to young and impressionable minds.”

“Look again at the first line,” Jones said. “That is the kernel of the blasphemy: ‘There is no God but Man.’ Do you see how that could lead weak-minded atheists to a kind of humanistic mysticism, and naïve mystics to atheism, while drawing both into a worldwide plot against both civil government and organized religion? And can you see how this ultra-individualism could even attract some really good minds and noble hearts during the Dark Ages when all government was tyranny and the chief engine of religion was the ungodly terrorism of the Inquisition?”