Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History (18 page)

The naked figure was Cagliostro himself. The ‘high priestess’ explained to the amazed ladies that both truth and wisdom were naked and that they (the ladies) must follow their example. Thereupon the beauties stripped and Cagliostro delivered a speech in which he declared that sensual pleasure was the highest aim of human life. The snake which he held gave a whistle, whereupon thirty-six ‘genii’ entered, clad in white gauze. ‘You are’ Cagliostro said, ‘chosen to fulfill my teachings!’ This was the sign for the beginning of the orgies.” Alas, while Cagliostro’s rite may have actually contained unusual and gnostic/antinomian elements, the ritual which Tabori “reveals” is clearly in the nature of hearsay. As was the case with many of these fringe groups, later, purely literary embellishments were not unknown, particularly when reported from the outside by unsympathetic detractors.

While the reputed eroticism of the Cagliostro Rite remains doubtful, it is difficult to dismiss the more openly erotic, bizarre and even perverse practices at the core of the religio-masonic group formed by Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf during the mid-Eighteenth Century … the famous Herrnhuter, or Moravian Brethren. Masonic dictionaries and encyclopedias list the group under several interesting appelations: The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed (Orden vom Senfkorn), The Confraternity of Moravian Brothers of the Order of Religious Freemasons, the Moravian Brethren, or the Herrnhuter (Moravians). The earliest foundations of this Order date to 1722, when a religious group, per se, formed around Count Zinzendorf, in the area of Upper Lusatia. In 1739, the Order took on its masonic aspect. Coincidentally, this was also one of the first “innovatory” Orders introduced into early German Freemasonry. The innovatory orders were those which added new material, often Christian or Templar, to the traditional three-degree Blue Lodge system. It is still true, as Arthur Edward Waite points out in his New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, that this was not yet a true “high grade” system on the order of the Scottish Rite or the Templar-legend based Strict Observance.

We do clearly know quite a bit about the Orden vom Senfkorn and Zinzendorf from remaining records. The Mysteries of the Order were ultimately based upon a phrase from the fourth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, in which the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a mustard seed. Indeed, the masonic “Jewel” of the Order was a golden cross, surmounted by a mustard plant in full bloom, with the mystical motto: “Quod fuit ante nihil”… “What was, before nothing?” This gnomic emblem was suspended from a green ribbon. Now, christianized masonic rites were plentiful during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, however in this particular case, one might detect evocations of a specifically Illuminist sentiment, in both the mystical and political senses. Almost as a Christian predecessor to Adam Weishaupt’s more deist Illuminati of Bavaria, Zinzendorf’s order proclaimed its purpose to be the extension of the Kingdom of Christ all over the world. Both Zinzendorf and Weishaupt proclaimed theocracies, with slightly differing conceptions of “Theos!” Along these theocratic lines, the Moravian Brethren wore rings inscribed with the phrase “Keiner von uns lebt ihm selber” … “No one of us lives for himself, alone.” This is a phrase suggesting both Christian and Illuminist sentiments at once, much as in the famous phrase in the Constitution of the United States … “all men are created equal”… a phrase which only has meaning in the Illuminist doctrine of the equality of all monads. Given the existence of such truly Christian Illuminist traditions, such as the Alumbrado, Gottesfreunde, Devotio Moderna, Bohme Kreise and Rosicrucians, this conjunction is by no means a contradiction in terms.

The genuinely religious and masonic character of the Moravians accepted, how is it that any erotic elements entered this matrix? It is important to point out that the Moravians, long since reformed, still exist in Germany and the United States as the Plymouth Brethren and the Pennsylvania Moravian colony, however, it was specifically the more bizarre eroticism directly attributable to Zinzendorf, that these latter day groups have eschewed, in favor of a doctrinaire Protestant Pietism. During the so-called “sichtungszeit” or period of sifting and searching, during the 1740’s and 50’s, Zinzendorf led the Moravians into ever more pathological territory, interpreting every aspect of the Passion and Death of Christ in increasingly erotic tenns. Slowly but surely, Zinzendorf created a truly antinomian theology, which came to claim that the disciple’s own sexual relationship with Jesus is the key to salvation!

Zinzendorf’s astonishing scheme of masonico-theological speculations begins with an obscure detail of New Testament history which should give infinite amusement to Freudians. The Count interpreted the wound in Christ’s side, caused when the soldier Longinus pierced the body with his spear in order to determine if death had occurred, in openly sexual terms. This wound became, for Zinzendorf, the veritable birth canal of the Christian Church. The wound thus became a vaginal orifice, the
“seitenholchen,”
or “little side cave” which combined the functions of birth, sexual pleasure and spiritual salvation! In the Moravian worship of the “side cave”, it was declared that Christ was the bridegroom and sexual partner of all humans, male and female alike. Zinzendorf enjoined his followers to meditate upon the Cave and to enter it, in the most phallic sense possible, to live therein, play and take their pleasure to their hearts’ content. During the course of these truly bizarre meditations, clearly influenced in technique and style, if not content, by St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, the Herrnhuter became “Kreuzluftvoglein” (Little cross birds of the air),
Wunderbienlein
(Little wonder-bees),
“Blutwundenfischlein”
(Little fish of the bleeding wound),
“Wundertaucherlein”
(little wonder-divers) or
“Wunderwurmlein”
(Little wonder-worms). The hopelessly neurotic phallicism and infantilism of these conceptions belie the historical fact that a functioning masonic order took them quite seriously as the foundation for the illuminative experience!

Some hint of the wilder erotic doctrines of Zinzendorf are to be found in the early hymns of the Order, which combine sexuality and mystical flight in the most dizzying way. The phallus is addressed in one of these hymns as:
“Und geheimnisvolles Glied/das die ehelichen Salben/ Jesus halben/heilig gibt und Keusch empfaht/im Gebet/in dem ven dem Ertzerbarmen/selbst erfunden Umarmen/Wenn man Kirchen-Saamen sat/Sey gesegnet und gesalbet/mit dem Blut des unserm Manne/dort entranne/ fuhle heisse Zartlichkeit/zu der Seit/die furs Lamms Gemahlin offen/seit der Speer hineingetroffen/das Objekt der Eheleut.”
(And you mysterious limb which sanctifies and commends the marital selves for the sake of Jesus in prayer, in the embraces designed by the Original Mercy itself, while the seed of the Church is sown! Be blessed and anointed with the blood which issues from our man … Jesus … feel burning affection for the side which is open to the spouse of the Lamb since the spear has pierced the goal of all married people.” Remembering that this is being addressed to the human phallus, there are some remarkable and quite sadistic images of blood and semen in this school of Christianity!)

Another hymn could easily be read as ejaculatory utterances:
“Ach, welche Bickel ich dir irzt schicke/ich bin ein Geist mit dir/und du ein Leib mit mire/und eine Seel/Du Seiten Kringel/du tolles Dingel/ich fress und sauf/mich voll/und bin vor Liebe toll/und ausser mir.”
(Oh, what glances I send you now; I am one spirit with you and you are body with me and one soul. You treasure of the side, you mad little thing, I devour you like food and drink to fulfillment and am mad with love, out of my mind.) As addressed to Jesus, the implications of this hymn become truly staggering.

Zinzendorf’s essential doctrine claimed, that while Christ was the only true husband of human souls, He had delegated His own mystical power as Bridegroom to his functionaries on Earth; his “vice-husbands” and “marriage procurators”, who must fulfill his duties and exercise his marital rights with his brides … earthly women. Under this doctrine, copulation within the bounds of the Moravian Mysteries became literal sexual union with Christ. Zinzendorf, as the chief deputy of Christ on Earth thereby became the chief marriage broker and undertook to regulate the sexual lives of the Moravians to an insane degree. Zinzendorf began the practice of “adjusting” marriages, switching partners to satisfy his own lust. Often, he held “mass adjustments” during which a large number of young boys and girls were suddenly thrust together in sexual union within the meeting house. After prayer and singing of hymns such as we have seen above, the young couples would perform an exacting form of sexual intercourse astride narrow benches. According to Zinzendorf’s dogma, the sexual act, being purely the affair of Christ with His Followers, must be accomplished to his stern designs. Another sexual ritual was enacted inside a small, portable cabinet with windows, which allowed the “Most Excellent Papa” Zinzendorf and his eldest mistress to view the proceedings with voyeuristic abandon. This was the famous Blue Cabinet of the Herrnhutter, which hid the rituals of the “Streitenchen” or “Little Fighters” for Jesus, whom Papa Zinzendorf married and instructed.

Clearly, there are elements in this insane
massa confusa
which are highly reminiscent of the Hindu and Buddhist schools of sexual Tantra ritual intercourse in a group, around the master, exacting performance of the sexual act for transcendent purposes; even the vaginal symbolism of the wound relates to the Goddess orientation of the Tantra. While Zinzendorf’s personal fetishes may still seem off to us today, we can begin to understand, with the help of modern depth psychology, that he was really in touch with a deep and archetypal current of erotico-mystical ekstasis that has been formalized in some Oriental religions. In our placement of the Moravian masonic rite in its historical matrix, we can also begin to discern the radical gnostic/antinomian bases for the Zinzendorf doctrines as well as the importance for the future of its intuitive excursion into the underworld of mystical eros. Zinzendorf emerges, not only as a wonderful and classic neurotic, but also as a true nexus for serious illuminative practice, sexual liberation and theocratic politics … a figure worthy of far more attention than has hitherto been forthcoming. In the context of modern groups practicing esoteric sexuality, such as the O.T.O., the G.B.G. and TOPY, Zinzendorf can now be seen as an important precursor and forefather… a liberator of the sexual current in the West.

A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
(2 vols.), A.E. Waite, Weathervane Books, 1970.

Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
(Abridged,) Albert G. Mackey, McClure Publishing Co., 1927.

Sexuality, Magic and Perversion,
Francis King, Citadel Press, 1972.

Ecstasy Through Tantra,
Dr. John Mumford, Llewelyn Press, 1988.

“A Fire in the Shadows,” Tim O’Neill, in
Gnosis
magazine, issue #17, Fall, 1990.

Secret and Forbidden,
Paul Tabori, Signet Books, 1966.

So much has been written and speculated upon surrounding Jim Morrison’s life, death and after-death that it is no longer enough to address just the facts. One must now also address the self-perpetuating mythos that has developed and enveloped the facts.

In the late 1960s, Doors’ singer Jim Morrison founded a publishing company named Zeppelin Publishing Company with the help of the legal department of Warner Brothers Pictures and Atlantic Records. According to promotions for Zeppelin, “Jim wanted to get his hands on the trademark ‘Zeppelin’ before Led Zeppelin did. He did this while everyone in America knew who the Doors were, but before the other rock group was well known…” Zeppelin Publishing Company was chartered and put into hibernation for later resurrection.

On July 3, 1971, rock and roll wünderkind James Douglas Morrison was supposedly, reportedly, found dead in a Paris, France apartment he had sub-leased as a writer’s studio. His “wife,” Pamela Courson, was the first to discover the body in the bathroom. Jim lay in the bathtub, naked and half-submerged. At first she thought that “Jim was pretending,” noticing that he had “recently shaved.”

What immediately followed was a series of bizarre and convoluted events, probable conspiracies, strange coincidences and surreal news reports surrounding the death of James Douglas Morrison. Following the death there was a three day news blackout. This was reported on and questioned widely in the media, including articles in
The Berkeley Barb, Esquire, The LA Free Press, Sounds, The Baltimore Morning Sun,
and many others. Robert Hillburn writing at that time in
The Los Angeles Times,
called his obituary of Morrison “Why Morrison Death News Delay?” igniting a spark that has yet to smolder.

The blackout prevented Morrison’s close friends from getting at the principals and witnesses — and the corpse — for close inspection. Even Jim’s parents and his in-laws were prevented from seeing the corpse.