The Mormon Role in the the Purge of Republican Freemasonry
Edgar Poe as Cultural Warrior Part 7
Part 1: The Society of the Cincinnatus: Solving a 170 Year Murder Mystery
Part 2: Poe, Beethoven and Houdini VS the Cult of Artificial Intelligence
Part 3: Poe’s Tales of Ratiocination and the Real C. Auguste Dupin
Part 4: Culture Wars: Mazzini's Minions Enter the Stage
Part 5: The Syncretic Revival of Paganism- Transcendentalists and Theosophists
Overlapping the intensive period of creativity that saw Edgar Allan Poe wage his cultural war against the enemies of the republic, the United States was in the midst of a 20 year purge of masonic lodges in the form of an ‘Anti Masonic Movement’. This movement, and an associated political party was launched in 1826 and was catalyzed by the disappearance of a peculiar character named William Morgan (1774-?).
William Morgan was a strange character known as a gambler, failed Canadian brewer, initiate into a British Columbia Freemasonic lodge and snake oil salesman who made waves across the USA announcing that he would soon write a book showcasing the secret rites of masonry to the public.
Strangely, after much media publicity, William Morgan disappeared in 1826.
His infamous book exposing the secret rites of masonry immediately became a national best-seller and newspapers everywhere quickly proclaimed his disappearance to have been a masonic murder. A mass hysteria swept like a wave over the nation as 400 of the 450 lodges existent in the USA were shut down between 1826-1840.
However, this story also is not what it appears.
As documented in part 1 of this series, Edgar Poe was himself a member of a secret society founded in 1783 dubbed ‘The Society of the Cincinnatus’ which itself had many members operating within Freemasonic lodges on both sides of the Atlantic [1].
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Many of Poe’s closest allies within America’s intelligentsia were also members of lodges, and it is a well known fact that certain freemasonic networks played an instrumental role in winning the battle for Independence in 1776-83, establishing the US Constitution of 1787, and in keeping America alive during the 1812 war against England.
In fact, prior to the anti-Masonic movement of 1826-1840, there was an extremely diverse array of freemasonic lodges spread out across the USA which were in no way homogeneous. Some lodges featured patriots operating with a moral mission guiding their minds and others featured deep state traitors working to destroy the republic from within.
Exemplars of Republican Lodges
While most lodges utilized occult symbolism and elitist initiation rites that dehumanized the initiate, those lodges that played a role in the positive advances in human civilization listed above, had been “Christianized” and broken of the occult rituals by rendering “secret scientific knowledge” accessible to all citizens.
Those lodges tended to promote classical culture, and education of all people based upon the highest notions of Truth and Beauty available, which was the case with many of the scientist-artists who were recruited to the influential Nine Sisters Lodge of Paris (named after the nine Greek muses) led by Benjamin Franklin, Marquis Lafayette, Jean-Sylvain Bailly and Antoine Lavoisier.
Sadly the republican ideals of 1776 didn’t last long in France and within a few months the French revolution launched by Franklin’s allies had been sabotaged by Anglo-Swiss traitors embedded in France. By 1795, Lafayette was rotting in an Austrian dungeon and both great scientists Lavoisier and Bailly had been decapitated.
Franklin’s efforts to create an advanced intelligentsia of philosopher kings capable of defeating the financier oligarchy was made possible through the influence he exerted over the Pennsylvania Lodge which he led from 1734-1776. It was through these masonic agencies that Franklin coordinated like-minded reformers in Manchaster who joined his Lunar Society and carried out a vast program of infrastructure building, education and industrial activity that created England’s industrial revolution.
Mozart’s Lodge of True Harmony
Within Vienna, this republican humanist current was embodied by Mozart’s Lodge of True Harmony established in 1781 by diplomat Baron Gottfried von Swieten and a republican scientist named Ignaz von Born.
Within this influential lodge that launched a vast reform that reverberated through all European freemasonry, Mozart was joined by his father Leopold, the musician Joseph Haydn and an incredible African musician/philosopher named Angelo Soliman (born Mmadi Make). Soliman was a Nigerian prince sold into slavery, who became a Christian and who rose through the ranks of society becoming a courtier and advisor to Emperor Joseph II. He was a close friend to Mozart and in 1786, Soliman became the Grand Master of Lodge of True Harmony.
In Mozart and the American Revolutionary Upsurge, David Shavin writes:
“Mozart was in touch with three groupings which we can identify as the hotbeds of republican organizing in Vienna: Baron Gottfried van Swieten's music seminars; Countess Maria Wilhelmine Thun's salon; and Ignaz von Born's efforts to win over the Freemasons, who had become hegemonic in nationalist political circles all over Europe, to republican ideas.”
Shavin continues: “Over the next few years, several hundred of the best scientists, artists, and writers of Vienna joined his organization. They worked to disseminate a republican outlook, with a vigorous promotion of science, by sending out both a journal aimed at Masonic groups, in addition to the scientific magazine. It is said that Joseph von Sonnenfels founded the Journal für Freymaurer (Freemasons' Journal). Ignaz von Born was the editor of the scientific journal”
Upon visiting Mozart’s vienna lodge, anti-masonic philosopher Georg Foster wrote: “It publishes a Freemason's journal in which everything--faith, the oath and ceremonies, and even fanaticism--is more openly discussed than at home in Saxony. The best scholars and poets are members of this lodge. They make light of the whole idea of secrecy and have transformed the entire thing into a society of rational, unprejudiced men dedicated to enlightenment.”
While the Napoleonic Wars and 1815 Congress of Vienna saw the vast majority of those republican lodges wiped out in Europe, significant currents continued to fight against feudalism within the United States.
The Anti-Masonic Movement as a Masonic Palace Coup
According to information analysed by this author, the 1826-1840 purge of masonry appears to have been itself an operation coordinated by England’s United Grand Lodge which sought to take back control over global masonry.
This hypothesis may sound radical, but it is, in fact supported by Scottish Rite Grandmaster Albert Pike (and agent of Mazzini), who wrote the following in his 1871 Morals and Dogma: