The Taxil hoax was a 12-year-long hoax of exposure intended to mock the Roman Catholic Church for its opposition to Freemasonry and its alleged credulity.
Taxil and Freemasonry
Léo Taxil (whose original name was Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès) was an atheist who had been accused earlier of libel on account of a book he had written called The Secret Loves of Pius IX. On April 20, 1884, Pope Leo XIII published an encyclical, Humanum Genus, that said that the human race was "separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ ... The other is the kingdom of Satan," which were "led on or assisted" by Freemasonry.
After this encyclical, Taxil underwent a public, feigned conversion to Roman Catholicism, and announced his intention of repairing the damage he had done to the true faith. His real intent, however, was to publicly slander the Freemasons (who had rejected him for membership), and simultaneously embarrass the Roman Catholic Church.
The first book produced by Taxil after his conversion was a four-volume history of Freemasonry, which contained fictitious eyewitness verifications of their participation in Satanism. With a collaborator who published as "Dr. Karl Hacks," Taxil wrote another book called the Devil in the Nineteenth Century, which introduced a new character "Diana Vaughan," a supposed descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist Thomas Vaughan. The book contained many implausible tales about her encounters with incarnate demons, one of whom was supposed to have written prophecies on her back with its tail, and another played the piano in the shape of a crocodile.
She was involved in Satanic freemasonry, but was redeemed when one day she professed admiration for Joan of Arc, at whose name the demons were put to flight. As Diana Vaughan, Taxil published a book called Eucharistic Novena, a collection of prayers which were praised by the Pope.
On April 19, 1897, Taxil called a press conference at which he claimed he would introduce Diana Vaughan to the press. He instead announced that many of his revelations about the Freemasons were fictitious. He thanked the clergy for their assistance in giving publicity to his wild claims. The hoax material is still used to slander Freemasons to this day. Chick Publications publishes such a tract called The Curse of Baphomet.
The Luciferian Quote
The quote most frequently associated with the Taxil Hoax reads:
That which we must say to the world is that we worship a god, but it is the god that one adores without superstition. To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the brethren of the 32nd, 31st and 30th degrees: The masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the higher degrees, maintained in the Purity of the Luciferian doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay and his priests calumniate him?
Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also god. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two gods; darkness being necessary for light to serve as its foil as the pedestal is necessary to the statue, and the brake to the locomotive....
Thus, the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy, and the true and pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil.
While this quote was published by Abel Clarin de la Rive in his Woman and Child in Universal Freemasonry, and does not appear in Taxil's writings proper, it is sourced in a footnote to Diana Vaughan, Taxil's creation. [1]
Conflicting view
The Freemason, a Masonic periodical in England, noted the reading of the letter in its January 19, 1935, issue. Count de Poncins also quotes portions of the letter in Freemasonry and the Vatican.
Some critics of Freemasonry say that although the Taxil Hoax was a 'sting' against the Church in France because of its teachings regarding Freemasonry, its modern usage by American Freemasonry in the context of rebutting quotations of Albert Pike's alleged letter to the 23 Supreme Councils of the world on the 'Luciferian Doctrine' is in reality an attempt to confound and confuse the issue of Freemasonry and Lucifer, especially in regard to references to it in Masonic writings. The critics say that the alleged Pike letter is not taken from any of Taxil's writings, but from a book by occult researcher Edith Starr Miller, and that therefore the this particular 'Masonic Lucifer Quote' can not in fact be considered ipso facto to be part of the 'Taxil Hoax'.
They further allege that Jogand was a Freemason in the Grand Orient of France who was a member of the Paris Lodge The Temple of Friends of French Honor. Jogand earned his living as a prolific and notorious anti-clerical propagandist and pornographer.
His writings included titles such as; 'The Sacred Cannibals', 'The Priest's Testicles', 'Letter from the Devil to the Pope concerning the Suppression of Menstruation in Girl's Communities', 'Extraordinary Correspondence of the Ecclesiastical Fuckers', 'The Whores of the Third Estate', and 'The Solicitors of the Fourth', 'It's We Who whip those dirty Scamps', 'Shooting the Crows', 'The Sacred Blunders', 'Critical Review of Superstition', 'The Scoffer', 'His Holiness the Police', 'The Crimes of the Inquisition', 'Down with the Clergy', and 'The Amusing Bible'
He founded the magazine 'The Anti-Clerical' and in 1881 'The Anti-Clerical League'.
Edith Starr Miller and Abel Clarin de la Rive did not source the Albert Pike letter to Diana Vaughn, no proof of this claim has ever been produced by Masonic writers who claim such a reference exists.
If the Pike letter in question was the ONLY reference by Pike or other Masonic leaders to Luciferian doctrine then the ploy may have succeeded.
The truth is that the letter authenticates itself when set against Pike's known beliefs and writings and the beliefs and writings of his high ranking colleagues.
Literature
- Alec Mellor, A Hoaxer of Genius Leo Taxil (1890-7)
External links
References
Arturo de Hoyos and S. Brent Morris, Is It True What They Say About Freemasonry? (Available online)