The Shaping of a World Religion: From Jesuits, Freemasons & Anthropologists to MK Ultra & the Counter-Culture Movement PART III
By Cynthia Chung
“Men are but the automata of Providence, and [Providenae] uses the demagogue, the fanatic, and the knave…as its tools and instruments to effect that of which they do not dream, and which they imagine themselves commissioned to prevent …”
“The Blue [or lower] Degrees are but the outer court … of the Temple. Part of the symbols are displayed there to the Initiate, but he is intentionally misled by false interpretations. It is not intended that he shall understand them, but it is intended that he shall imagine he understands them. Their true explication is reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry...”
“Magic is the science of the ancient magi.. Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever Philosophy can possess that is most certain, and Religion of the Infallible and the Eternal. It perfectly … reconciles these two terms… faith and reason … those who accept [magic] as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior beings and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters and Kings of the World….”
- Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)
[This is Part III of the series ‘The Shaping of a World Religion’, for Part I refer here and for Part II refer here.]
Thus far in this series we have discussed the Jesuitical role in launching cultural and religious warfare against the indigenous people of the Americas. We have also discussed the role that certain Mormons played in supporting and possibly creating the Ghost Dance religion phenomenon (and other fabricated religions amongst Indian tribes across the country) which led to the Sioux outbreak in 1890 and the massacre at Wounded Knee. Also discussed, was how the founding of Mormonism by Joseph Smith was inextricably intertwined with his founding of several Masonic Lodges in the 1830s and that by this point in time, all freemasonic activity in the United States was entirely run by the Scottish Rite. The following chapter will explain how such a thing came to be and its relevance in the shaping of a World Religion.
The Secessionist Plot and the Scottish Rite
In order to understand how freemasonry operated in the United States from the 19th century onwards, one must have an understanding of the Scottish Rite, which effectively took over all freemasonic organizations by the 1830s. The Scottish Rite was formally organized in the U.S. in 1801, as a group of Tory partisans on the losing side of the American Revolution. One of the principal men involved from the very beginning was a British general by the name of Augustine Prevost. Prevost had conquered Charleston, South Carolina, and set up a secret police apparatus there which became the Scottish Rite headquarters, after the British Army left.[1]
Augustine Prevost (1723-1786) had left Geneva, Switzerland in the 1750s to enter the British service along with his two brothers James Marcus and Jacques Prevost. They had been army officers in the French and Indian War (1754-1763) a theater of the Seven Year’s War.
The Prevost family in Geneva were hereditary members of the ruling Council of 200, the “Committee of Europe’s Spymasters”, which were the legislative authorities in four Swiss cities (Zürich, Bern, Fribourg, Basel), as well as in the independent Republic of Geneva prior to the French Revolution. In England and in Switzerland, the Prevosts were intermarried with the Mallets; and became the Mallets-Prevosts.[2]
Due to the ground-breaking research of historian Anton Chaitkin, who spent years sifting through raw data in library archives, he will be quoted at length on the activities of the Scottish Rite in this chapter.
Chaitkin writes in Treason in America[3]:
“British Major General Augustine Prevost is still remembered today in South Carolina as the ‘filthy’ enemy commander during the American Revolution, whose largely Loyalist troops looted and maliciously destroyed the homes and farms of residents in wide areas of that state. Augustine Prevost and his brother, Colonel James Marcus Prevost, were responsible for the recruitment of the largest force of Crown Loyalists used in the British war effort.
…As we have seen in earlier chapters, these Prevosts of Geneva represented the very highest levels of British-Swiss alliance forming the British Secret Intelligence Service. When Colonel James Prevost [1736-1781] died, Aaron Burr [1756-1836] married his widow, adopted his children, and took his place in the family and the British Secret Service. The substantial Tory element in South Carolina would serve Burr and the Prevosts as a fertile recruiting ground for political-conspiratorial activities after the Revolution, under the overall coordination of the supervisor of Loyalist affairs, Secret Intelligence chief Lord Shelburne.
‘The History of the Supreme Council, 33o, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction of the United States of America, and Its Antecedents’, by Samuel H. Baynard, Jr., states that Augustine Prevost was Grand Steward of the Lodge of Perfection set up in Albany, New York, in 1768.[4] This lodge was said to have been established by one of the traveling ‘patent’ bearers named Henry Francken. The lodge was ‘abruptly terminated’ as the troubles with the British came to a head in 1774, but not before responsibility for the ‘Ancient’ system was passed on:
In February 1774, Francken appointed Augustine Prevost deputy Inspector General at Kingston, Jamaica, and thereafter, so far as previous writers have recorded, Francken passed out of our picture. The official Rite historian states further that Prevost, in 1776, commissioned a fellow British army officer ‘to establish the Rite of Perfection in Scotland, [this commission] was afterwards to form the basis of its constitution’.” [emphasis added]
Thus, the origins of the Scottish Rite would come from a Swiss member of the Council of 200, who was directly working for the British Secret Intelligence Service.
Aaron Burr, (Vice-President 1801-1805 under Jefferson), was closely mentored by the Prevost-Mallet family and was also in the service of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Burr would play a central role in the treasonous faction which orchestrated the secessionist plot in 1807 (more on this shortly).
Augustine Prevost would have two sons, Sir George Prevost who would become Governor General of Canada and Commander of the British Forces in North America, who invaded the United States during the War of 1812; and Augustine Prevost Jr., a major in the British Army who was stationed in the United States and died in 1824. It was this Augustine Prevost who would found the Scottish Rite Lodge networks in the United States, with its official founding in 1801 and its headquarters based in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father had already established its base at the end of the American Revolution.
Chaitkin writes[5]:
“In [a] correspondence, [Augustine] Prevost [the son of Augustine Sr.] discusses his plans to establish a Swiss settlement – not far from where the Genevan immigrant Albert Gallatin [who initiated the ‘science’ of Anthropology in the United States] did indeed establish the base from which he launched the Whiskey Insurrection in the 1790s.
…Prevost’s other appointee, Pierre Duplessis, traveled to Massachusetts, and in 1790 he established the Knights Templars organization in Newburyport. The commander of that organization from 1823 to 1866 was Richard Spofford, father of Caleb Cushing’s private secretary.
It should be noted that while establishing these Lodge networks, Major Prevost was in constant contact with his lawyer, uncle, and advisor, Aaron Burr, who came to Philadelphia in 1791 as the US Senator from New York. Burr represented Prevost in his long feud with the pioneer father of novelist James Fenimore Cooper over the title to the Cooper lands in upstate New York – a conflict which ended when William Cooper was assassinated in 1809 by a blow on the head from behind.
With these antecedents, the Scottish Rite organization in Charleston, South Carolina – later to be called the Mother Lodge of the World – was officially founded in 1801.” [emphasis added]
Caleb Cushing (1800-1879) was, as Anton Chaitkin’s Treason in America incontestably demonstrates, one of the master architects of the American Civil War and the city of Newburyport would hold the “womb of this treasonous clique”, including Cushing’s protégés, Albert Pike and William Llyod Garrison; as well as Caleb Huse; and George Peabody.[6] George Peabody, American born, was the founder of a gigantic banking firm in England, to which he hired Junius and J.P. Morgan. When Peabody died the firm became the House of Morgan and later moved to the United States.
Chaitkin writes: “Historians have shown a strange lack of curiosity regarding the Cushing, Garrison relationship: William Lloyd Garrison became the leader of the most extreme and provocative elements of Abolitionism, while Caleb Cushing became the main-proslavery spokesman and strategist in the North.”[7]
This might seem a paradoxically contrary thing at first, however, it becomes more transparent when one looks at what was the goal, which was the break-up of the Union. In other words, they were stoking both sides of the same fire.
Albert Gallatin (1761-1849), who we will discuss in further detail later on as the man who initiated the ‘science’ of anthropology in America, like the Prevosts, also came from one of the leading oligarchical families of Geneva. Anton Chaitkin writes: “Relations of blood, and of bloody deeds, united them with Gallatins, Galitzins, Galitis, and Gallitinis in Russia, South Germany, Holland, Italy and Savoy, where the family originated. They had served the feudal nobility of Europe for centuries as financiers and soldiers of fortune. The Gallatins maintained a seat on Geneva’s Council of 200…”[8]
The first major secession attempt would occur in 1807 led by Burr, with the Workman Memorandum serving as its basis.[9]
Anton Chaitkin writes[10]:
“…in the year 1800, British intelligence officer James Workman submitted a remarkable document to the British Minister of War, Henry Dundas: the British plan for the conquest of the Western Hemisphere…In this treatise will be found the basis for Britain’s appeal to American traitors – white racial superiority and love of the British ‘mother ‘ culture. Workman’s memorandum and his subsequent arrival in New Orleans may be seen as the opening shot of the American Civil War of 1861-1865.
…The memorial…states that 2,500 regular troops, or 4-5,000 colonial irregulars and 1,000 volunteers, would be sufficient to conquer both Florida and Louisiana, the invasion to be backed by one of the British naval convoys in the Caribbean.
Extensive details of appropriate military action in the Americas are discussed [in the Workman Memorandum]:
‘The situation of the Indians…would afford an advantage too important to be overlooked or despised by an invader. He could attach them to his interests…by abrogating the vexatious and degrading imposts to which they are now subject, by treating their chiefs with respect and bestowing upon them in compliance with their customs, some privileges and distinctions.
The countries proposed to be conquered would not only afford an immediate increase to our maritime trade, but would become the means of supplying, sustaining, and forever preserving to Great Britain all the colonies now in her possession.
It may be said that these projected colonies might in time revolt…At all events, whatever may become of sovereignty and imperial dominion, it should be a proud satisfaction to every Briton to establish and immortalize his name, his language, and his race in every part of the world…
The same interests, language, laws, customs, and manners will ultimately unite together, as against foreigners, Great Britain and all the nations and colonies that have sprung or may proceed from her.
…If the Spanish settlements are taken…the whole continent of America will, in less than a century, become English….
These countries, together with [our] Indian empire, would place nearly one-third of the inhabitable territory, and one-half of the commercial riches of the earth at [our] disposal.’[11]
Earlier, the US ambassador to England, Rufus King, had sent a letter to John Adams’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, dated February 26, 1798, bearing intelligence of a preliminary British plan to the same effect. King called it:
‘…a plan, long since digested and prepared, for the complete independence of South America…England…will propose to the United States to cooperate in its execution. [British-backed adventurer Francisco de] Miranda will be detained [in London] under one pretence or another, until events shall decide the conduct of England…I will bring together and…send to you, such information as I have been able to procure upon this…subject, having found out and acquired the confidence of certain Jesuits, natives of South America, who, with a view to its independence, are, and for several years have been, in the service and pay of England. I have often conversed with them, and seen the reports which they have prepared for their employers…’[12]” [emphasis added]
It is worth holding in mind that this 1807 secessionist plot, first outlined by Workman in 1800 and attempted by Burr seven years later was not the first but rather the third such attempt. The first having been prepared by Burr in 1800 but which required Burr’s victory over Jefferson to the presidency, at which point the ‘northern secessionists’- largely centered in the Federalist Party would declare the constitution null and void while separating from the slave southern states. Burr would then ensure that the “free” northern states would join British territories in Canada forming a new pro-British confederacy. When Alexander Hamilton defeated this effort by getting Jefferson elected in 1801, Burr tried to revive the plot once more in 1804 by seeking the governorship of New York- the economic engine of the young nation. Once again, his plan was defeated by a relentless Hamilton who ensured Burr’s loss and the survival of the republic once more.
Burr would succeed in removing Hamilton quite literally from the picture by shooting him dead in a duel in 1804. Hamilton’s eldest son Philip was fatally shot three years before in a duel with George Eacker, who was politically aligned with Burr and a member of the Tammany Society, Aaron Burr’s political machine.
You may be wondering what this secessionist plot of 1807 has to do with the Scottish Rite, well apparently it has everything to do with it and is inextricably tied to British imperial interests…which makes sense considering the very founding of the Scottish Rite was made by a member of the British Secret Intelligence Service.
Another family who played a prominent role in the attempt to break up the Union of the United States was the Livingstons, based in New York. The political ‘prestige’ of the family dates as far back as Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, whom the fifth Lord Livingston was one of two guardians of, and the grandson of the seventh Lord of Livingston was one of two Scotsmen to negotiate with Charles II for his accession to the Scottish throne as well as the English. Later the Livingstons revolted as ‘Jacobites’ against the rule of William III and the later House of Hanover, in favor of the continuing claim of the Stuarts.[13]
Chaitkin writes[14]:
“The first Livingston in America…Robert Livingston [1746-1813]…In 1783, the leader of the Masonic organization of the British army in New York[15] was Grand Master William Walter, who was soon to make a forced departure to the Tory exile station of Nova Scotia. Walter arranged that the leadership of this Masonic organization – now no longer to be officially associated with the British army – would be put in the hands of Robert Livingston. The latter was installed Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York by William Cock, Walter’s temporary replacement, on February 4, 1784, just before Grand Master Cock also left with the departing British troops.
From 1798 to 1800, Burr’s law client John Jacob Astor was treasurer of the New York Grand Lodge. From 1801 to 1803, Robert Livingston’s younger brother Edward, who was also mayor of New York, and, by virtue of Burr’s designation, district attorney, served as Deputy Grand Master.” [emphasis added]
The French minister in Washington, Louis Marie Turreau, who wrote home to Foreign Minister Talleyrand further confirms Burr and Livingston’s role in attempting to commit Workman’s Memorandum into action:
“Louisiana thus is going to be the seat of Mr. Burr’s new intrigues; he is going there under the aegis of General Wilkinson. It is even asserted that he might find the means there already prepared by a certain Livingston…from New York City and who is closely associated with Burr.”[16] [emphasis added]
Burr had also obtained aid from Catholic corridors for his secessionist plot, most notably that of the Jesuits, in the words of Burr’s executor, Matthew Davis:
“The Catholic bishop, resident of New Orleans, was also consulted, and prepared to promote the enterprise [by Burr]. He designated three priests of the order of Jesuits, as suitable agents, and they were accordingly employed…Madame Xavier Tarjcon, superior of the convent of Ursuline nuns at New Orleans, was in the secret. Some of the sisterhood were employed in Mexico.”[17] [emphasis added]
Thus, we have the Scottish Rite, the British Secret Intelligence Service and the Jesuits all working for the same goal – the break-up of the Union…coincidence?
However, Burr’s and co. secessionist plot would ultimately fail, resulting in Burr fleeing to England wanted for treason, and thus only further confirming that he had been working for British interests all along...
Chaitkin writes[18]:
“The collapse of the conspiracy seems to have been caused by the habit…of ordinary American citizens to speak out when they suspect that something is being done against the interests of their country. Among these was Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, district attorney for Kentucky, who wrote to President Jefferson on January 10, 1806, outlining the secession plot and asking for the dispatch of investigators.
Eventually General Wilkinson decided to turn against Burr, apparently to save himself. He declared martial law in New Orleans and arrested Burr and several co-conspirators. Judge James Workman – described only as ‘an Englishman of three years residence’ in the Abernethy account – released Burr and his associates and began attacking Wilkinson as a liar.
But Burr was re-arrested, along with Workman and several other eligible characters. One of those taken and sent in chains to Washington was Dr. Justus Erich Bollman, Burr’s go-between for European arms and financing, who had previously been employed by Jacques Necker’s daughter Madame de Stael in smuggling operations within Revolutionary France.
Edward Livingston, who had been installed as Grand Master of the Louisiana Masonic Lodge as soon as he arrived there, was in sufficient command of the affairs of the legal community to have all charges against himself dropped. All the main conspirators managed to get off as well.” [emphasis added]
Burr’s treason trial was held in Richmond, Virginia and was presided over by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall. Burr was acquitted. Crucial evidence to Burr’s guiltiness in the secession plot was not included in the trial, including the letter of British Ambassador Anthony Merry which documented the plans for secession and the involvement of Burr amongst others.[19]
Ambassador Merry wrote giddily to the British Foreign Secretary explaining his having recruited Burr to the Empire’s cause of creating a new western Confederacy established by a joint U.S.-British war on Mexico with Burr as it’s head. Ambassador Merry wrote:
“I have just received an offer from Mr. Burr, the actual vice president of the United States (which situation he is about to resign) to lend his assistance to His Majesty’s Government in any manner in which they may think fit to employ him, particularly in endeavouring to effect a separation of the western part of the United States from that which lies between the Atlantic and the mountains, in its whole extant. – His propositions on this and other subjects will be fully detailed to your Lordship by Col. Williamson who has been the bearer of them to me, and who will embark for England in a few days. – It is therefore only necessary for me to add that if, after what is generally known of the profligacy of Mr. Burr’s character, His Majesty’s Ministers should think proper to listen to his offer, his present situation in this country where he is now cast off as much by the democratic as by the federal party, and where he still preserves connections with some people of influence, added to his great ambition and spirit of revenge against the present administration, may possibly induce him to exert the talents and activity which he possesses with fidelity to his employers.”
Chaitkin continues[20]:
“Witness Andrew Jackson – who was not himself charged because he had earlier ‘warned’ of Burr’s designs – denounced the President [Jefferson] for ‘oppressing’ Burr. And Albert Gallatin’s old friend, Paul Henry Mallet-Prevost, Burr’s cousin, swore that he wasn’t involved in the plot, and had refused to take part.
When he left the scene of the trial, Burr was a hated and a hunted man. He was wanted by mobs, to be lynched. He was wanted by several states, on charges including treason.
Burr made his way to New York in disguise. After receiving tens of thousands of dollars in cash advances for his house from John Jacob Astor, he fled the country, June 7, 1808, on a ship bound for Nova Scotia.
The British governor of Nova Scotia was Sir George Prevost, Burr’s nephew by marriage, who was soon to be Governor General of Canada. Prevost welcomed Burr effusively, and gave him a royal send-off to England with a letter of introduction to the British Secretary of War Lord Castlereagh.
When Aaron Burr arrived in England, he swore to customs officials that he was ‘born within the King’s allegiance and his parents British subjects.’ His purpose in coming to England? ‘I am known personally to Lord Mulgrave and [Prime Minister] Canning, to whom the motives for my visit have been declared. These reasons have long been known to Lord Melville’ – special operations chief Henry Dundas [the original recipient of Workman’s Memorandum].”
In the Footstep of the Grand Symbolic Lodge of England & the Purge of American Freemasonry
“Grand Lodges in the United States, if wise, ought to follow in the footsteps of the Grand Symbolic Lodge of England and beware that with all their foreign intercourse and corresponding that they do not become sooner or later Frenchified.”
- Quote from John James Joseph Gourgas DuPan Rengers[21], from J. Hugo Tatsch’s book Gourgas, Conservator of Scottish Rite Freemasonry (1938).
As previously mentioned, one of the principal men involved in the founding of the Scottish Rite was a British general by the name of Augustine Prevost. Prevost had conquered Charleston, South Carolina, and had set up a secret police apparatus there which became the Scottish Rite headquarters, after the defeat of the British Army in the American Revolution.[22]
Another notable name involved in the founding of the Scottish Rite was John James Joseph Gourgas DuPan de Rengers, referred to as J.J.J. Gourgas or simply Gourgas from here on.
Chaitkin writes[23]:
“John James Joseph Gourgas DuPan de Rengers (1777-1865) arrived on the scene after the Charleston founding. He was to consolidate the Scottish Rite organization in the North, and ran most of the Rite’s affairs in the United States from 1813 until his death at the end of the Civil War. Gourgas’s mother, Ulbiana Nicasia DuPan, was the daughter of a captain of the Geneva Garrison who held a hereditary seat on the Geneva Council of 200, along with his cousins the Gallatins, the Mallets, the Prevosts, and the DeSaussures.
The Gourgas family…had been French Protestants…coming to Geneva in the late 1600s, they emigrated to England during the French Revolution…sailed from England to Boston in 1803, finally settling in Weston, Massachusetts. J.J.J. Gourgas went to New York around 1806, quickly taking control of the Scottish Rite organization there (the headquarters was later moved to Boston). In 1813, Gourgas worked out a national territorial arrangement with the Southern Supreme Council, and began to put his Swiss imprint on American freemasonry…” [emphasis added]
The purge of the better traditions of American freemasonry was accomplished by