The Rite of Mizraim

DE HOMINIS DIGNITATE

Below is the full text of my article published in the new issue of De Hominis Dignitate, the prestigious journal of the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy, available online as of today.

The journal can be downloaded by visiting the G.L.R.I. website:

https://www.glri.it/

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EGYPTIAN RITE FREEMASONRY, ITS HISTORY AND ITS SPIRITUAL MESSAGE

Egyptian Freemasonry still remains today a rather obscure and nebulous subject for many brethren, despite its very long history and despite the fact that figures of the stature of Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero; the legendary Count Cagliostro; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Master Ignaz von Born; Giuseppe Garibaldi; the founder of the Theosophical Society Helena Blavatsky; the founder of Anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner; the great English scholar John Yarker, Grand Master of the Swedenborgian Rite; the famous esotericist Papus (Gérard Encausse), founder of the Martinist Order; the eminent Islamologist Leone Caetani of Sermoneta and his Master, the hermeticist Giustiniano Lebano; the celebrated Pythagorean and Freemason Arturo Reghini and his master Rocco Amedeo Armentano, were all part of it.

This is due, on the one hand, to the extreme complexity of this strongly spiritualist Masonic ritual system, consisting of a considerable number of degrees and antithetical to the rational–Enlightenment Freemasonry that developed especially in France, and, on the other hand, to the limited number of works that treat this Masonic ritual form in a clear and exhaustive manner. The author has sought to remedy this situation through the publication, with the prestigious publishing house Mimesis, of three books: Apis-Eleazar, The Egyptian Rites; Apis-Eleazar, The Egyptian Rites: The True History; and finally Apis, Egyptian Freemasonry Revealed in Its Arcana. For a deeper exploration of the concepts that I shall attempt to outline in this article, reference is also made to these works and to Gastone Ventura’s text The Egyptian Rites of Mizraim and Memphis, Atanor, Rome.

To this must be added the proliferation of innumerable entirely spurious Egyptian Rites, devoid of even minimal regularity, which have cast many shadows upon true, authentic, and regular Egyptian Freemasonry.

Despite its distinctly Christian character (evident, for example, in the Rituals of Egyptian Freemasonry by Alessandro Cagliostro, published several times by various publishing houses, as well as in the founding bull of 1747), the connection between Egyptian Freemasonry and the theurgic esotericism of ancient Egypt is undeniable. For this reason, it is appropriate first to devote some words to this subject.

It must first be noted that the spiritual and initiatic tradition of the Western world originates and develops in ancient Egypt. In this regard, we have two testimonies that, for any Freemason, possess evident authority. The first comes from Giordano Bruno who, in his work Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante, affirms:

“The true religion is the Egyptian one, which seeks the divinity latent in nature, employing a magical and most effective reason.”

The second testimony comes from Reverend James Anderson, one of the fathers of modern Freemasonry, who, in his celebrated Constitutions of the Free-Masons, writes:

“There is no doubt that the Royal Art was brought into Egypt by Mizraim, the second son of Ham, about six years after the Confusion of Babel and one hundred and sixty years after the Flood, when he led his colony there (Egypt in Hebrew is called Mizraim).”

The Egyptian origin of Western esotericism was perfectly well known to the compilers of the Emulation Ritual, so much so that in the so-called tracing board of the First Degree we read:

“The usages and customs of Freemasons have always borne a close affinity to those of the ancient Egyptians. For their philosophers, unwilling to expose their mysteries to the profane, concealed them under symbols and hieroglyphics, which were communicated only to the High Priests, who were bound by a solemn oath to keep them secret.

Upon similar principles were founded the School of Pythagoras and other institutions of more recent date.”

As we shall see, Mizraim (or Misraïm) was precisely the name chosen by Raimondo di Sangro for the characterization of the Egyptian Masonic Rite he founded in Naples on 10 December 1747, which represents the progenitor of Egyptian Freemasonry. We shall also see that there exist profound historical connections between the Emulation Masonic Rite and the Egyptian Masonic Rite.

Even today, despite the evident loss of all content of sacredness affecting human society, interest in ancient Egypt—its temples, sanctuaries, pyramids, its customs and habits, and its religion—is undeniably enormous. But what truly was the religion of the ancient Egyptians? What were its characteristics? How was spiritual investigation expressed in that ancient civilization which has managed to captivate and astonish us with its many marvels?

Premising and acknowledging the wide differences between the Egyptian religion of the earliest period and the Old Kingdom (approximately 5500 BC–2400 BC) and that of later periods (particularly from the Middle Kingdom, through the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom, and reaching the Greco-Roman period—Newer Kingdom—covering roughly 2000 BC to the first centuries of the Common Era), we must nevertheless highlight how magical-initiatic rites constituted, from the most remote times, a distinct category within the rigorous mysteriological reality of the era.

The Egyptian Rites, therefore—declined here in their Masonic forms—draw inspiration precisely from this esoteric-initiatic aspect of Wisdom. For obvious historical reasons, this wisdom is expressed predominantly in hermetic and alchemical forms, the latter being a discipline whose origins are commonly traced precisely to Egypt, as demonstrated by the excellent studies of Jack Lindsay.

Moreover, even though much of Egyptian Wisdom and its original deposit has been lost, a careful analysis of surviving testimonies and documents allows for an adequate revitalization of the Sacred Rites.

Generally speaking, exoteric religions have shown aversion toward initiatic paths, especially when characterized by a strong magical component; yet the survival of this Tradition is due to the following reasons. Indeed, with all due respect to many, while a magical act or procedure can exist outside a religious context, the converse cannot be affirmed, since there is no cult or religious function that does not, in its execution, identify or practice at least some elementary magical acts.

Without entering into the age-old discussions regarding where religion begins and where magic ends, or even more arduously into the field of mystery-shamanic techniques, we must nonetheless align ourselves with those who recognize marked differences between their modalities, both ritual and doctrinal.

Elementary magical acts, moreover—if only by virtue of their instinctive and immediate nature—maintain, even over long periods, an invariably specific characterization and structure.

Thus Egyptian religion, like many religions of the ancient world, was essentially a mystery religion. This was due to a typified, in some respects common and constant, application of subjective will toward a specific practical goal to be achieved. The desired effects require, in the application of this analogical model, well-defined behaviors to be effective and efficient.

Whereas in religious theologies, once divine primacy is recognized, one proclaims: “And so be it,” in the Magisterium, in assuming oneself to be in some way co-participant in the divine state, one instead exclaims: “And let it be so.” Hence the common perception of a more active and dynamic attitude, which was also reflected in the preservation of the initiatic deposit of ancient Egypt.

Finally, it should be added that where magical rites and practices are characterized by more elaborate and systematized forms, by virtue of their intrinsic technical-operative nature, they have generally shown strong resistance to alteration, in awareness of the risk of nullifying their effectiveness if precise ritual canons and details were not respected.

Egyptian civilization, which according to Rudolf Steiner represents the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch of Earth, after the paleo-Indian and paleo-Persian periods (first and second respectively), has its origins in the synchronism between the heliacal rising of Sirius and the flooding of the Nile. Astronomical science allows us to place this “original” (naturally in a historical, not astronomical, sense) heliacal rising of Sirius around 5500 BC—a period so distant in time and characterized by such transcendent sensitivity as to identify in the stars the manifestation of spirits, intelligences, and essences of the gods.

More specifically, Sirius—Greek Sothis, Egyptian Sopdet—is associated with the goddess Isis-Hathor, traditionally possessing the character of an initiatory and protective deity. Significant in this regard is a formula from the Pyramid Texts (circa 2500 BC), which reads:

“The sister of N.N. is Sothis, the mother of N.N. is Sothis; she is the Morning Star. N.N. comes with you…”

Several essential points regarding the mystery religion of ancient Egypt must be clearly borne in mind:

a) Egyptian religion was not polytheistic but henotheistic, in the sense that there existed a predominant and generative divinity (Ptah in Memphis, Atum/Amun in Thebes, Horus in Edfu, etc.) from which other divinities were generated through successive emanation. This has been amply demonstrated by the great Romanian historian of religions Mircea Eliade.

In short, the First Generative Principle or Supreme Architect of the Worlds (S.A.W.) was partitioned into successive emanations representing the diverse aspects of the Creative Divinity. This system—defined with Mircea Eliade as emanationist—is also found in Kabbalistic doctrine. Various authors (Yarker, Crowley, Fortune, Regardie, Idel) in fact maintain that Kabbalah has its roots precisely in the Sacred Science of the ancient Egyptians, also by virtue of the approximately four centuries of Hebrew presence in Egypt (the bondage of Israel in Egypt).

b) Egyptian society was centered on the system of pharaonic theocracy, the Pharaoh (Per-Aʿa = Great House) being a living hypostasis of Divinity. He was associated with Ra-Horus (Horus), or Ra-Horakhty, Lord of the Two Horizons, and was not only the temporal ruler but also the spiritual head of Egypt.

c) Those selected to be admitted to the initiatic mysteries, thus becoming part of the priestly class, had to undergo a very harsh preparatory regime and the overcoming of arduous trials that transformed the mystes into a true and accomplished initiate, up to complete fusion with Divinity and thus capable of becoming himself a divine hypostasis (osirification).

This could be achieved thanks to the different structure possessed by ancient humanity, endowed with physical, psychic, and spiritual characteristics that allowed easier detachment from the body (soma) and relatively simple communication with the Divine.

Specifically, according to the teachings imparted in the priestly colleges of ancient Egypt, the mystes learned that the human being is composed of nine constituent parts:

1. Khat / Get – Death (or birth) presents the Khat, the putrefiable corpse, while the Get is the living material body. The Khat is inert mineral, the support of all metamorphoses. Its dwelling is the tomb-crucible where all phases of what is, in every respect, the Great Work are carried out.

2. Sekhem – The capacity to aggregate diverse elements, each with a specific function, ensuring the cohesion of form. Sekhem guarantees communication among these heterogeneous factors. Its feminine form is Sekhmet, the fierce goddess against forces hostile to unity.

3. Ren – The name of the being, its identity, its specific vibration that concentrates divine energy and allows the human being to be animated. It is the Word-Logos, whose hieroglyph is a mouth above the undulating line of water: it is the Ren that causes the first vital vibration to arise on the formless surface of the Nun (the Primordial Nothing). The Name is therefore assigned (consecrated) through a rite analogous to baptism and placed in the cartouche, whose surrounding solar cord is the halo proclaiming a sacerdotal existence. A fundamental part of magic resides in the intrinsic power of Names, for the Name is Power. To know someone’s “Hidden Name” means to possess their most intimate essence. To pronounce the Name is to create, through the voice issuing from the lips, its material image.

4. Khaibit (Shadow) – With a protective function. The Book of the Dead states: “It is the first form of the soul at its exit from the body, a black, tall, and shadowy image,” before becoming luminous.

5. Ba – Often symbolized by a bird with human head. It is the force closest to our modern concept of the conscious soul, enabling movement, metamorphosis, and rebirth.

6. Ab (Heart) – The witness and moral conscience, seat of deep intelligence and creative force.

7. Ka – Vital universal energy, the double, the imperishable energetic body, returned to the universe at death.

8. Akh – A supernatural spiritual force, acquired through arduous work; the luminous, transfigured state of awakened beings.

9. Sahu (Sa-Hu) – The ninth sheath, fluid of divine knowledge and creative intelligence, enabling the practice of creative magic.

Egyptian theurgy taught initiates the correct use of these constituent parts. Egyptian religion was inseparable from magical practice; thus there was no esotericism separate from exotericism, nor good and evil gods, nor white and black magic—only correct or incorrect use.

Egyptian theurgy taught initiates into the mysteries the correct use of these constituent parts. In essence, Egyptian religion was inseparable from magical practice: therefore, there did not exist an esotericism separate from, or even opposed to, an exotericism—just as there did not exist good divinities and evil divinities, nor a white magic and a black magic. Depending on the use to which it was put, a rite could aim at good or at evil: for example, to strike the enemies of Egypt or the impious. Likewise, every divinity had a peaceful aspect and a terrifying one: the gentle and benevolent cat-goddess Bastet could transform into the dreadful lioness-goddess Sekhmet, the drinker of blood.

One may generally affirm that, by analyzing the original Egyptian mystery religion (and the initiatic path connected to it) in its sacred texts, it clearly emerges that the journey of the Sun in the world of the afterlife (the Amduat) constitutes a cosmic drama which involves—on a lower level—the mystes in the overcoming of the various initiatic trials, which may ultimately allow his rectification and transmutation, in order to reintegrate with the First Principle.

Only a civilization as profoundly desacralized and naïvely materialistic as the present one allows the flourishing of academicisms far removed from the evident—yet in some respects embarrassing and uncomfortable—initiatic keys of interpretation; far too much have fideistic religions taken hold, shaped by primarily social-popular needs. As may be seen from the most ancient Egyptian texts—among which it is necessary to include the Book of Caverns, the Book of Gates, and the Book of the Amduat, in addition to the already cited Pyramid Texts—the initiatic path of the Pharaoh was essentially a deification in the forms of Ra; whereas, conversely, osirification is defined as that initiatic path of reintegration into the divine, open to individuals of desire and will but not belonging to the royal lineage; the former form is, in practice, now extinct.

These domains and their specificities, as well as the

reintegrative path mediated by the wise work of harmonization carried out by Alexandrian Hermetic wisdom, constitute—as we shall see—the subject matter of study and practice of the true Egyptian Masonic Rites.

It must also be said that the use of fables and allegories, as well as the divinization of certain animal species and even the cult of zoomorphic divinities, misled those who approached Egyptian religion, so that some authors, even in the Greco-Roman period, dismissed ancient Egyptian religiosity as little more than children’s fairy tales.

The best answer to such criticisms is offered by the learned Abbot Dom Antoine Pernety, disciple of the Egyptian Freemason Theodore de Tschudy, who was in turn a disciple of the great Raimondo di Sangro, and who, in his work The Egyptian and Greek Fables, explains:

“Could the Egyptians, who passed for the most spiritual and the clearest among all men, ever have abandoned themselves to absurdities so gross and to puerilities so ridiculous as those attributed to them? One must not even give credence to the account of those Greeks who went to Egypt to gain knowledge of those sciences which were learned only by means of hieroglyphs. If the priests did not fully unveil to them the secret of the Priestly Art, nevertheless they did not conceal from them that which concerned Theology and Physics. Orpheus transformed himself, so to speak, into an Egyptian; he took possession of their ideas and their reasonings to such a point that the hymns and the ideas contained in them lead us to suppose rather a work of an Egyptian Priest than that of a Greek Poet. He was the first who transported into Greece the fables of the Egyptians; but it is not admissible that this man, whom Diodorus Siculus considers the wisest of the Greeks, commendable for his genius and his knowledge, wished to divulge in his homeland these fables by passing them off as realities. The other Poets—Homer, Hesiod—would they have wished, by deliberate intent, to deceive peoples by giving as true histories events very doubtful and actors who in fact never existed? A disciple, having become master, commonly imparts his lessons and instructions in the same manner and with the same method as he himself received them. They had been instructed by means of fables, hieroglyphs, allegories, and enigmas, and they perpetuated this use. They were dealing with mysteries, and thus they wrote mysteriously. Nor was it even necessary to warn the reader, since even the least perceptive could notice it. Let one simply pay attention to the titles of the works of Eumolpus, of Menander, of Melanthius, of Iamblichus, of Evantus, and of so many others who, in their writings, are full of fables, and one will immediately be convinced that they intended to conceal the mysteries beneath the veil of those fictions, and that their writings contain many things which are not perceived at first sight nor even upon attentive reading.”

With Pythagoras of Samos—the first non-Egyptian admitted into the sanctuaries of what its inhabitants defined as the land of Kemi or Ta-Meri (beloved land) of whom we have certain historical information—the Egyptian mysteries came to the Hellenic world and subsequently onto Italian soil. The Isiac cults, dedicated to Isis, penetrated the Roman world already around the 2nd–1st century BC and developed strongly during the imperial period.

Also very important in Italy was the cult of the god Serapis (Ser-Apis), the fruit of Ptolemaic syncretism (the “Newer Kingdom,” coinciding with the Macedonian dynasty founded by Ptolemy I Soter, general of Alexander the Great), and determined by the fusion between the Hellenic divinity Zeus and the ancient Egyptian divinities Osiris and Apis: the latter was the bull-god, earthly manifestation of Osiris, god of the dead, brother and spouse of Isis (Isais) and father of Horo (Horus).

The great triad Osiris–Isis–Horus held a central place in Egyptian theurgic rites: this has survived in the ancient rituals of Egyptian Freemasonry, where every work, in whatever degree, begins with the words pronounced by the Worshipful Master, or by the President of the high-grade ritual chambers: “Health to all the points of the triangle, respect to the Order.” In the works of the degree of Apprentice Egyptian Free Mason (Misraïm of Venice, 1788), to this formula pronounced by the W.M. there echoes the following response of the First Warden: “Amon on the first and on the second Horizon in the Temple of Truth-Justice.”

The Greco-Italian initiatic schools essentially revolved around three classes or degrees of teaching:

1. the Lesser Mysteries, in which one was taught to master particularly the Ka (etheric body according to modern Western occult literature);

2. the Greater Mysteries, in which one was taught to master the Ba (astral body);

3. the Epopteia, that is, the Great Work, in which the initiate learned techniques for the governance of his own Akh (organization of the I, i.e., spiritual body).

In the Mystery schools great importance was attributed to the Teletes, that is, the Secret Rites connected with the three degrees of the Mysteries.

Despite the degeneration of the ancient world—prey to a decadence that would bring about the fall of the Roman Empire and the consequent barbarization of Europe, aided also by the advent of an egalitarian and exclusively devotional religion such as Christianity (moreover capable of expunging from its doctrinal body all those survivals from the ancient wisdom of the ancient world; see, for example, the persecution of Gnostic doctrine and of the subsequent Manichaean, Bogomil, and Cathar movements, treated as heretical movements)—the ancient Wisdom coming from the Egyptian land could be preserved through a linear chain of Masters such as Plotinus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Maximus of Ephesus, Zosimos of Panopolis, Severinus Boethius, Raymond Lull, Gemistus Plethon, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Francesco Zorzi, reaching up to the Renaissance.

As we shall see further on, these mystery teachings came to Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, through various routes, and indeed the Masonic System created by him (Misraïm of Naples) was based on a reproposition of the ancient mysteries:

a) Lesser mysteries = “blue” or capitular degrees (Apprentice, Fellow Craft, Master). For work in these degrees, Di Sangro used the English Rituals coming from the Grand Lodge of England, since both the lodge La Perfetta Unione and the Grand Orient of Naples had been created thanks to a Patent granted by that Obedience. The use of the Emulation Ritual in “Egyptian” lodges is documented at least until 1871; subsequently it was replaced by the Ritual for the first three degrees created in 1788 by Alessandro Cagliostro for the Misraïm Rite of Venice, a “shoot” of the Misraïm of Naples;

b) Greater Mysteries = Scottish pyramid (from the 4th to the 33rd degree), or more precisely of the Rite of Perfection, the progenitor of the A.A.S.R.;

c) Epopteia = Scala di Napoli or Arcana–Arcanorum corresponding to degrees 87, 88, 89, 90 of Misraïm. In these degrees there were practiced (and are still practiced today in the very few authentic and regular Egyptian Masonic Rites) authentic hermetic operations corresponding to the four phases of the Work: Nigredo (87th degree), Albedo (88th degree), Rubedo (89th degree), Auredo (90th degree).

The degrees from the 34th (Prince of Scandinavia) to the 86th (Sublime Master of the Luminous Ring) were codified in the 19th century above all by Jean-Étienne Marconis de Négre (1795–1868), founder of the Rite of Memphis, and by his successor John Yarker (1833–1913).

The present configuration of the scale of degrees of the Rite of Misraïm and Memphis was codified for the most part when the union between the Rite of Misraïm and that of Memphis occurred—a union which in fact took place in a complete manner only in 1945 thanks to the Fiuman legionary brother Marco Egidio Allegri (1897–1949), a great friend of Arturo Reghini and Grand Master of the Martinist Order.

Of the 96 total degrees that compose the Initiatic Pyramid of Egyptian Freemasonry, only about twenty are actually practiced: many degrees are in fact conferred “by communication” before the initiation ceremony into the degrees that are practiced.