Faerie Queene

As demonstrated by Frances Yates in The Occult of the Elizabethan Age, Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi exercised a very great influence on the era of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603), which was “was populated, not only by tough seamen, hard-headed politicians, serious theologians. It was a world of spirits, good and bad, fairies, demons, witches, ghosts, conjurors.”[1] Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who provided the occasion for Henry VIII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and declare the independence of the Church of England from the Catholic Church. Henry VIII famously had  Anne beheaded for treason when Elizabeth was two years old. Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. In 1544, when she was eleven, Elizabeth gave her step-mother Catherine Parr, a manuscript book titled The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul. Elizabeth translated the poem into English from the French work Miroir de l'âme pécheresse by Marguerite de Navarre, the sister of Francis I of France, wrote the manuscript with her own hand, dedicating it with the words, “From Assherige, the last daye of the yeare of our Lord God 1544… To our most noble and vertuous Quene Katherin, Elizabeth her humble daughter wisheth perpetuall felicitie and everlasting joye.”

Catherine Parr, was the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII, and the final queen consort of the House of Tudor, when she assumed the role of Elizabeth’s guardian following the king’s death. Catherine’s mother was a close friend and attendant of Catherine of Aragon, her godmother, after whom she was named.[2] Catherine was influential in Henry VIII’s passing of the Third Succession Act in 1543, which superseded the First Succession Act (1533) and the Second Succession Act (1536), which declared Henry’s daughters Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate and to remove them from succession to the throne. This third act returned both Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession behind their brother Edward (1537 – 1553), his children and any potential children of Henry VIII by Catherine Parr, or any future wife he might have. Edward reigned as Edward VI until his death, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Roman Catholic Mary, infamous as “Bloody Mary,” and the young Elizabeth, in spite of statute law to the contrary. Edward’s will was set aside and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey.

During Mary’s reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels. Upon Mary’s death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. Upon Mary’s death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement, that brought the English Reformation to a conclusion, would evolve into the Church of England. The Act of Supremacy of 1558 re-established the Church of England’s independence from Rome, and Parliament conferred on Elizabeth the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

The royal astrologer to Elizabeth was the infamous sorcerer John Dee, who possessed copies of Francesco Giorgi’s work.[3] According to Yates, Giorgi’s influence might have had its roots when he was consulted along with the Jewish Rabbis of Venice by Richard Croke, in support of Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, an affair that ultimately led to the English Reformation and the establishment of the Church England, which separated itself from the Catholic Church in Rome. As Yates suggests, “Queen Elizabeth I might have been favourably disposed towards the philosophy of Francesco Giorgi if she knew that the Friar of Venice had supported her father's divorce, to which she owed her own existence.”[4]

Under Elizabeth’s successor, James VI of Scotland (1512 – 1542), later King James I of England, the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture, who laid the groundwork for the advent of Freemasonry. Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed two-and-a-half years after Elizabeth’s birth. When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558, there was a great revival of the Order of the Garter, including its ceremonies, processions and ethos, which she regarded as a means of drawing the nobles together in common service to the Crown.[5] As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor. A cult grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history, representing the height of the English Renaissance with the flowering of poetry, music and literature.[6]

The occult philosophy was the dominant influence of the Elizabethan Age.[7] As Yates has indicated, “Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi, with its ‘Judaising’ tendency, might have provided a bridge to conversion for the English Marrano.”[8] There is little evidence for the existence of Marranos in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. However, as elsewhere, their surreptitious presence was felt through the influence of the Christian Kabbalah. Christopher Marlowe wrote Doctor Faustus, a play developed from the Faust legend in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge. Marlowe’s Faustus says, possibly referring to Giorgi, as Yates suggests, “Go and returne an old Franciscan Frier; That holy shape becomes a devill best.” After the appearance of the diabolical Franciscan Friar, Faustus rejects Christ and the Trinity, as Mephistopheles has demanded.

The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser, who was heavily influenced by Giorgi.[9] Spenser inherited not only Neoplatonic influence from Ficino and Pico, but the Christian Kabbalism of Reuchlin, Giorgi, Agrippa.[10] As Elizabeth aged her image gradually changed, and she was portrayed as characters from Spenser’s magical and Neoplatonic poem The Faerie Queene, including Belphoebe or Astraea, and after the Armada, as Gloriana, the eternally youthful Faerie Queene. Spenser’s poem and his Neoplatonic hymns in Elizabeth’s honor, published in the 1590’s, were a direct challenge to the Counter Reformation and their attitude to Renaissance philosophy. The poem, inspired by the Order of the Garter, describes the allegorical presentation of virtues through Arthurian knights in the mythical “Faerieland,” and follows several knights, like the Redcrosse Knight, the hero of Book One who bears the emblem of Saint George.

Spenser was in contact with Philip Sidney and Edward Dyer, pupils of Queen Elizabeth I’s royal astrologer, the infamous sorcerer John Dee. Dee and his pupil Edward Kelley’s acquaintances included the famous alchemist Michael Sendivogius, a friend of the Scottish alchemist Alexander Seton, who was closely associated with William Schaw, King James’ Master of Works, an important figure in the development of Freemasonry in Scotland as the author of the Schaw Statutes of the Mother Lodge of Kilwinnig.

In his own time, Dee was one of England’s most sought-after scholars, recognized for his opinions on a wide range of topics. Dee was influenced not only by Giorgi but also by Lull, Pico, Reuchlin and Agrippa. immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermeticism, and believed that he found the secret of conjuring angels by numerical configurations in the tradition of the Kabbalah. In 1588, in his capacity as royal astrologer, he was asked to choose the most favorable date for the coronation of Elizabeth, and subsequently tutored the new queen in the understanding of his mystical writings. Dee believed that he found the secret of conjuring angels by numerical configurations in the tradition of the Kabbalah. He claimed to have gained contact with “good angels from whom he learned an angelic language composed of non-English letters he called Enochian. It has been suggested that Dee used Enochian as a code to transmit messages from overseas to Queen Elizabeth in his alleged capacity as a founding member of the English secret service. Dee was among the first to merge his career as a sorcerer with that of a spy, a tendency that would then come characterize almost all leading occultists ever since. As such, Dee was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond character. Dee would sign his letters to Elizabeth with 00 and an elongated 7, to signify they were for her eyes only.

Lord Bacon

As Elizabeth did not marry, and as she had no direct heir she was therefore succeeded by King James IV of Scotland (1473 – 1513), who became King James I of England in 1603, who brought the Scottish heritage of Freemasonry to his new kingdom. King James continued to reign in all three kingdoms for twenty-two years, a period known after him as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625. James’ Daemonologie is believed to be one of the main sources used by Shakespeare’s Macbeth.[11] Shakespeare attributed many quotes and rituals found within the book directly to the Weird Sisters, yet also attributed the Scottish themes and settings referenced from the trials in which King James was involved. A commentary on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by Daniel Banes, published in 1975–6, suggests the play was written with full knowledge of Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi and other Kabbalistic works.[12] Occult tradition firmly believes that Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) was the real author of Shakespeare’s plays, but the original father of Rosicrucianism, and by extension, of Freemasonry.

Francis Bacon is typically celebrated by Masonic historians as having been a Rosicrucian. As early as 1638 a hint as to a connection between Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, was published, with the earliest known reference to the “Mason Word” published in a poem at Edinburgh in 1638:

For what we do presage is not in grosse,
For we be brethren of the Rosie Crosse:
We have the Mason word and second sight,
Things for to come we can foretell aright…[13]

Bacon was the first recipient of the Elizabeth’s counsel designation, which was conferred in 1597 when she reserved Bacon as her legal advisor. There are also theories that Bacon was the illegitimate son of Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, the First Earl of Leicester, a Knight of the Garter.[14] Bacon is considered the father of modern science, having emphasized the importance of experimentation in his landmark work, The Advancement of Learning. However, recent scholarship has shown that he was committed to the Renaissance occult tradition, and his survey of science included a review of magic, astrology, and a reformed version of alchemy.[15] Bacon would later become chancellor of England in the reign of King James, and supervised the translation of the King James Bible. It was the King James Bible which translated the verse from the Song of Solomon as the “rose of Sharon” although previous translations had rendered it simply as “the flower of the field.” Bacon was also suspected of being the true author of Shakespeare’s plays.

Bacon was elected to Parliament in 1581. In 1597 Bacon became the first Queen’s Counsel designate, when Queen Elizabeth reserved him as her legal counsel. After the accession of King James in 1603, Bacon was knighted. In 1613, he was finally appointed attorney general, after advising the king to shuffle judicial appointments. Bacon continued to use his influence with the king to mediate between the throne and Parliament, and in this capacity he was further elevated in the same peerage, as Viscount St Alban, on 27 January 1621. Bacon’s public career ended in disgrace in 1621. After he fell into debt, a parliamentary committee on the administration of the law charged him with 23 separate counts of corruption.

Bacon did not marry until the late age of forty-eight, and contemporary accounts claim that he was a homosexual. John Aubrey in his Brief Lives asserted that Bacon “He was a Pederast. His Ganimeds and Favourites tooke Bribes.”[16] In Greek mythology, Zeus falls in love with Ganymede’s beauty and abducts him to serve as cup-bearer in Olympus. In poetry, Ganymede thus became a symbol for the beautiful young male who attracted homosexual desire and love. King James and his lover the Duke of Buckingham were referred to in similar terms in anonymously authored street pamphlets: “The world is chang’d I know not how, For men Kiss Men, not Women now;… Of J. the First and Buckingham: He, true it is, his Wives Embraces fled, To slabber his lov’d Ganimede.”[17]

The Jacobean antiquarian Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Bacon’s fellow Member of Parliament, in his Autobiography and Correspondence discusses Bacon’s love of his Welsh male servants, stating that Bacon could “not relinquish the practice of his most horrible & secret sinne of sodomie, keeping still one Godrick, a verie effeminate faced youth, to bee his catamite and bedfellow.”[18] D’Ewes implied there had been a question of bringing Bacon to trial for buggery, which his brother Anthony Bacon had also been charged with.[19] Even Bacon's mother, Lady Ann Bacon, in a letter to Anthony, complained of “that bloody Percy” whom Francis kept “yea as a coach companion and a bed companion,” as well as others including Jones, Markes, Enney “and his Welchmen one after another.”[20]

Bacon would have suffered the fate of his brother-in- law, Mervyn Touchet, second Earl of Castlehaven, who had similar inclinations. In 1630, Castlehaven was publicly accused of raping his wife and committing sodomy with two of his servants. Castlehaven’s wife was Lady Anne Stanley, elder daughter and co-heiress of Ferdinando Stanley, Fifth Earl of Derby by his wife Alice Spencer, heiress presumptive to Queen Elizabeth I. Edmund Spenser represented Alice Spencer as “Amaryllis” in his eclogue Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595) and dedicated his poem The Teares of the Muses (1591) to her. Castlehaven was beheaded on Tower Hill for sodomy, committed with his page and assisting another, who was also executed, in the rape of his wife Lady Anne, in which Castlehaven was found to have assisted him by restraining her. The page who was executed testified that Lady Anne “was the wickedest woman in the world, and had more to answer for than any woman that lived.” In The Complete Peerage, George Edward Cokayne Anne was the equal of Castlehaven in immorality.[21]

Knights of the Helmet

In Advancement of Learning, Bacon argues that just as there are “brotherhoods” in families and those associated with certain skills (crafts guilds), there should also be a “fraternity in learning and illumination.”[22] By 1586, the Fra Rosi Crosse Society, or the Order of the Rosicrucians, which became a degree in the Knights of the Helmet.[23] Bacon this later gave the group the name of Acception Masons, who were to carry out the long-term objectives of societal reform outlined in the Advancement of Learning:

…we here deliver [not] an option, but a work; and assure themselves we attempt not to found any sect or particular doctrine, but to fix an extensive basis for the services of human nature… That they do not despair, as imagining our project for a grand restoration, or advancement of all kinds of knowledge, infinitely beyond the power of mortals to execute… Indeed, as our state is mortal, and human, a full accomplishment cannot be exposed in a single age, and must therefore be commended to prosperity.[24]

As summarized by Peter Dawkins, the founder-principal of the Francis Bacon Research Trust:

In The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet, Francis Bacon presented his philosophical ideals and an Order of knighthood dedicated to carrying them out. The purpose of the Order was to correct the errors of the past and bring order out of chaos. The knights vow to keep nineteen articles, full of Baconian philosophy and precepts, including vows to defend God and the State, to attack ignorance, and to defend truth and virtue ceaselessly and secretly. The name of this philosophical Order of knights refers to the divine Spear-shaker, Pallas Athena, the Tenth Muse and Patroness of the Arts and Sciences, whose helmet guards the sacred diadem of the Prince of Purpoole. In addition, the goddess presents helmets to her knight-heroes, hence the Order of the Knights of the Helmet. These helmets were said to bestow invisibility on the wearer as well as being “will helms” (the derivation of “William”), meaning “helmets of strength”, a symbolism that has the further cabalistic meaning of righteousness, virtue, clear perception and judgement. All such knights are, metaphorically, spear-shakers or shake-speares, like the Gemini and St George. They are also “invisible brethren,” a term used to describe the Rosicrucian fraternity.[25]

At Gray’s Inn, Bacon was a member of the Order of the Helmet,[26] dedicated to the goddess Pallas Athena, who was most often represented dressed in armor like a male soldier, holding a spear in her right hand, with a serpent writhing at her feet, and wearing a Corinthian helmet raised high atop her forehead. Developed in the early seventh century BC, the “Corinthian style” helmet had no ear holes, but had solid nose guard a phallic cap-shaped crown.[27] It is also known as the Cap of Hades, Helm of Hades, or Helm of Darkness. Wearers of the cap in Greek myths include Athena, the goddess of wisdom, the messenger god Hermes, and the hero Perseus. Rabelais called it the Helmet of Pluto,[28] and Erasmus the Helmet of Orcus, a Roman god of the underworld.[29]

In classical mythology, the helmet was also known as the Cap of Invisibility that can turn the wearer invisible. According to Bacon, “the helmet of Pluto, which maketh the politic man go invisible, is secrecy in the counsel, and celerity in the execution.”[30] Thus the members of the Order of the Helmet likewise served “invisible” to the world, much of their labor being published anonymously or under pseudonyms.[31] To signify their vow of invisibility the knights of the order all had to kiss Athena’s helmet.[32] Pallas Athena was known as “the Spear Shaker” or the “Shaker of the Spear,”[33] while the cryptically hyphenated version of the name “Shake-Speares” appeared on the title pages of certain plays of Shakespeare, and on every page of the first edition of his sonnets.[34]

lord of Misrule

Academic drama stems from late medieval and early modern practices of miracles and morality plays as well as the Feast of Fools and the election of a Lord of Misrule, a role inherited from the Saturnalia, dedicated to Saturn, or Satan, believed to be the origin of the twelve days of Christmastide and modern Christmas.[35] The intellectual development of dramas in schools, universities, and Inns of Court in Europe allowed the emergence of the great playwrights of the late sixteenth century.[36] In contrast to Cambridge and Oxford, who produced theatre as a literary study, the London Inns of Court produced theatre as a means of entertainment.[37] Until the end of the seventeenth century, these performances typically took the form of masques written by law students at the Inns of Court. Once the Inns of Court transitioned from masques to plays, the so-called third university served as a cradle for classical English drama. Eventually, by the early seventeenth century, writers such as Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare began producing English comedies at the Inns of Court, thus expanding the range of materials performed.[38]

The style of the plays of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson is referred to as English Renaissance theatre, also known as Elizabethan theatre. Academic drama refers to a theatrical movement that emerged in the mid sixteenth century during the Renaissance. With the rediscovery and redistribution of classical materials during the English Renaissance, Latin and Greek plays began to be restaged.[39] Dedicated to the study of classical dramas for the purpose of higher education, universities in England began to produce the plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca the Younger (among others) in the Greek and Roman languages, as well as neoclassical dramas.

The Feast of Fools includes mummer plays, folk plays performed by troupes of amateur actors, traditionally all male, known as mummers or guisers. Early scholars of folk drama, influenced by James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, tended to view these plays as survivals of pre-Christian fertility ritual.[40] Mummer refers particularly to a play in which a number of characters are called on stage, two of whom engage in a combat, the loser being revived by a Doctor character. This play is sometimes found associated with a sword dance. Mummers are generally performed seasonally or annually, often at Christmas, Easter or on Plough Monday, more rarely on Hallowe’en or All Souls’ Day, and often with a collection of money, in which the practice may be compared with other customs such as those of Halloween, Bonfire Night, wassailing, pace egging and first-footing at new year.[41] The principal characters are a hero, most commonly Saint George, King George, or Prince George (Robin Hood in the Cotswolds and Galoshin in Scotland), and his chief opponent (known as the Turkish Knight in southern England), named Slasher elsewhere, and a quack Doctor to restore the slain man to life. Other characters include Old Father Christmas, who introduces some plays, the Fool and Beelzebub or Little Devil Doubt, who collects money from the audience. Despite the frequent presence of Saint George, the Dragon rarely appears although it is often mentioned.

Ingrid Brainard argues that the English word “mummer” is ultimately derived from the Greek name Momus, the god of carnivals. In Greek mythology, Momus was the personification of satire and mockery.[42] In Aesop’s fables Momus is asked to judge the handiwork of three gods: a man, a house and a bull. He found all at fault: the man because his heart was not on view to judge his thoughts; the house because it had no wheels so as to avoid troublesome neighbors; and the bull because it did not have eyes in its horns to guide it when charging.[43] For that reason, Plutarch and Aristotle criticized Aesop’s story-telling as deficient, while it was defended by Lucian, who is best known for his tongue-in-cheek style, with which he ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal.[44] In Lucian’s The Gods in Council Momus takes a leading role in a discussion on how to purge Olympus of foreign gods and barbarian demi-gods who are lowering its heavenly tone.

Bacon describes the precepts put forward in The Advancement of Learning as based on knowledge ourselves and knowledge of others, citing the example of Momus, who found fault in the human heart for its lack of a window. During the Renaissance, several literary works used Momus as a mouthpiece for their criticism of tyranny, while others later made him a critic of contemporary society. Leon Battista Alberti wrote the political work Momus or The Prince (1446), which continued the god’s story after his exile to earth. Since his continued criticism of the gods was destabilizing the divine establishment, Jupiter bound him to a rock and had him castrated. Giordano Bruno’s philosophical treatise The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (1584) also harkens to Lucian’s example. There Momus plays a central role in the series of dialogues conducted by the Olympian deities and Bruno’s narrators as Jupiter seeks to purge the universe of evil.[45]

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Gray’s Inn rose in prominence, and that period is considered the “golden age” of the Inn, with Elizabeth serving as the Patron Lady.[46] Gray’s Inn, as well as the other Inns of Court, became noted for the parties and festivals it hosted. Gray’s Inn is one of the four Inns of Court, professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. The four Inns, established between 1310 and 1357, are Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple. The Temples takes their name from the Knights Templar, who originally leased the land to the Temple’s inhabitants (Templars) until their abolition in 1312.[47] After the Templars were dissolved in 1312, their land was seized by the king and granted to the Knights Hospitaller. With the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, the Hospitallers’ properties were confiscated by the king, who leased them to the Inner and Middle Temples until 1573. James VI of Scotland, who would succeed Elizabeth as King James, granted the land to a group of noted lawyers and Benchers, including Sir Julius Caesar and Henry Montague, and to “their heirs and assignees for ever.”[48]

In winter 1561, the Inner Temple was the scene of an extraordinary set of revels and a performance of a play called Gorboduc, before Queen Elizabeth, that celebrated the raising of Robert Dudley as the Temple’s “Christmas Prince.” Dudley was granted the role in gratitude for his intervention in a dispute with the Middle Temple over Lyon’s Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery that had historically been tied to the Inner Temple. Dudley’s influence swayed Elizabeth into asking Nicholas Bacon—as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and father of Francis Bacon—to rule in favor of the Inner Temple, and in gratitude the Parliament and Governors of the Inner Temple swore never to take a case against Dudley and to offer him their legal services whenever required. This pledge was always honored, and in 1576 the Inner Temple Parliament referred to Dudley as the “chief governor of this House.”[49] The play was partially documented by Gerard Legh in his Accedens of Armory, a book of heraldry woodcuts, which described Dudley as bearing the shield of Pallas, and being Prince Pallaphilos, the second Perseus, lieutenant of the goddess Pallas Athena—personifying Queen Elizabeth—and patron of the order of Pegasus, the horse of honor.[50]

Printed in 1688 from a manuscript apparently passed down from the 1590s, the Gesta Grayorum is an account of the Christmas revels by the law students at Gray’s Inn in 1594. On 28 January 1594, Bacon took over the role of Treasurer of Gray’s Inn, where he was responsible for the revels. It was decided that the Inn was to be turned into a mock royal court and kingdom, ruled by a “Prince,” in jesting imitation of the royal court of Queen Elizabeth, complete with masques, plays, dances, pageants, ceremonial. The revels, which took place over the Twelve Days of Christmas, were called The Prince of Purpoole and the Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet. The title referred to the Manor of Purpoole or Portpoole, the original name of Gray’s Inn. Like the mummers, the theme of these revels centered around the idea of errors being committed, disorder ensuing, and a trial held of the “Sorcerer” responsible, who then restores order.[51]

The entertainment would have included drinking the health of the Prince of Purpoole, usually a student elected Lord of Misrule for the duration of the Festival.[52] The Lord of Misrule was sometimes called “Captain Christmas,” “Prince Christmas” or “The Christmas Lord,” being the origin of Father Christmas, and later Santa Claus. In the Inns of Court, the Lord of Misrule was represented by lawyers dressed as a prince: the Prince d’Amour for the Middle Temple, the Prince of the Sophie for the Inner Temple, the Prince of the Grange for Lincoln’s Inn, and the Prince of Purpoole for Gray’s Inn.[53] The Lord of Misrule to John Milton, in a masque of the same name, was the pagan god Comus. In Greek mythology, Comus is the god of festivity and revelry, and the root of the word “comedy.” Ben Jonson associated Comus with Bacchus in Poetaster (1602): “we must live and honor the Gods sometimes, now Bacchus, now Comus, now Priapus.”[54] In Jonson’s Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, Comus, the god of cheer, the Belly-god appears as a character, riding in triumph with his head crowned with roses. The Neo-Latin play Comus (1610) by Erycus Puteanus was performed in Oxford in 1634.[55] Ben Jonson dedicated Every Man out of His Humor to “the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty, the INNS OF COURT.”[56]

The Lord of Misrule, who presided over the festivities in grand houses, university colleges and Inns of Court, was sometimes called “Captain Christmas,” “Prince Christmas” or “The Christmas Lord,” being the origin of Father Christmas, and later Santa Claus.[57] With the Christianization of Germanic Europe, numerous traditions were absorbed from Yuletide celebrations into modern Christmas. Odin’s role during the Yuletide has been theorized as having influenced concepts of St. Nicholas, and later Santa Claus.[58] The Devil’s nickname, “Old Nick,” explains Jeffrey Burton Russell in The Prince of Darkness, derives directly from Saint Nicholas. [59] A personified “Christmas” appears in Ben Jonson’s court entertainment Christmas his Masque (1616), also called Christmas His Show, together with his ten children, who are led in, on a string, by Cupid: Carol, Misrule, Gambol, Offering, Wassail, Mumming, New-Year’s-Gift, Post and Pair, and even Minced-Pie and Baby-Cake. Cupid is soon joined by his mother Venus, who lives in Pudding Lane.

All the World’s a Stage

For the Christmas of 1594, Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors was performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men after a day of banqueting and revelry at Gray’s Inn presided over by the Prince of Purpoole.[60] Dame Frances Yates observed in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, “Shakespeare’s preoccupation with the occult, with ghosts, witches, fairies, is understood as deriving less from popular tradition than from deep-rooted affinity with the learned occult philosophy and its religious implications.”[61] Early editors of Shakespeare also saw echoes of Rabelais in As You Like It.[62]

The story for As You Like It features, which many of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches such as “All the world’s a stage,” “too much of a good thing” and “A fool! A fool! I met a fool in the forest,” was derived from Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie (1590) by Thomas Lodge (c. 1558 – 1625), a member of Lincoln’s Inn. Rosalynde features the rivalries between the sons of a Knight of Malta. As the author of A Fig for Momus, Lodge has been called the earliest English satirist.[63] Lodge had published a historical romance, The History of Robert, Second Duke of Normandy, surnamed Robert the Devil, based on a medieval legend about a Norman knight who discovers he is the son of Satan. The original of Robert the Devil was Robert, father of William the Conqueror, and sixth Duke of Normandy.[64] Owing to uncertainty over the numbering of the Dukes of Normandy he is usually called Robert I, but sometimes Robert II with his ancestor Rollo the Viking as Robert I.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is replete with occult symbolism. The play also intertwines the Midsummer Eve, referring to the traditional pagan holiday of the summer solstice, and May Day. Both David Wiles of the University of London and Harold Bloom of Yale University have strongly endorsed the reading of this play under the themes of Carnivalesque, Bacchanalia, and Saturnalia.[65] The revelry of the Saturnalia included the appointment in each community of someone to personify Saturn as the Jester or Lord of Misrule.[66] Shakespeare’s Puck, a Robin Goodfellow, is a “shrewd and knavish sprite,” mischievous fairy, sprite, or jester who delights in pranks and practical jokes, is the Lucifer character.

The idea of the mischievous Puck, like Comus, also inspired the archetype of the wise fool, which Shakespeare greatly helped popularize in the English theater through incorporating the trope in a variety of characters throughout many of his plays. The paradox of the wise fool is famously demonstrated through the jester in Shakespeare’s King Lear, who works in the royal court and remains the only character who Lear does not severely punish for speaking his mind about the king and his precarious situations.

The wise fool is a literary paradox that can be found in a wide range of early literature around the world, from Greco-Roman works to the oral traditions of folk culture, but the paradox received especial attention during the Renaissance.[67] More than Shakespeare or Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Erasmus of Rotterdam praised Momus as a champion of legitimate criticism of authorities in In Praise of Folly (1511), a satirical attack on superstitions and other traditions of European society as well as on the Western Church.[68] Rotterdam is often credited for creating the definitive wise fool through his portrayal of Stultitia, the goddess of folly. Influential to all later fools, she shows the foolish ways of the wise and the wisdom of fools through delivering her own eulogy, The Praise of Folly.

In Praise of Folly is considered one of the most notable works of the Renaissance and played an important role in the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation.[69] Even Pope Leo X and Cardinal Cisneros are said to have found it amusing.[70] The essay is filled with allusions to classical mythology delivered in a style typical of the leading humanists of the Renaissance. It was originally written in the space of a week while sojourning with Sir Thomas More, the author of Utopia, at More’s house in the City of London. The Latin title Moriae Encomium had a punning second meaning as In Praise of More.

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night includes numerous references to the Feast of Fools. Similar to the real fools and jesters of the time, fools in Shakespeare are usually clever peasants or commoners that use their wits to outdo people of higher social standing.[71] The jester is related to the harlequin, the best-known of the zanni or comic servant characters from the Commedia dell'arte.[72] The harlequin inherits his physical agility and his trickster qualities, as well as his name, from a mischievous “devil” character in medieval passion plays.[73]

Many royal courts throughout English royal history employed entertainers and most had professional fools, sometimes called licensed fools. In Renaissance times, aristocratic households in Britain employed licensed fools or jesters, who sometimes dressed as other servants, but generally wore a motley coat, hood with donkey’s ears or a red-flannel coxcomb and bells. Regarded as pets or mascots, they served not simply to amuse but to criticize their master or mistress and their guests.[74] During the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I of England, William Shakespeare wrote his plays and performed with his theatre company the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later called the King’s Men). Clowns and jesters were featured in Shakespeare’s plays, and the company's expert on jesting was Robert Armin, author of Fooled upon Foole. In Twelfth Night, Feste the jester is described as “wise enough to play the fool.” The English word “clown,” which was first recorded c. 1560, is used as the name of fool characters in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Winter’s Tale. The sense of clown as referring to a professional or habitual fool or jester developed soon after 1600, based on Elizabethan “rustic fool” characters such as Shakespeare’s.

[1] Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 88.

[2] Linda Porter. Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (London: Pan Books, 2011), p. 25.

[3] Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 112.

[4] Ibid., p. 37.

[5] Yates. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1972). p. 3.

[6] From the 1944 Clark lectures by C. S. Lewis; Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1954) p. 1.

[7] Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 88.

[8] Ibid., p. 131-132.

[9] Ibid., p. 90.

[10] Ibid., p. 112.

[11] J. Keay & J. Keay. Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland (London: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 556; Willson 1963, pp. 103–105.

[12] Daniel Banes. The Provocative Merchant of Venice (Silver Springs and Chicago: Malcolm House Publications, 1975); cited in Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 151.

[13] Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 268.

[14] Amelie Deventer von Kunow. Francis Bacon, last of the Tudors (Bacon society of America, 1924).

[15] Yates. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 119; see also John Henry. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

[16] Oliver Lawson Dick (ed.) Aubrey’s Brief Lives. Edited from the Original Manuscripts, 1949, s.v. “Francis Bacon, Viscount of St. Albans.” p. 11.

[17] Mundus Foppensis, or The Fop Display’d (1691).

[18] Rictor Norton. “Sir Francis Bacon.” Gay History and Literature, updated June 14, 2008. Retrieved from http://rictornorton.co.uk/baconfra.htm

[19] Daphne du Maurier. Golden Lads: A Study of Anthony Bacon, Francis and Their Friends (London: Gollancz, 1975).

[20] Rictor Norton. “Sir Francis Bacon.”

[21] Cynthia B. Herrup. A House in Gross Disorder: sex, law, and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (Oxford University Press, 1999).

[22] Gary Lachman. Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (Quest Books), Kindle Locations 750-751.

[23] Nicholas Hagger. The Secret Founding of America: The Real Story of Freemasons, Puritans, & the Battle for The New World (Watkins, 2009). Kindle Locations 1636-1637.

[24] George V. Tudhope. Bacon Masonry (1954). p. 39.

[25] Peter Dawkins. “The Life of Sir Francis Bacon.” Francis Bacon Research Trust (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.fbrt.org.uk/pages/essays/Life_of_Sir_Francis_Bacon.pdf

[26] Francis Bacon and His Times (Spedding 1878.) Gray’s Inn Revel. Nichol’s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth; cited in Martin Pares. “Francis Bacon and the Knights of the Helmet.” American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 46, No. 4 (APRIL 1960), p. 405.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 5, Chapter 8.

[29] Erasmus. Adagia 2.10.74 (Orci galea).

[30] Francis Bacon. Essays Civil and Moral 21, “Of Delays.”

[31] Alfred Dodd. Francis Bacon’s Personal Life Story (Rider, 1986 ), p. 131.

[32] Hagger. The Secret Founding of America. Kindle Locations 1632-1633.

[33] Alfred Dodd. Francis Bacon’s Personal Life Story (Rider, 1986 ), p. 131.

[34] Francis Bacon and His Times (Spedding, 1878).

[35] Ibid., p. 346.

[36] Tucker Brooke (December 1946). “Latin Drama in Renaissance England.” A Journal of English Literary History. 13 (4): 233–240.

[37] A. Wigfall Green. The Inns of Court and Early English Drama (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1931).

[38] Ibid.

[39] Frederick S. Boas. University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), p. 25.

[40] Henry Glassie. All Silver and No Brass, An Irish Christmas Mumming (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976). p. 224.

[41] Peter Thomas Millington. The Origins and Development of English Folk Plays, National Centre for English Cultural Tradition (University of Sheffield, 2002), pp. 22, 139.

[42] “Mommerie.” International Encyclopedia of Dance 1998, Vol. 4 (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 448-9.

[43] Francisco Rodríguez Adrados. History of the Graeco-latin Fable, Vol.3, (Leident: Brill NL, 2003), pp.131-3.

[44] Hermotimus or the Rival Philosophies, p. 52.

[45] Richard Henry Popkin. The Columbia History of Western Philosophy (Columbia University 2013), pp. 320-1.

[46] “Gray’s Inn.” Bar Council. Retrieved from http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/about/innsofcourt/graysinn/

[47] William Dugdale & William Herbert. Antiquities of the Inns of court and chancery: containing historical and descriptive sketches relative to their original foundation, customs, ceremonies, buildings, government, &c., &c., with a concise history of the English law (London: Vernor and Hood, 1804), p. 191.

[48] Robert Richard Pearce. History of the Inns of Court and Chancery: With Notices of Their Ancient Discipline, Rules, Orders, and Customs, Readings, Moots, Masques, Revels, and Entertainments (R. Bentley, 1848). p. 219

[49] Marie Axton. “Robert Dudley and the Inner Temple Revels.” The Historical Journal (Cambridge University Press, 1970). p. 365.

[50] Ibid., p. 368.

[51] Peter Dawkins. “The Life of Sir Francis Bacon.” Francis Bacon Research Trust (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.fbrt.org.uk/pages/essays/Life_of_Sir_Francis_Bacon.pdf

[52] “Francis Bacon and the Origins of an Ancient Toast at Gray’s Inn.” Graya no. 131, p. 41. Gray’s Inn. Retrieved from https://www.graysinn.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/members/Gray%27s%20Inn%20-%20Graya%20131%20Bacon.pdf

[53] Peter Dawkins. Twelfth Night: The Wisdom of Shakespeare (Oxfordshire: The Francis Bacon Research Trust, Feb. 2, 2015).

[54] 3.4.114-16.

[55] Stella P. Revard. John Milton Complete Shorter Poems (John Wiley & Sons, May 4, 2012), p. 90 n. 20.

[56] A. Wigfall Green. The Inns of Court and Early English Drama (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1931), p. 6-12.

[57] Jacqueline Simpson & Steve Roud. A Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 119–120.

[58] George Harley McKnight. St. Nicholas: His Legend and His Role in the Christmas Celebration and Other Popular Customs (1917) pp. 24–26, 138–139.

[59] Jeffrey Burton Russell. The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 114.

[60] Charles Whitworth. “Introduction.” The Comedy of Errors (Oxford University Press, 2003).

[61] Yates. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, p. 90.

[62] The Variorum As You Like It, ed. Horace Howard Furness, vol. 8 (Philadelphia, 1890), pp. 39, 161.

[63] Adolphus William Ward. “Thomas Lodge.” In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1911). pp. 860–861., p. 860.

[64] F. J. Furnivall (ed.), Robert Laneham’s Letter: Describing a Part of the Entertainment Unto Queen Elizabeth at the Castle of Kenilworth in 1575 (Chatto and Windus, London, 1907), p.cxxxix.

[65] David Wiles. “The Carnivalesque in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” In Harold Bloom & Janyce Marson. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages (New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2008), pp. 208–23.

[66] Peter Dawkins. Twelfth Night: The Wisdom of Shakespeare (Oxfordshire: The Francis Bacon Research Trust, Feb. 2, 2015).

[67] Walter Kaiser. “Wisdom of the Fool.” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Horowitz, Maryanne Cline, 1945- (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005). pp. Vol. 4, 515–520.

[68] “Moriae encomium, that is, the praise of folly.” The Praise of Folly (Princeton University Press, 2015).

[69] Hunt Janin. The University in Medieval Life, 1179–1499 (McFarland, 2008). p. 160.

[70] Stephen Collett. Relics of literature (Ludgate Hill, London: Thomas Boys, 1823).

[71] Frederick B. Warde. The Fools of Shakespeare: An Interpretation of Their Wit, Wisdom and Personalities (McBride, Nast, 1913).

[72] Beatrice K. Otto. Fools Are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 189.

[73] Giacomo Oreglia. The Commedia dell’arte (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968). pp. 55–70

[74] “The Fool”. King Lear. Retrieved from http://www.rsc.org.uk/lear/teachers/fool.html

Volume Two

1. The Elizabethan Age

2. The Great Conjunction

3. The Alchemical Wedding

4. The Rosicrucian Furore

5. The Invisible College

6. 1666

7. The Royal Society

8. America

9. Redemption Through Sin

10. Oriental Kabbalah

11. The Grand Lodge

12. The Illuminati

13. The Asiatic Brethren

14. The American Revolution

15. Haskalah

16. The Aryan Myth

17. The Carbonari

18. The American Civil War

19. God is Dead

20. Theosophy

21. Shambhala