Le Tarot des Bohémiens

SECRET SOCIETIES

The School of Alexandria was the principal source from which Western secret societies were born.

Most of the initiates had taken refuge in the East, and only recently did the West learn of the existence, in India and especially in Tibet, of occult brotherhoods possessing the ancient synthesis in its entirety (1).

However, the existence of this science in the East interests us less than the history of the development of initiatory societies in the West.

The Gnostic sects, the Arabs, the Alchemists, the Templars, the Rosicrucians, and finally the Freemasons form the Western chain for the transmission of occult science.

It is enough to take a quick look at the teachings of all these associations to see that modern Freemasonry has almost completely lost the meaning of the traditional symbols, which constitute the deposit it was supposed to transmit from age to age.

All the rituals of the ceremonies seem ridiculous to the common sense of the lawyer or the grocer, who are the living representatives—at the present time—of the profound teachings of antiquity.

We must, however, make some exceptions in favor of great thinkers like Ragon and certain others.

In short, Freemasonry has allowed the deposit entrusted to it to be lost and cannot, on its own, provide the synthetic law that we are seeking.

(1) See Saint-Yves d'Alveydre: La Mission de l'Inde (The Mission of India), one volume, octavo.