Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [201]
1771 The Due de Chartres, later known as Philippe-Egalite’, becomes grand master of the Grand Orient (then, the Grand Orient de France) and tries to unify all the lodges. Scottish rite lodge resists.
1772 Pasqualis leaves for Santo Domingo, and Willermoz and Saint-Martin establish Tribunal Souverain, which becomes Grand Loge Ecossaise.
1774 Saint-Martin retires, to become Philosophe Inconnu, and as delegate of Templar Strict Observance goes to negotiate with Willermoz. A Scottish Directory of the Province of Auvergne is born. From this will be born the Rectified Scottish rite.
1776 Saint-Germain, under the name Count Welldone, presents chemical plans to Frederick II. Societe des Phila-thetes is born, to unite all hermeticists. Lodge of the Neuf Soeurs has as members Guillotin and Cabanis, Voltaire and Franklin. Adam Weishaupt founds Illuminati of Bavaria. According to some, he is initiated by a Danish merchant, Kolmer, returning from Egypt, who is probably the mysterious Altotas, master of Cagliostro.
1778 Saint-Germain, in Berlin, meets Dom Pernety. Willermoz founds Ordre des Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cite Sainte. Templar Strict Observance and Grand Orient agree to accept the Rectified Scottish rite.
1782 Great conference of all the initiatory lodges at Wil-helmsbad.
1783 Marquis Thome founds the Swedenborg rite.
1784 Saint-Germain presumably dies while in the service of the landgrave of Hesse, for whom he is completing a factory for making dyes.
1785 Cagliostro founds Memphis rite, which later becomes the Ancient and Primitive rite of Memphis-Misraim; it increases the number of high degrees to ninety. Scandal of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, orchestrated by Cagliostro. Dumas describes it as Masonic plot to discredit the monarchy. The Dluminati of Bavaria are suppressed, suspected of revolutionary plotting.
1786 Mirabeau is initiated by the Illuminati of Bavaria in Berlin. In London a Rosicrucian manifesto appears, attributed to Cagliostro. Mirabeau writes a letter to Cagliostro and to Lavater.
1787 There are about seven hundred lodges in France. Weishaupt publishes his Nachtrag, which describes the structure of a secret organization in which each adherent knows only his immediate superior.
1789 French Revolution begins. Crisis in the French lodges.
1794 On 8 Vende’miaire, Deputy Gregoire presents to the Convention the project for a Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. It is installed in Saint-Martin-des-Champs in 1799, by the Council of Five Hundred. The Duke of Brunswick urges lodges to dissolve because a poisonous subversive sect has now corrupted them all.
1798 Arrest of Cagliostro in Rome.
1804 Announcement in Charleston of official foundation of Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite, with number of degrees increased to 33.
1824 Document from court of Vienna to French government denounces secret associations like the Absolutes, the Independents, the Alta Vendita Carbonara.
1835 The cabalist Oettinger claims to meet Saint-Germain in Paris.
1846 Viennese writer Franz Graffer publishes account of a meeting of his brother with Saint-Germain between 1788 and 1790. Saint-Germain received his visitor while leafing through a book by Paracelsus.
1865 Foundation of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (other sources give 1860, 1866, or 1867 Bulwer-Lytton, author of the Rosicrucian novel Zanoni, joins.
1868 Bakunin founds International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, inspired, some say, by the Illuminati of Bavaria.
1875 Elena Petrovna Blavatsky, with Henry Steel Olcott, founds Theosophical Society. Her Isis Unveiled appears. Baron Spedalieri proclaims himself a member of Grand Lodge of the Solitary Brothers of the Mountain, Prater Illuminatus of the Ancient and Restored Order of the Manicheans and of the Martinists.
1877