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The Magic Mountain
Still chapter 6
A Good Soldier
P602 [Naphta about the Masons,] “...At its root the very idea of the lodge is inseparably tied to the notion of the absolute. It is, therefore, terroristic -- that is, anti-liberal. It relieves the individual of the burden of conscience, and in the name of an absolute goal, it sanctifies every means -- even bloody, criminal means. There are indications that at one time the brotherhood of the lodge was symbolically sealed with blood. A brotherhood is never something visible, but always an organization that, by its very nature, is absolutist in spirit. You didn’t know, did you, that the founder of the Illuminati, a society that for a while almost fused with Freemasonry, was a former member of the Society of Jesus?”
P603 “No, that’s new to me, of course.”
“Adam Weishaupt modeled his humanitarian secret society strictly on the Jesuit order. He himself a Mason, and the most distinguished Masons of the period were Illuminati. I am speaking of the second half of the eighteenth century, which Settembrini would not hesitate to describe to you as a period of decline in his guild. [I think this was the era of Freemasonry Tolstoy wrote about in War and Peace. It’s been a very long time since I read that, but I seem to recall something like this.] In reality... it was in fullest bloom, as were secret societies in general. [The late 19th century in America was like this for groups like The Red Men. I have a bunch of artifacts from my great grandfather from this period. I know that he “worked on riverboats between Louisville and Cincinnati, but, now I think about it for the first time, I don’t know if he was working class or middle class. My oak bookshelf and desk comes from him, so maybe not working class? He was a Mason as well.] It was an age when Freemasonry achieved a higher life -- a life of which it was later purged by people of the same sort as our philanthropist, who would most definitely have joined those who at the time accused it of Jesuitical obscurantism.”
...
All this is yet another approach to finding meaning in life.
...It was a time when our own priests wanted to breathe the spirit of Catholic hierarchy into Freemasonry, and there was even a flourishing Jesuit lodge at Clermont, in France. It was, moreover, the period when Rosicrucianism [this about Hermeticism is also worth reading] infiltrated the lodges -- a very strange brotherhood, which you should note, united the purely rational, sociopolitcal goals of improving the world and making people happy with a curious affinity for the occult sciences of the East, for Indian and Arabic wisdom and magical knowledge of nature. At the time, many lodges went through a period of rectification and reform, in the spirit of the ‘strict charges’ -- an explicitly irrational, mysterious, magical, alchemistic spirit, to which the higher degrees of the Scottish Rite owe their existence... It was a matter of reaching back to certain religious orders of knights in the Middle Ages, to the Knights Templar in particular -- you know the ones who swore vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience before the patriarch of Jerusalem...
...
P604 ...The reemergence of the Templars had meant nothing less than the establishment of such connections [to Oriental mysticism]; it had introduced the ferment of irrationality into an intellectual world concerned with rational, practical social improvement. All of which gave Freemasonry a new fascination and luster... It attracted various elements who were weary of their century’s sophistries, of its humane, dispassionate enlightenment, and were thirsty for stronger elixirs. The order’s success was such that the philistines complained that it was alienating men from domestic bliss and a reverence for women.”
...
“... The strict charges meant a deepening and broadening of the order’s traditions, a transference of its historical origins back to the occult world, to the so-called Dark Ages. Those who held the higher degrees of the lodges were initiates in the physica mystica, bearers of the magical knowledge of nature -- which means... great alchemists.”
P605 “...Alchemy -- making gold, the philosopher’s stone, aunum potabile. . .”
“Yes, that’s the popular understanding. Put more academically, it is the purification, mutation, and refinement of matter, its transubstantiation to something higher, its enhancement, as it were. The lapis philosophorum, which is the male-female product of sulfur and mercury -- the res bina, the bisexual prima materia -- was nothing more and nothing less than the principle of that enhancement, the application of external influences to force matter upwards: magical pedagogy if you will.”
...
“The primary symbol of alchemical transmutation... was the crypt.”
“The grave?”
“Yes, the scene of corruption. It is the epitome of all hermetism -- nothing less than the vessel, the carefully safeguarded crystal retort, in which matter is forced toward its final mutation and purification.”
...
P606 “...The apprentice must be fearless and hungry for knowledge... The crypt, the grave, has always been the primary symbol in their initiation ceremony. The apprentice, the novice hungry to be admitted to such knowledge, must remain undaunted by the grave’s horrors... The path of the mysteries and purification is beset with dangers, it leads through the fear of death, through the realm of corruption, and the apprentice, the neophyte, is the young man who is hungry for the wounds of life, demands that his demonic capacity for experience be awakened, and is led by shrouded forms, who are merely shades of the great mystery itself.”
“... [hermetic pedagogy] is a guide to final things, to an absolute confession of those things that transcend the senses, and so to our goal. The alchemistic rites of such lodges have led many a noble , inquisitive mind to that goal in the decades since. But surely... it cannot have escaped you that the degrees in the Scottish Rite are but a surrogate for another hierarchy, that the alchemistic knowledge of the Master Mason is fulfilled in the mystery of transubstantiation, and that the mystic tour with which the lodge favors its novices clearly corresponds to the means of grace, just as the metaphoric games of its ceremonies are reflections of the liturgical and architectural symbols of our Holy Catholic Church.”
...
P607 “...The strict charges... provided lodges with human foundations that went far deeper. Like certain mysteries in our Church, the lodges’ secrets have a clear connection to the solemn cults and holy excesses of primitive man. As regards the Church, I am thinking of the supper that is a feast of love, the sacramental partaking of body and blood...”
...
“--as regards the lodges... I was referring to the cult of the crypt and coffin... In both cases, we are dealing with a symbolism of last and ultimate things [Eschatology], with elements of orgiastic primal religion, with unbridled nocturnal sacrifices in honor of dying and ripening, of death, transformation, and resurrection. You will recall that both the cult of Isis and the Eleusinian mysteries were carried out in dark caves at night... among its secret societies were some that used the name Eleusinian. Those lodges held feasts... of the Eleusinian mysteries and the secrets of Aphrodite, which at last got the female involved...”
...
“...The lodges were modernized, humanitarianized... They were led back from their aberrations to reason, usefulness, and progress, to the battle against prince and priest -- in short, to social happiness... In a word, it is bourgeois misery organized as a club.”
...
P610 [Settembrini on Freemasonry,] “...Masonic thought was never apolitical, not at any time... What are we? Masons and hodmen who build, all with one purpose. The good of all is the fundamental principle of our brotherhood. And what is this good, this building we build? The well-crafted social edifice, the perfection of humanity, the new Jerusalem... The social problem, the problem of human coexistence is politics, is politics through and through, nothing but politics. And the man who consecrates himself to it... belongs to politics, foreign and domestic. He understands that the craft of the Freemason is the art of governance.”
...
P611 [Hans,] “...Do Freemasons believe in god?”
“...An international union of Freemasons does not exist. It shall be established... And then... we shall likewise be united in our religious confession -- and it will be: ‘Ecrasez L’infame.’ “
“Will it be compulsory?...”
“...tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”
“So, then, God would be evil?”
“Metaphysics is evil. For it serves no purpose except to lull us to sleep, to sap us of the energy we should bring to building the temple of society. Only a generation ago, the Grand Orient of France provided us a fine model by erasing the name of God from all his works...”
“How Catholic of you!”
“By which you mean?”
“I find it terribly Catholic -- erasing God.”
Okay. I’m not sure what Hans means either but this, again, reminds me of The Brothers Karamazov and in particular of Ivan’s story of the Grand Inquisitor.
In it’s own way, this statement about metaphysics is as sweeping and “terroristic” as any Naphta has made -- though countless students of metaphysics would probably have stood and cheered while reading this. Again, I’m in the position of having to speculate about what both Settembrini and Mann are up to here. This dogma about metaphysics is similar to Settembrini’s wanting Hans to act and not reason. It seems to be pushing humanism to an absurd extreme. (And if you read the link about the Illuminati, it seems they were also rather focused on a single correct path to knowledge and truth.) As difficult as metaphysics can be, it is, to use a construction metaphor, the foundation upon which everything else rests. This ignoring of the foundation, to use a local, SF, example, must have been the thinking behind the construction of Millennial Tower. (Which is famously sinking and leaning.) They are now having to deal with the consequences of ignoring “metaphysics” and building on an unsound foundation.
This bit about metaphysics sent me back to Henry Ryecroft. I’m still having a problem finding the passages I’m looking for, but I recall that Ryecroft (Gissing) at some point associates metaphysics with illness. Maintains that in a life of perfect health there would be no need for metaphysics. I did, finally, find this passage about illness, with a reference back to TMM in my “Alpha” section. Still can’t find the passage about metaphysics I want.
This discussion continues with Settembrini returning to his West vs East dualism,]
P612 “...Decisions must be made -- decisions of incalculable significance for the future happiness of Europe, and your country will have to make them, they must come to fruition within its soul. Positioned between East and West, it will have to choose, will have to consciously decide, once and for all, between the two spheres vying for its heart. You are young, you will take part in this decision...”
...
P613 “You are silent... You and your country allow unconditional silence to reign, a silence so opaque that no one can judge its depths. You do not love the Word, or do not possess it, or sanctify it only in a sullen way -- the articulate world does not and cannot learn where it stands with you. My friend, that is dangerous. Language is civilization itself. The Word, even the most contradictory word, binds us together. Wordlessness isolates. One presumes that you will seek to break out of your isolation with deeds...”
I don't tend to think of Germans as being "wordless." More that they too often invent or compound new words but still leave everyone in the dark.
P617-618 [Interesting argument here about the future of Classical Education and even literacy, where, again, Naphta has turned out to be correct.]
And now we come to the sad decline and death of Joachim. I presume Mann means something by this, but I’m at a loss to say what it is. But, again, if we assume this is more about Weimar Germany than late 2nd Reich Germany, Joachim can be seen as representing the death of German honor. Aside from some nasty consequences of technological innovations in modern warfare around the Great War (U-boats and gas and zeppelin bombing, for example) the German military remained honorable during the first WW. There were no SS units yet. But I’m speculating here.
If I had remembered that there was so much back and forth between Settembrini and Naphta in this last section, I probably wouldn’t have advocated stopping at "Snow" before our last book club meeting. We could at least have gotten this all out of the way and balanced all the talk with Joachim. But I blame Mann here, as I still think "Snow" was the crucial synthesis that should conclude this dialectic.
Anyway, now we are on to chapter 7 and the, still distant, conclusion of the book.
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