A Taste of Bacon Sir? - The Secret of Shakespeare

[David Guyatt]

Steve, I found it genuinely heart-warming that you have made your Origins of the Tarot Deck freely available on your website HERE.

I, obviously haven't read the entire thing, just speed read parts of it. I noted what you said about there being two main branches of tarot research, namely the fortune telling branch that has focused on the images themselves, and the "world gaming" branch that has sought the origins of there cards themselves (I think I have this broadly right?).

I think that occultists work on the basis that there is a correspondence between the 22 letters of the Hewbrew alphabet and the 22 major trumps - as you have pointed out, and adding that this link is untenable. But it is my understanding that the "fit" derives not so much from a contrived alignment but because both correspond to the 22 paths of the Tree of Life.

And herein lay one of the best kept secrets of the occult Qabalah that was not made public until 1983 (according to what I was told), when it was revealed that the great significance of the pathways of the Tree of Life, and the 10 - now 11 - Sephiroth themselves, were that they were used as imaginative doorways and a roadmap of the soul and the Collective Unconscious [microcosm/macrocosm] via the technique of meditational Pathworking. The purpose of this Great Work was, clearly, aimed at Consciousness.

This has powerful correspondences to Jung's Analytical Psychology, as Jung practised his own form of this that he called Active Imagination. It is my understanding that these techniques amount to the real inner workings of the Qabalah, Tarot, Alchemy etc.

Of course, the images of the Tarot change somewhat with the deck used. And, so far as I know, different decks are often peculiar to different occult schools, each of which have slightly (sometimes largely, I suspect) differing means of achieving their objectives. My father, who studied these things, concentrated on the Paul Foster Case tarot (though I can't now remember if he used Case's deck or not - he had a few, which I now have along with all his papers) because that was the one his school had adopted for use, although they had nothing directly to do with B.O.T.A.

Anyway, I wondered if you had done any study of Pathworking/Active Imagination on these subjects?

[Steve Franklin]

Steve, I found it genuinely heart-warming that you have made your Origins of the Tarot Deck freely available on your website HERE.

I, obviously haven't read the entire thing, just speed read parts of it. I noted what you said about there being two main branches of tarot research, namely the fortune telling branch that has focused on the images themselves, and the "world gaming" branch that has sought the origins of there cards themselves (I think I have this broadly right?).

I think that occultists work on the basis that there is a correspondence between the 22 letters of the Hewbrew alphabet and the 22 major trumps - as you have pointed out, and adding that this link is untenable. But it is my understanding that the "fit" derives not so much from a contrived alignment but because both correspond to the 22 paths of the Tree of Life.

And herein lay one of the best kept secrets of the occult Qabalah that was not made public until 1983 (according to what I was told), when it was revealed that the great significance of the pathways of the Tree of Life, and the 10 - now 11 - Sephiroth themselves, were that they were used as imaginative doorways and a roadmap of the soul and the Collective Unconscious [microcosm/macrocosm] via the technique of meditational Pathworking. The purpose of this Great Work was, clearly, aimed at Consciousness.

This has powerful correspondences to Jung's Analytical Psychology, as Jung practised his own form of this that he called Active Imagination. It is my understanding that these techniques amount to the real inner workings of the Qabalah, Tarot, Alchemy etc.

Of course, the images of the Tarot change somewhat with the deck used. And, so far as I know, different decks are often peculiar to different occult schools, each of which have slightly (sometimes largely, I suspect) differing means of achieving their objectives. My father, who studied these things, concentrated on the Paul Foster Case tarot (though I can't now remember if he used Case's deck or not - he had a few, which I now have along with all his papers) because that was the one his school had adopted for use, although they had nothing directly to do with B.O.T.A.

Anyway, I wondered if you had done any study of Pathworking/Active Imagination on these subjects?

My approach is, and has been, purely historical, though I find it quite hilarious that I have been "accused" of being an occultist in print:

"In Tarot history, any connection is fair game. For instance, because there are fifty-six filled in holes at Stonehenge and fifty-six cards in the Minor Arcana, to an occult commentator such as Stephen Franklin the two not only might be but must be connected. (Franklin, who connects the cards with astrological figures in a far-reaching argument based on Pythagorean, Hindu, and Chinese sources, would recoil at being called an occultist, but in the strict sense of the word he is one.)"
--Jay Kinney in The Inner West

This from a cartonist and associate of R. Crumb. Well, I guess then I must be an occultist. ;-)

There is definitely a connection between the tarot and the alphabet, but it's another step removed, in that the 28 signs of the lunar zodiac are closely related to the 56 minor cards of the tarot; and the Phoenician alphabet, as well as the syllabic system used on the Phaistos disc, derives from the same lunar zodiac. I delve into this in the appendix to Origins and also in Chapter 9 of my current chronological reconstruction, Typhon: A History of the Holocene Period.

No, I have not done much with the kabbala or with the tarot as an occult device. I have done some work with the I Ching, which is distantly related to the tarot and more closely to 4 Kings or Chaturanga, the Indian 4-handed chess. I suspect that any complex graphical symbol system can be used for psychological/divinitory/occult purposes without regard to the original purpose of the device. Why this is true is beyond me at present. I do find that the calendrical aspects of the tarot are most obvious in the Rider-Waite deck, more obvious than the earliest surviving Italian decks, suggesting that A. E. Waite had either decoded it himself or received an explanation from someone on the inside. Any suggestions on who may have informed Waite on the matter? Associates, secret societies, etc.?

I find the suggestion that the Rosicrucians [substitute other secret societies here] existed before the time of Pythagoras quite interesting in that Pythagoras shows up in Southern Italy in the late 6th century BC, presumably already in possession of the tarot board, and it remains there unremarked upon for almost 2 millennia until it finally shows up in Milan in the 15th century in the form of a deck of cards. There almost certainly must have been some secret organization involved in maintaining it. Did this include da Vinci? Unknown at present.

My publisher wanted to republish Origins as a digital book, thus keeping it bottled up for another hundred years or so. I decided it was time to release it to the wider world for better or worse.

SF

[David Guyatt]

Re A E Waite, I'm sure you know he was a member of the Golden Dawn and was a Freemason - being a member of the Societas Roscruciana in Anglia, which was the home lodge of the three founding members of the Golden Dawn (Wynn Westcott, MacGregor Mathers and William Woodman).
I would look to these two organisations for the transmission of his knowledge that led to his deck (which again, as I'm sure you know, was illustrated by another member of the Golden Dawn. Some of the teachings and techniques of the Golden Dawn were profound. Not many members of the Golden Dawn were equal to the task, however. But this is the story of humanity as a species, I would argue.

In those days, almost everything about the occult was privately published and kept secret, only being circulated amongst lodges and schools. There were almost zero open transmission. Even later in the Sixties and Seventies the amount of information publicly available was still limited and what was available was only sold in two bookshops in London, hidden away in back streets. You were unlikely to trip across them by accident (it was probably different in the US, I suspect).

Today each school still retains it's own unique information that is transmitted only to senior members and is not made public -- although so much previously secret information is now in the public domain, that a diligent researcher with a budget - and a penchant for Indian, Egyptian and Chinese lore etc - could pull the underlying techniques and aims together fairly well. Yet this would only provide you with limited understanding. Looking at a meal prepared by a Michelin star chef and knowing the ingredients and techniques used to prepare said meal is intellectually stimulating but in no way allows one to taste and participate in the meal - which is, of course, the entire purpose of it.

And I would add that, in the last analysis, the origin, transmission and discovery of knowledge, throughout history, depends entirely upon actual participation. This is the the key to the raison d'être of all genuine schools. If this were not the case they would be next to useless.

Anyway, Jung's Collective Unconscious explains why this is so.

The collective unconscious is an universal datum, that is, every human being is endowed with this psychic archetype-layer since his/her birth. One can not acquire this strata by education or other conscious effort because it is innate.We may also describe it as a universal library of human knowledge, or the sage in man, the very transcendental wisdom that guides mankind.
Jung stated that the religious experience must be linked with the experience of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Thus, God himself is lived like a psychic experience of the path that leads one to the realization of his/her psychic wholeness.
Jung about the Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious - so far as we can say anything about it at all - appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious... We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual. (From The Structure of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 325.)

[Steve Franklin]

Re A E Waite, I'm sure you know he was a member of the Golden Dawn and was a Freemason - being a member of the Societas Roscruciana in Anglia, which was the home lodge of the three founding members of the Golden Dawn (Wynn Westcott, MacGregor Mathers and William Woodman).
I would look to these two organisations for the transmission of his knowledge that led to his deck (which again, as I'm sure you know, was illustrated by another member of the Golden Dawn. Some of the teachings and techniques of the Golden Dawn were profound. Not many members of the Golden Dawn were equal to the task, however. But this is the story of humanity as a species, I would argue.

In those days, almost everything about the occult was privately published and kept secret, only being circulated amongst lodges and schools. There were almost zero open transmission. Even later in the Sixties and Seventies the amount of information publicly available was still limited and what was available was only sold in two bookshops in London, hidden away in back streets. You were unlikely to trip across them by accident (it was probably different in the US, I suspect).

Today each school still retains it's own unique information that is transmitted only to senior members and is not made public -- although so much previously secret information is now in the public domain, that a diligent researcher with a budget - and a penchant for Indian, Egyptian and Chinese lore etc - could pull the underlying techniques and aims together fairly well. Yet this would only provide you with limited understanding. Looking at a meal prepared by a Michelin star chef and knowing the ingredients and techniques used to prepare said meal is intellectually stimulating but in no way allows one to taste and participate in the meal - which is, of course, the entire purpose of it.

And I would add that, in the last analysis, the origin, transmission and discovery of knowledge, throughout history, depends entirely upon actual participation. This is the the key to the raison d'être of all genuine schools. If this were not the case they would be next to useless.

Thanks. I did take a look at Waite's biography in the interim and, yes, he does appear to have had the access, if anyone did, to the resources that could have provided him with the underlying structure of the tarot. The question remains, though: What was the actual organizational structure in Italy that could have survived for ~2 millennia and kept the tarot board/deck bottled up but intact for that long? For what it's worth, my money is still on some hidden survival of the Pythagorean school at Croton and later Metapontum, perhaps merged into some obscure Catholic sect that popped its head above water for an historical instant with the appearance of Guglielma of Bohemia and [size=12]Sister Manfreda (Maifreda) da Pirovano ("The Popess" of the Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck--partial genealogy of Manfreda here) in [/SIZE]the late 13th century, only to have it unceremoniously lopped off, so to speak, by the Italian Inquisition. This is all speculation, of course--grist for another mill.

Getting back to the problem of W. Shakespeare, though, I feel that the solution requires a close chronological analysis of the First Folio. Again, I haven't gotten very far with this, but a couple of things occur to me.

# The Folio must have been in production for a good while, what, a year or two at the least? The editors/publishers would have had to gather the various manuscripts, working scripts, and more or less corrupt quarto editions (only 16 of 36 appeared in such editions) and then reduced them to a single accurate (as far as possible) version that appeared in 1623. Remember that no manuscripts or scripts of any kind are mentioned in Shakspere's will, so it wasn't a question of simply going to the heirs and retrieving the plays.

# No other plays appeared after the First Folio, suggesting that it was some kind of memorial edition, appearing close-on to the death of the author.

Now we know that Shakspere of Stratford "retired" in 1610 or thereabouts, and died in 1616. That's 13 years from his retirement to the appearance of the First Folio, and 7 years from his death, a bit of a long time between his pen falling silent and the memorial edition. The monument, with or without a quill pen, appeared prior to the Folio--no one knows when. Edward de Vere died in June of 1604, so even less of a reason to publish a memorial edition 19 years later. Stokes, in An Attempt to Determine the Chronological Order of Shakespeare's Plays of 1878, places Henry VIII in 1613, The Tempest in 1610/1611, Winters Tale in 1610/1611, Cymbeline in 1610, and on and on. The first play clearly after de Vere's death, according to Stokes, was King Lear in 1605. Othello was in 1604. That's 9 years writing from the grave.

We have the opposite problem with some of the other candidates (except Marlowe, whose date of death, assuming he survived his "murder," is unknown). Francis Bacon didn't die until April of 1626, no reason for a memorial edition in 1621-1623. Amelia Lanier survived until 1645, yet no quarto editions after 1616 and no new published plays after 1623. Shakspere dies and Lanier decides to stop writing? She couldn't have found another alias? I haven't gone through all of the known candidates for "Shakespeare" yet, but it will be interesting to see how the other candidates fit the timeline. I am still leaning toward Marlowe, but I am not yet positive. In passing, I should note that Walsingham, Marlowe's benefactor, died in 1630, so plenty of time to assist in the publication of a memorial editon of Marlowe's plays upon his death.

[Upon further reflection, it occurs to me that if Marlowe did indeed write the plays, then Walsingham would almost certainly have retained fair copies, if not the original manuscripts, thus simplifying immensely the logistics of publishing the First Folio.]

[R.K. Locke]

I too am leaning towards Marlowe at this very early stage, but there are elements of the Bacon and Lanier claims that are certainly very intriguing.

So much more to read and learn though.

[Steve Franklin]

I too am leaning towards Marlowe at this very early stage, but there are elements of the Bacon and Lanier claims that are certainly very intriguing.

So much more to read and learn though.

I will try to keep the thread informed of my progress. I should stress that my primary interest is in identifying the cometary avatar for 1593. This only intersects the authorship question in that it's always nice to get the identities of one's avatars correct. ;-) There is actually precedent for this kind of substitution, back around AD 6.

I should also point out that I have nothing against the good gentleman from Stratford, and would not be annoyed if a play turned up in his handwriting, as bad as that was. My next avenue of research should probably be to determine what happened to Walsingham's possessions after he died. That could go a long way toward explaining why there exist no early scripts of the plays. I can understand that Walsingham would have destroyed the actual manuscripts in fear of the dreaded Star Chamber, only abolished by the Habeas Corpus Act of 1640 (enacted in 1641).

[David Guyatt]

One thread that might be of interest to - although possibly not - were the Knights of the Helmet - the forerunner to the Rosicrucians, and I am copying an essay below from sir bacon.org

From : Alfred Dodd's BookThe Martyrdom of Francis Bacon
pp. 30-35
Chapter II
His Birth, Life and Labours, 1561-1621

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(special thanks to Gerald Francis Bacon)
Pallas Athena was the Goddess of Wisdom and was supposed to preside over the whole of the intellectual and moral side of human life. She was the patroness of the useful and elegant arts such as weaving (felling), imparting to her devotees the peuculiar Masonic Virtues of Prudence, Courage, Preserverance. She protected the State from outward enemies. The Britannia on our English coins is taken from Pallas. She was credited with being the inventor of musical instruments. The Olive wreath denoting Peace was her emblem. She was a Creator and Preserver.
She was depicted in Greek Art with a Helmet on her head. She held the Spear of Knowledge in her right hand, poised to strike at the Serpent of Ignorance writhing under her foot. The large Helmet denoted that she waged invisibly a silent war against Sloth and Ignorance. She was usually placed on the Greek Temples with a Golden Spear in her hand. When the morning rays of the sun glinted on the weapon, causing it apparently to tremble, the common people were in the habit of saying smilingly : "Athena is Shaking her Spear again." She was thus known as "the Spear Shaker" or " the "Shaker of the Spear."
This was the Goddess to whom Francis Bacon plighted his troth when a youth.
The members of this Secret Literary Society which centered in Pallas Athena were known as The Knights of the Helmet. They had a ritual&;created by Francis Bacon&;and were initiated with an elaborate ceremonial. There was a vow, recitatives, perambulations. The Initiate was capped with the Helmet of Pallas to denote he was henceforth an "Invisible" in the fight for Human Advancement. A large Spear was placed in his hand&;indicative of a pen&;for he was to Shake the Spear of Knowledge at the Dragons of Ignorance. He thus became a "Spear-Shaker", and the head of the little band of "Spear-Shakers" was "Shake-Speare" himself, Athena's visible representative on earth.......Francis Bacon.

This little group of law students&;with a few outsiders like Gabriel Harvey, a Cambridge Professor, the one-time tutor of Francis in Prosody&;became the brains of the secret movements in the Elizabethan Era which led to the English Renaissance. The prime Fraternity became known ultimately as the Rosicrosse.
Their activities began with an attempt to create a flexible English language, to provide words which Englishmen could express themselves, a literature written in their own tongue to take the place of Latin. To this end the Rosicrosse made translations from many languages and issued text-books dealing with all sorts of subjects. They wrote original works anonymously. They had to create an English reading public and they did so in many ways..... by feigned attacks on each other, stimulating controversy, by stories and plays of educational and moral interest. A great deal of Francis Bacon's financial difficulties in these days, and even later, was due to the fact that he had to pay for the books to be printed, and that he was running the printing and publishing side of his creative efforts at a dead loss. He was actually thrown into prison more than once for borrowed monies, such debts being incurred soley through the expenses of his idealistic "Philanthropia." These Rosicrosse books were signed with the numerical Seal of the Rosicrosse, 157 or /and 287 and often the author's real name by a numerical signature or anagram. In these books Francis Bacon had the opportunity to secrete his personal secrets which he dare not write about openly.
Thus began the Society of the Rosicrosse, and thus the Founder began a series of writings which eventually became the Fourth Part of The Great Instauration. Francis Bacon became an anonymous writer, using many pen-names until he had learned the art of creating personalities by a perfect blending of "FORMS" or human passions. This very word, "Form", Francis Bacon uses in The New Organ of Interpretation for the understanding of all Mental Phenomena and the Thinking Man, thus leading to the creation of the "Actual Types and Models" of Mental and Emotional Passion that were "to be set before the Eyes" as on a Stage by a "Shake-spear."
The Rosicrosse Literary Society, we know, was definitely in being in 1604

"for on the 6th January the Queen held a Masque Ball, and Inigo Jones, having been asked to design the costumes, drew among other sketches one over which he himself scribbled the words, 'A ROSICROS." (F. de P. Castells, Our Ancient Brethren. p. 90)

From another angle of study Parker Woodward says :

"There is very little doubt that Francis formed a Secret Society for the prosecution of his scheme for the Advancement of Learning, the Maintenance of Religion, and the Improvement of Manners, Morals, Arts, and Sciences......Overt signs can be collected only by watchful care over a number of years." (Sir Francis Bacon, p.54)
The same author, writing of the year 1592, says : 'Francis was at this time, if not earlier, well helped by a staff of men capable of writing a sort of shorthand, who afterwards transcribed their work." (Early life of Lord Bacon. p. 59)
See Elizabethan Scriveneries, in Shakespeare, Creator of Freemasonry, by Alfred Dodd.

Under the Cloak of the Secret Literary Society Francis Bacon built up his "Forms", the dramatic creation of Personalities; speaking his own thoughts to the world through their mouths. Now can be better understood his saying : "Motley's the only wear : It is my ONLY SUIT......."

"Invest me in my Motley: give me leave
To speak my Mnd, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of th' infected world
If they will patiently receive my medicine.

&;As You Like It

(written presumably prior to 1600: First Printed and Published 1623.)
So......in the "despised Weed" (Disguise) of a Dramatist, Shakespeare, he "procured the good of all men."

("I have , though in a DESPISED WEED, procured THE GOOD OF ALL MEN." &;from Francis Bacon's Prayer written in 1621;
"Why do I still keep INVENTION (Poesy) in a NOTED WEED." &; Shakespeare's Sonnets )

Through his stories he tried to uplift common humanity educationally and ethically, giving his countrymen, in his open works as well as his concealed ones, a vocabulary of some twenty thousand words. He painted broad canvasses of Life that taught the triumph of goodness and the dethronement of evil......great epics of moral power. He showed in the most practical manner, to succeeding generations of scholars, that he knew how to hold the mirror up to Nature, because he knew the secret of applied metaphysics, the interpretation of Nature according to the Novum Organum, i.e., PART III. In short, he demonstrated that he fully understood the laws that govern human nature, and how to blend creative effort along definite lines in order to produce characters in Art Form, the various "Forms" that live in the Great Plays. Had he openly declared his views that he put into the mouths of his various characters, Franis Bacon would have been brought into conflict with Church and State. He wrote his views under the Mask of a living man, as Sir Nicholas had done. This man was buried in the heart of the country.....literally buried in Stratford Church&;and had been for seven years&;when Part IV of the "Types and Models", interpretive of Nature, were mysteriously produced in 1623 under the title of Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies.This book contains the various "Forms" of mental and moral passion&; of "Light and Heat "&;to illustrate his experimental Natural Philosophy.

While he was establishing the educative aspect of Rosicrosse activities by printing and publishing text books,etc., Francis Bacon has also began another important work&; intended to be the crown of his labours, the establishment of an organized, Brotherhood with Rites and Ceremonial based on the Ancient Mysteries, Classical Myths, the craft-customs of the defunct guild of operative masons.... a Rite in which the Nature Wisdom of Egypt should be blended with the simple, ethical New Commandment of Jesus...."That ye LOVE one another." It was, virtually, a remodelling of the Contiental Templar Knights Secret Order which was then almost moribund....confined to a fast diminishing select few, and had outlived its former usefulness and grandeur. Francis Bacon aimed at remoulding the Ceremonial on broader grounds that would have, ultimately, a popular appeal as well as an esoteric one. He finally redrafted the Nine Degrees of the Templars into Thirty-Three, half of which were based on purely Christian Ethical Concepts. "Thirty-Three" was chosen as the Highest Degree because the number "33", was the numerical signature of "Bacon" :
B A C O N
______________
2 +1+ 3+ 14+ 13 = 33The first modern Freemasons' Lodge was held at Twickenham Park and Gray's Inn. It consisted of Three Degrees and the Royal Arch. It's first members were drawn from the Rosicrosse Literary Society : A Rosicrosse-Mason was a Brother who was privy to the Secrets of the Craft and the Rose.
(color added)

Woodblock emblem on the title-page of A Collection of Apothegmes New and Old, by the Right Honourable Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban,published in London in 1661, printed by Sarah Griffin for William Lee.

Francis Bacon created the Higher Christian Degrees gradually through the years, the majority being tried out at Twickenham Lodge. In 1620 all the Degrees had been created with their traditional histories, feigned tales and rituals; and the Brotherhood was well established in Lodges, Chapters and Presbyteries dotted all over the Kingdom &;England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Continent. It had even spread through military and naval officers and gentlemen to the New World.

Part VI was therefore actually in being in the form of a series of Ethical Rituals, some simple, some elaborate&;thirty-three in all&;and regularly worked secretly by an organized Brotherhood who recognized each other, unsuspected by the "uninstructed world", through secret words and tokens. Had the Fraternity been known to exist it would have been stamped out as a menace, for Authority would never have tolerated a "Commonwealth" within a "Commonwealth". The Church would have frowned on an Ethical System as subversive to Christianity, which all the divines then held could only be interpreted by creeds and dogmas. So Freemasonry was planted secretly like a bulb in the darkness and left to root itself and grow : And it was planned eventually to emerge into the Light of Day exactly one hundred years after the publication of the 1623 Great Shakespeare Folio... in 1723. (with The Book of Constitutions of The Freemasons, by Rev. James Anderson, being the first annoucement to the world of the Brotherhood.)
But while Freemasons' Lodges lay concealed from sight, there was a vigourous movement initiated by the Rosicrosse to bring ethical principles to public notice&; especially among liberal-minded thinkers&; and to familiarize the mass-mind with idealism in its loftiest form..... the amelioration of the common lot. In 1614 there was printed in Cassel (Germany) and elsewhere for the next few years, a series of Manifestoes based on the Theme, The Universal Reformation of the Whole Wide World, the Fama Fraternitatisand the Confessio Fraternitatis. From what quarter they proceeded no one knew. But they were circulating in manuscript in 1610 in the Tyrol, and there is now evidence that they were in circulation even before this date in England. There is also sufficient proof that the writer of the manifestoes was Francis Bacon, who had them translated into German and published anonymously. They were a call to all good men, irrespective of creedal belief, to unite against the evils that afflicted humanity on the lines of an Ethical Brotherhood.
The Rosicrucian booklets created a great stir at the time and much controversy. Many letters were written stating the willingness of the writers to join such a Brotherhood. But the anonymous author never replied to any of his correspondents and after some years the agitation died down. The seeds of curiosity had, however, been scattered abroad openly. The Fama and other Rosicrucian literature were studied and their principles practically applied by some enthusiasts to everyday life, by forming small commonwealth's of their own. Some parties even migrated to the New World that the might live their own lives, modelled on the Fama, free from persucution. Genuine inquirers were, however, noted and many were quietly absorbed into the secret Craft Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, being, later, passed on to the still more esoteric Rosicrucian College.

Before 1616 Francis Bacon had compiled Part V of The Great Instauration&; the Rosicrucian Manifestoes&;and published them openly to the world, besides having established the secret Colleges of he Fratres. He had given the world anonymously something on account of the full, ethical system of Rite and Cermonial, that by allegory and symbol gave a spiritual interpretation of the Universe...the system of Natural Philosophy, Freemasonry, timed to appear a hundred years later. The Rosicrucian pamphlets were "to serve as wayside Inns in which the mind might rest." They are still regarded as Inns for mental refreshment by many persons today who find their highest happiness in obedience to the teachings of the Rosicrucian literature.

This aspect of Francis Bacon's concealed activities must be borne in mind in order to understand his character....the secret ideals which, after all, were the first things in his intentions, and which inevitably had its repercussions on the open life which has been so variously interpreted and misinterpreted by so many critical biographers. His "Philanthropia" led him into the paths of an "Active Philosophy", so he termed it, as a social reformer and an ethical teacher. These were the touchstones by which he tested his personal actions. Thought had to be combined with action, otherwise the noblest thoughts were meaningless, insincere, and futile. It should lead essentially to practical results.
The three concealed Parts of his system were bound together by education, reform, ethics which he could not openly champion in an age of tyranny, intolerance and ignorance. His creation of a vast vocabulary, his moral tales of dramatic passion that even the unlettered could understand, his Rosicrucian ferment thrown upon the stagnant waters of society and the establishment of a Brotherhood can now be seen in their influence on the Elizabethan Era and succeedinggenerations. The Mystery of Freemasonry, the Mystery of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes, the Mystery of the Shakespeare Plays can all be traced to one source&;the concealed Architect and Master Builder. They are the missing parts of The Great Instauration which Spedding and Ellis, with other eminent scholars, having searched for in vain, eventually concluding with a sigh that he never wrote them. What they all overlooked was this : That Francis Bacon's System not only embraced the Reformation of Physics and Physical Well-being but the Invisible Worlds of Mental and Moral Thought and Action : and that his Plan, copied from the "Ancients", was to deliver his Philosophy by TWO Methods &;one Public and one PRIVATE. In Valerius Terminus, Ch.18, he says he will use

" the discretion anciently observed..... of publishing part and reserving PART TO A PRIVATE SUCCESSION, and of publishing in such a manner whereby it may not be to the taste or capacity of all but shall as it were single and adopt his reader....both for the avoiding of abuse in the excluded, and the strengthening of the Affection in those ADMITTED," i.e. exclusion by Blackball.
[This is a clear intimation of Initiation into a Secret Order.]
"Now my plan for publication is this : I wish to be published to the world and circulate from mouth to mouth ; the rest I would have passed from hand to hand with selection and judgment. My Formula of Interpretation.....will thrive better if committed to the charge of some fit and selected minds AND KEPT PRIVATE."
"Elsewhere he talks of an ORAL METHOD OF TRANSMISSION, which reminds one at once of Masonry." (W. F.C. Wigston, Bacon and the Rosicrucians, p.44)
"I , going the same road as the Ancients, have something better to produce, says Francis. This is, then, the Secret of The Great Instauration or RESTORATION. He has returned on the road to Antiquity, copying the Dramatic Rites of the Mysteries in their Moral Applications by Degree Methods, and seeks to outvie the Dramatic Art of AEschylus, Euripides and Sophocles.

This confirms more than sufficient proof that Francis Bacon was more than a Publicist. He was a secret Teacher with his Secret School of Disciples. Spedding and others never took these SECRET PUBLICATIONS into account. They ignored his plain words. They never sought for them; and they never sought for his Secret Society that was to be maintained by "ORAL TRANSMISSION." They therefore missed entirely the full import of his Labours&;his concealed work outlined in Parts IV, V, VI.
Over his own name he never published anything until he was forty-four years of age&;beyond ten short Essays in 1597. The best years of his life have apparently slipped away from him barren of creative effort. Actually, they were years overflowing with his concealed labours. On the definite completion of he basis from which could be launched the attack on the Citadels of the Kingdom of Ignorance (the secret bases from which sprang our new outlook on Literature; i.e. the Renaissance crowned by the production of the Shakespeare Plays: the Royal Society : the Theosophic Rosicrucian College : the Ethical Craft of Masonry: the New Philosophical and Scientific outlook whose watchwords were "Utility and Progress") he then&;and not until then&;started the ball rolling openly by printing The Advancement of Learning in 1605. It was PART I of the Instauration or the Revival of Learning.
In 1620 was published PART II, the Novum Organum or The New Organ of Interpretation.
In the Sylva Sylvarum, published in 1627, this book being "A Collection of Collections" (Spedding) or "the materials out of which anything is to be constructed," is to be found

"an accumulation of facts, beliefs, fables, and conjectures ranging over all the fields of Nature." (Nichol)

which Francis Bacon had been collecting all his life. "This Natural History," said he, "is the World as God made it and not as men have made it," and, added Dr. Rawley, his chaplain, in deeply significant words which the Universities have never interpreted :

"He that looketh attentively shall find that these particulars have A SECRET ORDER (Preface, S.S., 1627)
[The Masonic work entitled The New Atlantis was bound with the Sylva Sylvarum and contains particulars of his "Secret Orders."]

This was PART III of the Instauration.
This "Collection" of experiments and alleged scientific facts was Francis Bacon's first attempt, says Dr.Rawley,

"to write such a Natural History as may be Fundamental to the Erecting and Building of a True Philosophy; for the Illumination of the Understanding; the Extracting of Axioms; and the producing of many Noble Workes and Effects."

Apart from the fact that the "Author" of the Shakespeare Plays must have possessed similar peculiar and intimate out-of-the-way information respecting the phenomena of Nature and Human Nature, the Sylva Sylvarum, with other books, may be said to be the foundation-stone of the Royal Society of which Francis Bacon was the direct instigator and founder according to its first President, Dr. Spratt. Francis Bacon's idea of a Solomon's House of Science for the collection of natural facts, placed in a systemized order, led to the establishment of the Gresham College or Academy of 1660 and then to the Royal Society of Charles II. Boyle, Wren, Moray, Ashmole, and Locke were the men who directly founded the R. S., and they were also the driving force in Speculative Masonry. This connection between Masonry and the Royal Society in its early history is extremely significant. "Solomon's House" is the exoteric side of his System, while "Solomon's Temple"&;is the esoteric teaching to be found in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry&;the ethical interpretation of the facts of Nature.
This was the reason why The New Atlantis was issued with the Sylvarum in order to identify Francis Bacon's "Secret Order" with the Symbolism of Nature : for he that looketh attentively shall find that the Atlantis indeed discloses "A Secret Order", but only a Mason can detect it. There are, however, other "Secret Orders," of a different kind in the Work not yet disclosed. The New Atlantis, which was afterwards published as The Land of the Rosicrucians, reeks with Masonic Symbolism. James Hughan, one of the leading Masonic authorities in his day, said :

"The New Atlantis seems to be, and probably is, THE KEY TO THE MODERN RITUALS OF FREEMASONRY."

It was intended to be regarded as the preface to them. The Author left it with these significant words : "A WORK Unfinished ; The rest was not PERFECTED."
It is clear that by Easter Sunday, 1626, when Francis Bacon departed from the scene of his activities, he had definitely completed his philosophic system and established the Movements connected with them. The Shakespeare Plays had been gathered together in 1623 in an omnibus volume containing twenty plays printed for the first time; the sixteen previously printed were largely re-written; and several never heard of previously&;such as Henry VIII&;were inserted. (Shaksper of Stratford, be it remembered, died in 1616.) Shakespeare's Sonnet-Diary he bequeathed to his Fraternities (Xmas 1625). We may term this his last act...........

[David Guyatt]

On your puzzle about Marlowe, have you considered his membership to the secret society the School of Night which is said to have been close to the Rosicrucians?

I mention this only as an aside, but it was/is certainly the case in Freemasonry that important esoteric possessions of a brother who has passed are gathered together by his Lodge members and taken away.

Of course, Walsingham was a highly secretive man, as the Queen's spymaster and the forerunner of 007. :hock:: I have often pondered the question of whether he was, himself, a member of the Rosicrucians? I can find nothing to even hint that he was, so probably not. But it is self evident that the British Secret Service - which grew from him - have a long history of occult connections, as witnessed by their "eye in the triangle" logo:

[Steve Franklin]

On your puzzle about Marlowe, have you considered his membership to the secret society the School of Night which is said to have been close to the Rosicrucians?

I mention this only as an aside, but it was/is certainly the case in Freemasonry that important esoteric possessions of a brother who has passed are gathered together by his Lodge members and taken away.

Of course, Walsingham was a highly secretive man, as the Queen's spymaster and the forerunner of 007. :hock:: I have often pondered the question of whether he was, himself, a member of the Rosicrucians? I can find nothing to even hint that he was, so probably not. But it is self evident that the British Secret Service - which grew from him - have a long history of occult connections, as witnessed by their "eye in the triangle" logo:

First, I am aware of the "Shake-Spear" meme. This has been floating around the anti-Stratfordian world for a while now. I have not reached any conclusions on this yet. But keep in mind that there were 8 non-canonical plays published under "William Shakespeare," "W. Shakespeare," and "W. S." between 1595 and 1611. Also keep in mind that "Shake-speare" and "Shaks-pere" are different names with different meanings, so in either case Shakespeare is a nom-de-plume, whether meant to call to mind Shakspere or not. The widely flaunted Elizabethan spelling fluctuations never approached Shakespeare as a variation.

The original Thomas Mendenhall study was actually commissioned by someone trying to demonstrate that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare. The article in The Popular Science Monthly is here. Bacon failed the test by a wide margin. Now it has been argued that comparing Bacon's philosophical and scientific works with "Shakespeare's" fictional works would give different results, but notice that Bacon's word usage peaks sharply at 3 words, whereas "Shakespeare's" fictional usage peaks less sharply at 4 words. One would expect that if Bacon had written Shakespeare, his average word usage would have grown even shorter, fiction being less technical than non-fiction. And again, Marlowe's usage mirrors "Shakespeare's" precisely, even closer than the sonnets mirror the plays.

As for secret societies, I have no problem with associating any historical figure with one or another of these, especially in times of danger from the religious and civil authorities. Look at the American Revolution and the membership of many of these gentlemen in the Freemasons. I am, however, trying to keep my research focused on literary and exoteric data, at least for the moment. The mystery of "Shakespeare" is that, though supposedly a commoner, he understood the workings of the royal court and the idiosyncracies of its members, not the hidden knowledge they might have picked up as members of some underground association. I have no intent to impune your interests. I am just trying to steer clear of their target. For now, Occam must rule. In terms of the tarot, however, where there is little exoteric evidence between Pythagoras and Sister Manfreda, I am open to esoteric evidence.

[David Guyatt]

I understand your reservations, Steve. For you it's an academic study.

One possible problem that you might be encountering when trying to trace origins is that so much of the esoteric lore was transmitted as an oral tradition --- from mouth to ear --- and was not written down (and when written down was full of blinds impenetrable to the uninitiated. This oral tradition may create the impression that knowledge leapt whole from one period to another, and one place to another, without there being an apparent trail.

In regard to the the origin of the Tarot, Paul Foster Case states in his slim volume, The Esoteric Keys to Alchemy:

The Western literature of alchemy can be traced back to the days when Alexandria was the meeting place for the group of adepts of the Inner School who later transferred their activities to Fez, and from that city issued the earliest versions of the Tarot.

He adds that much of its doctrine was definitely Neo-Platonic, which in turn is tinged with ideas brought to Alexandria by wandering teachers from India, and that, therefore there is a mixture of Hindu thought, Egyptian Magic and Greek Philosophy in these Hermetic teachings that were set forth in alchemy and Tarot.

This might be of some help, I think.