Modern Mystery Schools

A Brief Genealogy of Secret Societies

Key Takeaways

1. Mystery Schools were fixtures in Greco-Roman society, and early Christianity started out as an example of one.

2. The Knights Templar was a secret society that carried the Mystery School tradition into the Medieval period, and the Freemasons brought it into the modern era.

3. Freemasonry and modern banking both date back to the same half-century in England after the Peace of Westphalia.

Mystery Schools

So-called “Mystery Schools” were fixtures in Greco-Roman society. Their defining feature was that initiatives joined them WITHOUT knowing their core secrets. This gradual revelation meant that the most sacred elements were revealed only to those who had undergone specific rituals and sworn oaths of secrecy.

The most significant Mystery School was the cult of Demeter at Eleusis. A close second in terms of significance were the Schools organized around the wine god Dionysus. To the Romans, this character was known as Bacchus. And in 186 BC, the Roman Senate violently suppressed the all-night raves known as the “Bacchanalia”. According to the Roman historian Livy, 7,000 cultists were put to death in the crackdown.

The Roman authorities didn’t destroy the cult outright. Instead, it was decreed that any future worship of Bacchus had to be explicitly sanctioned by the Senate and supervised by a praetor (with a maximum of two men and three women allowed).

The Greco-Roman wine god was the son of a god and a mortal woman. And because wine grapes were introduced to Greece and Italy from the Levant, he was often portrayed as a long-haired foreigner from the East.

Two hundred years after the Roman Senate's crackdown on the Bacchanalia, a new religious movement emerged within the Roman Empire, also centered around a long-haired son of a god from the Eastern Mediterranean. But, in part because of the earlier Senatorial decree, this god was neither Dionysus nor Bacchus. He went by the name Jesus, and his biography bore many similarities to the wine gods’. He turned water into wine at a wedding, for instance. And he was resurrected from the dead.

In addition to these similarities, the new Christian faith retained many other trappings of the old Mystery Schools that preceded it. Secret greetings and symbols, for example, were used to evade the authorities during violent crackdowns. Covert gatherings of early Christians convened in hidden places, like underground burial chambers, away from prying eyes but surrounded by bones. And for their new Eucharist, Christians mixed the bread of the grain goddess Demeter with the wine of Dionysus.

After several centuries of violent repression, the Roman oligarchy gradually took over the Church, just as it had once taken control of the Bacchanalia. And even though covert meetings among gravesites were no longer necessary, the Roman Catholic Church also carried a version of gradual revelation into the Middle Ages through its use of the bound book.

During the Middle Ages, the majority of literate people worked for the Church. That meant that, for a thousand years, most Christians accepted whatever the clergy told them about the contents of the Bible. Abuse of that dependency, of course, emerged as a major criticism against the Church during the Protestant Reformation. When it withheld information from rank-and-file members, the Medieval Church evoked the gradual revelation of the ancient Mystery Schools that so influenced early Christianity.

The Knights Templar & Freemasonry

During the Crusades, the Knights Templar emerged as a secret society. These Knights employed rituals and swore oaths of secrecy, much like initiates to ancient Greco-Roman Mystery Schools, and like the early Christians who emulated those same Mystery Schools. And, just as with the Bacchanalia and with Christianity, the authorities also felt threatened by the Knights Templar.

After violent crackdowns, the Roman authorities had replaced both the Bacchanalia and early Christianity with versions more acceptable to state power, and then endorsed them. Similarly, Pope Clement V followed up his violent repression of the Knights Templar by replacing them.

By papal decree, the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem assumed the bulk of Templar assets and duties after 1312. These “Hospitallers” had fought alongside the Knights Templar during the Crusades. The Title Card for this essay is a painting by Dominique Papety, circa 1840, depicting Hospitaller Mathieu de Clermont during the Siege of Acre in 1291.

Though Clement’s papal decree made them outlaws, rumors of the Knights Templar persisted after their downfall. Whispers abounded that they fought alongside Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314. Historians Barbara Tuchman and Winston Churchill agree that, a half century later in 1381, a mysterious secret society, meeting in London, fomented the infamous Peasants’ Revolt.

Some believe that the rise of Freemasonry in the 17th century was a direct continuation of the same secret society, which had once been the Knights Templar. There’s no evidence to support this theory, which supposes that this underground society was finally free to come forward in 1717, after the severe curtailment of the Pope’s political power by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

The prevailing theory is that Freemasons adapted the trappings of earlier secret societies, just as early Christianity adapted symbols from the Mystery Schools that preceded it. The central agitator in the Peasants' Revolts of 1381, for example, was a figure named Wat Tyler. In Freemasonry, the person who guards the door during a secret meeting is called a “Tyler”. There’s also a degree within Freemasonry explicitly called the “Knight Templar”. Furthermore, the Temple of Solomon, from which the Knights Templar derived their name, is a common theme in Freemasonry.

These are just a few of the many symbological parallels between the Knights Templar and the Freemasons. These parallels make historians unsure exactly where to draw the line between the two secret societies. The exact nature of the relationship remains unclear. But Greco-Roman Mystery Schools, Christianity, the Knights Templar, and Freemasonry are all historically linked, at the very least, by a shared genealogy of secret rituals and symbols.

Secret Societies & Banking

The actual histories of secret societies are impossible to establish because, by definition, they’ve intentionally concealed their activities. Often, it’s contemporary power structures they’re hiding from. But their practice of secrecy also shields the truth from historians as well as authorities.

In the specific case of the Rothschild banking family, historical waters are further muddied by unfortunate antisemitic tropes. Separating antisemitism from conspiracy theory from history is hard work. It’s a task worthy of real historians, such as Will and Ariel Durant, whose quote about the Rothschilds' involvement in international finance serves as the Further Materials section of this essay.

What can be said for sure is that the Rothschilds and other banking houses became highly influential in European geopolitics during the Industrial Revolution. This inevitably made them the subject of conspiracy theories during this era, in which Europe became dominated by central banks modeled after the Bank of England.

In 1694, only 46 years after the Peace of Westphalia, the Bank of England was established and influenced by a small, interconnected group of wealthy merchants and bankers, primarily located on or around Lombard Street in London. These individuals were shareholders, directors, and major clients of the bank, which remains the world's oldest surviving central bank.

In 1717, just 23 years later, the Freemasons emerged in public and announced the opening of their Premier Grand Lodge in London. This secret society met in taverns, many of which were located in or around the City of London, including areas close to Lombard Street. The initial members and Grand Masters included prominent figures from London's civic and commercial life, such as those involved with the newly established Bank of England.

It must be stressed that not every banker was a Freemason, and that not every Freemason was a banker. But there was a significant cross-pollination of members between major financial institutions and the Masonic lodges. Discussions, decisions, and influence within both spheres were informally linked through shared membership.

The co-emergence of Freemasonry with the Bank of England is far from a coincidence. Both institutions benefited from a new era of political stability after the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. And both were championed by the rising commercial and professional classes of the day. They were two different manifestations of the same historical forces that shaped the modern world.

Conclusion

Freemasons have become the preeminent example of a secret society in our modern world. Their windowless lodges and highway-sponsorship signs are familiar sights. And they were lovingly spoofed on The Simpsons. Freemasonry is a contemporary manifestation of the ancient Mystery School, distinguished by secret symbols, secret rituals, and gradual revelations. This genealogy encompasses Christianity itself, as well as the Knights Templar during the Middle Ages. But the extent to which it also includes major financial institutions, established around the same time and place as Freemasonry, remains the domain of conspiracy theory.

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Further Materials

In 1810 Nathan Rothschild (1777-1836) established in London a branch of the firm that his father, Meyer Amschel Rothschild, had founded in Frankfurt-am-Main. Nathan seems to have been the ablest of the financial geniuses who distinguished the family through several centuries and in many states. He became the favorite intermediary of the British government in its financial relations with foreign powers; it was he or his agents who transmitted from England to Austria and Prussia the subsidies that enabled them to fight Napoleon; and he played a leading role in the industrial and commercial expansion of England after 1815.
Will & Ariel Durant, The Age of Napoleon, 1975, page 360