Is Freemasonry A Revival Of Essenism

No.

A common vehicle for attacking Freemasonry is to identify it with some "ism," no matter that the "ism" may never have existed as a discrete, definable belief structure.

Essenism is a term that means whatever the user wants. It can refer to the Essenes who flourished near the west shore of the Dead Sea from about 150 BCE to the end of the first century CE and who some authors such as Thomas de Quincey defined, without solid proof, as the first Christians.

Or it can refer to the mystical beliefs of something termed Essene Nazorean Christianity, as practiced by such contemporary group as the Essene Church of Christ, the Essene Nazorean Church of Mt. Carmel, the New Covenant Church of God (B'rit Chadashah Assembly of Yahweh) and the Restored Essene Church. It could be said that many, calling themselves Essenes, have no real claim to the name other than an interest in either history or health.

The term essenism can also refer to a denial of the divinity of Jesus. The "essene theory" was an early eighteenth century attempt to invent "natural" explanations for scripture. Authors such as Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1784-1792), Karl Heinrich Venturini (1800), August Friedrich Gfrorer (1831-38), Charles Christian Hennell (1840), and Richard von der Alm [pseudonym of Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany] (1863) promoted the idea that Jesus had been controlled by the Essenes.

The "Essene Epistle" first appeared in German, printed in Leipzig 1849 and financed by an unidentified "German Brotherhood". The Dead Sea Scrolls clearly demonstrate that this epistle was a hoax. Its influence has nonetheless been enormous, with several new editions in print. It is used by the half-islamic Ahmadiyya movement as evidence for some of their beliefs. Several later books, such as Jeshoua the Nazir and The Gospel of Peace were clearly dependent on the "Essene Epistle" for their ideas and style.

The beliefs and practices of "Essenism" range from extreme vegetarianism to channelling spirits. Both the Spiritualism of Edger Cayce and such books by Dr. Edmond B. Szekely as the Gospel of Peace of Jesus Christ play a role in these beliefs.

Current Essenism utilizes a number of texts. The Gospel of the Holy Twelve, allegedly discovered in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet in the late 1800s by a Catholic priest, is claimed by some, without proof, to be the source of the four Gospels although much of it appears to be a direct plagiarisation of the 1611 King James Version.4 As with The Life of St. Issa by Notovitch, no hard evidence for the existence of source manuscripts exist.

Unrelated to current claimants to the Essene mantle, the Mandaeans are a small remnant of the ancient Nazoreans who live mostly in Iran and Iraq. Well documented by academics, they believe Jesus was a Nazorean but their texts, edited by Ramuia around 640 CE, contain "a number of negative interpolations against the Romanized version of Christ, Christianity and Islam." 5 They do not accept converts. It has been postulated that there were different kinds of Essenism. At Qumran, there was a group of Pharisees and Essenes, and another group of Sadducees with Essenes. The Pharisee-Essene group eventually became Mandaean, and the Sadducee-Essene group became Christian. This is only an hypotheses.

None of this has anything to do with Freemasonry. The belief held by some freemasons and non-masons that there is a link between Freemasonry, through the Knights Templar, to the Essene community in Qumran is the product of several recently published popular books such as The Hiram Key, reinforced by wishful thinking.

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Oto Under Mcmurtry

When McMurtry became aware of the critical condition into which the Order had fallen after Germer's death, he was impelled to invoke his documents of emergency authorization from Crowley, and assume the title "Caliph of O.T.O.," as specified in Crowley's letters to McMurtry from the 1940s. For the two witnesses he believed were necessary for this act, he chose Dr. Israel Regardie (1907-1985) and Gerald Yorke (1901-1983). McMurtry referred to these two as the "Eyes of Horus," as the two most prominent surviving personal students of Crowley. He advised them of his plans to reconstitute the O.T.O. using his letters of charter from Crowley, and requested their support, which was offered. McMurtry completed the activation of his Caliphate by June of 1969, with a letter to Hermann Metzger of Switzerland.

Upon activation of the Caliphate, surviving O.T.O. members from the Germer and Crowley years were invited to join with McMurtry to resume regular operations of O.T.O. At that time there were less than a dozen surviving older O.T.O. members in the United States. Soror Meral, Soror Grimaud, Mildred Burlingame and Gabriel Montenegro indicated willingness to see the O.T.O. accessible to the general public. Ray Burlingame had died some years before, and Dr. Montenegro died on July 14, 1969, before an organizational meeting could be held. Frederick Mellinger had re-established his contacts with the Theosophical Society and had been essentially inactive in O.T.O. since approximately 1956, except to write his letter blocking the probate of Germer's will in favor of Metzger in 1963. Mellinger died on August 29, 1970. In 1969 and 1970, McMurtry, Burlingame and Sorores Meral and Grimaud began to perform initiations. On December 28, 1971, the Ordo Templi Orientis Association was registered with the State of California to form a legal entity for O.T.O.

Sascha Germer died in April of 1975, and in 1976 when her death became known, the O.T.O. Association under McMurtry obtained a court order for delivery of the remnant of the O.T.O. archives that had been in her custodianship. This order was issued, recognizing Grady McMurtry as the authorized representative of O.T.O., by the Superior Court in Calaveras County, California, and filed July 27th, 1976.

Under McMurtry, as Caliph or acting Head of O.T.O., several attempts were made to attract new members to O.T.O. and to make the Order known to the public. In 1970, O.T.O. published Crowley's Thoth Tarot Cards, illustrated by Lady Frieda Harris, from the Dublin address. Response was slow, but a few new members were initiated through efforts centered in Dublin, California at The College of Thelema and in San Francisco at the Kaaba Clerk House. The San Francisco activity collapsed, and one new member resigned. Activity continued for two years in Dublin, and then was transferred to Berkeley, California.

In 1977, McMurtry held O.T.O. initiations at his home in Berkeley, California, and began a group there. O.T.O. was incorporated under the laws of the State of California on March 26th, 1979 e.v. Those who had claimed in print to be O.T.O. members or who were known to be former members were notified of the formation of this corporation, and given a period of time to file a claim to continued membership, according to a precedent established earlier by Karl Germer. The corporation attained Federal Tax exemption as a religious entity under IRS Code 501(c)3 in 1982.

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