Baron Hunde and the Mighty Secret of Freemasonry

By Peter Edwin Harter

I’m skipping right over the first part of Robison’s Proofs Of A Conspiracy which gives a general history of how Masonry began in England and then leaped across the channel when Charles the 2nd was deposed by William of Orange and Crown Temple Bank of England first gained prominence in England. For Robison, English Freemasonry was pure and simple, but in France, it became the agent of frivolity and moral decay. There is a tremendous amount to unpack there and we’ll save that for a subsequent post. Today’s post concerns what happened when Freemasonry went to Germany only a short time after the Stuart line fled to France, bringing its Masonic rights and symbolism.

I claim that many of Robison’s themes have modern analogs and that’s what I’d like you to consider as you read the following quote:

“But all the evils of society do not spring from the discontents and the vices of the poor. The rich come in for a large and a conspicuous share. They frequently abuse their advantages. Pride and haughty behaviour on their part rankle in the breasts, and affect the tempers of their inferiors, already fretted by the hardships of their own condition. The rich also are luxurious; and are often needy. Grasping at every mean of gratification, they are inattentive to the rights of inferiors whom they despise, and, despising, oppress.

Therefore they encourage superstition, and call to their aid the vices of the priesthood. The priests are men of like passions as other men, and it is no ground of peculiar blame that they also frequently yield to the temptations of their situation. They are encouraged to the indulgence of the love of influence natural to all men, and they heap terror upon terror, to subdue the minds of men, and darken their understandings. Thus, the most honorable of all employments, the moral instruction of the state, is degraded to a vile trade, and is practised with all the deceit and rapacity of any other trade; and religion, from being the honor and the safeguard of a nation, becomes its greatest disgrace and curse.”

From Robison, we learn that the ethics of the priests are to despise and exploit humanity, to cultivate ignorance and stupidity, so that the exploitation can continue. When Robison refers to the love of influence natural to all men he’s talking about power. Power over people. Priests take power and control over people through mind control. They trick the populace into ceding authority to them.

Here is Robison’s account of how Freemasonry took hold in Germany:

“About the year 1764 a new revolution took place. An adventurer, who called himself Johnson, and passed himself for an Englishman, but who was really a German or Bohemian named Leucht, said that he was ambassador from the Chapter of Knights Templars at Old Aberdeen in Scotland, sent to teach the Germans what was true Masonry. He pretended to transmute metals, and some of the Brethren declared that they had seen him do it repeatedly. This reached Baron Hunde and brought back all his former enthusiasm. There is something very dark in this part of the history; for in a little Johnson told his partisans that the only point he had to inform them of was, that Baron Hunde was the Grand Master of the 7th province of Masonry, which included the whole of Germany, and the royal dominions of Prussia. He showed them a map of the Masonic Empire arranged into provinces, each of which had distinguishing emblems. These are all taken from an old forgotten and insignificant book, Typotii Symbola Divina et Humana, published in 1601…Soon after Johnson turned out to be a cheat, escaped, was taken, and put in prison, where he died. Yet this seems not to have ruined the credit of Baron Hunde. He erected Lodges, gave a few simple instructions, all in the system of English Masonry, and promised, that when they had approved themselves as good Masons, he would then impart the mighty secret.”

What was Baron Hunde’s Mighty Secret?

“When the Order of Knights Templars was abolished by Philip the Fair, and cruelly persecuted, some worthy persons escaped, and took refuge in the Highlands of Scotland, where they concealed themselves in caves. These persons possessed the true secrets of Masonry, which had always been in that Order, having been acquired by the Knights, during their services in the east, from the pilgrims whom they occasionally protected or delivered. The Chevaliers de la Rose-Croix continued to have the same duties as formerly, though robbed of their emoluments. In fine, every true Mason is a Knight Templar.”

“After two or three years of noviciate, a convention was held at Altenberg; and [Baron Hunde] told them that his whole secret was, that every true Mason was a Knight Templar. They were astonished, and disappointed; for they expected in general that he would teach them the philosopher’s stone, or ghost-raising, or magic.”

You see, the Templars are the original suckers. They are the true believers in the secret of Masonry. They are on the hook. Everybody wants to know the secret. They become emotionally invested. They suffer from the same irrationality that leads the gambler astray: the sunk cost fallacy. The burgeoning German Masonic ranks spent so much time, energy, and money to learn the Mighty Secret that they couldn’t abandon their pursuit, even when they suspected it was a sham. Simple mind games like this one are what priests use to string their marks along. It’s all just a dumb trick that leaves us grasping at Rosary beads or with ashes smudged on our foreheads.

“They did, however, a sensible thing; they sent a deputation to Old Aberdeen, to enquire after the caves where their venerable mysteries were known, and their treasures were hid. They had, as they thought, merited some more confidence; for they had remitted annual contributions to these unknown superiors, to the amount of some thousands of rix-dollars. But alas, their ambassadors found the Free Masons of Old Aberdeen ignorant of all this, and as eager to learn from the ambassadors what was the true origin and meaning of Free Masonry, of which they knew nothing but the simple tale…”

“…one of them had been sent for by a dying nobleman to receive papers on this subject, and that his visit having been delayed a few hours by an unavoidable accident, he found all burnt but a fragment of a capitulary and a thing in cypher, part of which he (Dr. Stark) had explained to them. They had employed another gentleman, a H. Wachter, to make similar enquiries in Italy, where Schropfer and others (even Hunde) had told them great secrets were to be obtained from the Pretender’s secretary Approsi, and others. Wachter told them, that all this was a fiction, but that he had seen at Florence some Brethren from the Holy Land, who really possessed wonderful secrets, which he was willing to impart, on proper conditions. These, however, they could not accede to; but they were cruelly tortured by seeing Wachter, who had left Germany in sober circumstances, now a man of great wealth and expence. He would not acknowledge that he had got the secret of gold-making from the Asiatic Brethren; but said that no man had any right to ask him how he had come by his fortune. It was enough that he behaved honorably, and owed no man any thing. He broke off all connections with them, and left them in great distress about their Order, and panting after his secrets.”

So, the guy they sent to Italy to find the true Masonic secrets of their order’s origins betrayed them and somehow became wealthy and independent, leaving the Masons in the lurch. While the German Masons found no value in the revelation of Baron Hunde’s great secret, I think it’s compelling and deserves consideration. What are the Templars? And why is every true Mason a Knight Templar? We will explore these questions and more next week as Palamambron Presents Conspiracy Classics continues.