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The Taxil hoax was a hoax of exposure intended to mock the Roman Catholic Church for its opposition to Freemasonry and its alleged credulity.

In 1894, Léo Taxil published a fraudulent quote, supposedly found in a letter from the leader of the Southern Jurisdiction of Scottish Rite Masonry, Albert Pike, implying that Freemasons of the 19th Degree of the Scottish rite or higher worshipped "Lucifer."

Taxil was an atheist who had been accused earlier of libel on account of a book he had written called The Secret Loves of Pius IX. On April 20, 1884, Pope Leo XIII published an encyclical, Humanum Genus, that said that the human race was "separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ ... The other is the kingdom of Satan," which were "led on or assisted" by Freemasonry.

After this encyclical, Taxil underwent a public, feigned conversion to Roman Catholicism, and announced his intention of repairing the damage he had done to the true faith. His real intent, however, was to publicly slander the Freemasons (who had rejected him for membership), and simultaneously embarrass the Roman Catholic Church.

The first book produced by Taxil after his conversion was a four-volume history of Freemasonry, which contained fictitious eyewitness verifications of their participation in Satanism. With a collaborator who published as "Dr. Karl Hacks," Taxil wrote another book called the Devil in the Nineteenth Century, which introduced a new character "Diana Vaughan," a supposed descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist Thomas Vaughan. The book contained many implausible tales about her encounters with incarnate demons, one of whom was supposed to have written prophecies on her back with its tail, and another played the piano in the shape of a crocodile.

She was involved in Satanic freemasonry, but was redeemed when one day she professed admiration for Joan of Arc, at whose name the demons were put to flight. As Diana Vaughan, Taxil published a book called Eucharistic Novena, a collection of prayers which were praised by the Pope.

On April 19, 1897, Taxil called a press conference at which he announced he would introduce Diana Vaughan to the press. He announced that he had forged the letter, and that all of his other revelations about the Freemasons were fictitious. He thanked the clergy for their assistance in giving publicity to his wild claims. The hoax material is still used to slander Freemasons to this day. Chick Publications publishes such a tract called The Curse of Baphomet.

A Critical View of the so-called 'Taxil Hoax'

The critics of Freemasonry say that although 'The 'Taxil Hoax' was a 'sting' against the Church in France for it's teachings on Freemasonry, it's modern usage by American Freemasonry is in reality an attempt to confound and confuse the issue of Freemasonry and Lucifer, especially in regard to it's appearance in Masonic writings.

What American Freemasons citing 'The Taxil Hoax' do not say, probably because they do not know themselves, is that 'Leo Taxil' was actually the pen name of Gabriel Jogand, born 23 March 1853 in Marseilles France. Mr. Jogand (Taxil) was a Freemason in the Grand Orient of France who was a member of the Paris Lodge 'The Temple of Friends of French Honor'. Jogand earned his living as a prolific and notorious anti-clerical propagandist and pornographer.

Freemason Jogand's writings included titles such as; 'The Sacred Cannibals', 'The Priest's Testicles', 'Letter from the Devil to the Pope concerning the Suppression of Menstruation in Girl's Communities', 'Extraordinary Correspondence of the Ecclesiastical Fuckers', 'The Whores of the Third Estate', and 'The Solicitors of the Fourth', 'It's We Who whip those dirty Scamps', 'Shooting the Crows', 'The Sacred Blunders', 'Critical Review of Superstition', 'The Scoffer', 'His Holiness the Police', 'The Crimes of the Inquisition', 'Down with the Clergy', and 'The Amusing Bible'

Jogand founded the magazine 'The Anti-Clerical' and in 1881 'The Anti-Clerical League'.

Nowhere in any of Jogands writings does there appear any quotations about Albert Pike, the Supreme Commander of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction U.S.A.'s, letter to the Supreme Councils of the world. In fact this quotation comes from a book written by a respected Occult Researcher and Author - Edith Starr Miller.

The following quotation is taken from Edith Starr Miller's ('Lady Queensborough') Occult Theocracy (Published originally in 1933 e.v., later published by the Christian Book Club of America.), pp. 220 - 221.

The theological dogma of Albert Pike is explained in the 'Instructions' issued by him, on July 14, 1889, to the 23 Supreme Councils of the world and have been recorded by A. C. De La Rive in La Femme et l'Enfant dans la Franc-Maconnerie Universelle (page 588).

'That which we must say to the crowd is -- We worship a God, but it is the God that one adores without superstition.

'To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st and 30th degrees -- The Masonic religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the of purity of the Luciferian doctrine.

'If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay whose deeds prove his cruelty, perfidy, and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion for science, would Adonay and his priests, calumniate him?

'Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also God. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two Gods: darkness being necessary to light to serve as its foil as the pedestal is necessary to the statue, and the brake to the locomotive.

'In analogical and universal dynamics one can only lean on that which will resist. Thus the universe is balanced by two forces which maintain its equilibrium: the force of attraction and that of repulsion. These two forces exist in physics, philosophy and religion. And the scientific reality of the divine dualism is demonstrated by the phenomena of polarity and by the universal law of sympathies and antipathies. That is why the intelligent disciples of Zoroaster, as well as, after them, the Gnostics, the Manicheans and the Templars have admitted, as the only logical metaphysical conception, the system of the two divine principles fighting eternally, and one cannot believe the one inferior in power to the other.

'Thus, the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and the true and pure philosophic religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil.'"

Why Masons get so work up when this quotation is cited is unclear as it differs little in substance to what Pike wrote in Morals and Dogma and other works, which they don't contest. The 'letter' is in Pikes recognizable fluorid writing style, and would have been written at the end of his life also. Not every Mason denies the authenticity of the letter usually adding that Pike often was 'unorthodox' in his views. Pike was known to be a correspondant also of Helen Blavatsky, who wrote and taught about Lucifer in her Theosophy Schools.

Reference

A Hoaxer of Genius Leo Taxil (1890-7), by Alec Mellor well known Masonic Researcher and Author

External link

• "The Leo Taxil Fraud" an article that explodes and debunks it
• "Curse of Baphomet" at Chick Publications website
• The Confessions of Leo Taxil E-Text

• Hoaxes
• Freemasonry