A Modern Pythagorean
by Dana Lloyd Thomas

No study of esoteric culture in Italy in this century can fail to mention
Arturo Reghini (1878-1946).Writer, translator, mathematician, and above all
a Pythagorean, he played a key role in the revival of scholarship on
esotericism in Italy as well as in the attempt to restore the spiritual
traditions of Masonry.

Reghini's books and articles cover a variety of subjects including Masonic
symbolism,Theosophy, Neoplatonism, Cornelius Agrippa, and Cagliostro. As
editor of the magazines Ignis and Atanor, he published articles by the noted
esotericists Rene Guenon and Julius Evola. Later he was to pay for his out-
spokenness--especially on behalf of freedom of conscience -when Freemasonry
was outlawed by the Fascist regime.

Born in Florence on November 12, 1878, Reghini was the eldest of five
children. His career as a philosopher, in the classical sense of "lover of
wisdom," began early in life, when his aristocratic family sent him to the
University of Pisa to study mathematics.The tall, thin young student was
approached one evening by a stranger who singled him out as a candidate for
initiation into the mysterious Pythagorean school, also known as the Schola
Italica.The stranger turned out to be Amedeo Armentano (1886-1966), who
fascinated literary circles in Florence with his abstruse, laconic reasoning
about time, mind, and soul as well as with his psychic powers.

Reghini was initiated in the highest sense of the word. He experienced the
trial of the five elements not only as a ceremony but as a profound reality.
For him, passing beyond the threshold of death was a matter of experience,
vision, and knowledge rather than a mere symbol. 1

Polltics and Secret Societiea
To understand Reghini's role in the esoteric culture of his time, it is
helpful to have some background on Italian Freemasonry and its connection to
historical events. As in other countries, the Craft in Italy has so many
facets that there is little point in overgeneralizing. For some, Masonry has
commanded a virtually religious allegiance in the observance of the "ancient
and accepted" rules and ceremonies, while others undoubtedly saw it as a
means of improving society at large based on nineteenth-century rationalist
beliefs in progress, education, and science. The ranks of Masonry have also
included an eminent minority of philosophers and mystics, as well as-the
usual opportunists. Finally there are the antiMasonic elements, initially
Catholic and later spreading to both leftand right-wing politicians and
thinkers. In any case, the political and esoteric aspects of Freemasonry
have often run parallel throughout Italian history.

The first known Italian lodge was founded in Florence by Charles Sackville,
Earl of Middlesex, Henry Fox, and Sir Charles Mann in about 1730. 2 Although
by this time Florentine Renaissance traditions were but a distant
memory,Tuscany under the later Medici had still managed to preserve some
independence, sparing it from the worst excesses of the Counter-Reformation.
Lodges were soon opened in Rome, Naples, Turin, and elsewhere. But the
Craft's connection with England--a major Protestant power--aroused the
suspicions of both the rulers of the Italian states and the ecclesiastical
hierarchy.

In 1738, when Pope Clement XII issued the bull In eminenti, which in
practice banned Catholics from becoming Freemasons, he had reached the
venerable age of 87 and was completely blind. Firmly continuing the papacy's
penchant for power politics, the measure seems to have been initially rooted
in concern about the situation in the pope's native Tuscany and was probably
formulated mainly with Italy in mind. It may have been no coincidence that
the last of the Medici, Gian Gastone, had died a year before; the move could
have had the aim both of strihng a blow against a suspiciously Protestant
organization and of reasserting papal influence in relatively
tolerantTuscany. Nevertheless this independence persisted when Francis of
Lorraine, himself a Freemason, became Tuscany's new ruler. 3

The papal stance marked the start of persecution; the poet Tommaso Crudeli,
the first known Masonic martyr, was tortured to make him reveal "the secrets
of the Freemasons," but he was released upon Francis's intervention. 4
Several decades later, the celebrated magus Count Alessandro Cagliostro was
not to be so lucky, and would die in 1795 while imprisoned in the papal
fortress of San Leo. Of the papal ban Reghini wrote, "The effect of the
Church's hostility was to cause a reaction in some countries, with
Freemasonry being forced to defend itself by becoming a secret society.
Nevertheless, it never became sectarian, and the rituals were alwavs
characterized bv the tolerance, nonsectar1anlsm, ana independence of the
early period." 5

Masons and Masonic organizations played a significant role in the Italian
Risorgimento ("Resurrection") of the nineteenth century. Freemasons actively
promoted the unification of Italy's many states, thus winning them further
condemnation for"subversion." Giuseppe Mazzini's political organization,
Giovine Italia ("Young Italy"), dedicated to unification, shared Masonic
ideals of humanity, progress, and secular government.

The Italian Grand Orient was founded in 1859.6 In 1862, a Sovereign Council
of the Scottish Rite convened in Palermo under the guidance of the patriot
Giuseppe Garibaldi, and in 1864 the first Congress of Italian Freemasonry
met in Florence and elected Garibaldi as Grand Master.

Perhaps even more than the French Revolution, the Risorgimento was a
"bourgeois" revolution, and Freemasonry attracted Italy's small but active
middle class. It was seen as a means of keeping together forces as diverse
as Mazzini's republicans, monarchists who supported the House of Savoy, and
Garibaldi's "Redshirts."As one scholar points out, "in a country where all
the forms of political conflicts had a regional basis, . . . the lodges were
the only real school of national unity." 7 As a result of the Church's
continuing opposition to unification, Masonry persisted in its anticlerical
stance.

In the decades following the country's unification in 1870, numerous members
of the new class of politicians and administrators were Freemasons. By the
end of the nineteenth century, Freemasonry was widely perceived as part of
the establishment and as affording advantages that were often more material
than spiritual. Financial scandals and political instability had made
establishment politicians vulnerable to attack, and Freemasonry, previously
seen as the champion of independence and democracy, was now accused of being
class-ridden and corrupt. As in other Latin countries, many anti-Masonic
pamphlets were circulated, generally based on conspiracy charges by the Abbe
Barruel and Leo Taxil and creating the impression that the institution was
much more powerful and monolithic than it actually was.

These ideas undoubtedly influenced Benito Mussolini in his early years in
the Socialist Party and were to resurface in the Fascist period (1922-43)
despite the Masonic connections of many Fascist leaders. 8 The FAcist
movement, founded in 1919, counted a number of Freemasons among its first
members, who were attracted by a variety of factors, including the
movement's early anticlerical and revolutionary leanings. Persecution,
though not always systematic continued until the fall of the regime.

Paradoxically, as soon as World War II ended, anti-Masonic literature was
revived, this time with accusations of collaboration with Fascism. In recent
decades, historical research on Italian Freemasonry has largely been
monopolized by Catholicand Com1unist-oriented writers who are for different
reasons hostile to the institution. 9 It is therefore no wonder that a
Masonic writer has observed that "Italian Masonry is probably the most
misrepresented and misunderstood in the world." 10

Esoteric Societies
Italian Freemasonry was not all politics, however, and has always had a
strong esoteric strain. Together with the specifically Masonic symbolism of
building and architecture, probably rooted in medieval guilds, various
esoteric traditions including Rosicrucian, Kabbalistic, Templar, and
Pythagorean lines have converged in the Craft.

>From the earliest times Freemasonry has considered geometric symbolism to be
of the highest importance, with the Pythagorean theorem being widely
depicted in Masonic art. It has been suggested that some form of Pythagorean
initiation survived through the centuries, first in the Byzantine Empire and
later, as the Ottoman Turks advanced, in Italy, where the Greek intellectual
elite took refuge.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Sir Thomas Bodley is said to have been
initiated in the northern Italian city of Forli into the Pythagorean
Brotherhood of the Fratelli Obscuri, having "the laudable object of
propagating the Sciences and love of Virtue" and "established in imitation
of an older Society which had existed since before the fall of the Grecian
Empire in the towns of Constantinople and Thessalonica." In the eighteenth
century, the British and French Pythagoreans came to be known as
"Snuff-Takers" when they adopted the tobacco plant as their symbol. 11

Naples was the home of Egyptian Freemasonry, a tradition claiming descent
from the Hermetic community dating back to Hellenistic Egypt: there is still
a "Nile Square" in the city, and Giordano Bruno, who exalted the "wisdom of
Egypt," was from nearby Nola. The school subsequently came to light through
the work of Cagliostro and later of Giuliano Kremmerz, founder of the
Hermetic Brotherhood of Myriam. 12 Cagliostro's "Gospel," first published in
Italian in 1914 and later commented on by Reghini, uses alchemical
terminology to describe a path to immortality as well as propounding the use
of magical seals, meditation, fasting, and a vegetarian diet.

The esoteric Order of Misraim (whose name is derived from the Hebrew name
for Egypt) seems to have had Italian origins. The Misraim first emerged in
Italy in the eighteenth century, when it was associated with Cagliostro who
brought it to Venice around 1788. 13 Because both Egyptian Freemasonry and
the Order of Misraim allow the admission of women--thus violating the basic
Masonic guidelines known as the "Landmarks"--and because they work degrees
beyond the third, they are generally classified as part of "fringe Masonry."

The Order of Misraim was introduced into France after 1813 by the Bedarride
brothers; afterwards it spread to Belgium, Switzerland, Britain, and the
U.S. It consists of two forms of practice: the Kabbalistic form adopted by
the Bedarrides and the Egyptian-Hellenistic form of the highest degrees
known as the Arcana Arcanorum. 14

Politics again crossed paths with the esoteric when Garibaldi was appointed
Grand Hierophant of the Misraim in 1880. At that time the order was joined
with the Order of Memphis, whose rituals are inspired by Egyptian imagery.
By the end of the century, the combined order was to provide a link between
Freemasonry and Theosophy in Italy: both H.P. Blavatsky and Annie Besant
held high degrees.

Theosophlst and Freemason
When he was only eighteen, Reghini went to Rome, where he was introduced to
Isabel Cooper-Oakley, Blavatsky's delegate to Italy, and in 1898 the two
were among the founders of the Italian branch of the Theosophical Society.
(Blavatsky had always had a weakness for Italy; she even claimed to have
fought with Garibaldi against French and papal forces at the Battle of
Mentana in 1867.)l5 Theosophy too was soon open to accusations of heresy, if
not outright paganism, thus attracting the hostility of the Church. Yet the
Theosophical Society proved to be an im- portant vehicle for broadening the
horizons of educated and open-minded Italians by introducing the study of
oriental philosophy and religion--until then largely limited to academic
circles--to a wider public.

While already receiving instruction on the Pythagorean tradition, Reghini
started his Masonic career with initiation into the Order of Memphis and
Misraim in 1902. What did he find in this esoteric form of Freemasonry? He
was probably told something like these comments by a modern Masonic writer:

The Rite of Memphis and Misraim is not suited to every Mason, but is
intended for those few Brothers who, following the many indications and
revelations to be found in their rituals, genuinely aspire to enter into
resonance with the higher planes of existence, and to overcome their
individuality. In this case the Rite is a visible, tangible link between the
lower sphere and the upper sphere. It provides the key to the Arcana, the
way in which they can be revealed and practiced. 16

The order's Osirian ritual contains suggestive references Egypt, as when the
aspiring Master is told:

Brother, you have entered this Temple which is the Middle Chamber of the
Pyramid, aspiring to become Osiris, and to achieve this privilege you have
recited the negative confession, well aware that it was only symbolic, the
confession that every deceased person recites when reaching the world of
shadows and coming before the tribunal of Osiris to identify himself with
Osiris if his life has been pure. 17

In 1903 Reghini joined a lodge in Florence that owed allegiance to the
Italian Grand Orient; two years later this was reorganized as the Lucifero
Lodge, with Reghini as one of the founders. At the same time lodges in Milan
merged with the Rome Grand Orient, with headquarters in Rome's Palazzo
Giustiniani.

Writing in 1906, Reghini censured opposition to the higher degrees (from the
fourth up to the 95th in orders like the Misraim) and expressed regret over
the failure of Mazzini and the American Albert Pike to create "a secret rite
above all others, a sort of Masonry within Masonry, which would have unified
the divided Masonic family." 18 In 1908 a number of dissidents, led by a
Protestant minister, broke away from the Grand Orient in protest against its
overly materialishc and radical political stance.They set up a new Masonic
organization with its headquarters at Piazza del Gesu in Rome. Subsequently
Italy's two branches of Masonry were to be known as "Palazzo Giustiniani"
and "Piazza del Gesu" after the location of their Rome headquarters.

An attempt to promote unification of the splintered Masonic groups by
returning to the Craft's eady spiritual roots was undertaken with the
Italian Philosophic Rite, of which Reghini was one of the founders. (The
name calls to mind the Scottish Philosophic Rite, thought to have some
connection with British Pythagoreans.) The Italian rite had seven degrees
and has been described as a mixture of Pythagorean and Gnostic elements. In
1911 Reghini and Armentano rewrote the rite's statutes, dictating that a
copy of the Golden Verses of Pythagoras was to be placed in the temple
together with the other objects used in lodge work.

This experience was interrupted by WorldWar I, which disrupted international
fraternal contacts; Reghini himself served in the army. The Philosophic Rite
came to an end in 1919, when it was merged with the Grand Lodge Scottish
Rite. Afterwards Reghini, while remaining a Freemason, would be more
cautious about any "universal reformation" of the Craft.

Occultlsm and the Esoteric
In Italy, as in the rest of Europe around the turn of the century, popular
interest in the occult was largely focused on phenomena like hypnotism and
spiritualism. Astrological and magical manuals copied from classics such as
those by Cornelius Agrippa and Giovanni Battista della Porta abounded. At
the same time the works of French writers like Eliphas Levi, Henri Durville,
and Papus were gaining a considerable readership, and there were a number of
esoteric journals. Reghini himself translated Swami Vivekananda, the
Egyptologist E.A. Wallis Budge, and Robert Louis Stevenson's occult tales.

Both Reghini and Giuliano Kremmerz, active in Naples during the same period,
stressed that theirs was a quest for knowledge and warned against the
confusion between spiritual achievement and bouts of emotional excitement.
In this respect they rejected the occultism of seances and sects, sharing
the position of Levi, who insisted that his occultism (a term he coined) was
based on faith, science, and reason. 19

This experimental method makes use not only of logic but of analogy. Early
in his career Reghini had written, "The symbolism of architecture,
ceremonies, and images is superior to ordinary language due to the multitude
of meanings which only symbolism can express, since it works through
analogy; the hieroglyphic and ideogram forms of writing are superior to
ordinary writing due to the breadth and precision of their meaning."20

Twenty years later, Reghini expressed much the same idea: "There exists an
oral tradition of hidden knowledge which cannot be transmitted with words
(perceived and interpreted in the profane sense). There is still a serious
tradition in theWest which has nothing to do with the circuslike uproar, the
parody and pretense, of today's so-called occultism."21

Reghini also sometimes retired with his friends Armentano and Giulio Parise
to an isolated tower on the coast of Calabria, ideal for study and
meditation. Reghini was also no stranger to ceremonial magic, though one of
the few direct references he makes to it has humorous overtones, mentioning
some of the practical difficulties of pre-dawn rituals, with alarm clocks,
cups of hot coffee, sputtering oil lamps, incense failing to burn, and
candles going out, all to the detriment of the necessary "spiritual
concentration."22

Throughout all this activity Reghini remained a Pythagorean.What did this
mean for him in practical terms? He engaged in the daily recollection of his
deeds--a practice that has been traced back to Pythagoras--as well as
"philosophical ecstasy," which was actually a type of meditation. The
practitioner was to sit comfortably in a quiet place, emptying himself of
all thoughts and emotions; he could either be in the dark or have a light
behind him. "Then, when the soul is purified, a bright and shining light
from which nothing can be hidden seems to appear," says one old text."And
then a sweet pleasure is felt, incomparable to anything in this world, and .
. . an extremely pleasurable itch is felt inside the head.... The persons
most suited to this ecstasy are those whose skull is open, through which the
spirits can escape ....I believe that this is the Platonic ecstasy, the one
mentioned by Porphyry as having overcome Plotinus seven times."

This practice has important implications as a form of "Western yoga." It
does not so much connote an evaluation of deeds as good or bad but rather
stresses the importance of remembering itself. The Renaissance mages
Tommasso Campanella and Giordano Bruno were probably familiar with this
meditation. 23

Reghini also stressed that the seeker aimed at the transformation of his
soul by such techniques as breath control, meditation, and recollection, and
that this transformation had to take place during one's lifetime.

The Pagan Utopia
In Reghini's time the word "pagan" still had largely negative connotations,
and was widely used not to indicate a historically documented religion but
rather as a synonym for immorality and materialism. Nevertheless he found it
to be the best term to sum up his own position. In a 1914 article entitled
"Imperialismo pagano," he called for the spiritual rebirth of Italian
culture in a new type of"empire" that would entail excellence in every field
of human endeavor.This achievement would require freedom and tolerance,
although history showed that, unlike Greco-Roman paganism, the Abrahamic
religions had all too often borne the bitter fruit of religious intolerance.
Reghini agreed with Gibbon that the fanatical attitude of the Christians
from the earliest times had led to the fall of Rome and later to the papal
policy of preventing Italy's unification. 24

The avant-garde milieu in which Reghini's ideas had matured was also focused
on the problem of creating a new "secular religion," free from the defects
of Catholicism yet based on spiritual values. 25 Nevertheless for Reghini
any anti-Christian"crusade" would have been a contradiction in terms; rather
he called for the classical distinction between popular and initiatic
religion, subsequently developed by Guenon and others. He likewise condemned
the materialism and rabid anticlericalism of some in the Masonic community,
and may have even cherished a dream of the day when the Catholic Church
would have adopted the policy of St. Francis of Assisi, abandoning political
and financial power to devote itself to good works.

While aiming at spiritual perfection, Reghini believed, Masonry should be
nonsectarian. In his 1922 work on the meaning of the three basic Masonic
degrees, he analyzes the symbolism of the initiation of a Master Mason, with
the ritual death and resurrection of Hiram calling to mind Osiris, Dionysus,
and Jesus; the initiate, he says, should become aware that the conscious
mind does not depend on physical existence alone. He likewise chides some of
his Anglo-American brothers for interpreting the Nineteenth Landmark,
requiring belief in God, as meaning that Masons must necessarily be
Christians, reminding them that the square and compass are placed on top of
the Bible. 26 He also comments that both continental and Anglo-American
Masonry are more obsessed with high-sounding titles than with the spiritual
perfection of the initiate.

THE DISSAPOINTMENT OF FASCISM
After moving to Rome in 1921, Reghini devoted considerable attention to
Fascism and to the relationship developing between Mussolini and the
Vatican.

Most of Italian Freemasonry, along with the Nationalist and Socialist
dissidents led by Mussolini, had backed intervention in World War I, above
all to wrest the cities of Trent and Trieste from Italy's old enemy Austria.
After the war, in 1920, the Grand Orient supported the occupation of the
city of Fiume on the Adriatic in defiance of Italy's allies France and
Britain; this event was considered to be the final step in national
unification.

When Mussolini's Fascist government came to power in 1922, there was little
hint of the disaster that was to befall Freemasonry. None of the betterknown
Fascists were practicing Catholics, and ndeed some were known to be
Freemasons. Unfortunately, however, Reghini's warnings that the Craft
required spiritual renewal had gone unheeded, as would his attempts to
prevent the regime from coming to an agreement with the Church. In addition,
the Masonic hierarchy did not prove to be as skillful as their predecessors
in avoiding a "divide and conquer" policy.

Since the French Revolution, the fasces, the ancient insignia of Roman power
consisting of twelve birch rods bound together with an ax had had
revolutionary, antimonarchist connotations, initially inspiring its adoption
by the Fascist Party. For men like Reghini, however, the symbol also evoked
the ancient Roman concept of res publica, in which power was invested both
in the people and in an aristocratic Senate. Reghini did not want to propose
some new system of government; rather he hoped that a spiritually oriented
and Pythagorean Masonry would foster an elite political class whose members
would be endowed with superior values.

Nineteen twenty-four was a crucial year for Reghini. In that year the
government decreed Masonic affiliation to be incompatible with Fascist Party
membership. A Jesuit journal published an article condemning Freemasonry on
the grounds that, being international, it was therefore "unItalian"; this
line was soon officially adopted by the Fascists. 27

Reghini, a member of the Supreme Council of the Piazza del Gesu Grand Lodge,
replied that Masonry's key role in promoting the Risorgimento disproved this
accusation beyond any doubt. By this time, however, historical arguments
were of no avail, making him almost inadvertently a political dissident. In
May, his friend Armentano, who had continued to work with him in an abortive
attempt to reunify the two main branches of Italian Masonry, left for
Brazil.

Any hopes that Freemasons may have nourished for a change of heart in the
regime were dashed by the antiMasonic violence unleashed in November 1925. A
new law against "secret societies" did not specifically mention Freemasons,
but the regime made it clear that they were the intended target. 28
Mussolini asserted that the measures were to prevent political plots and not
to suppress Freemasonry as a spiritual institution, but there was little
difference when it came to police suppression. A number of top Grand Orient
officials went into exile in France, while after an unsuccessful attempt to
reorganize as the "Order of St. John of Scotland," the Piazza del Gesu was
also forced to close. Ironically, the lack of systematic persecution against
ordinary Freemasons led Pope Pius XI to criticize the Fascist regime for
being "too soft." In an article published in Fascism and the Vatican in
1927-28, Reghini, foreseeing the imminent alliance between Freemasonry and
the Vatican, commented:

The current conditions of our country in relation to the political situation
in Europe and the world would be favorable to someone who was willing and
able to exploit them to create a new universal civilization starting from
Rome. However . . . this type of imperialism could not be subservient to a
force which is universal in name only, whose innate and incurable
intolerance is unacceptable to both the rest of Western civilization and to
the Oriental civilizations.... We would proudly say more, if we were not
obliged today to use more prudent language than Agrippa was able to use four
centuries ago. Z9

By this time there could be no doubt that Reghini's position was highly
unorthodox. In a short time he had graduated from being a gifted writer on
rather obscure subjects to being an unflinching public opponent of
Mussolini's rapprochement with the Vatican, culminating in the 1929 Lateran
Treaty. How could a self-declared pagan be allowed to publish freely after
an alliance between the Church and Fascism? Reghini's courage in the defense
of Masonry was all the more remarkable considering his dim view of the Craft
as a whole for failing to fulfill its mission of perfecting the individual.

Faced with such a difficult situation, much of the Masonic hierarchy
preferred to temporize, but after unsuccessful attempts to come to terms
with the government, both of the major Masonic branches declared themselves
to be dissolved and would only reemerge in 1945. Reghini's sacrifice gained
him few friends either before or after the war.

Attacks in the press continued, and Parise writes of attempts "to save my
soul and Reghini's with pistol shots.. surveillance was so close and
overwhelming as to limit our contacts, since we were even afraid of
compromising people who just happened to greet us" 30 Reghini was dismissed
as a mathematics teacher in a public school in November 1928 and had to make
a living by teaching privately.

In a disgraceful eplsode, Reghini's former friend Julius Evola publicly
denounced him for Masonic affiliation. 3l Curiously, Evola had just
published Imperialismo pagano, a set of articles borrowing considerably from
Reghini's essay with the same title and calling on the Fascists to avoid
political and ideological compromise with Catholicism. Decades later, Evola
would ac- knowledge that he owed his awareness of genuine initiation to
Reghini and Guenon.

Epilogue
At this stage Reghini, Guenon, and Evola went on separate paths. In 1930
Guenon, who continued to be ambivalent about Masonry as a true source of
initiation, left Europe to devote himself completely to Islamic studies in
Cairo. Evola would soon drop his intransigent "pagan imperialism" and
condemn Freemasonry on the grounds that it could not provide any genuine
spiritual initiation. He would go on to cultivate a view diametrically
opposite to that of Reghini's, seeing the Catholic Church as the successor
to the Roman Empire as well as developing his own peculiar brand of racism
that was to influence the Fascist regime.

In the 1930s Reghini devoted himself to teaching and to the study of the
Pythagorean interpretation of numbers, proportion, and harmony, seen not
simply as an intellectual game but as the key to life. His approach somewhat
resembles that of the nineteenth-century English Neoplatonist Thomas Taylor
(whose works he quotes) in correlating spiritual and material reality with
numbers and proportions. Reghini's book on the reconstruction of Pythagorean
geometry, containing notions "on which Freemasons would do well to
meditate," 32 was published in 1935 and was praised for its scientific value
by the Accademia d'ltalia, Italy's equivalent of the Royal Society.

As World War II came to an end, Reghini intensified his work on Pythagorean
numbers. Perhaps sensing that his time was short, he left detailed
instructions concerning his manuscripts. 33 At five o'clock on the hot
afternoon of July 1, 1946, in a country villa near Bologna, he died standing
in his study, facing the westering sun.

In one of his later works on the relationship between mathematics and the
spiritual quest, Reghini stressed that true philosophy involved the direct
experience of the seeker:

Modern Western science is objective experimental science, achieved
externally by instruments which aid the senses; its purpose is to observe,
understand, taking into account the inevitable alteration (the Heisenberg
principle) made on the observed conditions by the observer. In Masonry,
Hermeticism, Pythagoreanism, and esoteric science of all times, the observer
is also the object of the experience, considered internally and directly
without limiting the field to any imaginary columns of Hercules; not so much
a matter of theorizing as of feeling and living. 34

And what indeed is the purpose of philosophy--the love of wisdom--if not, as
the Neoplatonist Porphyry said, "to free our mind from limitations and
chains"?35 u

Calfornia-born Dana Lloyd Thomas now lives in Rome. He has wntten articles
on Pythagoreanism, akhemy, and oriental medicine and is writing a book on
Arturo Reghini and esoteric traditions in Italy.

NOTES

1. One of the main sources for Reghini's biography was written by his friend
Giulio Parise and published as an introduction to Arturo Reghini,
Considaazioni sul rituale dell' apprendista libero muratore (Genoa: Phoenix,
1981),pp i-xv.

2. Bernard E. Jones, Freemasons' Cuide and Compendium (London: Harrap,
1986), p. 204.

3. There is extensive literature on Clement Xll's "excommunication" of
Freemasonry The events of this period are far from simple; the Catholic
Jacobites were conspiring against the Protestant Hanover dynasry in England,
and the Jacobite association with early Freemasonry also deserves attention.

4. Aldo A. Mola, Storia della massoneria italiana: Dalle origini ai nostri
giorni (Milan: Bompiani, 1994), pp. 53-54.

5. Reghini, pp. 13-14.

6. Dnisions in "official" Freemasonry have persisted up to recent years.
Because of the dispute over "accepted" and "irregular" lodges and the
disagreement over the position of higher-degree or "fringe" Masonry,
Englishlanguage Masonic literature has perhaps not dealt with Italian
history as extensively as it could.

7. Mola, p. 61. Lodges were named after such heretics as Tommasso Campanella
and Giordano Bruno and a&er patriots like Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi.

8. Ibid. pp. 48ff.

9. Augusto Comba,"La Massoneria in Italia dal Risorgimento alla Grande
Guerra 'unLamassonerianellastoriad'ltalia,ed.AIdoA.Mola (Rome:Atanor, 1981),
pp. 82-83.Among these were the famous Communist intellectu- al Antonio
Gramsci and a number of Jesuit writers.

10. Kent Henderson, "AVisit to Italy" in Masonk Sa,uare, March 1987. p. 28.

11. R.F. Wallace-James, "Les Nicotiates, or the Order of the Priseurs," in
Transactions of the t2uatuor Coronati Lodge, vol. 27 (1915), pp. 168-88. The
order was said to adopt different names for reasons of safery, becoming the
Nictotiates or Priseurs ("snuff-takers") in France and the Tobacco-logical
Sociery in England. See also J.M. Ragon, "Notice historique sur les
Pednosophes (enfants de la sagesse) et sur la Tabacologie, dernier voile de
la doctrine pythagoricienne ' in Monde Ma,connique, no. 12,April 1859. Ragon
traces the history of the order from antiquiry and hypothesizes contacts in
the Near East between the "children of wisdom" and the Templars.

12. Dana Lloyd Thomas, "Hermetic Healing in Italy: The Magical Therapeutic
Brotherhood of Myriam ' in GNOSIS #34, pp. 46-49.

13. F Brunelli, Rituali dei gMdi simholiri di Memphis e Misraim (Foggia:
Basto- gi, 1981), p. 45. See Ellic Howe,"Fringe Masonry in England, 1870-85
'in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, vol. 85 (1972), pp. 242-95.

14. Brunelli, p. 46.

15. Paul Johnson, In Search of the Masters: Behind the Oreult Myth (South
Boston,Va.: self-published, 1990), pp. 37-40.

16.Brunelli, p. 73.

17. Ibid., pp. 205-06.

18.Arturo Reghini,"La massoneria come fattore intellettuale ' in Leot~ardo,
Oct.-Dec. 1906, p. 297.

19. Parise, in Reghini, p. vi.

20.Arturo Reghini,"ll punto di vista dell'occultismo,"in Leonardl~,Aprillune
1907, p. 144.

21. Arturo Regluni, in Cornelius Agrippa, Laf losofa o~ulta o la ~nagia
(Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1972), p. Ixxxvii.

22. Arturo Reghini, "Awenture e disavventure in magia ' ill Gruppo di Ur,
Introduzione alla magia (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1978), vol. I, p. 388.

23. Roberto Sestito, "Le basi pitagoriche dell'estasi filosofica ' in
Ignis,June 21, 1991, p. 4-5.

24. Parise, p. viii.

25. Walter L. Adamson, Avant-Carde Florenee: From Modernism to Fasrism
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 64ff.

26. Arturo Reghini, Le parole saae e di passo dei primi tre gradi ed il
massimo mistero massonko (Rome:Atanor, 1981).

27.The article appeared in La Civilto ~attolita,Aug. 2, 1924.After Reghini's
reply, a counterreply appeared in October in the monthly Cerarrhia, edited
by Mussolini; signed with a pseudonym, it may have been written by Mussolini
himself.

28. Mola, pp. 138-39.

29. Reghini, in Agrippa, pp. cxxxvi-vii.

30. Parise, pp. xi-xii. Reghini's paganism has recently been reproved by
Catholic anticult writer Massimo Introvigne, n ~appello del mago (Milall:
SugarCo, 1990).

31. Letter of April 6,1929 from Rene Guenon to Guido de Giorgio, in De
Giorgio, L'lnstant et l'eternite (Milan: Arche, 1987), p. 294.

32. Parise, p. xii.

33. Partially published as Arturo Reghini, Dei ~lu~neri pitagoriri: Prologo
(Allcona: Casa Editrice Ignis, 1991).

34. Arturo Reghini, I numen saai nella tradizione pitagorira e massonira
(Rome: Casa Editrice Ignis, 1947), p. 143.

35. Porphyry, Lfe of Pythagoras, 46.

Summer 1997 / Gnosis Magazine 59