In many ways, the
geographical cradle of our history of initiation, the foundations of some of
the most important aspects of Freemasonry in the New World is Haiti.
Without question, some
of the most important moments in the development of American Freemasonry, (US
citizens please note: America is a continent and not a nation) began in Haiti.
With that in mind, it is shameful that there has not been a greater response
among US Freemasons to the recent natural disasters that have befallen our
island neighbors. Masons should be more active in forming a chain of union for
Haiti and its people.
Haiti, the Caribbean
country so recently devastated by a terrible earthquake has a long history of
unattained possibilities and all too material misfortune. It was the scene of
important historical events and developments decisive in the evolution of
Masonic initiation including being the
original site for the introduction of Ecossaisme, the Elus Cohen and Primitive
Martinism to the Western Hemisphere.
On December 5, 1492,
Christopher Columbus landed on a Caribbean island which he named Hispaniola.
The western portion of this island was in 1697, ceded to the French who named
the island with the name of Saint Domingue.
In the eighteenth
century, Saint Domingue was the most successful French colony due to the export
of sugar, cocoa and coffee. The region seemed to evolve with the impetus of new
ideas and swiftly took the intellectual and Freemasonic movements further than
did those of France.
The desire for freedom
flourished in the hearts of the enslaved, and in 1794, Haiti was declared a nation
and became the first country to abolish slavery. The Haitians had to struggle
until 1804 to assure independence. The Haitian Declaration of Independence was
a far more radical and true attempt at freedom than was that of the United
States, as it guaranteed freedom to all men and women regardless of color or
ethnicity and it totally abolished slavery. The US granted voting rights
regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude to its citizens 66
years after Haiti did and suffrage to women 116 years after Haiti. Without
exception, all people on Haitian soil were free. For that, Haiti was a made a
pariah state and has suffered until today, to all of our shame.
The Masonic
Personalities of the 18th Century in Saint Domingue
Estienne Morin
A French trader, by the
name of Estienne Morin, had been involved in high degree Masonry in Bordeaux
since 1744 and, in 1747, founded an "Ecossais" lodge (Scots Masters
Lodge) in the city of Le Cap Francais, on the north coast of the French colony
of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). Over the next decade, high degree Freemasonry
continued to spread to the Western hemisphere as the high degree lodge at
Bordeaux warranted or recognized seven Ecossais lodges there. In Paris in the
year 1761, a Patent was issued to Estienne Morin, dated 27 August, creating him
"Grand Inspector for all parts of the New World." This Patent was
signed by officials of the Grand Lodge at Paris and appears to have originally
granted him power over the craft lodges only, and not over the high, or
"Ecossais", degree lodges. Later attempts to disparage the validity
of this Patent calimed, without material evidence that it appeared to have been
embellished by Morin, to improve his position over the high degree lodges in
the West Indies. The political
equivocations of the Bordeaux Lodge provide little to support such claims.
Early writers long
believed that a "Rite of Perfection" consisting of 25 degrees, the
highest being the "Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret", and being the
predecessor of the Scottish Rite, had been formed in Paris by a high degree council
calling itself "The Council of Emperors of the East and West". The
title "Rite of Perfection" first appeared in the Preface to the
"Grand Constitutions of 1786. It is often argued that this Rite of
twenty-five degrees was compiled by Estienne Morin and is therefore more properly
titled "The Rite of the Royal Secret", or "Morin's Rite".
Whether that is to bolster the claims of legitimacy for Charlston is unclear.
Regardless, in the person of Morin, Haiti's central role in the advancement of
Higher Degree Masonry in the Americas is unquestionable.
Morin again returned to
the West Indies in 1762 or 1763, to Saint-Domingue, where, armed with a new
Patent, he assumed powers to constitute lodges of all degrees, spreading the
high degrees throughout the West Indies and North America. Morin stayed in
Saint-Domingue until 1766 when he moved to Jamaica. At Kingston, Jamaica, in
1770, Morin created a "Grand Chapter" of his new Rite (the Grand
Council of Jamaica). Morin died in 1771 and was buried in Kingston. On July 21, 1802 the Supreme Council of the
French West Indies in Haiti was formed out of the older 1836 Supreme Council of
Saint Domingue.
The Caribbean History
of Martinez Pasqually
More or less the same
time, Jacques de Livron Joachim de la Tour de la Casa Martinez de Pasqually
also a Mason from the French city of Grenoble, inherited a property in Saint
Domingue and traveled to the place which was within the modern territory of
Haiti. He had plans to establish the Chevaliers de l'Ordre de Masons Elus Coens
(Order of the Knights Elect Priests of the Universe) which he had previously
founded in France. There are still echoes of this Order in the Americas, but
despite romantic claims to the contrary, they all appear to derive from the
late 19th and early 20th Century based upon the romantic reinventions of Gérard
Encausse (Papus) and Robert Ambelain.
Martinez's father
Pasqually, was said to have been issued
a patent by King Charles Stuart granting him the title of Grand Master and
authorizing him to transmit his powers to his firstborn son. This rank and
power was transferred to Martinez when he was 28 years old. Martinez
subsequently wrote a treatise on the Reintegration of Beings and a commentary
on the Pentateuch from the point of view of the philosophy of the High Masonic
Degrees.
On September 20, 1774,
a little less than two years after his arrival Martinez died in
Port-au-Prince. It is said that he named
Armand Cagnet Lestère as his successor. However, Armand had little time to
devote to the Order and Martinism was silenced. Current claimants to the
Martinist banner all derive their origins from the aforementioned 19th and
early 20th Century French reinventions.
Martinez Pasqually left
students and followers in Europe including the Masons Willermoz and
Jean-Baptiste Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. At first they intended to adopt the
principles of the Lodge of Saint-Germian-en-Laye and practice the Seven High
Degrees. However, internal disputes led Saint-Martin and Willermoz to create
independent institutions. Abandoning Enlightenment ideals they sought
inspiration from the controversial "speech of the Knight Templar of
Ramsay," creating a Senior Corps in Europe. Jean-Baptiste Willermoz
founded his own Masonic Lodge, "La Parfait Amitie", which began to conduct
studies of alchemy. While the Elus Cohen and Martinism may have ultimately been
silenced, Willermoz' efforts, which more truly may be said to have retained the
seed of Martinist thought survived through its evolution into what is today
called the Rectified Scottish Rite and Swedish Freemasonry.
Out of these origins,
according to some authors, the structure of the Scottish Rite has established
itself in seven traditional categories:
1) Symbolic Degrees of
Apprentice, Fellow and Master;
2) Degree of development of the Universal
Symbolic Degrees
3) Degrees based on
Enlightenment
4) Jewish and biblical
Degrees
5) Templar Degrees
6) Alchemical and
Rosicrucian Degrees
7) Administrative and
Higher Degrees.
Joseph Cerneau
One more significant
player in the History of Freemasonry in the Western Hemisphere emerged from the
cradle of Haiti. Although much controversy and a great deal of unjustified
slander was leveled at him by that autodidact and self appointed revisionist of
Scottish Rite Masonry, Albert Pike, Joseph Cerneau, an unassuming, and
apparently quite sincere Freemason and Jeweler from Villeblevin in Central
France, became involved in Freemasonry while living in Pre Revolutionary Saint
Domingue. At the time of the Haitian Revolution he, like quite a few Frenchmen
living in Haiti escaped and went to Cuba. He is remembered for having founded
the first Masonic Lodge in Cuba in about 1804 or 1805 before having been
deported, as far as can factually be discerned, for the triple crimes of having
been French, formerly living in Haiti, and being also a Freemason.
The Spanish authorities
at the time lived in terror of the French contagion and Cerneau appeared
dangerous to them for these reasons. It seems that their suspicion, if
misplaced was not totally unwarranted, as a few years after the innocent
Cerneau left for New York, an Afro-Cuban freemason, named Aponte, was caught
and executed for attempting to lead a rebellion modeled upon that of Haiti.
Although Cerneau
himself did nothing that the "Gentlemen" of Charleston did not
themselves do, his form of Scottish Rite, although having much if not more to
recommend it, fell victim to the savage attacks of Albert Pike and his southern
"Gentlemen" after Cerneau himself had already returned to France,
disgusted by the corruption and petty politics of North American Freemasonry in
the early 19th Century.
Cerneau did not leave
however, until after he has successfully spread his vision of the Higher
Degrees to much of the Caribbean and Latin America, having personally granted
the 33rd degree to none other than Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad
Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco, known to those devoted to short and
unimaginative names as Simón Bolívar, the liberator of much of Latin America.
Today, Joseph Cerneau
is recognized in most of the Americas as the father not only of Cuban
Freemasonry, but of the Scottish Rite, and Freemasonry in general in their part
of the globe.
This is but a brief
introduction to the interaction of Haiti and Freemasonry, a subject to which we
will return again.
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