A Modern Pythagorean
  by Dana Lloyd Thomas


No study of esoteric culture in Italy in this century
can fail to mention Arturo Reghini (18781946).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