Lynn Picknett - The Secret History of Lucifer - And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code

It is easy to understand how even his short passage might obsess and even madden generations of seekers after alchemical truth. Newton cautioned fellow alchemist-scientist Robert Boyle (1627-91) against letting the uninitiated into their secret hot-house world `if there be any verity in the warning of the Hermetic writers. There are other things besides the transmutation of metals which none but they understand' ao

Some authorities" suggest Newton (who was knighted in 1705) may have actually achieved the fabled Great Work - after all, secrecy is no proof of failure, especially in such an intensely private discipline as alchemy. Look at how Leonardo triumphed behind closed doors, although his natural secretiveness did little to prevent the spread of rumours about his `sorcery'.

However, in the case of the British scientist Andrew Crosse, such a reputation - and worse - was to cost him a very promising career and the prospect of being feted throughout history as the discoverer of something very strange, perhaps even the creator of life itself ...

One who, according to his second wife, `delighted in whatever was strange and marvellous', Andrew Crosse was born in 1784 in the west of England and grew into a clever, questing young man. Probably because his father knew Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestley, both pioneers of the new science of electricity, Crosse was fascinated by it from the age of twelve. After some wasted years as a typical `lad-about-town', he settled down to experiments into electro-crystallization in partnership with George John Singer. But then in 1837 something happened that remains bewildering to this day, as Crosse explains:

In the course of my endeavours to form artificial minerals by a long continued electric action on fluids holding in solution such substances as were necessary to my purpose, I had recourse to every variety of contrivance that I could think of; amongst others I constructed a wooden frame, which supported a Wedgwood funnel, within which rested a quart basin on a circular piece of mahogany. When this basin was filled with a fluid, a strip of flannel wetted with the same was suspended over the side of the basin and inside the funnel, which, acting like a syphon, conveyed the fluid out of the basin through the funnel in successive drops: these drops fell into a smaller funnel of glass placed beneath the other, and which contained a piece of somewhat porous red oxide iron from Vesuvius. This stone was kept constantly electrified ...

On the fourteenth day from the commencement of this experiment I observed through a lens a few small whitish excrescences or nipples, projecting from about the middle of the electrified stone. On the eighteenth day these projections enlarged, and stuck out seven or eight filaments, each of them longer than the hemisphere on which they grew. On the twenty-sixth day these appearances assumed the form of a perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail ... On the twenty-eight day these little creatures moved their legs ... After a few days they detached themselves from the stone, and moved about at pleasure 42

What on earth were the acari, or tiny mites? Further experiments only served to reinforce the mystery. Crosse recorded after the third attempt at replication:

I had omitted to insert within the bulb of the retort a resting place for these acari (they are always destroyed if they fall back into the fluid from which they have emerged). It is strange that, in a solution eminently caustic and under an atmosphere of oxihy-drogen gas, one single acarus should have made its appearance 43

Strange indeed.

Having involved the steady and methodical W. H. Weeks to attempt to replicate the experiments - whose first concern was to ensure that no extraneous insect eggs fell into the equipment - matters were progressing well. But then Crosse made the mistake of discussing his discovery with the editor of a local newspaper, when all hell broke loose. Had this mad scientist actually created life in his secret laboratory? Who was this mere man to play God? Although eminent scientists such as Michael Faraday (1791-1867) went to some lengths to defend Crosse, Mr Weeks ruined it by solemnly announcing that the experiments had indeed `given birth' to living creatures.

Bewildered and hurt, Crosse retired to his rural laboratory, only to find himself a social pariah: the local vicar even carried out an exorcism on the locality. Crosse's innocent and objective discovery had marked him out as a Mephistophelean dabbler in the Black Arts. Although he returned to his research - intending to construct `a battery at once cheap, powerful and durable'' and worked on the preservation of food and the purification of sea water through the use of electricity - he remained a broken man, an object of ridicule and superstitious fear.

Before he died from a stroke in May 1855 he said: `... the utmost extent of human knowledge is but comparative ignorance' 45 The inscription on his gravestone reads:

Sacred to the memory of

ANDREW CROSSE/THE ELECTRICIAN ... HE WAS HUMBLE TOWARDS GOD AND KIND TO HIS FELLOW CREATURES

- perhaps a dig at those who thought him very arrogant towards God, and those who were less than kind to him.

To this day, no one is sure what the acari were, and Crosse is largely forgotten except in books about mysteries. But this true scientist may be remembered in much more sensational form: in 1814 the poet Robert Southey (1774-1843) visited his friends Mary and Percy Shelley after having discussed his experiments with Crosse himself. The three friends spent some hours on the subject. And the Shelleys attended a talk given by Crosse that same year. Four years later Mary Shelley (1797-1851) produced her first novel, Frankenstein, about an eccentric scientist who creates life in his laboratory through the use of electricity ... Was this a particularly bizarre case of life following art, or a nasty attack of the Cosmic Joker? Although sceptics might claim Shelley's novel put the idea of creating life in Crosse's head, all the evidence suggests that his mystery was genuine. But in any case, his is the classic case of the Luciferan martyr, persecuted by the mindless mob for honestly investigating a scientific anomaly.

On Saint John the Baptist's Day (24 June) 1717 the Grand Lodge of English Freemasonry was formed, taking what had been a truly secret society concerned with the preservation of sacred knowledge into a new semi-secret era that some might argue saw it degenerate into little more than a well-refreshed dining club.

An `Invisible College' of Masons had existed in 1645,46 but if as certain authors47 claim, they were the rightful descendants of the Knights Templar, then obviously they possessed a much longer pedigree. Indeed, an alchemical treatise dating from the 1450s specifically uses the term 'Freemason' ,4' and researcher John J. Robinson cites evidence of Masonic lodges as far back as the 1380s.49 But as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries passed, it became clear, according to one writer, Robert Lomas, that the Freemasons were at the forefront of a Luciferan explosion of unprecedented scientific invention and discovery and intellectual progress, with the formation of the Royal Society in 1660, `the oldest and most respected scientific society in the world'.50 Under the auspices of Freemason Sir Robert Moray, the aims of the Society were to be:

To overcome the mysteries of all the works of Nature for the benefit of human life51 ... and this is the highest pitch of human reason; to follow all the links of this chain, till all secrets are open to our minds; and their words advanced, or imitated by our hands towards the settling of an universal, constant and impartial survey of the whole Creation 52

Predictably, the Masons have suffered their fair share of abuse and outsiders' paranoia, especially from zealous Catholics and, more recently, fundamentalist Christians, who see `the Brotherhood' as a sinister conclave of either quasi-Devil worshippers or outright Satanists. A quick glance at the host of fundamentalist websites devoted to this subject will soon reveal the gist of their attitude. According to American scientist and Masonic writer S. Brent Morris, their fulminations usually begin with the words: `On July 14, 1889, Albert Pike, Sovereign Pontiff of Universal Freemasonry, addressed to the 23 Supreme confederated Councils of the world the following .. .'53 They go on to quote Pike's alleged declaration: