|
|
| About | Archives | Practices | Contribute | Contacts | Search |
| Periodical: | F. U. D. O. S. I. |
|
|
| Summary: |
From Pat Deveney's database:
F.U.D.O.S.I., The. This was the a short-lived attempt to revive the flagging interest in FUDOSI after World War II, but it produced little result: only one issue was published and the organization was formally dissolved in 1951. The journal was a venture of AMORC (it was copyrighted by its Supreme Grand Lodge) and intended as a free benefit to the societies that constituted FUDOSI, with a blank space left on the last page for the local society to put its address for further information. FUDOSI (Federation Universelle des Ordres et Societes Initiatiques / Federatio Universalis Dirigens Ordines Societatesque Initiationis) was yet another attempt by occultists to unite in one hierarchical organization all of the scattered, disparate and mutually antagonistic elements of the fin de siecle occult revival in France, most particularly the Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose+Croix, the Ordre Martiniste, and the various Eglises Gnostiques, together with the diverging branches of Theodor Reuss' Rite of Memphis and Misraim and Order Templi Orientis. A crib sheet would be necessary to do justice to the shifting organizations and personnae involved in (or opposed to) FUDOSI, but in brief, in August 1934 Emil Dantinne (Sar Hieronymous, 1884-1969, a Belgian librarian, Nauendorfist, and head of one of the successors of the Ordre Kabbalistique and of many other groups), Victor Blanchard (Sar Yesir, 1878-1953, the head of the Ordre Martiniste et Synarchique that combined Martinism and the ideas of Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, and former secretary to Papus), and H. Spencer Lewis (Sar Alden, 1883-1939, the head of AMORC), as leaders of their organizations (more than 20 in all), met in Brussels and formed FUDOSI. The goal was not to merge or unite their organizations but to express their mutual recognition of the others' validity, exchange degrees, initiations and honors, and work out plans "to protect the sacred liturgies, rites and doctrines of the traditional initiatory Orders from being appropriated and profaned by clandestine organizations"—i.e., their competitors, the "many false prophets and a number of so-called Initiates who use, for selfish and tyrannical purposes of domination, the pretext of initiation to thrust themselves on, and exploit, gullible and sincere persons." Blanchard, Lewis and Dantinne were the first "Imperators" of the group. Each had his own reasons for consolidation. Blanchard and Dantinne were in the midst of prolonged disputes over their regularity and authority and needed the support of a large international order, and Lewis, whose entire Rosicrucian authority rested on the slender reed of a supposed initiation in Toulouse, France in 1909 had long sought an alliance that would buttress his claims, approaching over the years Theodor Reuss, Aleister Crowley, Heinrich Traenker (Pansophia) and others for recognition and affiliation. Such a cobbled-together structure could scarcely last. Lewis died in 1939 and was succeeded as Imperator by his son, Ralph M. Lewis, and there had been dissension in FUDOSI even before his death over the validity of his mail-order initiations. The "regular" Memphis-Misraim in France expelled members who had embraced FUDOSI (in part because of irregular degrees added to the rite on the authority of Sri Sobbhita Bikkhu (Lewis) of the Great White Brotherhood of Tibet, which was not recognized by the rite), and FUDOSI in turn severed its connections with M&M. Blanchard, who was also head of the Fraternite des Polaires, overstepped his bounds on orders received directly from Agartha and ill-advisedly proclaimed himself "Universal Grand Master of the Rose-Croix and of all the Initiatic Orders of the world," and was expelled from FUDOSI, only to rejoin later. Dantinne, in the face of strong opposition from AMORC and under pressure from the Gestapo, determined that only Aryans were acceptable for membership in FUDOSI. The threat of FUDOSI's united front gave birth in Paris in 1939 to FUDOFSI (Federation Universelle des Ordres, Fraternites et Societes Initiatiques), led by R. Swinburne Clymer and Constant Chevillion, which hoovered up the disaffected members of FUDOSI and the various Martinist, Gnostic, and M&M groups that opposed FUDOSI. It did not survive the War. The journal was devoted to the official pronouncements of the order and its leaders (Mallinger, Hieronymous, Ralph M. Lewis), but carried minor contributions by the likes of Sar Skia (on clairvoyance) and notes that during the convention of 1937 Sar Iohannes showed to the astonished members of the Congress that, "by placing the symbol of the FUDOSI on the revolving disc of a phonograph and giving it an increasing speed, there came a moment when a new esoteric symbol appeared which, by itself, involved and vivified all other symbols: the true Swastika of the traditional Hindu Initiation." On FUDOSI generally, see the excellent article of that name by Milko Bogaard, www.hermetics.org.
|
| Issues: | Fudosi V1 N1 Nov 1946 |
|
|
