same blind obedience to unknown directors!

Under the guidance of these various sects of Illumines a wave of
occultism swept over France, and lodges everywhere became centres of
instruction on the Cabala, magic, divination, alchemy, and
theosophy[438]; masonic rites degenerated into ceremonies for the
evocation of spirits--women, who were now admitted to these assemblies,
screamed, fainted, fell into convulsions, and lent themselves to
experiments of the most horrible kind.[439]

By means of these occult practices the _Illumines_ in time became the
third great masonic power in France, and the rival Orders perceived the
expediency of joining forces. Accordingly in 1771 an amalgamation of all
the masonic groups was effected at the new lodge of the _Amis Reunis_.

The founder of this lodge was Savalette de Langes, Keeper of the Royal
Treasury, Grand Officer of the Grand Orient, and a high initiate of
Masonry--"versed in all mysteries, in all the lodges, and in all the
plots." In order to unite them he made his lodge a mixture of all
sophistic, Martiniste, and masonic systems, "and as a bait to the
aristocracy organized balls and concerts at which the adepts, male and
female, danced and feasted, or sang of the beauties of their liberty
and equality, little knowing that above them was a secret committee
which was arranging to extend this equality beyond the lodge to rank and
fortune, to castles and to cottages, to marquesses and bourgeois"
alike.[440]

A further development of the Amis Reunis was the Rite of the
_Philalethes_, compounded by Savalette de Langes in 1773 out of
Swedenborgian, Martiniste, and Rosicrucian mysteries, into which the
higher initiates of the Amis Reunis--Court de Gebelin, the Prince de
Hesse, Condorcet, the Vicomte de Tavannes, Willermoz, and others--were
initiated. A modified form of this rite was instituted at Narbonne in
1780 under the name of "Free and Accepted Masons du Rit Primitif," the
English nomenclature being adopted (according to Clavel) in order to
make it appear that the rite emanated from England. In reality its
founder, the Marquis de Chefdebien d'Armisson, a member of the Grand
Orient and of the Amis Reunis, drew his inspiration from certain German
Freemasons with whom he maintained throughout close relations and who
were presumably members of the Stricte Observance, since Chefdebien was
a member of this Order, in which he bore the title of "Eques a Capite
Galeato." The correspo