abilitate
Buddhism in India, representing the teachings of Gautama Buddha as an
advance on Hinduism.[713] Mrs. Besant, however, came to regard the
doctrines of the Brahmins as the purer faith. Yet it was neither
Buddhism nor Hinduism in a pure form that she introduced to the
Co-Masons of the West, but an occult system of her own devising, wherein
Mahatmas, Swamis, and Gurus were incongruously mingled with the
charlatans of eighteenth-century France. Thus in the Co-Masonic lodges
we find "the King" inscribed over the Grand Master's chair in the East,
in the North the empty chair of "the Master"--to which, until recently,
all members were required to bow in passing--and over it a picture,
veiled in some lodges, of the same mysterious personage. Should the
neophyte enquire, "Who is the King?" he may be told that he is the King
who is to come from India--whether he is identical with the young Hindu
Krishnamurti adopted by Mrs. Besant in 1909 is not clear--whilst the
question "Who is the Master?" will probably be met with the reply that
he is "the Master of all true Freemasons throughout the world," which
the enquirer takes to mean the head of the religion to which he happens
to belong--Christ, Mohammed, or another. But in the third degree the
astonishing information is confided with an appearance of great secrecy
that he is no other than the famous Comte de Saint-Germain, who did not
really die in 1784, but is still alive to-day in Hungary under the name
of Ragocsky. In yet a higher degree, however, the initiate may be told
that the Master is in reality Prince Eugene of Austria.

It would be superfluous to describe in detail the wild nonsense that
composes the creed of Co-Masonry, since a long series of articles was
recently devoted to the subject in _The Patriot_ and can be consulted by
anyone who desires information concerning its ceremonies and the
personnel directing it.[714] Suffice it to say here that its course,
like that of most secret societies, has been marked by violent
dissensions amongst the members--the Blavatsky-ites passionately
denouncing the Besantites and the Besantites proclaiming the divine
infallibility of their leader--whilst at the same time scandals of a
peculiarly unsavoury kind have been brought to light. This fact has
indeed created a serious schism in the ranks of the Theosophists, which
shows that a number of perfectly harmless people are to be found amongst
them. Yet the peculiar recurrence of