; and, finally, Phileas Walder, a native of Switzerland,
originally a Lutheran Minister, afterwards said to have been a Mormon,
but, in any case, at the period in question, a well-known spiritualist,
an earnest student of occultism, as were also Holbrook and Longfellow,
and, what is more to the purpose, a personal friend and disciple of the
great French magus Eliphas Levi. Albert Pike was himself an occultist,
whether upon his independent initiative, or through the influence of
these friends I am unable to say. Miss Diana Vaughan, who is one of the
seceding witnesses, affirms that it was an early and absorbing passion.
However this may be, the New Reformed Palladium was kept most rigidly
separate from all other Masonry, the Scotch Rite included; that is to
say, no initiate of even the highest grade had, as such, the right or
opportunity of entrance into the occult order, which, at the same time,
was chiefly recruited, as already stated, from the higher ordinary
grades, but the recipients of the new light became silent from the
moment that it was imparted. Now, it was exclusively in the Palladian
order that Albert Pike and his confidants propagated transcendental
religion, as it is said to have been understood by them. In other words,
while the Scotch Rite continued to speculate, the Palladium betook
itself to magic and succeeded so well that there was a perpetuity of
communication between Charleston and the unseen world. It does not
appear from the evidence either when or why Albert Pike and his
collaborators transferred their allegiance from the God of the sages to
Lucifer. The Catholic Church regards all magic as diabolism, and makes
or tolerates no mystic distinction between the black and white
departments of transcendental practice, but the specific character of
the Palladian cultus is so clearly defined in the depositions that it
cannot pass as a presentation of magical doctrine distorted by
prejudice. It is almost stripped of correspondence with any existing
school of occult teaching, and it is either the true statement of a
system founded by Pike, or the deliberate invention of malice. The
thaumaturgic phenomena tabulated in connection therewith are of an
extremely advanced kind, including the real and bodily presence of
Lucifer at frequent and regular intervals.

When Mazzini died he indicated to Albert Pike a possible successor in
Adriano Lemmi, who became in due course the chief of the Executive
Department, an