The same
observation applies to a second work published shortly after, "The
Cultus of the Grand Architect." Had Leo Taxil been acquainted with a
worship of Lucifer subsisting in Palladian Masonry he could not have
failed to make use of it in a volume so entitled. The work in question
is concerned, however, with the solemnities which obtain in Masonic
temples, with the names and addresses of all French lodges, so that it
is a directory as much as a revelation, with the political organisation
of the Carbonari, with the Judge-Philosophers, and with certain official
documents of Masonry.

But it may occur to those of my readers who are acquainted at first hand
with the revelations of Leo Taxil that his knowledge was held over in
view of his plan of publication, and that the Palladium would be
disclosed in due course when he came to treat of androgyne or adoptive
Masonry. Let us pass, therefore, to his next work, entitled, "Sister
Masons, or Ladies' Freemasonry," which appeared in 1888, and in which we
certainly meet with diabolism and also with Palladism, but not in
connection with Albert Pike or the Charleston Central Directory. The
reference in the first case is to practices which are alleged to obtain
in the Egyptian Rite of Adoption, called the Rite of Cagliostro, and in
the second to the Order of the Palladium as it was originally instituted
in the year 1730. At the same time the information given is of serious
importance, because it enables us to gauge the writer's method and
credibility in the one case, and his knowledge at the period in the
other. Once more, in the year 1886, Leo Taxil did not know of the
Palladium as a reformed or revived institution; had he known he could
not have failed to tell us.

I have not been able to trace all the sources of his information
concerning the older Palladian Rite, but it comes chiefly from Ragon; he
divides it into two systems:--(a) The Order of the Seven Sages, which
was for men only, and appears as a banal invention with a ritual mainly
derived from the "Travels of Anacharsis"; (b) The Order of the
Palladium, composed of two masculine grades and one feminine grade,
respectively, Adelphos and Companion of Ulysses for men, and Companion
of Penelope for women. It pretends to have been founded by Fenelon, but
at the same time claims an antiquity previous to the birth of the great
Archbishop of Cambrai. Leo Taxil accuses it of gallantry, but the
flirtations described in the ritu