The following is taken from the book “The Wandering Bishops – Apostles of a New Spirituality” by Lewis Keizer. It is a book I highly recommend and can be found in PDF form free on Mr. Keizer’s website.
Richard, Duc de Palatine, was a seminal figure in the development, transformation, and perpetuation of the English Gnostic tradition in this century, yet he is also one of the most misunderstood and maligned of the Gnostic teachers. Many of his ex-students derided him as a fraud, while others extolled him as the Gnostic genius that he truly was.
Richard was a true Episcopus Vagans, born in Australia, later moved to Europe, and ended his life a somewhat lonely and rejected figure in the United States. He had been ennobled by H.I.H. Prince Alexander Licastro de la Chastre Grimaldi Lascaris of Deols, France, under the Seal of the Prefect of Rome, Italy, and taken the name Richard Jean Chretien Duc de Palatine. This was to confirm his attainment of Spiritual Nobility as a Prince of Light. We possess a copy of the document. His title was no less authentic than that of the Comte de St.-Germain or the Duke of Wales. We know very little else about his personal life. However, what we do have is volumes about his work, ideas, and teachings. Most important, we have help from his student and successor, Bishop and Count George Boyer, and a few words from another famous student, Bishop Stephan Hoeller, quoted from his web site as follows:
The church bearing this name (Ecclesia Gnostica) is the oldest public Gnostic sacramental body in the United States. It was organized as the Pre-Nicene Gnostic Catholic Church at first in England and since 1959 in the United States by the late Bishop Richard, Duc de Palatine. After the demise of the Duc de Palatine in the 1970’s, the Church he established in America continued its work under the name Ecclesia Gnostica.
The Regionary Bishop of the church is Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, who was consecrated to that office by the Duc de Palatine in 1967. Dr. Hoeller is thus the senior holder of what is sometimes called the English Gnostic Transmission in America. (There are no other bishops living in the USA who were consecrated by the Duc de Palatine.) http://www.monmouth.com/~equinoxbook/gnostica.html
Palatine was born Ronald Powell of French and British noble parents in 1916. His mother descended from Captain John Hancock, first signee of the Declaration of Independence. He was educated at Melbourne University, the Western Orthodox University, and the Universite Philotechnique International.
According to an article entitled “Reminiscences” published in 1966, in the 1940’s Richard was known as a charismatic lecturer on a wide range of subjects with an ability to “confound most scientists, religionists, and philosophers who came near him. His insight was uncanny, but for all this he was perceived as being a very humble person who seemed to extrude love and peace wherever he went. Some feared his power, whilst others just allowed themselves to fall under his magnetic spell. Young people in particular were drawn to him.” (Lucis Magazine, VIII,2)
Bishop Leila Boyer, wife of Palatine’s successor George, writes:
“In 1948 a change overcame Richard and he informed his friends that he would be leaving soon, as his work was not in Australia. He would go to seek his other half, and then his Father’s work had to be done.
“Richard came to England and was eventually Consecrated as a Gnostic Bishop and claimed an unbroken line of succession from the College of Antioch, and linked twelve lines of Succession in his person. In 1953 he received a Charter from The Ancient Mystic Order of the Fratris Lucis, commonly called The Brotherhood of the Illuminati, to institute an ‘Outer Section to be called The Brotherhood of the Illuminati, to be dedicated to the object of restoring to the outer world the mystic teaching of our Lord Jesu Christi.’ The Charter also confirmed his office of Archon ‘with full power and authority to rule and govern the said Order, to enact a Constitution for the same, to appoint all Officers therein, and to nominate and appoint his Successor.’…
“In 1960 the name of the Brotherhood of the Illuminati was changed to the Brotherhood of the pleroma and The Order of the Pleroma, and a Council of Three was appointed comprised of himself, John Martin-Baxter, and George William Boyer.
“Richard held high office in many orders and was Sovereign Grand Master of the United Rites of Memphis and Mizraim, Grand Hierophant of the Sovereign Imperium of the Mysteries, Sovereign Grand Master of the Ancient and Universal Pansophic Rites of Freemasonry, Senior Prelate and Great Prior of the Order of the True Rosy Cross, and Grand Master of the United Templar Rite. In July, 1964, he incorporated these bodies into the Disciplina Arcani, an integral part of the Order of the Pleroma, in order to withdraw the Masonic influence and to cleanse the Order from all taint of being a political tool…
“He visited Pope John XXIII in the Vatican…and asked (him) to embrace his work as an Order within the Roman Church to enable it to reestablish its true mystical heritage, but was refused.
“From 1953 Richard carried out his work in Kensington, London, holding regular meetings of The Order of the Pleroma, the Disciplina Arcani, and the Pre-Nicene Catholic Church, at which he would give lectures on the Gnosis, the central theme being the Divine Nature of Man. The Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma had branches in England, South Africa, Nigeria, Australia, and the U.S.A., and in 1959 he undertook alecture tour in the U.S.A. …
“In 1971 Richard moved his base to Los Angeles where he continued his work up to the time of his death in 1977. He left behind a rich heritage, and because of his pioneering work a breach was made in the consciousness of the people, and we see today the things that he taught available to the public in many books…” Quoted from a two-page Profile of Richard, Duc de Palatine, by Bishop Leila Boyer
Palatine could be confrontational, demanding, extremely narrow in his perception of people and relationships, and he alienated many of his students and closest associates. In trying to shape the esoteric world and societies of the 1950’s and 1960’s to his vision, he often high-handedly trespassed against tact and convention–not always for the better–and expected too much from his students. Some of his private correspondences in my archives reveal the extent to which his students disappointed him.
But it is important to understand the zeitgeist and spiritual environment of occultism in the fifties and sixties of this century if we are to have any understanding of the circumstances surrounding the life of Richard, Duc de Palatine, and why he was forced to develop the kind of personality that made him controversial.
After World War II, conventional and orthodox religion (which had waned in the 20’s and 30’s) made a vigorous resurgence in European and American spiritual life. There was much propaganda against the occult because of Hitler’s reputed use of it. After the trauma of World War II, ordinary people yearned for the stability and simplicity of “old time religion.”
In Australia, England, and America, where Palatine carried out his teachings, the Anglican and mainstream Protestant churches stressed the dangers of occultism in their seminary training. Catholic seminarians were taught that all esoteric and initiatic orders including Masonry were instruments of the devil. Paradoxically, Freemasonry itself had degenerated into a kind of male social and business club not unlike the Elks or Odd Fellows, with little or no emphasis upon esoteric work.
Palatine had plumbed the depths of Freemasonry through the Scottish Rite and attained the thirty-third degree, then gone into the esoteric Ultra-Masonic and Egyptian rites searching for spiritual enlightenment. The same quest had taken him into Theosophy and deep investigation of its monuments, especially the writings of Blavatsky, and he had made connections with various Rose-Croix, Martinist, and Illuminist orders still operating secretly in Europe and America. For this he suffered rejection by his Masonic peers. He learned early on that his path was lonely and easily misunderstood, so he developed a personality that was demanding, well-defended, and strongly individualistic.
Many of the traditional European esoteric orders had degenerated into dynastic traditions carried down in families more as titles and journal archives than living disciplines. Palatine saw his mission as to reclaim their essences by gaining charters and warrants to properly reinstitute them with authority to modify and adapt them to the spiritual needs of contemporary humanity. This principle guided everything controversial that he did, and the conservative opposition to his work–which resorted to character defamation and accusations of fraudulence–forced Palatine to develop the unyielding, take-the-offensive posture that ruled his personality. Without that characteristic, he simply could not have succeeded in anything, given the tenor of the times. Exactly the same was true for Blavatsky. She was an iron-willed, pig-headed, totally self-confident dynamo. If she hadn’t been the way she was, we wouldn’t know her name today, and Spiritism would have triumphed over Theosophy more than a century ago.
As a scholar, I find Palatine’s writings at times very knowledgable, but at other times too much influenced by the one-dimensional perspectives of axe-grinders like John Allegro, Hugh Schoenfeld, and the nineteenth-century “Egyptian solar myth” school–all of which have been shown to be unbalanced. Palatine is most credible when speaking about European orders, least credible in the areas of ancient and Hellenistic cult and Christian origins. Yet even there he shows certain valuable insights. It seems to me that his forte was in the area of the European esoteric and initiatic orders, and in the Disciplina Arcana, which he transmitted and taught.
His most significant work was probably his synthesis and perpetuation of the full repertoire of European esoteric and Ultra-Masonic orders in a context of independent Gnostic Apostolic Succession. Palatine was essentially the founder of the English Gnostic Ecclesia that is today perpetuated by Bishops Boyer and others in England, and Bishops Hoeller and others (including myself) in America.
Palatine preserved and perpetuated the Pansophic or Antient Rites of Freemasonry that John Yarker had spent his career painstakingly collecting valid charters and warrants to preserve. Historically, English, Scottish, and French Freemasonry had preserved the outlines of European initiatic Rosicrucian, Templar, and other schools by adopting “higher degrees” beyond Master Mason into which worthy brothers could be initiated. Each of these was originally a school that could constitute a lifetime of study. Today, however, they have been minimized to a menu of ala carte productions that will allow Master Masons to pass through all or most higher degrees in one intensive weekend at a Scottish or York Rite Temple!
The authority for valid charters and warrants to the extant twenty-one European Non-Masonic, Masonic, and Ultra-Masonic initiatic orders (i.e., those that admitted women equally with men), many of which are no longer worked by regular Freemasonry, have been transmitted to me from Yarker through Palatine in the following way:
The Ill. Bro. John Yarker, Jn.: 33 , 90 , 96 , Initiated and Installed James Heard as the first Vicarius Salomonis, Conservator of the Rite of the Ancient Universal Pan-Sophic Rite of Masonry, (which synthesized all esoteric European lineages in the late 19th century), who transmitted to Ill. Bro. Hugh G. de Willmott, who transmitted to H.S.H. Duc de Palatine, who transmitted to Bishop and Count George Boyer, Grand Archon, Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma, Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, Sanctuary of the Gnosis (which have authority to transmit the following extant lineages), who warranted the Grailmaster, on behalf of the Temple of the Holy Grail, to carry forth the authorities embodied in the Pansophic Rite, including:
• ILLUMINIST (ULTRA-MASONIC):
1. Fratres Lucis or Brotherhood of the Illuminati
2. Order of the Illuminati
3. Order of the Martiniste
4. Brotherhood of Luxor
• TEMPLAR:
1. Knights of the Holy Ghost
2. Knights of St. John
3. Knights of Malta
4. Knights of the Holy Sepulchre
5. Knights of the Temple
• ROSICRUCIAN:
1. Order of the True Rosy Cross
2. Golden and Rosy Cross
3. The Order of the True Rosy Cross
• GNOSTIC ECCLESIAE:
1. Order of the Ecclesiae Rosicrucianae Catholicae (Catholic)
2. Hidden Church of the Holy Grail (Protestant, Edgar Waite)
• ULTRA-MASONIC and MASONIC:
1. Ancient and Primitive Rite
2. Rite of Memphis
3. Rite of Mizraim
4. Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
5. Swedenborgian Rite
6. Order of the Rose-Croix of Hiredom
7. Order of the Holy Royal Arch of Enoch
To these Bishop George Boyer has added and made available through T:.H:.G:.:
• +OMR+, the Teaching, Healing, and Chivalric Order of St. Michael and St. Raphael, through a most ancient and esoteric chivalric authority revived by Grand Master Emperor Frederick II Von Hohenstaufen in the 13th century as the Pactio Secreta—a secret alliance of Christian and Islamic Chivarlric Grand Masters to resist the imperial forces of the Pope of Rome. It has its roots in the original twelve-member Knighthood instituted by Numa Pamphilus as inner guard of the Roman Senate and carried forward into history by the Magistr Comacenes.
• The hitherto unknown hidden Apostolic lineage of the Knights Templar that was recovered through the research of Bishop Bertil Persson and his St. Ephrem’s Institute I have added and transmit through T:.H:.G:. and Pansophic Freemasonry the following:
• T:.H:.G:., the Temple of the Holy Grail, First and Second Orders.
• +MOT+ or Martinist Order of the Temple, which offers all three of the traditional Martinist Philosphical Degrees through S::I::III and potential advancement into S::I::IV or Free Initiator. Operational Elus Cohen theurgical training with unaffiliated initiation through Master Elus Cohen is offered through the T:.H:.G:. Liturgist Empowerment. Our M.E.C. degree is unaffiliated with any existing Lodges because surviving Elus Cohen traditions have not preserved the skill of producing the essential phenomena of La Chose, and therefore are in my judgment not legitimate successors of the school of the Master Martinez de Pasqualies, known to some as the successor of Paracelsus’ anticipated Elias Artiste.
One of the most serious charges made by Palatine’s enemies is that on one occasion he sold charters and warrants for the Pansophic Rites to a close associate. However, on that occasion (which I have personally investigated), he was sharing an expense that he had himself borne, and it was proper to require that his associate bear half the cost. It was also proper to redeem the charters and warrants for great esoteric rites that were no longer being worked in order to preserve and synthesize them for posterity. In my opinion, what he did was necessary as part of that process.
In reference to the charge of selling authorities for the Pansophic Rites, athough Palatine has been characterized by his enemies as a “collector” of titles and charters, this description is much more applicable to the person who sought the Pansophic authorities from him–an English occultist who had himself purchased and collected many other such charters, and who had thereby preserved and “worked” many of the rites in a legitimate and authentic way that none of his contemporaries fault. He survives in London, as of this writing, as a respected occultist whose contributions to the field are well recognized. The fact is that any accusations against him or Palatine in this matter are simply unfair. Without the work of “collectors” like Palatine and the other man (whose name I shall not mention), many of the rites would have disappeared. Palatine was criticized not only for being too demanding and his training too long and difficult, but on the other hand for advancing people through initiatic orders without sufficient training! I’d like to comment on this seeming paradox.
Masons do not provide any better training than many other esoteric schools–many of whom operate through the mail or even online. Today it is possible to become a Master Mason at age 18 and to achieve the degree in just a few months in certain Masonic jurisdictions. Why? Part of the reason is to make Masonic membership easier in an age when people’s time is at a premium, and when Masonic lodges are steadily losing membership.
But there is another and better reason for swift advancement through older initiatic orders. People today are far more sophisticated in their psychological, intercultural, and scientific attitudes than they were in parochial European villages a century ago. Their souls are older, and they are spiritually ready to recapitulate initiations they probably underwent in previous lifetimes so that they can make progress into the new and emerging field of spiritual initiation, many of which in older times were provided only by a few obscure esoteric schools.
Thus today it is quite legitimate to elevate certain advanced people through many degrees of initiation in one transmission. The Dalai Lama, having spent much time in exile in the West, chose to initiate Westerners into the most advanced of the Vajrayana tantras–the Kalachakra– on the basis of their own self selection! If that is so, then how can a developed initiate like John Yarker be criticized for advancing spiritually ripe colleagues through the degrees of Memphis and Mizraim in the late nineteenth century? How can Palatine be criticized for the same? All this is to clarify the fact that there are several practices done in this century that would have been fraudulent in previous centuries, but are quite appropriate for now, such as:
1. fast advancement through certain initiatic degrees;
2. ordination and consecration of seemingly “untrained” persons into Holy Orders;
3. deletion of the requirement for Masonic membership for initiation;
4. Ordination, consecration, installation, and initiation of women into traditionally male offices;
5. synthesis of older, crystallized orders into revitalized vehicles under new names.
Palatine deleted the Masonic requirement (good for him!), synthesized authorities, warrants, and charters (”collected?”), used spiritual discernment as a basic canon for ordination and consecration rather than seminary training, and was willing to quickly advance people to higher degrees when appropriate. For this he was unfairly designated a fraud by some. In fact, he was a pioneer of modern Gnostic spirituality.
However, as one critic of Palatine points out, “most lineages are only valid when passed down a line of successful practitioners [i.e., Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, etc.]. I therefore find myself sceptical of any lineages passed via ‘collectors’ of degrees (who make no attempt to practice), such as may/will be the case with anything received via the Duc de Palatine.”
We must assume that by “practice” our critic does not mean (for example) performing the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim or producing the degrees of the various Rose-Croix initiations, for these are the Pansophic Rites transmitted through de Palatine, which he in fact did practice.
But our critic does not understand that these and other such rites are mere external group exercises or liturgies through which invisible Cabalistic and Hermetic forces are contacted to potentiate the interior unfoldment of lodge members. These rites are not the essential Gnosis or the primary Ontos of any school or tradition. They are merely ritual instruments that were appropriate in a medieval setting, and that are secondary to the essential transmission.
Also, one must ask, how many of those who work the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim still have the entire ninety-nine degrees, and of those, how many actually do the “internal alchemy” work related to the material in the Quarantines of Cagliostro? (Nobody, I hope, unless they want a dose of Mercury poisoning!)
If one studies the transmission of Dzogchen illumination in Tibetan Buddhism, for example, its realization comes in a thousand ways entirely independent of formal practices. In any spiritual system, it is a fact that students can practice, recite mantras and prayers, perform sacred rites, do prostrations, etc., until their hair turns gray and they drop dead–without ever making any kind of spiritual attainment. By the same token, people can work all of the rites of every secret society that ever existed in Europe without earning even one spiritual initiation or making one spiritual achievement.
The issue is not to practice these rites. Rather, it is to realize, incarnate, and make practical the essential nature of what they represent and symbolize.
Did the Duc de Palatine have such realization? Absolutely! The evidence (for anyone with a modicum of discrimination) is clear in his taped lectures, which are preserved in my archives. The man was a great Gnostic teacher.
Palatine leaves behind volumes of passionate writings that reveal great familiarity with the inner teachings of European occult schools, deep psychological understanding, and surprisingly good academic knowledge of the European esoteric vehicles and their relationship to the Eternal Gnosis.
Much that the Duc de Palatine instituted or accomplished continues to serve the future of new and emerging spirituality. He held a high vision of this future. There was method to what he did, and time is proving the wisdom and fruit of his efforts, such as collecting, preserving, and reinstituting many of the ancient charters under what he called the Order of the Pleroma, which are still maintained under other names by Bishop Boyer and, through him, the Temple of the Holy Grail and Pansophic Freemasonry.
