In the late 19th century a Frenchman pulled off one of the greatest hoaxes of all time and inspired countless conspiracy theories about Freemasonry that still circulate today. The man, who went by the pseudonym Leo Taxil, started his career by publishing several texts smearing the Pope and the Catholic Church. But then he switched sides. He claimed he converted to Catholicism and to prove his devotion he started publishing anti-Masonic texts.These new works included wild stories about a secret satanic sect with freemasonry called Palladism. Despite the fact that these stories are far beyond the limits of believability, they were taken seriously by the Catholic Church. Taxil finally admitted that his multiple books about satanism in Freemasonry were all part of an elaborate, 12-year-long-hoax.

In the second part of the two-part series, we discuss Leo Taxil’s multiple books which supposedly exposed Satanism in Freemasonry, why he called Charleston, South Carolina the “Luciferian Rome,” and the dramatic public confession that sent shockwaves among Catholics and Freemason alike.

REFERENCES

Dickie, John. The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World. Public Affairs, 2020

Ziegler, Robert. Satanism, magic and mysticism in fin-de-siècle France. Springer, 2012.

Van Luijk, Ruben. Children of Lucifer: The origins of modern religious Satanism. Oxford University Press, 2016

Introvigne, Massimo. "Satanism: a social history.". Brill, 2016.

The Confession of Leo Taxil

https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/taxil_confessed.html

Mellor, Alec. A Hoaxer of Genius

https://skirret.com/papers/ahoaxerofgenius-leotaxil.html

Wikisource: The Works of Leo Taxil

https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Auteur:L%C3%A9o_Taxil

Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)

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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.