Abel Clarin de la Rive

Abel Clarin de la Rive (1855, Chalon-sur-Saône, France – 1914, Chalon-sur-Saône) was a French historian, essayist, journalist, and anti-Masonic writer.

Clarin de la Rive became a notable writer within the US, due to his direct involvement in the anti-Masonic movement within the US, and due to his involvement with Léo Taxil (pseudonym of Marie-Joseph Gabriel-Antoine Jogand-Pages), the author of the Taxil hoax, along with Clarin de la Rive's unbeknown fictitious writing about Albert Pike, who had become the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction of the US in 1859, which is an appendant body of Freemasonry.

In the April, 1897 issue of the magazine, Freemasonry Unmasked, Clarin de la Rive wrote an article about Léo Taxil, after Taxil revealed his anti-Masonic writings to be a hoax, which became known as the Taxil hoax, on April 19, 1897. A. C. de la Rive recanted much of what he wrote about Freemasonry, since he used the writings and correspondence of Taxil as his source for the 'official documents of the sect', especially in his book, Woman and child in Universal Freemasonry.^[1]

His published works have been quoted and cited by many conspiracy theorists, anti-Masons, and mystics in the US and elsewhere, such as Edith Starr Miller and William Guy Carr.^[2][3][4][5] de la Rive is also quoted and cited by many Masonic historians, scholarly publications, and websites in the US and worldwide, including S. Brent Morris, PhD, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brigham Young University.^{[6][7][8][9][10]}

In the US, when de la Rive's book, Woman and child in Universal Freemasonry, became available, numerous anti-Masons and religious leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, used the work to denounce Freemasonry and Albert Pike throughout the US, and to show that Freemasonry "Palladism" was actually a religion of Satanism, even though no such thing as Palladism existed. Taxil and his hoax are mentioned in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, under the article on impostors.^[11]

Biography

After de la Rive studied at a Dominican college, he became a journalist in 1873; first with Courrier de Saône-et-Loire, then with La Belgique. From 1879 to 1886, he was a senior journalist for various newspapers: La Côte d'Or, La Gazette du Centre, and Le Franc-Bourguignon. de la Rive was a publishing friend of Léo Taxil, and succeeded him as the manager of the weekly magazine, Christian Antimasonic France, in January 1896, a position he held until his death in July 1914. Under de la Rive, the magazine changed its name to The Antimasonic France, and the publication ended with him. Clarin de la Rive ran the Antimasonic Council of France, of which The Antimasonic France was a publication thereof.^[12][13]

Freemasonry Unmasked

Albert Pike had written his book, Morals and Dogma, which spoke about the definition of the word "Lucifer", that Taxil used for his hoax. Next, while de la Rive was working under Taxil, at the magazine Christian Antimasonic France, Taxil convinced him that Diana Vaughan, a fictitious character in his writing, was real, and that she was admitted into Freemasonry, where she supposedly saw Satanism within the Scottish Rite building firsthand, at Charleston, South Carolina. Taxil then gave de la Rive, what was supposed to be an encyclical written by Albert Pike, which he subsequently used as source material for his book, Woman and child in Universal Freemasonry.

However, Diana Vaughan being the name of Taxil's typist, she never had been a Freemason, nor did she experience any of the purported rituals described in said text. Taxil admitted to these being false, in his confession about the hoax.^[14] Women have never been allowed to join a Lodge of regular Freemasonry. In de la Rive's book, he wrote that Pikes encyclical, which Diana supposedly brought to France, claimed that Freemasonry had a secret group known as the Palladium, that God and Lucifer were one and the same, and that Freemasonry was a religion, to which the membership of Freemasonry, under the 30th degree in the Scottish Rite, were kept ignorant of.

After Taxil admitted to the hoax, in April, 1897, Clarin de la Rive recanted what he wrote.^[15]

Quoting A. C. de la Rive in Freemasonry Unmasked:

With frightening cynicism, the miserable person we shall not name here, [Taxil], declared before an assembly, especially convened for him, that for twelve years, he had prepared and carried out to the end, the most extraordinary and most sacrilegious of hoaxes. We have always been careful to publish special articles concerning Palladism and Diana Vaughan. We are now giving, in this issue, a complete list of these articles, which can now be considered as not having existed.

In particular, in his book, Woman and child in Universal Freemasonry, de la Rive wrote three paragraphs that he laid to Albert Pike, which he sourced in a footnote to Diana Vaughn, Léo Taxil's fictitious creation. This writing is part of the texts that Clarin de la Rive recanted, and said that they should not be considered to have ever existed.^[16] The text in mention:

That which we must say to the world is that we worship a god, but it is the god that one adores without superstition. To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the brethren of the 32nd, 31st and 30th degrees: The masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the higher degrees, maintained in the Purity of the Luciferian doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay and his priests calumniate him?

Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also god. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two gods; darkness being necessary for light to serve as its foil as the pedestal is necessary to the statue, and the brake to the locomotive....

Thus, the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy, and the true and pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil.

Footnote in Woman and child in Universal Freemasonry:^[17]

*It was the Sister Diana Vaughan that Albert Pike,--in order to give her the greatest mark of confidence,--charged to carry his luciferian encyclical, to Paris, during the Universal Exposition.

Bibliography

• Dupleix French or the East Indies, 1888.
• Fatal Date 1881.
• General History of Tunisia since the year 1590 BC until 1883, published by E. Demoflys 1883.
• Vocabulary of the language spoken in the Barbary countries - coordinated with the "Koran", 1890.
• Woman and child in Universal Freemasonry. According to official documents of the sect (1730-1893), Publisher Delhomme et Briguet 1894.
• The Jew and the Freemasons, 1895.

And, under the pseudonym of Sheik Sihabil Klarin M'Ta El Chott:

• Ourida, 1890.

From 1893-95 Clarin de la Rive periodically contributed to The Cross of Paris, The Cross of Reims, and The Cross of Ardennes under the pseudonym of "a layman" or "F.. X..", and in The Devil's Magazine Supplement, where he attacked Henri Antoine Jules-Bois and used the pseudonym "Rhémus".

References