GODFREY HIGGINS AND HIS ANACALYPSIS
In 1813, a Yorkshire magistrate found the defendant in an assault case to be insane, and ordered
that he should be sent to the public lunatic asylum in York. Sometime afterwards, the magistrate
found that the man had been badly treated while he was in the asylum, and decided to investigate
conditions there. He was appalled by what he found: ‘When the door was opened, I went into the
passage and found four cells, I think, of about eight feet square, in a very horrid and filthy
situation. The straw appeared to be almost saturated with urine and excrement. There was some
bedding laid upon the straw in one cell, in the others only loose straw … The walls were daubed
with excrement … I then went upstairs and [the keeper] showed me a room which I caused him
to measure, and the size of which he told me was twelve feet by seven feet and ten inches, and in
there were thirteen women…’
The magistrate also found evidence of massive embezzlement of funds by the asylum’s staff, the
excessive use of chains and other forms of restraint, and the rape and even murder of some of the
inmates. He wrote to the press exposing the conditions within the asylum. This prompted a
campaign to reform the asylum and led to a parliamentary commission to investigate the
conditions in local lunatic asylums. The campaign to expose the abuses at York is considered a
turning point in the modern history of the treatment of mental illness.
The kind­hearted Yorkshire magistrate who became the champion of the inmates of the York
asylum was Godfrey Higgins (1773­1833), one of the most remarkable English freemasons, now
largely forgotten. Higgins was a member of the Yorkshire gentry whose family owned the house of
Skellow Grange in Doncaster. Higgins studied at Cambridge and was admitted to the Inner Temple
in 1794, but not called to the bar. When Napoleon threatened invasion, he joined the 3rd West
Yorkshire Militia, and served as a major from 1803­11. Eventually, ill­health forced him to resign
his commission. He took an interest in radical politics, campaigning for the abolition of the Corn
Laws and the laws protecting game. He was also active in promoting the cause of parliamentary
reform. In 1831, Higgins was asked by some of the radical political unions in Yorkshire to stand for
parliament, but he refused.
The reason for Higgins’s reluctance to stand for parliament was that he was immersed in some
demanding studies. As a result of his illness, he determined to devote himself to the study of
philosophy. He decided to investigate the evidence for Christianity. This developed into a study of
all religions, and eventually became an investigation of the origins of language and nations. Higgins
ruefully recollected that ‘Ultimately I came to a resolution to devote six hours a day to this pursuit
for ten years. Instead of six hours daily for ten years, I believe I have, upon the average, applied
myself to it for nearly ten hours daily for almost twenty years. In the first ten years of my search I
may fairly say, I found nothing which I sought for; in the later part of the twenty, the quantity of
matter has so crowded upon me, that I scarcely know how to dispose of it’.

Higgins’s publications on the history of religion nowadays appear extremely eccentric, but they are
important in understanding many aspects of British radical thought and have had a profound
influence on esoteric and new age movements right up to the present day. Higgins’s books
fascinated many masonic writers during the nineteenth century. Higgins himself became a
Freemason to further his researches, reporting his findings to the Duke of Sussex.
The Library and Museum of Freemasonry has recently purchased a remarkable copy of Higgins’s
magnum opus, Anacalypsis, which sheds new light on the means by which Higgins’s work was
circulated and received in British radical circles in the first part of the nineteenth century.
Moreover, this copy of Anacalypsis contains extraordinary new evidence showing how Higgins
formed a link between the highest echelons of English Freemasonry, including the Duke of Sussex
himself, and radical writers such as the notorious atheist Richard Carlile (1790­1843) who were at
that time publishing copies of masonic rituals and claiming that Freemasonry was a remnant of
true religion and Christianity was a blasphemous confidence trick.
In 1819, Carlile had been imprisoned in Dorchester gaol for publishing Thomas Paine’s Age of
Reason. Far from languishing in prison, Carlile used his imprisonment to continue his campaign for
freedom of speech, and published from his prison room his pioneering working­class journal, The
Republican. In 1825, he devoted most of the twelfth volume of The Republican to an exposure of
masonic rituals. In its original form, Carlile’s attack on Freemasonry simply mocked a leisure
pursuit favoured by the aristocracy and middle classes. However, some years later, rereading
Thomas Paine’s essay on the origin of Freemasonry, Carlile realised that his initial dismissal of
Freemasonry had been overhasty. He wondered whether, as Paine suggested, Freemasonry might
contain elements of the ancient religion of which Christianity was a perversion. Reprinting his
original collection of masonic ritual as A Manual of Freemasonry, he argued that Freemasonry held
the key to recovering the ancient science of the zodiac which lay at the root of all religion. Carlile
was joined in his campaign to use Freemasonry to overthrow Christianity by Robert Taylor (1784­
1844), a renegade clergyman known as the Devil’s Chaplain. Taylor preached sermons on the true
nature of Freemasonry, and with Carlile planned public performances of masonic rituals.
In the introduction to his Manual of Freemasonry, Carlile states that in 1830 Godfrey Higgins
‘observed to me, without explanation, that there were but two masons in England – himself and
the Duke of Sussex’. Carlile replied to Higgins that there were also two other masons, namely
Carlile and Taylor. Higgins ‘asked me to explain, on condition that he was not to commit himself by
any observation. I did so, as here set forth. He smiled and withdrew’. Carlile’s account of this
conversation is slightly mysterious. What did Higgins mean by his claim? What exactly were the
nature of Carlile’s links with Higgins, and how far was he influenced by Higgins’s work? Some
answers to these questions are provided by the Library and Museum of Freemasonry’s newlyacquired
copy of Anacalypsis.

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Category  Mythology portal
v t e

Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, the religion of the Iron Age Celts.^[1] Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure. Among Celts in close contact with Ancient Rome, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, their mythology did not survive the Roman Empire, their subsequent conversion to Christianity, and the loss of their Celtic languages. It is mostly through contemporary Roman and Christian sources that their mythology has been preserved. The Celtic peoples who maintained either their political or linguistic identities (such as the Gaels, Picts, and Brittonic tribes of Great Britain and Ireland) left vestigial remnants of their ancestral mythologies, put into written form during the Middle Ages.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Overview
• 2 Historical sources
• 3 Irish mythology
  • 3.1 The Dagda
  • 3.2 The Morrígan
  • 3.3 Lugh/Lug
  • 3.4 Others
• 4 Welsh mythology
• 5 Remnants of Gaulish and other mythology
  • 5.1 Julius Caesar’s comments on Celtic religion and their significance
• 6 See also
• 7 References
• 8 Bibliography
• 9 External links

Overview[edit]

The Celtic god Sucellus

Although the Celtic world at its height covered much of western and central Europe, it was not politically unified nor was there any substantial central source of cultural influence or homogeneity; as a result, there was a great deal of variation in local practices of Celtic religion (although certain motifs, for example the god Lugh, appear to have diffused throughout the Celtic world). Inscriptions of more than three hundred deities, often equated with their Roman counterparts, have survived, but of these most appear to have been genii locorum, local or tribal gods, and few were widely worshipped. However, from what has survived of Celtic mythology, it is possible to discern commonalities which hint at a more unified pantheon than is often given credit.

The nature and functions of these ancient gods can be deduced from their names, the location of their inscriptions, their iconography, theRoman gods they are equated with, and similar figures from later bodies of Celtic mythology.

Celtic mythology is found in a number of distinct, if related, subgroups, largely corresponding to the branches of the Celtic languages:

• Ancient Celtic religion (known primarily through archaeological sources rather than through written mythology)
• mythology in Goidelic languages, represented chiefly by Irish mythology^[2] and Scottish mythology:
  • Mythological Cycle
  • Ulster Cycle
  • Fenian Cycle
  • Cycles of the Kings
• mythology in Brittonic languages, represented chiefly by Welsh mythology (cf. also Breton mythology and folklore)

Scota (left) with Goídel Glasvoyaging from Egypt, as depicted in a 15th-century manuscript of theScotichronicon of Walter Bower; in this version Scota and Goídel Glas (Latinized as Gaythelos) are wife and husband.

Scota, in Irish mythology, Scottish mythology, and pseudohistory, is the name given to two different mythological daughters of two differentEgyptian Pharaohs to whom the Gaels traced their ancestry, allegedly explaining the name Scoti, applied by the Romans to Irish raiders, and later to the Irish invaders of Argyll and Caledonia which became known as Scotland.

History of the Scota legends[edit]

Early sources[edit]

Edward J. Cowan has traced the first appearance of Scota in literature to the 12th century.^[1] Scota appears in the Irish chronicle Book of Leinster (containing a redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn).^[2] However a recension found in an 11th-century manuscript of the Historia Brittonum contains an earlier reference to Scota.^[3] The 12th-century sources state that Scota was the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh, a contemporary of Moses, who married Geytholos (Goídel Glas) and became the eponymous founders of the Scots and Gaels after being exiled from Egypt.^[4] The earliest Scottish sources claim Geytholos was "a certain king of the countries of Greece, Neolus, or Heolaus, by name", while the Lebor Gabála ÉrennLeinster redaction in contrast describes him as a Scythian. Other manuscripts of the Lebor Gabála Érenn contain a variant legend of Scota's husband, not as Goídel Glas but insteadMil Espaine and connect him to ancient Iberia.^[5][6]
Another variant myth in the redactions of the Lebor Gabála Érenn state that there was another Scota who was the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh named Cingris, a name found only in Irish legend. She married Niul, son of Fenius Farsaid, a Babylonian who travelled to Scythia after the collapse of the Tower of Babel. Niul was a scholar of languages, and was invited by the pharaoh to Egypt and given Scota's hand in marriage. They had a son, Goídel Glas, the eponymous ancestor of the Gaels, who created the Gaelic language by combining the best features of the 72 languages then in existence. See also Geoffrey Keating. Although these legends vary, they all agree that Scota was the eponymous founder of the Scots and that she also gave her name to Scotland.

Scota and the Stone of Scone[edit]

Main article: Stone of Scone

Baldred Bisset is first credited to have fused the Stone of Scone with the Scota foundation legends in his Processus (1301) putting forward an argument that it was Scotland and not Ireland which was the original Scoti homeland.^[7]

Bisset was keen to legitimise a Scottish (as opposed to English) accession to the throne after Alexander III of Scotland died in 1286. Alexander himself at his coronation in 1249 heard his royal genealogy recited back through 56 generations to Scota.^[8] Bisset therefore attempted to legitimise a Scottish accession by making Scota significant, as having transported theStone of Scone from Egypt during the exodus of Moses to Scotland. In 1296 the Stone itself was captured by Edward I and taken to Westminster Abbey. Robert the Bruce in 1323 used Bisset's same legend connecting Scota to the stone in attempt to get the stone back to Scotland's Scone Abbey.^[9]

Stone of Scone, also called Stone of Destiny, Scottish Gaelic Lia Fail,  stone that for centuries was associated with the crowning of Scottish kings and then, in 1296, was taken to England and later placed under the Coronation Chair. The stone, weighing 336 pounds (152 kg), is a rectangular block of pale yellow sandstone (almost certainly of Scottish origin) measuring 26 inches (66 cm) by 16 inches (41 cm) by 11 inches (28 cm). A Latin cross is its only decoration. According to one Celtic legend the stone was once the pillow upon which the patriarch Jacob rested at Bethel when he beheld the visions of angels. From the Holy Land it purportedly traveled to Egypt, Sicily, and Spain and reached Ireland about 700 bc to be set upon the hills of Tara, where the ancient kings of Ireland were crowned. Thence it was taken by the Celtic Scots who invaded and occupied Scotland. About ad 840 it was taken by Kenneth MacAlpin to the village of Scone.

At Scone, historically, the stone came to be encased in the seat of a royal coronation chair. John de Balliol was the last Scottish king crowned on it, in 1292, before Edward I of England invaded Scotland in 1296 and moved the stone (and other Scottish regalia) to London. There, at Westminster Abbey in 1307, he had a special throne, called the Coronation Chair, built so that the stone fitted under it. This was to be a symbol that kings of England would be crowned as kings of Scotland also.

Attached to the stone in ancient times was allegedly a piece of metal with a prophecy that Sir Walter Scott translated as

Unless the fates be faulty grown
And prophet’s voice be vain
Where’er is found this sacred stone
The Scottish race shall reign. 

When Queen Elizabeth I died without issue in 1603, she was succeeded by King James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England (or Great Britain). James was crowned on the Stone of Scone, and patriotic Scots said that the legend had been fulfilled, for a Scotsman then ruled where the Stone of Scone was.

On Christmas morning 1950 the stone was stolen from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalists who took it back to Scotland. Four months later it was recovered and restored to the abbey. In 1996 the British government returned the stone to Scotland.