The Icon and the Axe

Spiritual regeneration was to be accomplished not only through the Bible Society and a new system of spiritual instruction but also through such philanthropic societies as the nationwide "Lovers of Humanity," which was founded by Alexander for "the fulfillment of the divine commandments that the Bible Society teaches us."59 Most important of all was the florid expansion of higher order Masonry, which Alexander encouraged by visiting lodges both in Prussia and in Russia. His birthday became one of the two special holidays of Russian Masonry, and regional lodges began to spring up in the provinces as a counterpart to the regional chapters of the Bible Society and the "Lovers of Humanity." In 1815 higher Masonry was subordinated to the Grand Lodge Astrea, named for the Goddess of Justice, who had been the last to leave the earth at the end of the Golden Age. New Masonic hymns, inspired by the Holy Alliance, spoke of restoring the golden age "when love illuminated all with its beauty and men lived in brotherhood." Lutheran and Catholic priests joined, and prayers of invocation were addressed to "God, Odin, Zeus, Jehovah, Thor, and the White God:"60 Pietists were particularly active in the rapidly expanding chain of

provincial lodges, and German became the main language within the lodges.61

Quirinus Kuhlmann was venerated as a prophet of the new religion. Lopukhin included a statue of Kuhlmann in his garden of heroes, a kind of outdoor pantheon of the inner church. Labzin, in his introduction to an edition of The Path to Christ in 1815 by "our father among the saints, Jacob Boehme," suggested that Kuhlmann's teachings had been well received by "some of the boyars closest to the Tsar."62 Certainly, Labzin's mystical writings gained such favor. He published nine books on Boehme, and in 1816 was decorated by the Tsar and asked to revive his Herald of Zion. He became a kind of coordinator-in-chief for publications of the new supra-confessional church. In addition to the Herald, twenty-four books of a new devotional manual entitled "The Spiritual Year in the Life of a Christian" appeared in 1816. Other "spiritual journals," like Christian Reading and Friend of Youth (to which had been added and of All Ages), flourished as part of a general program to "bring thinking people back to faith."63 Previously proscribed prophetic works by Jung-Stilling were published. His famous Homesickness, which was serialized by the Moscow University Press throughout 1817-18, included among its subscribers twenty-four from Irkutsk alone.64 The Herald of Zion had among its sponsoring subscribers the Tsar, the Grand Duke Constantine, and all the theological academies of the empire.

In 1817 the Herald added a special section, The Rainbow, purporting to reveal new symbols and prophecies pertaining to the unification of the churches and of all humanity. Rainbows were a key symbol for higher order Masonry, because they combined sunlight (the light of the past) with rain (the sins of the present) to give men a hint of the future transformation of the world.65 The spectrum of colors in the rainbow was likened to the various churches and nationalities that were all formed from the One True Light.

For the optimistic, romantic imagination,

The One remains, the many change and pass;

Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity.66

As supervisor of heraldic symbols, Golitsyn sought to invest the official iconography of the state with the portentous symbols of occult Masonry. Classical mythology and esoteric, pseudo-Oriental motifs were incorporated into the coinage, architecture, and embellishments of the period.

The principal coin struck to commemorate the victory over Napoleon

bore the legend "Not ours, not ours, but thine be the praise, oh Lord."07 Alexander participated in prayer meetings with Quakers and Methodists; and the Moravians were gaining followers among the Kalmyks to the east and the Latvians to the west. The curator of the university at Tartu was converted, and the Moravians grew from about three thousand to forty thousand in the Baltic provinces under Alexander.68