“The Moralizing Catechism of True Freemasons” by I. V. Lopukhin as a Way of Forming the Masonic Ideal of Man

Abstract

The article analyzes the problems of I. V. Lopukhin’s “Moralizing Catechism of True Freemasons” as part of the treatise “The Spiritual Knight, or the Seeker of Wisdom” (1791). “The Moralizing Catechism” is considered to be a text that reflects the way of formation of the Masonic ideal of a person with a focus on the philosophy of Rosicrucianism. The purpose of the article: to prove that the answers to 40 questions of the “Moralizing Catechism” are the ethical basis of I. V. Lopukhin’s work. Based on the methods of ideological-thematic and subcultural analyses, the author of the article highlights the following topics raised by I. V. Lopukhin: proof of the Christian origin of Masonic teaching, description of the “scientific” knowledge of the Christian mysteries by Freemasons, the process of removing the “Old Adam” from a person and the triumph of the “Reborn man” living in the kingdom of Astrea. The “Moralizing Catechism” contains a refutation of government rumors about Masons as political enemies of Russia, describes in detail the ethical component of the private life of a true Freemason, including his attitude to family, servants, property. At the end of the article, the development of the tradition of “spiritual chivalry” in the works of Russian thinkers and writers of the 19th–20th centuries is outlined: from the Slavophiles to the culture of the Silver Age.