The Hellfire Club

Francis Darshwood (1708-1781) knew how to make his Satanist passion coexist with his philanthropic inclinations. He is credited with creating a very strange paracultural group called the Hellfire Club. An organization that had less to do with dark satanic rituals and a lot to do with a philosophical trend that used Satanism as a symbol of cultural transgression.

The founding and presidency of a club of such characteristics would not be so controversial if Francis Dashwood had not been a member of the House of Lords in the British Parliament, an active member of the Conservative Party and treasurer of the royal coffers.

It is worth saying that The Hellfire Club was a rather derogatory nickname. Its real name was The Monks of Medmenham, due to the establishment of its headquarters in an old abbey in Medmenham. The Club’s motto was inscribed above the doors of the abbey. It would be collected and sublimated by the occultist Aleister Crowley in the rare ethical system of The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis), both inspired by a thought by Rabelais regarding the Abbey of Thelema in his work Gargantua and Pantagruel:

Fais ce que tu voudras.

There is little evidence regarding the activities of the Hellfire Club. In this sense its members were worthy preservers of its secrets. The motto of the organization suggests an exaggerated humanism, which perhaps disregarded moral and ethical formalities in favor of the immediate and bureaucratic-free realization of desires.

The only testimony that managed to transcend the iron silence of the Hellfire Club comes from John Wilkes, a man who was never admitted to the lower orders but who did know some of their initiation rites. In this way John Wilkes denounced the activities of the Hellfire Club.

For others, the Hellfire Club not only had recreational purposes, but it was also an oracular temple dedicated to the god Dionysus. Nathaniel William Wraxall accused the “monks” of practicing aberrant satanic rituals; but the political power of the group destroyed these speculations, crushing poor Wraxall’s credibility. Wiccan Gerald Gardner surmises that the Hellfire Club worshiped a sinister variant of an entity they called The Goddess; perhaps similar to the White Godess that Robert Graves talks about.

Specifically, we know that the Hellfire Club operated between the years 1749 and 1766, and that many of its members belonged to the economic and political elite of their time. Among them it is worth highlighting Benjamin Franklin, William Hogarth, Edward Thompson, Paul Whitehead, Robert Vansittart, Thomas Potter, Francis Duffield, among others.

The few historians who have ventured to explore the history of the Hellfire Club point out that meetings were originally held in public taverns, and that they later moved to the mansion of Francis Dashwood. The first official meeting in this mansion took place on Walpurgis night in 1752. To confuse the curious, the order changed its name several times. It was called: The Brotherhood of Saint Francis of Wycombe and Order of the Knights of West Wycombe, although its nickname was retained unchanged.

The accusations that weigh on the Hellfire Club are the usual ones in this type of organization: group and clandestine love meetings, dark rites where alcohol was not lacking and even ritual murder, etc. But the truth is that perhaps this is an incomplete look at their intentions, more akin to parodying and blaspheming Christian sacredness, and above all its ethics, than actually practicing a genuine faith in evil.

The Hellfire Club finally disintegrated when Francis Dashwood took his task in the House of Lords to heart. Other stories indicate that the Club continues to be active, although its meetings no longer cause the amazement and stupor of yesteryear.

Occultism. I Esotericism.

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