The Taxil Hoax
This lesson introduces the Taxil Hoax, a 19th-century deception involving claims of Satanic cult practices within Freemasonry, as the blueprint for modern conspiracy theories. Origins of the hoax are established in Enlightenment philosophy, historical distrust of Freemasons by the Catholic Church, and Leo Taxil’s own life-long anticlerical incitement of the Church. A detailed timeline that superimpose real events with the fictionalized dates of the hoax is examined. Finally, and examination of what attributes of the hoax made it so powerful at the time, and continue to reverberate through the 20th and 21st centuries.
You may want to download the Study Guide (pdf) to help you to prepare for taking the quiz at the end of the lesson.
