Beneath the picturesque West Wycombe Hill, near the small town of Buckinghamshire, about 50 kilometers from London, there is an extensive underground labyrinth called the Hellfire Caves, or simply the Hell's Caves. They are famous for the fact that in the second half of the XVIII century Vienna was a meeting place for a strange secret society called "Hellfire Club", which translates as "Hellfire Club". In fact, it was a whole network of clubs that entangled Britain and Ireland, in a series of which Hell's Caves looked only something more exotic. The population looked at them as places of gatherings of jaded youth, but in reality the matter was much more serious.
Do as you like
The first Hellfire Club was founded in 1719 by Duke Philip Wharton in London. This man was said to have a dual lifestyle. On the one hand, he was an exemplary campaigner-bureaucrat, and on the other, a drunkard, blasphemer, and rebel. The Duke of Wharton was a big fan of eccentric antics. So, having visited St. Petersburg, he walked the streets and palaces of the capital of the Russian Empire in the costume of its worst enemy - the Swedish king Charles XII. The duke chose the dictum of François Rabelais "Do as you like" as the club's motto. (Two centuries later, the same words will become the motto of the famous magician and Satanist Aleister Crowley.) Members of the Hellfire Club met on Sundays in London taverns. There they ate dishes with exotic names: "Pie of the Holy Spirit", "Devil's Loin", "Chest of Venus", and drank Gehenna Fiery punch. The children of London's finest families often spent time there with prostitutes. Moreover, there were rumors that the participants in the feasts were holding black masses. Therefore, in 1721-1722, the club was disbanded on the personal instructions of King George I.
Rebuilding in caves
In the middle of the 18th century, the club's activities were resumed. This period is associated with the name of Francis Dashwood - a successful politician, but a very strange person in essence. Francis Dashwood, Lord le Despencer spoke a lot about the benefits of religiosity, but at the same time insisted in every possible way that the Anglican Church adopt Masonic deism, that is, the concept of the existence of two equivalent divine principles: light and dark, personifying spirit and matter, respectively. It is known that there were many Catholics among Dashwood's friends. He was also close to Prince Frederick, heir to King George II and a renowned Freemason.
Rumored to be members of the Hellfire Club staged orgies and black masses
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It was Francis Dashwood, Lord le Despencer, who moved the site of the mysterious mysteries of the Hellfire Club from Madmenham Abbey, on the banks of the Thames, to the grottoes of West Wycombe. It all started with the fact that peasants from the surrounding villages were sitting idle because of a bad harvest. And then Sir Francis attracted them to the arrangement of the ancient grottoes. The origin of these caves dates back to prehistoric times. The ancient inhabitants of the British Isles mined ordinary chalk in those places. Due to the changes made under Dashwood's leadership, all evidence of the early history of the caves has been destroyed.
The restructuring plan was carefully thought out. The location of the grottoes and underground halls now leads conspiracy theorists to believe that the Hell's Caves have become a meeting place for a real secret brotherhood. At the very beginning of the labyrinth, through which an underground river flows, named by the mythological name Styx, behind the "Door of Life" there is a strange hall, the so-called "Inner Temple". Symbolic rituals were held there, the secret of which has never been solved. In addition, legends say that the caves through a secret underground passage connected to the Church of St. Lawrence of West Wycombe, also built by Sir Dashwood. This church is distinguished by an interesting feature: there is a secret round room on the bell tower; some of the phantasmagoric details of this building appear only under certain lighting conditions - at dusk or in the light of the moon.
An underground river flows at the beginning of the labyrinth
The king with his eyes glued
In the caves, the arrangement of which was completed by 1766, statues and sanctuaries of a number of ancient pagan gods were installed: Bacchus, Venus, Dionysus, Daphne, Flora, as well as various Celtic deities. The club had a generally good library, which was a bizarre mixture of the lives of saints, cabalism and all kinds of erotic works. The walls of one of the underground rooms were hung with portraits of English kings. At the same time, the eyes of Henry VIII, the one who killed his numerous wives, were always sealed with sheets of paper.
Members of the club often gathered for their performances, dressed in monastic robes, and indulged in drunkenness and revelry to the sound of bells. The culmination was often a black mass, for which the naked bodies of the most depraved noblewomen were used. Sometimes, on the contrary, the club's regulars were dressed in all white. At first glance, the participants in the ritual gatherings simply indulged in sensual pleasures, among which wine and women took the first place. However, researchers say that it was a circle with unusual pagan rituals dating back to pre-Christian sacraments, and practicing the so-called tantric rituals of the left hand to magically release sensory perception and imagination. Each of the brothers, during their stay in the "abbey", chose a friend for themselves, with whom he participated in all secret actions up to the climax,which took place in the mysterious "Inner Temple".
Devil Brotherhood
The Knights of Saint Francis of Wycombe, played by Lord le Despencer himself, were nicknamed the "devilish brotherhood" because of their secret meetings. It was admitted to select British aristocrats, politicians, writers and artists of that era. All of them led the free lives of rich rakes, sarcastically depicted in the works of William Hogarth, who was also a member of the "Club". Thus, Sir Francis Dashwood regularly gathered such people as the first Lord of the Admiralty, Earl of Sandwich, the famous politician and journalist John Wilkes, and one of the future founding fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin.
John Wilkes was a radical man. He has done much to establish the right to freedom of the press in Britain. In 1763, he read his famous "Essay on a Woman" in Parliament, for which he was convicted as a pornographer and rebel. In 1776, he introduced the first ever parliamentary reform bill. He was entrusted with making the transcripts of meetings of the British Parliament, and in time he even became Lord Mayor of London.
Another regular in the Hellfire Club was George "Bubb" Dobington, Baron Malcombe, who not only loved extravagant wigs and was unusually obese, but had a sharp and shrewd mind. He was involved in a spy network of the royal intelligence services and collected information on Jacobin organizations.
Benjamin Franklin was a versatile gifted person: an erudite, scientist, inventor, satirist, politician, political scientist, commander and diplomat. It was he who designed the lightning rod. In his books, Franklin championed the values of puritanical frugality, hard work, a sustainable family, and quality education. It hardly ties in with the rampant "Hellfire Club", but, according to the English Masons, they study the nature of the dark side of life in order to better resist it.
It is also known that in 1770 Benjamin Franklin, together with Francis Dashwood, developed a plan for the reconciliation of Great Britain and its North American colonies. The plan was rejected by parliament, with well-known historical consequences. Such facts sometimes allow conspiracy theorists to assume that US independence was forged in the Caverns of Hellfire.
Over time, the Hell's Caves were abandoned. They were restored in the early 1950s by the eleventh Baronet, Francis Dashwood, namesake of his famous ancestor. There was created a freak show of wax figures in ancient costumes, illustrating the life of caves in the now distant 18th century. Since 1951, over two million tourists have visited this attraction. In addition, throughout the 20th century, persistent rumors circulated that underground "Hellfire Clubs" still exist today, doing some kind of dark and obscene deeds.
Now in the Hell Caves there is a freak show of wax figures
Source: Secrets of the XX century, №41, October 2009, Valdis PEYPINSH