By, WPGH. Frater. Robert Ambelain ,
From his accession into the imperial purple, Napoleon Bonaparte was always proclaimed and considered to be a genuine Freemason in his lifetime, as where his father, his brothers and his
Marshals. In his book The Freemasonry of Bonaparte, Francois Collavery showed the continual role of Lodges in the diffusion of the great ideals of the French Revolution across Europe "I am a man of the Revolution" Emperor Bonaparte had declared. In 1986 the same author had assembled all of the proofs to Napoleon personally belonging to the Masonic Order in a second volume: Napoleon, Emperor, Freemason.
All of the documents with the very important witness of the archieves of the Grand Orient of France affirm that the Initiation of Napoleon Bonaparte took place in Egypt. To those we can add the documentation published by us in Number 1 of the magazine L'Initiation in 1979, an article which included the recall of a letter by Grand Master Constant Chevellion, dated November 10th 1934, confirming to Grand Master Fletcher of the USA that Napoleon Bonaparte had been received as a Mason in Cairo, which brought together Masonic members of the mission to Egypt and that Kleber presided, a Lodge carrying the name Isis. These where the Masons along with their successors who thereafter formally constituted the Rite of Memphis at Montauban in 1815.
From this period, violet became the color of it's rituals, blue being that of the French Rite and blue edged with red being that of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite. Violet constituted the color of the Parma violets, the duchy where the little King of Rome resided at four years of age.
The Rite of Memphis-Misraim associated the violet of these origins with the turquoise blue attributed to the great Isis of ancient Egypt, this joining together in double esoteric symbolism.
This is why Napoleon was one of the very first Masons of the Rite of Memphis. And the Emperor had never forgotten that he "received light" on the unique soil of holy initiation. This is why he also adopted the Bee as the symbol of his reign, with the Eagle. The Bee was the image of the Pharoh in ancient Egypt and two wings of an eagle flank the Osiran sun. Finally, a comment by Napoleon to Josephine has been reported by her intimate friends, then celebrated by Mile Lonormand in her Memoirs: "I have consumed in my life continual movement which hasn't allowed me to fulfill my duties as an initiate of the Egyptian sect."