La mystification de Léo Taxil

1885

Gabriel Jogand-Pagès, writing as Léo Taxil, faked a conversion to Catholicism around 1884 and spent over a decade 'exposing' a satanic Masonic cult called Palladism, complete with an invented high priestess, Diana Vaughan. At a press conference on 19 April 1897, billed as Vaughan's first public appearance, he confessed the entire fabrication. The invented material still circulates in anti-Masonic writing today.