At the same time the information given is of serious importance, because it enables us to gauge the writer's method and credibility in the one case, and his knowledge at the period in the other.

Once more, in the year 1886, Leo Taxil did not know of the Palladium as a reformed or revived institution; had he known he could not have failed to tell us.
I have not been able to trace all the sources of his information concerning the older Palladian Rite, but it comes chiefly from Ragon; he divides it into two systems:--( a) The Order of the Seven Sages, which was for men only, and appears as a banal invention with a ritual mainly derived from the "Travels of Anacharsis"; (b) The Order of the Palladium, composed of two masculine grades and one feminine grade, respectively, Adelphos and Companion of Ulysses for men, and Companion of Penelope for women.

It pretends to have been founded by Fenelon, but at the same time claims an antiquity previous to the birth of the great Archbishop of Cambrai.

Leo Taxil accuses it of gallantry, but the flirtations described in the ritual impress an impartial reader as a species of childish theatricals, a criticism practically exhausting the entire motive of the order, which, as I have already stated, lapsed into obscurity, and, so far as can be traced, into desuetude, though our witness uniformly refers to it in the present tense, and as if it were in active operation.

However this may be, the description and summary of the ritual given by Leo Taxil place it outside the possibility of a connection with Templar Masonry, and also with the Baphomet Palladium in spite of what is alleged to the contrary.