Meet a Freemason

2011-07-21T12:08:00.007-07:00

Fundamental Readings: Books of Masonic Interest

Compiled and Annotated by

W:.B:. Eric W. Vogt, Ph.D., 32° A:.A:.S:.R:., R:.A:.M:.

Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis VII°

The following list of books, listed alphabetically by author, includes titles by scholarly

authors, most of whom are not Freemasons as well as classic Masonic reference works.

As they are the most impartial of sources, their works are offered in the interest of

preserving the favorable opinion which many people have held about Freemasonry.

As with any subject about which people may become emotionally involved with, hype,

sensationalism, exaggeration, illogical or improbable and undocumented claims of too

many writers will do more harm than good for those who want as clear a picture as

possible of the history and nature of the subject. For Freemasonry, a worldwide, loosely

knit organization whose origins are ultimately a mystery, a strong measure of intellectual

caution is even more important. Books dealing with appendant bodies, such as York Rite

or Ancient and Accepted (Scottish) Rite, have been omitted.

Berésniak, Daniel. Symbols of Freemasonry. Paris: Editions Assouline. ISBN 2-84323-033-0. A beautiful coffee-table book with text, it displays and briefly explains the outward meaning of the symbols of the Craft. Translated from French, it gives a view of the universality of Freemasonry and at the same time, its variety. Inasmuch as it reflects both the diversity of the Craft and its universality, it is a reminder of what our Founding Fathers meant when they coined the motto E pluribus unum for The Great Seal of the United States (about which controversial subject David Ovason has much to say; see entry below). I am unaware of Berésniak’s relationship to the fraternity.

Ecco, Umberto. Foucault’s Pendulum. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990. ISBN 345-41827-1-1295. A wonderful experience with fiction in which the myth and mystique of Freemasonry figures prominently. A real page-turner, but remember it is fiction! Woven into his mystery, Ecco offers two views of Freemasonry in relation to the myriad mythical sequels of the Knights Templar and its reputed relationship with secret or occult societies, whether real or imagined.

Gould, Robert Freke. A Concise History of Freemasonry. London: Gale & Polden, Ltd., 1903. Despite more recent research revealing errors and omissions in his scholarship, this work is still a standard work and is frequently cited. Perhaps too frequently; it should be the terminus a quo, not terminus ad quem for investigators, who are advised to discover if any recent articles of merit may have altered, expanded, refuted or corrected his views on any particular subject.

Mackey, Albert. Encyclopedia of Freemasonry. 2 Vols. Montana: Kessinger Publishing Company, 2000 (reprinted from 19^th Century facsimile). ISBN: 1-56459-009-2. A fundamental and famous reference work, rich in history and interpretation – which one is free to accept or not. Highly reliable, even if a bit dated.

_____. The History of Freemasonry. New York: Gramercy Books: 1996 (reprinted from the 1850s). ISBN 0-517-14982-6. Mackey was a doctor, the son of a wealthy family in Charleston, SC. He practiced medicine briefly, then dedicated himself to Masonic research. This work is dated, in that more historiographical, archival and archeological work has corrected some of his views (these defects are less found in his Encyclopedia). The value of his work lies in the fact that he explores, in forty-four chapters, numerous myths about the origins of Freemasonry, concluding at the end of each chapter that no single theory is sufficient to explain the history of the Royal Art or that many of the theories are pure fabrications. He does not make any definite conclusions about its ultimate origins, leaving the reader to agree with professor Frances Yates who stated in her book The Rosicrucian Enlightenment that Freemsonry’s origins are a “mystery wrapped in an enigma”.

Jacob, Margaret C. Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-century Europe. ISBN 0195070518. This work is intellectually accessible to the educated, general reader who is willing to spend the time to read her notes and follow her arguments. She directs her scholarly attention to the charges against, or boasts of, some Freemasons, that the Craft was responsible for the French and American Revolutions. She answers both sides of the controversy with a qualified “yes”, hastening to show that it was the already long-standing practice (in every sense) of self-government in masonic lodges that provided a blueprint for the rise of our respective constitutional governments, based on utopian ideas about the perfectability of man and society (at least as goals to strive toward). Any educated Freemason could have told Prof. Jacob that, but it is wonderful to have such distinguished academic testimony of this fact. On the other hand, a careful scrutiny of Benjamin Franklin’s travels and contacts (even in Catholic Spain!) that led to foreign support of the Revolution might push her argument more in support of the commonly held belief.

Mackenzie, K. The Royal Masonic Cyclopedia (Northamptonshire: The Aquarian Press, 1987. ISBN:0-85030-521-7. Very useful, but, as all such Victorian-era works, the contents reflect the idiosyncratic interpretations of the compiler. Still, it contains many entries which are merely factual, such as biographical, historical, literary, etc.; a wealth of data.

MacNulty, W. Kirk. Freemasonry: A Journey through Ritual and Symbol. ISBN:0-500-81037-0. This brief work is exquisitely illustrated and written. It contains excellent reproductions of engravings, posters, paintings and more. It is learned without being pedantic. He asserts, in a balanced and well articulated argument based on examination of the ritual and its symbolism, that the origins of the craft are to be found in Renaissance neoplatonism. MacNulty is a Mason.

Macoy, Robert. A Dictionary of Freemasonry. New York: Gramercy Books, 1989. ISBN: 0-517-69213-9. Another valuable reference, somewhat marred by its lack of clear organizational principles. It combines a few good features of an encyclopedia with a dictionary. Entries are well written.

Ovason, David. The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital. ISBN 0-06-019537-1. Very esoteric and a constant intellectual challenge. The more knowledge of astronomy and astrological lore one has, the easier the book will be. For readers willing to study, it is ever intriguing, Ovason details, and provides important documentation for his argument which is, in essence, that the development of the design and erection of structures in Washington, D.C. was and is according to an astronomically oriented plan, and has been in the hands of Masons through most of its history. The author assures readers that he is not a Mason. The compiler of this list lived in DC for a decade and has confirmed the correctness of his architectural and compositional observations; his interpretation of course, is open to debate, but is quite compelling.

Partner, Peter. The Knights Tempar and Their Myth. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1990. ISBN 0-89281-273-7. A responsible, serious, historical examination of the Knights Templar and the myths that arouse from their destruction and disappearance. He treats all masonic claims of Templar origin as fanciful at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. While more academically responsible than those that try to prove the Templar origins of the Craft which inevitably and invariably stretch the meaning of good evidence to cover gaps in documentation, Partner may be too timid about accepting the wealth of evidence suggesting that order’s influence on the development of Freemasonry.

Piatigorsky, Alexander. Freemasonry: The Study of a Phenomenon. London: The Harvill Press, 1997). ISBN 1-86046-265-0. This is a book for specialists in history, sociology, religious studies, anthropology or anyone willing and able to work to understand this opus magnum. The author is a non-Mason. He is a professor of comparative religion at the School of African and Oriental Studies, London. Piatigorsky presents anecdotal data to examine the attitudes of insiders (an emic approach) and outsiders (an etic one) as well as what each thinks the other thinks or declares about the Craft. He arrives at his own highly qualified, narrowly defined, disputable and controversial conclusion that Freemasonry is a form of religion – or can be for anyone on any side of this all-too-common controversy. A Russian emigré, he dedicates much attention to the Craft in Russia.

Pound, Roscoe, LL.D. Lectures on the Philosophy of Freemasonry. Anamosa, Iowa: The National Masonic Research Society, 1915. In this rather slender volume, Pound, a law professor at Harvard in the early 20^th century, provides an eloquent and clear framework for Masonic scholars and scholars of Freemasonry to circumscribe their investigations. This framework consists of identifying and defining the fields in which the subject falls: ritual, symbolism, history, jurisprudence and philosophy. He notes that these areas often overlap. In addition, he provides models of four types of Masonic authors: Preston, the educator; Krause, the moralist; Oliver, the traditonalist; and Pike, famous for his interest in metaphysics (see also Leadbeater, below, for interesting contrasts and parallels). On a pragmatic note, Pound offers three questions which each generation of Masons, and indeed each individual, should answer: 1. What is its nature and purpose?; 2. What is its relationship to society and other institutions?; and 3. What are its principles for achieving its goals?

Ridley, Jasper. The Freemasons: A History of the World’s Most Powerful Secret Society. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001. ISBN: 1-55970-601-5. A well written, thoughtful and researched history book with a wealth of data about Freemasonry and Freemasons in many countries. The greatest defect of this book is its sensationalist title, since it implies that Freemasonry is organized at the international level and also that it is so powerful – the contents of the book, particularly his chapter on the French Revolution, belies this notion.

Stevenson, David. The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century (1590-1710). ISBN 0-521-39654-9. A non-Mason and professor emeritus of history in the Department of Scottish History at the University of St. Andrews, professor Stevenson presents clear arguments with documentation from primary sources, to suggest that the formative period of the Craft was in Scotland, immediately prior to the formation of the Grand Lodge in 1717 at Apple Tree Tavern in London. His book is quite valuable, if not conclusive, for it helps one gain a contextualized view of the development of an organization that today, due to its esoteric rituals, is out of place and time to most people, an example of a cultural anachronism or atavism. It shows what influences were likely in forming the Craft as we know it today without discarding the possibility of other influences also having been important.

Waite, Arthur Edward. A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry. New York: Random House Value Publishing, Inc., 1996. ISBN: 0-517-19148-2 (reprinted). Waite’s clumpy prose style is nearly impossible to read, but worth the read if one is seriously interested in a particular entry. His views on Freemasonry were often controversial among his Masonic contemporaries, among whom were his fellow members of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Masonic Research #2076 in London, founded in 1888 and still quite active.

Wilmshurst, Walter Leslie. The Meaning of Masonry. New York: Gramercy Books, 1980 (reprinted from a 1920s edition). ISBN 0-517-33194-2. Excellent, especially for Christian Masons or those with a Christian worldview. Somewhat dated in style and is not footnoted; it is therefore not up to the standards of modern academic scholarship. It is, nevertheless, learned and reveals the depth of thought and erudition of its Victorian Era author. It is a good place to start for those interested in getting a good overview of one interpretation of the meaning of the Craft’s symbolism and its value for society and for the individual.

For an example of anti-Masonic fiction during the period of the Anti-Masonic Party’s heyday, read Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Cask of Amontillado.

The following books, some by Masons, are specifically not recommended, simply because of their less-than-orthodox scholarship, not because of their attitudes about the Craft. Indeed, some are favorable, but do no favors to the institution due to their sloppiness and often shameless sensationalism:

Baigent, Michael and Richard Leigh. The Temple and the Lodge. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1989. The strongest part of this book is its British perspective of the American War of Independence. It includes a healthy introduction to the role of Freemasonry on both sides of the conflict. However, the authors are a bit too eager to “prove” the theory of the Templar origins of Freemasonry, but are responsible in stating that the story of Freemasonry, if it could be told in its entirety, would reveal a series of accretions, a grafting of diverse elements, some of which derive from the Knights Templar. This seems to be the last almost intellectually responsible book they wrote on the subject of Freemasonry.

Hancock, Graham. The Sign and the Seal. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. An excellent read by a professional investigative journalist, but readers must be aware that, just as Knight and Lomas (see below), Hancock requires readers to make leaps of supposition with them as he leads them on a search for the Ark of the Covenant! If you like to be an armchair Indiana Jones and are willing to leap over spans of reasoning in the name of indulging in conjectural history (if such can be said to exist), then it is fun to read, and just may be true!

Knight, Christopher and Robert Lomas. The Hiram Key. Rockport, MA:

Element, 1996. A great read, it must be confessed, but truly terrible scholarship. The

authors ask readers to assume a lot and make great leaps of conjecture and supposition

with flimsy, non-existent, manipulated, highly selective or exagerated “evidence”. By far,

one of the worst books about Freemasonry to be found among friendly authors, due to

their abuse of the rules of evidence and proofs.

----------. The Second Messiah. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1997. Cervantes said that sequels are notoriously bad. This book by Knight and Lomas is proof of his observation. It is a follow up to their prior bad work and builds on it, as they themselves declare. That being the case, be assured it is even worse for its far-fetched theory depends on convenient omission of facts that otherwise would shatter it, and the delusional views of their readership.

----------. The Book of Hiram. London: Element, 2003. It can get worse. This book ought to be borrowed, not bought. The authors may be right in pointing out the ancient symbolic pedigree of the craft, but they long ago lost sight of a fundamental fact of symbolism, asserted by the famous art historian Erwin Panofsky, which is that symbols are like vehicles that travel through time and, while they can be stable bearers of content (“meaning”) which hitches a ride like passengers, new ones can and do get on board.

Leadbeater, C.W. Freemasonry and its Ancient Mystic Rites. New York: Gramercy Books, 1986 (originally published in 1926 as Glimpses of Masonic History). The author was articulate, gentlemanly, interesting and eccentric in an outlandish Victorian way. He boldly asserts his occult tendencies and, unfortunately, sounds as if he were speaking the last, authoritative word on Freemasonry. A fascinating read, despite his extreme eccentricity, he cogently defines the limits that various Masonic scholars have circumscribed around the objects of their study, that is, the limits and standards they have set for themselves and to whom they will appeal: the authentic school (he places academic historians in this category), the anthropological school, the mystic- and the occult school. He also observes that there is overlap (see Pound, above for interesting contrasts and parallels).

Picknett, Lynn and Clive Prince. The Templar Revelation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. This book is lunatic fringe fodder that will feed conspiracy theorists for years and unfortunately, the authors of this book who enjoy a large readership. In the same category, I mention their other book, Turin Shroud: In Whose Image? It is to be avoided with equal vigor. In the same vein, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln.

Robinson, John J. Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry. New York: M. Evans & Company, Inc., 1989.[1] This book has been immensely popular among Freemasons because it seems to “prove” the long-held, romantic notion of the origin of Freemasonry in the Knights Templar, a theory that became widely accepted due to the efforts of the eighteenth century Chevalier de Ramsey in France. While there probably is some merit to the influence of the Templars in the development of Freemasonry, rather than view them as the sole source of Freemasonry, it is more likely they grafted elements into an existing phenomenon in Scotland. It is a good read, but not solid scholarhip because it overstates a case only suggested by the evidence.

Works of related interest. The following works relate to Freemasonry in various ways: 18^th Century topics, comparative mythology, anthropology, etc.

Anonymous. Meditations on the Tarot Robert Powell, tr. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher / Putnam, 2002. 670 pgs. ISBN 1-58542-161-8 [author revealed to be the French theologian Valentine Tomberg (obit 1973) on the website by Bro. Jay Kenney, fellow RC member in CA on his personal website. Bro. Kenney published an article in Ad Lucem VIII, a publication of the Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis. It is included here due to its value as a powerful primer on symbolism and allegory. No mention is made of Freemasonry, but the connections will be obvious to well informed and well read people.

Decker, Ronald, Thierry DePaulis & Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. 308 pgs. ISBN 0-312-16294-4. Discusses in one section the association the Tarot had with Freemasonry, mostly in France, in the 18th century. Mostly with charlatans, it must be said.

De Santillana, Giorgio & Hertha Von Deschend. Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1969. ISBN: 0-87923-215-3. This work is challenging in many ways. It confronts many popular notions about the origins of science, myth, religion, and culture by examining myths from around the world. Very erudite. This is an incredibly rich book. It makes only passing mentions of Freemasonry, but the topic of cultural and symbolic transmission of information are vital to any historical approach to Freemasonry that draws on comparative myth, ritual, symbolism, and so forth. This book is a must, if only becuase it is a model of responsible scholarship. It argues that prehistoric science gave rise to myth, misinterpretations of myth gave rise to religion and that in the modern age, comparative religion and myth are mired down in blinds – because most scholars do not have the broad range of disciplines or range of exposure to crosscultural myth and astronomy, archeology etc. to execute responsible studies. It asserts that myth originally enciphered astronomical information and then spread from a common source to the whole earth. Compelling arguments are presented that refute or mitigate the theory that it is to our commonalities alone that similar myths appear all over the world. There are simply too many identical, discreet details that cannot be explained any other way than that they emerged from some common, late stoneage source and were dispersed. Freemasonry seems to have had some antecedents in widely dispersed cultures. For instance, they reproduce a print of an ancient Chinese astronomical treatise in which Draco is shown, personified, holding a square in one hand and a compass in the other!

Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism. New York: Norton, 1995. ISBN 0-393-31302-6. Two volumes in one, originally published in 1966 (The Appeal to Antiquity; The Tension with Christianity), these works combined in one volume are fundamental to any study of the the XVIIIth century and the Enlightenment. There is one conspicuous and paradoxical omission. In more than 555 pages of text, notes and bibliography, professor Gay mentions Freemasonry only once – in citing the title of Lessing’s masonic dialogue. The book is strewn with names of famous men long known to have been Masons without any attempt to show the contacts between them that the fraternity is known to facilitated. This serious flaw, by a Yale professor of history, has been corrected by Jacobs (see entry above). This inexplicable omission obscures the ubiquitous presence and impact Freemasonry had on XVIIIth century societies, forms of government as well as intellectual discourse and exchange. One example of how ignorance of Freemasonry’s presence in eighteenth century affairs distorts an historical interpretation is found in Prof. Gay’s labeling of Voltaire as an atheist. No atheist can be made a Mason. Three months before his death,Voltaire was initiated in the presence of Benjamin Franklin, at the Lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris, on February 7, 1778.[2]

Finally, a word of caution about the various exposés or monitors one may find, either online or in bookstores. Differences from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (Grand Lodge to Grand Lodge) and over time result in discrepancies in ritual wording and practice. As one who has examined visitors Masonically, this bibliographer assures readers that even if one has read exposés, he will not be able to accurately perform convincingly unless he has actually been initiated. It simply is not possible to “crash” a Masonic meeting. Also, as the variety of books above attest, no one person speaks for Freemasonry. Furthermore, even if one possesses an accurate monitor (to say nothing of the dangers of relying on a cipher), the experience of the ritual is not the same as reading about it. Imagine the experiential difference between eating a cake and reading a recipe!

For more information about Freemasonry, visit this webpage!

What is Freemasonry? One would sooner encounter an onion pit ere he should discover the origins or the pristine meaning of the Royal Art.

Whence came and whither can such a convoluted path lead a seeker after light? Why did Goethe, Voltaire, Franklin, Mozart, Payne, Washington, Churchill and so many other great men join this Fraternity? One must find the answers himself, as they may have. For me, so far, the answer is found in the journey iteself, in peeling away the layers of the onion.

[1] However, Robinson’s A Pilgrim’s Path: Freemasonry and the Religious Right. New York: M. Evans & Company, Inc., 1993. ISBN 0-87131-732-X, is required reading for those interested in the opposition Freemasonry has faced and still faces from the religious right. Robinson became a Mason after spending many years defending them and researching them.

[2] Mackenzie, K. The Royal Masonic Cyclopedia (Northamptonshire: The Aquarian Press, 1987), p. 761.

A Seattle Masonic Ghost Story? Reader, You Decide.

2011-03-01T12:49:00.000-08:00

Submitted for your consideration… – Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery.

     As any electrician can tell you, when a circuit is closed, the current flows. Switch a light on, and you close a circuit, making electrical current flow and power on the light bulb. Switch it off and you open the circuit, breaking the flow of electricity.
     The following story is true, in so far as the events it relates really did occur. All of the witnesses are young and healthy. Two of them are in their 20s, the oldest is 55, two of them hold Ph.D.s. and, like much of Seattle’s population, two of them are, high-tech experts and who understand circuitry quite well. You get the idea… We all have given due consideration to the event we witnessed, yet remain open minded to reasonable skepticism. You, our reader, may or may not agree with our interpretation: but if you don’t, mere skepticism is insufficient to justify dismissing the testimony of the eye witnesses out-of-hand.
     By way of introduction, just as you must believe that Jacob Marley was dead in order to appreciate Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, you must understand this basic fact about electricity in order to appreciate what five witnesses regard as a possible instance of paranormal activity at 1608 Fourth Avenue West – the location of Queen Anne Masonic Lodge, founded in 1921. The witnesses’ story emerges as much from the facts about the event we are about to relate as it depends upon the value and relevance of such biographical information as remains about our Charter Members.
     Queen Anne Masonic Lodge #242 was chartered in the twilight years of the Edwardian era, between the two Great Wars and before the Great Depression, when Seattle was still riding the wave of prosperity of the Alaskan Gold Rush and was more important and prosperous than Los Angeles.

One of the Charter Members of Queen Anne Masonic Lodge #242 was Bro. George R. Milstead, who met with the other Charter Members in the Queen Anne Branch of the Seattle Public Library early in the year 1921 to draft our bylaws and begin the process of forming the lodge. Our Charter was granted in June of 1921, amid much public ceremony recorded in the Queen Anne News.

     Judging from his photograph, Bro. George R. Milstead had appeared to be a robust, bald young man with calm, yet penetrating blue eyes. He would be the first Junior Warden, but no one could have known that he would not live to serve his term as W:.M:. when his photograph as W:.M:. was taken. Bro. George R. Milstead passed away before his installation. He would live only long enough to be pleased at his election and to have a photograph taken in September of 1923 to record that he was about to fill that distinguished and honored office for the 1923-1924 year Thus, for the previous year, in sure anticipation of assuming the chair of honor in the East, Bro. Milstead had served as our Senior Warden. As all Masons know, this is a position whose chair is in the West of the lodge room. In the case of Queen Anne Masonic Lodge, this also is the place in which the lighting for the entire room is controlled from a console at the Senior Warden’s podium.
     Now our story – or perhaps Bro. Milstead’s own – can be told. If it is Bro. Milstead’s story, may it give him rest. You decide.
     On the night of Wednesday, February 16, 2011 (A:.L:.6011), five Master Masons, including the current Worshipful Master (in his second term in the East), another twice Past Master, and three other Master Masons, were in the Lodge Room rehearsing Masonic ritual, in preparation for the following night, when another worthy man would be initiated in our Mysteries. During this rehearsal, an odd event occurred – yet not without some precedent, as you’ll soon discover.
     A sixth Master Mason was downstairs and did not witness the event. His role also is significant, as you’ll appreciate presently.
     At one particularly challenging point in the rehearsal, while all five of the Master Masons present in the Lodge Room were standing at least five paces from the station of the Senior Warden in the West, from which all the lights in the Lodge Room are controlled, the current Worshipful Master finished a line – and all the lights in the Lodge Room were extinguished immediately after the W:.M:.’s line: so that it seemed as though the outage had occured on cue.
     The elder Past Master ran to the door of the Lodge Room and bounded down the stairs to ask the sixth Master Mason, an expert building maintenance man, to investigate the source of the outage. He was in the kitchen on the phone with his young son at the time of the incident and throughout most of the aftermath. This brother had been far from the fuse box during the event, and well-away from the instrument which our Past Master had gone down to inspect. Hearing this, the Past Master went back upstairs only to find the lights back on. But how?
     The current Worshipful Master informed the returning twice-Past Master (with all present as witnesses) that after he had run downstairs, the W:.M:. had, to prevent himself from stumbling on the steps at the Senior Warden’s station, inched his own way through near-darkness to the lighting console. Mysteriously, when his hand was still inches from the console and before he could so much as touch the switch – and without any other brother upstairs or downstairs near any electrical controls – the lights suddenly came back on. Still more mysteriously, once the lights had come back on, he could see that the switch had been in the on-position the whole time: an inexplicable contradiction of how electric circuitry works.
     The rehearsal resumed uneventfully and culminated in an excellent initiation the following night. Nothing like this has ever happened at 1608 Fourth Avenue West, to our knowledge. As for precedent, various socially unrelated individuals, Masons and non-Masons alike, none of whom knew of Bro. Milstead, have reported to the twice-Past Master that when they stood near at or near Bro. Milstead’s last Station in the Lodge, his Station in the West as Senior Warden, they felt an odd chill within a certain radius of that station. These individuals revealed their impressions in an off-the-cuff manner, independently and without prompting. They all reported the sensation that they were being watched or watched-over.
     The most severe critics of Freemasonry who also believe in a personal, post-mortem conscious existence, and who would seriously entertain the idea that Bro. Milstead was present, will undoubtedly be inclined to suggest that our deceased Bro. Milstead (or some other spiritual entity righteous in their eyes) had been manifesting his disapproval of Freemasonry by shutting out “Masonic light” during our rehearsal. Yet the following night, no such “disapproving” interruption took place. On the contrary; it was a night of ritual virtually devoid of errors and well performed by all.
     It would appear that if it was our Bro. Milstead who disrupted affairs the night before, he did so to manifest his role as member of a very special category of sideliners to our degree work. We welcome, nay, we would solicit Bro. Milstead’s continued assistance and invite our readers to decide whether what happened was an inexplicable event in electrical circuitry or an unverifiable visit, as the late Rod Serling would have concluded… from The Twilight Zone.

Masonic Scholarship -- Advice for Researchers

2010-05-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

In a previous blog posting, I revealed that as a young man, I entered a very quaint "used, rare and antique bookstore" in Columbia, Missouri and asked the owner where the books about Masonic history were -- because I wanted to know "all about it." If you're familiar with any aspect of Masonic history, legend, lore, symbolism or ritual, you'll recognize how naïvely eager I was.

But here I am more years later than I like to think of, and I have read thousands of pages... of very uneven quality and perspectives on nearly every aspect of Freemasonry. And I've done it in sources available to me in two languages. I've published articles of relevance to my guild and to Freemasonry in mainstream academic, peer-reviewed journals.

My conclusion is that it is still one of the more fascinating and least understood areas of Western -- even universal -- culture. I've also given a few talks to my Masonic brothers who have invited me to help them with what they need to know in order to be responsible scholars. If these speaking engagements mean anything, they are proof of goodwill, brotherhood and humility in one stroke.

This blog is intended to help those who would like to learn about Freemasonry, whether they intend to write about it or not. These audiences are easily subdivided at first glance into Masons and non-Masons. Further subdivisions are perhaps less apparent, for there are, in both of these groups, those who are prepared to do academic research. By this I refer primarily, and almost exclusively to those who hold Ph.Ds. Why?

Because, even though once in a while a truly talented person without a Ph.D. comes along with an instinct for the "rules of evidence" and who has excellent writing skills, understands how to proceed in the "literature search" and sift reliable sources from unreliable ones, who knows how to cite sources properly, organize their writing and so forth, serious scholarship is usually only learned under close tutelage. Its methods and conventions are the results of centuries of refinement and are now pretty much universal. While I see major signs of decay around me in the US, particularly in the Humanities, there still are standards and they are upheld at what are known as R1 institutions (where "Research is #1"). Guild standards are recognized and understood by scholars internationally. While most Ph.Ds in all accredited institutions of higher learning do revere, understand and follow their guilds' standards, they are not always closely followed by faculty or valued by administrators in institutions more focused on teaching.

It would seem proper to let educated Freemasons speak about the Craft to the general public, insofar as they are at liberty by their obligations to do so. That is why I created this blog. But the truth is that there are few Masons in higher education nowadays, and the few who are there might just be out to make a sensational buck, despite all they know. The general public is always drooling for something sensational. The more mysterious or scandalous, the better. And of course, no one speaks for Freemasonry. There is no one central defining authority about its meaning or purpose. Odd, isn't it? This fact makes Freemasonry vulnerable to stupid and bigoted attacks. The insiders' view, known as the "emic" perspective, is tainted in the public eye for their being, well, insiders.

The well intentioned non-Masonic Ph.D. is at a disadvantage for obvious reasons as well. The outsiders' view, known as the "etic" perspective, is tainted from the point of view of insiders for being, obviously, outsiders, absent from the culture of Freemasonry, no matter what he or she may have read in documents purporting to "expose all." This disadvantage is heightened somewhat in the case of a woman scholar, since traditional, regular Freemasonry is a fraternity and does not admit women. Nevertheless, there have been and are great scholars in this latter group, men and women, such as Dame Frances A. Yates, Steven C. Bullock, Mark Tabbert, Margaret C. Jacob, David Stevenson and Alexander Piatigorsky.

The difficulty for the serious Mason who has a Ph.D. is that he may be perceived, rightly or wrongly, by his peers in the academy. They might whisper about him. He fears questions like these going through people's minds: "Is that scholarship?"; "There he goes, trying to recruit people!"; "Another weirdo, grinding his axe!" or, more subtle responses such as: "He's writing about what no one else among us here are able to do -- no fair! How can we judge this work when we don't know anything about it?"

Worse still, in our day and age of hyperbolic and agonizing political correctness (a form of McCarthyism aimed from the left or aimed from the last frustrated seethings of feminism amid a post-feminist culture), Freemasons in the academy might be fearful of being viewed as misogynists, especially if they are more successful than their potential critics as scholars in their guilds, never mind that many such men give a lot of scholarship money to females, are happily married and have -- oh, my, daughters!

Finally, there is another group comprised of Masons and non-Masons whom I generally place in the "Masonic ghetto." Both of these groups are usually sans Ph.D. and both are, or can be, dangerous to Freemasonry. The former often deliberately; the latter because of his best intentions to defend or represent it without adequate academic preparation or guidance. My remaining comments are primarily directed at this latter group.

Remember what you learned in high school and college about good writing. Get a copy of the Harbrace College Handbook of English -- a book unhappily no longer required of most freshmen. Become familiar with responsible and irresponsible books about Freemasonry. Review what a thesis statement is. Learn how to cite sources properly and how to quote them. Beware of too many editorial digressions and sermonizing. It's tough to do and I don't know if I always succeed in my blog postings! Outline your argument. In short, besides citing reliable sources to shore up your argument, remember: Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Symbology

2010-05-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word symbology came into the English language in 1840 as a shortened form of symbolology, which makes much more etymological sense, but evidently was a bit awkward to pronounce for some. Dan Brown's novels, featuring the character known as "the Harvard Symbologist Robert Langford," has made symbology a household word.

In the real academic world, symbology is seldom used to describe those of us who engage in the scholarship of discovery and interpretation in the areas of literary and artistic criticism (not to be confused with book reviews). The term most apt to describe what Langdon does (usually in a puerile way, however) is semiotics. While one does encounter the word symbology in reference works such as we'll examine below, the difference between the two words is itself symbolic of the vast chasm that separates the superficial fictional world of Dan Brown and the real, less glamorous and relatively inaccessible world of serious scholarship. To sum it up, the word symbology does not show up in job descriptions or job announcements.

This blog post is intended to help shed some light on what real symbology entails and to encourage the intellectually inclined fans of Dan Brown to explore genuine sources of information which Dan Br0wn often alludes to or enumerates, but seldom seems to have digested. I shall in a moment offer some titles that will set you on the path to a lifetime of delightful discoveries that will, I hope, lead you far above and beyond what Dan Brown's novels have inspired you to explore.

The most succinct definition of semiotics I can offer is this:

Semiotics studies how humans create, interprete and transmit meaning and even what it means to mean something. The objects of its study are -- anything and everything to which meaning is, or can be, ascribed.

The champion of semiotics is Umberto Ecco, whose academic work A Theory of Semiotics was first published in 1976. However, an excellent primer is Daniel Chandler's more recent work Semiotics: The Basics. Ecco is best known to the public as the author of The Name of the Rose which became a very popular movie starring Sean Connery. He later wrote Foucault's Pendulum -- the latter being the most intriguing fiction dealing with esoterica I have ever encountered, with The Shadow of the Wind coming in close behind.

However, in order to begin to understand or engage in semiotics in an educated way, one needs to acquire the tools.
I suggest beginning with the collection of essays known as Man and His Symbols, edited by Carl Jung. It is a collection of five major essays and a concluding chapter by different authors (only the first chapter is by Jung). One quote alone suffices to show its value as a primer for the study of symbols:

"It is not easy for modern man to grasp the significance of the symbols that come down to us from the past or that appear in our dreams. Nor is is easy to see how the ancient conflict between symbols of containment and liberation relates to our own predicament. Yet it becomes easier when we realize it is only the specific forms of these archaic patterns that change, not their psychic meaning" (p. 156).

In addition to this classic primer, I suggest reputable dictionaries of symbols. They really do exist. I do not refer to those entertaining but sketchy Victorian inventories about what this-or-that means in one's dreams.

Let's look at two serious dictionaries and one encyclopedia. The first is Jean E. Cirlot's work with the straightforward title: A Dictionary of Symbols. It contains enough material for a lifetime of study, particularly if one extends his reading to the works he cites in his bibliography. Imagine finding a citation dealing with the meaning of mirrors only to discover their connection with memory, water, the moon...

The next offering is more an encyclopedia than a dictionary and is beautifully illustrated with hundreds of color plates -- and it isn't expensive. It was authored by Alexander Roob and published by The Hermetic Museum as Alchemy and Mysticism. Jungian in its approach, it includes a responsible treatment of the symbolic system of Freemasonry and has a useful index and bibliography.

Finally, I recommend a dictionary by Penguin called simply Dictionary of Symbols. It is the work of two authors, a fact that gives it advantages and disadvantages. The chief disadvantage is that that quality of information is uneven since there seems to have been no one, controlling editorial mind to mediate between them; at times this results in entries whose information is a bit off the mark (judging from references about subjects I am more familiar with). Ironically, the advantages are also a result of its dual authorship since many of the entries on related subjects complement each other and round out the perspective of the reader.

Even though all these recommendations, except for Jung's work, are reference works, they make for enjoyable and profitable reading. I often spend hours reading entries on related subjects, going from one to another reference work, noting other books to read as I examine the bibliographies.

Finally, don't forget to follow this blog -- or at least post a comment or ask a question.

How to Become a Freemason

2010-05-08T00:45:00.000-07:00

First, why would a Freemason write an article about how to become a Freemason if we don't solicit membership?

This blog posting is intended to clear up a few issues that a man might have about how to join, if he already is inclined to do so. No question about it, we prefer to dissuade men from joining rather than swell the ranks with men who stay for awhile and then, having satisfied their profane and idle curiosity, leave the fraternity.

If you are reading this blog post and especially if you have been following it, the thought of joining has probably entered your mind. If so, and you aren't quite sure what to do next, you have come to the right place.

You may have already seen some bumper-sticker slogan with a Masonic Square & Compass that reads "2BE1ASK1." While that pretty much sums it up, I don't like "thinking" that is only as deep as a bumper-sticker is thick, so let's put a little substance into that statement.

Let's assume you've done some reading, including some on the internet, which is often highly inflamatory or sensational. If you already know someone who is a Mason and he's approachable, all you have to do is tell him you're interested in joining. Ask him for a "petition" and tell him you'd like to meet the men in his lodge. It's always interesting to us to learn why a man is interested in joining and as you move closer to that moment, you'll be asked that a lot. In many ways, we are "testing" you to see whether you're joining for the right reasons.

Your Mason friend will probably let you know when his lodge has dinner before its meeting and invite you to come by and join them. They may have some other thing going on besides dinner. Each lodge has its own "culture" -- or chemistry. Some are more social than others, some have a lot of sports fans, or hunters, fishermen... and then there's demographics about age and profession, education, and so on. At any rate, let him know that you understand that you can't stay after dinner or whatever the even is because Masonic meetings are strictly closed to all but members. By telling him that, you'll spare him the anxiousness some men feel when they have to tell a non-Mason friend that they can't come upstairs.

Depending on how well you know each other, he may ask you if you believe in a Supreme Being and an afterlife. These are not questions that require lengthy answers and it is highly unlikely that he will probe any further than to find out that you do.

Atheists cannot be Masons. That said, you don't have to be a church-goer or belong to any particular church or have any particular religion. So relax about that, so long as you can honestly answer that you believe in a Supreme Being -- no matter what your conception of that Being might be. One of our goals is to bring men together who might have otherwise never associated with one another -- because religion is a topic that often divides the world in bitter ways.

I remember when I was asked that question. The fellow was an elderly Jewish man, a retired Chicago police officer. When I started to launch into my personal religious autobiography, he cut me off politely and said that for Masons, those details are a person's private business.

The same goes for politics. Sure, we talk politics and religion -- outside lodge meetings. Inside, those two topics are strictly forbidden. It's a divisive subject.

You'll get a petition to fill out with some basic information about yourself. You'll have to pay the initiation fee -- which varies from lodge to lodge, even within the same Grand Lodge. Local lodges in each state in the US are under the oversight of a Grand Lodge.

Once you've filled out the petition, paid your fee (refundable if for some reason you're not approved for membership), your petition will be read in lodge and a committee assigned to meet you. Sometimes they want to meet your wife, to be sure she understands a little more about your involvement and knows about the time commitment. This is typically one or two nights each month, but often lodges have events and dinners for the whole family.

The committee members sometimes meet with you one at a time, depending on local custom or just realities of schedules. They will almost always want to know what you know, or think you know about Freemasonry, how you came to be interested, what you are looking for. They'll let you ask questions. Masons love to talk about the fraternity to people who are respectfully interested, so be sure to make some time and find a place where he can talk more openly.

As you move toward a decision about the organization, it is only fitting that you should seek out reliable books, such as W. Kirk MacNulty's Freemasonry: A Journey through Ritual Symbol. It has beautiful pictures and an educated, well informed narrative that explores many aspects of the ritual, without revealing what cannot be revealed.

The committee makes its report and the lodge ballots or votes on your petition. The approval must be unanimous. When we consider a man for membership, we always ask ourselves whether the fraternity and the man are a good match for each other and whether he will make a positive contribution to the group's dynamics and to the organization as a whole.

I've met a few men whom I have referred to other lodges -- I'll be honest here -- one I recall was a vegetarian and a total non-drinker. That's fine, but we eat a lot of steaks in our lodge and drink wine. I liked the guy. He was talented, but I realized he would be more comfortable in a lodge where I happened to know there were several veggans, so I was honest with him and introduced him to a man from that other lodge.

Once you're approved, you are no longer a petitioner, but a candidate for the degrees of Masonry. You'll be contacted and a date will be set for you to be initiated as an Entered Apprentice, the first of the three degrees of Ancient Craft Freemasonry.

It takes about three to five months to do become a Master Mason and the procedure for preparing for the next degree varies from lodge to lodge. There is always some measure of "memory work" -- material that has to be well learned. I saw a photocopy of George Washington's Masonic record. He was initiated in November, passed to Fellow Craft in December and raised as a Master Mason in January. It made an impression on me because those were the same months in which I had made those same steps.

Perhaps you're interested in joining but apprehensive about joining something that you can't really find out much about until you join -- commit to, in fact. That can be disconcerting, but it need not be. Freemasonry does not ask or require that you forsake your commitments to family, religion or your country. In fact, it encourages you to keep them.

I hope this posting has helped you if you have been sitting on the fence. Either way it pushed you is fine. We want strong, committed members who want to make friends and connections that last a lifetime. I can say without hesitation that my experience in this fraternity has been, next to my family, the most rewarding of associations.

In Search of the Mystic Stream

2010-03-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

When I was in my early 20s, prior to going to graduate school where I eventually earned a Ph.D., specializing in Baroque Spanish Drama & Poetry, I went into used bookstore -- Ninth Street Books, if I remember correctly -- in Columbia, Missouri, in search of books about Freemasonry. If I weren't charitable toward youthful and exuberant naïvité, I'd be embarrassed to tell how I approached the owner and told him that I wanted to know "all about" the history of Freemasonry.

From my youthful perspective, his reply was filled with crusty cynicism. Pointing vaguely toward an area on a shelf toward the back of the store, all he said was: "Good luck with that one."

The study of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque cultural artifacts involves a lot of reading and subsequent pondering about the transmission of culture and the nature of that transmission. It is a rough and rugged road indeed, one fraught with the equal dangers of jumping to conclusions as well as missing details. Often, both errors are due to the difficulty of removing the cultural filters through which we read and interpret the past. Imagine a world lit by fire and recorded by the quill...

The adventure into the past involves the risk of being wrong and so responsible scholars, among whom I like to number myself, will include caveats and disclaimers along with their balanced use of source material. Consider my caveat already expressed and allow me to offer a trail through which we might find the origins of modern Freemasonry, that is, prior to 1717 when the first Grand Lodge was formed in London. Let's work backward from that moment and examine a list of names who seem to suggest linkage in terms of personal relationships, as well as intellectual, spiritual and (to our modern way of thinking) occult, interests.

Dr. David Stevenson, a Scottish historian (a non-Mason), offers a glimpse of the birth of modern Freemasonry through his scholarly examination of the oldest extant minutes from Kilwinning Lodge, dating from the 1590s. The first name that stands out as an educated man associated with the Craft guild is Robert Moray (d. 1602), "master of works" for King James. It is suggested that Moray's esoteric (read "scientific") interests influenced the development of Freemasonry.

Stevenson's account of the origins of Freemasonry in Scotland are not univesally accepted. Prior to his work, Dame Frances Yates postulated that the influential Rosicrucian-related writings and activities of John Dee on the Continent had made their way back to the court of Elizabeth and there exerted an influence that gave birth to Freemasonry. Stevenson does not agree and the problem is probably unsolvable, unless one considers the possibility -- a likely one in my opinion -- that these two points of view only are mutually exclusive if one is looking for "the" birthplace of Freemasonry.

Under Elizabeth I, the name of John Dee stands out as one who also excelled in his knowledge of astrology and the occult. He was her court astrologer, so able, it is said that he predicted the precise date, time and manner of the death of Sir Phillip Sydney.

Chronologically, Dee precedes Moray somewhat, but their careers and influence in the upper reaches of society in England and Scotland definitely overlapped. The question is whether they mingled and if so, where, how and in what context.

The cultural waters of the Baroque are murky enough without asking questions so arcane as those that concern themselves with Freemasonry. But one recent source that dares to venture into those waters and does so with success is John Churton's The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians and the First Freemasons. Churton is thoroughly familiar with Stevenson's and Yates' works as well as with those of Margaret Jacobs, who has published extensively about Freemasonry for the past thirty years. One of her more significant is The Origins of Freemasonry, now in its second edition.

Next, considering the generation after Dee and Moray, also with sufficient overlap for cultural transmission in England, we find Sir Francis Bacon. His eerily modern work The New Atlantis (1626), coincides with the birth of empirical science and foreshadows the fanciful works of Jules Verne (also a Freemason). The New Atlantis is noteworthy in the context of conjectures about Masonic history due Bacon's use of "Saloman's House" -- a place of learning which his narrator explains thus:

"It was the erection and institution of an order, or society, which we call Saloman's House, the noblest foundation, as we think, that ever was upon the earth, and the lantern of this kingdom. It is dedicated to the study of the works and creatures of God. Some think it beareth the founder's name a little corrupted, as if it should be Solomon's House. But the records write it as it is spoken. So as I take it to be denominate of the King of the Hebrews, which is famous with you, and no strangers to us; for we have some parts of his works which with you are lost; namely, that natural history which he wrote of all plants, from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall; and of all things that have life and motion. This maketh me think that our King finding himself to symbolize, in many things, with that King of the Hebrews, which lived many years before him, honored him with the title of this foundation. And I am the rather induced to be of this opinion, for that I find in ancient records, this order or society is sometimes called Solomon's House, and sometimes the College of the Six Days' Works, whereby I am satisfied that our excellent King had learned from the Hebrews that God had created the world and all that therein is within six days: and therefore he instituted that house, for the finding out of the true nature of all things, whereby God might have the more glory in the workmanship of them, and men the more fruit in their use of them, did give it also that second name."

For the complete, online text of The New Atlantis, prepared by William Uzgalis at the University of Oregon, click here.

Bacon's career in turn overlaps neatly with that of Elias Ashmole who is often referred to as the first Freemason of record, since he noted his initiation in his diary. He was also one of the charter members of the Royal Society, along with Sir Isaac Newton and Christopher Wren, who was the architect of the reconstruction of London after the Great Fire in 1666. Wren is often said to have been the first Grand Master, although that seems implausible and unlikely, since there was no Grand Lodge for him to be Grand Master of prior to 1717. Still, the period from 1717 to 1721 is poorly documented and, since he died in 1723, it is at least possible but unprovable.

Once we pass the time of the founding of the Royal Society, we have only to sort out the details of the four years following the formation of the first Grand Lodge. After that, we are in the "historical" period of Freemasonry.

What may we make out of earlier times, prior to even the 1580s? There surely is some gold amid the dross, but there has been so fodder for Masonic publishing ghettoes that the general public will probably remain perplexed and, with reason, annoyed at the lack of any clear picture as to the history of Freemasonry. One day, I may even publish my own private opinions on the matter... in the meantime, feel free to ask!

Liberal Arts Education: A Masonic Tradition

2010-03-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

One of the most beautiful portions of Freemasonic ritual involves a lengthy, memorized discourse about the Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, and Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy. It is a delight to deliver it and always a pleasure to hear it delivered "trippingly on the tongue."

This posting is meant to be a primer to all those who are interested in their historical transmission and who are interested in the future of the studies of the liberal arts, whether Mason or not.

These subjects were known collectively as the Liberal Arts to distinguish them from the Mechanical Arts -- and also because they were associated with "free" men as opposed to serfs or slaves. During the Middle Ages, the first three of the Seven Liberal Arts were dubbed the Trivium and were associated with the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity; the other four were known as the Quadrivium and were associated with both the four cardinal virtues of Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence and Justice as well as with the four rivers of Paradise. Masons will especially appreciate some of these associations and see immediately the hand of Medieval Masons in the language of our ritual work.

Certainly, Freemasonry is not the source of these disciplines, but from ancient times in fact, the study of these traditional Seven Liberal Arts has been closely associated with, championed and advocated by the building craft, beginning with the explicit admonitions about the education of an architect made by the famous architect of Caesar Augustus, Vitruvius. His Ten Books on Architecture were never "lost" during the Middle Ages. He spends considerable time outlining the ideal education of an architect, and specifically refers to the Seven Liberal Arts. Copies of this treatise had travelled with the Legions to all parts of the Empire, so that fortresses, bridges, aqueducts and so forth could be constructed. From this work by Vitruvius, the architect who "found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble," we know that the Roman Empire had well organized guilds of Masons -- schools that passed on the art and craft of building. These guilds survived in various parts of the Empire long after the Fall of Rome -- and in the period when Christianity had also infused itself into every nook and cranny of public life. It isn't difficult for an attentive and studious Mason to identify a few details in our work that suggest that a Christian cultural veneer was applied over a pre-Christian guild ritual. The most telling is the seemingly arbitrary use of the Holy Saints John... about whom Sir James Fraser had much to say in his monumental work The Golden Bough.

During the Middle Ages, most education was under Church control. The monasteries preserved and copied manuscripts -- and Vitruvius' work was one of the more often copied, since monasteries needed to be built -- and built to last. Eventually, as universities were established in the 1200s at Paris, Bologna, Salamanca and Oxford, the Liberal Arts model was naturally adopted, and over time, adapted for the development of curricula. As one might expect, with time, experience and new discoveries, other subjects naturally were added to what constituted the fundamental education of a university educated person. I am endebted to a colleague of mine, Dr. William Purcell, for the recommendations I am about to make. One very important treatise about the Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages is David L. Wagner's The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages. For an example of an actual medieval treatment of the Seven Liberal Arts, in typical, medieval allegorical form, is that of Martianus Capella.

The link between the ancient study of the Seven Liberal Arts and the medieval guilds of stone masons, which over time became modern Freemasonry, may be found in a document known as the Halliwell Poem or the Regius Manuscript, from about 1390 (although the language dates it to about 1290).

Turning to an examination of sources for the study of each of the Seven Liberal Arts, two great resources for studying the Grammar of English is Analyzing English Grammar, by Thomas P. Klammer and Analyzing the Grammar of English, by Richard V. Teschner and Eston Evans. You can also read a brief, but very informative treatise about Grammar's role in the ancient world by a professor of Classics, Dr. Owen Ewald, here.

Another work that casts a great deal of light on the subject of the English language in particular is Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, by an ingenius fellow, John McWhorter. It makes a lively read whose well documented arguments challenge many cherished but apparently incorrect ideas about the development of the English language and even reach far back into antiquity.

If you are interested in the more general area of the use of language and of course, of its potential for misuse, the great classic by S. I. Hiyakawa ought not be ignored by any person of refinement! His monumental work, Language in Thought and Action, will help you to fight the on-going battle with ignorance among those who "confuse the map with the territory."

Moving on to the subject of Rhetoric, the place to start is, no surprise, Aristotle's Rhetoric. I have a couple of recommendations. One is George Kennedy's Aristotle's Rhetoric and Friedrich Solmsen's edition of The Rhetoric & Poetics of Aristotle. The Poetics is also a fascinating work. It does not deal exclusively with what we now narrowly define as poetry. In one of the chapters, using anger as a model for his acute analysis, Aristotle examines human emotions. This chapter could be considered a primer for the study of psychology.

The study of Logic teaches critical reasoning skills to enable a person who has mastered language and the poetic devices employed by skilled speakers to get his point across with sound arguments. Nowadays, this skill is often taught by symbolic logic. One of the greatest book written on the subject in the twentieth century was Irving Copi's Logic. As a sidebar, I had the honor of being a student of his at the University of Hawaii in the 1970 when he was teaching there. Maybe I'm just enthusiastic, because Dr. Steve Layman, a colleague of mine who is author of a logic text informs me that even more popular than Copi's book is Patrick Hurley's Logic is also available with CD ROM.

As for Arithmetic, and Mathematics generally, there are a number of books available that are very readable and educational for even the non-specialists or the math-phobic. One is Matthew Watkins' Useful Mathematical & Physical Formulae.
Another, which I am reading now, is the classic from the 1970s, The History of Pi, by Petr Beckmann.

Of the seven liberal arts, the one most associated and relevant to the ancient craft of building is GEOMETRY.

There are a number of books I recommend. First, I want to encourage Masons to take seriously the admonition that they should study geometry.

There are a number of online sources -- just google "Euclidean Geometry" and you'll find a lot of valuable resources. But for those who, like me, enjoy a "real" book, I recommend a book that is probably out of print but which can be found online: Plane Geometry for College Students by William Stone, from 1958!

Other books that will dazzle you with amazing facts about the geometry in the world around us include A Little Book of Coincidence by John Martineau, Sacred Geometry, by Miranda Lundy, The Power of Limits, by Gyorgy Doczi and Sacred Architecture, by AT Mann.

Despite the fact that I've been co-author of five volumes of previously unknown Baroque music, I am not a musician, but love Music, the sixth of the Seven Liberal Arts.

I recommend Barret Tagliarino's Music Theory because it is well written and can give even the average person a great appreciation for music and its relationship to geometry.
Finally, the queen of the Seven Liberal Arts is Astronomy. Even if you are not mathematically inclinced, you will love Robin Heath's Sun, Moon & Earth -- a good place to start for anyone interested in the heavenly bodies.

Finally, remember that the Seven Liberal Arts are the foundation of all learning. If you are a parent, insist on their conscious and deliberate inclusion in your child's education, public or private. You might not win that battle, so be proactive and give your child the wonderful roadmap to becoming a life-long learner, ever curious about the world and how it works.

If you're Mason, by all means, dig in and drink deeply from these and other books. Finally, no matter who you are or where you're starting from, never cease to learn and never cease encouraging others to do so.

Enjoy!

Masonic Secrets

2010-03-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

If you poke around even a little on the internet or prowl about certain sections of your local bookstore in search of Masonic secrets, you've probably run into pictures, drawings, even video clips that at first makes your heart race but leaves you disappointed. I will reveal only what I am not bound to not reveal, neither confirming nor denying what you think you have found.

Even if all you have seen and heard were true and you memorized and practiced them, you would not be able to gain admission into a tyled Masonic lodge meeting. Why? Because without actually having experienced the conferral of the degrees and considerable practice, a person will not understand the context or how to actually use the passwords, signs and so forth. To put it like a theatre director might: There are performance subtleties that elude print, picture and modes of transmission other than person to person.

Even Dan Brown, an author quite sympathetic to Freemasonry, makes some big mistakes in The Lost Symbol. One mistake in particular may have been deliberate. He used an elaborate, ghoulish ritual scene that never has had any part in regular Freemasonry. But he's not in the business as a novelist to tell the truth, but rather to spin a good yard.

What are Masonic secrets? Speaking for myself, I will say that there are three categories of Masonic Secrets. First, there are the rituals and conferrals of the various degrees. Think of these secrets as form, formatting or packaging. What is actually packaged, the content, is not anything you can't learn somewhere else, except for the second type of Masonic Secrets. They are the most obvious and most misunderstood and consist solely of the modes of recognition, about which so many anti-Masons seem to know so much. Yet the greatest secrets of all are the insights gained over time from the personal experience of participating in the degrees, studying and learning its symbolism and meeting the many friends you always had but didn't know.

If you're reading this, it's because you're curious about Freemasonry. I have a deal for you: I'm curious as to why so many people visit my blogs and yet never leave a comment or better yet, a question. So, again, I invite your respectful, genuine participation and you'll get an answer.

Mormonism's Misuse or Abuse of Freemasonry

2010-02-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

Well, folks -- this is a long post. If you're interested in a curious item that throws the light of poetic truth on a curious puzzle in American religious history, read on. As Rod Serling used to say as he introduced episodes of The Twilight Zone: "submitted for your approval" -- and without further comment:
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Deconstructing Mormonism’s Sacred Grove: A Retrospective on Refutations of LDS Truth
Claims in Scholarly Literature (1877-2007)

Dave E. Dunnfernow, Ph.D.

Few of the truth claims among world religions have appeared more bizarre or more refreshing to those hearing its “good news” for the first time than the LDS claim to be the latter-day restoration of the Church that Jesus Christ founded while on earth. Depending on whether one is naïve or skeptical by nature, one may be compelled either to rush headlong into a simplistic solution to the schisms of the past two thousand years or be repulsed by the charms of yet another set of charlatans – particularly by smiling, corporate packaging in which the LDS message is delivered door-to-door.

Naturally, those who are seriously inclined to engage in the discussion must first either believe in Jesus Christ or at least be willing to intellectually entertain the notion of His divinity. Furthermore, they also must be willing to consider as plausible the notion that He created not just a church, but the Church, that it had a particular organization, that He intended for it to endure, yet inexplicably knew it would not and that He therefore undertook its restoration in upstate New York in the early 19th century, choosing Joseph Smith, Jr., a young, marginally literate farm boy, as its first “prophet, seer and revelator.”

This article will present, for the first time, a gathering of obscure scholarly observations produced over roughly the past century and a quarter which have variously illuminated the internal contradictions of Mormonism or offered enticing alternative theories invoking scarcely known source materials that coalesced into Mormonism (1) and continue to contribute to its ever-evolving mystique. In order to forego a recounting of what is historically accepted, as well as all that is asserted about its miraculous origins, it will be expected that readers are already sufficiently acquainted with the chief truth claims and historical details of the rise of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The arrays of observations made by the diverse group of international, independent scholars we shall examine certainly will not end controversy, but they are representatives of an assortment of reasonable counterclaims that address the chief tenets of Mormonism. Collectively, they constitute evidence against what should be patent absurdities; for indeed, if the claims Mormonism has been making for nearly two centuries were made afresh today, they would not be granted a hearing. Mormonism simply has enjoyed the advantage of a head start. It began when science was less equipped to counter them and religion, particularly in the expanding American frontier, grew as wild and uncultivated by reason as buffalo grass.

Before proceeding to examine the various articles listed in the bibliography, it will be of value to the less-informed readers to acquaint them with the salient fallacies of Mormon apologetics. One ubiquitous feature of Mormon apologetics is that it is simultaneously mercurial and anachronistic. Its proponents undercut history by as many curious, fallacious circularities as necessary, the underlying premise of which is that all the truths about God and His plan of redemption are, and always have been, the ones currently laid claim to by Mormonism. Whatever historical data do not fit are dismissed with the explanation that mankind’s historical record is incomplete and that therefore the details that would cohere with accepted history have been lost. This fallacious mode of argument does cohere with Mormonism; after all, the golden plates on which the Book of Mormon was written also went missing. Sometimes, in order to justify why Mormonism is so different from, say, the early Church, the Mormon apologist will cite, as if it were evidence, that God’s various dispensations of His Gospel were incomplete and imperfect because people were not ready for it. Never mind that the Son of God Himself had just finished setting it up. Even unbelievers can see this inconsistency. So, “absence of evidence” for the Mormon “historian” thus “is not evidence of absence.” According to this highly selective process, the prophets of the Old Testament knew what would be in these latter days and would feign to have revealed it, were it not for the wickedness of the people. To use a Mormon practice as a metaphor for Mormonism’s approach to history, anything in the past can be baptized for the dead and made to fit its revised or restored history. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, however.

Thus, when the soil of the Americas yields no archeological evidence to support the claims of ancient civilizations described in the Book of Mormon, this very significant lack of artifacts is erased in one brazen swipe across the moral and reasoning conscience by attributing the evidential dearth to the earthquakes that devastated America when Christ visited the continent after His resurrection (again, according to the Book of Mormon). And again, when it is pointed out that there is no geological record of such massive earthquakes in so short a span, no matter. The Mormon apologist can run to still lower intellectual ground and decree that rain and vegetation could cover up the evidence, or decide to sink it all beneath the waves by the dismissive observation, trivial, trite and yet true enough to catch the unwary observation that coastlines were not then as they are now. And so it goes: all objections to Mormonism’s truth claims are met by continuing to build a maze of increasingly elaborate and often internally contradictory excuses as the mouse of truth scurries to emerge. One by one, the truth claims of Mormonism are hurriedly propped up, ad hoc, as if by so many thin stilts of excuses straining to hold the Mormon edifice above the swiftly rising flood waters that contain either evidence to the contrary or reveal how Mormonism’s claims have no supporting evidence at all. These tactics will not surprise those who are familiar with that trick of forgers (and good fiction writers) that involves – surprise of surprises – lost, missing or newly discovered manuscripts. The difference between Mormonism and a clever novelist is not tactical, it is moral.

The articles to be examined will not be revealed and explicated in any way to suggest a hierarchy of severity, but chronologically. No attempt is made to decide for readers which fallacy is more egregious than any other. After all, if one is guilty of one point of the Law, he is guilty of them all. Nor are these the only sources to be found. They are merely the most interesting and thematically representative.

Writing in late nineteenth-century London, Kenneth Mackenzie compiled a six-volume collection entitled The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia in 1877. In its day, this publication did not receive its due either among the general public or members of the Craft. Other publications, more “mainstream,” even with regard to their attitudes to esoteric aspects of Freemasonry, eclipsed it. However, following the Victorian Occult Revival and thanks to a renewed interest in wider and deeper studies than so-called knife-and-fork Masons usually study, Mackenzie’s work, like those of JSM Ward’s, have come into respectability.

One of his thousands of entries is entitled “Mormon Masonry.” In this brief entry, Mackenzie revealed what was then the “endowment” ceremony of the Mormons. It is quite different from the one practiced today in LDS temples. In fact, the temple ceremonies have changed much over the past 130 years -- to suit the tastes of converts who may be sensitive to older rituals (2). In Mackenzie’s exposé of 1877, the LDS endowment bore little resemblance to any Masonic practices past or present; however, a number of discrete points betrayed its debt to Freemasonry and other traditions instead of suggesting latter-day revelation as their source. Its borrowings from the anointing (as practiced by catechumens in the Roman Catholic Church for over a millennium and a half) further reinforce the evidence of Mormonism’s eclectic nature.

Mackenzie states:

"The Latter-Day Saints, with great shrewdness, have tried to harmonize their institutions with pre-existent forms of social life, and they have, therefore, a system of Masonry. This is called the Endowment […] each member of the body is then blessed according to its function […] This completes the lustration. A new name is next given […] the initiate is […] invested with a linen tunic; and a small square linen apron, ornamented with fig leaves […] Oaths are now administered, grips and pass-words communicated, and the initiates are admitted to the third degree of the Endowment, or first degree of the Order of Aaron. The second degree consists of the revelation of the Book of Mormon to man as a means of redemption, and oaths, grips and pass-words of this degree are given. From this degree the candidates are passed to the priesthood, third degree, or Order of Melchizedek. The fourth degree is the second degree of the same order […]” (497-8, italics added for emphasis).

Anyone even slightly familiar with Freemasonry will readily recognize, and if also a reasonable person, admit the borrowings: the lustrations of the Roman Catholic catechumen and the use of grips, passwords, oaths, etc., some of which are nearly identical to Masonic practice, albeit that they are used by Freemasons sans claims of divine origin or even the slightest suggestion that they might be efficacious for salvation as sacraments. Hence it is plain that the Mormons borrowed heavily from a fraternal ritual and recast it into a religious rite to match their own fancy. Brigham Young, the second LDS “prophet, seer and revelator,” declared that these signs and grips would be necessary in the next life to pass the angels that stand as sentinels, in order to enter the Celestial Kingdom. In his statement about the sentinels of the Celestial Kingdom, he was borrowing the concept of passing sentinels (of a very earthly, quasi-historical, militaristic flavor and thoroughly symbolic sort), along with the line “Holiness to the Lord” from the Royal Arch degree of the York Rite system of Freemasonry which in turn had taken it and fancifully adapted it from the Leviticus into their own admittedly contrived legends (3). Mackenzie revealed their motive in such “borrowings” when he observed that they “have tried to harmonize their institutions with pre-existent forms of social life.” Today such borrowings are more honestly called plagiarism.

Brigham Young also made some outlandish statements about life on the moon which, if he had made no claims to be a “prophet, seer and revelator” could be dismissed in good humor, as just one quainter, quirky nineteenth-century popular superstition. However, such cosmic blunders are inexcusable in one who makes such claims of communication with the source of all Truth.

Some readers will be familiar with the hollow earth theory. Most readers will probably immediately recall the exciting fictional works of Edgar Rice Burrows, H.G. Wells or Jules Verne in connection with it. However, most will be unaware of the connection it has with Mormonism. In this case, the connection is not one of source material for Mormonism’s development, but their common affinity for alternative histories, geographies and so forth. The hollow earth theory may have been foreshadowed by the wild speculations of the 17th-century Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, but it was an Albanian writer, Hadji Scharipf, who furnished the elaborate details of Earth’s inner geography and its inhabitants. In 1880, Scharipf published a curious monograph that shows its indebtedness to Freemasonry, but more importantly, it unwittingly reveals how an abuse of Masonic lore of hidden treasures beneath the Temple (which is an allegorical fiction) can lead to the creation of elaborate hoaxes when structurally similar tales are foisted on readers as truth (4).

Scharipf’s title contains the first known reference to Agarttha, a fictional place in central Asia that has become a commonplace in writings from the lunatic fringe. Agarttha is associated with the idea of the secret rulers and controllers of the world. It is the dwelling place of the “ascended white masters,” and “hidden” or “unknown superiors.” The title also reveals that Scharipf was acquainted with Masonic ritual’s references to traveling east and back to west. What matters most is the use of digging for treasure – whether of monetary or spiritual wealth. The allegory is an alchemical one. It has nothing to do with the planet earth, but with searching within oneself.

Finally, because the claims of the article on the hollow earth rest on lost and dubious records and testimonies, one is reminded of Joseph Smith, Jr.’s claims about the gold tablets God took back -- but which were seen by a group of men who were mostly all related to each other. Whether in their structure or discrete details, such treasure stories, with their accounts of digging in or through the earth, finding gold or other treasures are curiously too similar to the legend of the gold tablet found in the vault under the Temple, recognizable to all R.A.M.s and about which nothing further need be, nor can be, said. For those unfamiliar with that legend, another parallel instance in the public domain is the finding of Christian Rosenkreutz’s tomb by the Rosicrucians in the Fama Fraternitatis, published in the early 1600s and possibly intended to stimulate the creation of the organization simply by claiming it existed already. Mormonism’s fraud arises from its promoting fallacious interpretations of allegory as facts.

Readers may well recognize the name of Porter Rockwell as that of the personal bodyguard of Joseph Smith, Jr. It has not been possible to ascertain if the author of our next item for consideration is one and the same person. It seems unlikely. Smith’s bodyguard, even according to records in famously thorough Mormon circles, was more illiterate than Smith himself. Be that as it may, our Rockwell, writing in 1877, examines the geology of the Southwest where the Mormons had settled and, with the limited geological sophistication we ought to forgive him for, he relied solely on the Book of Mormon as his source to explain the severe broken landscapes of Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon and what is now Zion National Park. He attributes these abrupt rifts to the earthquakes that purportedly happened, according to the Mormon scripture, at the time of Christ’s crucifixion (5). As a New Testament analog to shore up his claim, he recalls the report that when Christ died in Jerusalem, there was an earthquake that caused damage in the Temple. Rockwell’s painstaking catalog is good for tourists who wish to sample a quirky, nineteenth perspective on history, but it is as geologically reliable as claiming, as some fundamentalist Ozark preachers do, that Arkansas is so named because it is where Noah’s Ark landed. Let us examine just one typical passage of Rockwell’s, peppered with paraphrases from the Book of Mormon. It seems that even our Rockwell needed some assistance in reading it, since his paraphrases are from an imperfect memory of texts he had heard read aloud (we have retained his orthography for its antiquarian, pioneer flavor):

"Behold these grete monumints of stone and clay! Yea, verrily, they do be speek and, yea, I declare unto you my testimony from the Holy Ghost that are the verry handywork of God All mighty who did smite the Nephites upon his deth on the Cross. And a grete darkness did cover the land for three days as we learn, in Thurd Nephi, for it came to pass that great earthquakes did rend the land with sundree damidge and many Nephites and Lamanites were slewn on a count a there many wickednessess. Behold, yonder arch was formed, saith the Spirit, by the rushing of waters from the canals the Nephites had formed afore their times of falling into darkness an a postussy. Yonder ridge, so cloven from the summitt above it sheweth His power and the extent of the destrukshun what He saw fit with which to destroy the wicked afore He come to preech His true gospell we find now re-stored to this verry land by the hand of His Prophet, Joseph Smith and led hence to Our Mountain Home by Brigham Young” (65-66).

Evidently, as Mormons spread beyond the continental US and Europe to preach to the “Lamanites,” interest in Mormon claims quickly reached Polynesia, where tales had long been extant of white explorers and “discovers” having been greeted with reverence. In Samoa for instance, Europeans were – and are – known as palangi because the white sails of their ships were at first interpreted as clouds on which they must have, as their word means, come from heaven. Turning palangi into white gods, and then interpreting the first encounters into cases of mistaken identity, in which a European captain might be identified as the Jesus of the Book of Mormon is the stuff the Mormon myth machine is good at.

One such researcher who labored in French Polynesia was Jean-Paul Lefevre, an eccentric Belgian whose real life story conjures up recollections of romantic tales of swashbuckling and high adventures always on the fringes of respectable society. An amateur, but ardent and detail-oriented ethnographer, Lefevre recorded the many parallels between the resurrection of Christ and ideas he encountered among the Polynesians from the Marquesas to Easter Island (Rapa Nui or, more anciently ‘O Te Pito ‘O Te Henua, which means The Navel of the World). Lefevre gathered and interpreted religious literature, mostly from moribund oral sources. His work resembles closely that of his near contemporary James Fraser who later wrote The Golden Bough.

Lefevre’s obscure article did not appear in France, but in pages of a local, or rather regional, historical revue (now defunct), called Rapa Nui Revue. It was published briefly (1878-1902) by what today we call ex-patriots, soldiers of fortune and jacks-of-all-trades living in the French archipelagos of the South Pacific who fancied themselves chroniclers of societies they had come to love.

In 1893 therefore, Lefevre’s article “Le texte Rongorongo e l’identité du Grand Dieu Blanc” primarily attracted the serious attention of his rag-tag, hard-drinking contemporaries in the South Seas. Curiously, the only extant copy of any of this journal’s short run was one issue brought to France by none other than the famous painter Gauguin, following his sojourn in Tahiti, in which, as luck would have it, Lefevre’s article is found (6).

Rongorongo is the name given to the writing system of the Rapanuians, now deemed undecipherable by scholars. It is the only writing system known to have existed among the Polynesian peoples found in the Polynesian Triangle (enclosed by Hawai’i, New Zealand, Easter Island), although the Tagalog people of the Philippines once used a script which the zealous Spaniards almost succeeded in wiping out, as they did the keys to deciphering the Mayan hieroglyphics. The two are quite unrelated, unfortunately, even though numerous root words in the spoken languages reveal enough affinities to speculate about some now-untraceable common roots in pre-history.

Lefevre’s tale speaks for itself and is a testament to his tenacity and good instincts as an ethnographer:

"The hieroglyphics (rongorongo) that fell into my hands were carved on a long stick, charred so badly (before it was carved on), making it impossible for me to ascertain from what sort of tree it had come, but I suspected it to be the toromiro, a hardwood plentiful on, and unique to, Rapa Nui. But this was of far less consequence than the script I beheld. The ceremonial stick, or ‘ao, was just over 1 m. in length and about four cm. in thickness, and covered with the Rongorongo script ‘round about and nearly from end-to-end.

"The person who presented it to me, an old woman, told me that she could not read it, but that her brother could and was anxious to reveal its contents before he died because he was distressed at the stories advanced by Mormon missionaries in their proselytizing and wanted to tell his story to me in the hope that it would dissuade his people from falling for new fables to replace their old.

"As we journeyed together, she related to me how he had been forced off of Rapa Nui as a small child with their parents aboard a Spanish slave ship bound for the mines of Peru, when a number of the captives managed to free themselves from their chains and mutiny, killing the Spaniards and throwing them to the sharks – after, she matter-of-factly related – setting aside those parts they deemed edible to sustain them during their return voyage to Rapa Nui.

"The Rapanuians had no ability to steer a ship, certainly not a European one, and had no knowledge of navigation, such as other Polynesians possessed, having been confined to land by a lack of wood with which to build ships. They surely would have perished had it not been for a Marquesan aboard. He had been pressed into service by the Spaniards to help them navigate. Spared by the Rapanuians because the close affinity of their language enabled him to reveal himself to them as a friend, he was able to return with them all, but fearing more raids by the Spaniards, transported them to Pape’ete.

"The old woman was born in Tahiti, after the events of which she spoke, but informed me that the stick had belonged to their father, who had told her brother to preserve it, and taught him to read it, or, as I later came to suspect, at least told him what it said. She informed me that a friend of her brother’s had told him of my interests and that she should oblige me to come to him; as he told her, by telling me that he too “is one who has traveled from sunrise to sunset”. It was an ambiguous phrase, particularly translated from Rapanui into French, but one so deliberately assigned to her to say that I was immediately desirous to introduce myself to him, confirm my own suspicions and hear his tale. To satisfy her curiosity as to her brother’s meaning, I explained that I had also voyaged to Rapa Nui, which is, of course, quite true.

"We at length arrived at the remote village where I found him reclining near a small stream (abundant with fresh water shrimp), in a shady bower she called the manavai, where indeed there were many plants within a stone structure. He was being attended by several people obviously anxious for his comforts, in anticipation, she explained for a koro, or party in his agèd honor.

"He took my hand, and by his manner I immediately recognized our mutual friendship… (7). Our mutual recognition excited some curiosity, as all present knew that we had never met before. His name, or rather nickname, was Ariki O Maori, or Chief of the Wise. Several of the children simply called him paparuáu, that is, grandfather – clearly his own part-Tahitian grandchildren, as they peppered their Tahitian with the Rapanuian language, as I judged from what short phrases I could discern.

"The tale he told me included all his sister had related up to his discussion of the content of the rongorongo script. He told me in brotherly earnest that the text revealed the tale of the Rapanuian’s first contact with white men, long before the arrival of the Spanish, the Dutch or any other Europeans. Shortly after the arrival of the first ships from the Marquesas archipelago to what is known as Rapa Nui, when, as he reported from his reading (or perhaps only from his recollection of his father’s reading), the island was a flourishing paradise of gigantic coconut palms, a small fleet of ships appeared on the horizon – ships of large square white sails with a large curved red cross upon them. The white sailors, or rather warriors, aboard them were hungry and had so little water that in a day or two more their supply would have been exhausted. At first, the Rapanuians thought they were aku-aku, or ghouls, because of their pale and starving appearance. Water and food were taken aboard the fleet – coconuts, chickens, breadfruit, and after several days they departed, grateful and gracious to their hosts. They disappeared on the horizon after sailing in a direction he interpreted as north, northeast by north. They left behind a handful of trinkets, “shiny, heavy, and pretty, but worthless yellow stones” which the Rapanuians turned into anchors for their small fishing rafts, but subsequently lost.

"Judging from the description, and the time frame for the settlement of Rapa Nui (based on genealogical chants), I concluded that somehow, a remnant of the Templar Fleet, which had sailed from New Rochelle with the Treasury in 1308, had succeeded in passing through the Straits of Magellan into the antipodal seas. As would have been their custom and wise practice when beyond their familiar northern skies, they probably dared not sail out of sight of land and had continued up the coast of South America. A storm therefore must have blown them westward at some point. Their arrival at Rapa Nui may have saved them, or merely staved off their deaths at sea or at the hands of other savages elsewhere.

"These white men, many of whom were blonde, all bearded and rather tall, sought to return to the eastern continent where food and fresh water might be more easily and regularly obtained. They carefully determined the island’s location celestially and made it known to the Rapanuians that if they failed to make land by the time almost half of their provisions were exhausted, they would return. This, he told me, was the origin of the story of the visit and promise of return, attributed to the Great White god."

Lefevre’s account gives a thinking person pause when viewed in light of the claims made by Mormons and non-Mormons (“ufologists” for instance) who seek fantastical explanations for phenomena that might as easily be explained by earthly events, remote as they might be. For, in this world’s world of possibilities, it is more likely that a remnant of the Templar Fleet arrived at the tiny island of Rapa Nui, took on supplies and figured out how to return, and that the relation of this singular event should spread throughout all the Polynesian Triangle, than that Jesus should come from the sky, visit several islands of the Pacific and promise to return.

By 1912, in the wake of statehood for Utah, the Mormons were no longer isolated in a distant territory. Professional scholarship turned to examine Mormon culture, politics and economics. The Marxist journalists Kauffman & Kauffman, a US-born couple in self-exile in London, examined Mormonism from an economic perspective. They demonstrated how the Mormons had begun to stray from their own exotic roots in order to obtain the benefits of capitalist society. The railroad had changed Mormon society and was the fundamental reason the LDS church was forced to re-examine its doctrines. It was an excellent case study in support of Marx because it demonstrated how a change in a technological infrastructure changes society. The Kauffmans cited as examples how Mormonism eliminated the United Order (involving common property), abandoned the practice of polygamy (8) and made other changes in order to mainstream. Thus, the deep revision to Mormon doctrine that occurred when it was convenient and even necessary for their survival at that time exposes the fraud of their prior truth claims (9).

In 1922, Benjamín Franco y Cabacungan examined at great length the curious parallels that might be drawn between Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent of the Mayan-Aztec pantheon, and the serpent which Moses lifted up on a staff in the desert (Num. 21: 6-9). At first glance, his parallels seem contrived, until one examines them from a more modern, Structuralist point of view.

In the biblical account, Moses set the brazen serpent on a staff to save from death those who had rebelled in the desert and had been bitten by the fiery serpents God had sent to punish them. All the afflicted person had to do was look upon it and live. An exegetical reading of this easily but uncomfortably equates the serpent on the staff with Jesus on the Cross. Jesus of course saves from death and sin, whereas the people in the desert were merely restored to life – but after repentance, and showing trust in God and His power. Therefore, the brazen serpent is clearly an Old Testament pre-figuration or foreshadowing of things to come.

In the case of the god Quetzalcoatl, he was believed to be the bringer of civilization, much like Thoth-Hermes or the pseudo-historical kings of Egypt. He likewise promised to return. He created the world by cutting his penis and using his blood – hence a foundational self-sacrifice – to create the first man by mixing it with cornmeal. In his eternal guise, or avatar of the sun, his emblem, his life ebbed as he gave off rays from himself, and thus human sacrifice was, theologically speaking, not only an act of self preservation but one that saved the world from destruction. The plumed serpent revealed his dual nature as one who gives and takes away – also a primary characteristic of the God of the Hebrews. The plumes reveal his creative, beautiful and loving nature as giver of life. The serpent represents his destructive force. In their synthesis, Franco y Cabacungan postulates an allusion, parallel or near-analogue to the hypostatic union, particularly when it is recalled that Queztalcoatl was not believed by the Mayans or Aztecs to have actually been such a creature, but rather a man-god whose nature is emblematized by it.

Such is the major line of Franco y Cabacungan’s argument in 1922. Naturally, he relies on the spirit, and even at times on the letter, of the relation of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega who, writing as a converted Christian of royal Peruvian ancestry in the 1500s (his complete Comentarios or Historia del Perú were published posthumously in Cordoba in 1616), asserted that his people’s pagan theology was pointing toward the One God of the Christian faith. In this way, one can see how susceptible these accounts are of being exploited after the fact to invent a history – one that inserts Jesus in the place of these great white gods.

Nigel Wellington, a New Zealander who claimed in his diary to have meet Jean-Paul Lefevre, was the son of an English immigrant on the South Island and a Maori woman of the priestly caste. His knowledge of the Maori tongue, their customs and religious practices was profound. He studied in London and worked for a time under the direction and tutelage of Wallis E. Budge of the British Museum where he acquired his knowledge of ancient Egyptian. He returned to New Zealand after some disagreements with Budge that, unfortunately, seem to have had some race or class overtones, if Wellington’s diary is to be believed.

In 1934, he published his own comparative study of the Egyptian and Maori religions. He reports having become engrossed in the subject when he learned of the use of reed boats on the Nile, the curious linguistic fact that in both languages Ra means the sun, and that both cultures not only had superb astronomers but that in both cultures the heavens played a key role in every aspect of life. Wellington’s article independently echoes the Comentarios of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega written centuries earlier and a world away. In consonance with Budge, Wellington asserts that just as the Egyptian priests were monotheists (and that their ancient neighbors never realized it) (10), in like manner, the tahunga, or Maori shaman, were guardians of a monotheism hidden from the lower castes. The Mormon myth-making machine is quick to pounce on any detail as this, as any moderately astute visitor will recognize when viewing the impressive dioramas of the LDS church, such as those in Salt Lake City’s Temple Square. Any identical, parallel or analogous detail in Egyptian, Incan and Maori theologies, language or symbolism quickly can become fodder for this machine.

Another analogous and particularly knotty problem that regularly embarrasses their best apologists is found in an illustration in their Pearl of Great Price. Joseph Smith Jr. obtained it from a fellow who had obtained a poor quality mummy in Egypt along with some papyri. Just as he previously had exclaimed that Freemasonry was a corrupted ritual from the corrupted Egyptian priesthood, he proclaimed this papyrus to be a writing of Father Abraham, and set out to translate it. Thus, the LDS church now is stuck with the deliciously impossible task of explaining how it is that this authentic Egyptian fragment has nothing to do with Smith’s English “translation” with the title The Book of Abraham in that collection, but is simply a common funerary text. Gullible nineteenth-century peasants accepted the charlatan’s romantic claim of its Abrahamic origins and rushed to the baptismal fonts, then to the handcarts and on across the prairies, enduring great hardships for Mormonism. If, as Francis Yates has suggested, borrowing a famous line from Churchill about communism, that Freemasonry is “an enigma wrapped in an enigma,” then Mormonism may be said to be “a grand fraud of frauds nested one within the other.”

Herr Doktor Otto Schlegel, a genuine scholar of Near East antiquities unfortunately found his work could only be funded by the Nazi Party. Although he was caught up in some of der Fürher’s occult-oriented projects, he never lost sight of his academic integrity. Curiously, he seems to have picked up on the scholarly zeitgeist of Lefevre and Wellington, probably through fanciful Grail lore and good and bad literature dealing with the Templar legacy.

Re-evaluating literary, religious and linguistic data in conjunction with biodiversity schema (11), currents, winds and other natural phenomena, Schlegel took both intellectual timidity and rashness to task when he declared summarily:

"What documentation could be better than the most interdisciplinary vision of the past assisted by reason and reasonableness? The inward looking and inbred nature of most disciplines, left to themselves, do not yield great insights into Man’s past or even his present nature. There is a vast difference between a letter writer and a stamp collector. The glories of the Aryan race lie buried in thousands of years of cultural debris scattered throughout the world and is only now coming to light through our research that gathers from all sources like a skillful detective. The myopia of most disciplines results from the small planets on which they dwell, whose horizons are so near their huddled timorous minds that they may as well live on specs of dust.

In light of our research, little doubt can remain, even absent the sort of documentation so cherished by literary studies and the social sciences that the discoveries of the Poor Soldier Knights of Christ, however trivial they may actually were, grew in proportion to their fame prior to and their infamy following their trial and scattering upon their official demise. Furthermore, these Christian Knights, these Templars, particularly of the fleet, would have been capable of circumnavigating the globe long before Magellan. Their proximity to, and the frequent intellectual intimacy of, their Muslim counterparts would have resulted in the Templars’ obtaining such scientific literature as the celestial maps of the northern and southern hemispheres. There are intimations in later reports, anecdotal as yet, of the Chinese having performed just such a feat with a vast fleet. In fine, the Templars did not merely flee to Scotland; they penetrated the South Seas and traveled along the western shores of South America. It was the frequent contacts they had with the savages that resulted in Christian ideas being grafted onto the existing ones. The fame of these Templars grew in metonimic fashion: over time, rather than many, they became one person: the Great White God. This provides us further evidence of the power of the Teutonic culture, of our Aryan race’s ability to exert its enlightened rays over even the savages (74-75)."

Schlegel’s appeal to the Nazi propaganda machine has to be forgiven; he was, after all, dependent upon them for his funding. He pursued his own research interests astutely, as he knew his endeavors would outlast their regime. He sought to make his own intellectual legacy and reputation eternal and as much without blemish as his circumstances permitted. His conclusions provide additional corroboration of earlier, more fanciful and intuitive works such as Lefevre’s. In terms of rigor, Wellington’s stands in a middle ground. Finally, let us recall the Inca Garcilaso’s testimony two generations after the conquest of Peru; it serves as very early, and therefore pre-Mormon source, rendering Schlegel’s labors all the more admirable. As we shall see, there are other threads that curiously connect the Templars with the high seas long beyond their supposed demise – and into the so-called Golden Age of Piracy. Schlegel’s intuitions regarding the Chinese have been recently proven beyond a shadow of a doubt (12).

About a decade after Schlegel, in 1958, an East European exile named Ruph Eyon III, turned his scholarly gaze toward conjectural reconstructions of myths. His work, comparable in many ways to Mircea Eliade’s, involved the collection of oral myths of foundational sacrifices. Among them, the Freemasonic one about the murder of the quasi-legendary builder Hiram Abiff was considered an instance, not of foundational, but of dedicatory sacrifices (13). This classification is highly dubious, but his gathering of information about what sacrificial victims said and did prior to their immolation (most of whom are female characters), proves useful in light of our thesis. Eyon’s work is similar in method to the biblical scholars reconstructing the gospel Quelle, or Q. Significant textual similarities between his reconstruction of conversations from non-Hebraic sources are also found in Mormon ritual, revealing they drew from the same well, via Freemasonry. Mormon ceremonies, therefore, rather than being revealed or inspired rectifications of corrupted ancient rituals, are not Judaic, nor even Nilotic, but rather Indo-Aryan!

The nearly constant use of the number three in the stonemason lore and Freemasonic ritual finds a strong analog in the non-scriptural (that is, Mormon Temple) tale of Creation. Let it be remembered that any creation story is, par excellence, a foundation story. In the Mormon Temple creation drama, the phrase “let us go down” is repeated thrice, in echo fashion, among the three players: God the Father, Adam (called Michael, yet unimbodied) and Jehovah (the also yet unincarnate Son of God, i.e., He who will become Jesus), who collaborate to create the earth. The phrase is repeated in various ways, three times.

In Freemasonic ritual, including public ones, such as funerals and cornerstone-laying ceremonies, “three-times-three” is a common structural motif, as it is, unsurprisingly to Freemasons, in the oral traditions of Indo-European and Indo-Aryan building myths. Sometimes one of the builders is killed to ensure the stability of the structure (usually a bridge or a monastery in the stonemason ballads of Eastern Europe and India). In the Mormon scheme of things, Jesus is one of the builders and, nota bene -- He is later sacrificed. As time has gone by, the LDS church has altered the Temple rituals, dragging branches over many of the tracks that once could easily link Mormonism with anything but what the LDS church wants the world to see it as: the restoration of Jesus’ church, instead of the plagiarizing mongrel that it is.

Just prior to the demise of academic Marxism at the end of the Cold War many professors in the USA who were Marxist in their critical orientation scurried to mount any new (and politically safer) hobbyhorse and thus they rallied in favor of political correctness, gay, feminist, and Afro-centric studies, ad nauseum. In the twilight years of Marxism as a viable political solution, it retained its vigor as a tool of critique (and still does). In this transitional environment, DiCulo and Jibe published an intriguing examination of a popular superstition, the sacrilegious practice for divining purposes of spitting in the sacred environs of a church. As a framework to their thirty-odd pages of case-after-case similar extant, non- or even un-Christian practices, they brilliantly employed a Marxist historical perspective; infused with a feminist air (they were clearly testing the waters in the approach of the Culture Wars of the early 1990s).

DiCulo and Jibe examined the false accusation against the Templars of spitting on the Cross in the broader context of power relationships in feudal and religious cultures. The connection of this practice with Freemasonry lies partly in Freemasonry’s unsubstantiated legend of being a direct descendent of this outlawed Order, but most especially when it is remembered that most of the charges leveled against the Templars have been consistently leveled against the Freemasons – by the Roman Church. DiCulo and Jibe express their dislike and suspicion of Freemasonry since it excludes all but male monotheists, whom they faddishly vilify as a group whose privileges are unearned and who are responsible for oppressing the world. With their virulent attacks on male-dominated hierarchies, DiCulo and Jibe would be surprised (and hopefully embarrassed to learn) that they have a strange ally in Pope Benedict XV. When the current Pope was still known as Cardinal Ratzinger, he was head of the Confraternity of the Christian Faith, the successor agency to the Holy Inquisition, much as the KGB was replaced by the less ominous sounding Russian Security Agency or some such. One of his last research projects convinced him that the Templars had survived as an organized entity or as organized entities (of this there is considerable evidence, albeit scattered and disconnected) and that they were bent on revenge against the Church. I am certain that Cardinal Ratzinger is an excellent researcher in this area and we can trust that his access to records and archives was impressive, to say the least. But his last judgment is a paranoid opinion, even if it is a well deserved position to take with regard to the papacy, given the facts about the trial of the Templars and subsequent persecution of Freemasons even into the twenty-first century (14). DiCulo and Jibe make Ratzinger’s anti-masonic position at least coherent from the Church’s point of view, inasmuch as they give credence to the Templar legend of the origins of Freemasonry.

The connection this strange practice of spitting has with Mormonism, according to DiCulo and Jibe, is that J. Golden Kimball, one of its colorful nineteenth-century apostles, often used foul language about spitting and urinating. Mormon cultural lore has it thus:

"Sitting on a public works committee for the city, Golden fought against what he considered to be frivolous ‘improvements’; in one case, speaking against building a bridge across the Jordan River (west of Salt Lake) where an easy ford existed, he said, “We don't need a bridge over the Jordan; why, I can piss half-way across the Jordan.” The chairman of the committee gavelled him into silence and said “Brother Golden, I believe you're out of order!” “I know I'm out of order,” was his immediate comeback; “if I wasn't out of order, I could piss all the way across the Jordan River!” (Cheney, 120-121).

This outburst was deemed sacrilegious by his own Mormon peers, and once report of his outburst spread to “gentiles” or “non-Mormons” it was misunderstood as a sacrilegious reference to the Jordon of the Holy Land. This is one case where even the harshest critic of the LDS church can step aside and enjoy how ignorance of facts poisons all perspectives.

In 1990, marine archeology and historical sociology contributed to scholarship about Freemasonry. The finding of the Whydah was featured in National Geographic in May, 1988, although the wreck had been found in 1984 by Barry Clifford. Plank is the author of the seminal study linking pirates (nota bene, not piracy, per se) with Freemasonry. His article entitled “Mysteries of the Whydah” delved into this most intriguing find in marine archeology because it revealed and examined an archeological artifact that linked the two social phenomena. As fate would have it, the Whydah is the first and to-date the only pirate ship ever recovered. It sank off Marconi Beach (Massachusetts) in April, 1717. Of Masonic interest, Plank records:

"What makes this find relevant to Freemasonry is a pewter plate that was recovered. It bore a known London maker’s mark on the back and, crudely carved on the edge, but unmistakable, the Masonic Square & Compass – two months before the organization officially existed; the first Grand Lodge was formed June 24 that year, in London.

"Evidence of the long-suspected and yet undocumented connection between Freemasonry and piracy can be found in the very name of the vessel. While “Whydah” was the name of a port in West Africa (whence slaves were brought to the British colonies), it translates as “Widow Bird”, ostensibly named for a type of bird in Africa, but revealing and concealing, in typical Masonic fashion, its identification with the “Craft” (also known among seafarers, and pirates in particular, as the “Brethren of the Coast”). With respect to the percentage of Freemasons in other professions, the maritime trades have always had a disproportionate number of Freemasons in their ranks, on both sides of the law. The famous explorer Captain Cook was a Freemason, as was Commodore Perry, -- as were the notorious pirates Sam Bellamy, Edward Thatch (“Blackbeard”), Stede Bonnet and Thomas Cocklyn.

"Further proof can be found in Madagascar, where the pirates had an international base and even a graveyard, where the skull and crossbones are found carved on stones, along with the plumb, level and square. Most telling, intriguing and suggestive of further study is to note that the skull and crossbones was originally a Templar motif and that the Templars figure prominently in lore about the origins of Freemasonry. Similar grave stones are found in the remote northwest islands of Scotland, dating from the Templar period" (35).

Beyond the evidence Plank cites, there are testimonies from diaries of individuals who were taken captive by pirates. Our first example comes from the diary of Clement Conger. He is a descendant of Alexandria, Virginia’s last Lord Mayor, William Ramsay. He tells his own story:

"In the early 19th century, pirates captured Alexandrian William Bartleman, owner and captain of a small fleet of merchant ships sailing off the Barbary Coast. The pirates forced the crew to walk the plank and go down to a watery grave. Capt. Bartleman, in high nautical tradition, was the last one to start on that fateful passage. Just before he took the plunge, in desperation he gave the Masonic hand sign for help. “Brother Mason!” or some such, exclaimed the pirate captain. Not only did he spare the Alexandrian’s life, he also paid his way back to the Virginia port" (Diary of Clement Conger, Alexandria Historical League).

The second is from near the end of the age of piracy, from a story found in Halifax, Nova Scotia:

"In 1804, a young man by the name of John Aul came to Halifax in an armed brig of war which that year brought out a detachment of artillery to which he belonged. He determined to be made a member of the Order of Free and Accepted Masons if it were possible. He was recommended in the usual way to Virgin Lodge of Halifax, by a member of that Lodge, accepted and received his first degree, when his detachment was placed under orders to proceed to Jamaica. A Lodge of emergency was called and he obtained the two following degrees, and his Master's Certificate.

"The brig sailed at the appointed time, and had a pleasant voyage until within a short distance of St. Ann's, the port to which she was bound. Then there was reason to think there was danger, as the island was approached. The French had many fine frigates afloat in West Indian waters, and at early dawn all hands on board were aroused by the booming report of a gun. Coming on deck they beheld a fine large French frigate, so near that there was no possibility of escape. It was the discharge of one of her guns across the bow that had awakened them. It was decided to surrender.

"The French commander immediately sent a boat with an officer to board the brig of war, and in the inspection which followed, the officer found John Aul's Masonic certificate. He asked to whom it belonged. On finding out he politely bowed to John Aul, and told him that the officers of the ship would be put on shore on the point of land nearest to St. Ann's and allowed to take all their personal property with them. He expressed his regret that it was out of his power to land them nearer, and thereby save them the trouble they might experience in reaching their destination, a thing he would willingly have done were it not for the danger he faced in being captured by some of the vessels in the neighbourhood.

"The brig of war was of course, taken and the crew made prisoners, but the rest were safely landed at the cape. The foe was a Freemason! Mr. Aul was one of the oldest Masons in Nova Scotia at the time of his death."

Whether the two are connected historically or not, taken together, the evidence that seems to connect Freemasonry and piracy merely shows that the symbolism was in currency in early modern times and had ranged far and wide. There is therefore absolutely nothing to support Mormon claims of their Temple ceremony being revealed – and the apologetic claim made by Joseph Smith, Jr. and asserted to this day by the LDS church that Freemasonry was an ancient Egyptian corruption of the true Melchizedek priesthood. Such a claim strains credulity to the breaking point. When you hear hooves thundering across the plains of South Dakota, think horses, not zebras.

Public art, paid for by tax dollars, often reveals the influence of Masonic symbolism. The mosaic known as By Cycling Fish, commissioned by Chicago’s Performance Art Collective (1991), clearly reveals – and conceals – a Masonic motif: the Templar cross may be clearly discerned in the overlapping of the fish tails and, as if the connection with piracy were known by the artists, this emblem in turn is superimposed on an outline of an island – Madagascar. Such ubiquitous imagery makes one wonder why, instead of acknowledging the debt, the LDS church has been doctoring their official 19th-century photographs of Brigham Young in which his Square & Compass watch fob can clearly be seen.

Myriad articles showing the debt of Mormonism to a number of traditions, many of which are not religious per se, were published by Sonia Johnson in 1993 in Devoured by Locusts: An Anthology of Critical Mormon Studies. One in particular, by Craig Fabulous, deals with the Nephites, one of two supposed peoples in ancient America. In addition to heaping the usual scorn on the Book of Mormon’s claims with archeological, linguistic, geological, biological and ethnological data, Fabulous indulges in a brief aside regarding Mormonism’s claims about the antiquity of its Temple ceremony:

"The tale is told among Mormons that two missionaries (significantly unnamed), sent to Chiapas on missions, 'fell away from the church.' The Mormon word is 'apostatized.' It is usually a code word for 'fornication.'

"Having been excommunicated in the mission field, they were left to wander among the people and figure out a way to return to Utah [various places are mentioned in the different versions of this urban legend]. However, in their excommunicated state, they chose to remain there rather than face their home “wards” and their disgraced families. In the course of there travels, they “went native” and found themselves among the Mayans in a remote area near the border of British Honduras [now Belize], determined as they were to avoid the shame of their sins and live out their lives in the jungle.

"As a means of securing their sense of belonging, they submitted to the community ritual for making them a member of the [male] community. After they were led by their native American hosts into a darkened stone building in which only a few oil lamps had been placed on the floor around a small altar, they were astonished to see that the many of the things that had been “revealed” to them in the Temple prior to being sent into their mission field, were identical to the signs being revealed to them there, most particularly, the Square & Compasses embroidered with small stone beads on the deer skin shirts of the officiating 'priests.'

"This shocking discovery caused them such remorse and contrition that they hastily found passage back to Utah and begged to be reinstated as full-fledged members and gladly endured years of humiliation awaiting re-baptism, while they spread this cautionary tale laced with juicy Mormon apologetics.

"It is clear that what they encountered was nothing less – or more – than the vestiges of Freemasonic ritual. This fraternity spread through Mexico in the last days of her colonization by Spain, entering via Veracruz, from French sources. Father Hidalgo was a member, and Freemasonry became a way, during the revolt, of knowing who was friend and who was foe" (82-83).

The year 1993 also saw the return of scholarly interest to the Templar Fleet legends, but from a most unexpected quarter: the Castro government. Juan C. Díaz, head of the Enterprise for Translation and Interpretation in Havanna, evidently was the compiler of the document that fell into the hands of US intelligence officers and who in turn presented it to none other than the Joint Chiefs of Staff (15). According to well informed sources who have met and spoken with Díaz, he is fluent in Russian, Korean and English. In the 1980s, he worked in North Korea translating Russian documents on nuclear energy for the regime’s atomic aspirations. By the early 1990s, intelligence sources claim he had moved beyond the trenches of translation into the Cuban equivalent of the Directorate of Clandestine Services, in which he worked as an analyst. Interest was running high in pursuing any leads, however fantastic, to a new source of energy, purported to be more amazing than atomic energy. Such a power would have served Castro well, since his Soviet sponsors had fallen to creeping Capitalism and from their own corruption.

Díaz was captivated by a corpus of literature often ransacked by the Nazis in their search for the ultimate weapon: the Ark of the Covenant, for instance. In this case, the legends of Templar magic and power, their supposed feats of architecture and navigation, to say nothing of the immense wealth they purportedly took from the Treasury in Paris, were powerful incentives to him as he compiled his article. He reports that the “Templars possessed, due to an advanced knowledge of resins and other petroleum based substances obtained in the Near East, an ability to evade fleets on the surface by being able to convert their otherwise 14th-century vessels into submarines” (n.p.). Díaz’s holy grail consisted of the chemical aspects as well as the energy sources for such technology. He further claimed, certainly to his superior’s delight, that

"[...] the Caribbean basin, particularly in the warm waters between Jamaica and Cuba, soundings and sonar records indicate that descendents of this Templar fleet have established permanent submarine colonies from which they venture under modern flags, purchasing modern items by laundering the Fleet’s nearly inexhaustible stores of gold bars. Establishing contact with these fellow Latins, securing their loyalties and obtaining this lost technology would give the Revolution a significant advantage and leverage, not only in the Caribbean, but throughout the world" (n.p.).

The Díaz piece is valuable to our present context because it demonstrates the extent to which a regime or an organization will go, grasping at straws – or inventing them! – to establish their legitimacy or try to create an aura of mystery around themselves. The Freemasons have come by this aura legitimately as well as had it thrust upon them by detractors and conspiracy theorists. The Nazis, for instance, aped many Masonic practices; most notably, they manufactured a symbolic system and invested it with their own propaganda (16). Mormonism has lifted, sifted and altered masonic symbolism at random, re-baptizing (otherwise appropriating it by “baptizing it for the dead”) it, that is, investing it with their own religious, quasi science-fiction-cum-scripture message.

If the Masonic legend about the Templar origins of Freemasonry (or connection with its genesis) is not entirely true, we might do better to wish it were, so we can all have done with the bewilderment. The adherents of the most extreme, conspiratorial forms of this legend could then seek passage on board the mother ship – or hasten to Agarttha. As we have seen, speculations attempting to connect the two run wild with regard to the menhirs of Scotland, treasure supposedly buried on Oak Island, the pirate base on Madagascar and, as seen earlier, Easter Island. It is sobering to recall, as we have seen, that the studied opinion of the current Pope does in fact connect the Templars with Freemasonry, but not in such fantastical ways.

An article prepared by Brennan MacCannaugh and read in 1998, now in a private collection on the Isle of Man (itself a mystery worth exploring), was printed by the Kilwinning Societas Latomorum (the Latin name for Freemasonry!). In it, MacCannaugh explored the diffusion of symbolism such as we have found in these various sites and tried to make sense of them from a skeptic’s point of view. In other words, it tried to disprove every connection these sites have with each other and any supposed connection they have to Freemasonry, modern or pre-1717. No “unified theory” could be constructed to account for the similarities and in many cases precise details, without coming full circle and admitting some points of direct contact. These results chasten academics who are either fearful of speculation as well as those whom the great Mason and scholar Wallace McLeod refers to as “mystic nuts.” MacCannaugh strikes the golden mean – he uses only hard evidence and accepted history to explore the plausibility, or outlandishness, of any and all theories that do not connect the dots as the conspiracy theorists typically do, and comes up slightly empty handed, but without giving an ounce of credit to crackpot theories. His approach to Masonic history is one that, if taken by Mormons looking at their own, would reveal the enormous gaps of reasoning in the Mormon apologetic and would prove Mormonism to be a house of cards, no different in method and mindset from the crackpot theories about Freemasons controlling the world.

MacCannaugh observes the following about intellectual speculation and the obligation to be rigorous:

"While caution is always a good watchword, it is equally abusive to refuse to follow a path of investigation when a door opens to it as it is to overindulge by introducing personal interpretations. In the latest edition of the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (AQC), a cautionary article appeared in which the author, quoting Hamill, John, AQC 101 (1988), p. 135, observed: “[...] there is a danger that ‘over-enthusiastic members will impose upon Freemasonry highly idiosyncratic interpretations not intended by the originators and achieved by taking similarities between masonic symbolism and symbolism in other fields to be actual correlations and evidence of actual links, interpretations that are alien to most members and at times distasteful [...]”. One must ask whether Hamill considers himself sure enough about what the originators intended or where they obtained their symbols as to pronounce such a categorical condemnation. Such statements cast a chill on what would be fruitful investigations by anathematizing them a priori. There can be no doubt but that Freemasonic symbolism did not originate in a vacuum, as so many capable researchers such as are cited herein have shown. The question is one of balance, and not imposing “idiosyncratic interpretations”, which this researcher has endeavored to avoid. See Washizu, Yoshio. Critical Reading of Masonic Literature." AQC 114 (2001), p. 208.

In 1999, the metalurgical researcher José Herrera turned his critical eye to examining Joseph Smith, Jr.’s claims of the divine origin of the Book of Mormon – in light of the technology required to make it. The golden plates, after all, would have been fabricated by human beings, even if the content on them were inspired. In Herrera’s approach, he takes a forensic view similar to that of a chemist involved in examining the papyri of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi documents. He asks the question “If the Nephites and Lamanites derive from a Near East culture of the period of the captivity, what would have been the nature of their metalurgical technologies and the resultant products?” Herrera’s research noted the archeological fact that the Israelites did not possess technologies as advanced as their neighbors in Egypt or Babylonia. “The Israelites at the time of the Captivity were barely into the iron age and were essentially still a bronze age culture” (39). It is even less likely that a small population on the run from the Babylonians would have had included enough technically skilled people to preserve and subsequently transplant even the best of this bronze-age technology to the New World.

However, the New World cultures of the Inca and the Mayan and Aztec empires did possess technology sufficient to create surgical grade copper and extremely thin sheets of gold (for jewelry). Ancient tales in the Old World include references to gold sheets being used for some records, but again, they are not Israelites. Moses’ tablets were stone – and even then, they were written on by the finger of God. Mormonism would support its assertion about the Book of Mormon having been on gold plates by a dizzying series of loosy-goosy assertions: the Nephites recorded on gold sheets (after all, it says so in the Book of Mormon). And, verily, as it came to pass, the Aztecs could make gold sheets (even if they were all used only for jewelry), therefore, behold! Since the Book of Mormon (after all) says that the Nephites (and Lamanites) came from Jerusalem to America and that they used gold plates – and archeologists assure us that the Mayans and Aztecs did too, then these Native American peoples must be the descendents of these semitic people and therefore the Book of Mormon is true (17). The only worse circularity is found in the Book of Mormon -- about itself: it states that someday, a man named Joseph will translate it. Quite convenient.

Linguistic speculations about the nature of the language of God were common before the modern era. In fact, the modern science of linguistics, in its search for universal deep structures common to all languages can be viewed as a spruced up version of the quest for Ursprach formerly referred to, and still called in Mormon circles, the Adamic language. The term may be traced to at least one representative Western occult source: Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettensheim’s Three Books of Occult Philosphy (1531). In this compendium of late medieval lore, a distillation of Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Babylonian magic, numerology, herbal, astrological medicine and chemical mumbo-jumbo, there are numerous “angelic” alphabets, talismans and so forth. This book, and others like it, distillations of Western occultism that were popular in the 19th century, explains how it came to pass that when Joseph Smith, Jr. was killed, he had on his person a piece of tin bearing a talisman that can be found in Agrippa’s book – one guaranteeing success in spiritual affairs and ministry. He would have done better, and shown his powers of prophecy even more, if he had been carrying one to make him impervious to lead projectiles.

In 2001, M. Jared explored the problem of another one of the Book of Mormon’s claims, namely, that a people even earlier than the Nephites, indeed, even earlier than Abraham, had come to America. The Jaredites, as they are called, one of whose prophets was called Corianton, was a group of people who were led from the Tower of Babel to the New World in submarines (for lack of a better term). Their leader had prayed that the language of his group would not be confounded. The use of the Tower of Babel and the Temple of Solomon respectively, as timeframes for the exodus of two groups of people from the Near East to America betrays its debt to Freemasonry and simultaneously point away from Joseph Smith, Jr. as the original author.

At an early, formative period of Freemasonry in the late Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the Tower of Babel was a major motif. The Temple of Solomon remains so to this day. Thus, more likely than Joseph Smith Jr.’s original authorship, is that a person living with the cultural baggage and lively concerns of the Revolutionary War period wrote or outlined major portions of the Book of Mormon. The original source manuscript of what Joseph Smith, Jr. and Oliver Cowdery turned into the Book of Mormon would not absolutely have to have been someone living during the eighteenth century, but whoever it was clearly was steeped in its concerns. Thus the discredited Spaulding Manuscript theory need not be resucitated to discredit Smith’s claims – Mormonism’s truth claims have sufficient problems without invoking Spaulding.

The chronological framework of the Book of Mormon is not apparent in the order of the printed text, of course, but it emerges when one reconstructs its historical chronology from the façade of the narration, the fabula from the sjuzet, to use a Russian Formalist distinction. The timing of the arrivals of the two immigrant groups to America -- the Jaredites and then the Nephites/Lamanites frame, like bookends, the entire span of the Book of Mormon’s purported history. The Jaredites arrive after the Tower of Babel and the Nephites/Lamanites arrive after the destruction of the first Temple.

In addition to this structuring device, which, by the way, would unlikely be of so great interest to any peoples recording their history, being so long removed from events in their lands of origin, one can discern passionate recastings of Revolutionary War period, as mentioned earlier. These include a banner on which the word Liberty is emblazoned during a war, the theme of revolution against tyranny, the overtly American slogan of “no kings to rule America,” exemplifications of the effects of excessive taxation, and so forth (18). All these signposts lead us, not to a small Israelistish family fleeing the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C., but to late 18th-century North America, with all the cultural baggage of Europe in tow. Certainly no one in his or her right mind today will claim or confess to believing in the literal, historical existence of a Tower built by ancient stonemasons whose ambition to erect it to heaven brought upon them the scattering of the people of the earth and the division of the family of mankind into different language groups. Race is conspicuously missing in the Genesis tale, suggesting the isolation of its original, ancient Near Eastern authors.

Returning to examine language, in 2002, the topic of angelic speech is directly examined in light of Mormonism’s claims. Seraf, in his “Corianton and Ursprach” points out the point-by-point borrowing of language from Agrippa in 19th-century Mormon writings, particularly in those of Brigham Young. It should be remembered that Young, the second LDS leader, is the principal architect of Mormonism’s Temple ceremony. Its heavy borrowing from, and subsequent transformations of Freemasonry’s esoterica have given Mormonism the patina of an occult movement, but one deliberately set adrift from its pedigree or cut from its moorings in Western civilization. Mormonism consists then of so many scattered objects, reassembled and reinvested with protean meanings.

The scholarly examination of Mormon apologetics would not be complete without the latest puerile attempt to dodge the solidity of modern science. A group of archeogeneticists collected DNA samples from people all over the world and discovered, to no surprise or consternation to anyone but the Mormons, that the Amerindian people are essentially Asiatic, with noticeable “outliers” pointing to Africa or Europe, but none to Semitic peoples. Pinga & Kosh attempted to refute this geneological impasse by resorting to the last refuge of shameless apologists: a counter charge of conspiracy. In their article, “The Genome Conspiracy: How Science Manipulated Genome Data on Native American Populations to Discredit the LDS Church,” they resort to all the outlier data and arguments about standard deviations, ranges of variance and so forth to obfuscate the central and resounding truth that batters away the foundational claim of the Book of Mormon regarding the original inhabitants of this continent. The conclusions advanced by the original scientists fall well within the standard and practices that make their conclusions reasonable, if not conclusive.

The Book of Mormon is an audacious fabrication whose defenders over the ages provide continuing proof of P.T. Barnum’s famous line: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” The scholars whose works we have reviewed in this brief article, even the most quaint and out of date ones, have explored how Mormonism’s claims could be otherwise explained and are a tribute to reason, to man’s quest for plausible speculation based on the careful weighing of evidence. Let us pray they outnumber the Mormon apologists.

----------END NOTES ---------------

1. The term Mormonism, originally pejorative but later embraced by the members of the LDS church, will be used to characterize the belief system and world or cosmic view characteristically held by its members. The acronym LDS will refer merely to the institutional or corporate entity of that church.
2. The mutability of the LDS temple ceremonies and even the evolution of the architectural styles of their regular and public meeting spaces, the wards and stake centers, are barometers by which the church’s efforts to mainstream may be measured.
3. The numerous contrivances of Freemasonry take great liberties with history and, being imperfectly known, are largely misunderstood by outsiders. They are not meant to be understood as history; they are woven into dramas whose purpose is to serve as moral allegories.
4. Dan Brown is a 21st-century heir of this “literary” tradition with his Da Vinci Code and its soon-to-be-released sequel in which, according to reliable sources, Freemasonry will feature prominently. It is clear that Brown is relying heavily (note we avoid saying plagiarizing) David Ovason’s The Secret Architecture of Our Nations Capital: The Masons and the Building of Washington, DC (London: Century Books, Ltd., 1999).
5. We shall not take up the thorny theological issue of what these massive earthquakes imply about the nature of the God who had just offered Himself as a loving sacrifice for the salvation of the world.
6. Jean-Paul de Clermont. “Les cahiers inconú de Gauguin en Tahiti.” Affairs Oceaniques. Vol. III, p. 25. Paris: Societé du Researche Polynesienne, 1943.
7. Mr. Lefevre’s pregnant ellipsis will seem odd until one realizes the subtext which he is attempting both to reveal to some, but conceal from most of his readers. It seems obvious that he and the old Rapanuian were Freemasons. It is not possible to tell to which Grand Lodge Lefevre was beholden. He could have been a member of the Belgian Grand Lodge (est. permanently in 1817), but it is as likely he joined in Tahiti under the Grand Orient of France which in 1834 established L'Oceanie Francaise (French Oceania). To the latter, most surely, Mr. Lefevre’s host belonged, for it was the only French Grand Lodge operating in the South Seas at the time. It also assures us the old man was able to speak French fluently. We are indebted to Mssr. de Clermont for his able and charming translation of this portion of Mssr. Lefevre’s account.
8. Polygamous marriages were still being contracted as late as the 1920s in northern Mexico. The Kauffman’s examination of the trial of US Senator Reed Smoot is particularly useful and reveal a strong Mormon tendency to sophistry and a willingness to evade the law in order to continue a controversial practice. This immoral philosophy is known as consequentialism.
9. Another major shift occurred on June 1, 1978 when the LDS church changed its policy about admitting blacks into their priesthood. This revealed the genuinely racist motivations of their previous apologetics and scripture wrangling to support the exclusionary practice.
10. “From the attributes of God set forth in Egyptian texts of all periods, Dr. Brugsch, de Rougé, and other eminent Egyptologists have come to the conclusion that the dwellers in the Nile valley, from the earliest times, knew and worshipped one God, nameless, incomprehensible and eternal […] The Egyptian religion is a pure monotheism, which manifested itself externally by a symbolic polytheism.” Budge, Wallis E. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1895. xci-xcii. The second portion of the quote is Budge’s reporting of de Rougé’s “amplifying” Champollion-Figeac, writing in 1839.
11. Schlegel’s attempt to incorporate biodiversity and technical information into his otherwise humanistic study anticipates aspects of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki.
12. Menzies, Gavin. 1421: The Year China Discovered the World. London: Bantam Press, 2003.Bibliography

Cheney, Thomas E. The Golden Legacy: A Folk History of J. Golden Kimball (Salt

Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1974, pp. 120-121.

DiCulo, Gianpiero & Fernando Jibe. “Il «Murlo Cowboy» e la divinazione per sputare nell’ area sacra di Chiusi.” Revista marxista di etruscologia teoretica 28 (1985) 937-62.

Epiphany. By Cycling Fish Performance Art Collective. Lower Wacker Drive, Chicago IL. 25 November 1991.

Eyon III, Ruph. “From Lost Word to Last Word: The Reconstructed Memoires of

Hiram Abiff.” Harpocrates Journal. Bluefield, WV: Stonewater Press, 1958.

Fabulous, Craig. “Will the Real Mother of Gog Please Stand Up? Nephites and Nephilim Reconsidered.” In Devoured by Locusts: An Anthology of Critical Mormon Studies. Ed. Sonia Johnson. Nauvoo, IL: Turba Irata Press, 1993, pp. 75-93.

Franco y Cabacungan, Benjamín. “La serpiente emplumada y la víbora crucificada de

Moisés: Paralelos emblemáticos náhuatl-hebraicos. Folia Hereticorum.

Ilocos, Nte. Republica ng Pilipinas, 1922, págs. 12-53.

“From Pitch and Reed Boats to the Nuclear Submarine: The Unclaimed Maritime

Empire of the Templars.” Unpublished intelligence presentation to US Joint

Chiefs of Staff, obtained prior to 1993, by Juan C. Díaz, Director of ESTI (Enterprise for Translation and Interpretation), La Havana, Cuba.

Herrera, José. “From Plates in the Head to Plates in the Ground: Metallurgy from

Egyptian Surgical Procedures to the Orphic Angel Moroni.” Alembic. New

Rochelle Press: New Rochelle, NY, 1999, pp. 33-72.

Jared, M. “Corianton and Ursprach.” Quest. Batavia, NY: Lucinda Morgan Press,

2001, pp. 12-25.

Kauffman, Ruth & Reginald Wright Kauffman. The Latter-Day Saints: A Study of the

Mormons in the Light of Economic Conditions. London: Williams and

Northgate, 1912.

Lefevre, Jean-Paul. “Le texte Rongorongo e l’identité du Grand Dieu Blanc.” Rapa

Nui Revue. Pape’ete, 1893. Vol. xviii, 89-110.

MacCannaugh, Brennan. “From Scottish Menhirs to Oak Island Treasure and Easter

Island Moai to Madagascar’s ‘Jolly Roger’ Gravestones: the Cultural Wake of

the Brethren of the Coast.” Select papers presented before the Kilwinning

Societas Latomorum, 1998. Private Collection, Isle of Man.

Mackenzie, Kenneth. “Mormon Masonry” in The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia. Vols.

I-VI. London, 1877.

Pinga, Kara D. and Kier B. Kosh. “The Genome Conspiracy: How Science

Manipulated Genome Data on Native American Populations to Discredit the

LDS Church.” Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Rocky Mountain

Retrofit Science Association. Vol. VI, No. 6, Series vi. June 6, 2006.

Plank, Walker. “Mysteries of the Whydah.” Piratology Journal. Boston, MA, 1990,

pp. 23-42.

Rockwell, Porter. “Slaying as He Rises: The Resurrection’s Geological Impact on

Pre-Columbian America.” Danite Journal. St. George, Utah, Mountain

Meadow Publications, 1877.

Schlegel, Otto. “Virakocha, Tanga-Roa und Quetzalcoatl: Spekulationen zur Identität

und der Trans-Pazifischen Route des Bärtigen Weißen Gottes.” Zeitschrift für

Polynesische Theologie. Berlin, 1942. Monograph, 75 pp.

Scharipf, Hadji. “Agarttha: East to West and West to East Again via the Center of the

Earth” (1880) reprinted in Katmandusk Krytikalia. Katmandu, Mandala Press:

July, 1990.

Seraf, Michael. “Is Angelic Speech Adamic Speech?: Reflections on H. Agrippa von

Nettesheim’s De Occulta Philosophia” in Mystic Tongues. Darwin, Australia:

Mirror Press, 2002, pp. 82-99.

Wellington, Nigel. “A Case for Secret Monotheism of Tahunga via Comparisons of

the Maori Ra and an Egyptian Middle Kingdom Papyrus of On.” Aenigmata

Incognita Novae Zeelandiae. Auckland, NZ. July, 1934, pp. 31-62.

13. The name Hiram Abiff is biblical, but distorted. The “surname” of “Abi[ff],” “Abu” and other like Semitic forms mean “father” and thus complicate attempts to say that the Hiram Abiff of Freemasonic lore is the same Hiram as the one in 1 Kings 7: 13-14. This is of no consequence to Freemasonry, since, it must be remembered, and Freemasonic lore constitutes a body of consciously constructed allegorical myths, designed for moral and philosophical improvement, not theological or historical instruction. Freemasons make no attempt to force the myths to cohere among themselves, except loosely, and even less to correspond to external history. It is, indeed, a world unto itself.
14. In 2002 or 2003, the Universidad Pontífica in Uruguay fired all professors they suspected of being Masons (translation: “whom others were pointing the finger at”). Actual slaughter of Freemasons occurred under Franco, in Spain. For a more complete treatment of the behavior of the Roman Catholic Church through the civil governments that serve as her surrogates, see Jasper Ridley’s The Freemasons: A History of the World’s Most Powerful Secret Society. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001.
15. Rumor among AFIO members (American Federation of Intelligence Officers) has it that the Díaz document was purloined or “bought” during a trip he made to Washington, D.C. as a delegate to a UN working group on lexical database management in 1993 or 1994. The details are, of course, impossible to ferret out, as all lips are sealed.
16. One interesting Nazi appropriation of masonic symbolism may be found in their inversion of the left-handed swastika into a right-handed one. While the swastika is a very ancient symbol, so also is Freemasonry (whose existence prior to 1717 has to be admitted). It is difficult to say at what period the swastika became incorporated into masonic symbolic system, but be that as it may, it was commonly and innocently used by Masons prior to Hitler’s coming to power in 1933. What is important at this juncture is to note that the Kipling Society emblazoned it on their logo, one that superimposed it across the profile of an elephant’s head, until Kipling himself ordered it removed following the “election” of Der Fürher in order to avoid any hint of association of sympathy with the Nazi party.
17. As evidence mounted against any Semitic stock in the Americas, the Mormon position began to mitigate the oversight and claimed that the original Semites were a small, very small group who mixed with others in America who came via other routes. Since Moroni told Joseph Smith, Jr. that the plates would contain an account of the previous inhabitants of this continent, it is apparent that even angels can err by oversimplification.
18. When mid 19th-century German immigrants came to mid America, an area still dominated by their descendents, they often cited as their reason for coming to America her then well known reputation of having no kings. When asked why they were coming to America, they would respond with keine Könige dort (No kings there).
19.

Pythagoras, Freemasonry and the Development of Science

2010-02-25T12:34:00.000-08:00

First, for readers who are newcomers to my blogs, I make no claim to be able to prove that Freemasonry dates from this or that time or place. What seems far more reasonable and to an extent demonstrable (after you've read a great deal), is that operative lodges (real stone masons) gradually evolved into the masonic bodies we have today. It coalesced slowly, absorbing bits and pieces of ancient lore, practices, symbolism and by a process of accretion, attached these iconographical, moral and philosophical elements into guild rituals, some of which were "native" to the Craft.

The period of greatest evolution was the 17th century and the place was, loosely, the British Isles. Whether Scotland first, or England, this was the geographical area where the social, cultural, intellectual and spiritual conditions were ripe for it to become what it finally emerged as in 1717.

One of the major figures in the development of Western civilizations is Pythagoras. Recently, a wonderful book called Measuring Heaven was published that makes the following observation, which is useful in understanding something not only about Pythagoras but about the nature of masonic history and its legends; namely, that the historical personage about whom we know very little with certainty is far less important than the history and impact of what is believed about him. I had some e-mail exchanges with the author, Dr. Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, a retired professor of Art History. She was intrigued to learn that a very great number of the names in her index were Masons.

The role of Pythagoras, or more properly, Pythagoreanism, in the development of science is very great. The use of geometry in harmonics, music and astronomy and a sense of awe, if not "holiness" or "mystery" through the ages is still percolating through our culture and is quite present, explicitly, in Freemasonry's symbols and ritual.

In a similar way, Freemasonry does not assert its origins in the building of King Solomon's Temple. True, in more historically naïve times, most Masons did believe that; many masonic traditions also traced its origins to the Tower of Babel (which would be more fascinating, in fact, in terms of the mysteries about something that has been "lost" and about the role of language in the Craft).

The two columns found in Masonry were actually imbued with some myths by the Jewish historian Josephus in the time of Nero. He wrote in his Antiquities of the Jews that these columns had been crafted before the Flood by the sons of Lamech and that in them the secrets of the arts and sciences had been hidden. After the Flood, only one was found. How fascinating, positive and how irresistible to conscious fabricators of myth!

I highly recommend these three books to all serious students of history, the classics and of course, Freemasonry. Take them seriously or take them as quaint, they will encourage you to think about the present world in a different way.

What is a Grand Lodge?

2010-02-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

A Grand Lodge is the central administrative and chief authority for the governance of all lodges in a given jurisdiction. They are sovereign in that they owe no explanation or obedience to any other Grand Lodge.

In many countries, there is one Grand Lodge. Sometimes there are more than one. Which one is "legit" depends on whom you ask, but generally, it will be the one -- or ones -- that can trace their formation back through time to the United Grand Lodge of England, formed in 1717, in London.

Some Grand Lodges do not require a belief in a Supreme Being -- and these are considered irregular because they do not conform to one of the great Landmarks of the Craft -- those practices or basic features that define what Freemasonry is. Such a Grand Lodge and all lodges under such a Grand Lodge would not be recognized by other regular Grand Lodges.

Then there are individual lodges that are clandestine, meaning that they were formed without a proper warrant or dispensation from the Grand Lodge under whose jurisdiction they would be. They may be regular inasmuch as they adhere to the Landmarks, but having failed to incorporate in adherence to Masonic Law, they would not be recognized. It would be possible for a clandestine lodge, if regular, to become recognized, by applying to the proper Grand Lodge. Most clandestine lodges I have heard of are also irregular in some way as well.

Large countries that they are, in the USA, Canada and Mexico, there is a Grand Lodge in each state. Mexico is more complex, because there are often several Grand Lodges in a given state and much political wrangling.

You may have heard of Masons traveling to visit a lodge in another grand jurisdiction and having to prove he is a Mason. This is a very ancient practice - and having a membership card and a driver's license to prove that you are who you say you are, are not enough. Masons have modes of recognition that derive from the days of illiterate, traveling stonemasons who had to protect guild secrets and also show their level of skill as workers. One book that discusses this in some detail is Ross King's Brunelleschi's Dome.

It's a lively book that brings to life what it would have been like in those days when Freemasonry was taking shape, becoming what we know it to be today. Yes, there are differences from place to place in terms of ritual, for instance; but those differences are slight -- and as long as the ancient landmarks are preserved, their members will be recognized by other Masons the world over.

You may be wondering "why all the fuss?" It may seem a bit like the Dr. Seuss story of the Sneetches, but Freemasonry is a serious organization with a lot of pride in the antiquity of its practices and zealously protects them from what one could call erosion, cultural decay or just plain dumbing down. Hence all the concern over regularity and only being in Masonic communication with regular Grand Lodges and the lodges under them. It may sound a bit like, say, the Anglican Communion, and the comparison is good up to a point -- but we are a fraternity, not a religion. Our rituals are not performed to grant sacramental graces, like baptism.

Origin of Freemasonry

2010-02-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Everyone interested in Freemasonry, whether Freemason or not, seems to be attracted, confused or repelled by the question of its origins. It seems to be an unsolvable mystery despite the dozens of theories advanced about it.

The problem arises from the fact that prior to 1717, when four lodges in London decided to create a "United Grand Lodge," Freemasonry had existed for centuries in the form of non-centralized guilds of craftsmen -- actual stone masons. When this Grand Lodge was formed, many zealous and concerned Masons began destroying records. In my own opinion, this happened because the members of those English lodges that came together were pro-Hanoverian and, fearing the membership of Freemasonry at large was Jacobine - pro Scottish -- they formed a Grand Lodge and asserted, presumptively but successfully, that they had authority over Masonic matters in all of England. This theory cannot be proven, but is only supported by circumstantial evidence about the political climate and what little is known about the members of that first "Grand Lodge."

David Stevenson, a Scottish historian, has asserted Scottish origins for Freemasonry. Naturally (!) many English scholars disagree. Even prior to Stevenson, Dame Francis Yates had tentatively asserted, again with much circumstantial but convincing evidence, that Freemasonry grew out of mystical protestant reform movements, Rosicrucianism and political intrigues involving Frederick V of the Palatinate and King James in the early decades of the 1600s. It is fascinating to read Stevenson and Yates because, in my opinion, their ideas are not mutually exclusive.

More recently, a real masterpiece has been published that stands on their shoulders, subsuming and sifting the works just mentioned and others: Tobias Churton's Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and the First Freemasons.

If you want a primer that does not directly deal with Freemasonry but prepares you for a fresh way to look at the history of science, myth and religion, read Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth by De Santillana, Giorgio & Hertha Von Deschend. This work is challenging in many ways. It confronts many popular notions about the origins of science, myth, religion, and culture by examining myths from around the world. Very erudite. This is an incredibly rich book. It makes only passing mentions of Freemasonry, but the topic of cultural and symbolic transmission of information are vital to any historical approach to Freemasonry that draws on comparative myth, ritual, symbolism, and so forth. This book is a must, if only becuase it is a model of responsible scholarship. It argues that prehistoric science gave rise to myth, misinterpretations of myth gave rise to religion and that in the modern age, comparative religion and myth are mired down in blinds – because most scholars do not have the broad range of disciplines or range of exposure to crosscultural myth and astronomy, archeology etc. to execute responsible studies. It asserts that myth originally enciphered astronomical information and then spread from a common source to the whole earth. Compelling arguments are presented that refute or mitigate the theory that it is to our commonalities alone that similar myths appear all over the world. There are simply too many identical, discreet details that cannot be explained any other way than that they emerged from some common, late stoneage source and were dispersed. Freemasonry seems to have had some antecedents in widely dispersed cultures. For instance, they reproduce a print of an ancient Chinese astronomical treatise in which Draco is shown, personified, holding a square in one hand and a compass in the other!

There seems to be no bottom to the abyss one can fall into when studying the history of Freemasonry before the creation of the United Grand Lodge of England. There is no one trail, it seems. Freemasonry emerged from what I've called the "esoteric soup" of the Renaissance, yet it predates even that period.

Indeed, some trails grow cold before others, but the journey itself is the lesson. As one searches for that which was lost, he learns so much. Like Ulysses, he is made richer from the trip home than from the outbound journey.

An Invitation to Dan Brown Fans

2010-02-04T10:50:00.000-08:00

First, welcome to my blog, where you can post questions about Freemasonry. I can't -- ok, I won't -- answer any questions that would violate my obligations to silence, but I am generally free to discuss symbolism and quite willing to tell you what is false about Freemasonry.

I am especially interested in commenting about Dan Brown's books, which have had a positive and a negative impact on Freemasonry in the public mind.

For starters, I want to direct you to a wonderful book, whose facts about zodiacs and other details, including astronomical data I have confirmed. However, I hasten to add that I do not share the interpretations of the author. It is David Ovason's book about the architecture and design of Washington, DC., particularly of what is known as the Federal Triangle.

I lived in DC for years, and after I read Ovason's book, I happened to go back for a business trip and in one afternoon, retraced the path he outlines regarding the architectural details that allude to zodiacal alignments and the rising of Virgo. They all check out. However, to say that the Founding Fathers and Masons involved in the design of DC were therefore star worshipers is just too big a stretch.

This book is one more example of how a wealth of information still needs to pass through the restraining fire of reason. For Dan Brown, as a writer of exciting fiction, the passion for a plot often eclipses (pun intended) and extinguishes good analysis of the facts. But one only needs to be concerned in an ethical sense when the fiction begins to be accepted as fact.

Readers of Dan Brown seem to be in search of something that was lost -- a feature that puts them on a wavelength that is harmonious with much in Freemasonry. At the same time, I ask all you Dan Brown fans: Do you read his works as escapist literature or are you in search of something? What is it about the modern world that is not filling a need?

Ironically, Freemasonry attracts men who are quite different from one another in many ways, and unites them into one body of friends and brothers. How do Freemasons recognize each other -- apart from perhaps wearing a ring or lapel pin?

You may have seen "exposures" -- but be warned that they cannot be trusted. Dan Brown fell into that trap when he claimed that a ritual of drinking blood was a Masonic practice. The Southern Jurisdiction of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite issued a statement to clarify that what Dan Brown used was a text from a different, renegade form of Scottish Rite that was around in the 19th century.

One reason I started this blog was to correct the misunderstandings out there.

Three Great Books About the Crusades

2010-01-13T11:58:00.000-08:00

Before reviewing any of these books, I wish to stress that this blog posting is not intended to imply that I believe that the Knights Templar of the Crusade period were the origin of Freemasonry. This posting is explicitly about three very responsible books, written by non-Masons, so far as I know, who treat the subject of the Crusades or the Knights Templar quite responsibly. The fourth book is a great read, but, as I explain below, not reliable from a scholarly point of view.

To all interested in the subject of the Templars, particularly if they come at the topic with some ideas about the Templars and Freemasonry, I recommend they read the books in this blog posting in the order in which I review them.

The first book I recommend is The Dream and the Tomb: A History of the Crusades, by Robert Payne. It does not treat the Knights Templar as a separate subject; instead, it examines the whole period of the Crusades, all eight of them (or nine, depending on how one counts them). The Crusades were an important era in European history during which Europeans came into long and close contact with cultures of the Middle East. It lasted from roughly 1100-1300 A.D. Payne's book is well written enough for scholarly research, yet very readable for a generally literate audience. He includes good maps and offers fascinating "cross-cultural" insights that often are eerily relevant to the conflicts in the region we see and hear about today. I read it as the US invaded Iraq and was struck by many similarities -- and dismayed that our leaders were so uninformed about many tactical aspects of warfare in the region that could be had for the reading!

Anyone interested in the Knights Templar are advised to read Payne's book first. It is essential to understand the entire period and its conflicts and various players before focusing on any particular aspect of them.

The second book to read is The Templars, by Piers Paul Read. It is a rigorously historical and scholarly treatment of the history of the Knights Templar. It is heavier going than Payne's book, but this is to be expected when one narrows the focus. It has interesting photos of artifacts, maps and other items to bring the subject to life. This book is the first place to go before dealing with any of the cultural sequela following the official disolution of the Order in 1312.

The third book to read is The Knights Templar and Their Myth. It too is a great read and one that is historical in focus, and it finally takes the curious reader beyond the period of the Knights Templar into the following centuries -- to examine responsibly the power of the myth of the Templars. Here is where you will find at least a primer into the oft-told story that the Freemasons are derived from the Templars, a myth that the Chevalier Ramsey made famous in the mid 1700s.

Finally, Born in Blood, by John Robinson. This book is not very good from a scholarly perspective. The evidence he cites is tenuous -- the connections he draws across time, connecting people and events are forced, yet convincing to those who have not taken the time to learn more about the Templars from reliable scholarly sources. To the uninitiated (pun intended), there seems to be some smoke but, to abuse the metaphor, Mr. Robinson is fanning a bed of fast cooling embers. The trail he purports to reveal as one that connects the two organizations has too many gaps -- and other possible explanations.

Despite my disagreement with his conclusions, he does offer a wealth of well documented information and he writes very well and with passion.

Enjoy them all!

One Great Read -- For Freemasons and Other Free-thinking People!

2009-12-30T19:57:00.000-08:00

Meeting God, by Thomas Trzyna, is the best novel I've read in a long time -- and I'm reading it for the second time now. It involves a great intellectual, spiritual quest in the form of a lively and highly readable adventure story, peppered with colorful, well drawn characters, very realistic conversations and exotic places. It isn't about trying to convert anyone, so relax! If anything, this novel might challenge some people who label themselves as "orthodox" -- whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jewish.

This novel includes a theme of interest to Freemasons, particularly those who are members of the Scottish Rite. Just as so many of the degrees of Scottish Rite deal with questions of religious and political history in the form of allegorical dramas which encourage its members to compare various belief systems, epistomology, ontology and so on, its protagonist, Dr. George Bourdon, a mature college professor, has been on a lifetime quest to understand, not just by study, but with the vigor of a serious anthropologist and comparative mythologist, all the religions of the world.

Dr. Bourdon seeks to discover if there is some over-arching unity or truth to them, something that might even reveal their common origins, a view known as perennialism, which may be explored to great intellectual profit in The Golden Bough -- or whether their differences are so profound that the impression that there are many paths to the top of the same mountain is simplistic and mistaken. Dr. Bourdon's first-person narrative often reflects, with a humor that reminds me of Voltaire's Candide, on the perennialism one finds in Sufism.

The plot thickens (pardon the cliché) on a trip to Paris, when he enters a very ordinary bar with his brother to get out of the awful wintery weather. There, they meet a very unusual old man who seems to be, well, supernatural -- to Dr. Bourdon anyway. The mystery begins when the old man, almost as soon as they meet, matter-of-factly reveals that he had known Dr. Bourdon's deceased uncle, a famous marine biologist -- and pulls the obituary from his pocket. The short exchange between the old man and Dr. Bourdon makes such a powerful, other-worldly impression on him that his lifelong quest goes into high gear.

Meeting God features one colorful character Masons will love right away, Dr. Jacques LaPere, who is Dr. Bourdon's one academic confidant with whom he shares and debates his ideas on the origin of monotheism, the emergence of mankind in Africa and how humans populated the world and diffused religious thought. Dr. LaPere is introduced to readers as "the strange Freemason." The narrator paints this character with great affection: "Ask him a question about modern science and he was likely to respond with a stream of astrological reflections that underneath their lunacy revealed a staggering knowledge of physics, astronomy and mathematics."

Meeting God is a great read that will make you think, laugh and actually enjoy its lively dialogue, mature and erudite speculations of a philosophical, theological and anthropological sort. It is delightful to read and is well researched in terms of the customs and places Dr. Bourdon visits. Erudite and readable -- a balance Thomas Trzyna has struck with a master's touch.

2009-12-30T12:56:00.000-08:00

Freemasonry

The word conjures up as many images and opinions as there are people of whom you might inquire. Some of these images and opinions are positive; some are quite negative. Some are comical, whether innocent or malicious. Regardless of the source or tone of the information available about Freemasonry, it can be reliable or unreliable, even if provided by a Freemason, also known as a Mason. To say that even a Freemason could be unreliable in his information or opinions about the organization he is a member of may seem surprising or even evasive, as if Freemasonry had something to hide, or worse, that some terrible truth is being hidden from the majority of its members. However, this is not the case. It may help to know that since June 24, 1717, it is estimated that over sixteen thousand articles, books, pamphlets, movies, tracts and other items have been published or promulgated of every quality and motivation imaginable about this loose-knit, world-wide society. This partially explains the diversity and varying reliability of opinions. Changing attitudes and motives among the membership, in accord with the various cultures of the world in which Freemasonry found a home also have contributed to the many views that Freemasons have had and have about themselves as well as the views that outsiders have had and still have about Freemasonry.

It is important to know that no one, Freemason or not, regardless even of his academic qualifications, can speak with absolute authority and certainty about the unquestionably remote origins of Freemasonry or even, surprisingly, the meaning of the rituals and interpretation of the symbolism employed in making a man a Freemason. There are differences in ritual in the U.S. and elsewhere, but everywhere in the world where they are found, there are fundamental commonalities that allow one to be recognized and accepted as a brother.

Much is known, however, about the development of the Craft, as it is often called, since St. John’s Day, June 24, 1717 when four lodges in London joined together to create the first Grand Lodge. This Grand Lodge eventually exerted influence and authority over lodges in England and, eventually, many areas of the world. In the 18th century, other Grand Lodges were formed, according to certain protocols that had been agreed upon, and became independent Grand Lodges with the right to create other lodges under their own jurisdictions. While this is a cursory account of the origins of the historical phase, or of modern Freemasonry, it does not satisfy the intellectually curious. As they delve into its symbolism, even the more conservative historians of the Craft, Freemason or not, soon conclude that despite the differences to be encountered from place to place, it has been around almost in its present forms for over three hundred years. David Stevenson, a Scottish scholar, has explored the origins of Freemasonry in Scotland that predate the English lodges, in his book The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century.

There is no single leader of the Freemasons either, a fact that would stop conspiracy mongers in their tracks if they were disposed to listen and think. Each lodge has its Worshipful Master — a merely honorific term inherited from 18th century England. In most jurisdictions, he serves for a year, by consent of the other members of the lodge. Likewise, each Grand Lodge has its Grand Master, who in most jurisdictions serves for a year by consent of the voting members in the jurisdiction. The authority of the Worshipful Master is absolute only in terms of the governance of the lodge, most conspicuous during the ritualistic aspects of lodge meetings, but also exercised in the day-to-day operations involving the same humdrum details as other organizations (budget, buildings and grounds, supplies, food and so on). Even in the performance of his duties, however, no Worshipful Master is successful without the goodwill and consent of his other and equal brothers of the lodge. Men who are obsessed with controlling others quickly fail in Freemasonry.

Some may view the Freemasons as tending toward the eccentric or antiquarian. Certainly, being a Freemason requires an individual to be tolerant of the constructive and positive idiosyncrasies of others.

Collectively, when men meet as respectful equals, individual differences can be an asset to the health of a group so long as they are not neurotic obsessions. In any case, the continuity of the Craft and its rituals attest to one characteristic: Freemasons are quite conservative on issues having to do with the ancient usages, traditions and customs of the fraternity. However, it must be quickly pointed out that this conservatism does not necessarily reflect any conservative political or religious views held by them as a group or individually. Certainly, no Freemason is required to believe in, or even consent to any particular political view or religious creed.

In fact, religion and politics are forbidden subjects while a lodge is in session. No Freemason will ever ask a man who is interested in becoming a Freemason any questions about his political views, nor any question about religion, except to find out if he genuinely believes in one God and an afterlife. A man’s specific opinions on these subjects are his own private business. This is not to say that Freemasons are indifferent to politics or religion. On the contrary; the masonic attitude toward freedom of opinion and expression has made it a champion of liberty, education, tolerance and human rights all over the world for over three centuries.

Liberty Equality Fraternity

These words are familiar to anyone acquainted with the French Revolution of 1789. While they are quintessentially masonic, despite movies, such as National Treasure or pulp fiction writers such as Dan Brown in his book The Lost Symbol, or other items tending to the sensationalist in other media, the Freemasons did not cause the French or the American Revolutions so much as they were conspicuous participants in, and, to some extent influenced events due to their contacts across political and national boundaries. Rather than as a causative agent of the Revolutions of the Age of Enlightenment (and beyond), Freemasonry is more properly understood when it is seen as a vehicle for the diffusion of ideas, as

Margaret C. Jacobs has shown quite responsibly in her scholarly book Living the Enlightenment.

Freemasons, and Freemasonry, then and now, adhere to, promulgate, and are dedicated to the underlying principles of universal human dignity that led to the liberation movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, neither Freemasons —nor Freemasonry, as some fantasize it, constitute a unified and international body—, orchestrate revolutions to overthrow oppressive governments and neutralize the forces of religious bigotry. Given what Freemasonry stands for, it might seem sometimes that the world would be better off if there were an international, masonic conspiracy, but there is not. It stands for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. When any society or government abandons its allegiance to these principles, it will sooner or later be replaced, with or without Freemasons.

Other freedoms which Freemasons had been practicing in private for generations by the time these revolutions occurred included, among others, freedom of expression, voting, paying taxes (in the form of dues), established by common consent, and constitutional, representative government. It was only natural that having been skilled in the exercise of these God-given rights of man that Freemasons, at the end of the American Revolution, should be so visible in codifying them in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Citizens of Washington and Oregon may be proud of a chapter in their earliest recorded history that is tied closely to Freemasonry. Lewis & Clark were both Freemasons. When one first notes this fact, this may seem unimportant, like affiliation with an ordinary professional guild, something Freemasonry is often thought to be, due to its own legendary history. Documentaries have neglected to mention Lewis’ and Clark’s affiliation with Freemasonry out of ignorance of its influence on the way this pair of explorers conducted the affairs of their group when they reached the Pacific coast and faced hard times before returning east. They called for a vote from all members of the party, which included an African-American slave and a native-American woman, anticipating voting rights for members of these groups by over a century. This has been pointed out correctly as a testament to the American spirit of liberty, but documentary makers have not known that while the ideas about freedom were spread internationally, before, during, and after the Enlightenment and up to our times, Freemasonry was one of the most important vehicles in the Western world for disseminating the ideas and ideals that gave birth to the modern, representative democracies, whose ever-precarious existence renders their comfortable familiarity deceptive.

Consider, for instance, Benjamin Franklin’s deep and international involvement with the Craft throughout his life. His masonic career and the ways his masonic life intersected with other important figures who were also Freemasons is not mentioned once on the voluminous web pages devoted to preserving and honoring his memory. He was once Grand Master of Pennsylvania and was member of lodges on both sides of the Atlantic. Freemasons were to be found among the leaders of most of the 18th and 19th century movements for independence in the New World and enlightened, progressive thinking everywhere.

From pole to pole, the countries of the Americas owe a debt of gratitude to Freemasonry deeper than any Freemasonry owes to the Americas. When politicians try to sell their ideas to the American people by wrapping themselves or their ideas in the flag, people would be advised to consider whether they or their ideas are consonant with the values of Freemasonry or whether they are merely paying lip service to them, while inwardly abusing or betraying those values.

Freemasonry has had and still has many enemies. One of its greatest is ignorance of its benevolent presence.

Not being a religion, it has been and still is accused of being one, worse still, of being a satanic one — by religious despots, charlatans and opportunists who fear Freemasonry’s dedication to freedom of conscience in all matters religious and political. The Catholic Church and a few Protestant denominations have been the perpetrators of the condemnation and persecution of Freemasons. The irony is that Freemasonry has no ill will toward any religion — quite to the contrary, Freemasons are encouraged to be involved with their respective faiths, even when that faith’s leaders may be inimical to Freemasonry, as John Robinson's book A Pilgrim's Path well documents.

Whether out of ignorance, superstition, fanatic zeal, or driven by personal motives, some religious leaders expend a lot of energy attacking Freemasonry.

Not being a political party, it has had many political enemies as well. The kinds of political enemies it has had serves to classify its religious detractors as well. They are numbered among humanities’ hall of villainy. Entire regimes have wielded their might against the Craft, imprisoning, torturing and killing many Freemasons over the centuries. Being not Right wing, it has been accused of being Left wing — by Hitler and Mussolini. Being not Left wing, it has been accused of being Right wing — by Stalin. Being non-Muslim, it has been accused of being a Zionist, American puppet — by the Imam Khomeini. Being regarded as a secret organization (it is more proper to consider it an organization with proprietary, fraternal secrets for modes of recognition), it has been variously accused even in England, the cradle of modern Freemasonry, of granting favors to members or covering up crimes. The Jack the Ripper story recurs from time to time in this context. Quite conveniently and conspicuously, favoritism, as it certainly manifests itself sometimes among, for instance, some Anglicans, Methodists, Mormons, and as is blatantly exerted by political parties, never occurs to Freemasonry’s detractors. Usually, Freemasonry’s position has been to remain silent in the face of accusers, because, as the Salem Witch trials amply proved, once accused by a fanatic, there is no appeal to reason.

By joining the Craft, a man aligns himself spiritually with many men, past and present, from all religions, language groups, races, cultures, socio-economic classes and professions who are dedicated to the universal brotherhood of man, to the proposition that man can be better, individually and collectively. You meet them all, the living or, figuratively if you wish, even Freemasonry’s illustrious dead, as equals before their one, common Creator. These include such figures as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Washington, various signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, various members of the English royal family throughout the centuries, the famous English architect Christopher Wren, some of the founding members of the Royal Society, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Goethe, Lessing, Garibaldi, José Rizal, Simón Bolívar, several U.S. presidents, the Mayo brothers who founded the Mayo clinics, Sam Houston and Santa Anna, Benito Juárez (who proclaimed that respect for others’ rights is peace), John Wayne, Neil Armstrong, maybe the man who lives next door, and thousands more from all walks of life.

By becoming a member of the Royal Art, as it is also called, a man makes a statement, mostly to himself (and his new brothers), that there is more to life than eating, sleeping, and working. Work, noble as it is in support of oneself, one’s family and to assist those in need, is not the sole end of man. Why should it be important to institutionalize or otherwise formally make a statement about these truths? Religions and philosophies provide man with transcendent meaning, but they are frequently divisive, or easily exploited by opportunists and fanatics. History, especially recent history in our own country, demonstrates this.

Men who might not have ever met, or who, if they had, might have been mortal enemies, may instead meet as Freemasons and transcend the limits of their various cultural backgrounds, becoming what Socrates called “citizens of the world”. Freemasonry attracts men who are enticed by this idea.

Masonic history abounds in examples of the power of this fraternal bond. Rightly sensing and fearing this power as a threat to established hierarchies created and maintained by exploitation, injustice and hereditary privilege, one edict of the Church of Rome against Freemasonry in the 18th century (among many still in force) objected to Freemasonry on the grounds that soldiers on opposite sides of a battlefield who recognize each other as Freemasons might be inclined to not kill one another when ordered to do so by their generals. Certainly worse things could happen to mankind than soldiers refusing to kill each other. Instead of determining to assert their divine birthright of being lords of themselves, responsible to the Great Architect of the Universe, their peers and history, they could continue to follow dictators and other egomaniacs like sheep, remaining slaves, body and soul to despotic kings, priests and other self-anointed leaders or usurpers of the rights of government that emanate from the governed by their direct and unequivocal consent.

Among the reasons for a man to become a Freemason, none may be greater than because he seeks truth, since his understanding of the nature of things will determine his actions in all spheres of life. He should be a seeker of truths about his own existence and identity, about the proper relations of things in the cosmos, about how things actually are, as opposed to how he is told to see them or as they appear to be, including what Freemasonry means to him. Remember, no one tells a man how he should receive Freemasonry into his soul, or how he should experience it.

A candidate for the mysteries of Freemasonry should be a decent man of legal age, a believer in one God and a future life, and have an open, inquisitive mind, neither a simpleton nor too headstrong to learn by modes of instruction unfamiliar in the modern, Western world, but which were more readily grasped in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He should view life, even existence itself, as a quest for more and more knowledge, or light that is only attainable by discipline driven by an orderly mind.

He should not wait to be invited. He may rest assured that he will not be. If, after serious consideration, he is interested in joining, he should “stand at the door and knock”, in humility and desirous for the step by step process of self improvement and discovery, taught in three degrees which are allegorical of man’s lifetime journey of learning and struggle, groping through the darkness, confronting and combating evil and error, within himself and in the world.

The three degrees of Freemasonry, Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason, are obtained by participating in relatively short, ritualistic dramas, usually accomplished one per month over three or four months. As he goes through them the candidate is acquainted with the mysteries or esoteric teachings of the Craft. He may say, after going through the degree work, “Is this all there is to it?” If so, that should not be a sign that there was nothing in the degree work but a few simple fraternal secrets of a predictable nature, or equally unfortunate, that there might have been anything wrong with him. It should also be remembered that while anyone can read about the rituals, but they must be experienced to be a real and vital force in a man’s life. If this seems odd, consider reading a play as opposed to being the main character in it. Then imagine being the main character in a series of plays you have never read and yet which you perform well. That would be suspenseful to say the least. To read such a play first would also ruin the experience, which is another motivation for all the “secrecy” for which Freemasonry is famous — or infamous.

The symbolism of the degree work, it must be remembered, has kept many people, even seasoned scholars, busy for centuries unraveling its many layers of meaning — or possible meanings. One of the features of symbolism is that it is so capable of multiple, non-exclusive interpretations, making emblematic and symbolic modes of instruction very powerful vehicles that speak deeper than words and can outlast the ages. Freemasonry has survived and will continue to survive to be a vital force within society, but ever vigilant to work its mysteries out of public view.

If you are interested in learning more about Freemasonry, contact me. Ironically, Freemasonry is a most open secret. We are found in most local phone books in the U.S. I can help you locate a lodge near you. Any active Freemason can direct you to reliable sources of information about Freemasonry from a variety of perspectives.

By becoming a genuine, active Freemason, a man does his part to ensure that this noble fraternity will continue to exert its gentle but unrelenting hand in human affairs through men in all walks of life for another generation.

With unprejudiced, kind regard for all good men everywhere.

Who Speaks for Freemasonry?

2009-12-29T21:03:00.000-08:00

The first two things to understand when beginning to learn about Freemasonry is that it is not one worldwide organization and that no one person's opinions or interpretations about it are authoritative, in the sense that all Freemasons have to accept them.

Another thing that is important to remember is that books like Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, favorable as it is to the fraternity, still are works of fiction.

Likewise, his highly popular novel The Da Vinci Code as well as Angels and Demons give the impression that the fraternity is an organization with an agenda of world domination.

Another misconception that needs to be corrected in the public mind is that Freemasonry is a "secret society."

If it were a secret society, I would not be able to tell you it existed or that I am a member of it. It is an organization with secrets. Just think how many organizations, businesses and corporations have "closed meetings" and propietary information.

Freemasonry is the descendant of an ancient guild -- and its secrets were a matter of protecting the trade. Nowadays, these secrets are still kept as a matter of tradition.

Finally, let's address the question of religion. Freemasonry is not a religion, but requires its members to believe in a Supreme Being. There is no requirement that he state what he believes this Supreme Being to be like or what this Being thinks or requires of us, if anything. Those matters are between the man and his conscience and he is encouraged to work them out according to his own religious tradition.

I invite my readers to post questions and comments -- and promise that all respectful ones will be answered. Future posts about Freemasonry will address history, symbolism, art, pop culture and will include links to books of interest. Look for my book reviews here as well!