Sion's Army: The Freemasons

SION'S ARMY - The Freemasons

Copyright 2015 Jeff Wilkerson

Published by Fox.Brown Press

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Table of Contents

Preface.

Chapter 1 - Freemasonry: An Overview.

Why Men flock to it.

Freemasonry Today.

Books and Authoritative Authors.

The Origins of Freemasonry.

Chapter 2 - Judaism: An Overview.

Judaism Today.

The Two Jewish Traditions.

The Jewish denominations.

Authoritative Books.

Chapter 3 - From Early Judaism to the Jewish Revolt (1350 BC to 67 AD).

The Bible Story.

The Babylonian Exile.

The Diaspora.

Hellenism.

Roman Rule.

Chapter 4 - The Rise of Christianity to the fall of Rome (33 AD to 476 AD).

The Story of Jesus.

Chapter 5 - The Merovingian Dynasty.

The Merovingian Dynasty.

The Bloodline.

Chapter 6 - The Crusades and the Templars (1099- 1314).

The Knights Templar.

The Albigensian Crusade

The fall of the Knights Templar.

Chapter 7 - The Renaissance.

The Renaissance.

The Spanish Inquisition.

The Protestant Reformation.

The Counter-Reformation.

The Religious Wars of France.

The Origins of Freemasonry.

Voyages to the New World.

Chapter 8 - Cromwell and the English Revolution.

The English Israelites.

The Rise of Puritanism.

The Palantinate.

Oliver Cromwell.

The Execution of Charles I.

The Protectorate.

Chapter 9 The Restoration and the Glorious Revolution.

The Restoration of Charles II.

Louis XIV ascends the Throne.

William of Orange.

The Bank of England.

Chapter 10 Freemasonry’s Public Debut and the American Revolution.

Grand Lodge of England.

The Scottish Rite.

Weishaupt's Illuminati.

The American Revolution.

The War of Independence.

The Templar Constitution.

Chapter 11 The French Revolution.

Prelude to Revolution.

The Revolution.

The Girondinist Revolution.

The Jacobin Revolution.

The Thermidorean Revolution.

Napoleon's Rise to Power.

Chapter 12 Conclusion.

Endnotes

Bibliography

About the Author

Preface

The day was windy and hot in South Florida. It was late 2002, and I was in my parked vehicle, at my employer’s sandy lot, waiting to be loaded. I was watching the swirls of dust pass by my window in front of me. On the radio was the voice of the opinionated Rush Limbaugh, the widely heard radio talk show host, spewing out his message to his listeners. We must go to war, he said. Saddam supports the terrorists. He possesses weapons of mass destruction. He is an evil dictator who must be deposed. He is an imminent threat to America and our way of life—a threat to world peace, he fulminated.

Obviously a war was looming. America was about to ensnare herself in another unnecessary war in the Middle East. I hated the prospect. I thought it was an incredibly stupid idea that could have catastrophic consequences—as it did. My political views were quite extreme compared to the American mainstream. I guess one could say that I was a radical nationalist. I did not want my country getting involved in a war unless it was indisputably in her interest.

I had long been aware of the Jewish power in my country at this period in my life and knew the Jews were supporting this war wholeheartedly. Almost every major Jewish organization in the country was behind it. They saw Saddam Hussein as the archetypal anti-Semite—a despicable creature whose ilk must be exterminated from the planet. So as the President huddled in the Oval Office planning and conspiring this adventure, I was mindful of the ten-thousand pound gorilla in the room—the Israeli Lobby—licking its chops in the background, egging on the other evil-doers.

I was certainly acquainted with the likes of Rush Limbaugh. I had been listening to him for years—at least since the early nineties. Frankly, I liked him. I thought he had a lot of good things to say. He was especially critical of the harmful ideological sway of the country’s liberal elite—many of them Jews. Some of the same idiots, who he attacked, however, were the same people pushing us into this idiotic war with Iraq. About this war, he appeared to be on their side, and I couldn’t understand why this was. It was an enigma to me. He appeared to be a Gentile, not a Jew. Why did he want us to go to war?

Not only was he a supporter of this war, he seemed to be a man on a mission. His rants about Iraq and Hussein would go on for hours, every weekday, between noon and two o’clock. There was a fire in his belly. At times, he appeared hysterical in his ravings for war. I couldn’t understand it as I was so opposed to it.

I said the Jews supported this war. My observation was not completely true. Many opposed it. The Tribe are a tricky bunch, and they strive to control both sides in an argument. Many had postured themselves in opposition to it. There were many vocal Jews who opposed it. Roughly two weeks after this incident I was listening to another talk show. This time the host was a liberal feminist named Randi Rhodes. About the only thing, she and I had in common, politically, was that she opposed the war. Obviously this was the topic of conversation in America, at this juncture in its history, and she, on a daily basis came out strongly in opposition to our tilt toward hostilities and for this reason I had been listening to her show. The topic of conversation this day was particularly intriguing to me: What makes Rush Limbaugh tick?, or, Why is he coming out so vociferously in support of the war? She, apparently, like me, could not fathom why he was so in support of it.

Although there were many Americans opposed to the war, probably most were quite apprehensive towards it. There were some, like Limbaugh, who strongly supported it. Why was this so? He didn’t seem to be a military man who never saw a war he didn’t like. He did not appear to be Jewish. Why was he so emotionally in support of it?

About mid-way through the show a man called in and made a stunning—stunning to me—and provocative pronouncement. Rush Limbaugh thinks the way he does because he is a Freemason. These people have their thumbprints all over this war. A light bulb came on in my brain.

I did not know Mr. Limbaugh personally. If he was a Freemason, I did not know what Lodge, or in what city it might be. As far as Freemasonry, was concerned, I was somewhat knowledgeable about the subject. Many of the men in my family had belonged to the Craft. My father was a Freemason, as well as my brother. One of my grandfathers was a member—many of my Uncles, as well. Growing up as a child my father never talked much about the subject. He always said they had secrets and that it was a good, reputable organization made up of men of good character.

Later in life I became more leery of them for I had heard people say they were part of the elite establishment for which I had learned to hate. To what extent were they involved in the conspiracy to control my country and the world, I was not certain. I guess you could say there was a lot I didn’t know about Freemasonry.

Was Rush Limbaugh a Mason? This idea seemed to fit the picture of what I had heard from him recently. As I said earlier, about this stupid war, he seemed to be a man on a mission. Did he have an agenda, maybe, a Masonic agenda? Were the Masons somehow behind the efforts of these conspirators to involve ourselves in the war? Were the Masons in league with the Jews and the militarists in pushing my country into it?

I was suddenly filled with the desire to learn more about them. I started reading books and articles. There was a lot of information out in the reading community concerning the subject. Probably hundreds of books had been written about Freemasonry. To my consternation, however, I could not find any which could give me the information I was seeking. From the welter of facts and knowledge I gleaned from them, I couldn’t find the holy grail I was looking for. The books I read seemed to fall into two categories: They were either favorable of the Craft, or they were somewhat critical of it but seemed to hold back for fear of venturing too far from the political mainstream—they didn’t want to appear too extreme. Were the Freemason’s in league with the Jews and the Globalists who were destroying my country? This was the evidence I was looking for.

Finally, I found a book that seemed to agree with my speculations. It was entitled Secret Societies and Subversive Groups, by an English lady named Nesta Webster. She would begin with where secret societies and the occult philosophies started—in the ancient lands of the Middle East —and from there she would write about their progression from these countries ultimately into Western culture. She would, in the end, conclude, as I had, that the Jews were behind a good part of it.

The problem I had with her book was simple. It was dated. It had been published in 1924. A lot of water had passed under the bridge, so to speak, during those ninety or so years since that time and the present. I couldn’t find a contemporary book that would arrive at the same conclusions as hers. Sure, I found little tidbits of information in many disparate publications—some here, some there—but no one had compiled all the information into one work. I was looking for a book that would tell the whole story of Freemasonry. A book that would be the definitive source on the matter. This was the task I would assign myself and it proved to be the genesis and inspiration of this book.

Jeff Wilkerson

West Palm Beach, Fl. 2015

back to T-O-C.

Chapter 1 Freemasonry: An Overview.

Many Freemasons deny the accusation made by others that their organization is a secret society. Most, when asked, will assert that it is no such thing but will smugly admit that it could be considered a society with secrets. Most of these same people deny their Craft is a religion, as well, but, when pressed, coyly revert to the tired, old axiom that it is, in fact, a system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols. However which way they splice the words when describing their organization, there has been a huge draw over the past half dozen, or so, centuries, of men to join Freemasonry and dedicate themselves passionately to its advancement. Frankly, in researching and writing this book, this author became astounded at the story he found laid out in front of him.

The Englishman, Steven Knight, in his 1985 book, The Brotherhood, states:

In many cultures and at many times humankind has been drawn to the esoteric—the conception that the great truths about life and how to control social and natural phenomena are secrets and can be known only to initiates who pass on their privileged knowledge to the elect from generation to generation. As one highly placed Mason told me, Truth, to the initiate, is not for everyone; pearls must not be thrown before swine.¹

Behind the concrete forces of Revolution, beyond that invisible secret circle that perhaps directs them all, is there not yet another force, still more potent, that must be taken into account? In looking back over the centuries at the dark episodes that have marked the history of the human race from its earliest origins—strange and horrible cults, waves of witchcraft, blasphemies and desecrations—how is it possible to ignore the existence of an occult power at work in the world? Individuals, sects, or races fired with the desire of world domination have provided the fighting forces of destruction. But behind them are the veritable powers of darkness in eternal conflict with the powers of light.²

Most mystery schools have emanated from the East—from the lands where the first recorded acts of the great human drama played out; specifically Egypt, Babylon, Syria, Persia, and especially Israel. Why say, Especially Israel? Because this is the country where a peculiar form of Jewish theosophy called, the Kabbalah, was born. This tradition has had a tremendous impact on the development of Western esoteric philosophy, and especially Freemasonry³.

It is important to point out that Freemasonry, through the ages, has not had a constant, or rigid form. The work which it proposes to accomplish is so vast that the task is divided, each section of Masonry having its particular role, which varies according to countries, times and circumstances; so that if we ask several Masons they can each, in good faith, give varying definitions as to the character of their organizations.

For example, the Freemasonry that existed at the time of the American Revolution had different characteristics and goals than had the form that emerged during the French Revolution later in the eighteenth century. The type of Masonry that existed in the 19th century revolutionary Italy was different from the form that developed in 20th century Soviet Russia. Freemasons in Catholic countries are thought by many to be more militant and revolutionary than their cohorts in Protestant countries. In Eastern Europe and Russia the organization is predominantly Jewish, but in Britain it is not.

Why men flock to it.

For almost three centuries, Freemasons have had an extraordinary amount of trouble explaining the particular attraction of their organization. More than one Mason has cryptically said, If you haven’t experienced it, you just don’t know. George Washington can, with certainty, be placed at just nine lodge meetings in his lifetime, using direct evidence of rare record books or letters. But this group of men had a more lasting effect on him than moldy books can prove. The lessons he learned when he was initiated in the lodge that first night in 1752, and his other two degrees the next year, lasted a lifetime, and he applied them to his daily life in an ongoing search for Masonic light.

There are many reasons men become Masons— power, wealth and knowledge being some of the most prominent. Unquestionably, throughout history there has been an incredible number of elite men, in all fields of human endeavor, who count themselves as members of the Lodge, from kings, presidents, and politicians to tycoons of industry, writers, composers, educators, generals, doctors, journalists, and other cultural, social, and civic leaders.⁴ Why do they join this organization? Does it have some hidden agenda? Is it trying to impose its tenets on the society at large?

While most members only make it to the first three rungs of the thirty-three degree hierarchy and have no idea of the hidden meanings of their craft, they pledge fealty to it. They do this because the temptation of advancement in this powerful organization is just too hard to refuse, and it is hinted that there are penalties to pay for betraying the society and revealing its secrets, and that it is impossible to advance unless one is hand-picked by those of the higher degrees.

From early in the formative years of Freemasonry, the blindfolded, bare-breasted and noosed candidate has had to place his hand on the open Bible and solemnly swear to observe these vows:

Under no less a penalty...than that of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the root, and buried in the sand of the sea at low water mark, or a cable’s length from the shore, where the tide regularly ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours, or the more effective punishment of being branded as a wilfully perjured individual, void of all moral worth, and totally unfit to be received into this worshipful Lodge, or any other warranted lodge or society of men, who prize honor and virtue above the external advantages of rank and fortune. So help me God and keep me steadfast in this my Great and Solemn Obligation of an Entered Apprentice Mason.⁵

Similarly, in the second degree, that of Fellow Craft Mason, for over 250 years the candidate has faced the penalty of having my left breast laid open, my heart torn therefrom, and given to the ravenous birds of the air, or devouring beasts of the field as a prey.

Likewise, the would-be Master Mason who dares to divulge the secrets of the third degree has risked being severed in two, my bowels burnt to ashes, and those ashes scattered over the face of the earth and wafted by the four winds of heaven, that no trace of remembrance of so vile a wretch may longer be found among men, particularly Master Masons.⁶

And one does not know the full agenda of Freemasonry by just passing through all thirty-two degrees, there is an invisible group of men at the apex of the pyramid who are the illuminated ones who know what the organization is all about. This group is all-powerful, and many of its members hold top-level positions in the government, police and military from around the world. Masons can be found at all levels of society but at the top, in the highest social and monetary brackets, the brotherhood prevails.⁷

In his 1989 book entitled Inside the Brotherhood, Martin Short picks up where Steven Knights’s 1985 book The Brotherhood leaves off with a depiction of contemporary British society and how it is controlled by the Freemasons, aptly called the silent brotherhood Both books were best-sellers inside the U.K. and created quite a stir by interviewing hundreds of people who related compelling stories of Masonic power and abuse at all levels of British society. At one point in his book Short interviews a wife whose ex-husband was a Mason and relates how she was told that Freemasonry was the benevolent Mafia and we know best.

Short goes on to describe what he uncovered:

Freemasonry is a mechanism of social control. It’s a feudal pyramid, by what people of influence in British society can mix with the ordinary bloke and lend a little luster to his dreary life. But only certain kinds of bloke. Have you ever thought why the police are so cultivated by Freemasonry? I have met scores of policemen throughout my Masonic career, but I haven’t met a single fireman or postman. There must be some firemen and postmen in Freemasonry but nowhere near as many policemen, lawyers, local government officials and businessmen. By drawing this kind of people into this network, the landed aristocracy, and big business interests filter their values down through the social structure.

One of the first things you are taught in Freemasonry is to obey rank. There is a line in the Masonic ritual that tells how the workmen building Solomon’s Temple were split into small lodges in a way best calculated to ensure promotion to merit, preserve due subordination and prevent confusion in the workplace. Well, you can forget about merit. Freemasonry is all about due subordination.⁸

Freemasonry Today.

As far as sheer numbers are concerned Freemasonry is very much an Anglo-Saxon concern. The majority of the world’s estimated 5.9 million Freemasons live in English-speaking nations with 4.1 million living in the United States and Canada. The statistics can be somewhat unreliable because an individual can belong to more than one lodge. Worldwide it is estimated that 550,000 live in England and Wales; 400,000 in Scotland; 47,000 in Ireland; 80,000 in Europe; 375,000 in Australasia; 50,000 in Latin America; 10,000 in the Philippines and 288,000 in other areas (India, Japan, Formosa, Africa, and Israel).⁹

Steven Knight, showing the rapid growth of English lodges, writes,

At the end of the eighteenth century only about 320 English Lodges had been warranted. About twice as many more were formed in the next half century; No 1000 in 1864. This number was doubled in the next twenty years, No 2000 being warranted in 1883. The next twenty years maintained this rate of growth with Lodge No 3000 opening in 1903, in which year Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the MP for Oldham, was initiated. All this nineteenth-century explosion resulted essentially from recruitment from the middle and professional classes. With the First World War, which led to so many of quite a humble background to seek a better status, the rate of growth speeded up in a dramatic manner. Lodge No 4000 was formed in 1919, and No 5000 only seven years later in 1926. The Second World War, for similar reasons, led to another such period of extraordinarily rapid growth—Lodge No 6000 being formed in 1944 and No 7000 in 1950. In 1981, Lodge No 9003 was warranted. Even allowing for Lodges that have been discontinued, taking average Lodge membership at around sixty men, a membership of at least half a million can reasonably reliably be estimated.¹⁰

Since the mid-1960s, recruitment in the United States has been flagging. Due to the effects of the Aquarian Conspiracy, young people started becoming self-indulgent and materialistic. The MTV generation preferred to go to shopping malls, the movies, and rock concerts, rather than join stodgy, old groups that attracted their fathers and grandfathers. Instead of tuning-in they tuned-out and believed that the rituals and rites of the Lodge offered no relevance to their lives. Historian John J. Robinson, author of Born in Blood; The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, assigns the cause of the erosion of recruitment to an increasingly permissive and materialistic society [in which] concepts of personal morality, personal pride, and personal honor may appear antiquated.¹¹

By far the largest and most prominent branch of Freemasonry in the United States and Britain today is the Scottish Rite. Based on the French Scottish Rite of Perfection it was founded in Bordeaux, France in the eighteenth century and was organized in the United States in 1801. It confers the fourth through thirty-second degrees (as well as the honorary thirty-third degree—the Sovereign Grand Inspectors General). All of these degrees follow the three blue lodge degrees that are the basic or foundation degrees of Freemasonry. In America the Scottish Rite is divided into the Northern Jurisdiction, which governs fifteen states, and the Southern Jurisdiction, which governs the other thirty-five states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. possessions.¹²

Black Americans have their branch of Masonry called Prince Hall Masonry. Considered to be the father of Black Masonry in the United States, Prince Hall and fourteen other Black men were initiated Masons in a universally recognized military lodge in Boston, in 1775. In 1784, Prince Hall received a charter from the Grand Lodge of England to form an African-American lodge, recognizing it as a valid and universal American Masonic Lodge.¹³ Notwithstanding Prince Hall’s legitimacy, American Grand Lodges have historically been reluctant to recognize Black Lodges or invite African-Americans into Freemasonry’s system of morality. These sentiments have slowly diminished over time, but still only about one-half of American Grand Lodges recognize Prince Hall Grand Lodges as regular Masonry. Today Prince Hall has over forty-five hundred Masonic lodges worldwide with approximately three hundred thousand Masons.

The Order of the Eastern Star is described as a quasi-Masonic society and is considered the ladies auxiliary of Freemasonry. It is open to women who are relatives of Master Masons. Each chapter must include a Mason as patron. A five-degree ritual was composed in 1850, and approximately 3 million women belong.

A training ground for wanna-be Freemasons is the Order of De Molay. This organization is open to boys who are relatives of Masons. It is named after Jacques de Molay (the last Grand-Master of the Knights Templar). Founded in Kansas City in 1919, most DeMolays eventually join a Masonic Lodge as adults and so it could be considered a novitiate, of sorts.

Books and Authoritative Authors

During the course of writing this book, many sources have been cited. There are some important authorities and authoritative writings that should be recognized because these are men of indisputable stature, and the writings are of great importance within the Masonic brotherhood.

The first authority is Albert Pike (1809-1891). He is considered the Father of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, in which he served as Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Jurisdiction from 1859 until his death in 1891. Pike is best known for his Masonic opus Morals and Dogma. This work is a weird jumble of learning: ill-digested, often incoherent, yet—like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake—a work of impenetrable genius. He’s a man of such varied talents and such diverse experiences that it is difficult to treat all sides of his character adequately in a limited space. His different activities would appear disconnected if treated chronologically and it would be equally misleading to discuss each separately from the others. He was a teacher, a pioneer of the West, a poet, a lawyer, an officer in two wars, an editor of newspapers, and he rewrote the lectures, rituals and laws of the 33 degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Next comes Dr. Albert Mackey (1807-1881). He was an American Masonic historian, ritualist, and symbolist, but was especially devoted to ancient mysteries and societies. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina and died at Ft. Monroe, Virginia. He graduated from the Charleston Medical College in 1834 and practiced his profession at Charleston until 1854, when he turned his attention exclusively to Freemasonry and various antiquities. From 1842 to 1867, he was Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of South Carolina. He became a Knight Templar in South Carolina encampment No. 1 in 1843, Commander in 1844, and later was made honorary Past Grand Warden of the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the United States. He was coronated 33° of the Scottish Rite in 1844, and in that year, became Secretary-General, which position he held until his death in 1881. Mackey’s Masonic Encyclopedia is a must have for any serious student or researcher of the Craft.

The first twentieth-century authority I’d like to mention is Henry Coil (1885-1974). He was born in Denison, Texas and received his early education in the public schools of that city. He later graduated from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1910 with the degree of B.A., Cum Laude and in 1914 completed his law studies at the University of Denver with the degree of LL.B, Cum Laude.

In 1916, he was raised a Master Mason in Las Animas Lodge No 28 and, in 1917, was exalted a Royal Arch Mason and received the degrees of Royal and Select Master, all at that place. In 1918, he moved to Riverside, California, where he was made a Knight Templar in 1922 and, in 1926, he received the Scottish Rite Degrees in the Long Beach Bodies. In 1927, he was the second Master of Riverside Lodge No. 635, having been High Priest of Riverside Chapter Royal Arch Masons in 1925 and becoming Commander of Riverside Commandery, Knights Templar in 1929. In 1947, he was dubbed Knight Commander of the Court of Honor and in 1957, coronated 33° and Honorary. He was the author of many books and articles but is best known for the editing of Coil’s Masonic Encyclopedia.¹⁴

Lastly comes Manly P. Hall (1901-1990) who was born in Peterborough, Ontario, to William S. Hall, a dentist, and Louise Palmer Hall, a chiropractor and member of the Rosicrucian Fellowship. In 1919, Hall, who never knew his father, moved from Canada to Los Angeles with his maternal grandmother to reunite with his mother, who was living in Santa Monica. He was almost immediately drawn to the arcane world of mysticism and esoteric philosophies. His budding interest in these subjects, was solidified by meeting—and becoming a student of—Sydney J. Brownson, a diminutive horse-and-buggy doctor and Civil War veteran in his early 70s who had set up business as a practitioner of phrenology. Phrenology was the popular pseudo-science that divided the brain into areas responsible for noble traits such as heroism and shunned ones such as cruelty and thievery, and mapped them out in patterns on the surface of the brain. About this time Hall delved deeply into the teachings of lost and hidden traditions, the golden verses of Hindu gods, Greek philosophers, the Christian mystics, and the spiritual treasures waiting to be found within one's own soul. In the twenties, he would become a popular lecturer on these topics.

In 1928, he published his magnum opus The Secret Teachings of All Ages and would go on to become an icon of the increasingly influential metaphysical movement sweeping the country at this time. His book challenged assumptions about society's spiritual roots and made people look at them in new ways. He dedicated his famous book to the proposition that concealed within the emblematic figures, allegories and rituals of the ancients is a secret doctrine concerning the inner mysteries of life, whose doctrines have been preserved among a small band of initiates. As one writer put it: The result was a gorgeous, dreamlike book of mysterious symbols, concise essays and colorful renderings of mythical beasts rising out of the sea, and angelic beings with lions’ heads presiding over somber initiation rites in torch-lit temples of ancestral civilizations that had mastered latent powers beyond the reach of modern man.¹⁵

(L. to R.) Albert Pike, Albert Mackey, Henry Coil, Manley P. Hall

Lastly, I’d like to bring attention to two authoritative writings; the Ritual Monitors and the Masonic Landmarks. The Monitors are the actual ritual workbooks, issued with the imprimatur of every Grand Lodge of each jurisdiction. They are the highest recognized authorities like the Bible is for Christians. They are either reference books, philosophical books or scholarly treatises written by men of the indisputable stature within Masonry. Many of these men are 33° Masons, such as, the above mentioned, Henry Wilson Coil, Albert Mackey or Albert Pike.

Although all Grand Lodges operate independently, their teachings are essentially the same. The reason for this is because Freemasonry is built upon certain ancient, unalterable principles called Landmarks. Landmarks are the universal rules of the Craft, existing from time immemorial, and handed down by oral tradition. Without them, Freemasonry’s identity would be destroyed. There is no consensus among Masons as to every single Landmark, yet approximately half of the Grand Lodges in the United States have adopted Dr. Albert Mackey’s list of twenty-five.

The Origins of Freemasonry.

Masons, themselves, debate the origins of the Fraternity. What is known is that in 1717, representatives of four Masonic lodges convened a meeting in London and established the United Grand Lodge of England. What led up to this point is unclear. From where did Freemasonry come? Some suggest that it grew out of Scottish traditions that had been in place long before 1717. Some claim that it grew out of the mysterious legends of the Rosicrucians, a group of alchemists and mystics who supposedly traveled the world seeking secret knowledge. Others believe that its ceremonies and traditions descended from the Knights Templar after their excommunication and trials in the 1300s. Some accounts trace its history back to the building of Solomon’s Temple, around 600 BC. Still others have conjectured that Freemasonry’s origins date back to the Mystery Schools of the ancient Greeks or even Egyptian sources.

As England established colonies in North America, Freemasonry was close behind. Some of the most prominent Founding Fathers were Masons. Many suggest it was a primary catalyst for the American Revolution and that it became a cornerstone in the forming of the U.S. Government. Since George Washington, at least fourteen presidents have been members, as well as other high government officials. Many Masonic experts assert that there are Masonic symbols on the one-dollar note (the U.S. Treasury Department denies this), and some historians contend that the street plan for Washington, D.C. was laid out in imitation of Masonic symbols. There is a great deal of compelling evidence to bolster belief in both contentions.

And it isn’t just in the United Sates that the revolutionary thought and the Fraternity became entwined in both popular and Masonic legend. Freemason Simon Bolivar wrested the South American continent from Spain. Freemason Benito Juarez led Mexico’s fight for independence. Freemason Giuseppe Garibaldi was the key figure in the liberation of the Papal States from the ownership of the Vatican and the creation of a unified Italy. Even in America, long after the revolution, Freemason John Brown led a raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859 for the cause of the abolition of slavery.¹⁶

The Freemasonry that attracted the Founding Fathers was one of high-minded ideals, but the honest observer can discern a deterioration since those early days, perhaps due to the Illuminati strain that was hidden within the Grand Orient at the time of the French Revolution. Since Weishaupt, the Illuminati’s founder, deception has masked Freemasonry’s drive to create a world government and its agenda includes hidden strategies based on Masonic self-interest to a degree that might shock the Founding Fathers if they were to come back and witness them today.

Most students of Freemasonry, both Masons themselves and anti-Masons, acknowledge a Judaic origin. The facts are that when the ritual and institutions of the institution were established in 1717, although certain remnants of the ancient Egyptian and Pythagorean doctrines were kept, the Judaic traditions were the ones selected by the organizers of the Grand Lodge on which to construct their system. King Solomon’s Temple was the setting for the original three Masonic degrees. The third degree, in particular, emphasizes many facets of Judaic worship, including the Sanctum Sanctorum or Holy of Holies, and the Jewish law. The Jewish Bible is read for each degree. The second degree, the Entered Apprentice degree, also calls to mind Israel’s escape from the Pharaoh and the parting of the Red Sea. "During Holy Week, The Scottish Rite publicly celebrates what it calls the Feast of the Paschal Lamb, a commemoration of the Jewish Passover, which is celebrated with bread and wine."¹⁷

According to Nesta Webster, from her book, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements,

Certain Masonic writers ... recognize that a Judaic tradition is the source from which their system is derived. For after tracing its origin from Adam, Noah, Enoch, and Abraham, they proceed to show its line of descent through Moses, David, and Solomon--descent from Solomon is in fact officially recognized by the Craft and forms a part of the instructions to candidates for initiation into the first degree. But, as we have already seen, this is the precise genealogy attributed to the Cabala by the Jews. In addition, modern Freemasonry is entirely built upon the Solomonic, or rather, the Hiramic legend.¹⁸

According to Albert Pike, All true dogmatical [mystery] religions come from the Kabbala and lead back to it: all that is scientific and great in the religious dreams of all the illuminated ... Is borrowed from the Kabbala. All the Masonic associations owe their secrets and symbols to it.¹⁹

Kabbalism is a form of esoteric Judaism. At the time of Jesus Christ, there existed a grouping of doctrines and speculations that were kept secret from the crowd. They were not even revealed to the ordinary priests for fear of corrupting their faith. This body of thought became known as the Kabbalah meaning to receive or transmit. It was conveyed to the adepts from remote antiquity, although it blended, in the course of time, with impure or foreign elements.

The Hiramic legend

Freemasonry’s most important foundation legend tells of Hiram Abiff, the architect of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Hiram appears in the Old Testament, or Jewish Bible, in the first Book of Kings and Chronicles, however, there are also elaborations and variations among the earliest of Talmudic legends and Judaic Apocrypha.

In the book The Temple and the Lodge, its authors tell the story of Hiram Abiff:

When King Solomon decided to build his temple, he approached the King of Tyre, who sent cedars from Lebanon for materials and an architect named Hiram. Masonic legend expands upon this basic story, telling us that Hiram was a master mason who had special esoteric knowledge He was attacked by three journeymen who demanded to know his secrets. Hiram refused to reveal what he knew. The three journeymen murdered him with a blow to the head and hid his body in a secret place.²⁰.

This legend is re-enacted in initiation rituals in Masonic lodges around the world as the third degree of Master Mason. In the drama, the candidate assumes the role of the Grand Master Hiram Abiff and symbolically experiences death, burial, and resurrection. The ritual is meant to forge a link with the inner soul of the Fraternity and a legend [of Hiram Abiff] that is completely and absolutely consistent with the mystery schools of antiquity. One Masonic scholar sees it as communing with the archetypal forces that are the foundation of their tradition. Hiram Abiff is, in essence, identical with many mystery school heroes.

The mysteries celebrated in Egypt were all attached to the legend of Osiris, Isis, and Typhon. Osiris was the sun, the generator of all mundane life. He was slain by Typhon, the destroying power in nature, thus deprived of his generative power. But Osiris reappeared in his son, Horus, in renewed power and glory. Isis was the feminine nature power longing for the masculine impregnating principle, seeking it in her wanderings and mourning in its absence. From Osiris whose prostrate form, she raised; Isis took his penis, conceived and brought forth a son, Horus, whom she suckled in secret, and who became the substitute for Osiris. Osiris is the masculine generative principle personified and deified. When slain by Typhon his penis [his generative power] is lost, but it is recovered in a future generation, namely his son Horus.

In his book, Freemasonry Interpreted, Martin L. Wagner writes,

Note the parallels [with the Hiramic Legend]. In the Egyptian myth. Osiris is slain by Typhon, the three winter months; his body cast into the Nile, subsequently found by him and again concealed. In the myth of Hiram, the architect is slain by three craftsmen, his body concealed, afterward recovered and buried. The body of Osiris afterward is found in the roots of the living oak, Hiram’s by the sprig of acacia [tree]. In the Egyptian myth Osiris is caught in a box, Hiram is caught in the Holy of Holies. In the Egyptian rite, Isis seeks Osiris and mourns his death. In the Masonic, the Lodge seeks Hiram and mourns his death. In the Egyptian when Osiris is found, the phallus is lost. In the Masonic when Hiram is found, the ‘word’ is lost. Isis furnishes a substitute for the phallus; the master furnishes a substitute word. Isis raises the prostrate form of him who was slain, she takes from him his essence, and she conceives and brings forth a son. In the Masonic rite, the master raises the prostrate form of him who was slain, whispers in his ear the mystic word, and a son, a Mason, is born in the lodge. In the Egyptian rite, Osiris lived again in his son Horus, in the Masonic the slain Hiram lives again in the newly made Master Mason, who is frequently termed the widow’s son. ²¹

Yes, Lucifer is God!

Lucifer is the Latin name for the planet Venus, the brightest morning star. In Hebrew texts Lucifer is referred to as the shining one, also relating to Venus. The association of Lucifer with the Devil comes about because of certain passages in the Bible, which somewhat tenuously link Satan with the coming of light;

He replied, I watched how Satan fell, like lightning out of the sky. (Luke 10:18)

Then the fifth angel blew the trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth. (Revelation 9:1)

Rather than signifying the bringer of light, in Christian tradition the term ‘Lucifer’ has become the name of the principal fallen angel who was once as bright as the morning star, although according to this tradition the word Lucifer is not actually the name of the Devil, but only a description of his fallen condition. Perversely, some editions of the Bible, notably the King James Version, use the word Lucifer as a proper name rather than as a descriptive term, which it really should be. Thus, Isaiah 14:12 reads: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!²²

Is Freemasonry a Luciferian religion? On 14, July 1889 Albert Pike allegedly issued these instructions to twenty-three Scottish Rite Supreme Councils throughout the world:

That which we must say to the crowd is—we worship a God, but it is the God that one adores without superstition. To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st and 30th degrees—the Masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian Doctrine. If Lucifer were not God would Adonay (The God of the Christians) whose deeds prove his cruelty, perfidy and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion from science, would Adonay and his priests, calumniate him?

Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also the God. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two gods: darkness being necessary for light to serve as its foil as the pedestal is necessary to the statue and the brake to the locomotive. Thus the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy: and the true and pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay: but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil.²³

In this chapter, the reader has been introduced to the institution of Freemasonry. He has been given an overview of the aims, the origins and some of the important people and writings of this 300-hundred-year-old organization. It has been shown that it has issued from Judaic sources: the Kabbalah and various Jewish Apocrypha. In the next chapter, you will be given an overview of the Jewish religion and will be enlightened as to the impact these people, the Jews, have had on world history.

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Chapter 2 Judaism: An Overview.

When defining the essence of Judaism—one of the major religions of the world —one must find its basic nature: that is, that which sets it apart from the other faiths. In doing so, this author has been rather condemnatory, and, yes, harsh in his judgment of it but in doing so he hopes to shed light on the effects this religion and these people, the Jews, have had on Western history and, for that matter, world history. He has identified four distinguishing characteristics that set this religion apart. The student of Judaism might have more for which he can enumerate, but these four this author finds pertinent to the study of Freemasonry. They are, firstly, a radical monotheism, secondly, a supremacism, stemming from a religious conviction that they are God’s Chosen and that it is their duty to rule over the other peoples of the world, thirdly, an ethnocentrism, a self-absorption or