Artist Greta Kempton poses in front of her painting of masonic attired President Harry Truman beneath the Big G.
Twilight language is employed to simultaneously evoke a spectrum of sub rosa meanings and concealment of esoteric truths through intentionally opaque language, metaphor, gesture, codes and signs.
—definition adapted from Roderick Bucknell and Martin Stuart-Fox, The Twilight Language: Explorations in Buddhist Meditation and Symbolism
SECRET SOCIETIES, it goes without saying, have secrets. That even applies to secret societies that refuse to admit that they’re secret, so great is their aversion to exposing the exact degree of concealment contained within their guarded chambers.
Some of the secrecy is easy to understand. A club that requires initiation and has a clearing process for membership must therefore exclude and guard; misdirection and disinformation becomes necessary when dealing with outsiders. Curious handshakes and whispered passwords, pledges and oaths, are the bread and butter of brotherhoods and fraternal organizations.
Even within secret societies there may be levels of meaning, codes that signal one thing to lower members and another thing to higher initiates. Words and symbols with multiple meanings bring us to the domain of Twilight language, ciphers, codes, and even the use of geography and names for symbolic lessons in a tapestry of Mystical Toponomy.
Freemasonic secret regarding the Great Architect of the Universe on the sacred mount where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac.
Many Masonic writers assert that any statement about Masonic symbolism is never definitive and simply one person’s private opinion. But some of Masonry’s greatest leaders and writers of ritual, such as Albert Pike and Albert Mackey, agree on decoding several symbols as sexual or phallic. Some meanings are standardized in the lectures of the degrees and the front matter of a Masonic Bible. A man initiated in a lodge gets such a lecture, part of which explains a set of symbols, differing by degree, ranging from the “working tools” to the beehive symbol to Euclid’s 47th Problem. Symbols abound: the point within the circle, the letter “G,” the obelisk, the Three Great Pillars, Ears of Corn, the Pot of Incense, the All-Seeing Eye. Explanations are typically moral in tone so that the candidate, according to Albert Pike himself, is “intentionally misled by false interpretations” regarding their “true explanation,” which is reserved for “Adepts, the Princes of Masonry.”
Hidden meanings can serve to track seekers into the esoteric inner circle of understanding while more obvious fare is served to beginners and outsiders. Some of the esoteric purposes are piggybacked with arcane lore and legends from the Far East; others have masked political purposes, some of which have merged with police and military structures, including moon landings and intelligence agencies. There are critics who note that while the Brotherhoods have pressed for a separation of church and state, they have actually secured a union of lodge and state. Such a union can be seen in the Shriners Bloc in Congress below. How the ciphers of Brotherhoods have served an agenda of the government remains to be seen, but cross-pollination between lodge and state is as downplayed and certain as the lodge membership of Brother J. Edgar Hoover, 33rd Degree.
The end of the drama is well known, and how Jacques DeMolay and his fellows perished in the flames. But before his execution, the Chief of the doomed Order organized and instituted what afterward came to be called the Occult, Hermetic, or Scottish Masonry.
The Occult Science of the Ancient Magi was concealed under the shadows of the Ancient Mysteries: it was imperfectly revealed or rather disfigured by the Gnostics. It is guessed at under the obscurities that cover the pretended crimes of the Templars, and it is found enveloped in enigmas that seem impenetrable in the Rites of the Highest Masonry.
—Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma
Shriner love under a paper moon.
The Big “G”... a blue meaning for the blue lodge?
“GNOSIS,” said Albert Pike, “is the essence and marrow of Freemasonry.” Here Gnosis must be understood to mean that traditional knowledge which constitutes the common basis of all initiations, the doctrines and symbols of which have been transmitted from the most distant antiquity down to the present day through all the secret Fraternities.
—René Guénon, Studies in Freemasonry and the Compagnonnage
THE USE OF SYMBOL and ritual speaks to a magical aspect of Masonry as does its emphasis on ancient lore, sacred architecture, fraternal secrets, and divine revelation. These have all tended to characterize it as a spiritual and esoteric brotherhood, in addition to its exoteric identity.
—James Wasserman, The Secrets of Masonic Washington
Aleister Crowley referred to occult “blinds” strewn throughout his writings—esoteric concepts for the Initiates that were hidden behind more ordinary, or simply different, language, thereby misleading the uninitiated or “unworthy.” Mystical symbols of the Brotherhoods can serve exactly as blinds to convey a lesser meaning, if intended, or else serve as a sort of koan to puzzle over, eventually giving alchemical, hermetic, Gnostic, or sexual meanings, as the case may be.
Masonic ciphers and codebooks conceal lodge secrets and guarantee limited understanding to those who lack the keys to decode. Twilight language can also serve to implant messages in a subliminal sense, as a sort of sub rosa-triggering mechanism. In such a construct, initiation is already happening before the recipient is fully aware of what is going on. Some conspiratorial analysts, such as James Shelby Downard, have advanced elaborate deconstructions of code words in historical events, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Regardless of the level of encoding and misdirection, two facts are certain: lodges mislead outsiders, and what starts out as simply moral can serve as a bridge to the mystical.
Masonry, like all the Religions, all the Mysteries, Hermeticism and Alchemy, conceals its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, or the Elect, and uses false explanations and misinterpretations of its symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be misled; to conceal the Truth, which it calls Light, from them, and to draw them away from it.
The Blue Degrees are but the outer court or portico of the Temple. Part of the symbols are displayed there to the initiate, but he is intentionally misled by false interpretations. It is not intended that he shall understand them, but it is intended that he shall imagine he understands them. Their true explanation is reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry.
—Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma
As has often been said, tantric texts are written in “twilight language” (sandha-bhasa, gongpe-ke), which... is a “secret language, that... others cannot unriddle.”
—Judith Simmer-Brown, Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism
MANY of the non-moral, alternative meanings assigned to secret symbols tend to converge in sexual or death-oriented directions. Stemming in part from the ancient Kabbalistic practice of Gematria, a type of numerology, lodges have found meaning in number, assigning correlations with the beginning of life—“generation”—and the end—“mortality.” In plain English, sex and death, the twin obsessions of Americans as evidenced by any of hundreds of cable television channels.
The emblems of mortality are three: the coffin, the skull, and the cross-bones.
—W. Bro. Reverend F. de P. Castells, AKC, The Arithmetic of Freemasonry
ALBERT PIKE, in his Morals and Dogma, repeats Plutarch’s comments and suggests that the triangle represents matter (Isis), spirit (Osiris), and the union of the two (Horus)... and, indeed, the sum of the two smaller squares equals the larger.
Caves of progressive initiation. Ascending the mountain through the cavernous underbelly.
Near Charlestown, West Virginia, is “Washington’s Masonic Cave” with an apartment called “The Lodge Room” where Washington and other Masons held lodge meetings.
The Royal Arch degree is considered an important completion of the Master Mason degree in the York Rite, championed in the mid-1800s by the “Antients” who reacted to the formation of the Grand Lodge, which limited itself to the three degrees, culminating in the Master Mason degree. Eventually the split between the “Antients” and “Moderns” was healed, and the Royal Arch degree is no longer controversial.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting.
The Royal Arch degree—the 7th Degree—involves quite a drama: a heavily Jewish Temple–rebuilding narrative with three candidates (somewhat like the three “ruffians,” or the 3rd Degree) who pass through four veils in Jerusalem and clear the ruins of the old Temple, coming across a half-buried stone, a keystone, for an underground arched vault. The ritual involves lowering the candidate into an underground chamber, recovering a copy of the Ark of the Covenant (a pop cultural icon, thanks to the original Indiana Jones movie). The lost “word” of the 3rd Degree turns up as well—Jahbulon, a syncretic amalgamation of Jehovah, Baal, and Osiris, according to certain Masonic exegetes. In addition, Duncan’s Ritual Monitor includes the line, “for the good of Masonry, generally, and the Jewish nation in particular,” long before the Zionist dreams of Theodor Herzl.
Illustration of secret formation found in a cave supposedly beneath The Temple of Solomon
After the Royal Arch degree, the York Rite has more, including the Cryptic degrees and the Knights Templar degree—thirteen in total.
The Cryptic and underground vault aspects of the York Rite might seem secretive-sounding aberrations, if it weren’t for the fact that caves and underground aspects pop up in other circumstances. Brother George Washington, for example, used a cave for a lodge. And the infamous orgiastic and religion-mocking Hellfire Clubs met in the West Wycombe Caves, a network of manmade chalk and flint caves in Buckinghamshire, southeast England, frequented by Freemason and Hellfire Clubber Benjamin Franklin during his European travels.
Masonic cave in Volcano, California
Rituals for various Orders were often coded for disciples.
ANOTHER FACTOR tending to multiply conspiracy theories beyond necessity lies is the fact that all intelligence agencies have two functions, viz.:
1. Collection of accurate information.
2. Planting and encouraging inaccurate information.
An intelligence agency, in other words, needs to know “what the hell is really going on” for the same reason a bank or a grocer or you and I need that kind of factual input. Hence, the huge budgets for item 1 above.
Intelligence agencies, however, also need to keep ahead of their competitors, the rival intelligence agencies of other and, hence, perfidious governments. They therefore engage in frenetic efforts of spreading misinformation, “disinformation” (a euphemism for the former), “cover stories,” “cover-ups,” etc. In order to deceive whoever currently functions as “the enemy,” these fantasies must have enough facts mixed into them, and enough general plausibility, that they will deceive many others not yet defined as “enemy.” Always, they must deceive persons of average intelligence and average education or they just won’t work. The best disinformation should also deceive persons of more-than-average wit and know-how, for a while at least.
In brief, modern secret-police work functions much like poker. All players try to send false signals at least part of the time, and all players try to detect “the real truth” behind the false signals sent by the others. In a world where nations relate to each other in this manner, conspiracy models flourish like bacteria in a sewage system. As Henry Kissinger allegedly said, “Anybody in Washington who isn’t paranoid must be crazy.” Indeed, any citizen in a world run like that who doesn’t have some “paranoid” suspicions must have suffered brain damage in childhood.
—from Everything Is Under Control by Robert Anton Wilson
Masonic Grand Lodge of Arizona meets in cave of a copper mine circa 1897.
FREEMASONS, n. An Order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void.
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906
Freemasons and other brotherhoods have created an ancient history that makes the claim that fraternal brothers are directly linked to the Great Architects of the Universe behind the Giza Pyramid (as seen on the Great Seal on the reverse of the U.S. dollar bill) and various versions of the Temple of Solomon.
In doing this, Freemasons have created a mythological past as old, and older, than the Old Testament itself. This high-flown concept becomes amusing when the myths collide with historical fact.
The heroes of the Knights of Pythias Order, Damon and Pythias, are part of Greek mythology. Unfortunately for the fraternal Order, Knights were a medieval phenomenon, and not ancient Greek.
Another fraternal Order in the making, originally called the Knights of Ben-Hur, based on the famous Lew Wallace novel Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ, reluctantly changed its name to The Supreme Tribe of Ben-Hur after author Wallace reminded the businessmen founders that there were no such thing as knights back in Christ’s day.
Grand Lodge icons often include cloven-hooved angels.
Ultimately, historical contradictions did not seem to matter much to the new Order, and its rituals were largely drawn from Wallace’s novel. The gladiatorial epic movie starring Charlton Heston also became a source for the names of many Shriner and Masonic lodges.
The fraternal obsession with ancient lore goes so far as to impose themselves in Masonic publishing companies, such as Detroit’s Masonic News, which released a novel called The Caliph of Bagdad by notable hack writer Sylvanus Cobb Jr. Cobb’s popular book was originally published in 1868, and was sold by the Freemasonic publishing company in the 1930s through the 1960s. According to the Masonic newspaper:
The scene is laid in Baghdad in the ninth century, and like all the stories of Brother Cobb, the plot is exceedingly strong.
Dagon, the hero, returns to Baghdad, his native city, impelled by a desire to relieve the distress which has been caused by the tyrannical Caliph. He comes from Jerusalem, where he has been a Brother of the Mystic Tie, but in Baghdad he finds the conditions have made it necessary for the Brotherhood to use the fraternal principles and practices to an extent he had not conceived. The adventures and thrilling incidents which Dagon and his associates undergo before the story reaches the satisfactory climax make it a fascinating and most delightful tale.
To all this is added a thread of Masonic interest, bringing out the true spirit of fraternity and making it not only splendid fiction, but also one of the best Masonic stories that has been written.
For the ancient priest-architect (and the functions were usually combined), the mystical construction of a building was at least as difficult as its physical construction. The Genius loci (the spirits of the rocks and trees on the building site) needed to be placated before the land could be cleared. The elemental forces of nature had to be propitiated and the beneficial gods invoked and invited to take up residence.
As carefully as the modern structural engineer calculates the stresses of a suspension bridge, the magus calculated and balanced the spiritual and metaphysical forces he believed to focus on the building. Its orientation to the stars was important; its orientation to the sun was critical.
Politico-ritual themes: from the famed novel of Baghdad (Iraq) to FDR troweling a symbolic human sacrifice in the standard Masonic cornerstone ritual
And this ancient priest-architect believed, as his whole society believed, that for the building to survive and stand, it had to have blood—and in most civilizations, human blood. In addition to victims sacrificed at the laying of the foundation stone, there are many references to blood being mixed with mortar....
History, legend, and subsequent archaeological investigations suggest that people were buried alive in the foundations or the hidden crypts of many of the medieval cathedrals and chapter houses. Apparently the victim was in some cases selected by the abbot and in some cases selected by lot. There is evidence that the practice continued throughout the Renaissance and into the 1700s.
These blood sacrifices were more often associated with foundation stones than with cornerstones themselves, the cornerstone rituals generally being of a more gentle nature. But there is one other dark moment which, together with the foundation sacrifice and cornerstone ceremony, comprised the Stability Rite—the Completion Sacrifice....
In the cornerstone-laying ceremonies of the Freemasons—by far the most frequently performed cornerstone ceremony today—corn, oil, and wine are placed on the stone. The purpose of the act is to celebrate the change from sacrifice to symbol, to commemorate the past while affirming that mankind has moved to a better and more compassionate understanding of the world around him.
—from Sacrifice to Symbol: The Story of Cornerstones and Stability Rites by Jim Tresner
Some of the keystones of the arches under the White House were found to have been carved with the two interlaced triangles, or the Seal of Solomon. The Hebrew letter yod was carved in the center. As it was anciently regarded as a talisman against fire, some theorize it may have been added during the restoration after the White House was burnt by the British.
Commemorative building for President Roosevelt, as he’s held up by his son
“King Solomon’s Temple and Citadel. View From North East Corner.” from Unbuilt America by Allison Sky and Michelle Stone. “A restoration of King Solomon’s Temple that bears evidence of authority has at last been made. Helmle and Corbett, architects, have carried out the idea of John Wesley Kelchner, who, inspired by religious zeal has made the reconstruction of the Temple his chief object in life for over thirty years.
“As a result of the research and design work carried on by Helmle and Corbett during the past four years this restoration is now splendidly shown in a large group of interesting drawings made by Birch Burdette Long, Hugh Ferriss, Taber Sears and others. Soon this resoration will be actually built as part of the Sesquicentennial International Expoition to be held in Philadelphia in commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The opening date of the Exposition is June 1, 1926.
“Visitors will be able to walk about the courts and to experience the sensation of having been carried back to King Solomon’s time, for it is understood that life is to be given to this picture by pageantry illustrating the customs, dress and activities of the time.”
“Result: Unsuccessful exposition proposal.”
In his influential study Orientalism, literary theorist Edward Said declared the Western fascination for the Far and Middle East as part and parcel of Western racism and imperialism, in which white men view “orientals” as a weak, illogical “other,” best to be exploited and controlled.
Illustrations of an Architect’s notion of a rebuilt Temple of Solomon.
Here we explore the secret society enthusiasm for contrary Middle Eastern aspects, such as the fetish for restoring the Temple of Solomon, the homage to the Knights Templar, and the simultaneous veneration of their Muslim adversaries.
Freemasonry has two forms of history: the known and verifiable, such as its formation with England’s Grand Lodge in 1717. The fabled history of Freemasonry begins with the story of the building of King Solomon’s Temple, which was said to hold Moses’ granite tablets with the Ten Commandments engraved on them by God Himself.
The Temple of Solomon tale is important and integral for Freemasonry’s cast of characters, history, and ritualism.
Another reconstruction of the second Temple of Solomon as shown at the huge Scottish Rite Temple on Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.
According to the Masonic ritual, every day at noon Hiram Abiff climbed a winding set of stairs to the unfinished sanctum sanctorum of the incomplete temple to work on the building’s designs and to pray. One day he was accosted by three fellow craft Masons who sought from him the secrets of the Master Masons so that they could advance professionally and receive higher wages on other building sites. Using threats of bodily injury, these three individuals, named Jubela, Jubelum and Jubelo, attempted to extort the craft secrets from Hiram Abiff. Because they had failed to prove themselves worthy, however, the righteous master craftsman refused to provide them with the information that would allow them to masquerade as Master Masons. After he denied their request three times, Jubelo struck Hiram Abiff on the head with a setting maul and thus killed him. Having stashed the body on the work site for twelve hours, these three men, always known by Freemasons as “the ruffians,” returned at midnight and transported the corpse to the west, where they buried it in a shallow grave on a hillside. They planted a sprig of acacia to mark the burial site.
The next day, King Solomon discovered that Hiram Abiff was missing and organized a search party composed of workmen to look for him and to locate Juela, Jubela, and Jubelum, who also had disappeared. Fifteen days later, the ruffians were captured and the architect’s body was located because of the acacia plant marking the resting place. King Solomon and Hiram, the King of Tyre, traveled to the gravesite where, after some difficulty owing to the body’s advanced state of decay, Hiram Abiff’s corpse was raised out of his temporary tomb. The cadaver was returned to the simple site and, as an indication of respect, was interred as close to the sanctum sanctorum as custom would allow. The fraternity then erected a monument to him located upon this final burial site.
—from William D. Moore’s Masonic Temples
The visual scenarios behind Scottish Rite Masonic rituals include painted cinematic backdrops of a Freemasonic concept of the original Solomon’s Temple, looking like castoffs from Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments.
The Temple of Solomon has been torn down and rebuilt on two momentous occasions. Both Jews and fundamentalist Christian Zionists pray for the construction of a Third Temple, but Temple Mount is also the holy site of Dome of the Rock, from where the Prophet Muhammad was said to ascend to heaven. It’s the most hotly disputed land on earth.
Albert Mackey, the 33rd Degree Scottish Rite historian, confirms in his Encyclopaedia of Fraternity the Masonic importance of the Temple of Solomon:
The Freemasons have, at all events, seized with avidity the idea of representing in their symbolic language the interior and spiritual man by a material temple.... The great body of the Masonic Craft, looking only to this first Temple erected by the wisdom of King Solomon, make it the symbol of life; and as the great object of Masonry is the search after truth, they are directed to build up this Temple as a fitting receptacle for truth.
Apocalyptic Zionist Christians, concerned Muslims, and anti-Masons alike claim that Freemasons themselves hold plans to rebuild the storied Temple of Solomon.
Freemasonry-approved “myth-busting” websites, such as AskAFreemason.org and Freemasonry.bcy.ca, dispute that Freemasons had or have any intention to rebuild the Temple. That may be, but a New York Times article published on September 22, 1912, discusses “Schemes of Freemasons and Opinion of Jews on Rebuilding Solomon’s Temple,” and a 1909 Illustrated London News article calls up “a suggestion that the Freemasons of the World shall subscribe that the Temple of Solomon may be rebuilt at Jerusalem.”
Author John J. Robinson, in his Born in Blood Masonic history, suggests in a way sympathetic to the freemasonic concept of a syncretic belief that Christian, Jew, and Muslim should unite on Temple Mount with a “tripartite temple for all.”
Today, a megalith-sized Protestant Universal Church for the Kingdom of God in São Paulo, Brazil, is spending $200 million to build a huge replica of Solomon’s Temple for an intended 2014 completion date.
In 1925 an unbuilt “Restoration of King Solomon’s Temple and Citadel” had its blueprints laid out by architects Helmle and Corbett.
And in the late 1950s, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments dramatized the story of Moses and his granite tablets that were said to have been housed by the iconic Temple of King Solomon. The Temple of Solomon tale inspired the enormous, block-long Scottish Rite Temple, designed by Millard Sheets, which opened in 1962 on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, located near Hancock Park.
Sheets, a famous artist and architect, met in the late 1950s with a committee of Scottish Rite Masons who, according to a taped interview, impressed on Sheets why it was an important time to build such a massive temple:
They told me quite a bit about what has to be in a temple of this kind. I didn’t dream that there was a huge auditorium and a huge dining room. The auditorium seats 3,000, and the dining room seats 1,500, and they have many lodge rooms and recreation rooms. It’s a city, a tremendous thing.... So we set up another dinner party, and it was an exciting evening. They had worked terribly hard on all of the questions and had... some very good thoughts about the new relationship of Masonry to society and why they felt this was an important time to build the temple and why they wanted to truly represent the spirit of Masonry.
I was surprised by the tremendous number of things that had to be incorporated in this temple. First of all, the upper degrees of Masonry are given in an auditorium, and they are given in the form of plays. They have incredible costumes and magnificent productions of the basic concepts that are ethical and have at heart a religious depth, and they draw from many religions, as far as I understand.
The huge mosaic on the exterior east end of the temple at that time was the largest mosaic I’d ever made. It starts out with the builders of the temple from the days of Jerusalem, and King Solomon, who built the temple, and Babylon. Then it jumps up to the Persian emperor, Zerubabel. When the crusaders went to the Holy Land, they built a place called Acre, which is still a very important historical monument to the period of the crusaders. Of course, there were other temples and I showed Rheims cathedral in the process of building. I showed the importance of [Giuseppe] Garibaldi, the Mason who broke away from the Roman Catholic Church because of what he felt was its limitations and dogmatism. Ever since then, there’s been a certain quarrel, I gather, between the Masons and the Catholics. Then there is King Edward VII in his Masonic regalia as one of the great Grand Masters. We had the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, which is part of the King Edward section. I think the final part of that mosaic shows the first Grand Master of California in his full regalia being invested in Sacramento. It’s a kind of historical thing going way back to the ancient temple builders and coming right up through to actual California history, which the California sun at the top symbolizes. I felt if we could get some sense of bigness of spirit, it would be exciting. I felt also that it gave us an opportunity, carving these figures in actual stone, to make a very dramatic presentation. The double-headed eagle, which was the symbol for the Scottish Rite, Albert Stewart designed, and I think it makes a stunning logo. We used it in four spots on the temple. Then all of the inscriptions, which we did, were carved in travertine, and the different insignias of the degrees are all parts of the actual rites themselves.
In 2004, within the King Solomon’s Temple–inspired Scottish Rite building were plastic models of an intended Third Temple, complete with one-sheet-sized posters intended for public distribution. According to the official website of Scottish Rite, the official full name of this Supreme Council is “The Supreme Council (Mother Council of the World) of the Inspectors General Knights Commander of the House of the Temple of Solomon of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America.”
Original post in New York Times, September 14, 1912
“I DISCOVERED that a local plant, Acacia maidenii, was reported to contain 0.6% alkaloids in the bark, of which 1/3 was N-methyl tryptamine, and 2/3 was Dimethyl Tryptamine (DMT)....
“I took about half a kilo of vertical strips from a number of trees, trying to cause as little as possible permanent damage. The bark was thick, red, fibrous and resinous.
“Smoking the bark directly gave a mild hallucinogenic effect, on the limits of the detectable.... It was decided to perform further extraction. To the extract was added dilute hydrochloric acid (about 20 ml 10M, but well diluted). Immediately, a large amount of tar congealed and was removed, leaving a watery brown aqueous mixture.
“Preliminary attempts at smoking small amounts of the alkaloids gave varying mild effects, and a friend and I decided to try a larger dose. He took a cone in one toke, and was immediately on the ground, making strange sounds and looking odd. He hugged me and told me to meet him in that place, and said it was very strong. I managed to finish a large cone in three tokes, and was instantly blown apart as if by a large brick through the head. I think I was temporarily blinded, and found myself on the ground grasping my friend, and coughing for air, as I watched all of my surroundings fragment into small pieces divided by lightning bolts, and feeling all the air in the universe escape through the holes. We were both totally astounded and scared shitless. The adjective is ‘wicked.’”
—from Erowid.org
“View of the interior of Solomon’s Temple, as seen by the Prophet Ezekiel.”
The medieval Knights Templar, or “The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon,” were successful crusaders, seizing East Jerusalem’s Holy Mount for the Christian Church from the Muslims. The Templars also created a huge financial operation throughout Europe and the Middle East.
Distrusting the Templars’ financial power, the Church used the Templars’ strange initiation ceremony against them, and King Philip IV, who was in debt to the usurious Templars, convinced Pope Clement to seize and publicly burn the Templars, who then became martyred emblems for the freemasonic movement of the eighteenth century.
Knights Templar became the name for several Masonic Orders, including degrees in the York and Scottish Rite. Masonic Templars are known for their forever marching and military “commanderies” that always sport a garish wardrobe, which include a narrow, broad-brimmed military hat, or chapeau, complete with white feather, and a Masonic apron with a skull covering the genital area. The Freemasons named an entire Order, usually reserved for juvenile members, after the martyred Templar Jacques DeMolay. Of course we don’t believe that Freemasons nowadays wish to organize warriors to battle Muslims, but this was no mere allegory less than a century ago. A 1912 New York Times article discussed a “scheme of Freemasons to rebuild the Temple of Solomon.”
Official Knight Templar publications from the 1970s.
Should we be surprised that Orders based on religious wars that resulted in the death of millions should also result in modern-day offshoots, official or not, that are picked up by similarly murderous groups in both Mexico and Norway? We now know that the killer Anders Behring Brevik belonged to a Norwegian Freemasonic fraternity; when things got hot, the Order expelled him. The Norge-based bomber/shooter of 93 persons (the original count, the magic gematria of the Great Beast) was attempting to pump up a Knights Templar war. And just a couple weeks before, a Mexican national known as “The Goat” was in charge of another Knights Templar group that killed over forty people in just a couple days. A goat-Templar intersection?
I am appalled by the horrible atrocity that was committed in the government district and at the Utøya island, says the Sovereign Grand Master of the Norwegian Order of Freemasons, Ivar A. Skar. We are filled with mourning and compassion for those who have been affected and their relatives. It has appeared in the media that the accused has been a member of the Norwegian Order of Freemasons.
He has now been excluded—the exclusion immediately effective.
The exclusion reflects that the acts he is accused of having carried out, and the values that appear to have motivated them, are completely incompatible with what we stand for as an Order. We build our activity on Christian and humanistic values and want our members to contribute to the promotion of charity, peace and goodness among all people. The police will of course get all the help and information we can give to contribute to the investigation.
—from frimurer.no/ordenen/15-aktuelt/1192-the-norwegian-order-of-freemasons-expressing-compassion-and-care
Knights Templars were a Masonic theme long before the Norwegian above put on his apron and holster.
It’s fascinating that a Michoacán-based meth-trafficking gang of particular violence calls itself “Knights Templar” after the medieval Christian crusaders. The fact that its primary boss calls himself “El Chivo,” or “The Goat,” leads us to believe that the violent drug group is also interested in naming themselves after the Masonic Fraternal Order. As news articles proclaimed, “Books, clothing, and banners referring to the Knights Templar were also seized during the police operation.”
As we saw in Chapter Two, a goat was often used by the Masonic Knights Templar in a ritualistic hazing ceremony in which prospective lodge members were forced to “ride the goat.” Prospective lodge members would mount a carpeted goat that often had an electric apparatus attached, designed to shock and humiliate the seeker of wisdom.
The Mexican gang that called itself Knights Templar was linked to dozens of murders, and Mexican police proudly announced the seizure of forty-four metric tons of materials used to manufacture meth-amphetamine.
Here’s the icon from the Masonic Knights Templar, part of the information seized by Mexican police:
FROM ANDERS BEHRING BREVIK’S LENGTHY MANUSCRIPT, KNIGHTS TEMPLAR 2083: A DECLARATION OF EUROPEAN INDEPENDENCE, MEANT FOR PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION FOLLOWING HIS MURDERS:
The PCCTS, Knights Templar Oath—Ordination Rite
Due to the nature and hierarchical and logistical limitations of our clandestine and extremely distributed organisational structure, it is the responsibility of the individual (during phase one—2010–2030) to ensure that he performs the initiation ritual. The rite is somewhat similar to the ancient and original ritual of the Knights Templar. This ritual has been partly adopted and kept alive by the Freemasons and similar “chivalric Orders” the last centuries. The following ritual is a requirement and must be performed by all aspiring Justiciar Knights of the PCCTS, Knights Templar in phase one. You are likely to be alone when performing the rite so you will not undergo the full magnitude of the experience.
The candidate is normally surrounded by Justiciar Knights under a normal initiation ceremony.
Symbolicism of the Ritual
The purpose of the rite is to create and formalise your commitment to the cause of the PCCTS, Knights Templar. You are also literally making a blood pact with the other side, with your ancestors, with past martyrs, and with God. You are offering them a central part of your very being in exchange for the gift of immortality and a place in the eternal kingdom. You pledge allegiance to the principles of the PCCTS, Knights Templar, to fellow Justiciar Knights, to your people, the wishes of your ancestors, and to God. Your oath will commit you to act selflessly as you offer them devoted service to the death.
As a holy Knight fighting for your people and the preservation of Christendom, the Templars, as the Justiciar Knight candidate, are willing to put aside the usual temptations of ordinary secular life for an arduous and dedicated life of service and sacrifice. As soon as you have completed the rite, your life will consist of reaching a pious state, embracing voluntary poverty, devoted service and unwavering dedication and loyalty to the principles of the Knights Templar. Your burdens will be lifted as you cast off the chains that influence you negatively in your day-to-day life and prevent you from doing the right thing for yourself, your family, your countrymen, and your country.
The rite is in many ways a death ritual where you will break the chains that burden you and you will rise as an immortal as you become fully prepared for the afterlife.
The intention of the rite is to formalise or create an unbreakable commitment where the candidate commits to:
Purge his traditional career/secular ambitions—you are embracing your destiny as a martyr for the cause of the PCCTS, Knights Templar.
Purge or distance yourself from worldly influences (including friends, family).
Seek a pious lifestyle and voluntary poverty, as all your worldly resources will go to the operation/cause from now on.
You will rise up as a Justiciar Knight and gain:
Partial immortality (an individual who has embraced martyrdom and death cannot be killed, all martyrs in protection of Christendom are granted a place in heaven)
Ideological confidence
Military/operational confidence
Fearlessness
Unwavering dedication
Preparation
Specific items required to perform the initiation rite:
A candle
A skull (replica, or an item resembling a skull)
A sword
Dimly lit surroundings (the temple), a room, or the wilds
Surroundings
As you obviously do not have access to the Temple of Solomon (as it currently lies in ruin below the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem), you will need to use the second best option, a solid rock (shaped somewhat as a cubic altar) resembling an actual stone altar. Prior to the rite, you, as a Justiciar Knight candidate, are described as a “poor candidate,” in a burdened state of darkness, which is figurative of being in a state of the darkest ignorance surrounded by negative influences (chains/burdens) preventing you from being a Knight and doing the right thing. The properties of stability and strength of the stone altar is being communicated to the oath contributing to making it inviolable. Furthermore, you are to print out the text (the oath) and sign it with your own blood, and subsequently burn it on the “altar.”
The ritual should be performed in a dimly lit environment (a room or in the wilds during dusk or dawn) and you will use one candle light. The candle is placed on the altar. The candle symbolises and represents the light of God or, specifically, the light of Christ and is, as we all know, common in Christian rituals. This liturgical candle must be made of at least 51 percent beeswax. The remainder may be paraffin or some other substance (a paschal candle may be used).
A Skull
A skull or an object resembling a human skull. The skull is placed in the centre of the altar next to the candle. The skull figuratively represents the afterlife/death, and the fallen heroes of our cause, our dead or martyred ancestors or brethren who died for their people and for Christendom in the past (former Knights Templar and nationalist/patriotic fighters of past struggles). You face the skull while reading the oath.
Attire
The candidate will wear his best clothing while performing the initiation rite (normally, the modern European suit). A traditional European dinner suit is the most optimal attire but not required. The use of similar attires symbolises that there is no distinction between Justiciar Knights.
The Justiciar Knight attire illustrates the dignity and nobleness of the Justiciar Knight office as judge, jury, and executioner. The purpose of the Justiciar Knight is to heed the call of his people in an unselfish manner. He is the protector of his people, culture, country, of European Christendom, and civilisation.
White Gloves
The gloves stand for dignity and purity (note that the good person is described in Psalm 24 as having “clean hands and a pure heart”).
A Sword
The sword symbolises aggression, protection, courage, strength, action, unity, justice, leadership, and decision—all important characteristics of the nature of a Justiciar Knight. If you are performing the rite alone, you must provide a sword, preferably a good replica of a battle-ready European sword from an epoch of your national history (for example, a broad Viking sword for Scandinavians, a Roman sword for Southern Europeans, etc. (This sword may be utilized later as it will be an aspect of the tombstone—see chapter about Overseer.)
Under normal circumstances (phase two), there will be several Justiciar Knights present encircling the candidate in a crescent on one side of the altar. They will all raise their swords against the candidate while he reads the final part of the oath. As this may not be possible during phase one, the candidate must make the best out of the situation. The shaft of the sword is placed on the altar while you place it in such a way that the tip of the sword faces your heart.
Here we experience the metaphorical sword cleanly piercing the spiritual soul of man. This symbolic action sacrifices physical bondage to release a path to the ethereal (enlightened) freedom of our struggle. Should the candidate ever knowingly and deliberately violate his oath, he will have his body severed in two, his bowels taken from thence and burned to ashes, the ashes scattered before the four winds of heaven by fellow Justiciar Knights.
The candidate kneels during the ritual.
Initiation Rite
[The candidate kneels in front of the altar, while reading the oath out loudly]
I, ________, of my own free will and accord, in the presence of Almighty God, the spirits of my ancestors and past martyrs, do hereby and hereon most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear, from now and forever, that I will hail, respect and obey the principles of the PCCTS, Knights Templar. I furthermore promise and swear that I will stand to and abide by all laws, rules, and regulations of the Military Order and Criminal Tribunal—PCCTS, Knights Templar. Further, that I will always aid and assist fellow Justiciar Knights, their widows and orphans, knowing them to be such, as far as their necessities may require, and my ability permit, without material injury to myself and family. Further, that I will keep a brother Justiciar Knight’s secrets inviolable, when communicated to and received by me as such.
I declare to take freely and solemnly this oath of obedience, this pledge of voluntary poverty and commitment.
With this oath I state my strong and irrevocable intent:
To pledge my sword, my forces, my life, and everything that I own to the cause, defence, honour of my country and of Europe, my people, the Christian religion, of the PCCTS, Knights Templar, and of my companions in arms; to the rescue of my country and of Europe as a whole from the tyranny of Marxist and Islamic oppression.
To love my brothers the Knights and my Sisters the Ladies and help them, their children, and their widows with my sword, my advice, means and wealth, my credit and everything in my power, and will favour them, with no exception, over those who are not members of the Order.
To fight the infidels and the non-believers with my example, virtue, charity and convincing arguments; and to fight with the sword the infidels and non-believers who attack the Cross with their own sword.
I will not aid, nor be present at, the initiation, passing, or raising of a madman, traitor or fool, knowing him to be such.
Officially sanctioned history of the Shriners
MEXICO’S NEWEST criminal organization, the Knights Templar, issued a “code of conduct” that included moral standards while also justifying the use of lethal force. The KT appears to be an offshoot of La Familia, another group that followed a cult-like ideology as it simultaneously profited from criminal activity and engaged in significant violence in Michoacán (also see Global Post and Al Jazeera).
Over the weekend, it has come out that the killer in Norway’s shocking massacre last week also considered himself a member of the Knights Templar. He claims that a group of nine individuals met a decade ago to refound the organization. His manifesto calls for the organization to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”
Did an 800-year-old organization inspire violence on two continents this week? I doubt anyone thinks these two groups are linked. It’s just a coincidence that they use the same name. Yet, it raises the question of what makes violent ideologues and criminals search the past for inspiration? And what makes two groups so far apart find that inspiration in the Knights Templar?
I’ve touched on the political ideology of Mexico’s criminal organizations previously. They do try to impact politics, but the main political goals are usually to have freedom of movement and action, avoiding arrest by the authorities. Still, La Familia and Knights Templar do claim an ideology beyond the freedom to be criminals, claiming to impose a moral authority and set of rules on the regions they control. The Zetas, on the other side, have engaged in violent acts that don’t appear to match their criminal goals and hint at a dark view of their role in Mexico and the world. Analysts question whether these groups legitimately follow their “ideologies” or if they are a false cover to grant some form of political legitimacy to criminal operations.
The Mexican Knights Templar code of conduct appears to be a false appeal to Mexico’s citizens. By promising to stand up for poor and the oppressed, they take a page from the FARC’s book in claiming to fight for economic justice while really cashing in on criminal actions. Their rule to use violence in only certain cases doesn’t stand up to the brutal and seemingly senseless killings that they have committed in the past month.
As for the guy in Norway, his nationalistic and anti-Muslim views are part of a very disturbed and violent mind. The Knights Templar label is a failed attempt to grant historical legitimacy to a violent act that truly has no justification.
—James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant based in Managua, Nicaragua, who runs Bloggings by Boz.
What Is a Shrine?
Shriners, or Shrine Masons, belong to the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for North America (AAONMS). The Shrine is an international fraternity of approximately 500,000 members who belong to Shrine Center throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and The Republic of Panama. Founded in New York City in 1872, the organization is composed of Master Masons.
The Shrine is best known for its colorful parades, its distinctive red fez, and its official philanthropy, Shriners Hospitals for Children, which is often called “the heart and soul of the Shrine.”
Members of the Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for North America are members of the Masonic Order and adhere to the principles of Freemasonry—Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth.
Freemasonry dates back hundreds of years to when stonemasons and other craftsmen on building projects gathered in shelter houses or lodges. Through the years these gatherings changed in many ways until formal Masonic lodges emerged, with members bound together not by trade, but by their own wishes to be fraternal brothers. There is no higher degree in Freemasonry than that of Master Mason (the Third Degree).
Shriners are distinguished by an enjoyment of life in the interest of philanthropy. With almost 500,000 members the organization has a buoyant philosophy which has been expressed as “Pleasure without intemperance, hospitality without rudeness, and jollity without coarseness.”
They knew they needed an appealing theme for their new Order, so they chose the Arabic (Near East) theme. The most noticeable symbol of Shrinedom is the distinctive red fez that all Shriners wear at official functions. Shriners are men who enjoy life. They enjoy parades, trips, circuses, dances, dinners, sporting events, and other social occasions together. Furthermore, Shriners support what has become known as the “World’s Greatest Philanthropy,” Shriners Hospitals for Children. Through fellowship and philanthropy, Shrinedom strengthens the soul and adds inner meaning to daily life. It thus spreads a glow of joy through one’s entire family. Men from all walks of life and all levels of income find fun, fellowship, and relaxation in their individual Shrine Temple and its activities. There are also regional Shrine Clubs in many communities, family picnics, dances, and scheduled trips to near and far—just to mention a few of the activities available. For the Noble desiring even more activity, there are various Units that he can join, such as Cibara Motor Corps, Drum and Bugle Corps, Oriental Bands, Motor Patrols, Horse Patrols, and Clown units. Every effort is made to be sure a Noble has a variety of activities from which he may choose.
—from official material posted online
Masonic poster advocates direct control of the White House via a point man in the Oval Office, as was accomplished many times in the past.
And upon this sacred book, by the sincerity of a Muslim’s oath, I here register this irrevocable vow, in willing violation whereof may I incur the fearful penalty of having my eyeballs pierced to the center with a three-edged blade, my feet flayed, and I be forced to walk the hot sands upon the sterile shores of the Red Sea until the flaming sun shall strike me with livid plague; and may Allah, the God of Arab, Muslim and Mohammed, and the God of our fathers, support me to the entire fulfillment of the same. Amen, Amen, Amen.
The Progressive-Socialistic Non-Partisan League “Bloc” in the Congress of the United States, with Noble Robert M. LaFollette in charge of its gyrations, may now dig in and give way to replacements.
The farm “bloc,” of which Senator Capper of Kansas is said to be the reigning prince, may now climb up on the wire fence and watch the procession go down the road.
Because the Order of the Mystic Shrine has the only really effective “bloc” around the “Big House” at the end of the avenue in Washington. It is composed of twenty-nine active Senators and ninety-two Representatives, all pledged to put on the brass knuckles and go forth to conquer in the cause of good cheer, genuine happiness, and a smiling constituency.
The Shrine “Bloc” is composed of eggs that do not require to be candled each morning to see if they are right. They are anointed and purified among all their associates.
Turn the Shrine Bloc loose without blinders and they would soon have the future begging for mercy....
They could put the Shrine Smile on each face in the land.
And the Shrine Smile is worn by those who are contented, loyal through faith, and happy in the approval of a clean conscience.
—from The Crescent, May 1923
THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF THE POLICE: KEEPING THE IMAGE UNTARNISHED
The lodges of the Fraternal Order of the Police (FOP) carry a membership, according to their most recent official count, of “more than 324,000 members in more than 2,100 lodges.”
The Fraternal Order of the Police has a long history—nearly a century long. Begun in 1915 by two Pittsburgh patrol officers, Martin Toole and Delbert Nagle, twenty-one other cops met on May 14, 1915, and held the first meeting of the Fraternal Order of the Police, forming Fort Pitt Lodge No. 1. The FOP not only mimicked the Masonic structure, but also adopted a five-pointed star as their emblem, containing twin Masonic images of the All-Seeing Eye and a typical Masonic-style grip (handshake).
It is not uncommon to see mutual association between the FOP and a local Masonic lodge. For example, the website of the FOP, Oregon Pioneer Lodge No. 4, expresses gratitude to the Masonic Lodge for hosting and supporting their members:
We would also like to thank the Officers and Brethren of Beaverton Lodge No. 100 Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Oregon for their support. When we started this FOP Lodge in January 1996 we were given a place in the Beaverton Masonic Temple to hold our meetings and receive our mail. The Masons did this without charging us a nickel.
The fraternal brotherhood of the gun had its own publications.
Similarly, we find a direct acknowledgement of Masonic roots of the FOP on the website of the Political Action Committee for the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Fraternal Order of Police:
The traditions found in the Lions Clubs, the Elks Clubs, or Masonic Lodges were the foundations of the FOP traditions and ceremonies.
Killer or kisser? From the Fraternal Order of the Police monthly magazine
The FOP has been keenly sensitive to its image throughout its history. Although the Keystone Kops had a good bit of fun with a Masonic reference (the Keystone is the topmost stone of an arch and an important symbolic element in Royal Arch Masonry), the FOP didn’t approve. They felt the cops looked too silly. (Even the term “cops” was deemed offensive, and the FOP advocated strongly for the title “police officers” to replace it everywhere.) The FOP also disliked gangster films, which made the bad guys look pretty attractive. The yardstick for FOP film reviews seemed to be pure image: Jack Webb received an FOP award for Sergeant Joe Friday, the cool, Chesterfield-smoking cop of Dragnet. The show Batman conversely irritated the FOP for its bumbling Police Commissioner Gordon and Police Chief O’Hara, who had to be rescued by Adam West dressed in tights with a boy-wonder sidekick who was routinely hurled into the bodies of thugs in wham-bam-socko weekly fight scenes with cartoonish villains.
During the Civil Rights era, the FOP became keenly sensitive to accusations of police brutality and, in particular, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s efforts to prosecute more cases. The official narrative of the Order penned by Justin E. Walsh, Ph.D., The Fraternal Order of Police: 1915–1976. A History, details the battle between the Grand Lodge of the FOP and RFK’s Department of Justice, with the peak of tension expressed this way:
Secretary William J. Murphy of the Ohio State Lodge therefore asked the national officers for financial and moral support. “We in Ohio feel that the Department of Justice is embarked on a campaign, a selective campaign, to harass policemen nationwide,” Murphy said....
Robert Kennedy’s call for more convictions in police brutality cases had already convinced the Grand Lodge that Murphy’s evaluation was correct. It really appeared that for the policeman the Justice Department was now an enemy.
The assassination of Robert Kennedy (the night he won California’s candidacy for President) is not as contested as the assassination of his brother John five years earlier, but the official story of the murder carried out by Sirhan Sirhan has been widely questioned by insiders, including the coroner.
Eyewitnesses uniformly recounted that Sirhan accosted Kennedy from the front and never got closer than two to three feet from the senator before he was grabbed and wrestled to the floor.
Yet County Coroner Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, who performed the autopsy, declared that all three of the bullets striking Kennedy entered from the rear, in a flight path from down to up, right to left. Moreover, powder burns around the entry wound indicated that the fatal bullet was fired at less than one inch from the head and no more than two to three inches behind the right ear.
Thus it would have been physically impossible for Sirhan to have fired the shots that struck Kennedy. Even allowing for the remote possibility that Kennedy twisted completely around—which is contrary to witnesses’ accounts that he threw his arms in front of his face in a protective reaction and sagged backwards—there remained the point-blank shot. Noguchi later revealed that before he entered the grand jury room he was approached by an unnamed DA who solicited him to revise the distance “from one to three inches” to one to three feet. [Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, May 13, 1974] The coroner bravely refused to “cooperate” with this blatant attempt to suborn perjury.
—from The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by William Turner and Jonn Christian
The interrelationship of Freemasonry and the military is old and complex. Anti-Masonic writers tend to accuse Masonry of fomenting, plotting, and executing numerous revolutions in Europe, South America, and the United States, including the French Revolution and, according to some writers, both world wars.
While these claims are sweeping and controversial, the relationship of Freemasonry and military units, small to large, is beyond question. One of the oldest models, noted by Masonic historian Albert Mackey, is the “Field Lodge, or Army Lodge,” which Mackey defines:
A lodge duly instituted under proper authority from a grand body of competent jurisdiction, and authorized to exercise during its peripatetic existence all the powers and privileges that it might possess if permanently located.
On the British side, the lodge was already a given fact of English life, and this pattern carried over to the New World. England’s first recorded initiate, Elias Ashmole, was a captain in Lord Ashley’s Royalist regiment when he joined a Warrington lodge in 1646. Records of the colonial period illustrate the British debt to Freemasonry in a St. John’s Day festival celebrated by the Master and brethren of Lodge No. 210 on June 25, 1781, while the British Army occupied New York:
To the King and the craft,
The Queen... with Masons’ wives
Sir Henry Clinton and all loyal Masons
Admiral Arbuthnot... and all distressed Masons
Generals Knyphausen and Reidesel... and visiting Brethren
Lords Cornwallis and Rawdon... with Ancient Fraternity.
The British Army assisted in the spread of Freemasonry from 1732 forward in the form of regimental field lodges. The first lodge was created in the 1st Foot, and later the Royal Scots. These mobile lodges were ready for travel; frequently, the colonel was the lodge’s original master. By 1755 twenty-nine field lodges existed, including the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Royal Innskilling Fusiliers, the Gloucestershire Regiment, the Dorset Regiment, the Border Regiment, and the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment.
While these early field lodges were not chartered by the Grand Lodge of England, they carried in their ranks some of the most prominent figures of the day, including the Duke of Cumberland, General Sir John Ligonier (one of the most important British military commanders), and Lord Jeffrey Amherst. But perhaps the most notorious member was George Sackville, later Lord Germain, who became the Colonial Secretary and played a significant role during the American Revolution.
Field lodges also popped up on the colonial side, with assistance from George Washington. At least eleven field lodges are certain to have existed—a decent proportion for a relatively small army—and Washington participated in many of their activities. Field lodges dotted the Connecticut line, the North Carolina line, the Massachusetts line, the Maryland line, the Pennsylvania line, the New Jersey line, and the Pennsylvania Artillery Regiment.
The most illustrious military lodge, however, was the American Union Lodge No. 1, in which Washington celebrated the Feast of Saint John the Baptist in 1779, 1780, and 1782, and the Feast of Saint John the Evangelist in 1779. While Washington later indicated some distance from Freemasonry in a letter in 1798, it had certainly not always been so. On December 27, 1778, following the colonial victory in Philadelphia, Washington marched in full Masonic attire, including the jewels, sword, and insignia of the Brotherhood, at the head of a solemn procession of three hundred Freemasons into Christ Church, where a Masonic service was held.
Washington’s popularity was such that the field lodges of the Army supported a movement that culminated in a request from prominent Masons in the army to the Grand Lodge of Boston, petitioning the creation of a National Grand Lodge—Washington himself being the hoped-for National Grand Master. However, the Grand Lodge of Boston killed the scheme, apparently in the larger interests of Masonic peace. Enough brothers were apparently already at war, and the Grand Lodge was already fighting to heal a schism of “Antients” and “Moderns,” so George didn’t make National Grand Master—only President.
Civil War Yankee carries verification of Masonic Lodge membership as life insurance in case he is captured by Dixie Masonic soldiers.
World War II memories of the military fraternal order known as National Sojourners
Lodge affinities on both sides of the American Revolution influenced behavior on the battlefield and treatment of the enemy (if that enemy was a lodge brother). To give one example: Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant, whose sister had married the Provincial Grand Master of New York, was initiated as a Freemason himself on a visit to London in 1776. Brant’s tribe later bagged a Captain McKinstry, an unfortunate man who was tied to a tree and a hair’s breadth from being burned alive, but due to a last-ditch “Masonic appeal”—which was recognized by Brant—he was ordered released and received further British assistance.
Or take the story of a Freemason named Joseph Burnham, a colonial prisoner-of-war escapee who climbed onto the top of a local lodge, fell through into the hands of the British, then thought quickly and gave the proper Masonic signs. The result? The British officers made a generous contribution for Brother Burnham, who was afterwards transported with secrecy and expedition to the Jersey shore.
We find similar events during the Civil War. For example, during the Battle of Douglass’ Church on April 13, 1863, the Confederate Captain Gray was ordered to counterattack and take no Union prisoners. As he charged up the hill toward what had been Freeman’s Battery, he found a trooper and pointed his pistol at him. The soldier quickly made a Masonic sign. The pistol dropped and the Union trooper was sent to the rear.
British military Masons in World War I could apply for a special Masonic pass or “Service Certificate,” which entitled the Freemason to special protection and treatment. The pass, intriguingly, was printed in five languages: English, French, Italian—languages of the Allies—but also German and Turkish—languages of the enemy.
The examples cited above have led some to ask if one of the effects of Masonic military or field lodges has been the creation of a supranational loyalty which can trump national concerns and obligations, even during war. Goethe, himself a Freemason, later criticized the Lodge for creating a “state within a state”: some have wondered if military lodges do not by their very nature lead to the phenomenon of an army within an army, determined by other loyalties and recognized by secret signs.
One of the most important chapters in Masonry’s intersection with the U.S. military begins in the Philippines, where a field lodge in Manila was established on August 21, 1898. According to reports of the Worshipful Master, “nearly every organization of the 8th Army Corps was represented” at lodge meetings, and “brothers from the Navy were in frequent attendance.”
By early 1900 a Sojourners Club developed in Manila and was granted a charter by the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of California on October 10, 1901. This club later became the Masonic Sojourners Association in 1907. In 1917 returning military Masons formed a national Masonic organization, and by February 28, 1918, the Sojourners were reborn on U.S. soil, “composed of officers and former officers of the various uniformed services of the United States.” By 1921 the Sojourners in Chicago had grown, and the National Sojourners arrived on the scene—the Masonic core of the U.S. military, from that day to ours.
The Masonic provenance of the term sojourner is old, rooted in the rituals of the Craft. As the former National President, John D. Billingsley, Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Retired, writes: “National Sojourners has provided a means for Master Masons who share another bond, that of being Commissioned Officers of Warrant Officers of the Uniformed Forces of the United States, to meet together in practically all parts of the world... By being provided this opportunity, Master Masons from widely separated Grand Lodge jurisdictions are permitted to continue their associations in Masonry no matter where their duties may take them.”
In other words, Master Masons who are military officers join the National Sojourners, which makes that organization a unique facet of Freemasonry—a commanding Masonic presence within the “Uniformed Forces of the United States.”
In Freemasonry, the number 33 possesses a long history, based on Kabbalistic numerology. Fortean author Jim Brandon notes in The Rebirth of Pan that alchemy is “said to be based upon the symbolism of the number 33: 3 × 3 = 9, the number of ‘esoteric man,’ and the number of emanations from the Kabbalistic ‘tree,’ one of the key symbol conglomerates.” Brandon continues:
The most powerful branch of Freemasonry in the world today, the Scottish Rite, has always been American-based, despite its name. It was founded in Charleston, South Carolina, apparently because this city is located approximately on the 33rd degree of north latitude, and offers its members 33 degrees of initiation.... The Southern Jurisdiction includes the 33 other contiguous states.... The most conspicuous Masonic edifice in the Washington area today is the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, a replica of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria. It is 333 feet high.... The official version of the U.S. Great Seal has 33 feathers on the eagle’s sinister wing.
The Freemasonic obsession with the number 33 is reflected in the Committee of 33 of the National Sojourners. The Committee of 33 was formed on June 10, 1925, during the Fifth Annual Convention of National Sojourners in Washington, DC, to “include the National Officers, to draw up definite plans, specifying definitely the object of the Sojourners and its war time and peace time policies... empowered to act and carry out the plans approved.”
How wide is the scope of these “definite plans” for both “war time and peace time policies”? It is difficult to say, but one suspects the influence of the Sojourners is considerable. The roster of military officers is enormous, encompassing a Who’s Who of the military. Lavon Parker Linn, National Historian of the National Sojourners, filled a book with lists, photographs, and celebrations of military Masons—including astronauts. The NASA-Freemasonic connections, or the links between Spacecraft and Craft, are themselves tighter than the fit of a spacesuit. It is worth noting that the 1997 NASA probe of Mars included a rover named Sojourner which was carried in a tetrahedral-shaped lander to 19.5° × 33°.
Knickers, fezzes and wartime memories in a snapshot carried in an undated Shriner member’s scrapbook
Soldiers proud of their Islam Lodge membership
Shriner scrapbook highlight
James Shelby Downard defines mystical toponomy as pertaining “to the magic and mystery of words intersecting with the Masonic science of symbolism.... My study of place names imbued with sorcerous significance necessarily include lines of latitude and longitude and the divisions of degrees in geography and cartography (minutes and seconds).”
Robert Macoy writes in his Dictionary of Freemasonry, “Freemasonry is a complete system of symbolic teaching and cannot be known, understood, or appreciated only by those who study its symbolism and make themselves thoroughly acquainted with its occult meaning.” Albert Mackey writes of the “respect paid by Freemasons to certain numbers,” which is founded on the assumption that they are “types or representatives of certain ideas.”
One notable instance of military Masonic symbolism is the very shape of the Pentagon, which is the third figure from the exterior in the camp of the Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret, or 32nd Degree of the Scottish Rite.
Vietnam War Shriner soldier
Masonic obsession with Iraq displayed in 1923 cartoon from The Crescent magazine
Shriner Lodge Rituals enacted in Saigon during the Vietnam War
The Masonic handclasp enacted between Islam Potentate and higher-ranked soldier
The newsletter of the military in Iraq, with an Islamic/Shriner emblem: the Scimitar. The scimitar was used in horse warfare by Islamic armies, and is still occasionally used for beheadings.
Another aspect of mystical toponomy involves the Masonic focus on Orientalism in general and the Middle East in particular.
Between 1858 and 1874, Brother Sylvanus Cobb Jr. produced a number of Masonic stories but none surpassed The Caliph of Baghdad, as mentioned previously, where we observed Dagon, a character who is initiated into the Brotherhood of the Mystic Tie in Jerusalem, then returns to his native Baghdad to relieve the stress caused by a Caliph tyrant. The story is full of staple Masonic symbolism—such as a secret vault—all of which is instantly recognizable to Masons who have been exalted to the Royal Arch Degree.
Some of these themes are synchro-mystically prescient. We find a modern tale written in history within our time involving a tyrant in Baghdad—Saddam Hussein—and military Freemasons “relieving the stress” of his reign. Is there a Mystic Tie to all of it?
From the perspective of mystical toponomy, it is worth noting that Baghdad is on the 33rd parallel.
One facet of Saddam’s capture seems cut from Cobb’s Masonic classic. Where did our military “Dagons” find the new “Caliph tyrant,” Saddam Hussein? In a “spider hole”—a type of secret vault, which is both the name of a chapter in Cobb’s book and a basic element of Royal Arch Masonic ritual.
According to the neo-conservative Washington Times, Saddam Hussein had prescribed the death penalty for “those who promote or acclaim Zionist principles, including Freemasonry.” Originally a number of Iraqi lodges dotted the landscape under the British Mandate following the first World War, but apparently that changed dramatically under Saddam Hussein, if we can believe the report.
With the “liberation” of Iraq, Land Sea and Air Lodge No. 1 was soon up and running in Iraq. Freemasonry had returned, even if running water had not.
A web page for “Freedom Team” details the programs available for supporting Masonic troops (their expression). These include the Masonic Troop Support Program (MTSP) and the Masonic Military Support Fund (MMSF). The website is topped by a photo of several white people in white shirts standing in front of an American flag.
At the website of the Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS), one can find back issues of The Scimitar, which is described as “a weekly paper published by the Multi-National Force-Iraq and Multi-National Corps-Iraq Joint Public Affairs Office. It is distributed throughout Iraq alongside the Stars and Stripes every Friday.” The publication states that Scimitar “is an authorized publication for members of the Department of Defense.”
In the realm of the synchro-mystical or purely coincidental, the scimitar itself is the emblematic image of the Shriners, whose members typically had to be either Knights Templar Masons in the York Rite or 32nd Degree Masons in the Scottish Rite, but now (due to declining membership) need only be 3rd Degree Master Masons.
The scimitar was used widely throughout the Muslim world from at least the Ottoman period (beginning in the thirteenth century), used in horse warfare for slashing opponents in passing. Scimitars are also used for beheading and public executions:
In Saudi Arabia, public beheading is the punishment for murder, rape, drug trafficking, sodomy, armed robbery, apostasy, and other offenses. Men and women receive sentences of death by beheading and are usually given sedatives beforehand. The condemned are taken by the police to a public place and their eyes are covered. A sheet of plastic is spread out on the ground and the prisoner is forced to kneel facing Mecca. The prisoner’s name and crime is read out loud and the executioner is given a traditional Arab scimitar. The executioner generally takes a few practice swings in the air before poking the prisoner in the back of the neck with the tip of the sword. This causes the prisoner to lift their head so that it can be removed with a single stroke. The head often flies two to three feet away from the body and is picked up and given to a doctor who sews it back on.
—from The 13 Most Brutal and Inhumane Judicial Punishments Still Used Today
The FV107 Scimitar is also an armored reconnaissance vehicle and is based on the FV101 Scorpion light tank used by the British Royal Army.
Allen Dulles, co-founder and first civilian Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was fired by JFK only to later oversee the Warren Commission. Allen Dulles also crops up on lists of famous Freemasons, along with former CIA director William Casey.
A notorious affair connecting the Masonic world and the CIA is the “P2” case in Italy, which broke the spring and summer of 1981 and created a national press sensation. “P2” is a popular abbreviation for the Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due. The P2 lodge was a Grand Orient lodge, and the United Grand Lodge of England immediately used this fact to distance itself from the scandal, citing the historical divergence of the two lodges. But what was the scandal, and how did the CIA enter the picture?
P2 was formed in 1966 with support from Giordano Gamberini, the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy. Placed in charge was Freemason Licio Gelli, who created the reputation of this lodge as an elite and powerful secret society, using blackmail and extracting “dues” in the form of official secrets, which he used to consolidate and extend the lodge’s power and his own. Gelli was an honored guest at Ronald Reagan’s presidential inauguration in January 1981, even as rumors spread of P2 connections to the Mafia and the underworld. Nor were these the only shadowy connections. According to researcher David A. Yallop, “from the very early days of P2, he [Gelli] had the active support and encouragement of the CIA operating in Italy.”
A police raid on the lodge blew the scandal lid, resulting in a list of members that included Italy’s most powerful men—ranging from prime ministers to members of parliament, judges, bankers, newspaper editors and journalists, police chiefs, thirty generals, and eight admirals—953 in all. The scandal culminated on June 18, 1982, when Roberto Calvi, president of Italy’s Banco Ambrosiano and P2 member—known as “God’s banker” for his close ties to the Vatican Bank—was found hanging by the neck from a rope (like a “cable tow” in Masonic ritual) suspended from scaffolding beneath Blackfriar’s Bridge in London, his pockets weighted with chunks of masonry. One day prior, Calvi’s secretary plunged to her death from a fourth-floor window at the bank, leaving behind a questionable suicide note. It was alleged that in Italy the logo of the Masonic Brotherhood is the figure of a Blackfriar.
J. EDGAR HOOVER’S membership in Freemasonry is seldom mentioned. Among Masons themselves, Hoover was an icon of Freemasonry in the world of intelligence and stood at the pinnacle of Masonic honor and membership. According to a Grand Lodge website, Brother Hoover was “raised” (made a Master Mason) November 9, 1920, at Federal Lodge No. 1, Washington, DC. The website of the Library and Museum of the Supreme Council, 33rd Degree, Southern Jurisdiction [of the Scottish Rite] gives much more detail in the online J. Edgar Hoover Collection:
“During his fifty-two years with the Craft, he received innumerable medals, awards, and decorations. In 1955, for instance, he was coroneted a 33rd Degree Inspector General Honorary and awarded the Scottish Rite’s highest recognition, the Grand Cross of Honour, in 1965.”
THE VERY WORD “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
—President John F. Kennedy, Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961
Brother J. Edgar Hoover and Shriner associates. Hoover has his own display room at Scottish Rite Masonic headquarters, Washington, DC
Brother Lyndon Baines Johnson
Hoover’s role in the aftermath of the John F. Kennedy assassination included supplying strong testimony and information to the Warren Commission, which in turn issued a report which has been accused of omissions and distortions. Hoover, for example, stated that there was “no scintilla of evidence” of any conspiracy, and that “Oswald shot the president.” Hoover’s testimony provided the Warren Commission with an appearance of solidity which stood like a wall for decades against evidence to the contrary—including direct evidence from Charles A. Crenshaw, the surgeon who tried to save JFK and who testified that the bullet wounds came from the front, not the back, in contrast to the Hoover-Warren party line.
The July 25, 2008, New York Times carried an intriguing detail in its obituary of Paul Bentley, the Dallas detective who snapped the cuffs on Lee Harvey Oswald. Bentley arrested Oswald in the Texas Theater eighty minutes after Kennedy was shot. The obituary states: “Photographs of Oswald in custody show a cut over his eye. It was caused by the Masonic ring Detective Bentley was wearing during the scuffle, about twenty rows back from the movie screen.”
Brother Earl Warren oversaw the famous Warren Report that according to Gerald Posner and Vincent Bugliosi answered all lingering questions about the killing of the country’s first Catholic President.
It is a prime tenet of Masonry that its assassins come in threes. Masonic assassins are known in the code of the lodge as the “unworthy craftsmen.” Because Masonry is obsessed with earth-as-gameboard (tessellation) and the ancillary alignments necessary to facilitate the “game,” it is inordinately concerned with railroads and railroad personnel to the extent that outside of lawyers and circus performers, no other vocation has a higher percentage of Masons than railroad workers.
Minutes after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered, three “hoboes” (“unworthy craftsmen”) were arrested at the rail yard behind Dealey Plaza.
No records of their identities have ever been revealed nor the “identity” of the arresting officer. All that remains of those few minutes are a series of photographs, which have reached legendary proportions among persons concerned with uncovering the real forces and persons behind the assassination.
Dealey Plaza breaks down symbolically in this manner: “Dea” means “goddess” in Latin and “Ley” can pertain to the law or rule in the Spanish, or lines of preternatural geographic significance in the pre-Christian nature religions of the English.
For many years Dealey Plaza was underwater at different seasons, having been flooded by the Trinity River until the introduction of a flood-control system. To this trident-Neptune site came the “Queen of Love and Beauty” and her spouse, the scapegoat in the Killing of the King rite, the “Ceannaideach” (Gaelic word for Kennedy meaning “ugly head” or “wounded head”).
The systematic arrangement and pattern of symbolic things having to do with the killing of Kennedy indicates that he was a scapegoat in a sacrifice. The purpose of such macabre ritualism is further recognizable in patterns of symbolism culminating in the final “making manifest all that is hidden.”
—by James Shelby Downard with Michael A. Hoffman II
Gentlemen, don’t pass me by!
Don’t miss your opportunity!
Inspect my wares with careful eye; I have a great variety. And yet there is nothing on my stall.
—Witch in Goethe’s Faust I, Walpurgis Night
These are the thoughts of a huckster-witch, which one need not search for, dressed all in black with conical cap. Instead, look among the gray flannel suits in the boardrooms and offices of the newspapers, electronic media, government, and advertising agencies—that is, those who are not busy working for the CIA or Naval Intelligence selling the public lies.
Brother Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, who enacted a Masonic ritual on lunar-bound spaceship, and brought back to Washington, DC Scottish Rite headquarters a very special Masonic flag
Mason Lyndon Johnson appointed Mason Earl Warren to investigate the death of Catholic Kennedy. Mason and member of the 33rd Degree, Gerald R. Ford, was instrumental in suppressing what little evidence of a conspiratorial nature reached the commission. Responsible for supplying information to the commission was Mason and member of the 33rd Degree, J. Edgar Hoover. Former CIA director and Mason Allen Dulles was responsible for most of the data his agency supplied to the panel.
Is it paranoid to be suspicious of the findings of the panel on these grounds? Would it be paranoid to suspect a panel of Nazis appointed to investigate the death of a Jew or to suspect a commission of Klansmen appointed to investigate the death of an African American?
Representative Hale Boggs, the only Catholic on the commission, at first agreed with its findings, but when he later began to seriously question them, he was “accidentally” killed in a plane crash.
HOODWINK (Definition) A symbol of the secrecy, silence and darkness in which the mysteries of our art should be preserved from the unhallowed gaze of the profane.
—Dr. Albert Mackey, foremost Masonic historian of the nineteenth century, writing in the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
That is how they see us, as “profane,” as “cowans” (outsiders), unclean and too perverted to look upon their hallowed truths. Yes, murder, sexual atrocities, mind control, attacks against the people of the United States—all of these things are so elevated, so lofty and holy, as to be beyond the view of mere humans.
Masonic flag flown to the moon and brought back to Earth and currently displayed at Scottish Rite Headquarters, Washington, DC
One of the nagging mysteries of Scottish Rite Freemasonry is just what is the true meaning of the invitation 33°? Some argue that the number “thirty-three” has no significance; that it is just “the next level after the 32°,” after which the founders of the Craft just didn’t have anything more to teach their initiates. However, given the crucial importance of each and every other Masonic symbol (recall how Aldrin carefully carried the Masonic Apron to and from the Moon—and then presented it in another ritual at the Scottish Rite Temple in Washington, DC) in the day-to-day activities of the Craft, it seems preposterous that Scottish Rite founder Albert Pike simply pulled 33° out of his hat....
So, it makes exquisite sense that an ancient “mystery school,” or one of the three “secret societies” we’ve identified in NASA... would choose the “thirty-third” level as its symbolic “highest level of enlightenment.” Most outside observers would never figure it out....
In looking at the White Sands Missile Range, where Wernher Von Braun conducted his first V-2 tests in America, it came to light that there had, in fact, been only one launch pad at the range, yet it was numbered
“Launch Complex 33.”
And the one and only landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center, at Cape Canaveral?
“Runway 33” of course.
This relentless, repeating “NASA ritualistic pattern” didn’t restrict itself to just the numbers either.
NASA was demonstrably enmeshed in the sorts of strange mythologies that groups like the “Masons” and the “SS” thrived on; the Apollo 11 Lunar Module was named Eagle, while the Scottish Rite flag Aldrin had taken aboard Eagle to the Moon and then returned to Earth bore the symbol of a double-headed Eagle—the official crest of the Scottish Rite.
As we looked at the skies above the Apollo 16 landing site—in that lunar highlands near a major lunar crater called Descartes—and, simultaneously, over the Mission Control Center in Houston itself, we found the star gods of ancient Egypt once again; “Osiris” had landed on the Moon... with Sirius (“Isis”—his “resurrection consort”) at 33° below the horizon... rising.
—from Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara, Dark Mission
The Teapot Dome-troubled Warren Harding’s fraternal wishes to fellow Masons and Shriners
Brother Mellon lays the cornerstone of the IRS, a symbol of human sacrifice. Mellon’s namesake is on the foundation of this national building.
Andrew William Mellon (March 24, 1855–August 26, 1937) was an American banker, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector, Secretary of the Treasury, and a Freemason, like many other rich and influential Americans.
Mellon, who was the third wealthiest man in the country, invoked a liquidation of farmers and other aspects of American wealth in order to make people work harder and become more “moral” as a result—a sort of “get the nation ‘on-the-level’ approach” with the work ethic of the beehive.
Andrew Mellon was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by the famously corrupt administration of Freemason and President Warren G. Harding in 1921. He served for ten years and eleven months, the third-longest tenure of a Secretary of the Treasury. His service continued through the Hoover administration.
President Harding, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1921, called for an overhaul of the tax system, an emergency tariff act, readjustment of war taxes, and creation of a federal budget system. These were policies Mellon could get behind, and his long experience as a banker gave him ideas for implementing these programs immediately. As a conservative Republican and a money man, Mellon was irritated by the manner in which the government’s budget was maintained—expenses were due and rising rapidly while revenue failed to keep pace with expense increases. And of course there was a general lack of savings.
Mellon set about reducing the huge federal debt (leftover from World War I obligations) by increasing federal revenue and cutting spending. He thought that the top income earners would only willingly pay their taxes if rates were 25 percent or lower. Mellon proposed tax rate cuts, which Congress enacted in the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926. Mellon’s policy reduced the public debt from almost $26 billion in 1921 to about $16 billion in 1930, but then the Depression came along and it rose again.
Mellon’s popularity plummeted. He advised Herbert Hoover to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate.... It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.”
Mellon also targeted “weak” banks and “weeded them out” by refusing to lend them cash (taking loans and other investments as collateral), and by refusing to put more cash in circulation.
In January 1932, Representative Wright Patman and others introduced articles of impeachment against Mellon, with hearings before the House Judiciary Committee at the end of that month. After the hearings were over, but before the scheduled vote on whether to report the articles to the full House, Mellon dodged the bullet and resigned, accepting an appointment to the post of Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Representative Louis Thomas McFadden, a pioneering enemy of the Federal Reserve, raised the specter of Mellon’s appointment while an impeachment was pending in his attempt to impeach President Hoover.
Long after his death, the bank Mellon created fell into a costly mishap with the IRS, the same agency that named its cornerstone after him.
John Jacob Astor
Walter Chrysler
John Eberhard Faber
Henry Ford
King Gillette
Charles Hilton
Andrew Mellon
J.C. Penney
Nathan Rothschild
Arthur Godfrey
WORKERS SAY Mellon besieged with forms after April deadline.
Edward W. Randall, 76, of Northboro, Massachusetts, isn’t your average taxpayer.
When none of three checks he sent to the Internal Revenue Service by the April 16 filing deadline was cashed by early June, he called the IRS to find out what happened.
At first, the IRS said his checks were lost and charged him several hundred dollars interest for paying late when he sent new checks by registered mail.
The charge was later removed, however, when the IRS discovered that Randall’s checks and returns—for his balance due on his 2000 return, an estimated first-quarter payment and third return for his late aunt—were among what officials estimate are at least 40,000 tax returns and payments totaling $810 million that were lost or destroyed by Mellon Bank’s downtown processing center operating under contract with the IRS.
The IRS, the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Postal Service are investigating what happened, and the IRS has terminated its contract with Mellon. “We’ve never had a situation like this or of this magnitude,” Ken Carfine, an official with the Treasury Department’s Financial Management Service division that oversees the collection and deposit of tax revenues, said yesterday.
—from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 31, 2001
What does modern America have to do with the Great Pyramid?
It is commonly known now, more so than ever before, that the United States of America was founded largely by men with a philosophy grounded in the occult: namely the members of Freemasonry, and other secret societies, who saw in the U.S. a potential “New Atlantis” or “New Jerusalem.” They foresaw the future of the United States as a beacon to the rest of the world, guiding the nations toward the formation of a New World Order of peace, democracy, and enlightenment. Many people today would agree that the U.S. is indeed, in several ways, fulfilling this role already. If nothing else, most people would certainly agree that America has come to dominate the world financially, and that among world currencies, the American dollar is king.
What few people understand, however, is the correlation between the esoteric doctrines of Freemasonry upon which the United States was founded, and the economic principles that underpin the American economy. Few understand that the dollar is a unit of magical energy, and the dollar bill itself a magical talisman. Although many words have been written by conspiracy theorists analyzing the Masonic symbols on the one dollar bill, no one has yet been able to sufficiently explain why these symbols are there, or what they really mean. Certainly no researcher yet has successfully connected the markings on American money to the hidden secrets of the American monetary system.
The symbolism on the American dollar bill has been the subject of Masonic conspiracy theories since the modern version was first rolled out during the Roosevelt administration in 1935. Masonic and mystical symbolism has been used on American currency since the very beginning, and was employed as a means of distinguishing our money from that of Old World Europe, which invariably featured the bust of the reigning monarch. In contrast, America’s founding fathers agreed that American money should be decorated with the symbols of the anti-monarchist, pro-democratic Enlightenment philosophy upon which the Republic was founded, and many of these ideals were Masonic in origin. The Great Pyramid, the All-Seeing Eye, and quirky phrases like “Mind Your Business” appeared on early American currency. In fact, the heads of “dead Presidents” and other state figures were not shown on U.S. money until the twentieth century, when it was seen as less taboo. But all researchers of the subject agree that nothing tops the modern American one dollar bill for the sheer exactness and complexity of its mystical symbolism. The meaning of the symbolism is so deep, the metaphors so multi-layered, and each element so precisely placed, that although several of the other American bills have changed their appearance to prevent counterfeiting (with the heads moved off-center, and the addition of funky rainbow colors) the perfection of the one dollar bill has remained intact.
When analyzing the symbolism of the one dollar bill, most researchers tend to focus on the repeated use of the number thirteen, which they always insist is “an important number sacred to Freemasons,” without demonstrating any proof of the supposed Masonic affinity for this particular number. This is, of course, the number of colonies that originally constituted the United States of America, and thus thirteen stars have been used in American heraldry since the start of the union, appearing not only on our first national flag but upon many of our early coins as well. Since Freemasons were responsible for both the foundation of many of America’s institutions and the design of our national symbols, it is tempting to ascribe a Masonic significance to the use of this number, and indeed there may be one. But there is no specific mention of the number thirteen in any known Masonic ritual, except perhaps in the rites of the Noble Order of the Shrine, where this number comes up more than once, but with no particular meaning given to it. In any case, the Shriners did not exist at the time of the founding of the American republic. None of the quintessential Masonic tomes, such as Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma, make any special note of the number. Although Pike examines the meaning of many numbers in terms of cabalism and sacred geometry, mention of thirteen is conspicuously absent, almost like an office building from the early twentieth century in which the thirteenth floor has been superstitiously omitted. Even Freemason Manly P. Hall, in his 1944 book The Secret Destiny of America (where he interpreted the history of the United States as the unfolding of an ancient Masonic plan) could only offer lamely that thirteen symbolizes Jesus and the twelve apostles, or the Sun and the twelve zodiac signs. One would expect him to say something more interesting, but perhaps he was just being coy. Indeed, if there are any Masonic teachings regarding this number, then they are among the few Masonic teachings that have actually remained secret throughout the centuries. My research tends to indicate that there is in fact a proto-Masonic significance to this number, and one which would have been of special importance to the founders of the United States.
At any rate, Masonic or not, the number thirteen is undeniably the most omnipresent, most repeated symbol on the one dollar bill, although its use is not always explicit. Most of these examples are found on the back of the bill. The pyramid on the left has thirteen layers, not including the eye at the top. Above the head of the eagle on the right, there is a constellation of thirteen pentagonal stars, arranged in the shape of a six-pointed star. There are thirteen leaves on the olive branch in his right talon and thirteen “Jonathan arrows,” as they are called, in his right. There are thirteen horizontal divisions on the eagle’s shield and thirteen vertical ones. The motto “E Pluribus Unum,” written on the banner in his beak, contains thirteen letters. So too does the motto “Annuit Coeptis,” written above the pyramid on the left. Furthermore, if you add the number of letters in “Novus Ordo Seclorum” and “MDCCLXXVI” (“1776” in Roman numerals) written below the pyramid, you get twenty-six, or two sets of thirteen. On the front of the bill, at the base of the portrait of George Washington, on each side there are eight leaves and five berries, indicating another two sets of thirteen. There are also thirteen stars on the chevron on the seal of the Treasury Department that is featured to the right of George Washington, overlaying the word “ONE.”
Clearly these allusions to the number thirteen are no accident. This truth is compounded by the letters in permanently featured words on the front of the dollar bill (that is, words not contingent upon any changing circumstance, such as the name of the U.S. Treasurer). These words include: “FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE,” “THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” “THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE,” “WASHINGTON, DC,” “ONE,” “TREASURER OF THE UNITED STATES,” “SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY,” “ONE DOLLAR,” and “WASHINGTON.” The total number of letters in these words is 169, or thirteen squared.
Returning to the back of the bill, there would appear to be exactly thirteen examples of the use of the number thirteen there. But in order for this to be correct, you have to count “IN GOD WE TRUST.” Of course, there are only twelve letters in this phrase, but occupying the same space in the center on the back of the bill is the word “ONE,” implying that we should add one to this sum and make thirteen. In addition, there are, on the front of the bill, four ones at the corners of an inner rectangle on the front of the bill that is exactly thirteen centimeters long.
These ones are part of a larger pattern, for in addition to the repeated use of the number thirteen, the number one, or the word “one”, is used profusely, much more than necessary to identify the denomination of the bill. The concept of “unity” could in fact be said to be the real underlying theme of the one dollar bill. And rightly so: it represents, after all, the original unit of currency upon which the American economic system is founded. It is the blueprint upon which all other dollar bills are based, and when we think of the American dollar, the first image that pops into our minds is the one dollar bill. As the official representation of the original unit underpinning the economy, its unity is expressed with the plenteous use of “1,” the central placement of “ONE” on the back of the bill, and the use of the motto “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of Many, One”) underneath a constellation of thirteen stars, representing the original colonies that were “unified” at the creation of the United States. The theme of “one” is continued with the use of the first American President, George Washington, on the front of the bill, and with the word “ONE” written next to him. As well, I would include the symbol of the pyramid on the back, which according to the designers of this emblem, was meant to represent the ideal state, made up of individuals (the stones) unified into one structure (the pyramid), under the divine unifying principle (the All-Seeing Eye of Providence).
Other strange features include the words “Annuit Coeptis” (“He [meaning God] favors our undertaking”) and “Novus Ordo Seclorum” (“The New Order of the Ages”). These are both based on quotes from the Roman poet Virgil, although they have been slightly altered, and both quotes referred in their original context to “Juppiter Omnipotes” (“Omnipotent Jupiter”), essentially the Roman equivalent of the Judeo-Christian Almighty God. (Interestingly, “E Pluribus Unum” is also a quote from Virgil, slightly altered, and some see in these alterations a numerological significance.) In the original Virgil poem, the words “Juppiter Omnipotes, Audacibus Annue Coeptis” were a plea for the deity to “favor my daring undertakings.” The words on the back of the dollar bill not only plead for, but confidently declare God’s favor upon the “daring undertaking” there represented: the creation of a “New Order of the Ages,” or a new global power structure, headed by the newly-created republic of the United States. For these symbols and words belong not just to the dollar bill: they are part of the Great Seal of the United States, created in 1776, at the same time the nation was founded. It is the front and back side of the Great Seal which is represented on the back of the dollar bill.
The design of the Great Seal has never been ascribed to any one individual, and it has evolved a bit over the years. But the essentials of the design were sketched out right at the beginning, in 1776, the year of the Revolution, emblazoned in Roman numerals beneath the pyramid on the back of the seal. That’s right: the roundel featuring the eye above the pyramid is actually the reverse side of the Great Seal, and the roundel featuring the eagle is really the front. It is the front of the Seal which is used to seal official U.S. documents, not the back.
Several people are known to have contributed to the design of both sides of the Seal, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, William Barton, Charles Thomson, and Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, and all but one were Freemasons. The first metal die for the Seal was cut by Robert Scot, a Freemason, in 1782. However, although dies were commissioned for both the front and the back of the Seal, only the front was actually cut.
None was made for the back of the Seal until much later, and most people were not aware that their national Seal had a back to it at all until it appeared on the dollar bill in 1935. Thirty-third-degree Freemason and historian Manly P. Hall wrote that the reverse of the seal was not originally used, “because it was regarded as a symbol of a secret society and not the proper device for a sovereign state.”
The mystical owl for the Cremation of Care ceremony at Bohemian Grove
Just like the Great Seal, the one dollar bill was also designed by a group of Freemasons working for the government; in this case, President Franklin Roosevelt, Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, although the design was executed at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (which employed exactly thirteen engravers). It was Wallace’s suggestion that the front and back of the Great Seal be used on the reverse of the dollar. He originally wanted the front of the seal to be on the left, and the back of the seal to be on the right, which makes sense logically. But it was President Roosevelt who suggested switching that order, and putting the more interesting reverse of the seal on the left, which made more sense intuitively, since the Western eye naturally reads words and images from left to right.
“In God We Trust” was not placed on the bill until 1957. However, it was originally made the national motto of the United States in 1863 at the suggestion of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who himself had supposedly been prompted to do so by a Protestant minister concerned with the waning of religious fervor in the American public. This man purportedly wanted to ensure that the U.S. would always be officially grounded in faith in divine Providence, and thus this motto has been put on all American coins ever since, although it did not appear on paper currency until much later. But “In God We Trust” is indeed a Masonic motto—one used in almost all Masonic rituals, in which the participants must pledge to always put their “trust in God” during the ceremonies—and this specific phrase can be found in Masonic dictionaries. Its appearance on the dollar bill in the 1950s may have been meant to bolster a currency increasingly dependent on faith due to changes in American monetary policy.
Hanging around at Bohemian Grove
Ritual play-acting at Bohemian Grove
Is this really what I want to be doing? Sneaking into the exclusive Bohemian Grove on the Saturday night when roughly 2,500 of America’s richest, mostly right-wing Republicans are kicking off their annual July “encampment”? The members of the San Francisco–based Bohemian Club are mostly all here, partying boisterously in this primeval stand of gargantuan redwoods seventy-five miles north of the city, or will be during the next sixteen days. Over the years all the usual suspects have made appearances: Rumsfeld, Kissinger, two former CIA directors (including Papa Bush), the masters of war and the oilgarchs, the Bechtels and the Basses, the board members of top military contractors—such as Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the Carlyle Group—Rockefellers, Morgans, captains of industry and CEOs across the spectrum of American capitalism. The interlocking corporate web—cemented by prep school, college, and golf-club affiliations; blood, marriage, and mutual self-interest—that makes up the American ruling class. Many of the guys, in other words, who have been running the country into the ground and ripping us off for decades.
The summer high jinks begin, as they have for more than 100 years, with a macabre, hokey ceremony—with Druidic, Masonic, Ku Klux Klan, and Aryan forest-worship overtones—called the Cremation of Care, which is starting in forty minutes down by the lake. I squeeze through a hole in a chain-link fence onto the 2,700-acre property and follow an old overgrown railroad bed. To my left, below a dense tangle of California bay laurel, big-leaf maple, and understory shrubs, the muddy-green Russian River is sliding by. I didn’t see any posting on that side of the property, but I know I am trespassing.
While many in the world see this gathering of the military-industrial high command as the bad guys—a sort of rogue state operating outside the constraints of democratic institutions, a favorite watering hole for what Peter Phillips, a Sonoma State University sociologist who has published extensively on the Bohemian Club, calls “the global dominance group”—this is not how the members imagine themselves. They see themselves as the moral underpinnings of America’s greatness, whose central tenets are the Protestant work ethic: work hard and prosper and you’ll get into that great club in the sky. The Bohemian Club is like the Opus Dei of the Protestant American establishment. Very few Jews have made it in and even fewer blacks.
—by Alex Shoumatoff, Vanity Fair, May 2009
Cross-dressing ritualism for the wealthy at Bohemian Grove
The Bohemian Club is a men’s club instituted, according to its constitution, “for the association of gentlemen connected professionally with Literature, Art, Music, the Drama and also those who, by reason of their love or appreciation of these objects and interest in participating in Club activities, may be deemed eligible.” While its membership has always included many outstanding professionals in the arts, most of its members are business professionals and academic people with artistic avocations, for whom the club affords an opportunity for expression and supportiveness. The club, in short, is participative and avocational in nature and purpose, with its focus on the fine and performing arts and belles-lettres.
Bohemian Club Founders
It is generally established that the original organizers were five newspapermen, aided and abetted by others in the publishing fields, a Shakespearean actor, a vintner, and a couple of merchants devoted to the arts. The newsmen were Joseph N.H. Irwin and Sands W. Forman, the Examiner; Daniel O’Connell of the Bulletin; James F. Bowman of the Chronicle; and Thomas Newcomb of the Call. Newcomb was the club’s first President. The Shakespearean actor, Henry Edwards, was the club’s second President. Forman was the first Secretary. And among the first trustees was Henry George, the journalist later best known as the author of Progress and Poverty. By 1873, the club had 125 members.
Bohemian Grove
The Bohemian Grove is located in Monte Rio, in Sonoma County, California, about seventy miles northwest of San Francisco and about fifteen miles west of Santa Rosa.
The Grove is the site of the club’s annual encampment during the last two weeks of July, when a large percentage of the club’s 2,300-man membership convenes for a midsummer program of performing arts and other artistic events and entertainment planned and staged by the membership. Attendance is concentrated in the three weekends of the encampment but continues during the weekdays.
The Grove is also used by members for an event known as the Spring Jinks, usually held the first weekend of June. This is a kind of “mini-encampment,” with performances of entertainment and also some programs of golf and tennis held not in the Grove but at nearby facilities.
The Grove property totals about 2,700 acres, of which only about 200 acres, or 7.4 percent, are “developed.”
Grove Camps
There are about 125 separate and distinct members’ camps within the Grove, developed and maintained by club members (though residual ownership belongs to the club). Each camp has a character of its own, and the facilities range from camps with tents, cots, and sleeping bags to camps with equipped, all-weather cabins.
Encampment Activities
The encampment program encompasses more than 100 entertainment events produced and performed by club members. The activities include concerts (by the club’s symphony orchestra, concert band, jazz orchestra, and chorus), dramatic and musical plays, other theatrical performances, recitals, readings, lectures, art exhibits, etc., plus outdoor pursuits including swimming, boating, hiking, and nature studies. The performing events are held in the Grove’s outdoor theaters and other communal gathering places. The “centerpieces” of the encampment are three major musical-theater productions: “The Cremation of Care,” a traditional musical drama celebrating nature, summertime, and members’ escape from business cares; “The Low Jinks,” an original musical comedy; and “The High Jinks” or “Grove Play,” an original operatic play of serious intent. These are written, directed, produced, and performed by club members. “The Low Jinks” and “Grove Play” take more than two years of preparation.
Early Bohemian Grove participant under the intense, alert gaze of the owl mascot
Acquisition of the Grove
Bohemians started holding their annual encampments in Russian River country starting in 1878, but it wasn’t until 1901 that the club owned its first parcel of what today is the Grove. Additional land was bought in increments over the years and in 1944 the final thirty-three acres of the Grove’s 2,700 acres were acquired. It has often been said by local residents that the acquisition of the Grove lands by the club saved the area from being over-encroached by real estate development. Only about 7.4 percent of the Grove acreage is “developed” in the sense of camp areas, building and connecting roads. The rest is preserved open space.
The Cremation of Care Ceremony
The ceremony involves the poling across a lake of a small boat containing an effigy of Care (called “Dull Care”). Dark, hooded figures receive from the ferryman the effigy, which is placed on an altar and, at the end of the ceremony, set on fire. This “cremation” symbolizes that members are banishing the “dull cares” of conscience. The ceremony takes place in front of the Owl Shrine, a 40-foot hollow owl statue made of concrete over steel supports. The moss- and lichen-covered statue simulates a natural rock formation, yet holds electrical and audio equipment within it. During the ceremony, a recording of the voice of club member Walter Cronkite is used as the voice of The Owl. Music and pyrotechnics accompany the ritual for dramatic effect.
—from the official fact sheet of the Bohemian Club
“The Bohemian Club! Did you say Bohemian Club? That’s where all those rich Republicans go up and stand naked against redwood trees, right? I’ve never been to the Bohemian Club but you oughta go. It’d be good for you. You’d get some fresh air.”
—President Bill Clinton to a heckler
“Good night!” said the Seedy Gentleman, taking his hat and coat.
“Off so early? And you haven’t said a word.”
“No, I am not satisfied, gentlemen, with some of the comments I have heard passed about me. I have started a new club. I am the president.”
“Yes? What is it?”
“It is a club for bores and people who do not speak to one another. Everybody talks to himself, and he can say just what he thinks about anything or anybody. It has many advantages. There is no interruption of the conversation; you are not called down all the time; and you can say right before anybody, what you would say behind his back, without offense. Good night!”
The old man walked down the street until he reached a door on which, engraved on a brass plate, was the legend:
THE CLUB LIBRE
He took a key out of his pocket, opened the door, and went up stairs into a cozy, well-furnished room. There were plenty of easy chairs in it, and on the back of each chair was the name of the member to whom it belonged. There were three or four men there, all sitting with their backs to one another, smoking and talking to the pictures, which were all portraits of celebrated bores, or the windows, but never looking at or addressing one another. The only man they all spoke to was the servant, who took the orders. The old man hung up his hat and coat and went to his own chair. Nobody said anything, but they all looked up with a frown on their faces, going on with their soliloquies. Then one fellow was heard to say:
“Here’s that confounded bore, the president! I suppose he’s been to the theatre, and he’ll drivel about the drama.”
“There is one rule of the club,” said the Oracle, talking apparently to a gas jet, “that people don’t need to listen if they don’t want to.”
“Some people,” said the bald-headed man with a fringe of reddish hair around the back of his neck, gazing abstractedly at an ash-receiver on the table, “talk so loud you must listen.”
“If I don’t want to hear,” said a venerable chap in a black skull cap, looking up at the ceiling, “I put cotton in my ears.”
“I wish,” put in a weazened fellow, who was absorbed in contemplation of a fly on the wall, “I wish some fellows would stuff their mouths with it.”
The Old Gentleman lit a cigar and, leaning back in his chair, continued his contemplation of the gas jet. “I am sorry.” he remarked to it, “I am sorry they are gone.”
“The trouble about some bores,” said a voice near him, “is that you don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s bad enough when you do.”
—from the Bohemian Grove publication, The Seedy Gentleman
