Masons and conspiracy theories

As I've stated before, I'm pretty sure that this is Mr Necros.

I've taken a look at his sentence structure and his punctuation throughout his other posts and they are identical.

I think I'm starting to get it now. Its all about the double headed eagle, Masons have to sides one they show the public and one they show initiates. They cover thier tracks by pretending to be good upstanding Christians, doing good works and sponsoring charities.

Originally posted by TgSoe
I think I'm starting to get it now. Its all about the double headed eagle, Masons have to sides one they show the public and one they show initiates. They cover thier tracks by pretending to be good upstanding Christians, doing good works and sponsoring charities.

Yeees... that's it! The double-headed eagle, a publicly displayed sign, is meant to suggest that we are two-faced! Of course! What better way to keep our two-facedness secret than rubbing everyone else's face in it!?!

Of course, there's absolutely no possibility that the double-headed eagle could represent the infinite mercy and infinite justice of the deity, or the balance necessary between action and consideration in this life, or the consideration of the philosophical systems of the Eastern and Western worlds, or anything like that. Nope, just means we're two-faced. You sure have caught on to us. You know what else?! We're actually secretly reptiles!

Ah, but Alex, there is two sides, as TgSoe said. The one we see, the charitable part, and the part that stays within the confines of the Lodge, the part that is growth and knowlegde. **or, am I wrong here *

It's just not the evil, greedy side people think it is (apparently, as I am no Mason).
People always fear what they don't know.

Hmmm, I like the way you think DTOM (as always), but in this case you're a smidge on the incorrect side through no fault of your own.

The two-headed eagle is an emblem only of the Scottish Rite of Masonry, not of the Craft Lodge. So, it must have meanings corresponding only to the Scottish Rite, some of which I alluded to in my earlier post.

It's true that Masons are charitable and believe in inner growth, but the position of charity (small-c charity, in the sense of giving money to some worthy cause) in Masonry is widely misunderstood. Masonry is not a charitable foundation, and Masonry's purpose is not to support charities. Masonry's purpose is to improve the inner man, and to make him more Charitable (big-C Charity, the virtue of unjudgemental love for all fellow human beings)... as a natural cosequence of this, many of the men then wish to help small-c charity, and sometimes the Lodge helps them in this desire by co-ordinating the help, but the charity itself is not Masonic per se. There, that's probably clear as mud now

Yes of course, there are two sides, but that is with everything. In family's it is the same situation, there is the public image, and then there are those things that are shared behind closed doors between the family, it doesn't mean familys are necessarely evil or have something to hide now does it? It simply means that we are entitlted to privacy and we exercise that right.

As far as historians can tell, the Double Headed Eagle made its first appearance as a symbol of the divided Roman Empire. When the Empire was divided into East and West by the Emperor (Diocletian, if memory serves), a pro-tem emperor set up shop in Rome, while the �official� Chair of the Empire was established Byzantium. The two portions of the Empire gradually separated, with the East being known as the Byzantine Empire, which was eventually conquered by the Turks and Moors, who established the Ottoman Empire.
According to legend, Frederick the Great, who considered himself the last king of the Holy Roman Empire, adopted the Double Headed Eagle as his personal crest to show his intentions of bringing the eastern Empire back under the folds of Christendom. Frederick, who was Grand Master of the Rite of Perfection in Berlin, then transferred the symbol to the chivalric degrees of Masonry, composed of Knights Templars, whose duties were to rid the Empire of the Infidels. The Double Headed Eagle would therefore represent the union of the two Empires under the Banner of the Cross.
This entire story, however, is completely bogus. To begin with, Frederick was a Deist, and not a Christian. Also, he was the first German monarch to grant complete equal and civil rights to the Muslim and Jewish minorities in his kingdom, and held friendly relations to the Ottoman Turks. And even though Frederick was indeed Grand Master of Masons in Prussia, he was not a member of the French Rite.
It is quite possible that the Symbol of the Double Headed Eagle was introduced into the French Rite by Jacobites in Paris, who desired to put Prince Charles Edward Stuart on the throne in England. If so, it is likely that these guys concocted the Frederick story.
The symbol was adopted by the Supreme Council 33� in Charleston, when it was formed in 1801 to succeed the then-defunct French Rite. When Pike revised the rituals 70 years later, he eliminated the spurious references to Frederick and Templarism, making the Double Headed Eagle a symbol of the Brotherhood of Man, from East to West.

Fiat Lvx.


[Edited on 22-5-2004 by Masonic Light]

My dad was a mason. Before he died, I asked him to tell me about it and he refused... flat out, and no matter how many times I pleaded with him to tell me about it, he would not. I tried and tried, but he kept its secrets. This set up a series of questions and suspicions in my mind that grew as time and knowledge of conspiracy theories modified and enhanced my original concerns:

Why couldn't he tell me? I wondered. So that's the first thing I looked up! Was it because I was a woman and only men are allowed information on male freemasonry? Was it because they had taught him strange occult information, as the conspiracies suggested, and revealing it to me would prove something was wrong in freemasonry. To me, his dogged silence was a great indicator of just that.

What information? I wondered. It wasn't like I was a devout catholic, hell bent on bringing demise to freemasonry! What information could he possess from the freemasons that he felt he couldn't tell me, even when he knew he was about to die, and I was his daughter!

THEN, I learned a few life lessons that helped me to understand a bit better. He had sworn. Now the bible says not to swear to anything, as you don't have the knowledge or power to swear by things, but nonethelss, in this instance, he had sworn a promise not to reveal the information and by not revealing it, he had kept his end of the bargain (and believe me, I really tried to get it out of him!).

Even so, I wondered, why would revealing God be something that needed oaths of silence? It was such a puzzle. A puzzle I wasn't going to learn the truth of, as I was female. This greatly bothered me, as you can well expect. The thought crossed my mind, were the genetic tables reversed, how would the men in the world feel about such secrecy. I read copious amounts of information such as how the order had formed originally. What the symbols meant. What the code languages were for. Then the natural progression became apparent. They had been driven underground by religious persecution from the catholic church government of the time. In an effort to provide people of various religious or non-religious creeds safe haven, they had adapted a sort of hodge podge underground system with codes and secret handshakes so that they might be better able to find each other and give each other asylum. And the passage of vast amounts of time in which such secrecy was necessary for the safety of people who were not necessarily catholic, cemented these secrets into traditions. As people tend to be tradition focused, which I had also learned as I matured, this made sense.

Now this does not mean that I believe they should be held unaccountable individually, if something goes awry, but I have some understanding now for why the tradition developed out of the need for secrecy and safety for those who weren't catholic, and how it has lasted till today, as even today the threat of religious persecution and/or domination still exists, regardless of what religion might be in the forefront.

I too was raised in a family filled with Masons, Eastern Stars, Thosophists etc. Yet no one even revealed themselves to me, let alone answer questions I might have posed if given the opportunity. However you are correct we are sworn by oath, and we must uphold that, no one is exempt, no one is an exception.

Yes our signs passwords and other secrets have helped brethren survive during difficult periods, however their origins have nothing to do with persecution under the Catholic Church, there are many things which go back long before the creation of Christianity, and the birth of Yashua (jesus) himself.

Originally posted by Undomiel
I read copious amounts of information such as how the order had formed originally. What the symbols meant. What the code languages were for. Then the natural progression became apparent. They had been driven underground by religious persecution from the catholic church government of the time. In an effort to provide people of various religious or non-religious creeds safe haven, they had adapted a sort of hodge podge underground system with codes and secret handshakes so that they might be better able to find each other and give each other asylum.

The signs and symbols weren't just created to save freemasons from persecution. You have to remember, that back then, the majority of people were illiterate. It was pretty useless getting a mason to prove himself in any way other than through signs as there would have been no other means that he would have understood.
As for the oaths that your father took? A lot of people automatically assume that the penalties mentioned would have been carried out by the freemasons themselves. What they don't realise is the fact, that if a mason was caught, these were the punishments that he could expect to receive from the "authorities", who would have tortured, tried and executed him as a heretic.

It reminds me of atheism of a sort, while it encompasses a definition of God that is universally transcribable, it also rejects Him on the premise that He is Nature itself. Now while I agree that God made nature, I don't think He is currently claiming ownership of it and hasn't for several millenia.

It reminds me of the Book of Enoch which discusses how humanity was "civilized" by the Sons of God, which if you believe Zecharia Sitchin, were simply aliens (I believe they were a bit more than just alien, I think they were interdimensional and Angelic, and as a result of their activities on the planet, they were "Fallen" Angelic beings, but that's another topic). One reference in Enoch that is especially interesting in this regard, is the topic of the manipulation of the natural forces. This was called magic, and was considered a form of demonic enlightenment humans were not supposed to have, as the spiritual dimension did not require the manipulation of natural forces. This is where the argument ensues over whether Jesus was practicing magic when he walked on the water, turned water into wine and so on or whether Moses and Pharaoh were just a couple of magicians/wizards, manipulating the natural forces with knowledge of the power of the natural forces.

Personally, I honestly believe there is a very strong difference between the miraculous and the magical and the physical, although they all three can seem quite similar in effect. One is an application of the spiritual dimension, the other two are applications of the physical dimension. One is in agreement with God, the other tries to replace God with humanity's physical understanding of the physical environment and the physical dimension. Someone says, "Well, had we taken an electrical device such as a flashlight to Noah's time or even Daniel's time, he would've thought it was a miracle or magical and worshipped it as the hebrews worshipped the ark of the covenant, when actually it was just a manipulation of the natural forces." If you've ever seen the film, "The Gods Must be Crazy," you get some idea how this concept developed.

Magic was also said to just be a manipulation of the physical dimension, as many have gone to great trouble to use science to explain magical events like mind reading, astral projection and so forth, or how the Great Pyrmaid of Cheops (Khufu) was built or the Coral Castle in Florida or the Mayan and Incan structures in South America or Stonehenge.

This is both true and false, in my opinion, as I believe it was thought to be "magic" but was just humanity's ability to understand things like magnetism and gravity, well in advance of their ability to mathematically calculate the exact science of both of those laws. However, what is construed as magic today, is the ability to manipulate the "spiritual" and "natural" physical dimensions to achieve one's goals. I, however, do not think the spiritual is involved at all in the application of magic, as I believe magic is purely from the physical dimension.

This is where some get tripped up and determine that there is therefore no "other spiritual dimension" as all can be explained in finite terms of a physical dimension and the ability to manipulate the same. Those who believe such a thing should seriously check out the original (not modern day) defintion of God in Kaballah, which in no uncertain terms refers to God as completely ineffable and infinite, in no way describable in finite terms. Since finite terms are in the physical realm entirely and since they are all we currently have to describe God, we are therefore operating with limited knowledge and limited means to define God and therefore, nature cannot be God as we are unable to define God with nature. Heh. It declares God's handiwork, yes, but nature represents the fallen, finite state of humanity, not the infinite spiritual state and the infinite spiritual dimension. So the phrase "Nature's God" is a bit ...shall we say atheistic?

Eek, well that got carried away. Anyhow, this is how I believe Mason's differ in their interpretation from mainstream christianity. It's like an atheistic cosmology and the manipulation of the same, which I think is only partially correct in that it is entirely based in the physical dimension. (this was inspired by another post by a mason on these boards who said that God's handiwork was everywhere, which is true, but it is nature is not "God" as God is infinite, and the physical is finite.

Err, something like that. Maybe that's freemasonry's big secret? That when all's said and done, masons believe and teach the message of the serpent in the garden, that we can be like gods through the manipulation of the physical realm via science, math and techonology? Perhaps this is also why you see the gradual phasing out of "religion" in its purest sense as it requires more than can be defined in the finite terms of the atheist world view. I could see how such a message would lead one to believe freemasonry was "Satanic" in origin, as their God would be the finite god of the physical realm, rather than the infinite God of the spiritual realm. If'n that makes any sense.

Originally posted by Undomiel
It reminds me of atheism of a sort, while it encompasses a definition of God that is universally transcribable, it also rejects Him on the premise that He is Nature itself.

Definitely not.
God is not taught as being Nature to freemasons. A freemason may study the secrets of Nature so better to understand God and to admire His work, but he recognises that Nature is one of God's creations.
In my opinion, atheism has no place in freemasonry.

The difference between the Catholic Church and Freemasonry is one of dogma. For example, freemasons knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun whilst the Inquisition was putting people to death for such opinion. Much scientific knowledge that was considered heretical as it contradicted Biblical interpretation by the Orthodox Church was safeguarded and taught by freemasonry.

Freemasonry does not teach you that, as a human, you are a god. A mason recognises that he is one of God's creations and as such is subordinate to Him.

Well my definitions are not based on catholicism. I'm a protestant.

Originally posted by Undomiel

Err, something like that. Maybe that's freemasonry's big secret? That when all's said and done, masons believe and teach the message of the serpent in the garden, that we can be like gods through the manipulation of the physical realm via science, math and techonology? Perhaps this is also why you see the gradual phasing out of "religion" in its purest sense as it requires more than can be defined in the finite terms of the atheist world view. I could see how such a message would lead one to believe freemasonry was "Satanic" in origin, as their God would be the finite god of the physical realm, rather than the infinite God of the spiritual realm. If'n that makes any sense.

I just hope you'll always remember that "maybe." You are, in fact, completely wrong here, although not being a Mason there's not necessarily any reason you'd know about Freemasonry. But Freemason does exactly the opposite of believing technology to be above the spiritual. What Freemasonry teaches, if it has anything to say on this topic, is that the physical world was created by the spiritual, and so by studying nature we can move towards a greater understanding of the Majesty of God (because the more we study nature, the more we realise how great its creator must be). You talk about the Kabbalistic notion of Ain Soph being completely ineffable (as, in fact, is Keter, but Keters ineffability is of a different kind than that of Ain Soph... Keter is ineffable because it is "hidden," while Ain Soph is elementally ineffable, or, perhaps, as Maimonides would have us say, Ain Soph is "not effable."), this is clearly also the opinion of Scottish Rite and York Rite Masonry (the Craft Lodge, again, has little to say that is explicit on the topic).

Sorry, Leveller, I know you said the same thing and more succinctly, but I wanted to "put my token in" here to show that your facts are confirmed by other Masons.

Originally posted by Undomiel
Well my definitions are not based on catholicism. I'm a protestant.

That has nothing to do with what he was saying. He was vehemently denying that Freemasonry has anything to do with atheism, either the "standard" brand or the type you were talking about. This is the vitally important point.

Ah, see now this is good clarification. So how does freemasonry stand on the premise that the "Sons of God" civlized humanity in a way that was not acceptable by God through the introduction of magic, science, math, language, and so on?

Originally posted by Undomiel
Ah, see now this is good clarification. So how does freemasonry stand on the premise that the "Sons of God" civlized humanity in a way that was not acceptable by God through the introduction of magic, science, math, language, and so on?

Nowhere. This is not an issue addressed anywhere in Masonic ritual, nor in any of the appendant bodies of which I am aware.
This idea was present in the book "Uriel's Machine," which was written by two men who happen to be Freemasons, but the book itself has no bearing on actual Masonic theory and practice (plus, I'm a Mason, and I think they made many incorrect conclusions in this book, due to their over-zealousness)... but again, Masonry takes no stand on this issue at all.

Originally posted by Leveller

Originally posted by Undomiel

Freemasonry does not teach you that, as a human, you are a god. A mason recognises that he is one of God's creations and as such is subordinate to Him.

AND

What Freemasonry teaches, if it has anything to say on this topic, is that the physical world was created by the spiritual, and so by studying nature we can move towards a greater understanding of the Majesty of God (because the more we study nature, the more we realise how great its creator must be).

So does that mean we can better understand the Majesty of God by studying and better understanding humankind?

Sure. Humanity was created by God (in my opinion through a process of evolution from other animal forms). Studying the creations of God can help one understand the Majesty of God. Therefore, studying humanity can help one better understand the Majesty of God.

HOWEVER, I shall be quite quite cross if you take this to mean that I think that only the study of humanity can tell us about the Majesty of God, or that I think that studying humanity somehow replaces other ways of worshipping or coming closer to God, etc.. Not that you will, but Masons get used to having their words twisted and taken out of context pretty quickly

We don't take any stand on it.

Science and mathematics (specifically geometry) are merely tools that we use to gauge the greatness of God and his creations. Logic also plays a great part in this study.

My personal belief is that God gave us these tools to use. To not do so would be a waste.