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Chapter 3
Freemasonry as a Political Force
We don’t know who compiled the following, but there are some fascinating slices of metaphysical history here. We thank the compiler, and if he or she wishes to get in touch, we will credit them immediately. This article will be of interest to all those who have read The De Vinci Code. Scottish Rite Freemasonry
(1) Chevalier Andrew Ramsay
"...There was a bitter conflict between
England and Scotland around the turn of the fourteenth century, and
from that time Scotland's cultural orientation shifted from England
to the Continent. This change in perspective is observable in the
Scottish architecture of the period -
Melrose
Abbey, for example, exhibits much French influence; and it is likely
that the French masons involved would have come with their
philosophical as well as their practical workings."
"...Peculiar is the claim that Scottish
does not has any reference to Scotland and that the Rite takes its
origins from English Masons, whom have in Scottish,
Trustworth Scottish, and Chosen Scottish their
distinctive peculiarity, while in Bordeaux, a city under English
dominion for three centuries (1154 - 1453), the City Cathedral is
consecrated to St. Andrew, patron saint of Scotland..." "Decades before the English Grand Lodge was created, many Masons in Scotland were already known to be helping the Stuarts. These Scottish loyalists used their lodges as secret meeting places in which to hatch political intrigues. Pro-Stuart Masonic activity may go as far back as 1660 - the year of the Stuart Restoration (when the Stuarts took the throne back from the Puritans). According to some early Masons, the Restoration was largely a Masonic feat. General Monk, who played such a pivotal role in the Restoration, was reported to be a Freemason."
Michael "Ramsey was a Scottish mystic who had
been hired by James III to tutor James' two sons in
France. Ramsey's goal was to re-establish the disgraced
Templar Knights in Europe. To
accomplish this, Ramsey adopted the same approach used by the Mother
Grand Lodge system of London: the resurrected knights Templar were
to be a secret mystical/fraternal society open to men of varied
occupations. The old knightly titles, uniforms, and 'tools of the
trade' were to be used for symbolic, fraternal and ritual purposes
within a Masonic context." Charles Radclyffe, an alleged Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, presided over the Freemason lodge at which Chevalier Andrew Ramsay (a friend of Newton - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
"From its beginnings, which only shortly
antedated Ramsay's intervention in 1736, French Masonry had been
patronized by the highest aristocracy; this may have owed something
to the Jacobite Scottish peers who had been Grand Masters of some
early French lodges. The craft was supposed to have grown from
'operative' stonemasons, but in addressing a noble audience Ramsay
naturally looked for something more dignified than a lineage of
humble British artisans. So he gave Freemasonry a fictitious
crusading parentage, suggesting that some medieval Crusaders had
been both stoneworkers and knightly warriors."
"It was Ramsay's conceit that the Crusaders were
Masons as well as
Templars and that the secret
words of Freemasonry originated as the watchwords of military camps.
He said that by the end of the Crusades, several Masonic lodges had
already been built on the European continent. Prince Edward, son of
the English king Henry III, allegedly took pity on the vanquished
Christian armies in
Palestine after the last Crusade and brought them back to Britain in
the thirteenth century. In his homeland, according to Ramsay, the
prince - who later reigned as Edward I - established a colony of
brothers renaming themselves Freemasons."
"Of the Templars Ramsay did not breathe a word.
On the contrary, he spoke of intimacy between the Crusader Masons
and the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who were said to have been
the occasion of giving the Masonic lodges the title of 'Lodges of St
John'." (2) Jacobite Freemasonry
"The esoteric element was more prominent in the
'Red' Masonry than in the 'Blue'.
But Red or Scottish Masonry can also be seen as a return to more
traditional ideas of hierarchy and social order....But the Scottish
higher degrees meant the implied rejection of at least a part of the
ideal of egalitarianism. The higher grades involved the
subordination of the lower, and also the ignorance on the part of
the lower grades of the wisdom enjoyed by the higher."
"To affect their pro-Stuart political aims, the
Scottish lodges changed the Biblical symbolism of the third Blue
Degree into political symbolism to represent the House of Stuart.
Ramsey's 'higher' degrees contained additional symbolism 'revealing'
why Freemasons had a duty to help the Stuarts against the throne of
England. Because of this, many people viewed Scottish Freemasonry as
a clever attempt to lure freemasons away from the Mother Grand Lodge
system which supported the Hanoverian monarchy and turn the new
converts into pro-Stuart Masons.
"We, Charles Edward, King of England, France,
Scotland, and Ireland, and as such Substitute Grand Master of the
Chapter of H., known by the title of Knight of the Eagle and
Pelican..." During their stay in France in 1745, the "Young Pretender" Bonnie Prince Charlie and other Stuarts "had become deeply involved in the dissemination of Freemasonry. Indeed they are generally regarded as the source of the particular form of Freemasonry known as 'Scottish Rite'. 'Scottish Rite' Freemasonry introduced higher degrees than those offered by other Masonic systems at the time. It promised initiation into greater and more profound mysteries - mysteries supposedly preserved and handed down in Scotland. It established more direct connections between Freemasonry and the various activities - alchemy, Cabalism and Hermetic thought, for instance - which were regarded as 'Rosecrucian'. And it elaborated not only on the antiquity but also on the illustrious pedigree of the 'craft'."
"...It did not, like many rites of Freemasonry,
consist primarily of free-thinkers and atheists. On the contrary, it
seems to have been deeply religious and magically oriented -
emphasizing a sacred social and political hierarchy, a divine order,
an underlying cosmic plan. And the upper grades or degrees of this
Freemasonry, according to M. Chaumeil [Le Tresor du triangle d'or]
were the lower grades or degrees of the
Prieure de Sion."
"In the aftermath of the 1745 rebellion,
Jacobite Freemasonry as such, with its specific political
orientation and allegiance to the Stuart bloodline, effectively died
out. Variations of it, however, purged of political content and
tempered by the moderation of the Grand Lodge of
England, survived. They survived in part through the so-called
'higher' degrees' offered by such institutions as Irish Grand Lodge.
Most important, however, they survived within the
Strict Observance promulgated
by Hund - of which the highest degree was that of 'Knight Templar'.
The Strict Observance was to spread throughout
Europe."
(3) The Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite
"The rite in its present form of thirty-three
degrees was reorganized at the end of the eighteenth century by some
half dozen Masonic adventurers at
Charleston, South Carolina."
The Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite (AASR) "is an
appendant body of Masonry, meaning that it is not part of the Blue
Lodge per se, but closely associated with Masonry. It requires that
a man be a Master Mason before joining the Scottish Rite. The
Scottish Rite confers the 4th through 32nd degrees. The degree work
may be, but is not necessarily, completed at one time. Any Master
Mason is eligible to join the Scottish Rite. The degrees of the
Scottish Rite continue the symbolism of the first three Masonic
degrees."
"Scottish Rite Masonry has almost a million
members in
America..." (4) Templarism
"The birthplace of Templarism was
Germany, where the egalitarian and rationalist thrust of Freemasonry
was resisted by an old-fashioned and rank-dominated society, and
there was a demand for a version of the Masonic craft acceptable to
conservative doctrine and Gothic taste. During the Seven Years War a
French prisoner in Germany co-operated with a German pastor who went
under the name of Samuel Rosa to concoct a Templar myth to serve the
ritual needs of the Masonic lodges."
"The idea of vengeance to be exacted for a
wronged and murdered magus was embedded in orthodox Masonic lore in
the form of the myth of the murder of the Temple-builder, Hiram, and
of the despatch by Solomon of chosen masters to avenge his death.
There was originally no particular political context for this
supposed murder and its atonement, though the paraphernalia of
swords, skeletons, and decapitated dolls which was used in some
lodges to represent the events was already alarming enough."
"The most successful organizer of German
Templarism, who came for a time close to controlling the whole
apparatus of German Freemasonry, was Karl Gotthelf von Hund, a
substantial landowner in north-east Electoral
Saxony.
Hund was very different from the self-seeking charlatans such as
Johnson and Rosa; he was much more of a self-deluded fanatic, said
to have gone through life almost like a sleepwalker. He had begun
his Masonic studies in France, and at about the same time as the
invention of the other Templar myths he had produced his own."
As a further extension to the "Scottish Rite",
the "Strict Observance" demanded "an oath of unswerving,
unquestioning obedience to the mysterious 'unknown superiors'. And
the basic tenet of the 'Strict Observance' was that it had descended
directly from the Knights Templar, some of whom had purportedly
survived the purge of 1307-14 and perpetuated their Order in
Scotland."
"In 1782 [the Duke of]
Brunswick decided to solve his doubts by holding a final Conference
or Convent of the Order at Wilhelmsbad, near
Hanau
in Hessen. True to its aristocratic origins, the last gathering of
the Strict Observance was a blue-blooded affair. But disillusion and
decay were patent. The successively unveiled mysteries of the Order
had yielded nothing but boring ritual; the alchemists had made no
discoveries, the Templar lands would never be returned. No one
expected to identify the long-concealed Unknown Superiors. The
thirst for mystical illumination remained, but hope of quenching it
at the Templar spring was over."
Revolution and Controversy (1) The Ideal Political Structure
"...By the third decade of the eighteenth
century, English Freemasonry, under the auspices of
Grand Lodge, had become a
bastion of the social and cultural establishment, including, among
its more illustrious brethren, Desaguliers, Pope, Swift, Hogarth and
Boswell, as well as Charles de Lorraine, future husband of the
Austrian Empress Maria Theresa."
Alessandro Cagliostro "founded the Egyptian Rite
of Freemasonry, which received into its mysteries many of the French
nobility and was regarded favorably by the most learned minds of
Europe. Having established the Egyptian Rite, Cagliostro declared
himself to be an agent of the order of the Knights Templars and to
have received initiation from them on the Isle of Malta. (See
Morals and Dogma, in which Albert Pike quotes Eliphas Levi on
Cagliostro's affiliation with the Templars.) Called upon the carpet
by the Supreme Council of France, it was demanded of Cagliostro that
he prove by what authority he had founded a Masonic lodge in Paris
independent of the Grand Orient. Of such surpassing mentality was
Cagliostro that the Supreme Council found it difficult to secure an
advocate qualified to discuss with Cagliostro philosophic Masonry
and the ancient Mysteries he claimed to represent. The Court de
Gebelin - the greatest Egyptologist of his day and an authority on
ancient philosophies - was chosen as the outstanding scholar. A time
was set and the Brethren convened. Attired in an Oriental coat and a
pair of violet-colored breeches, Cagliostro was haled before this
council of his peers. The Court de Gebelin asked three questions and
then sat down, admitting himself disqualified to interrogate a man
so much his superior in every branch of learning. Cagliostro then
took the floor, revealing to the assembled Masons not only his
personal qualifications, but prophesying the future of France. He
foretold the fall of the French throne, the Reign of Terror, and the
fall of the Bastille. At a later time he revealed the dates of the
death of Marie Antoinette and the King, and also the advent of
Napoleon. Having finished his address, Cagliostro made a spectacular
exit, leaving the French Masonic lodge in consternation and utterly
incapable of coping with the profundity of his reasoning. Though no
longer regarded as a ritual in Freemasonry, the Egyptian Rite is
available and all who read it will recognize its author to have been
no more a charlatan than was Plato."
"...The
United
States was not created as a republic of the kind implied by that
word today. Most of the men responsible for creating it were staunch
Freemasons, and the new nation was originally conceived as the ideal
hieratic political structure postulated by certain rites of
Freemasonry. The state as a whole was seen as an extension, and a
macrocosm, of the Lodge."
"...St. Andrew's Lodge of Boston, which had
perpetrated the
Boston
Tea party in 1773 conferred a Templar degree already on August 29,
1769 after applying for the warrant in 1762 from the Scottish Grand
Lodge in Edinburgh. That application was made almost a decade before
the American Revolution began. Some Templars were not only
anti-Hanoverian, they sought the abolition of all monarchy."
"At the beginning of 1776, the more moderate
Freemasonic-oriented factions in the Continental Congress still
prevailed. Their position had been enunciated once again the
previous December, when congress again defied Parliament but
continued to affirm allegiance to the crown. Now, however, the mood
began to change and more radical elements began to gain the
ascendancy. Thomas Paine's pamphlet, 'Common Sense', did much to
polarize attitudes and convert many hitherto loyal colonists to the
principle of independence from the mother country."
"While in
France, Dr. Franklin was privileged to receive definite esoteric
instruction. It is noteworthy that Franklin was the first in America
to reprint Anderson's Constitutions of the Free-Masons, which
is a most prized work on the subject, though its accuracy is
disputed. Through all this stormy period, these impressive figures
come and go, part of a definite organization of political and
religious thought, a functioning body of philosophers represented in
Spain by no less an individual than Cervantes, in France by
Cagliostro and St.-Germain, in Germany by Gichtel and Andreae, in
England by Bacon, More, and Raleigh, and in America by Washington
and Franklin. Coincident with the Baconian agitation in England, the
Fama Fraternitatis
and Confessio Fraternitatis
appeared in Germany, both of these works being contributions to
the establishment of a philosophic government upon the earth."
Mayer Anschel "Rothschild made a fortune from
various activities while serving under William IX. The French
Revolution and the wars it triggered created many shortages
throughout the
Hesse.
Rothschild capitalized in this situation by sharply raising the
prices of the cloth he was importing from England. Rothschild also
struck a deal with another of William IX's chief financial agents,
Carl Buderus. The deal enabled Rothschild to share in the profits
from the leasing of Hessian mercenaries to England." (2) Anti-Masonic Movements
"In 1738 Pope Clement XII issued a Papal Bull
condemning and excommunicating all Freemasons, whom he pronounced
'enemies of the Roman Church'....In its text the pope declares that
Masonic thought rests on a heresy...- the denial of Jesus's
divinity. And he further asserts that the guiding spirits, the
'masterminds', behind Freemasonry are the same as those who provoked
the Lutheran Reformation."
"In 1740, the Grand Master of the Order of
Malta
caused the Bull of Pope Clement XII. to be published in that island,
and forbade the meetings of the Freemasons. On this occasion several
Knights and many citizens left the island; and in 1741, the
Inquisition persecuted the Freemasons at Malta. The Grand Master
proscribed their assemblies under severe penalties, and six Knights
were banished from the island in perpetuity for having assisted at a
meeting." "Citizens of Northwestern New York acted swiftly in 1826 when they heard the news that William Morgan had disappeared. Morgan, described by an historian of politics as "a somewhat down at heel citizen of Batavia," was a disgruntled Mason who had written a book alleged to be an expose' of Masonic secrets. Rumors contended that the Masons had murdered Morgan. The Order, for its part, maintained a stolid and uncooperative silence, and so local political organizations campaigned to keep support from office- seeking Masons. One new organization, the Anti-Masonry Party, attracted those in the populace who distrusted the Masons and other secret societies. It grew almost overnight, and the party's power base soon stretched from western New York to Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
"In the rush of growth of the anti-Masonic
movement, the initiating impetus for it was submerged, and neither
the fate of Morgan nor the culpability of the Masonic Order was
ascertained. Instead, the new and liberal Anti-Masonry Party became
the voice of the poorer citizen against the well-to-do (and most
Masons were regarded as rich), the spokesman for the orthodox
against Unitarianism and other liberal sects, a supporter of
temperance and anti-slavery activities, and a cheerleader for some
features of Jacksonian Democracy against the autocratic Federalists.
It opposed not only secret societies and government-in-secret, but
also imprisonment for debt and drafts for state militia service.
"By the 1880s eight Popes had already condemned
Freemasonry when Freemasons urged that these condemnations had been
based on erroneous information and were excessively severe. This led
Pope Leo XIII to issue his famous encyclical Humanum Genus in
1884. Leo XIII classed Freemasonry as a grouping of secret societies
in the 'kingdom
of Satan' and, like the Greek Orthodox Church half a century later,
stated that it wished 'to bring back after eighteen centuries the
manners and customs of the pagans.'"
"There was nothing nefarious or subversive on
the pope's part, Leo XIII was a troubled man. He felt deeply the
great losses in church power, privilege, and wealth brought on by
the democratic revolutions and developed such profound mistrust that
he kept all of the gold of the
Vatican
in a box under his own bed. He truly believed democracy was evil,
part of the 'kingdom of Satan', and that the Catholic church had a
right and duty to oversee every secular government."
"The principles of social science follow. Here
naturalists teach that men have all the same rights, and are
perfectly equal in condition; that every man is naturally
independent; that no one has a right to command other; that it is
tyranny to keep men subject to any other authority than that which
emanates from themselves."
VATICAN CITY (1985) "The Vatican, clarifying its position on
membership in Masonic lodges, said yesterday that Catholics who join
such organizations commit 'grave sin'. The new reminder, in the
Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, appeared to be aimed
mainly at Catholics in the
United States,
where some have interpreted recent church statements as relaxing the
247-year-old ban on Masonic membership imposed by Pope Clement XII.
A new code of Canon Law outlined on Nov. 25, 1983, omitted
membership in the Masons in the list of offenses that incur
automatic excommunication."
(3) P2 Lodge and the Vatican Banking Scandal
"...The Agency, through some of its priest
'assets' in the
Vatican,
had placed six bugging devices in the Secretariat of State, the
Vatican Bank and the Apostolic Palace, where the Pope actually lived
and worked. The devices were sufficiently powerful to enable
conversations to be overheard within rooms with walls thick enough
to withstand artillery-fire. Working from 'safe houses' in high-rise
buildings overlooking the Leonine walls of the tiny city-state, CIA
operatives had recorded often highly confidential discussions about
papal plans. The Italian Masonic Lodge P2 "provided a means of furnishing anti-Communist institutions in Europe and Latin-America with both Vatican and CIA funds. Calvi [who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982] also claimed that he personally had arranged the transfer of $20,000,000 of Vatican money to Solidarity in Poland, although the overall total sent to Solidarity is believed to have exceeded $100,000,000. Prior to his indictment for murder [of an Italian investigator], Michele Sindona was not only P2's financier, but the Vatican's investment counselor as well, helping the church to sell its Italian assets and re-invest in the United States. His services for the CIA included passing funds to 'friends' in Yugoslavia, as well as to the Greek colonels prior to their seizure of power in 1967. He also channeled millions of dollars into the funds of the Christian Democrats in Italy."
In March 1981, Italian police raided the villa
of Licio Gelli, the ultra-right leader of P2. Although his files had
vanished the index was discovered. Some of the headings included the
Opus Dei, "Giulio Andreotti, currently Italian Foreign Minister and
alleged...to be a member of the
Prieure de Sion. And they
included the organization known officially as the Sovereign and
Military Order of the
Temple
of Jerusalem - the organization, that is, which today claims a
direct lineal descent from the Knights Templar." "A list of [P2] members drawn up by Gelli contained the names of nearly a thousand of Italy's most powerful men. One prosecutor's report later stated: 'Lodge Propaganda Due is a secret sect that has combined business and politics with the intention of destroying the country's constitutional order.' "Among the names were three members of the Cabinet (including Justice Minister Adolfo Sarti; several former Prime Ministers including Giulio Andreotti who had held office between 1972 and 1973 and again between 1976 and 1979; forty-three Members of Parliament; fifty-four top Civil Servants; 183 army, navy and air force officers including thirty generals and eight admirals (among them the Commander of the Armed Forces, Admiral Giovanni Torrisi); nineteen judges; lawyers; magistrates; carabiniere; police chiefs; leading bankers; newspaper proprietors, editors and journalists (including the editor of the country's leading newspaper Il Corriere Della Sera); fifty-eight university professors; the leaders of several political parties; and even the directors of the three main intelligence services. "All these men, according to the files, had sworn allegiance to Gelli, and held themselves ready to respond to his call. The 953 names were divided into seventeen groupings, or cells, each having its own leader. P2 was so secret and so expertly run by Gelli that even its own members did not know who belonged to it. Those who know most were the seventeen cell leaders and they knew only their own grouping."
"Of the many political groupings in
Italy,
Gelli's files showed that only the Communist Party had no links with
P2."
"The P2 was more than a subversive political
organization. The documents collected by the parliamentary
commission show it was a kind of full-service international
organization influencing everything from arms sales to purchases of
crude oil."
Propaganda Due
or P2
was "a lodge originally formed by the Italian Grand Orient as a
lodge of research. In 1975 an Italian fascist named Licio Gelli was
made the Venerable Grand Master of P2, and the following year that
lodge was disavowed and suspended by the Grand Orient of Italy, so
whatever it was, P2 ceased to be an official Masonic organization."
When Archbishop Marcinkus, head of the IOR,
invoked the Italian Concordat which guarantees
Vatican sovereignty "when he learned he had been indicted by the
Italian government." This decision was backed up by the Italian
Supreme Court. "...The papal bank agreed to pay and paid over to the
Banco Ambrosiano the incredible sum of 244 million dollars, while
denying any guilt, or even any material involvement, in the great
fraud. Together with the reputed loss of 450 million dollars, this
means that the affairs between the papal bank and the Banco
Ambrosiano cost the Catholic church almost 700 million dollars, over
ten times the 1987 operating loss that Catholics all over the world
were asked to make up with extra donations..."
In late 1983, "the pontiff had recently sent
Archbishop Luigi Poggi to
Moscow
to begin secret discussions in the Kremlin on the prospect of coming
to a mutually acceptable accommodation over Poland: the pontiff
would control Walesa if the Church was given more freedom."
"Though they are originated and resident in
Italy, though they have the same duties and pay the taxes like all,
the Italian Freemasons doesn't have the same rights: no more they
can aspire to hold offices in a public bureau throughout the Italy,
like the rest of the Italian citizens. It is the amazing conclusion
of the junta of the region
Marche:
from the August 1996 a Freemason can work no more in the Marche's
public bureaus and neither propose to hold in them any role."
"These sinister, grim aspects have not escaped
to any deputies of the Italian Parliament, that have presented an
interpellation to the government on the manifest unconstitutionality
of the
Marche's law. The law, they affirm in the interpellation,
"constitutes a serious damage to the liberty of thought and of
association, guaranteed from our Constitution, and the equality of
whole the citizens in front of the law; it seems instead that the
Marche legislator has retained that the membership to a Masonic
Lodge is equivalent tout court to be on trial or be condemned".
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