Mason Cult Secrets [REPACK]
Up to 30 worshippers gathered in a cave-like space known as a mithraeum (over 45 of at least 680 have been discovered by archaeologists in Rome alone) to share a meal of bread and wine and conduct secret ceremonies in front of an effigy of the god slaying a bull. In its heyday, the cult became a major challenge to another rapidly growing religion: Christianity. In fact, early Christians persecuted them, and the society was suppressed by the end of the 4th century.
mason Cult Secrets
Known for their white aprons, secret handshakes, and mysterious symbols, the Freemasons have allegedly helped plot the American and French Revolutions and plan the design of Washington, D.C. With chapters all over the world, members have included George Washington, Voltaire, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Harry Houdini, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Gerald Ford, and Buzz Aldrin.
The origins of this mysterious organisation are murky, but it is believed to have begun in Europe as far back as the Middle Ages. Early members were a guild of professional masons or stoneworkers who, unlike most other commoners, had the means to travel to different cities and lands, which gave these artisans a unique and liberal worldview that transcended local customs.
During the turbulent 18th century in China, the Tiandihui, or Society of the Heaven and the Earth, formed as a spiritual cult led by charismatic leaders in Fujian Province. They were forced underground by the Qing dynasty, becoming a ferocious resistance movement against the Qing Manchu rulers. They resorted to armed robbery to maintain financial stability.
To separate Freemason fact from Lost Symbol-style myth, National Geographic News went inside the centuries-old order with two Masons and a historian of the ancient Christian order from which some claim the Masons sprang in the 17th or 18th century.
Much has been made of the Freemasons purported lineage to the Knights Templar. The powerful military and religious order was established to protect medieval pilgrims to the Holy Land and dissolved by Pope Clement V, under pressure of King Phillip IV of France, in 1312.
Prominent Freemasons like Ben Franklin and George Washington played essential roles in the American Revolution. And among the ranks of Freemasons are 9 signers of the Declaration of Independence and 13 signers of the Constitution.
"For many years [Masons] claimed in their own quasi-scholarship that all of these revolutionaries and Founding Fathers were Freemasons," Tabbert said. "A fair number of them were, but they weren't doing these things because they were Freemasons."
Contrary to The Lost Symbol, you don't have to drink wine from a skull to become a ranking Freemason. In fact, tradition dictates that Masons don't recruit members but simply accept those who approach them of their own free will.
While The Da Vinci Code novelist Dan Brown and his contemporaries have shined a light upon some of the bigger secret fraternal organizations like the Order of Skull and Bones, Freemasons, Rosicrucians and the Illuminati, there are still other, lesser-known groups that have compelling stories of their own. Here are just a few:
Even before he was named Prince Regent of the United Kingdom, George IV, had been a member of the Freemasons, but as the story goes, when he wanted a relative of his to be admitted to the society without having to to endure the lengthy initiation process, the request was emphatically denied. George IV left the order, declaring he would establish a rival club, according to a history of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows published by the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph in 1867. The official website of the order, however, traces the clubs origins all the way back to 1066.
But there is another possibility about the origin of the Bohemian Club. There was another occult secret society called the Sath-Bhai in Prague. Also known as Asiatic Brethren, it had a combination of Jewish Kabbalah, alchemy, and ritual magic. Just like any other secret society with crossover in membership in different orders, Sath-Bhai members belonged to Schlaraffia simultaneously.
Best-selling author Dan Brown's latest novel, The Lost Symbol, draws heavily on the lore and mystique of the Freemasons. A visit to one of the locations in the novel, a prominent Masonic building in Washington, D.C., serves as an introduction to the history of the once feared and even reviled secret society.
The House of the Temple, the headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, is an impressive and dignified edifice on Washington's 16th Street. The design was inspired by the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, in Turkey. A couple of sphinxes on huge pedestals flank the steps.
The rites inside the temple are at some level spiritual, and though they are related to religion, Freemasonry is not a religion. Morris explains that when the group was organized from a stonemasons' guild in 1717, its members adopted the radical proposition that men of different faiths can agree on God's existence.
Still, Masonic secrecy often inspired opposition to the society. In the 19th century, the Vatican issued anti-Masonic encyclicals, one of them branding the Masons "the Synagogue of Satan." Hitler ranted against the Masons. But some Masons have had fun with the orders' secrets over the years.
"A lot of Masons sort of assumed that everything about the organization is a secret, and they just sort of clammed up, and that gave them a real reputation for being close-mouthed," Kinney tells Siegel. "However, the actual secrets that are not supposed to be revealed tend to be just the modes of recognition, which boil down to a few handshakes and hand gestures and the specific wording of degree rituals."
Beyonce and Jay-Z are frequently depicted as Illuminati heads of the New World Order, but who were the real Illuminati? The mysterious secret society was founded in Bavaria in the 18th century by a professor who wanted to stop the church from interfering in public life. Adam Weishaupt pushed another form of illumination: ideas that could radically alter the way European countries were governed. His secret society was based on the Freemasons. One of the defining features of the society was that Illuminati members initially did not trust anyone over 30. Bavaria cracked down on the Illuminati and other secret societies in the 1700s but rumors persist that it has survived as an underground society. The symbols most associated with the Illuminati include triangles, pentagrams, goats, 666, and all the all-seeing Eye of Providence which appears on US $1 bank notes.
The basic Christian objection to Freemasonry is that the Craft constitutes a religious sect in opposition to the revealed truths of the Gospel. Whatever the religious doctrines of the Masonic sect it is plain that they do not embrace the central Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Atonement. To the lodge these essential Christian beliefs are completely irrelevant. No one need accept the Christian revelation, acknowledge Jesus Christ as God and Man, or receive baptism in order to attain salvation and enjoy the eternal happiness promised by the lodge.
Masons themselves have testified again and again to the religious nature of the lodge while denying that Masonry should be classified as "sectarian" religion. By this they mean that the various religious faiths represent on a lower plane that pure and undefiled universal religion of mankind represented by Freemasonry. For example, Pike states:
Some Masonic partisans seem to believe that Masonry could not qualify as a religion because it lacks the complex dogmatic systems of the denominations in their hometown. The lodge demands only belief in a Supreme Architect and in the immortality of the soul. As Mackey states: "The religion of Masonry is pure theism." He boasts, "The truth is that Masonry is undoubtedly a religious institution . . . which, handed down through a long succession of ages from that ancient priesthood who first taught it, embraces the great tenets of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul."[4] In his he restates this: "The Religious Doctrines of Freemasonry are very simple and self evident. They are darkened by no perplexities of sectarian theology but stand out in broad light, intelligible and acceptable by all minds, for they ask only for a belief in God and in the immortality of the soul."[5]
Although Freemasonry is not a dogmatic theology, and is tolerant in the admission of men of every religious faith, it would be wrong to suppose that it is without a creed. On the contrary, it has a creed the assent to which it rigidly enforces, and the denial of which is absolutely incompatible with membership in the Order. This creed consists of two articles: First, a belief in God, the Creator of all things, who is therefore recognized as the Grand Architect of the Universe; and secondly, a belief in the eternal life, to which this present life is but a preparatory and probationary state.[6]
The right to membership in the Masonic fraternity is very much like the right to membership in a church. Each requires a candidate for admission to subscribe to certain articles of religious belief as an essential prerequisite to membership. Each requires a member to conduct himself thereafter in accordance with certain religious principles. Each requires its members to adhere to certain doctrines of belief and action. The precepts contained in the "Landmarks and the Charges of a Freemason" formulate a creed so thoroughly religious in character that it may well be compared with the formally expressed doctrine of many a denominational church. The Masonic fraternity may, therefore, be quite properly regarded as a religious society, and the long line of decisions, holding that a religious society shall have sole and exclusive jurisdiction to determine matters of membership, should be deemed applicable to the Masonic fraternity. 041b061a72