Masons

mark kennedy · Mar 13, 2017

I caught a documentary on the Masons and the Knights Templars. Apparently the Middle East was highly developed, cultured and educated. The time frame was the early second millennium AD so the crusades were underway. There were a lot of eastern influences and they seem to enjoy Arab symbolism to this day.

Albion · Mar 13, 2017

You're right that Arabic culture is considered to have been at a higher level than European civilization at that time, but there's little Arabic imagery or symbolism built into the rituals, etc. of the Knights Templar. Rather, the themes are intensely Christian and military as would be logical for a modern fraternity built upon the example of a religious order of "fighting monks," pledged to defend the faith in the way that the original Templars were.

Elijah Hashem · Mar 13, 2017

The apostle Paul tells us that Satan masquerades as an angel of light:

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

One example of this masquerading is the culture of secret societies that claim to have illumination or light but are in fact full of darkness. Their Gnostic teaching inverts the truth, making Satan the god and God the enemy. The following sources attest to the fact that Freemasonry is Luciferian:

Occultist and author Manly Palmer Hall
When the Mason learns that the key to the warrior on the block is the proper application of the dynamo of living power, he has learned the mystery of his Craft. The seething energies of Lucifer are in his hands and before he may step onward and upward, he must prove his ability to properly apply energy (emphasis added).i

I hereby promise the Great Spirit Lucifuge, Prince of Demons, that each year I will bring unto him a human soul to do with as as it may please him, and in return Lucifuge promises to bestow upon me the treasures of the earth and fulfill my every desire for the length of my natural life. If I fail to bring him each year the offering specified above, then my own soul shall be forfeit to him. Signed...{Invocant signs pact with his own blood}.ii

Eliphas Levi
What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete [an advocate]; it is the Holy Spirit, where the physical Lucifer is the great angel of universal magnetism.iii

Albert Pike, 33-degree Freemason and author of Morals and Dogma
Lucifer, the Light-Bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!iv

The devil is the personification of Atheism or Idolatry. For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force, created for good, but which may serve for evil. It is the instrument of Liberty or Free Will. They represent this Force, which presides over the physical generation, under the mythological and horned form of the God Pan; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient Serpent, and the Light-bearer or Phosphor, of which the poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend.v

The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is Yahweh (GOD) reversed; for Satan is not a black god, but a negation of God...the Kabala imagined Him to be a "most occult light."vi

That which we must say to a crowd is—We worship a God, but it is the God that one adores without superstition. To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th degrees—The Masonic Religion should be, by all of us initates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian Doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay whose deeds prove his cruelty, perdify and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion for science, would Adonay and his priests, calumniate him? Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also god. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two gods: darkness being necessary to the statue, and the brake to the locomotive. Thus, the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and the true and pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil.vii

Arthur Edward Waite, 33-degree Freemason
First Conjuration Addressed to Emperor Lucifer. Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, I adjure thee to leave thine abode, in whatsoever quarter of the world it may be situated and come hither to communicate with me...I command and adjure thee, Emperor Lucifer, as the representative of the mighty living God, and by the power of Emanuel, His only Son...viii

Manly Palmer Hall, "The Fellow Craft," The Lost Keys of Freemasonry (Richmond, Virginia: Macoy Publishing, 1931).

ii. Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teaching Of All Ages: 65.

iii. Eliphas Levi, as quoted in Arthur Edward Waite, The Mysteries of Magic: A Digest of the Writings of Eliphas Levi (London: 1886): 428.

iv. Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Prepared for the Supreme Council of the Thirty-Third Degree, for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, and Published by Its Authority (Richmond, Virginia: L.H. Jenkins, 1871, Reprinted 1944): 321.

v. Ibid: 102.

vi. Ibid: 102, 704.

vii. Albert Pike, "Instructions to the 23 Supreme Councils of the World" (July 14, 1889), as recorded by Abel Clarin de La Rive, La Femme et l'Enfant dans la Franc-maçonnerie Universelle (1894): 588.

viii. Arthur Edward Waite, The Book Of Black Magic (Weiser Books, 2004): 244-245.

(from - Lucifer is the god of Freemasonry )

Albion · Mar 13, 2017

Elijah Hashem said:
The apostle Paul tells us that Satan masquerades as an angel of light:

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

One example of this masquerading is the culture of secret societies that claim to have illumination or light but are in fact full of darkness. Their Gnostic teaching inverts the truth, making Satan the god and God the enemy. The following sources attest to the fact that Freemasonry is Luciferian

Well, that's what people whose only knowledge of the subject is reading a few lines quoted from a Seventh Day Adventist book entitled Lucifer is the god of Freemasonry might think. But now that the discussion has turned specifically towards Masonry, we ought to discuss it on the forum to which this topic has been assigned by CF. That's "Conspiracy Theories" and I'll join you there if you want to continue.

JM · Mar 13, 2017

Albion, are you a Mason?

JM · Mar 13, 2017

Albion said:
You're right that Arabic culture is considered to have been at a higher level than European civilization at that time, but there's little Arabic imagery or symbolism built into the rituals, etc. of the Knights Templar. Rather, the themes are intensely Christian and military as would be logical for a modern fraternity built upon the example of a religious order of "fighting monks," pledged to defend the faith in the way that the original Templars were.

Arabic culture flourished due to the Syrian Christians that work for the Arabic conquerors. This is best demonstrated in The Lost History of Christianity by Jenkins. Excellent read, I highly recommend it.

Albion · Mar 13, 2017

JM said:
Albion, are you a Mason?

Yes

JM · Mar 13, 2017

Albion said:
Yes

After 7 weeks my petition was just accepted on Saturday. I will be initiated into a PHA Lodge on April 22.

I applied with the Orange Order but they responded.

Albion · Mar 13, 2017

Congratulations. I hope it is a wonderful experience for you.

Elijah Hashem · Mar 13, 2017

Albion said:
Well, that's what people whose only knowledge of the subject is reading a few lines quoted from a Seventh Day Adventist book entitled Lucifer is the god of Freemasonry might think. But now that the discussion has turned specifically towards Masonry, we ought to discuss it on the forum to which this topic has been assigned by CF. That's "Conspiracy Theories" and I'll join you there if you want to continue.

Albion, the claims in that book are sourced and verified. The Occult Order books are legitimate. One may be able to argue with theology, but your claim that a few lines from a SDA source makes the claim false is not very enlightening.
Are you implying this thread was not about Masonry? So, was it for Masons to talk to each other? At what point does the subject of Masonry become CT?

Albion · Mar 13, 2017

Elijah Hashem said:
Albion, the claims in that book are sourced and verified.

That would take some investigation, but I'd consider the source. And the excerpts prove nothing anyway, because no one or two Masons make doctrine for millions of others. I'd need to check them out more closely to see for myself, but fakes are common; and sensationalist publications of course aren't concerned with accuracy as much as with sales. Remember that "Amazing Discoveries" considers almost all of us Christians, of whatever denomination, to be Satanic or Pagan by definition.

However, I will go to CT and look for the topic.

Look up Leo Taxil as well.

JM · Mar 13, 2017

Albion said:
Congratulations. I hope it is a wonderful experience for you.

Thank you, I'm looking forward to it.

The Lodge I've joined seems to be filled with Christians. Deacons, Elders and Ministers make up the ranks.

The Pike quote is a famous mis-quote.

Albion · Mar 13, 2017

JM said:
Thank you, I'm looking forward to it.

The Lodge I've joined seems to be filled with Christians. Deacons, Elders and Ministers make up the ranks.

The Pike quote is a famous mis-quote.

It looks like that one, all right.

Elijah Hashem · Mar 13, 2017

JM said:
The Pike quote is a famous mis-quote.

So it's not in Morals and Dogma then?

Albion · Mar 13, 2017

Here's a pretty good treatment of this subject:
Lucifer

Now, could we please take this to the appropriate forum just to be square with the moderators?

JM · Mar 13, 2017

Elijah Hashem said:
So it's not in Morals and Dogma then?

I'm no expert but I am careful in what I do and that includes reading, quoting properly and understanding the context of a statement.

Quote:

While browsing the Internet for materials related to freemasonry, I came across “The morals and dogmas”, the monumental work of Albert Pike, a famous American Masonic writer of the 19th century. Surprisingly enough, this voluminous text is mostly advertised via anti-Masonic sites(e.g. here), who sometimes even post the whole text only for the sake of one quote, which is meant to illustrate poorly hidden satanic inclinations of A.Pike and, hence, the whole freemasonry (see). Here is the quote:

“Lucifer, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable, blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish souls? Doubt it not!”

Comments around the quote usually say that Lucifer is praised here as a Light-Bearer of freemasonry. But most of the time the quote is considered to be so self-explanatory that it is given without comments. Apparently I started looking for what another party has to say. I was able to find only feeble and indirect defence. Masonic defenders say that Pike was an Episcopal Christian, that he was interested in all kinds of spiritual knowledge, that his leadership was limited with a only few states, that his books are not a dogma for freemasonry and are not in official use since 1974, etc. They also complain that A.Pike is a controversial figure who did damage to freemasonry and offer awkward explanations about how the word ‘Lucifer’ can be understood. This kind of defence seems only to confirm the fact itself that A.Pike was flirting with dark forces.

Having read all that, I almost accepted (as probably many other readers did) that A.Pike was at least occasionally looking at Satan as a source of inspiration to unleash man’s own spirit, in the style of today’s LaVeyan Satanism. However I was perplexed by the fact that a few other places where Lucifer is mentioned in Pike’s volume sounded quite in line with normal Christian theology, and also by the fact that in other Masonic texts I browsed I could not find any references to Lucifer at all. If Lucifer is of any importance to these guys, could they at least mention him somewhere? While double-checking this, I made accidentally one more time a word search in ‘Morals and dogmas’ and naturally stumbled again upon the infamous quote. But this time I bothered to read the text around it. The result was quite shocking: I could not even suggest that the meaning of this quote changes so much when you read the whole paragraph. Here is how it looks:

The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth Degree, the Apothesis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, for traditions are full of sensual or selfish Souls ? Doubt it not! Divine Revelations and Inspirations: and Inspiration is not of one Age nor of one Creed. Plato and Philo, also, were inspired. The Apocalypse, indeed, is a book as obscure as the Sohar. It is written hieroglyphically with numbers and images; and the Apostle often appeals to the intelligence of the Initiated. “Let him who hath knowledge, understand! let him who understands, calculate !” he often says, after an allegory or the mention of a number. Saint John, the favorite Apostle, and the Depositary of all the Secrets of the Saviour, therefore did not write to be understood by the multitude.

In the first sentence A.Pike directly says that mason-candidates of the 19th degree (to whom this chapter is addressed) must aspire to God alone despite the works of Lucifer. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Now having the context before my eyes I saw clearly why the name of Lucifer appears in all capitals in the next sentence – because the name itself puzzles A.Pike. He knows that ‘Lucifer’ means ‘Light-bearer’ in Latin and he is simply surprized why this sort of name is used for the Spirit of Darkness. He assumes that his reader knows Latin and understands the question. This naming of Satan as a ‘Light-bearer’ is indeed weird, but it was not invented by A.Pike. It was used by the Church for centuries since its first appearance in Vulgate, the Latin Bible. The next sentence says that Lucifer’s light can blind (seduce) the weak ones, which is again a fairly common idea. ‘Doubt it not!’ is making the statement yet stronger – yes, says A.Pike, indeed his false light can distract those who are sensual and selfish. His allusion to Lucifer is only natural in this place because he is talking here about the book of Revelation. Further A.Pike goes on with in his eclectic semi-mystical style mixing in one bowl the Apocalypse (i.e. the book of Revelation), apostles, Philo, Plato and God knows what else.

So the main meaning of the famous quote is a simple and natural question: why the spirit of darkness is called Lucifer = Light bearer? This question is hard for us to understand because we assume that the name ‘Lucifer’ is only one of the names of Satan. I don’t know Latin, but I studied Dutch, so I know that in Dutch ‘een lucifer’ means only ‘a match’. This inspired me to start looking at the ethymology, and eventually I found that ‘Lucifer’ in Latin means a ‘Light-bearer’ (lux = ‘light’, fero = ‘to bring’). But indeed why? Now that I understood Pike’s question, I wanted to know the answer.

The answer came through the Catholic Encyclopedia on-line, which I assume to be the ultimate source on the topic. It says that the word ‘lucifer’ was often used to mean Venus – the star that shines in the morning. It is used a few times in Vulgate to indicate “the light of the morning” (Job 11:17), “the signs of the zodiac” (Job 38:32), “the aurora” (Psalm 109:3), and even Jesus Christ himself (2 Peter 1:19; Apocalypse 22:16 ). The only reason why we use it as a devil’s name is an allegoric story retold in Isaiah 14:12 about one of the Babylonian kings falling from his throne as the morning star is falling from the sky. This passage was used by some interpretators as a Biblical proof of the popular legend of a fallen angel, which originated from other sources. St. Jerome, who translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, apparently used the word ‘lucifer’ just as another word for ‘star’ or ‘light’ in a number of completely unrelated places. St. Jerome had no idea that one of these passages would give rise to another name of the Devil! The story of a fallen angel is sitting so deeply in our minds, that most of us do not realize that the Biblical evidence to support it is so shaky.

So the answer to Pike’s question is simple: the name ‘Lucifer’ = ‘Light Bearer’ is a result of misunderstanding, of misinterpretation mixed with somewhat unimaginative translation. I wonder if he would pose this question at all if he knew the modern answer. As a by-product of my little research I came to an interesting conclusion: the story of a fallen angel with a strange name, made so famous through a number of well-known artistic and poetic masterpieces, is based on misunderstanding! There is no direct Biblical evidence to support this story – the only passage on which it was based was originally meant to indicate something else.

Source

Elijah Hashem · Mar 13, 2017

Albion,

Why is it CT to bring up these subjects? the first question of the thread was asking what people thought about joining Masonry. If this thread is not in that sub, then why redirect me there? Square? lol. You never told me what constituted being a CT comment instead of a valid response to the question presented in the thread.

I'll read the posts about the mis quote and Taxil, but even if, that's hardly enough to shut down the whole contradiction with being a Christian and being a Mason. Thanks JM for posting some material to read, but even if AD mis quoted something, I don't think the whole issue is disregarded in principle. It's definitely beyond one or two quotes.

Also, is there a thread regarding the doctrine of Masonry?

Albion · Mar 13, 2017

I'm not sure that I follow all of that, but I'm simply saying that discussions of Masonry have, by a decision of the moderators, been assigned to CT. I understand that this thread, entitled "Masons" was posted here by someone else, but the posts lately have not been about Baptist theology or churches and their relationship to Masonry, but simply about Masonry. It's just a matter of doing what we're supposed to do. Otherwise, it wouldn't make the slightest difference to me where the discussion took place. If moved to CT we could discuss at length.

JM · Mar 13, 2017

We can move through thread now. I wanted to get the opinions of just Baptists at first and that has been accomplished.

mark kennedy · Mar 14, 2017

Albion said:
I'm not sure that I follow all of that, but I'm simply saying that discussions of Masonry have, by a decision of the moderators, been assigned to CT. I understand that this thread, entitled "Masons" was posted here by someone else, but the posts lately have not been about Baptist theology or churches and their relationship to Masonry, but simply about Masonry. It's just a matter of doing what we're supposed to do. Otherwise, it wouldn't make the slightest difference to me where the discussion took place. If moved to CT we could discuss at length.

I don't know, what JM is saying is commonly believed among Baptists. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals often think that the Masons are somehow the ominous devil worshiping cult which doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. They're really just a fraternal organization as far as I can tell and they are no more Satanic then the Knights of Columbus or the Rotary Club. I've seen no indication of Masons being involved in the occult but some of them may have a taste for eastern mysticism. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, there is nothing Satanic about Christians being involved in some kind of eastern mysticism. The Eastern Orthodox have a long history of this and it seems benign to me.

The secrecy of the Masons is a legacy tradition, in the ancient world you did not divulge the secrets of your trade to any but those who practiced that trade. A worthy apprentice could learn it, usually a favored son or maybe an initiate. Those skills whether as a mason or a carpenter, a wood worker or an architect, was their livelihood. Masonry reflects legacy traditions that have little, if anything to do with magic, the occult or for the most part eastern mysticism.

I think rather then separating this discussion from the thread it seems altogether appropriate to at least allow a common misconception of the Masons. It seems to be the intended focus of the thread. The Masons I have become acquainted with didn't seem Satanic or otherwise given to the practice of magic or the occult. Their legacy embodied in their rituals and oaths seem to me to be a tradition of taking only those of your trade into your confidence.

That's my take on it, I see no harm in exploring the subject matter in a candid and substantive way.

Grace and peace,
Mark

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