What do you know and believe about the Freemasons also known as the Masons?

Question

"..in order to destroy Catholicism, it is necessary to commence by suppressing women....but since we can not suppress woman, let us corrupt her..." Letter between 2 Freemasons dated August 9, 1838

Answer 1

This I know about Freemasons:

In order to become one, you must ask one. They do not recruit despite what you may have read other places. It is against their charter.

They have several diverse Orders. There are even some Orders (springing from those in France) that admit women as well as men. They are called Co-Masons. There are some Lodges that only take women.

They vary in opinion as to their own origins. Some maintain they spring from the craft of builders. Others say they come from the Ancient Mystery schools. Some say Egypt; some say Persia.

With some it is simply a fraternal organization bent upon good works and fellowship. They raise money to help charities like the Shriners hospitals (all Shriners are Masons) that treat children for free. With others it is an esoteric way of making themselves better, more acceptable to the Supreme Being.

I know that Freemasons have fought on both sides of the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. Many Presidents of the United States have been Freemasons, many entertainers, inventors, and statesmen. Dictators hate Freemasons (Hitler had them killed). Freemasons call Brother people of all religious faiths so fundamentalists of different faiths sometimes find fault with them.

Not all Freemasons are rich. Many are teachers, working people, some work in bookstores, pet shops, and computer labs. The dues are not expensive at all.

Freemasons try to live by the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That includes helping those who need their help (inside and outside their Lodges).

How do I know this? My girl friend is a Freemason (American Co-Masonry) and so am I. She joined after she saw the change in me and came to an open meeting of our Lodge.

If you wish to know more about our history in general and American Co-Masonry in particular, feel free to click on the link below or write me directly.


Hiram Lodge No. 11 Orient of Santa Cruz, CA
Amon Ra Lodge No. 9 Orient of Los Angeles, CA
Sapientia Lodge of Research Orient of Larkspur, CO

Answer 2

The Masons call themselves "Masons" because they believe themselves to carry the burden of being the foundation for Christianity. Many groups have elite units--the Army has the Rangers, the Navy has the SEALS, and so on. The Masons consider themselves the elite group of Christians. They are very selective on their members. You do not approach them to join--they approach you for recruitment. To qualify as a Mason, you generally have to be a powerful member of society, be successful, morally upstanding, associate with the right crowds, etc. Doctors, police, CEO's, and other such individuals are the most common members of the Masons.

Although the Masons use several symbols that typically have occult connotations, such as pentagrams, they are a moral and good Christian faith. They do, however, take many traditional beliefs to their extreme. One of those extremist beliefs is, as your question listed, the notion that men are to dominate women. Although Masons have in recent years lightened up on that stance and now enforce fair and just treatment of spouses, Masonic families are still unwaveringly patriarchal.

Answer 3

Get more facts before you form your opinion. Don't base your opinion on a letter dated 1838 for all you know, that letter is a fake. Masons give generously back to the community, they are not a secret society, they accept all forms of religion.

Answer 4

I believe that you need to stop thinking everything you find on the internet is true. So you havea quote from two freemasons, big deal. Do all catholic priest molest boys? You people need to understand that freemasonry is one of the greatest fraternal organizations in the world and do great things for family, children, education, society, culture, and personal satisfaction.

I encourage every good man to seek more answers about freemasonry.

Answer 5

It's an old social organization that has been around for centuries. It's also world wide.

Many have equated it to having satanic origins, however many of the founding fathers of this nation were Masons.

Answer 6

They're a fraternity for older men.

Look up modern texts on them before forming an opinion.

Taking something from the 19th century when we're in the 21st century is pretty irresponsible.

Answer 7

they really won't tell anyone anything, pretty secretive, but the reports from inside sources you hear make them out to be pretty nuts, takign oaths to kill their children and themselves if they ever tell, but wh do you believe, the slient masons, or the public that may or may not be informed?

Answer 8

no offence to any of yall out there,but i think freemasons are a lod of crap.and again no offence.

Answer 9

My Pops is one.

Answer 10

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The Illuminati Freemason Conspiracy

The Freemasons began as members of craft guilds who united into lodges in England in the early 1700's. They stressed religious tolerance, the equality of their male peers, and the themes of classic liberalism and the Enlightenment. Today they are a worldwide fraternal order that still educates its members about philosophical ideas, and engages in harmless rituals, but also offers networking for business and political leaders, and carries out charitable activities.
The idea of a widespread freemason conspiracy originated in the late 1700's and flourished in the US in the 1800's. Persons who embrace this theory often point to purported Masonic symbols such as the pyramid and the eye on the back of the dollar bill as evidence of the conspiracy. Allegations of a freemason conspiracy trace back to British author John Robison who wrote the 1798 book Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies, collected from good authorities. Robison influenced French author Abbé Augustin Barruel, whose first two volumes of his eventual four volume study, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, beat Robison's book to the printer. Both Robison and Barruel discuss the attempt by Bavarian intellectual Adam Weishaupt to spread the ideas of the Enlightenment through his secretive society, the Order of the Illuminati.

Weishaupt was appointed a professor at the University of Ingolstadt in Germany around 1772 and elevated to the post of professor of Canon Law in 1773 or 1775 (sources conflict), the first secularist to hold that position previously held by clergy. Weishaupt began planning a group to challenge authoritarian Catholic actions in 1775, the group (under a different name) was announced on May 1, 1776. This group evolved into the Illuminati. The Enlightenment rationalist ideas of the Illuminati were, in fact, brought into Masonic lodges where they played a role in a factional fight against occultist philosophy. The Illuminati was suppressed in a series of edicts between 1784 and 1787, and Weishaupt himself was banished in 1785.

Weishaupt, his Illuminati society, the Freemasons, and other secret societies are portrayed by Robison and Barruel as bent on despotic world domination through a secret conspiracy using front groups to spread their influence.

Barruel claimed the conspirators "had sworn hatred to the altar and the throne, had sworn to crush the God of the Christians, and utterly to extirpate the Kings of the Earth." For Barruel the grand plot hinges on how Illuminati "adepts of revolutionary Equality and Liberty had buried themselves in the Lodges of Masonry" where they caused the French revolution, and then ordered "all the adepts in their public prints to cry up the revolution and its principles." Soon, every nation had its "apostle of Equality, Liberty, and Sovereignty of the People."

Robison, a professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, argued that the Illuminati evolved out of Freemasony, and called the Illuminati philosophy "Cosmo-politism." According to Robison:

"Their first and immediate aim is to get the possession of riches, power, and influence, without industry; and, to accomplish this, they want to abolish Christianity; and then dissolute manners and universal profligacy will procure them the adherents of all the wicked, and enable them to overturn all the civil governments of Europe; after which they will think of farther conquests, and extend their operations to the other quarters of the globe, till they have reduced mankind to the state of one indistinguishable chaotic mass."
Robert Alan Goldberg, in his book Enemies Within, summarizes the basic themes of the books by Barruel and Robison:
"Writing in the aftermath of the French Revolution, these monarchists had created a counterhistory in defense of the aristocracy. Winning the hearts and minds of present and future readers would assuage some of the pain of recent defeat and mobilize defenses. The Revolution, they argued, was not rooted in poverty and despotism. Rather than a rising of the masses, it was the work of Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminati, a secret society that plotted to destroy all civil and religious authority and abolish marriage, the family, and private property. It was the Illuminati who schemed to turn contented peasants 'from Religion to Atheism, from decency to dissoluteness, from loyalty to rebellion.' "
The major immediate political effect of allegations of an Illuminati Freemason conspiracy in Europe was to mobilize support for national oligarchies traditionally supported by the Catholic Church hierarchy. Across Europe authoritarian governing elites were coming under attack by reformist and revolutionary movements demanding increased political rights under secular laws. The ideas of the Enlightenment were incorporated by the leaders of both the French and American revolutions, and in a sense, these Enlightenment notions were indeed subversive to the established social order, although they were hardly a secret conspiracy. The special status of the Catholic Church in European nation-states was actually threatened by the ideas being discussed by the Illuminati and the rationalist wing of the Freemasons.
Several common conspiracist themes emerge from these two books. The Enlightenment themes of equality and liberty are designed to destroy respect for property and the natural social hierarchy. Orthodox Christianity is to be destroyed and replaced with universalism, deism...or worse. Persons with a cosmopolitan outlook--encouraging free-thinking and international cooperation--are to be suspect as disloyal subversive traitors out to undermine national sovereignty and promote anarchy.

Shortly after the Barruel book was published, conspiracy theories about the Illuminati Freemasons were mixed with antisemitism in Europe. This confluence took place much later in the US.

Adapted from Berlet & Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.


Bibliography

Abbé Augustin Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, second edition revised and corrected, English translation by Robert Clifford, (originally published 1797-1798, reprinted in one volume, Fraser, MI: Real-View-Books, 1995).

John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy—against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies, fourth edition with postscript, (originally published 1798, reprinted Boston: Western Islands, 1967)

Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965).

Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (London: Serif, 1967 [1996].

George Johnson, Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics, (Los Angeles: Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin, 1983).

Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, (New York: Guilford Publications, 2000)

Robert Alan Goldberg, Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).

Herm. Gruber, "Illuminati," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, (New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1910).




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This article has been adapted from the book:
Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort



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