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The Element encyclopedia of Secret Societies

The ultimate a-z of ancient mysteries, lost civilizations and hidden history

by John Michael Greer published in 2006

 

Licio Gelli. conveniently  vanished mysteriously  from a Swiss prison cell, where he was being held for extradition, and had never been (officially) seen since....

Licio Gelli has similtaniously been a member of the Hitler's German Nazi Gestapo and the Italian Communist Underworld during the second World War. Under Gelli's Leadership, P2 received CIA Money as part of a project to fight communism in Italy, 'but the evidence suggests Gelli played the CIA and the KGB off against one another and pocketed much of the proceeds....

Licio Gelli was the self appointed head of ...the extremely powerful clandestine criminal. political, banking and socially divisive and destructive Freemason Lodge P2 which was involved with the in excess of $240 million in losses for the Vatican in 1975 and Banco Ambrosiano - Italy's largest private bank, headed by a P2 members .... Roberto Calvi and Michele Sindona- collapsing  after being stripped of $1.4 billion in assets and the 1974 collapse of Michele Sindona's largest American holding being the Franklin National Bank of New York, that help set off a chain of defaults and bankruptcies that landed Sindona himself behind bars in 1980, and sparked the Italian police investigation that led to the seizure of P2's records and the public release of P2's membership list in 1981....

conveniently  vanished mysteriously  from a Swiss prison cell, where he was being held for extradition, and had never been (officially) seen since...

"..  According to the rule, any man who applied to join the Templars had to be voted into membership b a majority of brother knights in the chapter house where the application was made. A simple initiation ritual followed, in which the new member affirmed that he was neither married or vowed to another religious order, had no debts he could not pay, had no hidden illness, had not bribed any member of the order in the hope of admissions, and was not 'a serf'....."

 

  ".....By 1903 the aryan racial mystic Jorg Lanz von Liebentels was laying the foundations for the Ordo Novi Tempi (ONT-Order of News Templars), a racists occult oder that foreshadowed Hitler's SS. In 1906 the Order Templi Orients (OTO- Order of Templar Orients), which practiced a system of sex magic borrowed from magical orders of its time, was established, and in 1912 Aleister Crowley, for whole sexual deviation, religious heresy, and occult practices were the breath of life, took charge of the OTO in England and America and proclaimed to his 'New Templars', a gospel very nearly identical with Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall's fanatsies (See: Crowley, Aleister; Ordo Novi Templi -ONT; Ordo Templi Orients -OTO)....."

 

Society of Jesus (Known as the "Jesuits")

The Society of Jesus (Known as the "Jesuits"), is the largest Roman Catholic religious order today, the Society of Jesus - known since the late sixteenth century as the Jesuits - was founded by Spanish priest St Ignatious Loyola (1491-1534) as a mendicant order of priests dedicated to the propagation of Catholicism, and was formally approved by the Pope in a bull in 1540 (see: Roman Catholic Church).

  Unlike older Catholic religious orders, which assign wide authority to local officials such as abbots and place important decisions in the hands of the brothers or sisters collectively, the Society of Jesus assigns absolute power to a single head, the General, who is elected for a life term by the General Congregation (a legislative assembly of provincial officials and elected delegates). The  General can do anything within the scope of the Constitutions, the written law of the Society, and can even suspend the Constitution at will, though he cannot change them without the approval of the General Congregation. He appoints the Provincials, who govern the Society in individual countries or regions, and a variety of other officials.

   Ordinary members take, alongside the usual religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the Pope. In practice this requires perfect obedience to any superior of the Society. Enemies of the Jesuits have argued that this rule is used to justify Jesuit involvement in political crimes, including assassination. This has been energetically denied by the Society, but the involvement of Jesuits in attempts to assassinate England's Queen Elizabeth I and other Protestant monarchs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is accepted by many historians.

  The Catholic Church, while theoretically under the Pope's personal control, is in practice a diverse constellation of religious orders and regional authorities whose obedience to Rome is often a police fiction. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, this disorganization put the survival of the Catholic Church at risk. The formation of the order of the "Jesuits" under vows of personal obedience to the Pope was thus a godsent to Rome, and the Society of "Jesuits" received funding and encouragement from the highest levels of the Church in 1764. It repaid this by promoting Catholicism against the growth of Protestantism in France, southern Germany, and Austria, and by spearheading missionary efforts in the newly discovered lands of Asia and the Americas.

The concentration of power inevitably produced a reaction. The jesuits aroused

suspicions in France from the Wars of Religion onward, and were accused of having a role in the murder of Henri IV, who had converted from Protestantism to Catholicism before his coronation but who supported freedom of religion in France

 

German Protestants rightly identified the Society of Jesuits as the intellectual shock troops of the Catholic Counter-reformation, and attempted at several points to banish them from Germany forever. Other Catholic orders, jealous of the privileges conferred on the Society of Jesuits, encouraged opposition to the Jesuits even in the more staunchly Catholic countries.

 

The final straw, however, was economic. Jesuits used their position as missionaries in the New World to create missions plantations and mines worked by native labour, and their trade network inevitably came into conflict with the national trade policies of the colonial powers of the age.

 

Portugal expelled its Jesuits in 1759 after a series of scandals capped by an assassination attempt on the royal chamberlain that allegedly had Jesuit backing.

 

In France, a scandal that began with the sudden bankruptcy of the Jesuit missions on Martinique ended with the explusion of the Society of Jesuits in 1764

 

Spain followed suit in 1767 after the Jesuits were implicated in political activity against the government, In 1775, after many tangle negotiations, the Jesuit order was formerly suppressed by Pope Clement XIV.

 

The suppression did not take effect in Russia, however where Catherine the Great found the Jesuits useful in her struggles with the Russian Orthodox Church, but elsewhere the Society of Jesuits ceased to exist.

 

Many Jesuits reacted to the suppression by blaming it on intrigues by the liberals of the time, many of whom were Freemasons. The rise and destruction of the "Bavarian Illuminati" increased hard feelings on both sides.; the Illuminati crusade against former members of the Society and Catholicism in general gave ex-Jesuits reason to believe the worst about Masonry, which was seen as closely allied to Illuminism, while liberal Masons blamed ex-Jesuits for the campaign against the Illuminati by the Bavarian government (See: Bavarian Illuminati,; Freemasonry)

  Oronically, many Masons of the time argued that some branches of Masonry had become unfiltrated and controlled by the Jesuits. Johann August Stark's Order of Clerks Templar, one of the orders of high-grade Masonry active in Germany in the lat eighteenth century, was one of the rites most often accused of Jesuit involvement. Writers with links to the Illuminati themselves, such as Nicholas de Bonneville, spread the charge of Jesuit infiltration more broadly, claiming that Jesuits had taken over the entire institution of Freemasonry and needed to be driven out by a secret order - presumably the Illuminati, through de Bonneville did not say so. It is worth noting in the light of all these charges that the Society of Jesuits is the only male Catholic religious order whose members are completely absent from its lists of eighteen- and nineteenth-century ,,, clergy in Masonry,...

 

The sweeping European political changes that followed the French Revolution enabled a new Pope, Pius VII, to restore the Society of Jesuits in 1814, Penalties against the Society of Jesuits remained in force to varying degrees and in a variety of countries during the nineteenth century, however, as long as the Pope as a political as well as a religious figure, Jesuits were widely suspected of being the Pope's secret agents.

 

With the absorption of the Papal States into the new nation of Italy in 1871, however, animosity against the Jesuits faded in most European countries, though many nations outside Europe have continued to treat them warily or forbid them altogether.

 

The Jesuits have long played a major role in conspiracy theory in Protestant countries, especially Britain, where books circulating allegations of Jesuit misdeeds have had steadily sales for centuries.

Similar theories played an important part in anti-Catholic movement in the Unites States, and during the first half of the twentieth century were frequently circulated n some branches of Freemasonry, particularly the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (AASR), It is ironic  that Freemasonry, which has so often been tarred with allegations of conspiracy, has had a major role in circulating similar allegations about another organization, but such ironies are common in the history of Conspiracy theories (see; Ancient and Accepted Rite; Know Nothing Party)

Further reading: Billington 1980; Roberts 1972)

 

Accepted Mason

An Accepted mason is a member of a Freemason Lodge of masons who is not an operative Mason - that is.a working stonemason - but has joined the lodge to take part in it social and initiatory activities. The first accepted Masons documented in lodge records were Anthony Alexander. Lord William Alexander, and Sir Alexander Strachan of Thornton, who became members of the Edinburgh Lodge in 1634. Sir Robert Moray, a Hermeticist and founding member of the Royal Society, became a member of the same lodge in 1640, the alchemist and astrologer Elias Ashmore was another early accepted mason joining a lodge in England in 1646. They and the thousands who followed then over the next century played a crucial role in the transformation of Freemasonry from a late medieval trade union to the prototypical secret society of modern times ( see: Ashmole, Elias; Freemasonry; Moray, Robert)

 

Ordinary Freemason Craft Degrees which a Freemason has to reach the highest of before he can be considered by the Supreme Council to initiated into any of the 4th to 33rd Degree of the Scottish Rite Accepted Freemasonry

 

1st   Degree -      Entered Apprentice

2nd  Degree -     Fellow Craft

3rd   Degree -     Master Mason

 

Rite Of Perfection

 

The Rite Of Perfection was the firs known Masonic body to work the degrees that later belonged to the Scottish Rite, the Rite of Perfection was organized in Paris in 1754 b the Chevalier de Bonneville. The Rite Of Perfection  met in the buildings of the College of Jesuits at Clermont, thus its alternate name, the College or Rite of Clermont. The Rite Of Perfection's membership included many English and Scots Jacobites in exile in FRance, and it seems to have played a role in reorganizing the scattered and demoralized Jacobite movement after the failure of the Stuart rising in 1754 (See: Jacobites)

  The Rite Of Perfection worked 22 degrees beyond the Ordinary Craft Masonry degrees of entered Apprentice, Fellow `CRaft, and Master Mason, Its rituals included a great deal of occult material, including alchemy, Cabala and Rosicrucian traditions, but its central teaching - certainly influenced by Andrew Ramsay;s famous 1736 oration - was that Freemasonry descended from medieval Knights Templar and that every Mason was therefore a Templar. This theory was adopted by the Rite's successor, the Council of Emperors of the East and West, which absorbed the Rite of Perfection four years after its founding (See: Freemasonry, origins of; Knights Templar; Ramsay, Andrew Michael.

  During the Rite Of Perfection's  short lifetime, the Rite of Perfection also played a role in launching another important eighteenth-century secret society... One of its early initiates was Baron Kark Gotthelf von Hund, who went on to found the Rite of Strict Observance, one of the most important magical orders in Germany and the source of MOst Templar Masonry in continental Europe (see: Rite of Strict Observance

 

Rite Of Observance

The Rite of Strict Observance was one of the most important secret societies in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century ... the Rite of Strict Observance had its roots in the Templar Masonry which was invented by Jacobites exiles in FRance in the years just before the Stuart rebellion of 1745. Baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund, the founder and original head of the Rite of Strict Observance, was initiated into Freemasonry in 1741 or 1742, and traveled to Paris in 1743, where he received the Templar degrees from the Earl of Kilmarnock, a Jacobite peer attached to the Stuart court in exile (See: Jacobites; Knights Templar; Scottish Degrees).

   During his visit Baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund also received appointment as Provisional Grand Master of the Templar degrees for Germany. He returned home to Saxony, and to all appearances spent the next 11 years doing nothing with the degrees and authority he had received.

 

 

wealthy society

 

 

Scottish Rite Accepted Freemasons

 

The wealthy society-within-a society based at 10 Duke Street, London.

 

The Thirty-Three Degrees of Freemasonry

Run world wide by  the Supreme Council of Charleston, USA, who control the  Supreme Council in London (based at an Edwardian mansion built in 1910-1911at 10 Duke Street, London which is known as the Grand East) which effectively operated a worldwide network of Freemasonry in the most powerful positions in the executive, legislature, judiciary and armed forces as well as the industry, commerce and professions of many nations.

The anonymous house at 10 Duke Street, London with the words on a small pale to the right of the entrance with the words 'The Supreme Council.Ring Once' has  two sets of study double doors and up the stairs, there is a Black Room, a Red Room and a Chamber of Death. To high masons, the house is Duke Street is known as the Grand East. In the London Telephone Director it is listed as 'Supreme Council 33rd Degree..01-930 1606')

 

4th   Degree -     Secret Master

5th   Degree -     Perfect Master

6th   Degree -     Intimate Secretary

7th   Degree -      Provost and Judge

8th   Degree -      Intendant of the Building

9th   Degree -      Elect of Nine

10th Degree-     Elect of Fifteen

11th Degree-     Sublime Elect

12th Degree-    Grand Master Architect

13th Degree-     Royal Arch of (Enoch)

14th Degree-     Scottish Knight of Perfection

15th Degree-     Knight of the Sword, or of the East

16th Degree-     Prince of Jerusalem

17th Degree-      Knight of the East and West

18th Degree-     

         Knight of the Pelican and Eagle & Sovereign Prince Roe Croix of Heredom

19th Degree-      Grand Pontiff

20th Degree-       Venerable Grand Master

21st Degree-        Patriarch Noachite

22nd Degree-       Prince of Libanus

23rd Degree-             Chief of the Tabernacle

24th Degree-              Prince of the Tabernacle

25th Degree-             Knight of the Brazen Serpent

26th Degree-              Prince of Mercy

27th Degree-              Commander of the Temple

28th Degree-               Knight of the Sun

29th Degree-              Knight of St Andrew

30th Degree-             

                       Grand Elected Knight Kadosh, Knight of the Black and White Eagle

31st Degree-                Grand Inspector inquisitor Commander

32nd Degree               Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret

33rd Degree                Grand Inspector General

 

With each Degree the number of initiates diminishes. the 31st Degree (Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander) is restricted to 400 members; the 32nd Degree ( Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret) to 180; and the 33rd Degree - the re-eminent Grand Inspectors General - to only 75 members.

 

 

The Supreme Council in London is one of many Supreme Councils in various parts of the globe, of which the senior is the Supreme Council of Charleston, USA, which effectively operated a worldwide network of Freemasonry in the most powerful positions in the executive, legislature, judiciary and armed forces as well as the industry, commerce and professions of many nations.

 

 

Initiation into Scottish Rite Freemasonry is open only to those Master Masons who are 'selected' by the Supreme Council. If a representative of the Supreme Council establishes contact with a Master Mason and concluded that he is suitable, the Candidate will be offered the chance of being 'perfected' and setting the first foot on the ladder to the 33rd Degree. But only a very small proportion, even of the limited  number of Freemasons who take the first step. progress beyond the 18th Degree, that of Knight of the Pelican and Eagle and Sovereign Prince Rose Croix of Heredom. With each Degree the number of initiates diminishes. the 31st Degree (Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander) is restricted to 400 members; the 32nd Degree ( Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret) to 180; and the 33rd Degree - the re-eminent Grand Inspectors General - to only 75 members.

Whatever might be said of the Duke of Kent, the current Grand Master of Craft Masonry (Head of the 33 Degree Supreme Council-which there are only 75 members world wide) the hierarchy over which the Most Puissant Sovereign Grant Commander presides at top of the world Freemason command, with the Duke of Kent' and the Queen of England being of sub-hierachy way down low nearer the bottom of the ladder (being in charge of the 1,2 and 3rd Degree Freemasons, with the Most Puissant Sovereign Grant Commander presiding over the Supreme Council of an exclusive group of men only 75 in total being another 30 Degrees above them,,

 

   Although Craft Freemasonry is worldwide in the sense that it exists in most parts of the non-Communist world, and even underground in parts of the eastern bloc, it has no international organization. The  Ancient and Accepted Rite of the `thirty-Third Degree is the only cohesive Masonic group run on truly international lines. The Supreme Council in London is one of many Supreme Councils in various parts of the globe, of which the senior is the Supreme Council of Charleston, USA, which effectively operated a worldwide network of Freemasonry in the most powerful positions in the executive, legislature, judiciary and armed forces as well as the industry, commerce and professions of many nations....

 

   Although Craft Freemasonry is worldwide in the sense that it exists in most parts of the non-Communist world, and even underground in parts of the eastern bloc, it has no international organization. The  Ancient and Accepted Rite of the `thirty-Third Degree is the only cohesive Masonic group run on truly international lines. The Supreme Council in London is one of many Supreme Councils in various parts of the globe, of which the senior is the Supreme Council of Charleston, USA, which effectively operated a worldwide network of Freemasonry in the most powerful positions in the executive, legislature, judiciary and armed forces as well as the industry, commerce and professions of many nations.

 

A series of Masonic degrees created in France in the middle of the eighth-century, known as Scottish Rite Accepted Freemasons ..... Despite the name,  they have no actual connection to Scotland, and first arrived in Scotland in 1833, when the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite came there from America. This has n t prevented incautious researchers from searching the degrees of that Rite for secrets passed from medieval Scottish Templars ( See: Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Freemasonry, Knights Templar.

  The firstt (local lodges) working Scottish degrees appeared in Paris in the late 1730's , in circles closely connected to the Jacobite exile community then planning the 1745 attempt to put Charles Edward Stuart on the British throne. The legendary origin of the degrees draws heavily on the Famous Masonic oration of the Chevalier Ramsay, who first proposed that masonry descended from the knightly orders of the medieval Crusades. Ramsay was himself a Jacobite , and it has been plausibly suggested that the origin and the new degrees were part of a single project to create a new Jacobite Masonry at a time when Jacobites were losing control of ordinary Freemasonry Craft Lodges in FRance and other European countries ( See: Jacobites, Ramsay, Andrew Michael).

 This Templar origin, according to the legend, came via Scotland. Allegedly a band of Knights Templar fled from France to escape the destruction of their order under Philip IV. They were given a safe haven in Scotland, and in gratitude fought for Robert the `bruce against the English at the battle of Bannock in 1314. Each of the branches of Scottish Masonry that emerged after the failure of the 1745 rebellion traced their roots back to that group of Templars, thus the Royal Order of Scotland, for instance, claims that Bruce rewarded the Templars for their valor by institution the Royal Order of Scotland, with the Templars as its first members and himself as the fist grand master (SEE: Royal Order of Scotland)

  After the battel of Culloden put an end to Jabobite hopes in 1746, the Scottish degrees appear to have been left to their own devices, and spread through European Masonry. The Royal Order of Scotland was among the first to surface, establishing a lodge in The Hague in 1750. A much more elaborate rite of 22 degrees, the Rite of Perfection, went public in 1754 with the foundation of the Chapter of Clermont. Four years later this yielded to a new body, the Council of Emperors of the East and West, which lasted until 1781 and contended with a rival body, the Council of Emperors of the East. One or the other Council - to this day, no one is sure which - authorized a French Mason named Stephen Morin to establish the Rite of Perfection in the New World, and thus laid the foundations of the ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, one of the most important ( and powerful) masonic bodies today ( See: Rite of perfection).

 

Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (AASR)

   The most influential of the concordant bodies of Freemasonry in the United States (UK and the rest of the world) and one of the most important Masonic Rites worldwide, the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was foundered in Charlestown, South Carolina in 1802 by a group of Freemasons who had received a charter to work the Rite of Perfection, a system of high degrees from France that claimed descent from the medieval Knights Templar, but actually had their roots in the Jacobite Masonry of the Mid-eighteenth century. They obtained several additional degrees from various sources, expanding their Rite of Perfection to 33.  Recruitment was slow, and for decades the Scottish Rite ranked as one of the minor rites in American Freemasonry. It was two jurisdictions in America, Northern and southern; the Northern, despite the name, included those northern states east of the Mississippi River, so that Scottish Rite Masons in Alaska belong to the Southern Jurisdiction ( See: Freemasonry; Jacobites; Rite of Perfection' Scottish Degrees).

   The transformation that turned the Scottish Rite into one of the world's most successful Masonic rites was the work of one man, Albert Pike (1809-1891). Albert Pike joined the Scottish Rite in 1853 and rose quickly through its ranks, becoming Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Jurisdiction in 1859. Albert Pike completely rewrote the Rite;s initiation rituals, replacing dull and turgid language with genuine poetry and inserting a great deal of occult philosophy into the ceremonies, In addition, his 'Morals and Dogma' (1871) - a commentary on the Scottish Rite Degrees - is one of the classics of nineteenth[century occultism, It has been said, with some justice, that Pike 'found the Scottish Rite in a log cabin and left it in a Temple.' ( See Pike, Albert).

   Pike envisioned the Scottish Rite as the university of Freemasonry, a body in which those Masons interested in the philosophical  and spiritual dimensions of the Craft could work their way through degrees that summed up the moral and intellectual heritage of the western world. During his time, Scottish Rite lodges met in buildings owned by other Masonic bodies, and Pike wrote movingly of the simplicity and dignity of the ritual of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Under Pike and his successors, the Scottish Rite Freemasonry spread to many countries, and Supreme Councils were chartered in Britain. Europe. South America and Australasia.

  Pikes immediate successors in the American jurisdictions lacked his vision, but for the most part they followed the precedents he had set. Starting in the decades after Pike's death, however, the Rite gradually took on a more active political stance and entered into a long-running fed against the Roman Catholic Church. Masonic bitterness about the Vatican's hostility toward Masonry goes back centuries, but in early twentieth century American opposition to Catholicism also served to cloak racist attitudes toward Irish, Italian. and Hispanic immigrants. Successive Sovereign Grand Commanders in the Southern Jurisdiction used the Rite's resources to disseminate anti-Catholic propaganda and lobby against parochial schools ( See: Roman Catholic Church).

  The Scottish Rite's opposition toward Catholicism became a severe liability in the 1920s when it brought the Rite into tacit alliance with the revived Ku KLux Klan. The Klan shared the Rite's anti-Catholic  sentiments, and white Masons' hostility toward black Prince Hall Masonry rendered the Rite's leadership as well as its ordinary member vulnerable to the Klan's blandishments. During the mid-1920s several members of the Southern Jurisdiction's Supreme Council were Klansmen, and one of them simultaneously headed the scottish Rite and the Klan in his home state. As the Klan's dubious activities came to light in the media in the second half of the decade, embarrassed Scottish Rite leaders and members alike concealed their Klan involvements, but the Rite's reputation suffered (See: Ku Klux Klan; Prince Hall Masonry)

  Difficulties caused by the Rite's short-lived rapprochement with the Klan proved to be transitory. BY the end of the twentieth Century, though, the Rite in America faced problems that offered no easy solution. The roots of the predicament reach back to the beginning of the century, and grew out of the soaring popularity of the Scottish Rite in those years. Faced with hundreds of enthusiastic new members, most American Scottish Rite units began to confer their degrees as theatrical performances in which new members simply sat through a series of ritual plays, standing at intervals to join in when it was time to take the obligations of each degree. At the same time, the once-mandatory time between degrees went to the wayside, and new rules allowed most of the degrees to be skipped, s that only five degrees- 4th Degree, 14th Degree, 18th Degree, 30th Degree and 32nd Degree - were required. By the middle of the twentieth century new members of Rite in America went from 3rd Degree Master Mason, to 32nd Degree, Master of the Royal Secret, in a single weekend, or even a single day, by sitting in an auditorium and watching five rituals performed on stage.

   These changes went as far as they did because the scottish Rite in america during this time had become economically dependent on another Masonic concordant body, the ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic shrine, The Shriners had golf courses and other members-only recreational facilities that offered a powerful draw to the middle-class and middle-aged men who made up the majority of American Masons. Membership in the Shrine was available only to Masons who has held either the 32nd Degree of the scottish Rite or the ~Knight Templar Degree of the York Rite, but most Shriners had little interest in Freemasonry -  in the late 1950's, 92 percent of Shriners never set foot inside a 'Masonic Lodge Meeting' and 95% never attended meetings of scottish Rite or York Rite bodies after their initiation. The Scottish Rite capitalized on this by simplifying the process so that Master Masons could qualify for Shrine membership after a single weekend of them being involved with 'Scottish Rite Degree Rituals'.  This brought the Scottish Rite a steady income from hundreds of thousands of new members who had no interest in the Rite itself but paid their dues every year to maintain their standing in the Shrine (See: ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine -AAONMS)..

  Al this changed abruptly in 2000 when the Shrine, faced declining membership on its own account, changed its rules to allow Master Masons to join without going through the Scottish or York Rites first. Enrollment in the Scottish Rite, already dwindling at that time, plummeted thereafter. While the Rite's survival in the United States is probably not at risk, it seems likely to shrink to a small percentage of its peak size during the next few years.

Outside the United States, the Scottish Rite's history has followed different paths. In Latin america, the Scottish Rite is far and away the most popular branch of masonry, and most Masonic Lodges are affiliated with it. In the years following the Soviet Union's collapse the Rite succeeded in expanding into eastern European countries formerly closed to masonry, including Russia itself, and seems to be taking a similar role there, In Britain, by contrast, the Rite has restricted its membership to Christians, limited its membership to its degrees, and dropped the word "Scottish" from its name, referring to itself as the Ancient and Accepted Rite; it remains a relatively small Masonic body there. Further reading: Brockman 1996, Hutchens 1995, Pike 1871.

 

 Jacobites

 

Partisans of the House of Stuart opposed to the Hanoverian rule in Britain from 1714, the Jacobites took their title from the Latin version ('Jacobus') of the names of the exiled James II and his son, the `"Old Pretender". On James's daughter Queen Anne's death in 1714. Parliament gave the throne to the minor German prince George of Hanover, a descendant of one of James I's daughters. In response, the Old Pretender landed in Scotland in 1715 and attempted to start a rebellion against the new king. he rebellion fizzled out, though, and most of James's supporters had to flee to France.

  The collapse of the 1715 rising many have played a central role in one of the crucial events in Masonic history, the organization of the first Grand Lodge of England in 1717. Many of the first accepted Masons to be initiated into what were then still stonemasons' guilds, men such as Elias Ashmore and Sir Robert Moray had been staunch supporters of the Stuarts, and a sizable number of Jabobite exiles after the 1715 rebellion were Freemasons. The Grand Lodge, however was firmly in the Hanoverian camp from the first, and the lodges affiliated with it followed its lead. Many Masonic historians have suggested that the GRand Lodge was at least encouraged, and may have been covertly sponsored, by supporters of the House of Hanover t0 deny the Jabobites a potential network for espionage and subversion ( for further reading see: accepted Mason; Ashmore, Elias; grand lodge; Moray,Robert)

  If this was their intention, the challenge was taken up by the Jabobites. Between 1723 and 1730, Masonic lodges organized by Jacobite exiles sprang up in France. In 1732 the first French lodge chartered by the English Grand Lodge in London was foundered, and from then until 1738 Jacobite and Hanoverian factions in French Masonry fought a bitter covert struggle in which the English ambassador in Paris. Lord Waldegrave, had a part. Th Jacobites fared poorly in these struggles, not least because Hanovarian England had enormous prestige in eighteen-centruy France.

  The Jacobite loss of control over Masonry was a serious blow, but not fatal. The Jacobites responded with a double strategy that had immense consequences. First came a burst of official sanctions against French Masonic Lodges. In Paris, Masonic meetings were broken up by the police in 1737 and 1738, though the widespread popularity of Masonry and high social standing of some of its members made it difficult for Cardinal Fleury, who headed the police to go too far. More serious action came from Rome, where in 1738 Pope Clement XII issue the bull In Eminenti, te first Catholic condemnation of FReemasonry, which excommunicated all Masons and reserved the right to absolve then to the Pope alone (see:Anti-masonry; Roman Catholic Church).

  The second phase of Jacobite strategy had equally seeping results. Starting around 1740, a new form of the Craft called "Scottish Rite Masonry" appeared in France. Until late in the decade its presence was little more than rumour: "I am not unaware," wrote Gabriel Calabre Perau in a 1744 antimasonic book, 'Les secrets de l'Ordre des Franc-Macons devoiles ( The SEcrets of the Order of Freemasons Unveiled), " that a vague rumour circulates among Freemasons concerning a certain order they call Scottish, superior to ordinary FReemasonry with its own special ceremonies and secrets' (quoted in Roberts 1972 P.95) ( also see: Scottish degree)

 The Scottish Rite Masonry was not Scottish at all. Scots Masonic records yield no trace of the Scottish degrees until they were imported from America in 1833.

   Where eighteen-century talk about its origins at all, they trace it directly to the Jacobites. Providing justification to the new degrees was the famous 1737 oration of Andrew Michael Ramsay on the origins of Masonry, which for the first time traced the Craft back to the knightly orders of the Crusades: Ramsey had connections on both sides of the Stuart-Hanover split, but as a devout Catholic and a former tutor to the Old Prender's two sons, his loyalites lay with the Jacobite cause ( See: Ramsey, Andrew Michael)

   The Scottish Rite Degrees probably formed part of the Stuart grand strategy that led up to the 1745 rising, a strategy focused on spreading disaffection and undermining the legitimacy of the Hanovarian regime in advance of the planned revolt. Networks of Jacobite Masons in Britain and Europe played a role in these preparations. The strategy seemed to work at first : when Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender ( James II's grandson), arrived to Scotland many of the Highland clans rallied him and forces seized Edinburgh with little difficulty and marched south as far as Derby. But the general uprising never happened: the Jacobites never grasped the depth of popular resentment and Protestant distrust toward the Stuart Line. As the British army closed in, Charles Stuart's forces retreated into Scotland and were crushed in 1746 at the battle of Culloden.

 The disaster at Culloden put an end to the dream of Stuart restoration, though it did not bring an immediate end to Jacobite activities. Masonic networks in France and Sweden that had been organized to support helping Jacobite refugees who fled Scotland with nothing but their lives. Yet the failure of the 1945 condemned the Jacobite element in continental Masonry to death by irrelevance. In 1754 the once-secret Templar grades became public knowledge; in that year the Scottish Rite of Perfection was founded in Paris while the Rite of Strict Observance appeared in Germany ( see: Rite of `perfection; Rite of Strict Observance).

  There the Jacobite cause rested until the Victorian period, when the Stuarts became the focus of romantic nostalgia and eccentrics could embrace the Jacobite cause with the same enthusiasm that went into schemes for universal languages and clothing reform. They had the advantage of two living claimants to the Stuart Title - John Sobieski-Stuart, Count d'Albanic, and his brother Charles - who claimed to be Charles Stuart's grandsons; their actual names were John and Charles Allan and their claim has been dismissed even by modern Jacobites, but at the time they attracted mush attention. A secret society titles the Order of the White Rose existed to promote the Stuart cause, and Samuel Liddle Mathers, one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, added to his other interests (see Hermatic Order of the Golden Dawn, Order of the White Rose)

   While claims of the House of Stuart may seem to belong on the far end of irrelevance nowadays, yet another claimant has surfaced in the rejected knowledge scene in recent years. Belgian author Michael of Albany, claims to be a legitimate descendent of the Young Pretender and the rightful heir to the Throne of Scotland. His claims, backed b the usual lack of evidence and blatant errors of fact, have found him and enthusiastic audience in today's rejected knowledge scene. His supporter, author Laurence Gardener, has also claimed that J.R.R. Tollden's "Lord of the Rings" triology is a work of history, which may suggest something of the factual basis of "Prince Michael's" claim. (see: rejected knowledge)

Further reading: McLyn 1985, Roberts 1972.

 

P2 (Propaganda Due) P.381  The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies

 

Among the major political secret societies in recent European history, P2 (standing for Propaganda Due, Propaganda 2) was founded in Italy in 1877 as a private Masonic Lodge, headed by GRand master of Italy, for members of the Italian Parliament who wanted to become Masons but needed their membership kept secret from the Roman Catholic Church. Suppressed in 1924 by Mussolini's government, it was reactivated again in 1946. In the late 1960's under his leadership of Licio Gelli, P2 reinvented itself as a political secret society. Gelli was no stranger to intrigue; Gelli has similtaniously been a member of the Hitler's German Nazi Gestapo and the Italian Communist Underworld during the second World War. Under Gelli's Leadership, P2 received CIA Money as part of a project to fight communism in Italy, 'but the evidence suggests Gelli played the CIA and the KGB off against one another and pocketed much of the proceeds (See" Freemasonry)

  P2's opposition to communism made it attractive to many people at the conservative end of the italian political spectrum. In 1981, when its records were seized in a police raid, its membership included 3 Italian cabinet ministers, 43 members of the Italian parliament, the heads of all Italy's intelligence agencies, and many other public figures.  he Mafia's traditional conservative politics made 'mafiost' another significant group with in P2;  members with known Mafia connections included Michele Greco, rumored to be the 'capo dei capi' of Italy, and Michele Sindona, the lodge treasurers, a multi-millionaire financier who managed the Mafia's profits from the transatlanlic heroin trade See: Mafia).

     The Vatican, another Italian institution with conservative leanings, also entered into a rapprochement with P2. Despite the Catholic Church's official ban on Masonic membership, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank, became a P2 member. Also the P2 treasurer Sidona and his protege Robert Calvi served as key Financial advisors to the Vatican. Calvi, along with archbishop Marcinkus, created hundreds of Fictitious bank accounts through which Mafia drug money was laundered. Pop Paul VI placed a large portfolio of Vatican investments under Sindona's control in 1969, an act that cost the Vatican some $240 million in losses by 1975. (See: Roman Catholic Church).

 Obsessed with fighting communism on all fronts. P2's members staged at least one major terorrist attack - the bombing of the Bologna r ail station in 1960 - in an attempt to discredit the Italian Communist Party and move public opinion to the right (side of politics), Some investigators have argued that P2 was also behind the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I. After launching a close personal insepction of the Valtican's finances, the Pope announced on September the 28th, 1978, that he intended to remove Archbishop Marcinkus and three other Sindona prodeges from the Vatican Bank. The next morning Pope John Paul I was found dead, no autopsy was performed, and allegations of suppressed and destroyed evidence have dogged the Vatican ever since.

 

P2's plans to move Italy to the right went awry when the financial empire that supported P2's activities came crashing down and Italian Freemasonry turned against P2. The 1974 collapse of Franklin National Bank of New York, Michele Sindona's largest American holding, set off a chain of defaults and bankruptcies that landed Sindona himself behind bars in 1980, and sparked the Italian police investigation that led to the seizure of P2's records and the public release of P2's membership list in 1981. At the same time, disputes between P2 and the GR and Orient of Italy - the grand lodge of Italian Freemasonry - escalated steadily; the Grand Orient formally withdrew P2's charter in 1974, and by the early 1980's one former Grand Master had been expelled from Masonry and many other

largest Masonic official voted out of office because of ties to P2.

 

In 1982, while the P2 scandal was still front-page news, Banco Ambrosiano - Italy's largest private bank, headed by Roberto Calvi - collapsed after being stripped of $1.4 billion in assets. The immediate aftermath of the collapse involved a flurry of mysterious deaths. Calvi was founded hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London. A coroner's inquest labeled the death suicide, but his widow forced the verdict to be overturned, presenting evidence that Calvi intended to name everyone involved in P2's actions, and the verdict was changed to "cause of death unknown". The same day Calvi was found hanged in London, Calvi's long time secretary committed "suicide" (this being the official story with many researchers  believing that she was pushed to her death with a fake suicide note created for her) by leaping (to her death) from the window of her office in the Banco Ambrosiano building.

Within the following year Licio Gelli vanished mysteriously  from a Swiss prison cell, where he was being held for extradition, and had never been (officially) seen since, while Sindona died is a Milanese prison claiming that he had been poisoned.

   As far as anyone outside P2's membership knows, P2 went out of existence after it and its records became public. Still, the tradition of political secret societies runs deep in Italy and it seems likely that some of the members have reorganized under a new name.

Further reading: DiFonzo 1983; Yallop 1984

 

 Jacobites

 

Partisans of the House of Stuart opposed to the Hanoverian rule in Britain from 1714, the Jacobites took their title from the Latin version ('Jacobus') of the names of the exiled James II and his son, the `"Old Pretender". On James's daughter Queen Anne's death in 1714. Parliament gave the throne to the minor German prince George of Hanover, a descendant of one of James I's daughters. In response, the Old Pretender landed in Scotland in 1715 and attempted to start a rebellion against the new king. he rebellion fizzled out, though, and most of James's supporters had to flee to France.

  The collapse of the 1715 rising many have played a central role in one of the crucial events in Masonic history, the organization of the first Grand Lodge of England in 1717. Many of the first accepted Masons to be initiated into what were then still stonemasons' guilds, men such as Elias Ashmore and Sir Robert Moray had been staunch supporters of the Stuarts, and a sizable number of Jabobite exiles after the 1715 rebellion were Freemasons. The Grand Lodge, however was firmly in the Hanoverian camp from the first, and the lodges affiliated with it followed its lead. Many Masonic historians have suggested that the GRand Lodge was at least encouraged, and may have been covertly sponsored, by supporters of the House of Hanover t0 deny the Jabobites a potential network for espionage and subversion ( for further reading see: accepted Mason; Ashmore, Elias; grand lodge; Moray,Robert)

  If this was their intention, the challenge was taken up by the Jabobites. Between 1723 and 1730, Masonic lodges organized by Jacobite exiles sprang up in France. In 1732 the first French lodge chartered by the English Grand Lodge in London was foundered, and from then until 1738 Jacobite and Hanoverian factions in French Masonry fought a bitter covert struggle in which the English ambassador in Paris. Lord Waldegrave, had a part. Th Jacobites fared poorly in these struggles, not least because Hanovarian England had enormous prestige in eighteen-centruy France.

  The Jacobite loss of control over Masonry was a serious blow, but not fatal. The Jacobites responded with a double strategy that had immense consequences. First came a burst of official sanctions against French Masonic Lodges. In Paris, Masonic meetings were broken up by the police in 1737 and 1738, though the widespread popularity of Masonry and high social standing of some of its members made it difficult for Cardinal Fleury, who headed the police to go too far. More serious action came from Rome, where in 1738 Pope Clement XII issue the bull In Eminenti, te first Catholic condemnation of Freemasonry, which excommunicated all Masons and reserved the right to absolve then to the Pope alone (see:Anti-masonry; Roman Catholic Church).

  The second phase of Jacobite strategy had equally seeping results. Starting around 1740, a new form of the Craft called "Scottish Rite Masonry" appeared in France. Until late in the decade its presence was little more than rumour: "I am not unaware," wrote Gabriel Calabre Perau in a 1744 antimasonic book, 'Les secrets de l'Ordre des Franc-Macons devoiles ( The Secrets of the Order of Freemasons Unveiled), " that a vague rumour circulates among Freemasons concerning a certain order they call Scottish, superior to ordinary Freemasonry with its own special ceremonies and secrets' (quoted in Roberts 1972 P.95) (also see: Scottish degree)

 The Scottish Rite Masonry was not Scottish at all. Scots Masonic records yield no trace of the Scottish degrees until they were imported from America in 1833.

   Where eighteen-century talk about its origins at all, they trace it directly to the Jacobites. Providing justification to the new degrees was the famous 1737 oration of Andrew Michael Ramsay on the origins of Masonry, which for the first time traced the Craft back to the knightly orders of the Crusades: Ramsey had connections on both sides of the Stuart-Hanover split, but as a devout Catholic and a former tutor to the Old Prender's two sons, his loyalites lay with the Jacobite cause ( See: Ramsey, Andrew Michael)

   The Scottish Rite Degrees probably formed part of the Stuart grand strategy that led up to the 1745 rising, a strategy focused on spreading disaffection and undermining the legitimacy of the Hanovarian regime in advance of the planned revolt. Networks of Jacobite Masons in Britain and Europe played a role in these preparations. The strategy seemed to work at first : when Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender ( James II's grandson), arrived to Scotland many of the Highland clans rallied him and forces seized Edinburgh with little difficulty and marched south as far as Derby. But the general uprising never happened: the Jacobites never grasped the depth of popular resentment and Protestant distrust toward the Stuart Line. As the British army closed in, Charles Stuart's forces retreated into Scotland and were crushed in 1746 at the battle of Culloden.

 The disaster at Culloden put an end to the dream of Stuart restoration, though it did not bring an immediate end to Jacobite activities. Masonic networks in France and Sweden that had been organized to support helping Jacobite refugees who fled Scotland with nothing but their lives. Yet the failure of the 1945 condemned the Jacobite element in continental Masonry to death by irrelevance. In 1754 the once-secret Templar grades became public knowledge; in that year the Scottish Rite of Perfection was founded in Paris while the Rite of Strict Observance appeared in Germany ( see: Rite of `perfection; Rite of Strict Observance).

  There the Jacobite cause rested until the Victorian period, when the Stuarts became the focus of romantic nostalgia and eccentrics could embrace the Jacobite cause with the same enthusiasm that went into schemes for universal languages and clothing reform. They had the advantage of two living claimants to the Stuart Title - John Sobieski-Stuart, Count d'Albanic, and his brother Charles - who claimed to be Charles Stuart's grandsons; their actual names were John and Charles Allan and their claim has been dismissed even by modern Jacobites, but at the time they attracted mush attention. A secret society titles the Order of the White Rose existed to promote the Stuart cause, and Samuel Liddle Mathers, one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, added to his other interests (see Hermatic Order of the Golden Dawn, Order of the White Rose)

   While claims of the House of Stuart may seem to belong on the far end of irrelevance nowadays, yet another claimant has surfaced in the rejected knowledge scene in recent years. Belgian author Michael of Albany, claims to be a legitimate descendent of the Young Pretender and the rightful heir to the Throne of Scotland. His claims, backed b the usual lack of evidence and blatant errors of fact, have found him and enthusiastic audience in today's rejected knowledge scene. His supporter, author Laurence Gardener, has also claimed that J.R.R. Tollden's "Lord of the Rings" triology is a work of history, which may suggest something of the factual basis of "Prince Michael's" claim. (see: rejected knowledge)

Further reading: McLyn 1985, Roberts 1972.

Knights Templar P.272

 

 It is said by historians  and fairly well accepted that in about  the year 1119, nine French knights living in Jerusalem formed a religious order devoted to the protection of pilgrims traveling to the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Together, they took monastic nows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the presence of the patriarch of Jerusalem... then King Baldwin II have them a place to live near the ruins of Solomon's Temple. This inspired the name of the new order, the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, more commonly known as the Knights Templar.

 Many strange claims have been floated in recent years about the founding of the 'Knights Templar Order', but it made perfect sense in the context of the time... as aiding pilgrims on their way to sacred sites was a religious duty in the Middle Ages, enshrined in cannon law and accepted in the popular culture at the time.. The road between he port city of Joppa and Jerusalem, the principle Pilgrim route, was infested by robbers and wild animals, but only 40 miles (64 kilometres) long, short enough that nine competent knights devoted to the task could have a real impact on pilgrim safely..

 

(....many historians say it is quite fanciful to claim that only nine poor knights on horse back, who were so poor that they sometimes even had to share a horse, could effectively patrol 40 miles of road infested by robbers and wild animals to ensure the safety Pilgrims traveling alone the road...the whole story simply does not make logical sense....

..what makes more sense is that many historians claim is is much more likely that behind the scenes the real purpose was for the Knights Templar, using their protective role a cover, was to dig below Solomon's Temple for some secret artifacts and/or knowledge and that this was eventually found, .... and that it was as a result of this, ..... that they were able to convince rich and powerful people from all over the world to give them money, assets and support that made them one of the richest and most powerful organizations in the world in a very short time period with a very large army, fleet of ships, and assistants and were able to start and control the world's first banking and financial system with governments being in large debt to the Knights Templar... with all the the support, guidance, backing and blessing of the Catholic Church and the Pope which was attempting to create itself as the most powerful influential religious and financial in the world.. which they say today it has become...with many banking, industrial, intelligence, financial, criminal, political, social, legal, business and secret society networks and organizations under the Roman Catholic Church's guidance and control...).....

 

It is claimed that the 'Knights Templar Order' remained very small for its first decade, and the title "Poor" well describes their situation, despite intermittent support from the KIng of Jerusalem, they had to make do on resources so limited that on occassions two brothers had to ride a single horse ....

 

A letter from the first Grand Master, Hugues de Payens, to the members of Jerusalem at the time of the Council of Troyes in 1128 makes it clear that the poor Fellow Soldiers were struggling for survival...

 

Fortunately for the 'Knights Templar Order', help was on its way. Few people had heard of the Templars until Hugues traveled to Europe in 1128 to publicize the 'Knights Templar Order'... the journey brought back a torrent of donations and scores of new recruits ....

 

.... (again, it has to be stated that the enormous and instant international level of financial,moral and physical support for the 'Knights Templar Order' does not make sense  if the only publicly and/or privately stated reason for the 'Knights Templar Order' was just to provide assistance to protect a few Pilgrims on a 40 mile piece of road...).....

 

More valuable still, at the Council of Troyes, the Catholic Church formally recognized the 'Knights Templar Order' and (very conveniently  for the 'Knights Templar Order') made the property  and income of  the 'Knights Templar Order' exempt from Church and ordinary taxes, while the influential Bernard of Clairvaux (later canonized by the Church) helped write a monastic rule for the the 'Knights Templar Order' and penned a widely circulated essay about the the 'Knights Templar Order'... ' IN Praise of the New Knighthood'. extolling the the 'Knights Templar Order' and encouraging others to support the 'Knights Templar Order'...

 

Within a few decades donations of land (and other forms of assets and income) provided to the the 'Knights Templar Order' from nobles across Europe gave the TEmplars so much real estate that a network of local centres called 'commanderies', had to be set up to managed the the 'Knights Templar Order' properties, assets and income... and send the profits to Palestine...

 

A the 'Knights Templar Order' navy had to be built to convey recruits and supplies the length of the Mediterranean, and castles rose in vulnerable points throughout the Holy Land as the Templars redirected their efforts from the protection of Pilgrimage routes ....

( obviously a lot more Pilgrim routes to protect than just the one 40 mile road from Joppa to Jerusalem ...)

..... to the defense of the Crusader Kingdoms against Muslim efforts at re-conquest (for Muslim re-control of these Kingdoms that the the 'Knights Templar Order' had helped the Catholic Church obtain control of..)

 

Even so, the 'Knights Templar Order', (always) assigned (at least) ten knights to guard duty on the Joppa Road as long as the crusader presence in Palestine lasted.

 

   B 1170  the 'Knights Templar Order' had nearly a thousand brother knights in the Holy Land, divided more or less evenly between the crusader kingdoms of Jerusalem ... Antioch, and Tripoli..

 

Squires (noble recruits not yet admitted to the rank of brother knight), sergeants (cavalrymen of peasant origin), Turcopoles (mounted archers recruited from native Palestine population) expanded the total fighting force of the 'Knights Templar Order' to perhaps (around 10,000 men..... Along with the two other major crusading orders of the time, the 'Knights Hospitallers' and 'Teutonic Knights', the 'Knights Templar Order' made up about half the effective fighting force of the 'Crusader States'. and their training experience, and discipline, made these military orders the iron backbone of the 'Crusades'...

 

The black and white banner, known as the 'Beauccant of the 'Knights Templar Order', was seen on every battlefield in the Holy Land as long as the 'Crusades' lasted.

 

At the core of the discipline of the 'Knights Templar Order' was their rule...

 

The original or "Primitive Rule" given to the 'Knights Templar Order' at the Council of Troyes was closely modeled on the rule of the 'Cistercian Order of Monks', and has little reference to the Templars' military life and/or the conditions their faced in Palestine.  The rule was later expanded by ' retrais' or additional sections covering the order's organization, the duties of the officers and members, and the penances imposed on those who violated its laws. The rule divided the Templars into brother knights, who were of noble birth and alone could vote in chapter meetings, chaplains, who administered the rites of the Catholic Church to the new Templar brothers, and serving brothers, a class that included squires and sergeants as well as craftsmen, such as armorers, blacksmiths, cooks, and the like, who provided all the goods and services needed to help a medieval military force in action. A fourth class of lay affiliates consisted of men and women who pledged support to the order and received a variety of honorary the 'Knights Templar Order' memberships in return.

  

   Sensational claims about a 'secret rule' were made during the trials of the Templars in the fourteenth century, and have been repeated by pro-ant anti-Templar writers over the last two centuries, but the reality was more prosaic. The Templar rule has survived in numerous copies (see: Upton-Ward 1992 for English Translation)and contains detailed information about Templar military tactics and procedures, for this reason one of the ' retrais' required that copies of the rule be restricted to officials of the order, so that they would not fall into enemy hands.

 

   According to the rule, any man who applied to join the Templars had to be voted into membership b a majority of brother knights in the chapter house where the application was made. A simple initiation ritual followed, in which the new member affirmed that he was neither married or vowed to another religious order, had no debts he could not pay, had no hidden illness, had not bribed any member of the order in the hope of admissions, and was not 'a serf'...the new member then pledged himself to the order for the rest of his life, was then received into the order, and heard a lecture on his duties and responsibilities. The ritual which serves in numerous texts of the Temple Rule, has close similarities to other medieval initiation rituals, including the reception of new members into other Monastic Orders and the admissions of apprentices, fellow craftsmen, and master into trade guilds (See: Brothering; guilds, medieval; Initiation)

  The Templar Rule forbade any member from having money of his own - if money was found in a brother's possession on his death, his body was left unburied for dogs to eat - but the order itself quickly became rich....Financial Systems evolved to transfer funds from Europe to the 'Crusader Kingdoms' soon found other uses and the Templars became the first "International Bankers' in medieval Europe. From the time of King Philip Augustus of France (116501223) until the end of the order, the French Royal House banked it;s treasury at the Templar Centre in Paris. The Grand Masters of the order served as advisers, financiers, and field marshals to crusading kings for more than a century.

  The efforts of the Templars and other associated military orders at the time, however,  could not save the 'Crusader States' once the 'Arab World' united against them. Despite the Third Crusade, Jerusalem fell to the armies of Saladin (Yusuf Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, 1138-1193), and later crusades merely slowed down the tide of Arab advances. The fall of Acre in 1291 removed the last crusader foothold in Palestine and deprived the military orders of their original reason for existence.

 The Knights Hospitalliers then moved to the Greek Island of Rhodes and continued to fight from there; the Teutonic Knights returned home to Germany and launched a new holy war against the pagan Balts and Salvs of Eastern Europe. The Templars alone failed to find another missions, and contented themselves with lobbying European Courts for a new crusade.

  This proved to be a fatal mistake...Envied for their wealth and privileges ( given to them by the Catholic Church-not tax etc), hated for their arrogance, and blamed by many for their failure of the Crusades, the Templars offered a tempting targets to any monarch bold enough to seize the opportunity. Philip IV of France had long regarded the rich Templar properties on his country with a greedy eye. Philip IV of France's hand picked papal candidate, Clement V, was elected Pope in 1305. All that was needed was an excuse, rumors of Templar improprieties circulated by Esquin de Floryan, a renegade Templar from southern France, provided that.

   At dawn on Friday 13th October, 1307, in an operation that would have done credit to a modern police state, royal officials carried out coordinated raids and mass arrests in every Templar chapter house in France.

                        The Charge was heresy..

Two thousand Templars, of whom about one hundred were brother knights, land in prison.  Torture was used and confessions duly followed, alleging that the Templars had a secret initiation ritual requiring novices to renounce Christ, trample on a cross, and kiss their initiator on the anus, while Templar chapter meetings focused on the worships of an idol called 'Baphomet'. This name has been subject to any number of strange interpretations over the year, but is simply the standard medieval FRench mispronunciation of "Muhammad", equivalent to the contemporary English "Mahound"; the implication was that Templars, during their time in Palestine, had gone over to the (Moslim) enemy (See: Baphomet)

   The following year, under intense pressure from the French king. Pope Clement decreed that Templars elsewhere in Europe be arrested and tried. Some arrests followed, but convictions were very few, in several trials, notably in Germany, the Templars were found innocent of all charges. In 1312, Clement called a general council of the Church at Vienne to condemn the Templars, but found that many of the bishops and cardinals supported the order and wanted to give them the right to formally respond to the charges against them, Clement caught between the recalcitrant council and an enraged King Phil, summarily dissolved the Templar Order on his own authority.

  Outside France, the dissolution of the Templars Order simply involved a change of habit for its members, Most Templars found new homes in other military orders' German Templars joined the Teutonic Knights; Templars in Spain joined the Spanish military orders of Montesa and Calatrava, while the king of Portugal simply renamed the Portuguese Templars "Knights of Christ" and helped them continue as before. In England, King Edward II settled pensions on the Templars and arranged for them to transfer to monastic orders. Even in France, of the 2,000 Templars seized in the 1307 arrests, the vast majority were set free, an uncertain number died during torture, and only 60 were actually executed. One of these was the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, who was burned at the stake in 1314. As Jacques de Molay died, according to legend, he pronounced a curse against King Philip and Pop Clement. If so. the curse was a potent one, for both king and pope were dead before the yea was out.

  Jacques de Molay's dead marked the end of the (official) history of the Templars, but it was only the beginning of the history of the 'Templar Myth'. That myth has essentially noting to do with the historical Knights Templar, and everything to do with the history of secret societies in the Western World from the 1730's to the present day.

  At the time of the Templar's destruction, and for hundreds of years thereafter, almost everyone in Europe believed that Philip IV had destroyed the Templars to get at their wealth, and only a handful of propagandists for the French Royal House and the official historians of the Papacy even claimed to believe the stories about heresy and the worship of Baphement. The contemporary poet Dante Alighieri, whose great poem, 'The Divine Comey' commented on most of the events of his time, referred to the Templar's fate in Canto XX of the 'Purgatoria' as purely a result of Philip's greed and spite, The great Renaissance legal theorist Jean Bodin, two centuries later, cited the Templars as a classic example of a group oppressed and destroyed by an unjust monarch. Until the middle of the eighteen century, this view and the orthodox claim what Philip IV said the Templars did, were the only opinions about the Templars in circulation.

  Abruptly in the late 1730's a third set of claims began to appear, insisting that the Templars were the secret guardians of an ancient wisdom ruthlessly suppressed by the forces of orthodoxy. These first surfaced in Masonic circles in France linked to the Jacobites - supporters of the exiled House of Stuart - and drew their theme from the famous 1736 Masonic address of the Cevalier Andrew Ramsay, an influential Jacobite who argued that Freemasonry itself was descended from the knightly order of the crusades (See: Freemasonry; Jacobites' Ramsay, Andrew Michael).

  Within a few years of Ramsay's address, rumors circulated through the French Court about a new, "Scottish" Freemasonry above the three Craft degrees of ordinary Masonry.

French sources claim that the first 'Scottish Freemasonry System' was launched by Ramsay himself and included the three degrees of Scottish Master, Novice, and Knight of the Temple. More degrees followed: a 1744 pamphlet from Paris claims that there were six or seven degrees above Master Mason at the time, while in 1751, most French Mason Lodges worked a system if nine degrees ( See: high degrees; Scottish degrees)

  Central to the entire system of Scottish Degrees was the claim that they descended from Templar traditions preserved in Scotland, and that the Templars themselves had been guardians of an ancient wisdom that the now survived in the higher degrees of Freemasonry. Many historians have argued that the entire "Templar Myth" was created by Jacobite propagandists at the time, as part of a struggle for control of French Freemasonry between the Jacobites and their opponents, and the evidence does seem to support this claim.

  After the catastro pic defeat of the Jacobite rising of 1745 put an end to the hope of a Stuart restoration, several different systems of Scottish Masonry surfaced in public, among then was the Royal Order of Scotland in The Hague in 1750, the Rite of Perfection )the source of today's Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) in Paris in 1754, and the Rite of Strict Observance in Saxony, also in 1754. All these rites had connections to the Jacobite Court in exile and included, as part of their teachings, the claim that surviving Templars had carried their mysteries to Scotland in the years after 1307.  and established Freemasonry there. This claim was originally a secret teaching but, like most Masonic secrets, it slipped out at an early date, and sparked a lively market fir Templar degrees within Masonry. Eighteenth-century Masonry being what it was, supply soon caught up with demand, and soon more than a dozen newly minted Templar Rites with no connection to the 'Stuart Cause' competed with the 'Scottish Degrees' for membership and influence. The Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross, an eighteenth-century German Rosicrucian order, also found room for the Templars in their origin story, claiming that Templars were initiated in 1188 into the 'Rosicrucian Order'. originally founded in alexandria in 96 CE, and brought its teachings back to Europe with them (See Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite; Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross; Rite of Perfection; Rite of Strict Observance; Rosicrucians; Royal Oder of Scotland).

 The next major element of the 'Templar Myth' arrived by way of the French Revolution. Many of the liberals who originally supported the National assembly in its struggle against 'Royal Privilege' in the heady days of 1789 were Freemasons. During the French Revolution years, a handful of journalists turned this fact into the foundation for a claim that the Revolution itself had been hatched as a 'Masonic Plot', One contributor to this literature was Charles-Louis Cadet de Gassicourt, a former radical whole book 'Le Tombeau de Jaques Molay (The Tomb of Jaques Molay, 1796) claimed that Freemason were exacting their vengeance against the French monarchy for the death of Jacques de Molay. Cadet de Gassicourt's book also introduced the idea that the Templars had been influenced by the order of assassins, and strung together more than a dozen unrelated secret societies into a supposedly continuous tradition of anarchist conspirators plotting across the centuries (See: assassins; French Revolution).

  This theme was taken up readily by conservatives in the decades immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, when secret societies - many of them linked in one way or another with the Templar Degrees of Freemasonry - played an important role in spreading liberal political ideas across Europe and fomenting rebellion against the attempts of autocratic regimes to stamp out the influence of the French Revolution. The two great founders of modern conspiracy theory, Augustin de Barruel and John Robinson, both drew on Cadet de Gassicourt's work in claiming that Freemasonry had been infiltrated by a vast conspiracy against religions and government. (See" ant-Masonry).

   Far more influential than either of these authors in shaping the Templar myth, however, was the Australian scholar Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, whose 'Mysterium Baphemetis Revealed, 1818) and several later books argued that the Templars had been Gnostic heretics, practicing an orgiastic cult of the goddess Achamoth or Baphomet passed on in secret since the third century CE. Von  Hammer-Purgstall was an employee of Prince Klemens von Metternich, chief minister to the Emperor of Austria and leader of the conservative reaction in post-Napoleonic Europe. and his books on the Templars were anything but disinterested scholarly research, rather, they were part of a deliberate strategy of disinformation meant to tar the revolutionary secret societies of the era with charges of sexual deviance, religious heresy, and occult practices (See: Disinformation)

   As with so much disinformation involving secret societies, however, von Hammer-Purgstall's assault on the Templars had the unintended consequence of creating new secret societies on the model of the disinformation project - on this case. making sexual deviance, religious heresy, and occult practices popular among would-be Templars. France was the scene of most of these transformations, as von Hammer-Purgstall's book arrived there in the middle of a full-blown Templar renaissance. This was launched by Bernard Fabre-Palaprat, a Freemason who in 1894 announced that he had a charter dating back to the time of Jacques de Moray himself. According to this document, the Charter of Transmissions, de Moray had passed of the Grand Mastership of the Templars to one Johannes Marcus Larmenius, who kept the order alive in secret and passed it on his turn. The charter is an eighteen-century forgery and Lamenius apparently never existed, but the ploy allowed Bernard Fabre-Palaprat, to launch his own Order of the Temple and attract hundreds of members.

 The Templar revival quickly found common ground with the burgeoning French alternative scene. By 1828 fRench Templars were claiming a direct descent from the ancient Gnostics and Eliphas Levi's immensely influential 1869 'Histoire de la Magie (History of Magic) argued that the Templars were Gnostic sorcerers practicing the true, magical Christianity of jesus as passed on through the "secret church" of the apostle John, and their idol Baphonet was the goat-symbol of the all-powerful astral Light, the mysterious substance that made magic possible *See: Gnosticism Magic).

  By 1903 the 'Aryan Racial Mystic' Jorg Lanz von Liebentels was laying the foundations for the Ordo Novi Tempi (ONT-Order of News Templars), a racists occult oder that foreshadowed Hitler's SS. In 1906 the Order Templi Orients (OTO- Order of Templar Orients), which practiced a system of sex magic borrowed from magical orders of its time, was established, and in 1912 Aleister Crowley, for whole sexual deviation, religious heresy, and occult practices were the breath of life, took charge of the OTO in England and America and proclaimed to his 'New Templars', a gospel very nearly identical with Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall's fantasies (See: Crowley, Aleister; Ordo Novi Templi -ONT; Ordo Templi Orients -OTO).

     Nor was this the last hurrah of the Templars. All the elements of the Templar mythology just surveyed remain live option in the alternative scene today, and many have penetrated popular culture as well. Bestselling books repeat the old claims of a Templar origin for Freemasonry and link the Templars to Gnostics, Assassins, and others. New elements have entered the myth in recent years; Pierre Pantard's extraordinary  Priority of Sion hoax. and its various mutations at the hands of other authors, grafted as entirely new body of fable onto the existing mythology, centering on the Merovingian Kinds of Dark Age France, the alleged mysteries of 'Rennes-le-Chateau', an exotic accounts of Christian origins. These same speculative claims have also fond a home in the world of popular fiction, most notably in Dan Brown's bestselling novel -'The Da Vinci Code -2005'.

   In recent years new Templar orders of various kinds have sprouted throughout the Western World, promoting almost every imaginable ideology except the orthodox Catholicism that motivated the original Templars. The reaction of he simple, devout soldier-monks of the Knights Templar to all this can scarcely be imagined.

Further reading: Barber-1978; Barber-1994;Partner-1981; Upton-Ward-1992)

 

 

 

Ordo Novi Tempi (Order of the Novi Tempi- The Order of New Templars) P.371

 

 

Ordo Novi Tempi was one of the most influential secret societies  in central Europe in the proto-Nazi underworld of the early twentieth century. The Order of New Templars (ONT) was founded by Austrian occultist, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-19540 in Vienna in 1907. A defrocked Benedictine Monk, Lanz (the "von Liebenfels" was an affectation) had become convinced that the mystery cults of the ancient world had been devoted to deviant sex with subhuman dwarfs and that the original Aryans had been god-like beings possessed of strange electrical-psychic powers, which had been lost to humanity due to inbreeding with subhuman dwarfs.

  In 1905 Lanz published his magnum opus....

...." Theozoologie, oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-Afflingen and den Gotter-Elektron (Theozoology, or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and Electron of the Gods)", which  expounded his theory in vast and titillating detail.

    These ideas won Lanz a following in German and Australian racists circles, and enabled him to launch a successful magazine, Otara, which combined reactionary politics and anti-semetic diatribes with long dis-quisitions about "Theozoology" and the lost occult powers of the ancient Aryans, Lanz also became active in the Ariosophical scene, and was a founding members of the Guido von List Society, the parent body of the Hohere Armanen-Order (Higher Armanen-Order, HAO), another Ariosophical secret society (See: Hohere Armanen-Orden -HAO).

  In 1907 Lanz attracted enough following to launch a secret society of his own, The Ordo Novi Tempi was headquartered at Burg Werfenstein, a medieval castle on the Danube donated by a wealthy supporter (may well have been an Old Knight Templar), and combined Lanz's theories with a ritual system devoted to the new racial gnosis of "Electron and the Holy Grail". Daily ceremonies of Matins (dawn), Prime (noon), and Compline (night) included Aryan hymns, liturgical readings, and devotional imagery on Lanz's monastic background. The ONT liturgy expanded to fill seven large volumes by the time it was completed in the  mid-1920's.

   Advancement in the order depended largely on the candidate's percentage of Aryan blood, as determined by stringent tests devised by Lanz. Those with less than 50 per cent Aryan ancestry could never advance beyond the lowest degree of Server; those with 50 per cent or above could become Novices and then Masters, while a minimum of 75 per cent was required to reach the degree of Canon. Masters or Canons who founded a new chapter of the order received the title of Prebyter, while Presbyters whose chapters had more than five Masters or Canons were advanced to the rank of Prior.

  The racial tests and ritual life of the ONT helped inspire Heinrich Himmler's reinvention of the SS as a "Deutsche Mannerbund ("Order of German Manhood")" dedicated to racial purity and service to the Nazi cause. Despite these similarities, or just possibly because of them, the ONT was banned in Germany as soon as the Nazi Government took power, and abolished in Australia after the "anschluss" of 1938. Lanz himself had the good sense to move to Switzerland in 1ª33, and remained there through the war years. IN 1946 Lanz returned home to Vienna, and revived the ONT. The ONT remains active today in Austria, Germany and several central European countries (See: National Socialism; SS -Schutzstaffel).

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Brotherhood

by Stephen Knight –published 1984

The Dissidents – Chapter 16 _ages 140 to  149

One of my major sources of information was a former Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander of the Thirty-First degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite who has withdrawn form masonry in 1968 for religious reasons.. her agreed to be interviewed by me through a third party concerning his conviction that no active Christian could in all conscience remain a Freemason…

When I met him I learned he was a judge, and a particularly quick-tempered one .. I asked him about the Ancient and Accepted Rite of the Thirty-Third degree, he answered quickly: ‘Nom I dare not go into that’, her said ….’we’d better stick to religion… I thought immediately afterwards how strange it was he had used the words ‘dare not’, Most people said, ‘I’d better not’, or ‘I’d rather not’… I remarked on his used of the world. He said, ‘Anyone in public life has to be cautious.’ ..’Cautious’.. I repeated. “That’s a Masonic word of recognition.”..

He then said, ‘You’ve obviously delved into the ritual, so you know…..’

… ‘Mr Knight, I don’t like this line of questioning. I agreed to speak to you in general terms about why my commitment to Jesus is incompatible with Masonic religion …. I do not wish to be drawn into discussion of matters covered by whatever undertakings I have … taken…

I went on to tell the judge ..’I have heard form quite a lot of contacts about organized action groups of Freemasons that have resulted in the financial or social ruin of certain people, ‘ I said..

The judge replied.. ‘So have I’…’ ..still looking me straight in the eye as if telling me this was an important issue and point of fact…’ So have I Mr Knight… No of such happenings which had the backing of official Freemasonry, but of actions which were unofficial, in other words, Masons abusing the Craft for their own ends..’…’You know the answer to that form what I have said.. ‘I have also heard about people who have .crossed’ certain masons and finished up in prison…’ He then stopped me in mid-sentence by placing a finger on his lips ... ’if I told you everything about Freemasonry, being betrayed by its members, it would surprise you… it would make your hair stand on end … I can’t tell you any more..’ he said…then he said.. Give me your phone number, you might hear from someone in a few days…’… His finger went back to his lips and he went to fetch my coat .. as he left he said, ‘God Bless’…

A few days later received as phone call from a man calling himself Christopher whom I ended up having along meeting at his private club and he showed me his papers to show him bona fide ID and Freemason membership… I asked him what a person might have to fear from a group of influential Freemason if circumstances made him, for instance, a threat to them in the business world; or if he discovered they were using masonry for corrupt purposes; or had fallen victim of their misuse of Freemasonry and would not heed warnings not to oppose them…

He replied..’.. It is not difficult to ruin a man,’ he said, ‘And I will tell you how it is done time and time again.. there are more that half a million Freemasonry Craft Brethren (In 1883) just in England and Wales and over 400,000 in Scotland (in 1983) under the jurisdiction of Grand Lodge.. Standards have been falling for twenty or thirty years, it is now too easy to enter the Craft, so many men of dubious moral have now joined the Craft… about 12-13% abuse the Craft for selfish and/or corrupt ends.. (that is about 60,000 in England and Wales and about 40,000 in Scotland)..

Note: Christopher was one of a small and unpopular group within Masonry who some time in the early 1970’s had decided that either they had to get out of the Brotherhood or they had to so something ‘to stop the rot’, which the ‘blinkered officers of Great Queen Street refuse to admit was there..’

This group wanted pressure brought to bear on those in positions of responsibility within the Brotherhood to put Freemasonry’s house in order.. to instate proper policing, to close down Lodges used for shady dealings and to root out corrupt brethren and expel them, they also wanted the whole business of Masonic secrecy looked into by Grand Lodge, most of them believing that secrecy was more harmful than helpful to Masonry..

 Christopher explained that Masonry’s nationwide organization of men form all walks of life provided one of the most efficient private intelligence networks imaginable, private information on anybody in the country could be accessed very rapidly through endless permutations of Masonic contacts in the police, magistrates, solicitors, bank managers, Post Office staff (‘very useful is supplying copies of a man’s mail’), doctors, government employees, bosses of firms and nationalized industries etc. etc. …. A dossier of personal data could be built up on anybody very quickly.. when the major facts of an individual’s life were known, areas of vulnerability would become apparent…

I asked what action might be taken?..

“ Solicitors are very good at it…Get your name involved in something legal it need not be serious and you have him,, Solicitors are past masters a causing endless delays, generating useless paperwork, ignoring instructions, running up immense bills, misleading client into taking decisions damaging to themselves etc etc..

‘Masonic police can harass, arrest on false charges, and plant evidence.. ‘ A business man in a small community or a person in public office arrested for dealing in child pornography, for indent exposure, or for trafficking drugs is at the end of the line..’

‘Masons can bring about the situation where credit companies and band withdraw credit facilities form individual clients and tradesmen, said my informant..

People who rely on their telephone for work can have it cut off for long periods, Masonic employees of councils can arrange for a person's drains to be inspected and extensive damage reported etc etc..

 

Stephen Knight the author of

the Brotherhood who died aged 33 ......18 months after publishing his book

                             A dramatic moment during Freemason third degree ceremony

The Brotherhood

by Stephen Knight –published 1984

The Dissidents – Chapter 16 _ages 140 to  149

One of my major sources of information was a former Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander of the Thirty-First degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite who has withdrawn form masonry in 1968 for religious reasons.. her agreed to be interviewed by me  through a third party concerning his conviction that no active Christian could in all conscience remain a Freemason…

When I met him I learned he was a judge, and a particularly quick-tempered one .. I asked him about the Ancient and Accepted Rite of the Thirty-Third degree, he answered quickly: ‘Nom I dare not go into that’, her said ….’we’d better stick to religion… I thought immediately afterwards how strange it was he had used the words ‘dare not’, Most people said, ‘I’d better not’, or ‘I’d rather not’… I remarked on his used of the world. He said, ‘Anyone in public life has to be cautious.’ ..’Cautious’.. I repeated. “That’s a Masonic word of recognition.”..

He then said, ‘You’ve obviously delved into the ritual, so you know…..’

… ‘Mr Knight, I don’t like this line of questioning. I agreed to speak to you in general terms about why my commitment to Jesus is incompatible with Masonic religion …. I do not wish to be drawn into discussion of matters covered by whatever undertakings I have … taken…

I went on to tell the judge ..’I have heard form quite a lot of contacts about organized action groups of Freemasons that have resulted in the financial or social ruin of certain people, ‘ I said..

The judge replied.. ‘So have I’…’ ..still looking me st5raight in the eye as if telling me this was an important issue and point of fact…’ So have I Mr Knight… No of such happenings which had the backing of official Freemasonry, but of actions which were unofficial, in other words, Masons abusing the Craft for their own ends..’…’You know the answer to that form what I have said.. ‘I have also heard about people who have .crossed’ certain masons and finished up in prison…’ He then stopped me in mid-sentence by placing a finger on his lips ... ’if I told you everything about Freemasonry, being betrayed by its members, it would surprise you… it would make your hair stand on end … I can’t tell you any more..’ he said…then he said.. Give me your phone number,, you might hear from someone in a few days…’… His finger went back to his lips and he went to fetch my coat .. as he left he said, ‘God Bless’…

A few days later received as phone call from a man calling himself Christopher whom I ended up having along meeting at his private club and he showed me his papers to show him bona fide ID and Freemason membership… I asked him what a person might have to fear from a group of influential Freemason if circumstances made him, for instance, a threat to them in the business world; or if he discovered they were using masonry for corrupt purposes; or had fallen victim of their misuse of Freemasonry and would not heed warnings not to oppose them…

He replied..’.. It is not difficult to s=ruin a man,’ he said, ‘And I will tell you how it is done time and time again.. there are more that half a million Freemasonry Craft Brethren (In 1883) just in England and Wales and over 400,000 in Scotland ( in 1983) under the jurisdiction of Grand Lodge.. Standards have been falling for twenty or thirty years , it is now too easy to enter the Craft, so many men of dubious moral have now joined the Craft… about 12-13% abuse the Craft for selfish and/or corrupt ends.. (that is about 60,000 in England and Wales and about 40,000 in Scotland)..

Note: Christopher was one of a small and unpopular group within Masonry who some time in the early 1970’s had decided that either they had to get out of the Brotherhood or they had to so something ‘to stop the rot’, which the ‘blinkered officers of Great Queen Street refuse to admit was there..’

This group wanted pressure brought to bear on those in positions of responsibility  within the Brotherhood to put Freemasonry’s house in order.. to instate proper policing, to close down Lodges used for shady dealings and to root out corrupt brethren and expel them, they also wanted the whole business of Masonic secrecy looked into by Grand Lodge, most of them believing that secrecy was more harmful than helpful to Masonry..

 Christoper explained that Masonry’s nationwide organization of men form all walks of life provided one of the most efficient private intelligence networks imaginable, private information on anybody in the country could be accessed very rapidly through endless permutations of Masonic contacts in the police, magistrates, solicitors, bank managers, Post Office staff (‘very useful is supplying copies of a man’s mail’), doctors, government employees, bosses of firms and nationalized industries etc. etc. …. A dossier of personal data could be built up on anybody very quickly.. when the major facts of an individual’s life were known, areas of vulnerability would become apparent…

I asked what action might be taken?..

“ Solicitors are very good at it…Get your name involved in something legal it need not be serious and you have him,, Solicitors are past masters a causing endless delays, generating useless paperwork, ignoring instructions, running up immense bills, misleading client into taking decisions damaging to themselves etc etc..

‘ Masonic police can harass, arrest on false charges, and plant evidence.. ‘ A business man in a small community or a person in public office arrested for dealing in child pornography, for indent exposure, or for trafficking drugs is at the end of the line..’

‘ Masons can bring about the situation where credit companies and band withdraw credit facilities form individual clients and tradesmen, said my informant..

People who rely on their telephone for work can have it cut off for long periods, Masonic employees of councils can arrange for a persons drains to be inspected and extensive damage reported etc etc..

Chapter 28

The Threat To Britain P 297 to 303

  The "Chinaman Report" goes further than drawing attention t the KBG's almost certain use of Freemasonry for placing operatives in positions of authority, most damagingly achieved, so far as we know, such as in the case of Sir Roger Hollis, who was the director-general of the M!% service in the critical years 1956 to 1965 (as convincingly demonstrated by Chapman Pincher in his controversial study of Russia's infiltration of the West's secret services and defenses in his book 'Their Trade is Treachery)'. few people in MI5 now doubt that Hollis was a Russian spy for nearly 30 years and a respected Freemason having joined when he was in Shanghai, China in the 1930's working an international tobacco company along with then spending time in Russia..

(From Chap 27)..Of the many mysteries surrounding Sire Roger Hollis, one of the most baffling is how Hollis  was ever accepted into M!% in the first place, Hollis was quite the opposite of what was required. In MI5, as opposed to MI6, which operates abroad, there is a great reluctance to accept candidates who have travelled widely out of the U,K. In the 1930's  when Hollis was recruited this stipulation was more easily met than it is today. For this reason and other reasons. Hollis was most unlikely candidate to be allowed to join the MI5 organization...Hollis did badly at university, having thrown in the towel in 1926 afer only two years, then worked in London for a while and set off for China, Hollis then became stranded with only $10 in his pocket in Malaya, where he got a job with an international tobacco company in Penang and was later transferred to the company's offices in Shanghai. Hollis moved around China for the next nine years, working at Peking, Hangkow and Dairen. After this, Hollis contracted tuberculous, and travelled to a swiss sanatorium by way of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok. spending some time in Russia All this, especially his time in Russia, should have been an insuperable obstacle to any hopes he had of joining MI5... So it proved.. at first,..Even after Hollis's treatment that his health was not strong enough for Hollis to continue working the tobacco company, so early in 1936 Hollis went back to England....''Even Hollis's friend agreed that Hollis was not particularly talented', wrote Chapman Pincher, who describes Hollis at the time of his return to England as 'basically a broken man': 'Though surprisingly athletic, Hollis was to retain the look of someone who had had contracted tuberculous and Hollis became progressively round-shouldered that he looked almost hunched...he had no degree, his health was suspect and his experience in China was not likely to be helpful in securing a post in England...the only work Hollis could find at the time was as a clerk-typist. .... However, through an army major Hollis met, Hollis secured an interview with MI5.. Hollis was turned down and told that his experience abroad might be useful to MI6,,so hollis then applied to join MI6, but Hollis was turned down for health reasons from the MI6 service. Then when Hollis applied to join MI5 for the second time later that year nothing had changed as far as Hollis' ability, background and health ,,except the mind of MI5... miraculously....completely against any sort of normality given Hollis had already been turned down by MI5 and MI6 on previous occasions.. Hollis was hired by MI%... it is noted that the director-general of MI5 at the time was Major General Sir Vernon Kell, who happened to be a Freemason ..almost everything against him, Hollis had got into MI5... What is even more remarkable. was the rate in which Hollis was promoted within the MI5 service once Hollis got in... this astonished his colleagues them and still cannot be explained by any of the MI5 officers, current and retired, with whom I (Stephen Knight) have had contact either directly or through intermediaries. this is one of the great mysteries of Sir Roger Hollis,.. Even though it was against regulations for any MI5 or MI6 officer to be a Freemason - and this, incidentally, must presumably indicate that membership of Freemasonry was regarded as a threat to security- several MI5 officers were in the Freemasonry Brotherhood - Among them was man called Potter, who was in charge of the hugh MI5 card index, which is now computerized... such a man would be good to have as a friend... But is was Freemasonry that got Hollis against all odds into the MI5 service and took Hollis, the unlikeliest of all its officers, to the very top of MI5 .. the likeliest key to the mystery of Hollis is Shanghai and the time Hollis spent there for the British American Tobacco Company in the 1930's... the European community in Shanghai was small.. the English-speaking community was of course smaller and very tight-knit, Virtually every Englishman arriving in Shanghai gravitated to the Masonic Hall at 1623, Avenue Road, Shanghai .. Freemasonry had flourished among the British expatriates here and at the previous masonic Hall at 30 The Bund, Shanghai, since the mid-1800's .. In the 1930's, when Hollis was in Shanghai, the tradition of Freemasonry there was at its zenith.. A man who was not a Mason was at a grave disadvantage in achieving whatever social or professional ambitions he had...Almost everyone I have contacted who knew Hollis, including MI5 officers past and present, has reacted similarly to the suggestion that the former director-general Sir Roger Hollis was a member of the Freemason Brotherhood. - that was just the kind of man, extremely secretive by nature, with few friendships and with small prospect of advancement - who would join Masonry in order to exploit its covert advantages ...Freemasonry, said the contacts, offered the first explanation to the Hollis mystery, his otherwise inexplicable acceptance and his phenomenal rate of promotion.....it is understood that Hollis's immediate predecessor as director-general of the MI5 security service, Sir Dick Goldsmith White, was also a Freemason, who was the only man to have ever been both the head of MI5 and MI6, having moved from MI^ to MI5 in 1956 to take over the MI5 secret service from Sir John 'Sinbad' Sinclair...  Despite his impressive record and qualifications, the unprecedented transfer was viewed by many within MI6 as dangerous and as something which, once again breaking all the traditional rules governing the secure operation of the two services, should never have been allowed. It was Sir Dick Goldsmith White. who on his appointment as MI5 Secret Service Chief, recommended Hollis as his successor to premier Anthony Eden....Holllis' treachery should have come to light in the late 1940's when Sir Percy Sillitoe was director-general of MI5..As A.W. Cockerill, Sillitoe's biographer, points out, 'practically the entire effort of the MI5 Service form 1946 on, and until long after Sillitoe's retirement, was directed at identrifying and weeding out Communists from positions in which they posed a threat to national security'. Cockerill states that one of Sillitoe's first actions after getting settled into the job as MI5 chief was to carry out a purge, for which he had something of a reputation in his former career in the police..

'" In the case of MI5m he was primarily interested in the political reliability of his staff, and a number of employees were forced to leave for one reason or another.... Beginning with those whose credentials were 'impeccable', he carried out a systematic security check of the entire establishment, This was a programme in which the internal security officers combed through each personal file as though the person concerned was a newcomer; the individual's history was checked and rechecked, membership in clubs, societies and social organizations was investigated anew to ensure that the service itself was 'clean'..."

  But Sillitoe, without knowing it, was fighting an impossible battle,,, with the man in charge of all the personal records being a member of the Freemasonry Brotherhood, Sillitoe would never be allowed to learn that Hollis's mans of entry to the MI5 Service had been by way of a masonic Lodge in China and a Masonic Director-General of MI5.. In is an interesting fact that the Freemason Lodge membership lists of the Shanghair Lodges between the wards are among the lost closely guarded secrets of the United Grand Lodge.. Several attempts by concerned Freemason members of the Brotherhood to get try and hold of these files through the ordinary channels have been always blocked ... it is evident that those lists of names contain something so explosive, so potentially damaging to the Brotherhood, that it will not permit them to be examined even by senior Masons,,

Whose name is being concealed???

 If not...Sir Roger Hollis????

Chapter 28: The Threat To Britain continued

The Chinaman Report also expresses concern that British Freemasonry as a whole is, quite unknown to tis members, a major target for so-called 'Special Political action' for the KGB, The Chinaman Report states among other things"

" ...sheer prudence demands that the lessons of the P2 affair receive the attention of all who have the interests of the UK and the West at heart, masons and no-masons alike... The affair has so far been tot he considerable advantage of the Soviet Union and the Communists, which alone of the political parties ( conveniently) has no known members among the listed names published by order of the Prime Minister,, Has P2 continued its secret growth and unacceptable activities, the inevitable scandal could have brought down with it non-Communist government in Italy,,,Yet Italian Freemasonry has been estimated as of the order of under 100,000 - a mere tenth of the supposed UK total for roughly similar population,..."

In the Uk he Brotherhood enjoys the inestimable advantage of royal patronage... The Chinaman Report suggested that 'the Italian affair is a serious warning form which important lessons can be drawn ..The UK could well prove very much more vulnerable to exposure of improper activities by a group of FReemasons than is Italy...'

According to the Chinaman Report There are two reasons for this:

",,,First, Masonry so permeates so many revered British institutions form the Crown downwards, that a grave masonic scandal could in modern circumstances involved popular revulsion against the whole established order ...Government and Business ...

Second, the proportion of Masons to non-Masons in some professions and other walks of life, including areas of Government, appears to have reached a critical point: the point at which people believe themselves obliged to join Freemasonry, no longer voluntarily, but from a feeling of compulsion...."

..This statement is certainly accurate, as my own enquiries have revealed..

.."Masons and non-Masons alike seem increasingly to fear the potential of the fraternity (Freemason) to ruin them (if they in any way upset the Freemason Fraternity or tty to take them on in any way)...At such a point it becomes hard to find in certain areas vital to the state an adequate numbers of competent persons who are non-masons to prevent such a vacuum as now threaten Italy were al the officers of the armed forces of General rank named in the P2 documents to be required to retire (because of being exposed and named as members of the P2..

Third, there is much circumstantial evidence that more ruthless elements have joined Freemasonry and are using up the find of respectability that Royal patronage confers to indulge in activities which reputable members would find quite unacceptable were they aware of the extent of the abuse (of Freemasonry)..This of course, is a danger inherent in all secretive societies for their cellular from devised by the founders for the security of the movement, can as readily be used to 'hoodwink" the leadership, who thus become unwitting 'front men' for activities they would never countenance,..."

..The Chinaman Report alludes to the argument that there has not been a masonic scandal of major proportions in modern times and the contention that should one occur, it could readily be contained by the Brotherhood by mean of both public expulsions and cover-uos. the Chinaman Report continues:

"...This may possibly be so... But British society as a whole is changing rapidly..The established order of things developed over the past thousand years in no longer so widely and so automatically accepted as in even recent past ....Many, of all political hues, consider some of our institutions archaic and in need of reform.. this view is fueled by the loss of national self-confidence and national pride following from the loss of Empire and our very poor showing in the list of advanced industrial societies,, Disrespect for those in authority is already considerable and is increasing at an accelerating rate: such rife dissatisfaction soon comes to seek a scapegoat, such as 'the Establishment' provides... But out institutions - both public and private - seem incapable of reforming themselves and performing the 'aggiornamento' the thoughtful of all moderate persuasions are increasingly coming to expect...

...Against this worsening background it would be rash to suppose that the methods of the pas to contain scandals and irregularities in Masonry ( or indeed in anything else) will still be adequate by, say, the end of the decade. And this is to count without the intentions of the KBG...

The possibility that the KGB has along-term interest in British FReemasonry must be taken seriously..For to any trained intelligence officer, Freemasonry offers an ideal vehicle for the destabilization of the United Kingdom. to make two points:

(1) there has for some time ben practically no mention of Freemasonry in the media: for widespread and important a movement this almost amounts to a taboo- any serious, well documented exposure of substantial malpractices could be expected to have a disproportionate shock effect. We are not yet so cynical and so inured to scandal as the Italians.

(2) Second, the KBG - itself growing out of a clandestine movement's seizure of state power, well understands the organization, motivation and other problems of secret societies (particularly of Communication records, and the use of a reputable ''front'') and is thus ideally qualified to exploit Freemasonry for its own ends,,"

  ..here the Chinaman Report constructs, form its thirty-year knowledge of the KGB's political methods and of the inner workings of British Freemasonry -with the P2 conspiracy forming a bridge between the two - a scenario which to my certain knowledge senior official of both MI5 and MI6 regard with utmost gravity. ..the man code-names Chinaman suggest that the most likely method of attack would follow the pattern of P2 - in other words, the KGB, doubtless through Czech intelligence, would attempt to hive off a promising area of Freemasonry and encourage its growth...

"....The more prominent those unwittingly involved, the greater the ultimate effect - provided the top echelon ( of Freemasonry) were carefully preserved untainted..Another phase would be deliberately to encourage and exacerbate existing abuses for personal advancement at the expense of non-Masons.. Arrogance would be inflated to a point where the Masons concerned would become over-confident and incautious ..... the KGB would then obtain and collate documentary and circumstantial evidence in as many spheres of activity as possible ...

...Once sufficient material has been gathered, the KGB would be prepared to wait years if required until directed to mount an exposure at a politically appropriate juncture.. Then the 'fuse' would be lit for example by arranging for a blackmail operation to fail, or a 'Soviet 'defector' to arrive perhaps in the US, and point conclusively to KBG involvement in Masonry ..Media and Government enquiries could them be fed with supplementary evidence garnered for the purpose over the years,, Names would be called....Confusion would be sown by including the righteous (chosen for their effectiveness in opposition to Soviet designs)with the guilty (chosen for their publicity value) : in such circumstances lies mixed with incontrovertible truths would be hard to winnow.

  If the right moment for 'ignition' were chosen the disaster could be very great. ...One only need only to remember the effect on each occasion of the news of Fuchs's espionage (Klaus Emil Julian Fuchs, was convicted in 1950 of passing British American atomic research secrets tot eh Soviet Union), the Maclean and Burgess defections, the Philby case, the Blunt exposure and the recent public allegations regarding the late Sir Roger Hollis, to appreciate the effect of well documented exposures at one time of even fifty prominent persons - let alone nearly a thousand as in the Italian P2 case.."

  Chinaman makes it plain that short of information from some formerly well-placed genuine defector, there is no certain means of knowing whether the Soviet Union is operating such a plan..

"..I simply suggest that it is self-evident that the possibility should be taken seriously and appropriate defensive action taken if this has not already been done adequately.."

..I can reveal that no such defensive action has yet been taken because prior to the submission of the Chinaman Report, no one had considered  the possible exploitation of Freemasonry. No one knew enough about the Brotherhood for it to present itself as a possibility. Chinaman suggests measures to minimize the effects of any KGB-promorted exposure in two main ways:

 "..(1) First, by ensuring that we are not 'caught' with persons holding certain key delicate positions being Masons ... From my own experience (as well as reports of the P2 case) I would hope for example that the heads of both the MI5 Secret Intelligence Service and the MI6 Security Service are not (again) permitted to be Freemasons, and that  the regulations of these two services now provide for any Masons to declare their adherence to the head of the service concerned personally (as already stated, MI5 officers are banned from joining the Brotherhood, but this has not prevented several MI5 officer from being members of the Freemasonry Brotherhood).. I believe that the same should apply o MI6 Special Branch. Masons who are already members of MI5 and/or MI6 branches of Government could provide a valuable link to Freemasonry in  the MI5 and MI6 services, in the service of the State, if they are not so acting already.. In other Government Departments, arrangements could ensure that heads of personnel sections be non-Masons, and that they have a right of access to the Director-General of the Security Service, ..The legal professions- presently the object of increasing public disquiet because of its alleged tendency to protect its own - is a particular problem given the large number of Freemasons (in the legal profession in the United Kingdom)

(2) The Second direction I would concentrate upon would be legislation. It seems to me, for instance, far less likely that any deliberate organized exposure would cause serious and lasting damage to the benefit of the pro-Communist left and the Soviet Union, if all citizens had the legal right, if the elected, to a written assurance that any professional person they consulted is not a member of any secret society, including Freemason and similar or related groupings:  an untrue denial rendering the professional person liable to criminal proceedings.. I appreciate the very great difficulties, but possibly in the not too far distant future in the wake if the P2 affair, some measure along these lines might be passed ... In the Government service Masons in delicate areas would come to know that for security reasons a few positions were closed to the: this too would help shift the balance of advantage..

...Such measures could, I believe, also incidentally lead to a significant improvement in Britain's performance in many places, lessening the possibility that the more dynamic, more forward-looking and better qualified may be passed over to the detriment of government and industrial efficiency ... I repeat, though, that I am well aware that I have not the qualifications for suggesting counter-measures, that I have for setting out the dangers,,,'

..I have discussed the ChinaMan Report in general terms and off the record with several high; placed officials and with three former Cabinet Ministers, all of whom told me that if such a report came into their hans when they were in office hey would have initiated an enquiry, IN March 1982, having contacted Foreign ~Secretary Lord Carrington and been assured by him that he was not a Freemason Brotherhood, I was on the point of raising it with him.. The Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and Britain lost on of its most able ministers.

  And here another link is forged between Licio Gelli (P2 founder and controller), hiz Oviet Masters, and the important task P2 had been created to perform in th continuing programme to destabilize the West, After Licio Gelli's flight from Italy. Licio Gelli did not go hiding beyond the Iron Curtain as suggested by the perspicacious Peter Hebblethwaithe...Most informed sources  believed Licio Gelli was in Argentina, where he had exercised so much influence in the past and where, I suggest. Geberal Galtieri was Licio Gelli's new Peron, It cannot be a coincidence that Admiral Emilo Massera, the commander of the Argentine Navy and one of the three-man junta that launched the Falkland invasion, and the commander of the Argentine Fits Army, General Calos Suarez Mason, we`re both secret members of Lodge P2.

Epiloque of The Brotherhood

by Stephen Knight –published 1984 Pages 304 to 308:

On the 18th June 1982 the dead body of a middle-aged man was found hanging by the neck from a rope suspended from Scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge, London. The pockets pf his black suit contained nearly £23,000 in various currencies and were weighted with 12 pounds of builder's blocks. He was Rpberto Clvi, presdent of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano. who in 1981 had been named a member of Licio Gelli's illegal Freemasonic Lodge Propaganda Due (P2). Calvi was later found guilty by an Italian court of illegally exporting $26.4 million to Switzerland and received a four year suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay a fine of equivalent to £7.3 million, A week later he was confirmed as chairman of Banco Ambrosiano. In April 1982 Calvi's deputy at the bank was wounded by a would-be assassin. Known as 'God's banker', Calvi had been closely linked with Instituto per le Opere di Religione (IOP), the Vatican Bank, for years. A number of highly questionable transactions involving the Vatican Bank, Calvi and Banco Ambrosiano subsidiaries in Latin America and elsewhere led the Bank of Italy to launch an investigation. oN the last day of May 1982 the Bank of Italy demanded an explanation for loans of $1,400 million ( $1.4 billion) made by Banco Ambrosiano subsidiaries to several companies registered in Panama owned directly or indirectly by the Vatican Bank. This precipitated a run on Ambrosiano's shares, and eleven days later Calvis disappeared in Rome. Using a false passport. Calvi fled to Austria and then to England. arriving at Gatwick on the 15th June. 1982 and travelled straight to London where he remained for several days in an apartment in Chelsea Cloisters. On the 17th June, 1982 the Bank of Italy seized control of Banco Ambrosiano and trading in its shares was suspended after they had dropped twenty percent in value in one day. Ambrosiano's directors resigned and Calvi's secretary- Graziela Corrocher - who kept the books of Lodge P2 - jumped, or was pushed, to her death from,a four-flour window at the bank, Graziela Corrocher left behind her what was obviously intended to be taken as a suicide note, although there is more tan a small doubt that this was genuine.. The note said: 'May Calvi be double cursed for the damage he has caused to the bank and its employees,'

The following night Calvi's body was found hanging from the scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge, four miles from the apartment in Chelsea Cloisters. Even as the Daily Express postal clerk who found the body was hastening to call the police, Italian police were busy chartering a plane ..and a party of high officials arrived at Gatwick a few hours later..

 There were many rumours: The Mafia, with whom Calvi had connections, had murdered him; frightened and despairing, he had committed suicide; he had been ritually done the death by Freemasons. a masonic 'cable-tow' around his neck and his pockets filled symbolically with chunks of masonry, the location of the murder being chosen for its name - i Italy, the logo of the Brotherhood is the figure of a Blackfriar.

....But a City of London inquest later decided that Calvi had committed suicide, a verdict the banker's family immediately announced its intention to challenge... Italian police, and a number of City of London police associated with the case, are convinced it was murder...a further inquest in 1983, the jury returned an open verdict....as for the reason for the death of Calvi

  The mystery of Calvi's death deepens rather than clarifies with time. It is inextricably bound up with the riddle of P2, the KGB penetration of Freemasonry, and Freemasonry's penetration not only of the Roman Catholic Church, but also of the Vatican itself... At the time this book goes to press, investigations are continuing into Banco Ambrosianos link with the enigmatic president of the Vatican bank, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, and into the continuing international reverberations of the P2 lodge conspiracy.

 Meanwhile, Licio Gelli has since been arrested in Switzerland where he was attempting to withdraw nearly $100 million from several numbered accounts at Genva's Union Bank - money belonging to Banco Ambrosiano..Gelli awaits the outcome of extradition proceedings,,,

Meanwhile, too, Andropov, had of the KGB when the P2 plot was hatched, now sits at the pinnacle of Soviet power and diverts ever more funds towards the KGB's activities in the West, the exploitation of Freemasonry included