Global Freemasonry

Introduction

Freemasonry is a subject that has attracted much discussion for several centuries. Some have accused Masonry of fantastic crimes and misdeeds. Instead of trying to understand "the Brotherhood," and criticizing it objectively, critics have been unduly hostile to the organization. For their part, Masons have deepened an ordinary social club-which they are not.

This book contains a correct exposition of Masonry as a school of thought. The most important unifying their traditional reticence in the face of these accusations, preferring to present themselves as influence among Masons is their philosophy-which can be best described according to such terms as "materialism" and "secular humanism." But, it is an errant philosophy based on false suppositions and flawed theories. This is the basic starting-point from which Masonry must be criticized.

It is necessary to point out from the start that such criticism is important; not only to inform non-Masons on the subject, but also to invite Masons themselves to see the truth. Of course, Masons, like everyone else, are free to choose for themselves, and can adopt whatever worldview they wish and to live in accordance with it. This is their natural right. But, others also have a right to expose their errors and to criticize them, and this is what this present book attempts to do.

We follow the same approach in our criticisms of other communities as well. Like the Jews for example. This book, in part, also deals with the history of Judaism and offers certain important criticisms. It must be pointed out that these have nothing to do with anti-Semitism or "Judeo-Masonic" conspiracy theories. Indeed, anti-Semitism is alien to a true Muslim. Jews are a people that at one time had been chosen by God and to whom He sent many prophets.

Throughout history they suffered much cruelty, even being subjected to genocide, but they never abandoned their identity. In the Qur'an, God calls them, together with Christians, the People of the Book, and enjoins Muslims to treat them kindly and justly. But, a necessary part of this justice is to criticize the errant beliefs and practices of some of them, to show them the path to true righteousness. But of course, their right to live according to what they believe in and desire is beyond question.

Global Freemasonry sets out from this premise, and investigates critically Masonry's roots, as well as its aims and activities. In this book, the reader will also find a summary of the history of the Masons' struggle against theistic religions. Freemasons have played an important role in Europe's alienation from religion, and in its place, founding of a new order based on the philosophies of materialism and secular humanism. We will also see how Masonry has been influential in the imposition of these dogmas to non-Western civilizations.

Finally, we will discuss the methods Masonry has used to help establish and perpetuate a social order based on these dogmas. Their philosophy and the methods they use to establish this philosophy will be exposed and criticized.

It is hoped that the important facts related in this book will be a means whereby many, including Masons, will be able to look at the world with better awareness.

After reading this book, the reader will be able to consider many subjects, from schools of philosophy to newspaper headlines, rock songs to political ideologies, with a deeper understanding, and better discern the meaning and aims behind events and factors.

The common perception of the majority of historians of Freemasonry is that the origin of the organization goes back to the Crusades. In fact, though Masonry was only officially established and recognized in England in the early eighteenth century, the roots of the organization do reach back to the Crusades in the twelfth century. At the center of this familiar tale is an order of crusaders called the Knights Templar or the Templars.

Six years before this present work, our book, entitled The New Masonic Order, examined the history of the Templars in great detail. For that reason, we will now offer just a summary. For, as we analyze the roots of Masonry, and the influence that it has had on the world, we discover the meaning of "Global Freemasonry."

No matter how much some may insist that the Crusades were military expeditions carried out in the name of the Christian faith, fundamentally, they were undertaken for material gain. In a period when Europe was experiencing great poverty and misery, the prosperity and wealth of the East, especially of the Muslim in the Middle East, attracted the Europeans.

This inclination took on a religious facade, and was ornamented with the symbols of Christianity, though, in actuality, the idea of the Crusades was born out of a desire for worldly gain. This was the reason for the sudden change among Christians of Europe from their former pacifist policies, in earlier periods of their history, towards military aggression.

The founder of the Crusades was Pope Urban II. He summoned the Council of Clermont, in 1095, in which the former pacifist doctrine of the Christians was abandoned. A holy war was called for, with the intent to wrest the holy lands from the hands of the Muslims. Following the council, a huge army of Crusaders was formed, composed both of professional soldiers, and tens of thousands of ordinary people.

Historians believe Urban II's venture was prompted by his desire to thwart the candidacy of a rival to the papacy. Furthermore, while European kings, princes, aristocrats and others greeted the pope's call with excitement, their intentions were basically mundane. As Donald Queller of The University of Illinois put it,

"the French knights wanted more land. Italian merchants hoped to expand trade in Middle Eastern ports... Large numbers of poor people joined the expeditions simply to escape the hardships of their normal lives."1 Along the way, this greedy mass slaughtered many Muslims, and even Jews, in hopes of finding gold and jewels.

The crusaders even cut open the stomachs of those they had killed to find gold and precious stones the victims may have swallowed before they died. So great was the material greed of the crusaders that they felt no qualms in sacking the Christian city of Constantinople (Istanbul) during the Fourth Crusade, when they stripped off the gold leaf from the Christian frescoes in the Hagia Sophia.

After a long and difficult journey, and much plunder and slaughter of Muslims, this motley band called Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099. When the city fell after a siege of nearly five weeks, the Crusaders moved in. They carried out a level of savagery the like of which the world has seldom seen. All Muslims and Jews in the city were put to the sword. In the words of one historian, "They killed all the Saracens and the Turks they found... whether male of female."2 One of the Crusaders, Raymond of Aguiles, boasted of this violence:

Wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one's way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are normally chanted ... in the Temple and the porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins.3

In two days, the Crusader army killed some 40,000 Muslims in the most barbaric manner.4 The crusaders then made Jerusalem their capital, and founded a Latin Kingdom stretching from the borders of Palestine to Antioch.

Later, the crusaders initiated a struggle to maintain their position in the Middle East. In order to sustain the state they had founded, it was necessary to organize it. To this end, they established military orders, the alike of which had never existed before. Members of these orders came from Europe to Palestine, and lived in a type of monastery where they received military training to fight against Muslims.

One of these orders, in particular, was different from the others. It underwent a transformation that would influence the course of history. This order was the Templars.

The Templars, or, their full name, The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ and the Temple of Solomon, was formed in 1118, that is, 20 years after the crusaders took Jerusalem. The founders of the order were two French knights, Hugh de Payens and Godfrey de St. Omer. At first there were 9 members, but the order steadily grew. The reason they named themselves after the temple of Solomon was because the place they had chosen as a base was the temple mount where this ruined temple had been located. This same location was where the Dome of the Rock (Qubbet as-Sakhrah) stood.

The Templars called themselves "poor soldiers," but within a short time they became very wealthy. Christian pilgrims, coming from Europe to Palestine, were under the complete control of this order, and by whose money they became very rich. In addition, for the first time they set up a cheque and credit system, similar to that of a bank. According to the British authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, they established a kind of Medieval capitalism, and led the way to modern banking through their interest-based transactions.5

It was the Templars who were mainly responsible for the crusaders' attacks of and murder of Muslims. For this reason, the great Islamic commander Saladin, who defeated the crusaders' army in 1187, in the Battle of Hattin, and afterwards rescued Jerusalem, put the Templars to death for the murders they had committed, even though he had otherwise pardoned a large number of Christians. Although they lost Jerusalem, and suffered heavy casualties, the Templars continued to exist. And, despite the continual diminution of the Christian presence in Palestine, they increased their power in Europe and, first in France, and then in other countries, became a state within a state.

There is no doubt that their political power made the monarchs of Europe uneasy. But there was another aspect of the Templars that also made the clergy ill at ease: the order had gradually apostatized from the Christian faith, and while in Jerusalem, had adopted a number of strange mystical doctrines. There were also rumors that they were organizing strange rites to give form to these doctrines.

Finally, in 1307, the French king Philip le Bel decided to arrest the members of the order. Some of them managed to escape but most of them were caught. Pope Clement V also joined the purge. Following a long period of interrogation and trial, many of the Templars admitted to heretical beliefs,

that they had rejected the Christian faith and insulted Jesus in their masses. Finally, the leaders of the Templars, who were called "grand masters," beginning with the most important of them, Jacques de Molay, were executed in 1314 by order of the Church and the King. The majority of them were put into prison, and the order dispersed and officially disappeared.

Some historians have a tendency to portray the trial of the Templars as a conspiracy on the part of the King of France, and depict the knights as innocent of the charges. But, this manner of interpretation fails in several aspects. Nesta H. Webster, the famous British historian with a great deal of knowledge on occult history, analyzes these aspects in her book, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements.

According to Webster, the tendency to absolve the Templars of the heresies they confessed to during the trial period is unjustified. First, during the interrogations, despite the standard claim, not all the Templars were tortured;

Moreover, do the confessions of the Knights appear to be the outcome of pure imagination such as men under the influence of torture might devise? It is certainly difficult to believe that the accounts of the ceremony of initiation given in detail by men in different countries, all closely resembling each other,

yet related in different phraseology, could be pure inventions. Had the victims been driven to invent they would surely have contradicted each other, have cried out in their agony that all kinds of wild and fantastic rites had taken place in order to satisfy the demands of their interlocutors. But no, each appears to be describing the same ceremony more or less completely, with characteristic touches that indicate the personality of the speaker, and in the main all the stories tally.6

Anyhow, the trial of the Templars ended with the termination of the order. But, although the order "officially" ceased to exist, it did not actually disappear. During the sudden arrest in 1307, some Templars escaped, managing to cover their tracks. According to a thesis based on various historical documents, a significant number of them took refuge in the only kingdom in Europe that did not recognize the authority of the Catholic Church in the fourteenth century, Scotland. There, they reorganized under the protection of the Scottish King, Robert the Bruce.

Some time later, they found a convenient method of disguise by which to continue their clandestine existence: they infiltrated the most important guild in the medieval British Isles-the wall builders' lodge, and eventually, they fully seized control of these lodges.7

The wall-builders' lodge changed its name, at the beginning of the modern era, calling itself the "Masonic lodge." The Scottish Rite is the oldest branch of Masonry, and dates back to the beginning of the fourteenth century, to those Templars who took refuge in Scotland. And, the names given to the highest degrees in Scottish Rite are titles attributed centuries earlier to knights in the order of Templars. These are still employed to this day.

In short, the Templars did not disappear, but their philosophy, beliefs and rituals still persist under the guise of Freemasonry. This thesis is supported by much historical evidence, and is accepted today by a large number of Western historians, whether they are Freemasons or not. In our book, The New Masonic Order, we examined this evidence in detail.

The thesis that traces the roots of Masonry to the Templars is often referred to in magazines published by Masons for its own members. Freemasons are very accepting of the idea. One such magazine is called Mimar Sinan (a publication of Turkish Freemasons), which describes the relationship between the Order of the Templars and Freemasonry in these words:

In 1312, when the French king, under pressure from the Church, closed the Order of Templars and gave their possessions to the Knights of St. John in Jerusalem, the activities of the Templars did not cease. The great majority of the Templars took refuge in Freemasonic lodges that were operating in Europe at that time. The leader of the Templars, Mabeignac, with a few other members, found refuge in Scotland under the guise of a wall builder under the name of Mac Benach. The Scottish King, Robert the Bruce, welcomed them and allowed them to exercise great influence over the Masonic lodges in Scotland. As a result, Scottish lodges gained great importance from the point of view of their craft and their ideas.

Today Freemasons use the name Mac Benach with respect. Scottish Masons, who inherited the Templars' heritage, returned it to France many years later and established there the basis of the rite known as the Scottish Rite."8

Again, Mimar Sinan presents a lot of information about the relationship between the Templars and Freemasonry. In an article entitled, "Templars and Freemasons," it states that "the rituals of the initiation ceremony of the Order of Templars are similar to those of present-day Freemasonry."9 According to the same article, as in Masonry, the members of the Order of the Templars called each other "brother."10 Towards the end of the article, we read:

The Order of the Templars and the Masonic organization have influenced each other to a noticeable extent. Even the rituals of the corporations are so similar as to have been copied from the Templars. In this respect, Masons have to a great extent identified themselves with the Templars and it can be said that what is viewed as original Masonic esoterism (secrecy) is to an important extent an inheritance from the Templars. To summarize, as we said in the title of this essay, we can say that the starting point of Freemasonry's royal art and initiatic-esoteric line belonged to Templars and its end-point belonged to Freemasons.11

Finally, we say, it is clear that the roots of Freemasonry stretch back to the Order of Templars, and that the Masons have adopted the philosophy of this order. Masons themselves accept this. But certainly, the important matter for our consideration is the nature of this philosophy. Why did the Templars abandon Christianity and become a heretical order? What led them to this? Why did they undergo such a change in Jerusalem? Through the agency of Masonry, what has been the effect on the world of this philosophy adopted by the Templars?