What is all this about pyramids and triangles? There are three colossal pyramids outside Cairo, Egypt, each of them ascending toward heaven, and one of them ascending higher than its brethren. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the World, and the only ancient Wonder still standing. Aficionados of pyramidic symbolism will tell you that this cannot be by accident. The edifice endures, freemasons are sure, for a profound reason.
The triangle has long represented the Deity in symbolic form. That is what the Masons and many other secret societies have seen in it, and why they consider it essential. The Masonic square and compass, architect’s tools, represent restraint, order, skill and knowledge. Without their use, a whole form–a consubstantiated life-can not be made.
Alas, nothing is seamless and uncomplicated in the world of secret societies (and supernatural religions). A member will be rewarded with illumination (which also happens to be the promise of most tax-evading organizations). One of the confusions is that Masonry not only associated itself with the medieval Knights Templar but with just about any prior society or legend that stood for “good”: Many people were inspired by the Pythagoreans and their belief that numbers reflected the harmony of the universe (Kabbalah?).
Then there was Hiram Abiff, a master builder who, for work on behalf of the monarch Solomon, oversaw 183,600 craftsmen and laborers in creating a temple to Yahweh and a palace for the kings of Israel. One day, three rebels from his crew accosted Hiram and tried to force him to reveal the password of the master’s degree. Hiram refused. A man with a gauge struck him in the throat. Hiram remained stoically mum. The second man, brandishing a square, struck him in the breast. Hiram staggered on, and was killed by the third man, who had a maul. The Masons regard Hiram as their great martyr, and as a lesson on the value of protecting valuable secrets (like the CIA?).
Going further back, it has been proposed by a few lunatics that Adam himself was the first Mason, and that the freemason’s hallmark apron represents the fig leaf. The fundamentalist-evangelical Christian, Jack Thomas Chick, hates freemasonry.
All this jabberwocky began as basically a labor union for stoneworkers in the fourteenth century. The term freemason begins to appear circa 1375 in London city records, referencing highly skilled masons who were allowed to travel the country working on the most splendid projects–castles, cathedrals, etc.–when the norm was to shackle the working class (proletariat) to localities. The freemasons learned to enjoy and protect their privilege, organizing themselves into local “lodges” that admitted the talented elite and that led them to protect their membership through codes and secret handshakes. As the Masons became the best club to join, their membership grew far beyond actual masons–barons, philosophers, clergymen, and aristocrats clamored for membership, and were allowed in–and their mission changed. The Masons became known as tolerant and open-minded and jovial, dedicated to doing “good”.
It is good to be a Freemason and here are a few American Masons: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, John Hancock, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Albert Pike (1809-1891); Joseph Smith (1805-1844), founder of Mormonism; the atheistic-agnostic writer Mark Twain; the anti-Semitic automaker Henry Ford; magician Harry Houdini; comedian Red Skelton; U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.
A few foreign freemasons include Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Marquis de Lafayette, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Jean Terrasson, Carlo Lorenzini Collodi, Simón Bolívar, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s brothers. Read The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries by Charles William Heckethorn and the great article The Occult Roots of the American Revolution by Examiner George Sieg for more data. THE END
