Five years ago I knew almost nothing about Freemasonry except that it is believed to be often a vehicle for corrupt fixes between businesses and the various arms of government, which I suspect is very probably true. But what Freemasons did, or believed in, I had really very little idea. Writing my book on Alexander Burnes required me to learn a great deal, because the Burnes family were not just very active Freemasons but had a profound international influence on the organization.
My conclusion about Freemasonry is that it became widely established as part of the spirit of rational enquiry that informed the eighteenth century enlightenment. It had the same motivation as Unitarianism, which thrived around the same time – it was striving towards a form of Deism that allowed people to move towards a belief in God while abandoning the obvious irrational mumbo-jumbo of Christian miracles and the divinity of Christ. There are obvious parallels with the French revolutionary cult of the Supreme Being. It was therefore very friendly to other monotheistic religions and looked to provide a kind of lowest common denominator religious synthesis. The whole project was then dressed up in a great deal of “secret” ritual borrowed from crafts guilds. That Freemasonry was so successful in aristocratic and educated circles was simple because it was they who also propelled the Enlightenment.
As time went on, for most members it became just a club to make good business contacts – the commitment of “brothers” to help each other in a secret society including a lot of the wealthy was originally well-intended but obviously bound to become a conduit of corruption. Most members would probably, from about 1820 on, have been very surprised by my analysis of its intellectual and religious origins. They probably still would be today. It’s just a club for most.
But what I was surprised to find, and of this I am certain, is that Freemasonry’s insistence that all members were equal, of whatever colour and creed, played a very important role as a counterweight to the increasing nineteenth century British Empire philosophy of racial superiority and religious and cultural arrogance. Freemasonry actively helped turn the tide among the governing classes and directly impacted the increasing anti-colonial beliefs of the British governing classes from the 1920’s on. A very high proportion indeed of British colonial administrators and officers were Freemasons.
We have a caricature view of Rudyard Kipling now; he was by no means the apostle of Imperialism he has somehow become in popular belief. I know his soldier’s dialect writing is annoying. I find it helps to speak it out loud. But although it is sentimental, his poem The Mother Lodge does contain the germ of a very real truth about the impact of Freemasonry on the British view of race in India. We’d say ’twas ‘ighly curious, An’ we’d all ride ‘ome to bed,
With Mo’ammed, God, an’ Shiva, Changin’ pickets in our ‘ead. The same was true in Egypt, at least. Remember many lodges operated on a far higher social level than the one described in this poem, and those too were mixed.
I appreciate this posting is going to annoy pretty well everyone. Oh well. No, I am not a Mason.
Humour me and read it out loud:
The Mother Lodge
There was Rundle, Station Master,
An’ Beazeley of the Rail,
An’ ‘Ackman, Commissariat,
An’ Donkin’ o’ the Jail;
An’ Blake, Conductor-Sargent,
Our Master twice was ‘e,
With ‘im that kept the Europe-shop,
Old Framjee Eduljee.
Outside — “Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!”
Inside — “Brother”, an’ it doesn’t do no ‘arm.
We met upon the Level an’ we parted on the Square,
An’ I was Junior Deacon in my Mother-Lodge out there!
We’d Bola Nath, Accountant,
An’ Saul the Aden Jew,
An’ Din Mohammed, draughtsman
Of the Survey Office too;
There was Babu Chuckerbutty,
An’ Amir Singh the Sikh,
An’ Castro from the fittin’-sheds,
The Roman Catholick!
We ‘adn’t good regalia,
An’ our Lodge was old an’ bare,
But we knew the Ancient Landmarks,
An’ we kep’ ’em to a hair;
An’ lookin’ on it backwards
It often strikes me thus,
There ain’t such things as infidels,
Excep’, per’aps, it’s us.
For monthly, after Labour,
We’d all sit down and smoke
(We dursn’t give no banquits,
Lest a Brother’s caste were broke),
An’ man on man got talkin’
Religion an’ the rest,
An’ every man comparin’
Of the God ‘e knew the best.
So man on man got talkin’,
An’ not a Brother stirred
Till mornin’ waked the parrots
An’ that dam’ brain-fever-bird;
We’d say ’twas ‘ighly curious,
An’ we’d all ride ‘ome to bed,
With Mo’ammed, God, an’ Shiva
Changin’ pickets in our ‘ead.
Full oft on Guv’ment service
This rovin’ foot ‘ath pressed,
An’ bore fraternal greetin’s
To the Lodges east an’ west,
Accordin’ as commanded
From Kohat to Singapore,
But I wish that I might see them
In my Mother-Lodge once more!
I wish that I might see them,
My Brethren black an’ brown,
With the trichies smellin’ pleasant
An’ the hog-darn passin’ down;
An’ the old khansamah snorin’
On the bottle-khana floor,
Like a Master in good standing
With my Mother-Lodge once more!
Outside — “Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!”
Inside — “Brother”, an’ it doesn’t do no ‘arm.
We met upon the Level an’ we parted on the Square,
An’ I was Junior Deacon in my Mother-Lodge out there!
I might add in clarity that I honour the various peoples who struggled against the Empire, and who still struggle against Empires today. I by no means denigrate their achievement. But there is no doubt at all that the demise of most of the British Empire (sadly it hasn’t all gone yet) was hastened by the fact that the majority of the British governing classes had come themselves to believe the colonies should be free, certainly by 1945 and arguably sooner.
Unfortunately since about 1975 public opinion has been moulded into a rigid neo-conservative mindset, and neo-imperialism increasingly looks like the old variety. If you didn’t live through it, it must be hard now to believe that the British “elite” once held quite left wing opinions, and of course some ideologically motivated would wish to deny it as not fitting their model of society. But it was so,
The masonic judiciary of the USA, and the masonic state murder machine has botched up another execution since the EU have refused to supply drugs for this use.
http://nsnbc.me/2014/04/30/oklahoma-lockett-dies-from-heart-failure-40-minutes-after-botched-execution/
Sorry, trying to keep it on topic. Doesn’t quite work.
For example the jewel, as masonic emblems are known, of a chaplain has an open book with “Holy Bible” written on it. By the time the mason is raised to grand chaplain the book is just an open book with no text.
The symbolism of this would be instantly appreciated by a Mevlevi Sufi:
“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.”
(Rumi)
It’s about abandoning what separates you from God. The book isn’t holy. It’s the word within, if you favour that line of discussion. The Knights Templar, I’ve long suspected, picked these ideas up in the Middle East, along with some new architectural skills.
Its angels, as seen on the emblem of the President of the Board of General Purposes, have hairy Pan-like legs and cloven feet.
Pan (Faunus) was a perfectly respectable Greek (Roman) god – and would nowadays be the god of the environment – until the Christians literally demonised him.
Masonry is not suitable for Christians because of the way it bastardises Christian teachings.
I am not at all sure that Christians are suitable for Masonry. The other side of that coin is that Christianity involves a person intervening between God and Man. Which may not have even been Christ’s intention. Most of Christianity is down to Paul’s voluminous exhortations, and, frankly, he looks like a bit of a Mandelson to me…
But then, I’m appearing here as the Devil…
“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
(Rumi)
Ouch.
“But then, I’m appearing here as the Devil…”
Surprisingly I agree with most of what you say. The organised church can come between man and God but it is not exclusive in that anybody can be a member of the church and there is no secret initiation ceremony. And most churches do some good. Can’t agree with your assessment of Paul as Mandelson. That’s really offensive against a man, Paul, who spent years in prison for no crime other than being a converted Christian. Surely Ba’al you would prefer him being a Christian than a state tax-collector! 🙂
NWOPR (MI6 Lodge) Incorporated – SECRET COMMUNICATION – SingInt32014xx.666
Agent Murray,
Operation LONE NUTTER is going exactly to plan. Continue to discredit T H Ford. He knows too much.
Congratulations on the British Elites Are Left Wing insert. Inspired! On a masonic thread too. You judge them well. Agent Jones was wrong to doubt this.
Invite Karel indoors. Agent Slog will return. XXXXXXXXXXX remains in place. Remember, at all times, as The Great Healey wrote in childblood, there is only one nutter. We are not nutters. Only one nutter and it’s him.
END
Do you like Brussels? The Big Frog is preparing to consider a tasty overseas post once Scotland is free. Free. Ha, ha. Ha ha, ha…
XXX XX XXXXXXXXXXX
While Masonry, like everything else British, got caught up in its expansion and contraction, seems to me that it started out being quite anti-English, centered in Edinburgh, opposed to imperialism, and quite pro-French in its outlook on life.
It represented the philosophies of the North, opposed to everything that Henry Dundas stood for, and looked to covert discussions to lay bare everything that was true and good.
Henry Brougham was one of its Masons.
Surely Ba’al you would prefer him being a Christian than a state tax-collector!
He could be both. There is no dichotomy. The fact that his conversion, and dropping the tax job, are seen as meritorious, says something of the political nature of the Christ cult, as it then was. ‘Render unto Caesar’ implies no criticism of tax collectors. My Mandelson jibe is really based on his role as pretty well the sole source of Christianity as it is generally understood – I except Quakers from this, btw – and the defensible premiss that he got in through the door marked ‘Push’
The intervention between God and Man I intended to refer to Christ – the symbolic Christ – rather than his church. According to John:
I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Was he so insistent on his own importance? I wonder:
According to Luke (and Rumi):
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Thanks, Phil, was writing and struggling to get my post posted when yours appeared.
Must have helped get passed the censor.
Must have persuaded him that the butters will finally destroy themselves.
Empire: Many feel Freemasons were instrumental in the creation of the State of Israel, and it’s no secret they want to rebuild Solomon’s Temple.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Masonic-Magician-Cagliostro-Egyptian/dp/1905857829
Seems I can’t even see straight, as, up to now, every time I go to hit he n key, I get the b one.
Freemasonry and the Rothschilds;
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/the_rothschild_bloodline.htm
Ba’al, I’m afraid with scripture there are a lot of difficulties. To quote Paul, who did not know clearly himself, “Now we see through a glass darkly . . .” As to the deity side of Jesus I have difficulty because when asked how to pray his answer starts “Our father . . .” and when confronted by Pontius Pilate or the scribes as to whether he was the son of God he said so you say. For me the jury’s out. But from the stories I’ve read the instructions were quite clear:
“You have heard it said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say . . . turn the other cheek”. “Love your neighbours” think of people as though it was you in their position. Quite clearly Theresa May does not do that regarding Muslims. While it is not for me to judge her, I do, because if she became the proper Christian she puports to be Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan would never have gone to the US where they were tortured 23/24 hours a day in solitary confinement into a confession which would be useless in any proper court of law.
Quakers are very good. I am fond of them. I went to a meeting on Sunday and came away uplifted.
Thanks for that John. I did get there in the end. Not very familiar with the names of football teams even Scottish ones. Do you remember the TV announcer who used to read out the scores on Saturdays as the scores came up on the teleprinter? Everyone did the pools then and hoped to win a fortune of £75,000 or similar if they predicted the eight draws correctly. Another age. My father did not approve of my mother doing them. He was quite Victorian and called it gambling which he was against. Now the lottery is a prime time Saturday TV programme and embedded in the national psyche.
@babushka – 6.10 am. Re comment “Roderick Russell do you think JFK might still have been in denial about the real life dealings of his father Joe”. Whatever his father’s dealings were, JFK’s quote on the dangers of secret societies still seems to me to be quite relevant. Was it not Adam Smith, himself a Freemason I think, who wrote “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public”.
“People join the Masons not because it is a community group raising money for charity but for its “snob factor” and history, argues McConnachie. If this is overtaken by a transparent, inclusive approach then the organisation would be indistinguishable from many other dining clubs.
“You’d have to ask – why would you want to be a Freemason rather than a Rotarian?”
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17272611
Yes John it was the most disgusting of murders by a state. Why do they still do it? Barbaric. At least we abandoned the death penalty. .
Those convicted have to wait on ‘death row’ for years too whilst the lawyers wrangle
My same father used to send telegrams to the PM appealing for clemency if a hanging was planned. The last such hanging took place in 1964. Only 50 years ago.
See how many countries still have capital punishment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_Kingdom
~~~
Speaking of years past, RIP Bob Hoskins. Sad. Such a kindly looking man. He was brilliant in The Long Good Friday and Denis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven.
Theresa is limiting the number of ‘stop and searches’. Attempting to look saintly prior to May 2015. I think she would like the top job.
Police stop and search powers to be overhauled
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27224887
There is no mystery if you just see things how people saw them at the time. Whoever he was he wasn’t a Christian, Christians hadn’t been invented yet, neither had Heaven and Hell.
So who was the son of God? Adam was. How could he be Adam? It’s easy if you believe in reincarnation. Then you are Adam reborn, the father, son and Holy Ghost, the only one who can pay for Adam’s sin.
The Romans deciding Heaven and Hell would be a better form of crowd control screwed things up.
Freemasonry and ‘Magick’.
http://hermetic.com/jones/aleister-crowley-freemason-revisited.html
That short introduction to the Rothschilds Ben is illuminating. Of course many people are beholden to the Rothschilds including many Christians. Their wealth is incalculable. The people they can buy cannot be imagined. It is difficult too to remain clean. I have a Quaker friend who has nothing bad to say about them. Similarly you will find the Rothshcilds have donated to major art funds of many churches. How could you as a trustee of the church or receiving body criticise them. Unfortunately it boils down to how did they amass such wealth, the answer of which is mostly through war, and why do they finance the manufacture of weapons and governments? To be as rich as the Rothschilds must be a terrible burden.
In an interview, when asked what he owed his parents, he said, “Confidence. My mum used to say to me, ‘If somebody doesn’t like you, fuck ’em, they’ve got bad taste.'” When asked which living person he most despised, Hoskins named Tony Blair and claimed that “he’s done even more damage than Thatcher”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Hoskins
” I have a Quaker friend who has nothing bad to say about them.”
Indeed. Many sectarian religions have noble and sincere membership. At what level in the hierarchy do they inhabit? I suspect the lower are less informed of the grand design.
All that said about the Quakers, I’ve been to the Quaker meeting-house in Boston where the American Revolution kicked off…human beings tend to get in the way of the best principles.
Never really examined what Brougham’s c critics and enemies really thought about him and why, but his Masonry background must have helped them think he was a subversive enemy of the Crown, given his drug, sexual, and covert excesses, explaining why they wanted to get rid of him in any way possible, short of assassination.
And Hoskins was quite right about Blair, but Thatcher did not come in second for a lack of trying – it was just all those spies that Putin recruited which prevented us all from going up in smoke when she was to the triggering of the non-nuclear conclusion to the Cold WAr after Palme was assassinated.
Lord Balfour-Freemason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
Mary 30 Apr, 2014 – 3:18 pm
I do indeed Mary remember the eight draws. My father used to do it every week when we were children but gave up in the end. At five o’clock the presenter would read out “Queen of the South 1, Hamilton Academicals 0” and go trhough the whole pools coupon with a different tenor in his voice depending as to whether it was a home win, or an away win, in which case the voice would rise on the pronunciation of the away team. A draw, which everybody wanted was delivered with a neutral voice. For a penny a line the prize money was a colossal £75,000 which would not even buy a house today.
Talking of houses I climbed over the wall of Vernon Sangster’s house, he of Vernon’s Pools, on the outskirts of Douglas, Isle of Man, just to have a nosey and it was quite impressive. Believe me! Some young people were taking afternoon something or other on the lawn in front of the house. There were some big dogs, looked like Dobermanns to me, left me in doubt as to whether to go over and introduce myself. But I had not been invited so I chose not to. The Isle of Man was a bit of a leveller with people like Sangster, Sir Dudley Cunliffe Owen, who I played golf with once or twice, Norman Wisdom, with whom I was once in a film, though not in the Isle of Man, and Walter Greenwood, who very kindly dropped off some notes on writing for me when he learnt I was an aspiring writer.
I saw ‘Love on the Dole’ done by Hall Green Little Theatre two or three weeks ago and it reminded me of the kindness of a successful writer. My mother had a meal with Bobbie Charlton, who sent his fish back, “I know my Dover sole, and that’s not Dover sole.” We are all the same, rich or poor. The poor want to be rich. The rich want to be richer. But deep down we are all quite fragile and insignificant in the great scheme of a higher authority.
Phil,
There is little point having a conversation with someone who wilfully does not hear or misconstrues the points you are making. I did not say the British elite are left wing. I said they were, sixty years ago. Tony Benn and Eric Lubbock were not isolated examples – neither for that matter were people like Philby Burgess and Maclean.
To say that there was a period when left wing thought captured much of the social “elite” is not to deny the existence of working class movements. I very probably know more than you do about the instances you mention. But the problem with ideologues like yourself, is that your shallow determinism reduces humans to the level of Pavlov’s dogs, and denies the possibility of altruism. You don’t have to be working class to have left wing beliefs. To claim otherwise is a nasty form of prejudice.
Paul Revere – Freemason…
http://www.mwsite.org/papers/PaulRevere.html
What have you been smoking?
The British rulers realised that changing technology meant they had to change their ideology, administration, military attitudes and the way they saw the map. They were never traditionalist, conservative, racist reactionaries first and foremost. Apart from a few morons, they always believed they had to get the ‘clever wogs’ and ‘clever niggers’ on their side. Cut them in on a slice of the action.
The British imperial system changed a lot over time. They always loved change when it was in their interests. They brought it about. They were and are very practical.
If you think freemasonry “actively helped turn the tide among the governing classes and directly impacted the increasing anti-colonial beliefs of the British governing classes from the 1920′s on”, you should be able to provide some practical examples of the causality being that way round.
The 1920s were roughly speaking the time when freemasons in Britain stopped having public parades. Why? It was also the time when the line was laid down that nobody inside the org was to refer to the movement as a religion.
The term “left wing” is of little meaning unless it denotes movements or ideas which favour the expropriation of the rich. At different times in the history of the world, there have been freemasons who have supported exactly that. For example, many freemasons died fighting for the Paris Commune in 1871. Print chapels in Paris were often both freemasonic and anarchist until recent times. And there are other examples too.
You mention the Cult of the Supreme Being, but whilst that may sound awfully masonic to your ears, in 1877 the Grand Orient lodge in France allowed membership to those who didn’t believe in such a being. That’s why it’s still out of communion with the United Grand Lodge of England.
As for the UGLE, you can’t take a monarchist organisation seriously when it talks about the brotherhood of all men. The words should burn the fuckers’ mouths.
Craig 30 Apr, 2014 – 4:26 pm
I didn’t say you did. Straw man.
No you didn’t. You didn’t mention 60 years until now. In your article you talk about the British elites during the decline of Empire. You mention the 1920s, the run up to 1945.
Hilarious. In your article you say “the majority of the British governing classes”. These people are not that. They are a million miles from “the majority of the British governing classes”. Also Benn and Lubbock were not politicians until decades after the decline of the British Empire. You really are grasping at straws.
Maybe you do or maybe you don’t. Either way it does not make your post more correct. It does make you more arrogant.
Idealogue yourself mate. You may find determinism shallow but you are merely postulating my determinism. Cheap name calling based on nothing.
I am a big fan of altruism. I am myself altruistic. To be judged not so by someone who once made a killing working hard for empire and now earns as a celebrity “human rights activist” makes me laugh. Go f**k yourself.
I didn’t claim any such thing. Another straw man from you.