NEW PODCAST - Morals and Dogma - Episode 1

BRAND NEW PODCAST

Morals and Dogma Podcast Episode 1 OUT NOW!

Morals and Dogma Podcast is an exploration of the texts and writings of the one of the most mysterious organizations on Earth, the Freemasons. On this show we will cover the major doctrines of the Freemasons and attempt to uncover whether or not this conspiratorial laden group is behind all the woes of the world.

Follow here!
https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/morals-and-dogma-podcast--6707449

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/cory-hughes-bloody-history--5875229/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning everybody. Normally at this point I'd say Corey
Hugh's Bloody History, but not today. Today we are going
to start something brand new. If you've never tuned into
my show before Corey Hugh's Bloody History, I cover almost

(00:22):
exclusively the Kennedy assassination, and on my Corey Hugh's Bloody
History World War Two sub stack, I deal primarily with
World War Two. Plus I send out a bunch of
other stuff for free on that mailing list. But I
have been repeatedly coming across the involvement of the Scottish

(00:42):
Right in the Kennedy assassination. Numerous well known people in
the Kennedy assassination story are associated with the Scottish Right,
and the Scottish Right is one of a handful of
sects of Freemasonry. And it got me thinking, I need

(01:04):
to understand this stuff because it's rearing its ugly head,
and it's not quite the place to put it with
my Kennedy work, and it's not quite the place to
put it with my World War two work. So I said,
screw it, Let's just put it on its own podcast,
and that's what we're gonna do. Welcome to the Morals
and Dogma Podcast a podcast designed to examine, analyze, and

(01:27):
really come to understand what the hell this Freemason thing
is all about, because if you ask me, it's a
bunch of adults playing children. It's cowboys and Indians on
an adult level. And I'm hoping that throughout this journey
I'll be proven wrong. I'll come to some sort of
understanding of what these people actually believe in. But at

(01:49):
the moment, I don't, and I have put off the
Secret Society conversation forever. I have ignored overtly the Freemason
influence on our history, and it's time to put an
end to that. So that's what we're going to do today.
We're going to begin with Morals and Dogma of the
ancient and accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, prepared for the

(02:13):
Supreme Council of the thirty third Degree for the Southern
Jurisdiction of the United States and published by its authority.
All right, we'll skip the table of contents. This is
by Albert Pike, who is considered the father of Freemasonry.
But in my Freemason studies thus far, it appears that

(02:35):
the Freemasons have been around for a lot longer than that,
all right, So I'll go ahead and I'll read the preface.
The following work has been prepared by the authority of
the Supreme Council of the thirty third Degree for the
Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, by the Grand Commander,
and is now published by its direction. It contains the

(02:56):
lectures of the ancient and accepted Scottish rite in that jurisdiction,
and is specially intended to be read and studied by
the brethren of that obedience in connection with the rituals
of the degrees. It is hoped and expected that each
will furnish himself with a copy and make himself familiar
with it, for which purpose. As the cost of the
work consists entirely in the printing and binding, it will

(03:19):
be furnished at a price as moderate as possible. No
individual will receive pecuniary profit from it, except the agents
for its sale. It has been copyrighted to prevent its
republication elsewhere. In The copyright, like those of all other
works prepared for the Supreme Council, has been assigned to
the trustees for that body. Whatever profits may accrue from
it will be devoted to purposes of charity. The brethren

(03:42):
of the Right in the United States and Canada will
be afforded the opportunity to purchase it, or is it
forbidden that other Masons shall, but they shall not be
solicited to do so. In preparing this work, the Grand
Commander has been about equally author and compiler. Since he
has extracted quite half its contents from the work of
the best writers in most philosophic or eloquent thinkers, perhaps

(04:04):
it would have been better and more acceptable if he
had extracted more and written less, still, perhaps half of
its own. And in incorporating here the thoughts and words
of others, he has continually changed and added to the language,
often intermingling in the same sentences his own words with theirs.
It not being intended for the world at large, he's

(04:26):
felt at liberty to make, from all accessible sources a
compendium of the morals and dogma of the right to
remold sentences, change and add to words and phrases, combine
them with his own, and use them as if they
were his own, to be dealt with at his pleasure,
and so availed of as to make the whole most
valuable for the purposes intended. He claims therefore little of

(04:49):
meritive authorship, and has not cared to distinguish his own
from that which he has taken from other sources, being
quite willing that every portion of the book in turn
may be regarded as borrowed from some old and better writer.
The teachings of these readings are not sacramental, so far
as they go beyond the realm of morality into those
of other domains of thought and truth. The ancient and

(05:10):
accepted Scottish rite uses the word dogma in its true
sense of doctrine or teaching, and is not dogmatic in
the odious sense of that term. Everyone is entirely free
to reject and descent from whatsoever herein may seem to
him to be untrue or unsound. It is only required
of him that he shall weigh what is taught and

(05:31):
give it fair hearing and unprejudiced judgment. Of course, the
ancient theosophic and philosophic speculations are not embodied as part
of the doctrines of the right, but because of it
its interest and profit to know what the ancient intellect
thought upon these subjects, and because nothing so conclusively proves
radical difference between our human and animal nature, as the

(05:52):
capacity of the human mind to entertain such speculations in
regard to itself and the deity. But as to these
opinions themselves, we may say, in the words of the
learned canonist Ludovicus Gomez, opinionists secundum varitatum temporum senskant at
intermouriantor alique diverse a vell priorbus contrere reniscantor at d'ende pubescent.

(06:24):
The titles of degrees as herein given, have some instances
been changed. The correct titles are as follows. First degree apprentice,
second degree Fellow craft, third degree Master, fourth degree secret Master,
fifth degree perfect Master, sixth degree Intimate Secretary, seventh degree Provost,

(06:44):
then judge, eighth degree Intendant of the Building, ninth degree
Ilu of the nine, tenth degree Ilu of the fifteen,
eleventh degree Elu of the twelve, twelfth degree Master Architect,
thirteenth degree Royal arc of Solomon, fourteenth degree perfect Elu,
fifteenth degree Knight of the East, sixteenth degree Prince of Jerusalem,

(07:08):
seventeenth degree Knight of the East and West, eighteenth degree
Knight Rose kraw nineteenth Pontiff, twentieth Master of the Symbolic Lodge,
twenty first no Kite or Prussian Knight, twenty second degree
Knight of the Royal Axe or Prince of Lebanis, twenty
third degree Chief of the Tabernacle, twenty fourth degree Prince

(07:30):
of the Tabernacle, twenty fifth Knight of the Brazen Serpent,
twenty sixth Prince of Mercy, twenty seventh Knight, Commander of
the Temple, twenty eighth Knight of the Sun or Prince
Adept twenty ninth Scottish Knight of Saint Andrew, thirtieth degree
Knight Kadosh, thirty first degree inspector Inquisitor, thirty second degree

(07:51):
Master of the Royal Secret Chapter one A Prentice. The
twelve inch rule in the common gap. Force unregulated or
irregulated is not only wasted in the void, like that
of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined
by science, but striking in the dark, and its blows

(08:14):
meeting only the air, they recoil and bruise itself. It
is destruction and ruin. It is the volcano, the earthquake,
the cyclone, not growth in progress. It is polyphemus, blinded,
striking at random, and falling headlong among the sharp rocks
of the impetus of his own blows. The blind force
of the people is a force that must be economized

(08:36):
but also managed. As the blind force of steam, lifting
the preponderous iron arms and turning the large wheels is
made to bore and rifle the cannon, and to weave
the most delicate lace. It must be regulated by intellect.
Intellect is to the people and the people's force what
the slender needle of the compass is to the ship,

(08:56):
its soul, always counseling the huge mass of wood and iron,
and always pointing to the north to attack the citadels
built up on all sides against the human race by superstitions, despotisms,
and prejudices. The force must have a brain and a law.
Then its deeds of daring produce permanent results, and there
is real progress. Then there are sublime conquests. Thought as

(09:17):
a force in philosophy, should be an energy, finding its
aim and its effects. In the ameloration of mankind, the
two great motors are truth and love. When all these
forces are combined and guided by the intellect and regulated
by the rule of right and justice, and combined of
systematic and movement and effort, the great revolution prepared for

(09:37):
by the ages will begin to march. The power of
the deity himself is an equilibrium with his wisdom. Hence
the only results are harmony. It is because force is
ill regulated that revolutions provide fail tires. Therefore, it is
that so often insurrections coming from those high mountains that

(09:58):
domineer over the moral horizon. Justice, wisdom, reason, right, built
of the purest snow of the ideal, after a long
fall from a rock to rock, having reflected the sky
in their transparency, and having been swollen by a hundred
affluents in the majestic path of triumph, suddenly lose themselves
in quagmires, like a California river in the sands. The

(10:20):
onward march of the human race requires that the heights
around it should blaze the noble and enduring lessons of courage,
deeds of daring, dazzle history, and form one class of
the guiding lights of man. They are the stars and
corusations from that great sea of electricity. The force inherent
in the people to strive to brave all risks, to perish,

(10:40):
to preserve, to be true to one's self, to grapple
body to body with destiny, to surprise defeat by the
little terror it inspires. Now to confront unrighteous power, now
to defy intoxicated triumph. These are the examples that the
nations need in the light that electrifies them. There are
immense forces in the great caverns of evil beneath society,

(11:03):
in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and destitution, vices and
crimes that wreak and simmer in the darkness. In that
populace below the people of great cities, their disinterestedness vanishes.
Everyone howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws for himself. Ideas are
ignored in the progress. There is no thought. This populace

(11:24):
has two mothers, both of them stepmothers, ignorance and misery.
Want is their only guide. For the appetite alone, they
crave satisfaction. Yet even these may be employed. The lowly
sand we trample upon, cast into the furnace, melted, purified
by fire, may become resplendent crystal. They have the brute
force of the hammer, but their blows help on the

(11:46):
great cause. When struck within the lines traced by the
rule held by wisdom and discretion. Yet it is this
very force of the people, this Titanic power of the giants,
that builds the fortifications of tyrants and is embodied in
their armies, hence the possibility of such tyrannies as those
of which it has been said that Rome smells worse

(12:08):
under Vitellus than under Sula. Under Claudius and under Domitian,
there is a deformatory of baseness corresponding to the ugliness
of tyranny. The foulness of the slaves is a direct
result of the atrocious baseness of the despot. A miasma
exhales from these crouching consciousness that the reflect the master.

(12:29):
The public authorities are unclean, hearts are collapse, consciousness shrunken,
soul's puny. This is so under Caracalla, it is also
under Commodus. It is so under Heliogabalus, while the Roman
senate's under Caesar there comes only the rank odor peculiar
of the Eagle's ire. It is the force of the

(12:50):
people that sustains all these despotisms, the basis as well
as the best. That force acts through armies, and these
oftener enslaved and liberateism there applies. The rule force is
the mace of steel and the saddle bow of the
knight or of the bishop, and armor. Passive obedience by
force supports thrones and nolagarchies. Spanish kings and Venetian senates

(13:13):
might in an army wielded by tyranny. This is the
enormous sum total of utter weakness, and so humanity wages
war against humanity. In spite of humanity, So a people
willingly submits to despotism, and its workmen submit to be despised,
and its soldiers to be whipped. Therefore, it is that
battle's loss by a nation are often progress attained. Less

(13:37):
glory is more at liberty. When the drum is silent,
reason sometimes speaks. Tyrants use the force of the people
to chain and subjugate, that is, in yoke the people.
Then they plow with them as men do with oxen yoked.
Thus the spirit of liberty and innovation is reduced by bayonets,
and principles are struck dumb by cannon shot. While the

(13:57):
monks mingle with the troopers, and the church militant and
jubilant Catholic or Puritan sings teddums for victories over rebellion,
for military power not subordinate to the civil power. Again,
the hammer or mace of force, independent of the rule,
is an armed tyranny, born full grown as a then
sprung from the brains of Zeus. It spawns a dynasty

(14:20):
and begins with Caesar, to rot into Vitellius and Commodus.
At the present day, it inclines to begin where formerly
dynasties ended. Constantly, the people put forth immense strength, only
to end in immense weakness. The force of the people
is exhausted in indefinitely prolonging things long since dead, in
governing mankind by embalming old dead tyrannies of faith, restoring

(14:43):
dilapidated dogmas, regilding faded, worm eaten shrines, whitening and roughing
ancient and barren superstitions, saving society by multiplying parasites, perpetuating
superannuated institutions, the worship of symbols as the actual means
of salvation, and tying the dead corpse of the past

(15:05):
mouth to mouth with the living present. Therefore, it is
that it is one of the fatalities of humanity. To
be condemned to eternal struggles with phantoms, with superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices,
the formulas of error, and the pleas of tyranny despotisms
seen in the past become respectable as the mountain bristling

(15:26):
with volcanic rock, rugged and horrid, seen through the haze
of distance, is blue and smooth and beautiful. The sight
of single dungeon of tyranny is worth more to dispel
illusions and create a holy hatred of despotism, and to
direct force all right, than the most eloquent volumes. The
French should have preserved the Bastille as a perpetual lesson.

(15:47):
Italy should not destroy the dungeons of the Inquisition. The
force of the people maintained the power that built its
gloomy cells and placed the living in their granite sepultures.
The force of the people cannot, by its unrestrained and
fitful action, maintain and continue in action and existence a
free government. Once created, that force must be limited, restrained,

(16:08):
conveyed by distribution into different channels and by roundabout courses
to outlets. Whence it is to issue as law, action
and decision of the state the wise old Egyptian kings
conveyed in different canals by subdivision the swelling waters of
the Nile, and compel them to fertilize and not devastate
the land. There must be the just et norma, the

(16:31):
law and rule, or gage of constitution and law within
which the public force must act make a breach in either,
and the great steam hammer, with its swift and ponderous blows,
crushes all the machinery to atoms, and, at last, wenching
itself away, lies inert and dead amid the ruin it
has wrought. The force of the people or the popular will,

(16:54):
in action and exerted, symbolized by the gavel regulated, the
guided by and acting with in the limits of law
and order symbolized by the twenty four inch rule, has
for its fruit liberty, equality and fraternity, liberty regulated by law,
equality of rights in the eye of the law, brotherhood
with its duties and obligations, as well as its benefits.

(17:15):
You will hear shortly of the rough ashlar and the
perfect ashlar, as part of the jewels of the lodge.
The rough ashlar is said to be a stone as
taken from the quarry in its rude and natural state.
The perfect ashlar is said to be a stone made
ready by the hands of workmen, to be adjusted by
the working tools of the fellow craft We shall not
repeat the explanations of these symbols given by the York Right.

(17:39):
You may read them in its printed monitors. They are
declared to allude to the self improvement of the individual craftsman,
a continuation of the same superficial interpretation. The rough ashlar
is the people as a mass, rude and unorganized. The
perfect ashlar or cubical stone, symbol of perfection is the state,

(18:01):
the rulers deriving their powers from the consent of the governed,
the constitution and laws speaking the will of the people,
The government harmonious symmetrical efficient, its powers properly distributed and
duly adjusted in equilibrium. If we delineate a cube on
a plane surface, thus we have visible three faces and

(18:22):
nine external lines drawn between seven points. The complete cube
has three more faces, making six, three more lines making twelve,
and one more point making eight. As the number twelve
includes the sacred numbers three, five, seven, and three times
three or nine, and is produced by adding the sacred
number three to nine, while its own two figures one two,

(18:46):
The unit or moned and douad added together make the
same sacred number three. It was called the perfect number,
and the cube became the symbol of perfection, produced by
force acting by rule. Hammered in a chord with lines
measured by the gauge out of the rough ashlar. It
is an appropriate symbol of the force of the people,

(19:06):
expressed as the constitution and law of the state and
of the state itself. The three visible faces represent the
three departments, the executive which executes the law, the legislative
which makes the laws, the judiciary, which interprets the laws,
applies and enforces them. Between man and man, between the

(19:26):
state and the citizens. The three invisible faces are liberty, equality,
and fraternity, the threefold soul of the state its vitality, spirit,
and intellect. Though masonry neither usurps the place of nor
apes religion, prayer is an essential part of our ceremonies.
It is the aspiration of the soul towards the absolute

(19:46):
and infinite intelligence, which is the one supreme deity. Most
feebly and misunderstandingly characterized as an architect. Certain faculties of
man are directed towards the unknown. Thought, meditation, and prayerknown
is an ocean, of which conscience is the compass. Thought, meditation,
and prayer are great mysterious pointing of the needle is

(20:07):
a spiritual magnetism, and thus connects the human soul with
the deity. These majestic irradiations of the soul pierce through
the shadow towards the light. It is but a shallow
scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because it is
not possibly for us, by means of it, to persuade
God to change his plans. He produces foreknown and foreigntended
effects by the instrumentality of the forces of nature, all

(20:31):
of which are His forces. Our own are part of these.
Our free agency and our will are forces. We do
not absurdly cease to make efforts to obtain wealth or happiness,
prolonged life, and continue health, because we cannot, by any
effort change what is predestined. If the effort also is predestined,
then it is not less our effort made of our

(20:52):
free will. So likewise we pray. Will is a force.
Thought is a force, Prayer is a force. Why should
it not be of the law of God that prayer,
like faith and love should have its effects. Man is
not to be comprehended as a starting point or progress
as a goal. Without those two great forces, faith and love.

(21:12):
Prayer is sublime. Orsons that beg and clamor are pitiful
to deny the efficacy of prayers deny that of faith, love
and effort. Yet the effects produced when our hand, moved
by our will, launches a pebble into the ocean never cease.
Every uttered word is registered for eternity upon the invisible air.

(21:32):
Every lodge is a temple and as a whole, and
it is details symbolic. The universe itself supplied man with
the model for the first temples reared to the divinity.
The arrangement of the Temple of Solomon, the symbolic ornaments
which formed its chief decorations, and the dress of the
high priest all had reference to the order of the universe,

(21:55):
as then understood. The temple may The temple contained many
emblems of the seasons, the Sun, the moon, and the planets,
the constellations ursa major and minor, the zodiac, the elements,
and the other parts of the world. Is the master
of this lodge of the universe, hermes of whom Kirkhum
is representative, that is, one of the lights of the lodge.

(22:16):
For further instructions as to the symbolism of the heavenly bodies,
and of the sacred numbers, and of the temple and
its details, you must wait patiently until your advance in masonry.
In the meantime exercising your intellect in studying them for
yourself to study and seek to interpret correctly the symbols
of the universe is the work of the sage and
the philosopher. It is to decipher the writings of God

(22:40):
and penetrate into his thoughts. This is what is asked
and answered in our Catechism. In regard to the lodge.
A lodge is defined to be an assemblage of freemasons
duly congregated, having the sacred writings square and compass, and
a charter or warrant of constitution authorized them to work.

(23:01):
The rumor place in which they meet, representing some part
of King Solomon's Temple, is also called the lodge, and
it is what we are now considering. It is said
to be supported by three great columns wisdom, force or strength,
and beauty, represented by the Master, the senior Warden, and
the junior warden. And these are said to be the
columns that support the lodge, because wisdom, strength, and beauty

(23:23):
are the perfections of everything, and nothing can endure without them.
Because the York Right says it is necessary that there
should be wisdom to conceive, strength to support, and beauty
to adorn all great and important undertakings. Know ye not,
says the apostle Paul, that ye are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. If

(23:45):
any man desecrate the temple of God, him shall God destroy.
For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are?
The wisdom and power of the Deity are an equilibrium.
The laws of nature and the moral laws are not
the mere despoting mandates of His omnipotent will, For then
they might be changed by him, and order become disorder,

(24:06):
and good and right become evil and wrong, honesty and loyalty,
vices and fraud, and gratitude and vice. Virtues. Omnipotent power,
infinite and existing alone, would necessarily not be constrained to consistency.
Its decrees and laws could not be immutable. The laws
of God are not obligatory on us because they are
the enactments of His power or the expression of his will,

(24:30):
but because they express his infinite wisdom. They are not
right because they are his laws, but his laws. Because
they are right. From the equilibrium of infinite wisdom and
infinite force results perfect harmony. In physics and in the
moral universe, Wisdom, power and harmony constitute one masonic triad.
They have other and profounder meanings that may at some

(24:50):
time be unveiled to you. As to the ordinary and
commonplace explanation, it may be added that the wisdom of
the architect is displayed in combining, as only a skillful
architect can do, and as God has done everywhere. For example,
in the tree, the human frame, the egg, the cells
of the honeycomb strength with the grace, beauty, symmetry, proportion, lightness,

(25:11):
and ornamentation. That too, is perfection of the orator and poet.
To combine force, strength, energy with grace of style, musical cadences,
the beauty of figures, the play and irradiation of imagination
and fancy. And so in a state, the warlike and
industrial force of the people and their titanic strength must
be combined with the beauty of the arts, the sciences,

(25:33):
and the intellect, if the state would scale the heights
of excellence and the people be really free. Harmony in this,
as in all the divine, the material, and the human,
is the result of equilibrium of the sympathy and opposite
actions of contraries, a single wisdom above them, holding the
beam of the scales to reconcile the moral law, human responsibility,

(25:54):
free will with the absolute power of God, and the
existence of evil with His absolute wisdom and goodness and mercy.
These are the great enigmas of the Sphinx. You entered
the lodge between two columns. They represent the two which
stood in the porch of the temple on each side
of the Great Eastern gateway. These pillars of bronze, four fingered,

(26:15):
breath and thickness were, according to the most authentic account
that in the First and that in the Second Book
of Kings, confirmed in Jeremiah, eighteen cubits high, with a
capital five cubits high. The shaft of each was four
cubits in diameter. A cubit is one foot and seven
oh seven out of one thousand, That is, the shaft
of each was a little over thirty feet eight inches

(26:37):
in heights, and the capital of each a little over
eight feet six inches in height, and the diameter of
the shaft sixteen six feet ten inches. The capitals were
enriched by pomegranates of bronze, covered by bronze network, and
ornamented with wreaths of bronze, and appear to have imitated
the shape of the seed vessel of the lotus or
Egyptian lily, a sacred symbol to the Hindus, Hindus and Egyptians.

(27:02):
The pillar or column on the right or in the
south was named as the Hebrew word is rendered in
our translation of the Bible Yakin, and that on the
left Boaz. Our translators say that the first word means
he shall establish, in the second in its strength. These
columns were imitations by Kurum, the Tyrian artists, of the

(27:22):
great columns consecrated to the winds and fire at the
entrance to the famous Temple of Malkarth in the city
of Tire. It is customary in lodges of the York
Right to see a celestial globe on one and a
terrestrial globe on the other, but these are not warranted
if the object to be imitate the original two columns
of the temple. The symbolic meaning of these columns we

(27:43):
shall leave for the present unexplained, only adding that entered
apprentices keep their working tools in the column yakin, and
giving you the etymology and literal meaning of the two names.
The word yakin is Hebrew. It was probably pronounced yakyan,
and meant as a verbal noun, he that strengthens and

(28:04):
thence firm, stable, and upright. The word boaz is baz,
meaning strong, strength, power, might, refuge, source of strength, fort
The prefixed means with or in and gives the word
the force the Latin gurrand roberandu strengthening. The former word
also means he will establish or plants in an erect position.

(28:27):
From the verb kun he stood erect, it probably meant
active and vivifying energy and force. Boaz stability permanence in
the passive sense. The dimensions of the lodge are Brethren
of the York right say, are unlimited in its covering
no less than the canopy of heaven. To this object,
they say, the mason's mind is continually directed, and thither

(28:49):
he hopes to last to arrive by aid of the
theological ladder which Jacob and his vision saw ascending from
Earth to Heaven, the three principal rounds of which are
denominated faith, hope, charity, and which admonish us to have
faith in God, hope and immortality, and charity to all mankind. Accordingly,
a ladder, sometimes with nine rounds, is seen on the chart,

(29:12):
resting at the bottom on the Earth, its top in
the clouds, the stars shining above it. And this is
deemed to represent that mystic ladder which Jacob saw in
his dream, set upon the Earth, and the top of
it reaching to Heaven, with the angels of God ascending
and descending on it. The addition of the three principle
rounds to the symbolism is wholly modern and incongruous. The

(29:34):
ancients counted seven planets, thus arranged the moon, Mercury, Venus,
the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There were seven heavens
and seven spheres of these planets. On all the monuments
of Mithras are seven altars or pyres consecrated to the
seven planets, and were the seven lamps of the golden
candelabrum in the temple. That these represented the planets. We

(29:57):
are assured by Clemens of Alexandria in Stromata, and by
Philo Judeus, to return to its source in the infinite.
The human soul, the ancients held, had to ascend as
it had ascended through the seven spheres. The latter by
which it reascends has, according to Marcillus Ficinus, in his
commentary on the Eneid of Plotinus, seven degrees or steps,

(30:21):
and the mysterious of Mythrus, carried to Rome under the emperors.
The latter, with its seven rounds, was a symbol referring
to this ancient though the spheres of the seven planets,
Jacob saw the spirits of God ascending and descending on it,
and above it the Deity himself. If the Mithraic mysteries
were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at the

(30:44):
four equinoctal and so stitchal points of the zodiac, and
the seven planetary spheres were represented which soul's needs must
traverse in descending from the heaven of the fixed stars
to the elements that enveloped the Earth, and seven game
were marked, one for each planet though which they passed
in descending or returning. We learned this from Celsius in origin,

(31:08):
who says that its symbolic meaning of this passage among
the stars used in the Mithraic mysteries was a ladder
reaching from Earth to heaven, dividing into seven steps or stages,
to each of which was a gate, and at the summit,
and eighth one that of the fixed stars. The symbol
was the same that of the seven stages of Borsipa,

(31:29):
the pyramid of vitrified brick near Babylon, built of seven
stages and each of a different color. In the Mithraic ceremonies,
the candidate went through seven stages of initiation, passing through
many fearful trials, and of these the high ladder with
seven rounds or steps, was the symbol. You see the lodge,
its details and ornaments, by its lights. You have already

(31:51):
heard what these lights, the Greater and Lesser, are said
to be, and how they are spoken by our brethren
of the York right. The Holy Bible square encompassed are
not only stated styled the great lights in masonry, but
they are also technically called the furniture of the lodge.
And as you have seen, it is hell that there
is no lodge without them. This has sometimes been made

(32:13):
a pretext for excluding Jews from our lodges because they
cannot regard the New Testament as a holy book. The
Bible is an indispensable part of the furniture of a
Christian lodge only because it is the sacred book of
the Christian religion. The Hebrew pentetok in a Hebrew lodge,
and the Quran in a Mohammedan one belong on the altar.

(32:33):
And one of these, and the square and compass, properly understood,
are the great lights by which a mason must walk
and work. The obligation of the candidate is always to
be taken on the sacred book or books of his religion,
that he may deem it more solemon binding. And therefore
it was that you were asked of what religion you are.

(32:56):
We have no other concern with your religious creed. The
square is a right angle formed by two right lines.
It is adapted only to a plane surface, and belongs
only to geometry earth measurement, that trigonometry, which deals only
with planes and with the Earth, which the ancients supposed
to be a plane. The compass describes circles and deals
with spherical trigonometry. The science of the spheres and heavens.

(33:19):
The former therefore is an emblem of what concerns the
earth and body, the latter of what concerns the heavens
and the soul. Yet the compass is also used in
plane trigonometry, as in erecting perpendiculars. And therefore you are
reminded that although this degree, both points of the compass
are under the square, and you are now dealing only
with the moral and political meaning of the symbols, and

(33:41):
not with their philosophical and spiritual meanings. Still the divine,
ever mingles with the human, with the earthly, the spiritual intermixes,
and there is something spiritual in the commonest duties of life.
The nations are not bodies politic alone, but also soul's politic.
And woe to that people which seeking the material only
forgets that it has a soul. Then we have a

(34:02):
race petrified in dogma, which presupposes the absence of a
soul and the presence only of memory and instinct, or
demoralized by lucre. Such a nature can never lead civilization
genefluxion before the idle or the dollar atrophies. The muscle
which walks and the will which moves hierarchtic or mercantile

(34:23):
absorption diminishes the radiance of people, lowers its horizon by
lowering its level, and deprives it of that understanding of
the universal aim. At the same time human and divine,
which makes the missionary nations a free people, forgetting that
it has a soul to be cared for, devotes all
its energies to its material advancement. If it makes war,

(34:43):
it is to subserve its commercial interests. The citizens copy
after state and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the
great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly
and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes of monstrous opulence.
In monstrous misery, all the enjoyment to a few, all
the privations to the rest, that is to say, to

(35:05):
the people's privilege exception monopoly feudality springing up from labor itself,
a false and dangerous situation which making labor a blinded
and chained cyclops in the mine, at the forge, in
the workshop, in the loom, in the field, over poisonous fumes,
in miasmatic cells, in unventilated factories, founds public power upon

(35:26):
private misery and plants, the greatness of the state and
the suffering of the individual. It is a greatness ill
constituted in which all material elements are combined, and into
which no moral element enters. If a people, like a star,
has the right of eclipse, the light ought to return.
The eclipse should not degenerate into night. The three lesser

(35:49):
or sublime lights you have heard are the Sun, the Moon,
and the Master of the Lodge. And you have heard
with our brethren of the York rights say in regard
to them, and why they hold them to be lights
of the lodge. But the Sun and the Moon do
in no sense light the lodge, unless it be symbolically.
And then the lights are not they but those things
of which they are, the symbols of what they are,

(36:10):
the symbols in the Mason. And that right is not told.
Nor does the moon in any sense rule the night
with regularity. The Sun is the ancient symbol of the
life giving and generative power of the Deity. To the ancients,
light was the cause of life, and God was the
source from which it all flowed. The essence of light,
the invisible fire, developed a flame manifested as light and splendor.

(36:34):
The sun was his manifestation and visible image, and the
Sabeans worshiping the light God seemed to worship the Sun
in whom they saw the manifestation of the deity. The
moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature
to produce the female, of which the life giving power
and energy was the male. It was the symbol of Isis,

(36:55):
Astarte and Artemis or Diana. The Master of Life was
the supreme deity above both and manifestations. Through both, Zeus,
the son of Saturn, become king of God's Horus, son
of Iosiris, and Isis become the Master of life. Dionasus
and Bacchus, like Mithris, become the author of light, life
and truth, the master of light in life. The Sun

(37:18):
and the Moon are symbolized in every lodge by the
Master and wardens, and this makes it the duty of
the Master to dispense to the light brethren by himself
and through the wardens, who are his ministers. Thy son,
says Isaiah to Jerusalem, shall no more go down, neither
shall thy moon withdraw itself. For the Lord shall be
Thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall

(37:39):
be ended. Thy people also shall be righteous, they shall
inherit the land forever. Such is the type of a
free people. Our northern ancestors worshiped this triune deity, Odin,
the Almighty Father, Freya his wife, emblem of universal matter,
and Thor his son, the Mediator. But above all these

(37:59):
was the Supreme God, the author of everything that existeth
on the eternal, the Ancient, the living and awful Being,
the searcher into concealed things, the being that never changeth.
In the Temple of eleusis a sanctuary, lighted only by
a window in the roof, and representing the universe. The
images of the Sun, Moon, and mercury were represented. The

(38:21):
Sun and moon, says the learned bro De Launey, represent
the two grand principles of all generations, the active and passive,
the male and the female. The Sun represents the actual
light he pours upon the Moon his fecondating rays. Both
shed their light upon their offspring, the blazing star or horse,
and the three form the great equilateral triangle, in the

(38:45):
center of which is the omnific letter of the Kabbala,
by which creation is said to have been affected. The
ornaments of a lodge are said to be the mosaic pavement,
the intended tessel and the blazing Star. The mosaic pavement
checker and squares or lozenges is said to represent the
ground floor of King Solomon's temple and the intended tessel

(39:07):
that beautiful tesselated border which surrounded it. The blazing star
in its center is said to be an emblem of
divine providence and commemorative of the star which appeared to
guide the wise men of the East to the place
of Our Saviour's nativity. But there was no stone scene
within the temple. The walls were covered with planks of cedar,
and the floor was covered with planks of fur. There

(39:29):
was no evidence that there was such pavement or floor
in the temple or such bordering. In England anciently, the
tracing board was surrounded with an intended border, and it
is only in America that such a border is put
around the mosaic pavement. The tessaray, indeed, are the squares
or lozenges of the pavement. In England also, the intended

(39:50):
or denticulated border is also called tessellated because it has
four tassels, said to represent temperance, fortitude, prudence and justice.
It was termed the intended trassele, but this is a
misuse of words. It is a tescerated pavement with an
indented border around it. The pavement, alternatively black and white, symbolizes,

(40:13):
whether so intended or not, the good and evil principles
of the Egyptian and Persian creed. It is the warfare
of Michael and Satan, of the gods and titans of
balder and look between the light and shadow, which is
darkness day and night, freedom and despotism, religious liberty, and
the arbitrary dogmas of a church that thinks for its
votaries and whose pontiff claims to be infallible, and the

(40:36):
decretals of its councils. To constitute a gospel. The edges
of this pavement, if in lozenges, will necessarily be intended
or denticulated tooth like a saw, and to complete and
finished it a bordering. In necessity, it is completed by
tassels as ornaments, and the corners. If these in the
bordering have any symbolic meaning, it is fancible and arbitrary

(40:59):
to find The blazing star of five points, in allusion
to the divine providence, is also fanciful, and to make
it commemorative of the star that it is said to
have guided the magi is to give it a meaning
comparatively modern. Originally it represented Sirius or the dog Star,
the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile, the god
of Nubis, companion of Isis in her search for the

(41:19):
body of Osiris, her brother and husband. Then it became
the image of Horace, the son of Osiris himself, symbolized
also by the Son, the author of the seasons and
the god of time, son of Isis, who was the
universal nature himself, the primitive matter, inexhaustible source of life,
spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of all beings. It

(41:42):
was Hermes, also the master of learning, whose name in
Greek is that of the god Mercury. It became the
sacred and potent sign or character of the Magi the Pentalpha,
and it is significant emblem of liberty and freedom, blazing
with a steady radiance amid the weltering elements of good
and evil, of revolutions, and promising serene skies and fertile

(42:05):
seasons to the nations after the storms of change and
tumbulent in the east of the lodge over the Master
and closed in a triangle is the Hebrew letter at yode.
In the English and American lodges, the letter G is
substituted for this as the initial word of God with
his as little reason as if the letter D initial

(42:26):
of du were used in French lodges instead of the
proper letter. At Yode is in the Kabbalah, the symbol
of unity of the Supreme Deity, the first letter of
the Holy Name, and also a symbol of the great
Kabbalistic triads. To understand its mystic meanings, you must open
the pages of so Far and Cifra, d Zeniatha, and

(42:47):
other Kabbalistic books and ponder deeply on their meaning. It
must suffice to say that it is the creative energy
of the Deity is represented as a point, and that
point in the center of the circle of immensity. It
is to us, in this degree a symbol of that
unmanifested deity, the Absolute, who has no name. Our French
brethren placed this letter yode in the center of the

(43:08):
blazing star, and in the old lectures are ancient English brethren.
The blazing star or glory in the center refers to
us that grand luminary, the Sun, which enlightens the earth
and by its genial influence, dispenses blessings to mankind. They
called it also in the same lecture, as an emblem
of prudence. The word prudentia means in its original and
full of signification foresight. And accordingly, the blazing star has

(43:32):
been regarded as an emblem of omniscience, or the all
seeing eye, which to the Egyptian initiates, was the emblem
of Osiris, the Creator, with the eyode in its center.
It has cabalistic meaning of the divine energy manifested as
light creating the universe. The jewels of the lodge are
said to be in six in number three are called

(43:52):
movable and three immovable. The square, the level, and the
plum were anciently properly called the movable jewels because they
had to pass from one brother to another. It is
a modern innovation to call them immovable, because they must
always be present in the lodge. The immovable jewels are
rough ashlar, the perfect ashlar or cubicle stone, or in

(44:13):
some rituals, the double cube, and the tracing board or
trestle board. Of these jewels are brethren of the York
Right say the square inculcates morality, the level equality, and
the plumb rectitude of conduct. Their explanation of the immovable
jewels may be read in their monitors. Our brethren of
the York Rights say that there is represented in every

(44:35):
well governed lodge a certain point within a circle, the
point representing an individual brother, the circle the boundary line
of his conduct, beyond which is never to suffer his
prejudices or passions to betray him. This is not to
interpret the symbols of masonry. It is said by some
with a nearer approach to interpretation, that the point within
the circle represents God in the center of the universe.

(44:57):
It is a common Egyptian sign for the Sons and Osirih,
and is still used as the astronomical sign of the
Great Luminary in the Kabbalah. The point is yeowed the
creative energy of God, irradiating with light the circular space
which God, the Universal Light, left vacant wherein to create
the worlds by withdrawing His substance of light back on
all sides from one point. Our brethren add that this

(45:20):
circle is embordered by two perpendicular parallel lions representing Saint
John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, and upon
the top rests the Holy Scriptures, an open book. In
going around this circle, they say, we necessarily touch upon
these two lines as well as upon the Holy Scriptures.
And while a mason keeps himself circumscribed within their precepts,

(45:42):
it is impossible that he should materially err. It would
be a waste of time to comment upon this. Some
writers have imagined that the parallel lions represent the tropics
of Cancer and Capricorn, which the sun alternately touches upon
at the summer and the winter solstices. But the tropics

(46:02):
are not perpendicular lines, and the idea is merely fanciful.
If the parallel lines ever belonged to the ancient symbol,
they had some more recondite and more fruitful meaning. They
probably had the same meaning as the twin columns of
Yakin and Boaz. That meaning is not for the apprentice.
The adept may find it in the Kabbalah. The justice

(46:23):
and mercy of God are in equilibrium, and the result
is harmony, because a single and perfect wisdom presides over both.
The Holy Scriptures are an entirely modern addition to the symbol,
like the terrestrial and celestial globes of the columns of
the portico. Thus, the ancient symbols has been denaturalized by
incongruous additions, like that of isis weeping over the broken

(46:47):
column containing the remains of Osiris at Babylos. Masonry has
its decalogue, which is a law to its initiates. Vise
are its ten commandments. One God is the eternal, omnipotent,
immutable wisdom and supreme intelligence and exhaustless love. Thou shalt adore,
revere and love him. Thou shalt honor him by practicing

(47:09):
the virtues. Two. Thy religion shall be to do good
because it is a pleasure to do THEE, and not
merely because it is a duty that thou mayest become
a friend of the wise man. Thou shalt obey his precepts.
Thy soul is immortal, Thou shalt do nothing to degrade it. Three,
Thou shalt unceasingly war against vice. Thou shalt not do

(47:33):
unto others that which thou would not do unto THEE.
Thou shalt be submissive to thy fortunes and keep burning
the light of wisdom. Four Thou shalt honor thy parents.
Thou shalt pay respect and homage to the aged. Thou
shalt instruct the young. Thou shalt protect and defend infancy
and innocence. Five Thou shalt cherish thy wife and thy children.

(47:56):
Thou shalt love thy country and obey its laws. Six.
Thy friend shall be to thee a second self. Misfortune
shall not estrange him from thee. Thou shalt do for
his memory whatever thou would do est for him if
he were living. Seven Thou shalt avoid and flee from
insincere friendships. Thou shalt in everything refrain from excess. Thou

(48:18):
shalt fear to be the cause of a stain on
thy memory. Eight Thou shalt allow no passions to become
thy master. Thou shalt make the passions of others profitable
lessons to thyself. Thou shalt be indulgent to error. Nine
Thou shalt hear much, thou shalt speak little. Thou shalt

(48:39):
act well. Thou shalt forget injuries. Thou shalt render good
for evil. Thou shalt not misuse either thy strength or
thy superiority. Ten Thou shalt study to know men, that
thereby thou mayest learn to know thyself. Thou shalt ever
seek after virtue, Thou shalt be just, thou shalt avoid illness.

(49:01):
But the great commandment of masonry is this a new commandment,
Give I unto you, that ye love one another. He
that saith, he is in the light, and hath his
brother remaineth still in the darkness. Such are the moral
duties of the mason. But it is also the duty
of masonry to assist in elevating the moral and intellectual
level of society, in coining knowledge, bringing ideas into circulation,

(49:23):
and causing the mind of youth to grow, and in
putting gradually by the teachings of axioms and the promulgation
of positive laws. The human race in harmony with destinies
to this duty and work the initiative, the initiate is apprenticed.
He must not imagine that he can affect nothing, and

(49:44):
therefore despairing, becoming inert. It is in this, as in
a man's daily life, many great deeds are done. In
the small struggles of life. There is, we are told,
a determined, though unseen bravery which defends itself foot to
foot in the darkness against the fatal invasion of necessary
and of baseness. There are noble and mysterious triumphs which

(50:06):
no eye sees, which no renowned rewards, which no flourish
of trumpets salutes. Life. Misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields
which have their heroes, heroes obscure, but sometimes greater than
those who become illustrious. The Mason should struggle in the
same manner, and with the same bravery, against those invasions
of necessity and baseness which come to nations as well

(50:28):
as to men. He should meet them two foot to foot,
even in the darkness, and protest against the national wrongs
and follies, against usurpation and the first inroads of that
hydra tyranny. There is no more sovereign eloquence than the
truth and indignation. It is more difficult for a people
to keep than gain their freedom. The protests of truth

(50:49):
are always needed continually. The right must protest against the fact.
There is in fact eternity in the right. The mason
should be the priest and the soldier of that right.
If his country should be robbed over liberties, he should
still not despair. The protests of the right against the
facts persists forever. The robbery of a people never becomes prescriptive.

(51:10):
Reclamation of his rights is barred by no length of time.
Warsaw can no more be tartder than venice can be teutonic.
A people may endure military usurpation and subjugated states kneel
to states that wear the yoke while under the stress
of necessity. But when the necessity disappears, if the people
is fit to be free, the submerged country will float

(51:31):
to the surface and reappear, and tyranny will be adjudged
by history to have murdered its victims. Whatever occurs, we
shall have faith in the justice and overruling wisdom of God,
and hope for the future, and loving kindness for those
who are in error. God makes visible to men his
will of events in obscure text, written in mysterious language.

(51:53):
Men make their translations of it forthwith hasty, incorrect full
of faults and omissions in misreading the see so short
away along the arc of the great circle. Few minds
comprehend the divine tongue. The most sagacious, the most calm,
the most profound, the decipher of the he hieroglyphics slowly,

(52:14):
and when they arrive with their text, perhaps the need
is long gone. There are already twenty translations in the
public square, the most incorrect being, as of course, the
most accepted and popular. From each translation a party is born,
and from each misreading of faction. Each party believes or
pretends that it has only the true text, and each
faction believes it pretends that it alone possesses the light. Moreover,

(52:37):
factions are blind men who aim straight. Errors are excellent projectiles,
striking skillfully and with all the violence that springs from
false reasoning. Wherever, a want of logic in those who
defend the right, like a defect in a curus, makes
them vulnerable. Therefore, it is as we shall often be
discomfited in combating error. Before the people long resisted hercules,

(53:01):
and the heads of the hydra grew as fast as
they were cut off. Is absurd to say that error wounded,
writhes in pain and dies amid her worshippers. Truth conquers slowly.
There's a wondrous vitality and error. Truth, indeed, for the
most parts, shoots over the heads of the masses. Or

(53:23):
if an error is prostrated for a moment, it is
up again in the moment, and as vigorous as ever.
It will not die when the brains are out, and
the most stupid and irrational errors are the longest lived. Nevertheless, masonry,
which is morality and philosophy, must not cease to do
its duty. We never know at what moment success awaits
our efforts, generally when we most unexpected, nor with what

(53:46):
we affect. Our efforts are or are not to be attended,
succeed or fail. Masonry must not bow to error or
succumb under discouragement. There were a roam a few Carthaginian
soldiers taken prisoner who refuse to bow to Flaminius, and
had a little of Hannibal's magnanimity. Masons should possess an

(54:08):
equal greatness of soul. Masonry should be an energy, finding
its aim and effects in the Amylorian of mankind. Socrates
should enter into Adam and produce Marcus Aurelius, in other words,
bringing forth from the man of enjoyments the man of wisdom.
Masonry should not be a mere watchtower built upon mystery
from which to gaze and ease upon the world, with

(54:29):
no other result than to be a convenience for the curious,
to hold the full cup of thought to the thirsty
lips of men, to give all the true ideas of
the deity, to harmonize. Conscience and science are the province
of philosophy. Morality is faith in bloom. Contemplation should lead
to action, and the absolute be practical. The ideal be

(54:50):
made air and food and drink to the human mind.
Wisdom is a sacred communion. It is only on that
condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of
science and becomes the one and supreme method by which
to unite humanity and arouse it to concerted action. Then
philosophy becomes religion and masonry like history, and philosophy has

(55:10):
eternal duties, eternal and the same time simple. To oppose
Caiphas as bishop, or Draco or Jeffreys as judge, Trimalcion
as legislator, and Tiberius as emperor. These are symbols of
the tyranny that degrades and crushes and the corruption that
defiles and infests. In the works published for the use
of the Craft, we are told that there are three

(55:32):
great tenets of Mason's professions are brotherly love, relief, and truth.
And it is true that a brotherly affection and kindness
should govern us all in our intercourse and relations with
our brethren, and in general and liberal philanthropy acute accutate
us in regard to all men. To relieve the distress

(55:55):
is pecularly the duty of mason's, a sacred duty, not
to be omitted, nicolelis or coldly or inefficiently compiled. It
is true that truth is a divine attribute and the
foundation of every virtue. To be true and to seek
to find and learn the truth are the great objects
of every good mason. As the ancients did, masonry styles, temperance, fortitude, prudence,

(56:18):
and justice the for cardinal virtues. They are as necessary
to nations as to individuals. The people that would be
free and independent must possess sagacity, forethought, foresight, and careful circumspection,
all which are included in the meaning of the word prudence.
It must be temperate in asserting its right, temperate in
its councils, economical in its expenses. It must be bold, brave, courageous,

(56:43):
patient under reverses, undismayed by disasters, hopeful, amid calamities like
Rome when she sold the field at which Hannibal had
his camp. No Canae or Farsalier or Pavia, or agon
Courts or Waterloo must discourage her sit in the seats
until the Gallus plucks them by the beard. She must,

(57:04):
above all things, be just, not truckling to the strong
and the warring on or plundering the weak. She must
act on this square with all nations and the feeblest tribes,
always keeping her faith honest in her legislation, upright in
all her dealings. Whenever such a republic exists, it will
be immortal. For rashness injustice and temperance and luxury and prosperity,

(57:26):
and despair and disorder in adversity are the causes of
the decay and dilapidation of nations. And that brings us
the end of chapter one. And so there's a lot
to take in here, a lot to try to wrap
your head around. But this whole thing seems to swivel

(57:47):
on symbolism, beyond the need for a deity or a god.
The freemason. I'm seeing patterns here that I'm not going
to talk about today, but I'm starting to see patterns
in another people who only worship themselves, which is exactly
what the Masons seem to do. So we will continue
this next time on Morals and Dogma podcast. And thank

(58:10):
you for tuning in to this new adventure with me,
and I'll hope you tune in to Corey Hugh's Bloody
History and my other shows as well. Thank you everybody,