January 12, 2026 • 38 mins
Hot takes alert! Does the study of Kabbalah, Tarot, and other esoteric traditions have a place in modern Freemasonry, or is it, as our guest argues, a "big stupid distraction from one's actual Masonic work"? We sit down with WB Bull Garlington, author of the provocative white paper "Messoterica." Listen as Bro. Bull makes the brutal case that the modern obsession with esoterica is nothing more than “a waste of time.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Commons.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Opinions and views shared during this program are of those
individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official position of
a Grand Lodge, concordant Body, a pendant Body, a Masonic authority,
or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only Masonic
podcast still proudly endorsed by the Grand Lodge of New York.
If we love them for that, I'm your host, Wright
wors of a Brother, Michael Arse. Here we are brand
new season pac Can you believe it? Six years we've
been doing this that long man. Want to thank everybody
who's been following us or subscribing along for the ride
(00:51):
since day one. Our rider Diers, we'd love you for that. Also,
big thanks to our friends who have taken this step
to support us on Patreon. Not going to beat you
up with that, but we are always looking for folks
who want to help support the show anyway possible. What
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You get episodes that are ad free and access to
our back catalog with all the subscriber extra episodes that
(01:11):
actually feature this guy, just someone I look forward to
and I see on my phone that I have a
podcast recording with the one and only Worshipful Brother Bull Garlington.
I know for the listener that I'm in for a
good one. And as I told you, uh, this paper
is the one paper that our listener needs to read
before any of the other papers that you've you've shared
(01:33):
with us, because one percent your voice is in this.
This sarcastic, you know, snotty. I'm just gonna keep poke, poke, poke, push, push,
pushing the issue. It like oozes through this. What was
the the mindset where you were when you're like, oh,
I'm gonna sit down and just start feverishly typing this
one out.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Well, it happened right after I did a presentation for
a large way Out and the Sticks, and I gave
this presentation. There are two of the there's another brother
who gave his presentation which was Esoterica one oh one,
and I was like, okay, and my style is you've
seen me talk. There's no slides, there's no handout, there's
(02:13):
no script. I don't know what I'm going to say.
It's a little bit more like street preaching than giving
a presentation. And so it was. It was passionate, It
was interesting the people were involved, and then I went
and sat down and he just he walked up there
and he was just I think he kind of lost
his edge a little bit. He basically listed all of
(02:35):
esoterica like bullet point, and that was his presentation. And
I just thought to myself, man, you know what it is.
You have some guys new and he comes up to
you and he goes, hey, you know, I'm kind of
I'm kind of interested in, you know, esoerica, and so
I go, oh, well, that's very interesting. Did you want
(02:55):
to talk about diacritical marks that an editor might use
when doing a page? Would you like to talk about
medical terminology? And the guy goes what, and I'm like esoterica.
He goes, no, you know, esoterica, and I'm like, Jesus,
it drives me crazy that people are so enamored of
something that is really stupid.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So you could tell there was some frustration and he
was not holding back when he started writing this. The
paper is titled mesoterica. I know a lot of this.
You say this is tongue in cheek, but the person
that you're describing, I too have run into them, and
I feel like sometimes I've been guilty of being one
of them where you feel like, oh, I've discovered this
cool little secret about our arbitual that nobody knows, and ooh,
(03:40):
how do I decide that I'm going to share this
insightful news with people.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm
sort of above this kind of bullshit because I am
not early in my career. I guess you can call it.
As a speaker. I had slides, I had diagrams. I
was running the red line from here to there, from
point a to point b and point nine, like like
I was solving some sort of mystery, you know. I mean,
(04:04):
I read Pyramids, I did all that stuff. Thank God.
Something within me sort of like said, hey, what the
fuck is wrong with you? And I listened to that
little voice, and I thought, and I saw one day,
I saw that to be one ask one bumper sticker,
all right, and it just infuriates it fust I'm like,
(04:28):
first of all, that's esoterica, all right, it is because
nobody really knows what it means unless you know what
it means. And then I realized how completely just ludicrous
that truth is. And I realized that most of the
people that are interested in esoterica are in it at
that level. They're in it at the bumper sticker level.
(04:49):
And I have to be careful while I'm talking to
you because I'm liable just to not shut up for
an hour.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
So we know what we signed up for. Well, we
know what we signed up for now. The thing for
me is I was guilty of this because, as you said,
I also discovered some secret and thought, oh, I've found
this revelation after watching countless hours of YouTube videos and
maybe a couple chapters of a manly p Hall book
and you know, a very thin Albert Pike expose or
(05:16):
something that came out. I'm like, I have all this knowledge.
I can't wait to tell my Lodge brothers. And I
quickly learned it. It kind of reminds me of one
of my favorite lines from Obi Wan Kenobi, and so
he said, there's always a bigger fish. And I realized
there were guys that knew actually more than me about stuff,
and they were bigger nerds about it than I was
about it, and also kind of bigger jerks about knowing
(05:40):
it and wouldn't just tell you what they knew, like
you had to pry it out of them like it
was some sort of state secret. And then once they
told you, you're like, I still don't get it, Like
I don't understand how much time did you spend in
all of it. And that's when I just stopped being
that guy where it's like, if I feel like I
know something, I throw it out there. I don't sit
there and hold on to it like it's my precious
(06:02):
you know.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I mean, I think I say in the paper somewhere
that there are these guys that they lead you on.
They're like, well, I really do know the secret. No, no,
I can't tell you right now because you're not ready
for it. But no, no, I swear I know the secret.
And they're like, if you just buy my book for
thirteen fifty and then then you're like, fine, okay, I'll
buy your book and they sign it. You're like, man,
(06:25):
now I'm going to know. And you open up their
book and it's just more commeric com. It's more bs.
And the truth is there's nothing for them to know.
That's the thing that drives me crazy, the people that
say that to you, the moment that they that you
realize that that that's what they are, is that they're
selling something You have to understand that they clearly are
(06:48):
oblivious to what esotericism really is. And I don't mean
that in terms of its definition or the didactic aspect
of it. I just mean what we're all talking about
when we saw about esotericism. You realize those guys are
absolutely surface level full of shit. They learned aboocabulary, the reds,
Wikipedia articles and all they want. All they want for
(07:11):
someone to believe them so that then it validates what
they've spent so much time reading about so they can
maybe feel like it's real.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
You mentioned that in your paper A Mesoterica, which, as
I mentioned, you can get now if you open up
the show notes right there boom. The link to get
it from the Craftsman Online website is there. You call
them out as being weak minded and hyper introverted nerds,
but you also use the term that I was like, hmm,
I've never thought about this before. You say that certain
(07:42):
Freemasons hide behind esoterica. What did you mean by hiding
behind it?
Speaker 3 (07:48):
It's a smoke screen, right, So one of the things
people are talking about when they talk about esoterica, what
they really mean is they want to they want to
get to the nuts and bolts of alchemy, of for
metic a sign of magic and all that stuff, and
Voyd they getting disappointed when they realized there's not a
lot of us and bolts to all that stuff. If
you've ever looked into into hermetic writing or cult writing, anything,
(08:13):
you've surely come across the name is Reel Regard, all right,
Israel Regard. He was a respected early twentieth century psychologist
and occultist. And I may be getting my facts wrong,
but I think that he was like the secretary for
Alistair Crawley. I'm not nerve enough to know all that stuff,
but it was a kind of a big deal. So
(08:33):
if you go to in a cult bookstore, and I've
spent some time there, and so one day I bought
this book for him called Garden of Pomegrantate she so
I'm like, man, I'm finally gonna learn about the Tree
of life, this esoteric stuff. I'm going to get into
it and open up this book. And it was absolutely baffling.
It was I could not nail down actual meeting in
a single sentence in the entire book. Every single sentence
(08:57):
seemed to say and in the next sent I'll explain
what I'm talking about. But then the next Senate said,
now in the next sentence, I'm going to explain. I'm
really going to explain what I'm talking about. And I
was just like, I don't need this kind of crap
and it's stupid, and it really turned me off. And
then I found out that that's that happens all over
the place. I mean, a lot of people are going
(09:18):
to be upset when I say this, especially if they're
linguistic nerds. But I use the word nerd lovingly, by
the way. But look at look at Gnom Chomsky. First
of all, he's right about everything. Right, let's just establish
JOm Chomsky is write about everything. And when you read
some of his books, they're pretty good, but they're all
hard to read. But some of his books are absolutely impenetrable.
(09:41):
They're impossible to read except you read like one sentence
every half hour. Right, it takes that much effort to
read his books. It's just it is. It is for
linguistic professor, for a guy who's practically invented the newest
linguistic sciences. The son of a bitch writes like a
(10:04):
concrete flood, And that's a kind of smoke screen. I
don't know what num Chomsky is putting a smoke screen up,
but it's partly just to make sure you know how
fucking smart he is. All Right, that's a terrible accusation
for me to lay on somebody who is clearly an
American hero. But that kind of thing happens all over
the place. You know, when you read, When you read
(10:26):
Albert Pike, it'd be a great all right, that guy.
His language is so lurid and florid and loopy and
coming back in on itself and everything that again, when
you get down to it, if you edit something, you
can take a paragraph of his and you edit down
to its essentials. It's not saying anything. This is the
truth about Albert Pike. It's mostly crap he wrote about.
(10:48):
Was him saying I do know what the secret is.
But all I can do is tell you, in a
very complicated way that I can't tell you how much
of Masonic writing is, like how much of Masonic conversation
with some of these guys and some lodges is like that.
You know, they just won't come right out and tell you, oh, well,
this is what's happened. Right. It's not like they're asking
(11:10):
you a question in order to draw the truth out
of you so that you actually learn It's that's an
efficient way. That's a good and solid way to learn things.
It's through socratic dialogue. That's not what they're doing. They're
trying to sound like they know what they mean so
that you look up to them and go, damn, that
guy knows what he means. I've seated it in presentations.
When these authors come in, you're just like, I can't
(11:31):
wait for this guy to get here. And when they
get there, you just realize, Jesus, he is so clearly
full of shit that I can't even stand that I'm
in the room right now. And so the smoke screen
is a real thing. And if you if you listen
to somebody and they're a telling you they really know
what's going on, then they just want your money. And
(11:53):
if you think yourself, this guy really knows what's going on,
they already got.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I feel like the problem here is. And this was
the first time that I went up to and I
hate to use this term, like a Masonic hero of mine,
somebody that I look up to in my lodge. It was,
honest to God, the first Masonic question that I ever
remember asking as a newly raised master Mason, I said,
so the point with in a circle because I had
just seen the first degree again and I was like, so,
(12:44):
if it's represented in the lodge and there's supposed to
be a specific point, is that this place in the lodge?
Is it at the altar that's in the center of
the room. That would kind of make or as it's
kind of explained to us, like is it us? Are
we the individual points? Is like, well, what do you
think it is? And I'm like, I don't know, brother,
That's why I'm asking you. Well, I think you should
(13:06):
read this book, this book, in this book, if.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
It's important to the human race, who the fuck are
you not to tell everybody right holding on to it?
I tell like the Great Secret of Cream I see
all the time. I'll tell anybody. I don't care because
it doesn't matter. It absolutely does not matter if you
tell somebody, because I mean, everyone is interested and it's
out there. You know, people are people are obsessed with it.
So what is its actual actual value? People might get
(13:31):
the impression right now that I don't think it has
its value, especially since I said it to useless earlier
in a broadcast. That's not true. Of course, it has value,
but it only has value if you if you live
the system or the social framework that it represents. So take,
(13:52):
for instance, to Kabbala, which people you'll notice in my
paper I spell it like nineteen different ways. But do
that specifically to pissed people off, because if you're hanging
out with one of those guys you say Kabala, they'll go,
it's kabbala and I'm like, I can continue, I can
reach you from here. I'll funk you in the list
in mouth right now. The thing is that let's let's
say that you're interested in the Kabbala. That's beautiful. I
(14:14):
don't want anyone to think that that I'm saying that
they shouldn't look into these kindeth. What I'm saying is
that if you're serious about learning about the Kabbala, then
you've got a lot of work in front of you.
And if you think, I mean reading a lot of books,
I don't.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Step one is you need to convert to Judaism. And
step two is you need to find a rabbi or
a mentor who is a leader, who unders who has
lived those principles that are that are contained within the
Kabbala to teach you as you begin to live those principles,
and that means that you're about to spend years living
(14:54):
each one of those successive principles until at some point
you really do understand it all. And it's not like
some mystical light comes on. It's just that you improve
as a person. It's not like you're going to go
around saying, you know, well, the thing about Chunkma is
that if you take Banah and go to Kelther, then
what you if you bypass the oak on seventh Street,
(15:15):
you can get to the seven eleven, and that's where
you're trying to get to. It doesn't work like that.
It's about living the system. Same thing with you know,
I make fun of it and I say editorial die
critical marks, because that's something that I use a lot
that nobody understands unless you're in publishing. But if you
don't understand it, it's pretty mysterious looking. There's a lot
of squiggles, there's weird lines, there's strange backwards letters. Could
(15:37):
be alchemy, you know, but it's not. It just means
if the wavy liners there's like, hey, that should be
an Ialat's and if there's two lines under a letter,
it's like that should be capitalized. Actually three lines for capitalization,
you know, and a backwards s fee that's got a
pill prow. That's a chemical knowledge right there, but it
needs to character. That's all that stuff is. Look at,
look at. If you know Java, then you have an
(16:01):
esoteric language under your belt. Only select number of people
understand it. So when people say esoterica, what they're really
talking about. What they don't realize they're talking about is terminology,
because that's all all that most people know about these systems,
about potaro, about the kabala, about alchemy, about hermeticism, about
whatever else, zero astronism, what else, whatever you want to
(16:23):
throw in a mix. Most of the time, what people
know is they know the words and they know what
the words mean. It's pretty rare that you talk to
somebody who says, yeah, the last year I've been focused
on living ar Canad fourteen, I've really meditated them that
every single day and tried to find out how I
can incorporate that into my life. As my teacher has
(16:46):
been helping. You don't hear that.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
The first esoteric question I asked in the lodge was Hey,
the point within a circle? Where is that represented? How
can I see that? I was told go read a book,
which really turned me off. So I started watching these
YouTube videos and the guy was like, really cool, the
backyard Freemason and he was up in like Montana or Wyoming,
just beautiful like scenery and learned all this stuff, and
(17:11):
then I really got into the point of minister. It
became a bit of a study for me. So one
of the central arguments that you make in your paper
Mesoterica is that esoteric study is actually a distraction from
the real work that we're supposed to be doing as Masons.
And I can see why you say that, because it's
(17:32):
very easy to get distracted by, Oh, what's the point
within a circle? Ooh, what is the meaning of the
lost word? What is the lost word? Word? The loss?
Who are the people that came up with it? Now
you're like going down to this rabbit hole and you're like, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not the lesson of this class assignment. Here is
what the ritual wants you to study. Here, what the
lessons are trying to say? Not going after all of
(17:54):
these other things, Where do you actually see value in
like actual real esoteric study.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
For brother, I should maybe qualify that a little more again.
When I wrote this paper, I was intentionally being a
snarky bitch, and I was intentionally writing something that our
Illinois Lodge of Research, which I was suspecting, did not
vet the papers very well. I was like, okay, all right,
let's test them out. Let's see if they bet this. No,
(18:21):
they didn't. They published it immediately with spelling error. There's
a lot of this paper that is not just tongue
in cheek. It is two it is double birds in
this paper a lot of the time. And so for
those brethren who do download it, just let me apologize
a little bit. This was meant as sort of an
fu in some ways, and that probably does come through
(18:43):
the paper a little bit. I think they're making gallid points.
And when I say the esoteric study is abstraction, I'm
talking about armchair esoteric, right, which is I know that's
a pejorative, but still, if you just pick a book
per Mission for Dummies and you go through that, it's
not a terrible book, okay, but it's it's just a
bullet point of all the stuff. It's list. It's a
(19:04):
list all right. If you go through that, that's not
studying freemasonry, because you can't study freemasonry and really get
me thing out of it. Which again, I know a
lot of people just heard me say that and they're like,
suck you Garlington. Yes I can, well, okay, sort of,
all right, sort of, but let me tell you the
difference between reading about something and actually learning a thing.
(19:29):
Imagine if I get on that plane, right, and I
go there, and the pilots in the third seed as
I walk by, and he's reading a book says how
to fly plane, all right, And I'm like, then that's
a joke, right, and he goes, oh no, It's like
I read this. I'm really starting to get the hang
of it. I'm like, okay, you flown a plane. He's like, no, no,
but look I understand the esoterica of flight, and I
(19:53):
really have gotten this author is amazing, and I really
feel that I've internalized the meaning. It's differ for me
than it is for some people, but I really think
that I think you can appreciate what to do. I
know the truth about flight, and I'll tell you in
just a minute. And then he disappears in a cockpit
and fires up the eenng and you're like, oh shit,
you know, I'm not gonna get there. That's that's the
(20:17):
reading about something like the Kabbala, about esoterica is simply
not the same as actually practicing it. And although some
people are going to say to me, well it leads
to practice, I'm like this on that because I fully
believe that you should not practice something that is basically
(20:38):
rewiring your brain, which is what a lot of hermetica
and a lot of other things doing, even freemasonry a
little bit. You should not engage in a practice, particularly
when the door into that practice is esoterica without a
mentor without someone who's already done it, who can say, yeah,
back off a little bit, all right, That part's not important.
(20:58):
Do this part. The value is the lived experience, and
that's that's the only thing that really matters, is the
lived experience of whatever it is you're studying.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
We're talking about the guys that have the escoltay and
this is where I feel bad, the guys that come
to lodgings who are like, oh, I want to talk
about medicism or the Kala, And that's why I'm going
to get into freemasonry, because I'm gonna do. And they
come to the lodge and they want to like give
these papers and I'm not saying this, this is my
personal opinion. And we played the disclaimer at the beginning
(21:49):
of the show that nobody listens to skip right over
it's a commercial. But this is my opinion of my alone.
If you got ten Masons in a room, and if
you say, hey, I have an eight guys, we'll leave
the room, i'lby two that are left that are like, oh,
tell me more, because it just doesn't appeal to every
man who's a Freemason these days. And you touch on
(22:12):
this in your paper, and it's a theme that I've
loved about you since we first met, where you talk
about Freemasonry it's a fraternity like minded men. You even
talk about Maslow and Joseph Campbell as this deeper need
for some of the guys that are into these esoteric
areas that it's a need for them to belong and
to connect with other people just like that. But why
are they having this disconnection from their Masonic brothers who
(22:34):
are like I don't want to hear about this. I'd rather,
you know, go to the bar and have a beer.
Go stand outside and smoke a cigarette. I don't even smoke.
I'd rather do that than here you talk about this
esoteric carp.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Well, we're about to go back into psychology, because what
you're talking about is the difference between the internal lopus
of control and an external loes of control. So and
locus of control is I wish there was a better
way to say, wish there's a better term, but it
is a psychological term, and what it means is a
person who has an external locuscopt of control is someone
(23:08):
who looks to validate themselves by stuff outside of themselves,
by things that other people say, by things that other
people do, and by how people react to what they do.
And so for them, the emblems themselves and the display
of those emblems is the end of their effort. I
(23:29):
am being a judging bitch. And I know if you're
somebody who fits this description, you're like, hey, you know
few Garlington, And all I can say is f you back. Man.
All right, But if you pull up to a lodge
and there's seventy four metal emblems in the back of
your car, come on, man, I mean I kind of
feel that that is missing the point and invariably, when
(23:50):
I talk to one of those guys, they have not
internalized any of it. They are looking outside of themselves
for validation. So those are the guys that I say
are like NASCAR, all right, because everything is right here,
it's all sewn under their jacket, it's plastered on in
front of them. And I feel that for a lot
of them, that's the end of their studies, that's the
(24:12):
end of their effort, is to buy that thing and bam,
put it on there. And internal locus of control is
where you find your validation through internal reflection and through
direct experience, and that is a different type of understanding
of the world. It's less concrete. There's a lot more
(24:35):
doubt involved in that, because you begin to learn that
that doubt is important, and you begin to learn that
you don't know everything, and you begin to admit to
yourself that you don't know everything, which is a very
liberating thing to understand, and you stop worrying about what
other people are saying about what your belief you know
(24:56):
what I mean. So somebody says, somebody says, well, esoterica's stupid.
You don't write a letter going listen, buddy, here's another
thing I think about the Kabbala, and you don't do
that because you know what it's like. Okay, well that's
your opinion. Because your locust control is internal, it goes
wherever you are. But if your locus of control is external,
you're beholden to that external thing, and if it fades,
(25:17):
if it grumbles, if it goes away, you get pretty lost.
But the thing you have inside of you, you're never
going to lose that.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
I want to jump into the yeah butts with so
what section of your paper? Because if our listener didn't
get the full experience a bull and you haven't been
offended yet, well then we haven't done our job. Clearly.
This is where you dismissed the Kabbala as just a database?
Speaker 3 (25:42):
That's right. Yeah, what's your response.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
To those who have to see the Kabbala as some
universal system of thought that just anyone can study?
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Bullshit? And also, so what all right?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
What does it do for you? It's a database, that's
all it is. It's just a it's a spreadsheet. Have
you ever looked at the early Kabala, the really really
early ones, They don't look anything like the Cabbala you
see it now they were a big coincentric circle, like
a half an onion, all right. And before that, I'm
sure it was something else. It might have been just
a seating pattern and some old rabbis like classroom chart
(26:19):
that just evolved into something else. You know, it's the
kabbala was nothing more than a way to keep track
of things. That's what it was, to keep track of
ideas in the relationship between ideas. It's a database. And
so my answer to that is, sue, what.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Let's jump into alchemy. Then a lot of people are like, hey, alchemy,
the early chemists, they're protecting their trade secrets. It's a
mystical truth.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Let's just say that you spend the next fourteen years
studying alchemy. All right, what are you gonna do with it?
All right? Are you really if? If if people could
study alchemy and change lead into gold, gold to be
worth about four cents a pound, right, Okay, don't work.
Nobody can do it. It's it's a it's a metaphor. It's
(27:04):
not a thing that really happens. And for those of
you who are like I've been to Notre Dame and
I saw the emblems on the front of Notre Dame
and I've read Fulcanelly. It's a metaphor, all right, it's
not about actually doing those things. And also, again, how
does that do anything for you in your life right now?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Are you?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
We go back to the distraction thing right here. But
if you're going to spend the next four or five
years or the rest of your life studying alchemy, what's
going to happen to your sons at the league game?
All right? How does that apply? Are you? How what's
going to happen when you're so lost in your stack
of books and everything that your kids like that I'll
want to help with my homework, you know. Yeah, but
I've got to transmute the red dragon into the white dragon,
(27:44):
and I've only got like five minutes before the process
turned into snowflakes. It's like, what good is that stuff
really to you? What? What does it really matter? And
wouldn't it be better if you took that time and
lived the principles behind all of these systems that you're
just paying attention to the symbols for Would it be
(28:07):
better if if you did that?
Speaker 1 (28:09):
This is where you kind of get in the same
section you compare esoteric study. And I found this to
be Yeah, it's it's kind of true. Guys get addicted
to this. It's like a rabbit hole for them. Or
as you say, every new piece of knowledge is like
a hit off the crack pipe.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
How do we get these guys off the esoterica crackpipe.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
By consistently asking them so what? Never stop asking that question.
When a guy goes, hey, have you really thought about
how the kabbala is? Blah blah blah blah, And I'm like,
so what, and they're like, okay, all right, wait because
I'm sorry to say this. And you know, a lot
of times when guys come up for you to talk
about something esoteric, they just want to impress you with
(28:51):
their vocabulary. And I get that. And that goes back
to the root of why people join freemasonry or join
any other thing. There. The path that they're taking through
the study of esoterica has nothing more than their long
way and out of short path, but the long way
to belonging. So that's what they really want. They want
(29:12):
to belong. They're desperate to belong because they're human and
humans need to belong. And for some reason, the path
they've taken is through learning the vocabulary of the Kabbala.
Now there's a group out there somewhere. If they go
to an occult bookstore, there's a flyer on the wall.
We meet every Tuesday. We talk about Kabbala and they're
going to join that. And it's like, holy shit, I've
got friends, and that's great. It's not much different for
(29:34):
somebody who learns everything there is to know about rockabilly
and buys a leather shirt and gets a duct tail
and goes and hangs out a rockabilly club. It's exact
same thing. Back when I was a punker back in
the eighties, most of what we did was we exchanged
like the names of bands and vocabulary and like we're
one upping each other. Like they're like, hey, have you
heard of REXCCM? Like, I mean, they're okay, but if
(29:55):
you've heard of you know. It was like that. And
when you get into a discussion about kabala, listen above
the discussion and you realize usually that's the same thing
that usually that's what they're doing. It's just like you say, well,
I really kind of appreciate the way that in the tarot,
the lust is depicted as a lion, and they're like
(30:17):
a lion you know, and it's like it's kind of
like that. And and so what they're engaging is two
of the great human traits and there and you're never
going to get rid of them, never going to get
rid of these things. One of them is status human
beings deed status. And people that are going in studying
the stuff thinking okay, if I know all those stuff,
and then I go talk to somebody in again, and
(30:37):
I keep coming back or in a cult bookstore, right
and like I'm wearing my I'm now wearing all my
my kabbala jewelry and everything. You know, they're going to
see that and they're going to be like, oh, you know,
and in the paper I see. There's two ways that
can go, and one of them is they can say, hey,
cool necklace, man, you know, and then the conversation. And
(30:58):
the other way is like man, and they walked right
past you. Neither one of those is particularly good, to
be honest with you. But the root of all this
stuff is is that people are they need to belong
to something. In the study of Kabbala, which ends up
being an isolating thing. They feel like they're joining something
but it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
The only time before I was a freemason that I
ever heard of the Kabbala was. I think it was
Britney Spears, maybe it was Madonna. They had the little red,
really thin bracelets and people mentioned something about Kabbala and
I remember it was like the New York Post or
like page six or something, and I'm like, what is that?
And then I had to look it up back then
because Google wasn't around, and I was like, Oh, it's
(31:42):
like Jewish mysticism, and I'm like, what is Jewish?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
You know what?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
No, don't. I don't want to go to an encyclopedia.
I'm not going to go to a bookstore. It took
becoming a Freemason to hear Kabbala just being mentioned so
much in guys talking about it, and I'm like, I
maybe maybe I owe them a second, maybe I should
look into But I don't see where there's these connections.
And that's the one thing I feel about just esoterica
(32:08):
kind of in general, is that our ritual is very
It comes from many different sources, right, But nowhere in
the ritual do we talk about the chakras. Nowhere in
our ritual do we mention terot cards. So far as
I know, with what I know about Kabala. Nowhere in
our ritual do we make these connections. It's the individuals
in Freemasonry, the other brothers that find a way Mason
(32:31):
our ritual and our emblems mean something specific.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
There. A lot of people are like, well, it's really
open to interpretation. I'm like, okay, after you understand what
it means, and after you live that experience, then sure
it's open to interpretation. But the reason that it's so precise,
the reason the language in Freemasonry is so precise, and
the reason those emblems have endured is because they actually
(32:55):
mean something. If you begin to think yourself, well I can,
just I can. This is what it means to me,
is I'm going to write a book about that. You've
just expanded the distraction right.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
There, mesoterica, why esoteric study is a waste of time?
The last sentence of that paper really is a final conclusion.
You say people are glible nit wits. And I read
that final paragraph and a smile beamed on my face.
The question that comes to me is, Okay, we want
brothers to pursue Masonic education. We want them to go
(33:27):
seek that further life. We want them to come with
new ideas or discovery that they can share with us
in the lodge. But how how can we have these programs,
these discussions, these presentations, these talks without kind of stepping
into that danger zone of this is opinion not fact.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
You said something earlier that's pretty wise, and that is
if you know something, just say what it is. And
I think that you need to preface a lot of
conversations you have with other Masons, especially new Masons, with Look,
what I'm about to talk to you about is going
to say weird, and maybe some of the language I'm
going to use is mysterious, and that's that's my fault.
But what you should understand is is this is back
(34:07):
actually about something, and you know and and that, and
you should let them know that like all the mysticism
and all that stuff is window dressing that other people
have put on our fraternity, the truth of this opporternity
is pretty straightforward about all of the the ideas and
the concepts that are clearly marked out and are ritual.
(34:28):
And there's not a lot of the esoterica in our
in our fraternity comes from the emblems and our porternity.
I know a lot of people have tried to figure
out like what the stenography is inside of it and everything,
and none of that is really there. They were that
way because until the late seventeen hundreds, people couldn't read
(34:49):
all right. A lot of people don't understand just how
illiterate everyone was. You know, a merchant would probably be
able to read a daily newspaper with a little bit
of ap and sign his name and I say his,
because that was all they were were dudes were merchants.
Most people up until like the middle eighteenth century, like
seventeen to fifty, most people the only book they ever
(35:12):
saw was the Bible in church. They didn't own one
because the Bible possibly equivalent a brand new car back then.
So there weren't a lot of books. And until publishing
became different, until the gutenbergen way after that, when bookstores
and printing shop began to pop up in London and
in America, most people could not read a lick. And
(35:33):
so when you have people like that that join an
organization that's promoting the seven Liberal arts and sciences and
some of the cardinal virtues, how do you have them study?
How do you remember what to say to them? How
do you store those concepts? If you're not going to
use words so that they're useful to those people. You
(35:54):
could teach them how to read. But for some reason
that never seemed to pop up in freemason. I wish
it wouldn't be great, And people are like, oh, free
basis they taught us all how to read. That would
have been great, but no, Instead, there's an arc, there's
a heart or the fire on it. There's a freemason
in your lodge somewhere that can go to that emblem
and take each part of it and show you what
(36:16):
part of the essay that he's memorized that it alludes to.
And when a guy was illiterate, he listened to you
talk about these things, and you pointed to parts of
that emblem, all right, and you said this is this
means this, and this means that. And here's what providence
is on the on one of our treust boards is
the hand of God. Right, it's shown they're floating in space.
(36:37):
It's the hand of Providence. And that's a great, great concept.
And and back in that day most people would only
the only place they went really was the field and church,
and so the hand of God meant a lot to them,
and that's why it's a symbol that endures. You know,
all the symbols that we have were there because those
guys couldn't read. It's not mystical, it was practic.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, and it's kind of scary. Just as a side
note of listening to you talk about this, and I'm like,
you know, it's still happening today. We have people that
are just too lazy to do their own research, so
they're just taking in whatever one person says that gets
reported by a bunch of people. It kind of sounds
like a part of it could be true, and the
next thing, you know, alternate facts become truth to some people.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Then you have two of those guys and this has
happened to me in a cigar lounge and I'm sitting
there and they're guys like are you amazing? Like yeah,
and the other guy looks up and goes, I'm amazing too. Brothers,
And I'm like, oh cool, And then they start going
at it and they're just spouting esoterica at each other.
It's weird. It's like, hmm, It's like you know when
you had those AI chatbots talking to each other. You know,
(37:46):
you're kind of like that. I'm smoking cigar going guys,
come on, man, relax.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Thanks again to our guest worship for Brother Bull Garlington.
If you want to get your hands on his white
paper Mesoterica, you can do so by opening up the
description for this podcast episode right there in the notes. Bam, dude,
I make it easy for you. There's the link to
read Bulls paper. I'm right, worshipvie Brother Michael Larsa. We
have got a really cool episode coming up next week.
If you've ever wondered or had questions about the Morgan affair,
(38:14):
one of the biggest murder mystery episodes on our podcast
is coming as we mark the two hundredth anniversary of
the disappearance of William Morgan next week. Until then, the
piece of harmony prevail.
The Commons.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Opinions and views shared during this program are of those
individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official position of
a Grand Lodge, concordant Body, a pendant Body, a Masonic authority,
or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only Masonic
podcast still proudly endorsed by the Grand Lodge of New York.
If we love them for that, I'm your host, Wright
wors of a Brother, Michael Arse. Here we are brand
new season pac Can you believe it? Six years we've
been doing this that long man. Want to thank everybody
who's been following us or subscribing along for the ride
(00:51):
since day one. Our rider Diers, we'd love you for that. Also,
big thanks to our friends who have taken this step
to support us on Patreon. Not going to beat you
up with that, but we are always looking for folks
who want to help support the show anyway possible. What
do you get for that five dollar subscription? Every month?
You get episodes that are ad free and access to
our back catalog with all the subscriber extra episodes that
(01:11):
actually feature this guy, just someone I look forward to
and I see on my phone that I have a
podcast recording with the one and only Worshipful Brother Bull Garlington.
I know for the listener that I'm in for a
good one. And as I told you, uh, this paper
is the one paper that our listener needs to read
before any of the other papers that you've you've shared
(01:33):
with us, because one percent your voice is in this.
This sarcastic, you know, snotty. I'm just gonna keep poke, poke, poke, push, push,
pushing the issue. It like oozes through this. What was
the the mindset where you were when you're like, oh,
I'm gonna sit down and just start feverishly typing this
one out.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Well, it happened right after I did a presentation for
a large way Out and the Sticks, and I gave
this presentation. There are two of the there's another brother
who gave his presentation which was Esoterica one oh one,
and I was like, okay, and my style is you've
seen me talk. There's no slides, there's no handout, there's
(02:13):
no script. I don't know what I'm going to say.
It's a little bit more like street preaching than giving
a presentation. And so it was. It was passionate, It
was interesting the people were involved, and then I went
and sat down and he just he walked up there
and he was just I think he kind of lost
his edge a little bit. He basically listed all of
(02:35):
esoterica like bullet point, and that was his presentation. And
I just thought to myself, man, you know what it is.
You have some guys new and he comes up to
you and he goes, hey, you know, I'm kind of
I'm kind of interested in, you know, esoerica, and so
I go, oh, well, that's very interesting. Did you want
(02:55):
to talk about diacritical marks that an editor might use
when doing a page? Would you like to talk about
medical terminology? And the guy goes what, and I'm like esoterica.
He goes, no, you know, esoterica, and I'm like, Jesus,
it drives me crazy that people are so enamored of
something that is really stupid.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So you could tell there was some frustration and he
was not holding back when he started writing this. The
paper is titled mesoterica. I know a lot of this.
You say this is tongue in cheek, but the person
that you're describing, I too have run into them, and
I feel like sometimes I've been guilty of being one
of them where you feel like, oh, I've discovered this
cool little secret about our arbitual that nobody knows, and ooh,
(03:40):
how do I decide that I'm going to share this
insightful news with people.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm
sort of above this kind of bullshit because I am
not early in my career. I guess you can call it.
As a speaker. I had slides, I had diagrams. I
was running the red line from here to there, from
point a to point b and point nine, like like
I was solving some sort of mystery, you know. I mean,
(04:04):
I read Pyramids, I did all that stuff. Thank God.
Something within me sort of like said, hey, what the
fuck is wrong with you? And I listened to that
little voice, and I thought, and I saw one day,
I saw that to be one ask one bumper sticker,
all right, and it just infuriates it fust I'm like,
(04:28):
first of all, that's esoterica, all right, it is because
nobody really knows what it means unless you know what
it means. And then I realized how completely just ludicrous
that truth is. And I realized that most of the
people that are interested in esoterica are in it at
that level. They're in it at the bumper sticker level.
(04:49):
And I have to be careful while I'm talking to
you because I'm liable just to not shut up for
an hour.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
So we know what we signed up for. Well, we
know what we signed up for now. The thing for
me is I was guilty of this because, as you said,
I also discovered some secret and thought, oh, I've found
this revelation after watching countless hours of YouTube videos and
maybe a couple chapters of a manly p Hall book
and you know, a very thin Albert Pike expose or
(05:16):
something that came out. I'm like, I have all this knowledge.
I can't wait to tell my Lodge brothers. And I
quickly learned it. It kind of reminds me of one
of my favorite lines from Obi Wan Kenobi, and so
he said, there's always a bigger fish. And I realized
there were guys that knew actually more than me about stuff,
and they were bigger nerds about it than I was
about it, and also kind of bigger jerks about knowing
(05:40):
it and wouldn't just tell you what they knew, like
you had to pry it out of them like it
was some sort of state secret. And then once they
told you, you're like, I still don't get it, Like
I don't understand how much time did you spend in
all of it. And that's when I just stopped being
that guy where it's like, if I feel like I
know something, I throw it out there. I don't sit
there and hold on to it like it's my precious
(06:02):
you know.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I mean, I think I say in the paper somewhere
that there are these guys that they lead you on.
They're like, well, I really do know the secret. No, no,
I can't tell you right now because you're not ready
for it. But no, no, I swear I know the secret.
And they're like, if you just buy my book for
thirteen fifty and then then you're like, fine, okay, I'll
buy your book and they sign it. You're like, man,
(06:25):
now I'm going to know. And you open up their
book and it's just more commeric com. It's more bs.
And the truth is there's nothing for them to know.
That's the thing that drives me crazy, the people that
say that to you, the moment that they that you
realize that that that's what they are, is that they're
selling something You have to understand that they clearly are
(06:48):
oblivious to what esotericism really is. And I don't mean
that in terms of its definition or the didactic aspect
of it. I just mean what we're all talking about
when we saw about esotericism. You realize those guys are
absolutely surface level full of shit. They learned aboocabulary, the reds,
Wikipedia articles and all they want. All they want for
(07:11):
someone to believe them so that then it validates what
they've spent so much time reading about so they can
maybe feel like it's real.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
You mentioned that in your paper A Mesoterica, which, as
I mentioned, you can get now if you open up
the show notes right there boom. The link to get
it from the Craftsman Online website is there. You call
them out as being weak minded and hyper introverted nerds,
but you also use the term that I was like, hmm,
I've never thought about this before. You say that certain
(07:42):
Freemasons hide behind esoterica. What did you mean by hiding
behind it?
Speaker 3 (07:48):
It's a smoke screen, right, So one of the things
people are talking about when they talk about esoterica, what
they really mean is they want to they want to
get to the nuts and bolts of alchemy, of for
metic a sign of magic and all that stuff, and
Voyd they getting disappointed when they realized there's not a
lot of us and bolts to all that stuff. If
you've ever looked into into hermetic writing or cult writing, anything,
(08:13):
you've surely come across the name is Reel Regard, all right,
Israel Regard. He was a respected early twentieth century psychologist
and occultist. And I may be getting my facts wrong,
but I think that he was like the secretary for
Alistair Crawley. I'm not nerve enough to know all that stuff,
but it was a kind of a big deal. So
(08:33):
if you go to in a cult bookstore, and I've
spent some time there, and so one day I bought
this book for him called Garden of Pomegrantate she so
I'm like, man, I'm finally gonna learn about the Tree
of life, this esoteric stuff. I'm going to get into
it and open up this book. And it was absolutely baffling.
It was I could not nail down actual meeting in
a single sentence in the entire book. Every single sentence
(08:57):
seemed to say and in the next sent I'll explain
what I'm talking about. But then the next Senate said,
now in the next sentence, I'm going to explain. I'm
really going to explain what I'm talking about. And I
was just like, I don't need this kind of crap
and it's stupid, and it really turned me off. And
then I found out that that's that happens all over
the place. I mean, a lot of people are going
(09:18):
to be upset when I say this, especially if they're
linguistic nerds. But I use the word nerd lovingly, by
the way. But look at look at Gnom Chomsky. First
of all, he's right about everything. Right, let's just establish
JOm Chomsky is write about everything. And when you read
some of his books, they're pretty good, but they're all
hard to read. But some of his books are absolutely impenetrable.
(09:41):
They're impossible to read except you read like one sentence
every half hour. Right, it takes that much effort to
read his books. It's just it is. It is for
linguistic professor, for a guy who's practically invented the newest
linguistic sciences. The son of a bitch writes like a
(10:04):
concrete flood, And that's a kind of smoke screen. I
don't know what num Chomsky is putting a smoke screen up,
but it's partly just to make sure you know how
fucking smart he is. All Right, that's a terrible accusation
for me to lay on somebody who is clearly an
American hero. But that kind of thing happens all over
the place. You know, when you read, When you read
(10:26):
Albert Pike, it'd be a great all right, that guy.
His language is so lurid and florid and loopy and
coming back in on itself and everything that again, when
you get down to it, if you edit something, you
can take a paragraph of his and you edit down
to its essentials. It's not saying anything. This is the
truth about Albert Pike. It's mostly crap he wrote about.
(10:48):
Was him saying I do know what the secret is.
But all I can do is tell you, in a
very complicated way that I can't tell you how much
of Masonic writing is, like how much of Masonic conversation
with some of these guys and some lodges is like that.
You know, they just won't come right out and tell you, oh, well,
this is what's happened. Right. It's not like they're asking
(11:10):
you a question in order to draw the truth out
of you so that you actually learn It's that's an
efficient way. That's a good and solid way to learn things.
It's through socratic dialogue. That's not what they're doing. They're
trying to sound like they know what they mean so
that you look up to them and go, damn, that
guy knows what he means. I've seated it in presentations.
When these authors come in, you're just like, I can't
(11:31):
wait for this guy to get here. And when they
get there, you just realize, Jesus, he is so clearly
full of shit that I can't even stand that I'm
in the room right now. And so the smoke screen
is a real thing. And if you if you listen
to somebody and they're a telling you they really know
what's going on, then they just want your money. And
(11:53):
if you think yourself, this guy really knows what's going on,
they already got.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I feel like the problem here is. And this was
the first time that I went up to and I
hate to use this term, like a Masonic hero of mine,
somebody that I look up to in my lodge. It was,
honest to God, the first Masonic question that I ever
remember asking as a newly raised master Mason, I said,
so the point with in a circle because I had
just seen the first degree again and I was like, so,
(12:44):
if it's represented in the lodge and there's supposed to
be a specific point, is that this place in the lodge?
Is it at the altar that's in the center of
the room. That would kind of make or as it's
kind of explained to us, like is it us? Are
we the individual points? Is like, well, what do you
think it is? And I'm like, I don't know, brother,
That's why I'm asking you. Well, I think you should
(13:06):
read this book, this book, in this book, if.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
It's important to the human race, who the fuck are
you not to tell everybody right holding on to it?
I tell like the Great Secret of Cream I see
all the time. I'll tell anybody. I don't care because
it doesn't matter. It absolutely does not matter if you
tell somebody, because I mean, everyone is interested and it's
out there. You know, people are people are obsessed with it.
So what is its actual actual value? People might get
(13:31):
the impression right now that I don't think it has
its value, especially since I said it to useless earlier
in a broadcast. That's not true. Of course, it has value,
but it only has value if you if you live
the system or the social framework that it represents. So take,
(13:52):
for instance, to Kabbala, which people you'll notice in my
paper I spell it like nineteen different ways. But do
that specifically to pissed people off, because if you're hanging
out with one of those guys you say Kabala, they'll go,
it's kabbala and I'm like, I can continue, I can
reach you from here. I'll funk you in the list
in mouth right now. The thing is that let's let's
say that you're interested in the Kabbala. That's beautiful. I
(14:14):
don't want anyone to think that that I'm saying that
they shouldn't look into these kindeth. What I'm saying is
that if you're serious about learning about the Kabbala, then
you've got a lot of work in front of you.
And if you think, I mean reading a lot of books,
I don't.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Step one is you need to convert to Judaism. And
step two is you need to find a rabbi or
a mentor who is a leader, who unders who has
lived those principles that are that are contained within the
Kabbala to teach you as you begin to live those principles,
and that means that you're about to spend years living
(14:54):
each one of those successive principles until at some point
you really do understand it all. And it's not like
some mystical light comes on. It's just that you improve
as a person. It's not like you're going to go
around saying, you know, well, the thing about Chunkma is
that if you take Banah and go to Kelther, then
what you if you bypass the oak on seventh Street,
(15:15):
you can get to the seven eleven, and that's where
you're trying to get to. It doesn't work like that.
It's about living the system. Same thing with you know,
I make fun of it and I say editorial die
critical marks, because that's something that I use a lot
that nobody understands unless you're in publishing. But if you
don't understand it, it's pretty mysterious looking. There's a lot
of squiggles, there's weird lines, there's strange backwards letters. Could
(15:37):
be alchemy, you know, but it's not. It just means
if the wavy liners there's like, hey, that should be
an Ialat's and if there's two lines under a letter,
it's like that should be capitalized. Actually three lines for capitalization,
you know, and a backwards s fee that's got a
pill prow. That's a chemical knowledge right there, but it
needs to character. That's all that stuff is. Look at,
look at. If you know Java, then you have an
(16:01):
esoteric language under your belt. Only select number of people
understand it. So when people say esoterica, what they're really
talking about. What they don't realize they're talking about is terminology,
because that's all all that most people know about these systems,
about potaro, about the kabala, about alchemy, about hermeticism, about
whatever else, zero astronism, what else, whatever you want to
(16:23):
throw in a mix. Most of the time, what people
know is they know the words and they know what
the words mean. It's pretty rare that you talk to
somebody who says, yeah, the last year I've been focused
on living ar Canad fourteen, I've really meditated them that
every single day and tried to find out how I
can incorporate that into my life. As my teacher has
(16:46):
been helping. You don't hear that.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
The first esoteric question I asked in the lodge was Hey,
the point within a circle? Where is that represented? How
can I see that? I was told go read a book,
which really turned me off. So I started watching these
YouTube videos and the guy was like, really cool, the
backyard Freemason and he was up in like Montana or Wyoming,
just beautiful like scenery and learned all this stuff, and
(17:11):
then I really got into the point of minister. It
became a bit of a study for me. So one
of the central arguments that you make in your paper
Mesoterica is that esoteric study is actually a distraction from
the real work that we're supposed to be doing as Masons.
And I can see why you say that, because it's
(17:32):
very easy to get distracted by, Oh, what's the point
within a circle? Ooh, what is the meaning of the
lost word? What is the lost word? Word? The loss?
Who are the people that came up with it? Now
you're like going down to this rabbit hole and you're like, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not the lesson of this class assignment. Here is
what the ritual wants you to study. Here, what the
lessons are trying to say? Not going after all of
(17:54):
these other things, Where do you actually see value in
like actual real esoteric study.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
For brother, I should maybe qualify that a little more again.
When I wrote this paper, I was intentionally being a
snarky bitch, and I was intentionally writing something that our
Illinois Lodge of Research, which I was suspecting, did not
vet the papers very well. I was like, okay, all right,
let's test them out. Let's see if they bet this. No,
(18:21):
they didn't. They published it immediately with spelling error. There's
a lot of this paper that is not just tongue
in cheek. It is two it is double birds in
this paper a lot of the time. And so for
those brethren who do download it, just let me apologize
a little bit. This was meant as sort of an
fu in some ways, and that probably does come through
(18:43):
the paper a little bit. I think they're making gallid points.
And when I say the esoteric study is abstraction, I'm
talking about armchair esoteric, right, which is I know that's
a pejorative, but still, if you just pick a book
per Mission for Dummies and you go through that, it's
not a terrible book, okay, but it's it's just a
bullet point of all the stuff. It's list. It's a
(19:04):
list all right. If you go through that, that's not
studying freemasonry, because you can't study freemasonry and really get
me thing out of it. Which again, I know a
lot of people just heard me say that and they're like,
suck you Garlington. Yes I can, well, okay, sort of,
all right, sort of, but let me tell you the
difference between reading about something and actually learning a thing.
(19:29):
Imagine if I get on that plane, right, and I
go there, and the pilots in the third seed as
I walk by, and he's reading a book says how
to fly plane, all right, And I'm like, then that's
a joke, right, and he goes, oh no, It's like
I read this. I'm really starting to get the hang
of it. I'm like, okay, you flown a plane. He's like, no, no,
but look I understand the esoterica of flight, and I
(19:53):
really have gotten this author is amazing, and I really
feel that I've internalized the meaning. It's differ for me
than it is for some people, but I really think
that I think you can appreciate what to do. I
know the truth about flight, and I'll tell you in
just a minute. And then he disappears in a cockpit
and fires up the eenng and you're like, oh shit,
you know, I'm not gonna get there. That's that's the
(20:17):
reading about something like the Kabbala, about esoterica is simply
not the same as actually practicing it. And although some
people are going to say to me, well it leads
to practice, I'm like this on that because I fully
believe that you should not practice something that is basically
(20:38):
rewiring your brain, which is what a lot of hermetica
and a lot of other things doing, even freemasonry a
little bit. You should not engage in a practice, particularly
when the door into that practice is esoterica without a
mentor without someone who's already done it, who can say, yeah,
back off a little bit, all right, That part's not important.
(20:58):
Do this part. The value is the lived experience, and
that's that's the only thing that really matters, is the
lived experience of whatever it is you're studying.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
We're talking about the guys that have the escoltay and
this is where I feel bad, the guys that come
to lodgings who are like, oh, I want to talk
about medicism or the Kala, And that's why I'm going
to get into freemasonry, because I'm gonna do. And they
come to the lodge and they want to like give
these papers and I'm not saying this, this is my
personal opinion. And we played the disclaimer at the beginning
(21:49):
of the show that nobody listens to skip right over
it's a commercial. But this is my opinion of my alone.
If you got ten Masons in a room, and if
you say, hey, I have an eight guys, we'll leave
the room, i'lby two that are left that are like, oh,
tell me more, because it just doesn't appeal to every
man who's a Freemason these days. And you touch on
(22:12):
this in your paper, and it's a theme that I've
loved about you since we first met, where you talk
about Freemasonry it's a fraternity like minded men. You even
talk about Maslow and Joseph Campbell as this deeper need
for some of the guys that are into these esoteric
areas that it's a need for them to belong and
to connect with other people just like that. But why
are they having this disconnection from their Masonic brothers who
(22:34):
are like I don't want to hear about this. I'd rather,
you know, go to the bar and have a beer.
Go stand outside and smoke a cigarette. I don't even smoke.
I'd rather do that than here you talk about this
esoteric carp.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Well, we're about to go back into psychology, because what
you're talking about is the difference between the internal lopus
of control and an external loes of control. So and
locus of control is I wish there was a better
way to say, wish there's a better term, but it
is a psychological term, and what it means is a
person who has an external locuscopt of control is someone
(23:08):
who looks to validate themselves by stuff outside of themselves,
by things that other people say, by things that other
people do, and by how people react to what they do.
And so for them, the emblems themselves and the display
of those emblems is the end of their effort. I
(23:29):
am being a judging bitch. And I know if you're
somebody who fits this description, you're like, hey, you know
few Garlington, And all I can say is f you back. Man.
All right, But if you pull up to a lodge
and there's seventy four metal emblems in the back of
your car, come on, man, I mean I kind of
feel that that is missing the point and invariably, when
(23:50):
I talk to one of those guys, they have not
internalized any of it. They are looking outside of themselves
for validation. So those are the guys that I say
are like NASCAR, all right, because everything is right here,
it's all sewn under their jacket, it's plastered on in
front of them. And I feel that for a lot
of them, that's the end of their studies, that's the
(24:12):
end of their effort, is to buy that thing and bam,
put it on there. And internal locus of control is
where you find your validation through internal reflection and through
direct experience, and that is a different type of understanding
of the world. It's less concrete. There's a lot more
(24:35):
doubt involved in that, because you begin to learn that
that doubt is important, and you begin to learn that
you don't know everything, and you begin to admit to
yourself that you don't know everything, which is a very
liberating thing to understand, and you stop worrying about what
other people are saying about what your belief you know
(24:56):
what I mean. So somebody says, somebody says, well, esoterica's stupid.
You don't write a letter going listen, buddy, here's another
thing I think about the Kabbala, and you don't do
that because you know what it's like. Okay, well that's
your opinion. Because your locust control is internal, it goes
wherever you are. But if your locus of control is external,
you're beholden to that external thing, and if it fades,
(25:17):
if it grumbles, if it goes away, you get pretty lost.
But the thing you have inside of you, you're never
going to lose that.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
I want to jump into the yeah butts with so
what section of your paper? Because if our listener didn't
get the full experience a bull and you haven't been
offended yet, well then we haven't done our job. Clearly.
This is where you dismissed the Kabbala as just a database?
Speaker 3 (25:42):
That's right. Yeah, what's your response.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
To those who have to see the Kabbala as some
universal system of thought that just anyone can study?
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Bullshit? And also, so what all right?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
What does it do for you? It's a database, that's
all it is. It's just a it's a spreadsheet. Have
you ever looked at the early Kabala, the really really
early ones, They don't look anything like the Cabbala you
see it now they were a big coincentric circle, like
a half an onion, all right. And before that, I'm
sure it was something else. It might have been just
a seating pattern and some old rabbis like classroom chart
(26:19):
that just evolved into something else. You know, it's the
kabbala was nothing more than a way to keep track
of things. That's what it was, to keep track of
ideas in the relationship between ideas. It's a database. And
so my answer to that is, sue, what.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Let's jump into alchemy. Then a lot of people are like, hey, alchemy,
the early chemists, they're protecting their trade secrets. It's a
mystical truth.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Let's just say that you spend the next fourteen years
studying alchemy. All right, what are you gonna do with it?
All right? Are you really if? If if people could
study alchemy and change lead into gold, gold to be
worth about four cents a pound, right, Okay, don't work.
Nobody can do it. It's it's a it's a metaphor. It's
(27:04):
not a thing that really happens. And for those of
you who are like I've been to Notre Dame and
I saw the emblems on the front of Notre Dame
and I've read Fulcanelly. It's a metaphor, all right, it's
not about actually doing those things. And also, again, how
does that do anything for you in your life right now?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Are you?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
We go back to the distraction thing right here. But
if you're going to spend the next four or five
years or the rest of your life studying alchemy, what's
going to happen to your sons at the league game?
All right? How does that apply? Are you? How what's
going to happen when you're so lost in your stack
of books and everything that your kids like that I'll
want to help with my homework, you know. Yeah, but
I've got to transmute the red dragon into the white dragon,
(27:44):
and I've only got like five minutes before the process
turned into snowflakes. It's like, what good is that stuff
really to you? What? What does it really matter? And
wouldn't it be better if you took that time and
lived the principles behind all of these systems that you're
just paying attention to the symbols for Would it be
(28:07):
better if if you did that?
Speaker 1 (28:09):
This is where you kind of get in the same
section you compare esoteric study. And I found this to
be Yeah, it's it's kind of true. Guys get addicted
to this. It's like a rabbit hole for them. Or
as you say, every new piece of knowledge is like
a hit off the crack pipe.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
How do we get these guys off the esoterica crackpipe.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
By consistently asking them so what? Never stop asking that question.
When a guy goes, hey, have you really thought about
how the kabbala is? Blah blah blah blah, And I'm like,
so what, and they're like, okay, all right, wait because
I'm sorry to say this. And you know, a lot
of times when guys come up for you to talk
about something esoteric, they just want to impress you with
(28:51):
their vocabulary. And I get that. And that goes back
to the root of why people join freemasonry or join
any other thing. There. The path that they're taking through
the study of esoterica has nothing more than their long
way and out of short path, but the long way
to belonging. So that's what they really want. They want
(29:12):
to belong. They're desperate to belong because they're human and
humans need to belong. And for some reason, the path
they've taken is through learning the vocabulary of the Kabbala.
Now there's a group out there somewhere. If they go
to an occult bookstore, there's a flyer on the wall.
We meet every Tuesday. We talk about Kabbala and they're
going to join that. And it's like, holy shit, I've
got friends, and that's great. It's not much different for
(29:34):
somebody who learns everything there is to know about rockabilly
and buys a leather shirt and gets a duct tail
and goes and hangs out a rockabilly club. It's exact
same thing. Back when I was a punker back in
the eighties, most of what we did was we exchanged
like the names of bands and vocabulary and like we're
one upping each other. Like they're like, hey, have you
heard of REXCCM? Like, I mean, they're okay, but if
(29:55):
you've heard of you know. It was like that. And
when you get into a discussion about kabala, listen above
the discussion and you realize usually that's the same thing
that usually that's what they're doing. It's just like you say, well,
I really kind of appreciate the way that in the tarot,
the lust is depicted as a lion, and they're like
(30:17):
a lion you know, and it's like it's kind of
like that. And and so what they're engaging is two
of the great human traits and there and you're never
going to get rid of them, never going to get
rid of these things. One of them is status human
beings deed status. And people that are going in studying
the stuff thinking okay, if I know all those stuff,
and then I go talk to somebody in again, and
(30:37):
I keep coming back or in a cult bookstore, right
and like I'm wearing my I'm now wearing all my
my kabbala jewelry and everything. You know, they're going to
see that and they're going to be like, oh, you know,
and in the paper I see. There's two ways that
can go, and one of them is they can say, hey,
cool necklace, man, you know, and then the conversation. And
(30:58):
the other way is like man, and they walked right
past you. Neither one of those is particularly good, to
be honest with you. But the root of all this
stuff is is that people are they need to belong
to something. In the study of Kabbala, which ends up
being an isolating thing. They feel like they're joining something
but it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
The only time before I was a freemason that I
ever heard of the Kabbala was. I think it was
Britney Spears, maybe it was Madonna. They had the little red,
really thin bracelets and people mentioned something about Kabbala and
I remember it was like the New York Post or
like page six or something, and I'm like, what is that?
And then I had to look it up back then
because Google wasn't around, and I was like, Oh, it's
(31:42):
like Jewish mysticism, and I'm like, what is Jewish?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
You know what?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
No, don't. I don't want to go to an encyclopedia.
I'm not going to go to a bookstore. It took
becoming a Freemason to hear Kabbala just being mentioned so
much in guys talking about it, and I'm like, I
maybe maybe I owe them a second, maybe I should
look into But I don't see where there's these connections.
And that's the one thing I feel about just esoterica
(32:08):
kind of in general, is that our ritual is very
It comes from many different sources, right, But nowhere in
the ritual do we talk about the chakras. Nowhere in
our ritual do we mention terot cards. So far as
I know, with what I know about Kabala. Nowhere in
our ritual do we make these connections. It's the individuals
in Freemasonry, the other brothers that find a way Mason
(32:31):
our ritual and our emblems mean something specific.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
There. A lot of people are like, well, it's really
open to interpretation. I'm like, okay, after you understand what
it means, and after you live that experience, then sure
it's open to interpretation. But the reason that it's so precise,
the reason the language in Freemasonry is so precise, and
the reason those emblems have endured is because they actually
(32:55):
mean something. If you begin to think yourself, well I can,
just I can. This is what it means to me,
is I'm going to write a book about that. You've
just expanded the distraction right.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
There, mesoterica, why esoteric study is a waste of time?
The last sentence of that paper really is a final conclusion.
You say people are glible nit wits. And I read
that final paragraph and a smile beamed on my face.
The question that comes to me is, Okay, we want
brothers to pursue Masonic education. We want them to go
(33:27):
seek that further life. We want them to come with
new ideas or discovery that they can share with us
in the lodge. But how how can we have these programs,
these discussions, these presentations, these talks without kind of stepping
into that danger zone of this is opinion not fact.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
You said something earlier that's pretty wise, and that is
if you know something, just say what it is. And
I think that you need to preface a lot of
conversations you have with other Masons, especially new Masons, with Look,
what I'm about to talk to you about is going
to say weird, and maybe some of the language I'm
going to use is mysterious, and that's that's my fault.
But what you should understand is is this is back
(34:07):
actually about something, and you know and and that, and
you should let them know that like all the mysticism
and all that stuff is window dressing that other people
have put on our fraternity, the truth of this opporternity
is pretty straightforward about all of the the ideas and
the concepts that are clearly marked out and are ritual.
(34:28):
And there's not a lot of the esoterica in our
in our fraternity comes from the emblems and our porternity.
I know a lot of people have tried to figure
out like what the stenography is inside of it and everything,
and none of that is really there. They were that
way because until the late seventeen hundreds, people couldn't read
(34:49):
all right. A lot of people don't understand just how
illiterate everyone was. You know, a merchant would probably be
able to read a daily newspaper with a little bit
of ap and sign his name and I say his,
because that was all they were were dudes were merchants.
Most people up until like the middle eighteenth century, like
seventeen to fifty, most people the only book they ever
(35:12):
saw was the Bible in church. They didn't own one
because the Bible possibly equivalent a brand new car back then.
So there weren't a lot of books. And until publishing
became different, until the gutenbergen way after that, when bookstores
and printing shop began to pop up in London and
in America, most people could not read a lick. And
(35:33):
so when you have people like that that join an
organization that's promoting the seven Liberal arts and sciences and
some of the cardinal virtues, how do you have them study?
How do you remember what to say to them? How
do you store those concepts? If you're not going to
use words so that they're useful to those people. You
(35:54):
could teach them how to read. But for some reason
that never seemed to pop up in freemason. I wish
it wouldn't be great, And people are like, oh, free
basis they taught us all how to read. That would
have been great, but no, Instead, there's an arc, there's
a heart or the fire on it. There's a freemason
in your lodge somewhere that can go to that emblem
and take each part of it and show you what
(36:16):
part of the essay that he's memorized that it alludes to.
And when a guy was illiterate, he listened to you
talk about these things, and you pointed to parts of
that emblem, all right, and you said this is this
means this, and this means that. And here's what providence
is on the on one of our treust boards is
the hand of God. Right, it's shown they're floating in space.
(36:37):
It's the hand of Providence. And that's a great, great concept.
And and back in that day most people would only
the only place they went really was the field and church,
and so the hand of God meant a lot to them,
and that's why it's a symbol that endures. You know,
all the symbols that we have were there because those
guys couldn't read. It's not mystical, it was practic.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, and it's kind of scary. Just as a side
note of listening to you talk about this, and I'm like,
you know, it's still happening today. We have people that
are just too lazy to do their own research, so
they're just taking in whatever one person says that gets
reported by a bunch of people. It kind of sounds
like a part of it could be true, and the
next thing, you know, alternate facts become truth to some people.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Then you have two of those guys and this has
happened to me in a cigar lounge and I'm sitting
there and they're guys like are you amazing? Like yeah,
and the other guy looks up and goes, I'm amazing too. Brothers,
And I'm like, oh cool, And then they start going
at it and they're just spouting esoterica at each other.
It's weird. It's like, hmm, It's like you know when
you had those AI chatbots talking to each other. You know,
(37:46):
you're kind of like that. I'm smoking cigar going guys,
come on, man, relax.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Thanks again to our guest worship for Brother Bull Garlington.
If you want to get your hands on his white
paper Mesoterica, you can do so by opening up the
description for this podcast episode right there in the notes. Bam, dude,
I make it easy for you. There's the link to
read Bulls paper. I'm right, worshipvie Brother Michael Larsa. We
have got a really cool episode coming up next week.
If you've ever wondered or had questions about the Morgan affair,
(38:14):
one of the biggest murder mystery episodes on our podcast
is coming as we mark the two hundredth anniversary of
the disappearance of William Morgan next week. Until then, the
piece of harmony prevail.
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