Kabbalah and Freemasonry

Freemasonry, A.K.A."The Brotherhood," or "the Craft," is a curious mixture of the medieval stone masons guild and various underground speculative currents of esoteric and occult thought that blossomed throughout Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The origins of Freemasonry are clouded by the vast number of legends put forward by the adherents of the various lodges. As historical fact, however, modern Freemasonry is generally acknowledged to have begun in 1717. At that time various sectarian groups came together to found the Grand Lodge in London as the seat of "speculative," rather than "operative" Freemasons, dedicated to the building of freely perfected men rather than stone cathedrals.

The roots of so called "speculative" masonry, as suggested above, are to be found in the secretive movements that had existed for centuries in Europe as parallel and adversarial to the established order of Christendom. As the power of the Catholic Church weakened under the attacks of both Protestantism and Renaissance humanism, such latent esoteric movements as Catharism (Manechean dualism) in France, Jewish theosophy -Kabbalah- in Spain, and Alchemy throughout Europe gained respectability. This trend was aggravated by the arrival of Egyptian Hermetecism- a Gnostic philosophy that openly preached the divinity of man- which entered Italy after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

These movements coalesced in to such "secret brotherhoods" as Rosicrucians in England as well as Germany and Shabbateans in Eastern Europe in the 17th century. These in turn in the 18th and 19th centuries influenced the Bavarian Illuminati, Italian Carbonari and Polish Frankists whose adepts openly asserted their influence on the political affairs of their day, especially in the "Young Europe" political parties. Although these societies and movements had distinct structures and rituals, all shared a single common denominator, the belief in the perfectibility of man and society through political action without need of the Church with her dogmas, discipline and sacraments. Rather than confront the Church head on, these groups, under the umbrella of the Masonic brotherhood, generally attempted to subvert rather than destroy the religious faith of the unwary.

In contrast to the English Grand Lodge Masonry with its "religious" overtones, as described above, there also exists a distinct, but linked, European Grand Orient Masonry based on the "Deist" or even, since the declarations of 1777, openly atheist philosophy of the French Enlightenment. Virtually all the precursors of the French Revolution, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and Robespierre were Grand Orient Masons. Generally speaking, the goal of the Grand Orient Lodges has been to openly confront the Roman Catholic Church with its hierarchical structure of government topped by the Pope in Rome by espousing revolution and radical democracy.

The Church, from the beginning, has fought back against Freemasonry with all of its strength. There have been dozens of warnings and encyclical letters issued by the Holy See regarding the dangers of Masonry.

The foremost of these is that of Pope Leo the XIII titled Humanum Genus, published in 1884. In this document the Pope clearly states that the conspiratorial society of Freemasons shelters "the partisans of evil" and is, at its root, "Satanic" in nature. * According to the 1917 Code of Cannon Law, article #2335, to belong to a Freemasonic Lodge was grounds for automatic excommunication Latae Sententiae. (The act itself bringing the penalty without formal accusation.) Although no longer grounds for ipso facto excommunication, Cardinal Ratzinger reiterated the incompatibility of Masonry and Catholicism in 1985.

While the ostensible goals of Freemasonry are philanthropy and human development, the true goal is philosophic and ultimately religious. Masonic author, Albert Pike (Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, 1859 -1891) sets the record straight in his authoritative Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry.

According to Pike, following the system of the medieval Jewish Kabbalah (oral tradition), Freemasons are bound to no one particular religion, but worship the "Complete God." This "God," Pike points out, again according to the Kabbalah, is comprised of both good (expansive) and evil (restrictive) principles, personified by, God and the devil. It should be noted, however, that in Albert Pike's twisted mind, as put forth in his July 4, 1889 letter to the Masonic supreme councils, Lucifer is the expansive, pleasure loving "good" god, and Adonai (the Judeo-Christian God) is the restrictive, judgmental mean spirited deity.

As Pike further explains to the Apprentice Mason, once again in his Morals and Dogma, "The pavement (of the Lodge), alternatively black and white, symbolizes the Good and Evil principles of the Egyptian and Persian creeds. It is the warfare between...Light and Darkness, Freedom and Despotism, Religious Liberty and the Arbitrary Dogmas of a Church that thinks for its votaries and whose Pontiff claims to be infallible..." In the final chapter of this book titled Prince of the Royal Secret Pike informs us, " The Evil is the Shadow of the Good and inseparable from it. The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence of the Divine Will or Power, and the result is Beauty or Harmony."

The "secret" then for the individual Freemason, following the Serpent's lie that, "You shall be as gods," is to work out for himself the balance or harmony of good and evil in his own life to achieve his own divine perfection. "Man is a God in the Making", Manly P.Hall, 33° The Lost Keys of Free Masonry

Collectively the external goal of Masonry is for an emancipated mankind to rebuild "Eden" without heed to the restrictive demands of the Creator and His established Church. The esoteric goal is to incorporate Lucifer into the definition of the "Complete God" that includes both good and evil, or the fusion of opposites, coincidentia opositorum. "In one instance we have the interlaced triangles, one black, the other white, the white triangle has its point up; the black triangle points down... The interlaced black and white triangles represent the forces of darkness and light, error and truth, ignorance and wisdom and good and evil; when properly placed they represent balance and harmony.

Source: www.agdei.com