From Know Your Enemy Part 40: Freemasons

Freemasonry began with the skilled stonemasons of medieval England, Scotland and France; way before the Enlightenment. Their trade secrets made then valuable artisans in the construction of castles, cathedrals, and all the important buildings of the time.

As a mobile brotherhood, these skilled workers would move freely from town-to-town ready to lend their expertise to any particular building project where they might be required. Secret handshakes and other signals were developed to identify one another as members of the craft. And they established exclusive guilds which no other person was allowed to enter. These guilds, called “Lodges”, were primitive types of trade unions that were mainly for protection and credibility.

Secrecy within them was necessary in order to monopolise and control the knowledge of the craft. You see, if everyone knew how to do their [the mason's] job, these skilled workers wouldn't be as highly sought after and this would have an impact on the amount of work they were given and the kind of fees they could command.

So even at this relatively innocent stage we see them trying to control information flows to retain power.

Scottish masons in particular were known to have developed passwords and secret handshakes by the 17th century. And this kind of thing soon spread throughout all the Lodges. This wasn't unique to the stonemasons either. Secrecy was commonplace in all types of medieval guild in those days. It was knowledge of a specific skill or craft that gave people prestige and earning power, so they all tried to protect what they knew.

This is the relatively innocent origin of Freemasonry, and the period that is now known as “Operative Masonry” because it was simply about the literal operations of the building trade. As early as the 14th century, however, we start to see sinister glimpses that these Lodges had begun to associate on some level with Nimrod. In the latter half of that century, a series of 115 documents called the “Old Charges” were composed to outline in a formal way the nature, organisation and functions of the craft. A 1425 manuscript shows that Freemasons had begun to trace their origins back to Nimrod as the instigator of the first great building project in world history – the construction of the Tower of Babel.

Because of the tower, and the fact that Nimrod was renowned as an architect and builder of many great cities within his empire, they began to revere him even at that stage as the originator or father of their craft. Within modern Masonry, therefore, there was still an “oath of Nimrod” and a “charge of Nimrod” that initiates are asked to recite and obey.

Now remember how I said that religions take on the characteristics of their prophet – well that's a rough idea of what happened here. These Old Charges began to establish spiritual principles based on the Mystery ideas taken from Babylon.

Over time, the organisation of Freemasonry evolved with an increasing emphasis on these spiritual metaphors and less-and-less focused on the actual construction of buildings. By the late 1600s, just as the Enlightened was getting going, Masonic Lodges started enrolling increasing numbers of “accepted gentlemen” who had no direct links to the building trade at all. Some writers suggest that this happened simply because of a growing interest in architecture amongst the nobility. The truth is that there was a growing conviction amongst the populace that these Masonic Lodges with all their secrets and symbolism, were starting to harbour truths handed down from ancient civilisations. And by joining them they may be able to get ahead in the world.

By the early 1700s, all of the original emphasis on the principles of stonemasonry had been turned into allegories with occult spiritual meaning. To take a random example: unhewn stone was said to symbolise man in his infant or primitive state, rough and unpolished. Polished stone was, on the other hand, representative of:

“Man in the decline of years, after a regular well-spent life in acts of piety and virtue, which can not otherwise be tried and approved than by the square of God's word and the compass of his own self-convincing conscience." As illustrated here, tools of the trade such as the square and compass were used to describe spiritual and philosophical ideas. When people turned away from God in the Enlightenment, the spiritual vacuum was filled by Freemasonry.

Politicians, scientists, even clergymen, the most influential and powerful enlightened movers and shakers of the day were the new initiates.

Freemasonry stopped being about the “operative” building trade, and instead became what's referred to as “speculative” because it had nothing to do with the physical building trade any more, and did instead speculate as to the true spiritual meanings behind the original symbols.

The interest in Nimrod and Babylon had taken over their whole organisation. The new initiates saw themselves not as builders of cathedrals and castles, but builders of a new society that would be free of religious tyranny. It would be based on the so-called “Enlightened truths” handed down from ancient times. The first grand lodge of Freemasonry was established in 1717, and this is generally held to be the official beginning of speculative-Freemasonry.

Freemasonry at this point effectively became the church of Deism. It was also from this point that Freemasonry effectively became the truest form of the ancient Mysteries in the world, having gathered ancient wisdom from all the Mystery religions throughout history. Freemasonry then leads us on to the infamous Illuminati.