Why behind the appearances ? Because we must ask ourselves whether the events of yesterday in Russia, were part of a perfectly performed play or a sequence of ruinous actions spoilt by unforseen circumstances. What we saw in the west yesterday was Putin‘s tense face on TV in the morning, denouncing the betrayal of Motherland and promising a severe punishment to those who had betrayed Motherland Russia. The media showed us the great flames of the sun with a films of the Wagner ‘s war vehicles roaring along the highway on their way to Moscow. And then surprisingly, as the day came to a close, the same media announced to us the granting by Putin of the impunity for the rioters, and a safe exile to Bielorussia of the Wagner’s vile leader.
JUNE 24TH – ST. JOHN’S MIRACLE
The two Saint John
Why behind the appearances ? June 24th is the day the Christians celebrate this Saint around the world, but St John the Baptist is also the Saints’ Patron of Freemasonry ! And it was also on June 24, 1717, that the four main english Masonic lodges came together into one Grand Lodge giving birth to the “Modern” “speculative” Freemasonry. Two Protestant Christian excellent brothers, then wrote the new statutes of “Freemasonry” : the Reverend James Anderson and the Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers.
MASONIC COINCIDENCES
In his book “Massoni”, WM Gioele Magaldi – Grand Master of the Grand Democratic Orient of Italy- basing himself on the thousands of documents that he boasts to possess – describes Vladimir Putin as a refined esotericist.
Worshipful Brother Magalli, wrote that Putin “has been a militant freemason for decades, together with Angela Merkel, both members of the “Golden Eurasia,” one of the many supranational Masonic structures which supervise the great decisions taken by the world governments.
The 1680s had been a difficult decade for London’s livery companies. The Crown’s attack on the ‘Whig’ faction and James II’s assault on the ‘Tories’ had caused them to surrender their charters and be purged of thousands of their members. Elizabeth I and James I had both extracted large sums from the companies. During the civil wars of 1640s and 1650s, it is impossible to know the exact amount they contributed to both the Crown and Parliament, mostly in loans that were never repaid. Against this backdrop of political attack, court action and financial stress, it is unsurprising that many members of the Masons’ Company were reluctant either to assume or to discharge the responsibilities of office. The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed 44 company halls and devastated their property portfolios, wiping out much of their rental income. The Masons’ Company was a going concern and by 1690 it went on its knees.
To pay for its royal charter, the Masons’s Company borrowed £800 from Anthony and Anne Light in return for 22 annual payments of £80. However, it was unable to meet its obligations and defaulted on the payments, increasing its debts. By the end of the 17th century, the Masons’s Company was so short of money that, in 1681, it agreed to have only a breakfast on Lord Mayor’s Day.
With the Rebuilding of London Act of 1667, the Parliament had unwisely removed for the building worker in London any economic or legal compulsion to join a Company or Guild, thus allowing any skilled labourer to work on the city’s reconstruction on the same terms as a freeman.
The Masons’ Company’s finances improved in the 1690s due to the return to political stability under William III and Mary II and through hard work, ingenuity and generosity, the Company’s finances were put back on a firmer footing.
In 1694, the Company applied for an Act to the London’s Common Council which required all those who worked as masons in London to join the Masons’ Company.
The Masons’ Company’s Act of 1696-1705 was an initial success, with 28 men admitted to the ranks between 1696 and 1705.
Butchers’ Hall
However, by 1706, the initiatives had run out of steam. To enlarge its membership, the Masons’ Company instituted two incentives: lowering its redemption fine from 36s to 3s 4d and offering a commission of 2s 6d for each admission. It seems that a lucrative market opened up at the Guildhall in redemption admissions because, following news that several other Companies were paying more for every member their ministers and officers brought , the Masons’ enhanced their gratuities to 6s.
This was an effective policy. In the 30-year period from 1676 to 1705 the Company had admitted 357 freemen but from 1706 to 1735 the number increased to 428.
More members meant more of their sons joining and receiving the freedom, which lead to more people paying quarterage and more people holding office.
DAVID GROS OF THE MASONS’ COMPANY
David Gros or Le Gross, the Company’s clerk, was given one of the houses adjoining Masons’ Hall by the Court in January 1717 for his ‘good and faithful Services’ and efforts to introduce new members by redemption (i.e. by fee payment).
Le Gross was born in 1682 and was connected to the Gros or Le Gross of Cornwall. He was elected as clerk of the Masons’ Company in June 1708 and in 1717 he was serving as secretary to the governor and directors of the Bank of England. He probably ceased to work at the Guildhall, but he continued as clerk of the Masons’ Co, until February 1721. Le Gross was an important figure in early eighteenth-century London politics, finance and administration.
He was a prominent Whig and although not himself a Huguenot, he had connections with the French merchants and exchange brokers who established themselves in London’s stock exchanges and insurance markets. In 1708, Le Gross became Company clerk and introduced 21 admissions to the freedom of the Masons’ Company, five of which were exchange brokers. When the Masons’ Company court rewarded Le Gross for his efforts, they took particular note of the benefit and advantage the Corporation received from the many substantial Traders and others whom were recruited through his efforts. The Company’s intake of redemptioners in the early eighteenth century was cosmopolitan, with twelve of the 19 exchange brokers, admitted by redemption, not English. At least nine of those were Frenchmen wand identifiably Huguenot.
Old London Guildhall
The Guildhall today
But the Company’s intake of international redemptioners was not limited to exchange brokers. Huguenots joined the Masons’ Company for the social and fraternal aspects of Company life, as it was a tradition in London, and to take the livery and thereby acquire the right to vote.
Two particularly noteworthy admissions by redemption were of women with French names, such as Mary Latour and Mary Paramor. Women had traditionally only participated in company life as wives or widows, but young women began to enter into corporate apprenticeships in greater numbers in the second half of the 17th century. As they completed those apprenticeships, they became eligible to join the Companies. In the first four decades of the 18th century, nine women – mostly business owners – took up the freedom of the Company by redemption. For example Anne Baker, who joined the Co. in March 1715, was a victualler in Finch Lane, while Anne Sparhawke and Katherine Wight, who were admitted to the freedom together in March 1735, were milliners and business partners.
Huguenot women
Certainly, this study has shown that Huguenots diffused quite extensively into the wider livery as, indeed, they did into London society generally. It seems also that the new entrants were easily absorbed into the Masons’ Company’s ranks. There is no evidence for religious division in the contemporary Masons’ Company, and not once was the confession, or indeed the nationality, of those joining the Company marked next to the name of an entrant. A much liberal way than today! As far as members of the Masons’ Company were concerned, at least according to the official records, the Huguenots -and indeed Germans and Dutchmen -who joined the Company, were no different to any other freeman of London.
Children of Huguenot descent were admitted to the Company by patrimony, and Huguenots bound their children as apprentices. Between 1706 and 1735, two dozen of the 428 men and women who joined the Masons’ Company were identifiably as Huguenot, making them five per cent of the population of London.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, City’s companies completed their transformation into ‘corporations concerned primarily with the administration of their valuable freehold and trust estates and with sponsoring convivial, charitable and educational activities. In its early eighteenth-century history, no more than a dozen of the 32 men and women admitted to the freedom in 1712 identified as masons. In 1724, the Company admitted two attorneys at the Lord Mayor’s court and a clerk in the town clerk’s office, and in 1734, just 29 of the 70 men on the Company’s livery worked or had worked in the craft of masonry.
Huguenotsat work
Throughout the 17th c. London Great Twelve companies had admitted more members unconnected with their traditional trades. As London’s workforce diversified and became increasingly specialised, the Masons’ Company’s membership began to disconnect from its traditional craft. This was a revolutionary development in the Company’s history and one with which Huguenots were clearly associated because none of those who joined the Masons’ Company were actually masons.
The Masons’ Company’s decision to lower its redemption fine and pay gratuities for referrals had long-lasting effects, helping to secure its future.
The Company experienced a remarkable turnaround in financial health by the end of the 17th century and certainly reached the nadir of its fortunes. In 1681, for example, it was so short of money that had agreed to have only a breakfast on Lord Mayor’s Day. In 1727, it was able to purchase £200 worth of interest-bearing stock and a property in Bishopsgate and in 1739, it spent well over £60 on food, drink, tobacco and music for the London Mayor’s Day. In 1680s and 90s the Co seems to have struggled to pay its pensions, yet in 1774, it was able to pay five men an annual pension of £2 each and seven widows one of £ 1 each. Membership of the Company was now much more attractive, worthwhile and fun.
Membership of the Company was, at the end of this remarkable period, much more attractive, worthwhile and fun and the change from operative into a speculative Freemasonry had thus just begun.
Extract from Ian Stone’s paper “Huguenots, Whigs and the Remodelling of the Masons’ Company, 1680-1740 – The Huguenbot Society Journal vol.35, 2022
Religion, the Church and Freemasonry are not constantly at odds. Pope Pius IX[1], for example, was a Freemason born Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti in the profane world. He was elevated to Pontiff on 16 June 1846 and had hardly been in that post three months when, to the huge regret of his masonic Brethren, he issued an encyclical against the Order. So much for Brotherly love!
Half a century later Angelo Roncalli and Giovanni Montini, better known respectively as Pope John XXIII (or the Good Pope) and Pope Paul VI, were also raised into the Great Mysteries of Freemasonry.
Both prelates saw themselves as enlightened heads of State and launched significant reforms of the Church, aimed at bringing it up with times. The changes introduced by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council are even based on the Masonic principles and postulates. The Council addressed the relationship between the Catholic Church and the contemporary world. The Council was formally opened under the pontificate of John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and was closed by Paul VI on 8 December 1965. The reforms, however, were regarded by many as heresies.
John XXIII – A. Roncalli
Pius XII – G.Pacelli
Paul VI – G. Montini
We do not know why Giovanni Pacelli/Pope Pius XII always denied the Cardinalate to Giovanni Montini. But on 24 November, 1958 Angelo Roncalli, twenty days after being installed on the throne of Peter as Pope John XXIII, wasted no time and made his brother of the Order a Cardinal at last, alongside twenty-three other prelates.
Comte de Cagliostro, an enigmatic figure of the Age of Enlightenment, whose identity and motives are still up for deliberation, inspired both Alexander Dumas to write the novel The Memoirs of a Physician and Goethe’s five-act play Deer Gros-Cophta.
The world is divided over whether he was an adventurer, a compassionate individual who used his profound knowledge of alternative medicine to help the sick, a teacher of the occult, or a charlatan who preyed on gullible rich people. Some identify the Comte de Cagliostro with the Jesuit raised fraudster Giuseppe Balsamo from Palermo, Sicily; others think he was the Comte de Saint-Germain, an alchemist who had discovered the secret for ubiquosity–being in more places at the same time – and eternal life.
Whatever you may believe, there is little doubt, however, that Cagliostro’s power to seduce has lasted the test of time. He said: “The truth about me will never be written because nobody knows it”.
As for whence he came, he declared: “I am not of any time or any place; beyond time and space my spiritual being lives an eternal existence (…) my country is wherever my feet stand at that moment.”
On December 27, 1789, the self-styled Comte de Cagliostro was arrested in Rome and taken toCastel Sant’Angelo, where he was held until his trial before the Holy Inquisition Tribunal. He received the death penalty, which was later commuted to life imprisonment at the Forte San Leo, where he passed away on August 26, 2006, six years later. However, neither his grave nor body has ever been found.
The Holy Inquisition and Comte de Cagliostro
The self-styled Count was the founder of a new Masonic Order he called Egyptian under whose roof he attempted to bring both the Masonic movement and Christianity.
He founded the Mother Lodge of Egyptian Masonry in Lyons in 1784/86.
Cagliostro, the Grand Priest (Copt) of the Order, promised that he could lead his disciples to perfection and heal their bodies and souls. The philosopher’s stone would give his adepts immortality, the sacred talisman of the Pentagon promised them the obtain that innocence of spirit and perfection that belonged to Adam, the primal man.
THE TWO PROPHETS
According to legend, Comte de Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite was inspired by the belief of immortality held by the prophets Enoch and Elias. Enoch, the seventh descendant of Adam (Jude 1:14), is said to have been “translated (by God) (so) that he should not experience death and he was never been found” (Heb. 11:5).
The term translated implies that Enoch was taken somewhere other than Heaven, which is a place where God dwells and where only a soul of the highest purity, such as Jesus Christ’s, can be allowed access.
London was the 18th century wonder capital of Europe. It had been rebuilt following the Great Fire of 1666 and had an extremely new look. The merchants had withdrawn from the City and moved into fashionable terrace houses in the parishes of Soho, Mayfair, and in St. James, which had broad streets and paved squares.
And yet, London continued to be surrounded by miasma and be a city broadly tarnished by horse-dung. In the absence of an adequate sewerage structure, many servants still discharged their master’s chamber pot upon the heads of passersby and because of the coal burning in the fireplaces, layers upon layers of black soot coated the buildings and made the air not healthy to inhale. Violence and street crime were rampant.
THE WORLD OF THE OPERA IN LONDON
It was in this almost surreal habitat that deep connections were established between Freemasonry and the world of music, and they have never been stronger than during those years.
With the upper social classes having so much available time in hand and a strong love for entertainment, London turned into a Mecca for foreign artists. Since 1708, the Italian Opera had been constantly performing, with varying fortunes, at the Queen’s Theater in Haymarket, London, which is now called Her Majesty’s Theater. Built in 1705 and renamed the King’s Theater in 1714 upon the ascension to the throne of Great Britain of the German born George I (1626-1727), the theater also became identified for a period as The Italian Opera House.
The ceaseless comings and goings of French, German and Italian musicians, singers and impresarios continued strongly into the following century and the King’s Theater audience was never entertained with as many comic operas as it was in the season 1768-69.
The international artists all detested the English climate, which brought them colds and fevers, but they never regarded this poor factor as a reason for not coming back if awarded a contract. Aliens had also learned to put up stoically with the infamously atrocious English food and an Italian representative of the 1763 King’s Theater recounted his experience of it in these terms:
“In this expensive metropolis, we poor Christians are reduced during Lent to the melancholy alternative of either fasting like our founder, or living on rotten eggs, stinking fish, train-oil, and frost-bitten roots and herbage’’.
The old King’s Theater
The current Her Majesty’s Theater
HOSTILITY TOWARDS FOREIGNERS
The Italian literatus Giuseppe Baretti (1719-1789), compiler of the first English-to-Italian vocabulary, devoted most of his life in London and denounced the poverty that existed among Italian singers in London, which was created by inadequate earnings and exceedingly costly existence. He did so in a letter printed in The Public Ledger of 16 September 1760, which received this response:
“We can now see into the penury and meanness of those who have gained thousands by our folly and extravagance – we know, while in England. how miserably they live, because they will save all they can to spend in their own country; (…) such is their hatred of the nation that caresses them, that if it were possible to live upon the dirt or filth of the streets, they would rather do it than the least farthing should come back again into an Englishman’s pocket“.
The London society, had always harbored animosity towards aliens–the 1666 Great Fire of London was attributed on a French catholic, after all – and accused the Italians of avarice for their meager spending, neglecting that the aristocrats kept artists waiting around without work or payment for days or even weeks at a time. They did not understand the struggles the touring musicians suffered and would not have cared less even if they did.
Samuel Johnson declared that in London one discovered the “full tide of human existence,” and that although the Capital of England was “a place with a diversity of greed and evil (…) slight vexations do not fix upon the heart” of its residents. In my opinion, he never asked them.
THE NINE MUSES LODGE
Networking was an important chore for all the foreigners who visited England, whether they were artists, merchants, aristocrats, or rich gentlemen. At best, it assured admittance into affluent and patrician circles, at worst it guaranteed contracts and even a profitable office.
And what better way to network than by joining a Masonic Lodge?
On January 14, 1777, these individuals convened in the Thatched House Tavern on St. James’s Street, Westminster–which at the time was regarded as being part of the County of Middlesex – and on the 23rd, after securing a warrant, formed the Lodge of the Nine Muses No. 502.
Among the most celebrated visitors to Italy of the 18th c. was the German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman and theatre director, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who dedicated a significant part of his work Italienische Reise (The Italian Trip) to his journey to Sicily, and left us a vivid impression of its inhabitants’ way of life.
Freemasonry officially appeared in Sicily, part of the Kingdom of Naples, in 1768 when England’s leading Grand Lodge in Naples conceded a warrant to the Perfect Union N. 433, which met in Palermo. The Lodge had been established by and for the benefit of military Irishmen under the command of Col. Francis Everard, but in order to survive it soon began to also admit civilians, culminating in Carlo Cottone, Prince of Villermosa, being its Worshipful Master at the end of 1785. There was another lodge in Palermo that operated under the rival National Grand Lodge of Naples, working on the rituals of the Rite Rectifié, successor of the Rite of Strict Observance, but it was in decline.
The Danish philosopher Friedrich Münter and Goethe were among the many Freemasons who in the 18th century visited the enchanting Mediterranean island. They were both disciples of Neo-Templarism and members of the Illuminati sect and had met in Rome. It is unquestionable that Goethe’s eagerness to broaden his Italian experience by visiting Sicily, rose directly from the description that Münter gave him of that captivating place. Goethe claimed he scheduled his trip to Palermo around the middle of March and that he delayed it on at least two occasions, only sailing from Naples on March 29th after he had learned that the vessel’s captain, Filippo Cianchi, was also a Freemason. Turbulence hampered the sea crossing, but Goethe safely arrived in Palermo on the bright afternoon of 2nd April. In Italienische Reise, he described the marvelous sensation he felt when he saw the gulf with on the right the Mount Pellegrino – “the most beautiful promontory in the world,” he called it – and the Conca d’oro on the left (The Golden Shell).
View of the gulf of Mondello and Monte Pellegrino, Palermo, Sicily island, Italy
In Palermo, Goethe checked in at Mme. Montaigne’s hotel with the alias Philip Moeller. He hoped that by not revealing his true identity he would stay away from prying eyes, but to his surprise one evening, two men in uniform came to escort him to the Palace of the Viceroy, Francesco d’Aquino Prince of Caramanico. This nobleman had left the Dutch Lodge Les Zelés in Naples in 1769 to become a founding member and first Master of the Well Chosen Lodge, sanctioned by the Grand Lodge of England. He became also the Grand Master of the newly formed National Grand Lodge of Naples in 1773, but he resigned and withdrew from the Craft in 1775, when King Ferdinand IV banned Freemasonry in his realm.
It is unknown who had notified Prince Caramanico of the presence in Palermo, under an assumed identity, of the important German Brother; but it is reasonable to suspect the tip-off came from the Naples Freemasons. Other potential informers are the German landscape painter Jacob Philipp Hackert, who had met Goethe in Naples and had been Prince Caramanico’s guest at Palermo, the English Ambassador in Naples, Sir William Hamilton, and the ship’s Captain Cianchi himself.
Count Statella, the Viceroy’s Master of Ceremonies and a Knight of Malta, greeted Goethe on his arrival at the Palace. According to an anecdote, the Count – believing the visitor was a German called Philip Moeller – made an embarrassing blunder and casually mentioned that he had just finished reading “Werther,” a novel by another German named Goethe, whom he then talked about in derogatory terms. At this point Goethe revealed his true identity much to the dismay of the Count, who was even further embarrassed when the Viceroy, requesting him that Goethe be sat next to him at the table, grinned back at his Master of Ceremonies’ surprised reaction.
Francesco D’Aquino Prince of Caramanico
Joanne Wolfgang von Goethe (Frankfurt 28.8.1749 -Weimar 22.3.1832)
By traveling under a false identity, Goethe wanted to avoid contact with anyone from academic circles or high society and thus remain free to fully absorb and enjoy the island’s natural beauty. Despite his best efforts to remain incognito, however, we know he also met and frequented in Palermo the Baron Antonio Bivona, a lawyer engaged by King Louis XVI of France to investigate Giuseppe Balsamo and his family. Balsamo, a self claimed magician and healer who was using the alias Count Cagliostro on his far and wide travels in Europe, had become famous particularly for his frauds and supposed role in Queen Marie Antoinette’s necklace scandal. We know that in March 1787, the Baron had lent his report on Balsamo/Cagliostro to Goethe, who after reading it, visited Giuseppe’s mother and sister on Via Terra delle Mosche, a street in a much run-down area of Palermo.
This time Goethe introduced himself as an Englishman by the name of Mr. Winton, and informed the Balsamos that Giuseppe had traveled to London after being released from the Bastille. Goethe sympathized with the two destitute women, who had a big family to support and in Italienische Reise, he expressed the remorse for not being able to take care of them right away.
Giuseppe Balsamo akas Count Cagliostro
Via della Terra delle Mosche, Palermo, Sicily
According to one account cited by several sources, on his return to Germany, Goethe showed his Brothers of the Order the letter that Giuseppe’s mother had written to her son, in which she begged for financial help. And those generous and caring men, moved by the tragic story, raised a sum of money and conveyed it to the Balsamo women via the English merchant Jacob Joff. The truth, however, may be that which is found in the memoirs of Brother Karl August Bottiger, a well-known archaeologist who knew Goethe and was a member of the Lodge Der goldene Apsel in Dresden. He wrote:
“(…) the amount delivered to the Balsamos was [just] the honorarium the publisher Unger had paid Goethe for his Der Gross-Cophta,” a satire on Freemasonry that was staged in 1791 and proved a failure.
Whatever version of the events you choose to believe, there is no doubt that the financial gift to the the Balsamos was a noble, generous gesture performed in classic Masonic fashion !
After traveling across the island of Sicily, Goethe came to the following conclusion about the locals , which is a strong testament of their bravery:
Messina, Sunday 13 May 1787 – “I thought how interesting it was to see howgentlemen couldget together and speak freely and with impunity, under a dictatorial government, to protect their own as well as foreign interests.”
Extracted and revised by the Editor from the paper Goethe in Palermo written by Bro. M.R. Maggiore and published in AQC 1985,vol. 98, page 205-207
Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury was the most distinguished medical detective in England and a Freemason, like some of his colleagues and the criminals he helped bring to jail. Only the imaginary character of Sherlock Holmes exceeds him in popularity.
Spilsbury was responsible, with Scotland Yard, for the introduction of the “Murder Bag” following the “Crumbles murder” case in 1924. Patrick Mahon had killed Emily Kaye, his lover, and then dismembered her body and when Spilsbury arrived on the murder scene, he was surprised to find investigators picking up body parts with their bare hands. As a result, he devised a kit consisting of a collection of instruments – tweezers, evidence bags, and other items -which forensic detectives presently still use.
Spilsbury was also responsible for establishing the character of the “legal expert” by integrating pathology and cause-of-death examinations into the legal criminal context.
— *** —
Bernard Henry Spilsbury was born on January 16, 1877, in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England and was one of four offspring from the union between Marion Elizabeth Joy and James Spilsbury, a chemist. Bernard adopted his father’s passion for science but – according to the crime author Michael J Buchanan-Dunne – he also absorbed his coldness, arrogance and lack of empathy. After receiving home education, at the age of nine Bernard was sent to boarding school for three years and at the age of 15, with his parents living in Crouch End in London, he went to study chemistry, physics and biology at the Owen’s College in Manchester.
In 1895 Bernard Spilsbury enrolled at the Magdalen College, Oxford and earned his BA in natural science in 1899. He subsequently attended St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in Paddington’s Praed Street, London, where he meant to qualify as a general practitioner. Instead, he went on to study pathology and never repented.
There is a time-immemorial tradition, both in Masonry and outside it, of the wearing and giving of gloves”
Bernard E. Jones
The function of the gloves is to protect and avoid injury to our hands and skin. The Medieval Knights wore them in fight to have a stronger grip on the sword. Later, their metal version was introduced; called gauntlets, they better protected against blows. The gloves thus took on a meaning of strength, courage and authority, with Kings and nobles also wearing them to affirm their supremacy over the simple folks. But they were also a useful tool for avoiding direct contact with dirty objects and not so hygienic people. Once upon a time In the Catholic Church, even the Pope and high prelates wore white gloves to indicate their chastity, which albeit only a few observed.
In the middle ages, the so-called “sweet gloves”, were gloves saturated with the perfumes of herbs and spices and they served to hide the nasty odour of the skin browned with…dung. They were in use across the Continent by both men and women.
Catherine de ‘Medici, an Italian-born monarch of France, made these fragrant gloves renowned at the Court in the 16th century. She was even accused of poisoning one of her greatest enemies, a Huguenot named Jeanne d’Albret, with a pair of gloves she had gifted him. Centuries later, the French author Alexandre Dumas, spun the story of this poisoning Queen into a historical novel called “La Reine Margot.”
Today the gloves are employed for the more refined purpose of maintaining hygiene and preserving aseptic conditions and to be worn in the most accurate tasks, such as those performed by a surgeon on the human body.
During the reign of terror, in the early stage of the French revolution, many women’s passion reached the height of fanaticism; and fanaticism prevailed, either real or simulated, among all who were not impatient to flee the scene of such dreadful passion.
It did not shock, therefore, that the mischief had spread even to female Masonic Lodges, known as Lodges of Adoption.
On one occasion, a female candidate for initiation, while undergoing examination, was instructed to stare down at what awaited her if she hesitated in her task: a void imitating a terrifying abyss emerged underneath her, with a double row of iron spikes exposed.
The lady, instead of retreating in horror at the sight, in a visible state of extremism and disorder of mind, exclaimed: “I can confront all !” and lunged forward. But “Providence” instantly touched the secret spring, and the candidate fell, not on the spikes, but on a green soft bed simulating a patch of grass. She lost consciousness, but her friends quickly revived her. When the scene changed, the lovely notes of choral music reanimated the lady, and the ceremony’s (…)
The international Masonic Institutions have been harmed as never before during the last two years of Sars2 restrictions. The Brotherhood gets its nourishment from face-to-face debate both in and outside its lodges. But for far too long, the rules put in place have limited our freedoms and have prevented this intellectual confrontation taking place.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg.
During these times of semi-incarceration, Masonic authorities of all Obedience have encouraged their members to roll up their sleeves and volunteer to help inject these supposed “miracle serums” that have failed to safeguard us time and time again.
They’ve also imposed on us to wear a mask, which master masons, knowledgeable in symbolism, should recognise means surrender, subordination, resignation, and destroys our identity.
“Freemasons want to assist the National Health System and uphold the Masonic essential values of friendship, integrity, charity, and respect at all times.” These were the words of the Chief Executive Officer of the United Grand Lodge of England, an odd title that suggests there may be little of spiritual in what the institution represents.
In history, dictators always fought their conflicts by exposing themselves in person, and that when they lost, they paid the price with their own life.
Today, the world’s aspiring tyrants fight instead in a covert and cowardly manner. They use lies to sway people’s opinions. and sow the seeds of evil by repeating those lies until they bear fruit.
