Freemasons and World domination

The Masonic Myth's most extreme expression has taken the form of the Masonic Conspiracy; the Masonic Myth's more moderate version is the "Secular-Humanist Conspiracy." The first version of the Masonic Conspiracy names the Jews and the Freemasons as the principle villains; the second version of the Masonic Conspiracy names the liberal establishment. In both instances, Communism and Socialism are the tools through which the hidden cabal (i.e., the Jews in the one instance, the secular-humanists in the other) hopes to achieve its goal of world domination. In reality, the second version of the Masonic Conspiracy is nothing more than a sanitized and less offensive version of the first - one which has been "cleaned up" to suit the sensibilities of moderate conservatives.

Mythologies like the Masonic Myth are more easily described than defined; the Masonic Conspiracy can be said to occupy a border area somewhere between religion and history on the one hand, and folklore on the other. The Masonic Conspiracy is a popular explanation of conundrums and enigmas (often of a semi-historic nature) that cannot be easily subjected to objective inquiry using Scripture or verifiable events as the standard against which the inquiry can be made and ultimately judged. Nonetheless, it should not be assumed that adherence to the Masonic Myth is merely the province of the uneducated; such is the pull and magnetism of the Masonic Myth that the Masonic Myth and the Masonic Myth's cousin, the Secular-Humanist Conspiracy, continue to survive and even flourish among the educated and in the elite business establishment - though often there is a recognition that a belief in the Masonic Myth (and its cousin, the Secular-Humanist Conspiracy) is probably unjustified, coupled with a slight sense of unease and even shame in holding them - especially the Masonic Myth. [Hence, the effort to sanitize the Masonic Myth by removing the offensive references to Jews and substituting liberalism as the main target.]

Contributing to the sinister reputation are all of their freaky ceremonies. The Masons are very proud of their rituals, which have been copied innumerable times.

One longstanding sore point for the Masons has been the plagiarization of Masonic ceremonies and symbology by Joseph Smith for his religious cult known as the Mormon Church. Smith was inducted into the brotherhood in March 1842. In May he produced the Endowment ceremony, which borrowed whole sections of dialogue from the Masonic ritual. This pissed off a lot of Freemasons, to say the least. Like every Mason, Smith had been required to swear an oath never to reveal the secrets of Freemasonry to non-members, under pain of death. Oh well. Evidently tired of taking crap from the Masons, the Mormons finally excised the offending elements from their ceremony in 1990.

One prominent 19th century Mason was Albert Pike. He was an officer in the Confederate army during the Civil War, who later went on to become a big deal in Freemasonry. He wrote seminal books which are still read today by the Freemasons.

He was also evidently a big fat racist, writing editorials in his newspaper inveighing against the Negroes and so forth. It is widely-believed but poorly documented that Pike might have been one of the original founders of the Ku Klux Klan. The Masons vehemently deny this, of course.

The idea of a widespread freemason conspiracy originated in the late 1700's and flourished in the US in the 1800's. Persons who embrace this theory often point to purported Masonic symbols such as the pyramid and the eye on the back of the dollar bill as evidence of the conspiracy. Allegations of a freemason conspiracy trace back to British author John Robison who wrote the 1798 book Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies, collected from good authorities. Robison influenced French author Abbé Augustin Barruel, whose first two volumes of his eventual four volume study, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, beat Robison's book to the printer. Both Robison and Barruel discuss the attempt by Bavarian intellectual Adam Weishaupt to spread the ideas of the Enlightenment through his secretive society, the Order of the Illuminati.