Historically High - The Freemasons

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

When you're considered the world's oldest fraternal order and one of the oldest continuous organizations in history, you're probably gonna develop some secrets or at the very least the suspicion that you're hiding something. Enter the Freemasons. The Freemason origin is kind of like a choose your own adventure book where there's an option for all, depending on what you're into. You can go the biblical route, the conspiratorial route, or the one that just makes common sense. Regardless, Masonic Lodges exist in nearly every country on the planet. Their use of symbols alone is enough to drive any conspiracy theorist mad, not to mention the use of code words, secret handshakes, and the rituals. Some of the most influential men (it's a fraternal order so it's all dudes...mostly) have been known Freemasons. 8 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 13 of the 39 to sign the Constitution, 14 U.S. Presidents, Churchill, Mozart, Mark Twain, Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford just to name a few. I mean with a roster like that there's gotta be something going on with these guys right? Why does the Catholic Church have a papal ban against them? Tune in as we attempt to unravel the mystery that is the Freemasons. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We're back. We're ready for another episode. You guys need a new lesson. We've spent the entire week going through the lesson plan on our heads. And I'm going to be honestly, there's still some fuzzy areas for us. I am your co-host, Adam, Professor Adam, my esteemed co-host, Professor Chris, aka the World War Wizard. Let's just stop doing the co. Where's the hosts? Yeah, it's a team. It makes it seem less important when we're co-something. Is it like quarterbacks? If you have two number one quarterbacks, you don't have a number one quarterback. You don't see this is like co-quarterback, even though he doesn't play that much. True.

Yeah. As far as this episode goes, we're hitting the Freemasons. There's probably been no other episode, honestly, where Chris and I have kind of had to sit before the episode and kind of get things straight as far as perspectives in our heads. because there's so much mystery that surrounds the Freemasons that it kind of becomes a breeding ground for conspiracy theory when I think the story is just more straightforward than it ever could be thought. And the most interesting conspiracies about this aren't even like the most well-known or like the biggest ones. It's like little things. Because once we get into kind of the nitty-gritty of this and we start dropping some names of people who, were freemasons, kind of based upon the history and how it starts out, you're going to be like,

okay, if these guys were freemasons, there had to be something to this more than just kind of what the public kind of view of freemasons would be. And also, like, it's more of conspiracy for, like, what were they teaching these guys or kind of what type of, like, resources did they have? Instead of, like, oh, were they involved in this murder? Did they, you know, were they controlling this or that? Yeah, and there's conspiracy theories that tie the Freemasons to the Illuminati. There is something in the history were Freemasonry and something called the Illuminati that really fizzled out before it got started, both coexisted, but there wasn't ever really anything to connect them. And it is sort of, I would say, semi-logical to look at a situation like any kind of price fixing. say you're driving down the street, you drive past a Chevron, its gas is $2.50 a gallon,

you drive past Texaco next, it's $2.75, drive past another place, it's $275. Then as you're coming home, all three of them are $2.75. There's something in your head that makes you look at that and think, well, are all these guys in cahoots to price fix? Yeah. And then you start wondering, well, are there connections beyond just like the fact that these three guys are all CEOs of gas corporation. And then you find out that all three of them are masons. That doesn't necessarily mean that the masons are in this cabal to try to price fix. This just means that the economy is such that if you can charge the same as everybody else and don't give anybody a cheaper option,

that's how it's going to go. But at the same time, is there any type of relationship, even if it's to the business level, but a familiarity because you know that person is also a Freemason. Yeah. And so I think there's a lot of misconceptions. There's, the story's incredibly interesting, just without any sort of conspiracy behind it. The conspiracy is almost a little fun. The light conspiracy, the heavy conspiracy almost makes this not fun at all. But the light stuff, the interesting stuff that kind of went on behind the scenes, we're going to talk about a murder here. We're going to shockingly talk about war and civil war and the American Revolution and everything, because all that is tied in to sort of freemasonry history.

It's been a worldwide organization for hundreds of years. Its foundation goes back. Technically, and it's a little loosey-goosey when it comes to the actual origins of this thing. One makes a lot of sense. The other one then kind of tries to explain. It tries to do like a prequel series, like how George was did with Star Wars. Someone comes in after the story's already been written. They're like, oh, no, no, no, this is actually four or five.

and six. I haven't written one, two, and three yet, so I'm going to need you to write that. We're going to punch up the epilogue? Yes. Yeah. No prolog. Prolog? Yeah. We're going to punch that up to the point to where we'll still incorporate your stuff, but we have this whole other backstory that's going to provide so much more research and study and lore to what you brought to the table is your origin story. So this is our first kind of dip into the secret society. or is the Freemasons like to call themselves a society with secrets? And of course, if you're keeping secrets, it's going to be a breeding ground for people to speculate. But one thing you don't have to speculate on is what you're going to be listening to for the next couple hours.

All right. So trying to track this thing down for its origination is a little bit tricky, but there is a point in time, a period of time, where it makes sense that these guys would need to come about. Yeah, and sort of we're going to do a lot of bouncing back. There's going to be a lot of this is sort of the thought of how this was started. This is the most logical explanation of it. And then this is what happens when some more intellectual, creative figures get involved. There's these different things. I completely forgot what they're called.

My mind's just blanking. The Regis poem, it's called a truth. excuse me what are they called like the groupings of like paperwork a stack no no no no no this is going to kill me right out of the gates

I'll figure it out okay this thing called the Regers Palm it was found at a later date they dated it back to some I believe it was found in like the 1700s they dated it back to around 1390 to 1425 CE a manuscript

it's like They had a different name for it that wasn't a manuscript, but manuscript is kind of what it is. It references Euclid, the ancient... Father of Geometry. Yeah, the ancient Greek father of geometry in Egypt, creating the craft of masonry using geometry. Is that in Alexandria? Is that what they're assuming? Because I know the Greeks were also in other areas, but I assume father of geometry, intellectual type, Alexandria.

Yeah, he had to have been hanging around all the other intellectuals. down there and run the library. He kind of created this craft of masonry using geometry because a stone mason has to be very well versed in geometry. So there's also, there's new forms of geometry that have been discovered, but there's Euclidean geometry, which is still a form of geometry. Just to kind of give some... Is the Euclidean the thing at the top of the vagina?

Sure. You glitterous? Yeah. Okay. So with, you know, with Stone Masons at this point, this was at a time when the ability to, you know, this is essentially like a civil engineer, but not just a civil engineer. This is somebody who also knows not just how to plan something, but also how to construct it to where it's actually going to last. So educated people like this that have this type of skill set are pretty rare and pretty sought after. They're very valuable.

And kind of look at it in the sense of like no temples could be built, no castles could be built, no keeps could be built without Freemasons. And that's actually where the name comes from, even though they're called, you know, even though they're not essentially, there are still practicing masons within the Freemasons. but their origin essentially is from a group of masons, of builders. Well, this is also at a time, too, when servitude and people would be indentured, there would be indentured masons that would basically work for little to no money, but get their housing and their food and everything taken care of. it's believed that the free was put in eventually to separate themselves out as they were Freemasons to work for whoever they wanted to instead of being tied to a master basically.

So there's, and again, going back to the fact that there's a couple different versions or spins on origin, they also think that it could have been, and this probably hasn't been dispelled. You'll find that a lot of this stuff about the Freemasons, they don't really have to dispel anything when stuff comes out. because stuff gets so wild that even if there was any type of truth, like a kernel of truth to any of it, it gets so crazy and taken out of hand that it never gets the reins put back on it to tie it back into anything reasonable. Which works if you're trying to keep something a secret. Exactly. When you deny it, then people are going to look into it even more because they know they're on the right track.

The term also came from the fact that the workers used freestone and it was basically like a smooth sandstone or limestone, basically for like ornamental stonework. So again, this is them just being like, sure, that sounds like, good. Well, weren't you guys also free men? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, that could apply to. Yeah, we were all free men. We all did ornamental work. So this Regist poem thing, I want to say it's like 67 pages long. And it's, there's like rhyming couplet to most of it. So that's why it's considered like a poem. Do you want to know why it was also a poem? Because if it was put into poem form where it had the structure of a poem, it was easy to remember it

and because these guys were not literate they could actually remember the information because it would be in the form of a poem which was much easier would it had prose I think to it than it would be it's like remembering you can remember the lyrics to a fucking song because it's got a beat and it's got a tone to it try to read someone back a page out of a book

even if you read it 10 times you're going to miss something so by putting this type of like pros and like pattern to it it made sure that the information was going to be sustainable to remember yeah that that That makes a ton of sense. It's the same reason we learn nursery rhymes. From Euclid, this is where the profession would spread. Stone masons were extremely important in medieval Europe,

just as any major building was going to require masons because it was going to be made of stone. So any sort of cathedrals, any sort of castles that are being built, mostly the two biggest needers, not a word. Employers? Yeah, employers, perfect. It sounds way better than needers. Hatrons.

Of masons, we're going to be the crown and the church, because they were the ones that were in charge of building stuff. Later on, there will be private projects that people are funding themselves. But yeah, the people with the money. The only people with the money, yeah. The church and the crown are the two that are doing business with masons the most. There were many other trades, but stone masons were crucial in every part of construction. these jobs would just because they were in such high demand and there were so many of them, they would become competitive.

Their wages would be lower because you would have guys undercutting bids to try to get the work. Not only that, but you would have guys that were unqualified to be building these structures, temples, castles, you know, cathedrals, and could maybe sell somebody enough to get that job. But as soon as they start building and they realized that they had no idea how to have, actually do it, then that actually makes the rest, you know, the next guy in line is going to look bad. Yeah, you're diluting the craft of masonry. Yeah. And that's a big deal because the craft of masonry, according to Regis, was brought to England between 924 and 939. So we're already starting to get this timeline set up. But you're at the point to where you need kind of some structure

if you want to start creating something like a trade union. And you also want to have like, you want to standardize the work. You want to have some way of also vetting to know that the person that you're going to be working with or hiring is someone that can actually do what they say they can do. Yeah. And so this guy named Athelstan would create these 15 articles for the master

concerning both moral behavior and the operation of the work on a building site. So even if you are a pretty crack Mason, if you're going and getting drunk and buying prostitutes all night and then showing up late the next day. What we even building this thing for if not for that? Yeah. You're going to- I've been chisling away all fucking day. I want a beer and a hooker. You're going to start to dilute this Mason brand.

And if you're not doing very good work or you're morally corrupt and you're bringing that onto the job site, they're going to give you, less money because they think that you're more easily replaceable. So he comes up with these 15 points. There were also, or he comes up to 15 articles. There were also 15 points for craftsmen that followed kind of a similar course, but this time they added like warnings of punishment for breaking the ordinances. So if you have one that's like always show up five minutes early and you're showing up 10 to 15

minutes late, other masons are going to start looking at you in punishing you for reasons that you aren't kind of keeping up the good name of stone masons because they kind of start looking out for each other. They started to create the first lodges. These would often be on construction sites that they would have meetings and recruitment to try to bring people into this guild, if you will. So, yeah, so there's so many words that have different meanings as time goes on on this. So yeah, basically kind of think of it in a fantasy setting sense, like it's a Mason's guild, like how they have thieves, guilds and merchant guilds, things like that. You understand that there's guilds outside of that world, right?

I understand that, but that's where it's the most prevalent these days and where people understand it the most. Anyway. The Screen Actors Guild. Yes. Oh, that's true. So you would have these things that started out as physical lodges. Essentially, if you're building a cathedral or a castle, these things aren't going up over the

course of a matter of days. It takes sometimes years to build this. Talking about, you know, going back to the Vatican episode, talking about how long it took to build St. Peter's Berserk, and of course some of this stuff is not on that scale, but it's still, it's requiring a lot of work, a lot of movement of materials, things like that. So you have to have a place for these guys that are not local guys because if their profession is as a stone mason and the work is coming from the crown or the church, you have to go where the work is. Once a church or a castle is built, it's not like they're knocking that shit down and needing to build one the next year, even the next year after that. That shit's meant to stay there for as long as it can. So with these groups of masons, they would be

traveling to different areas and working. When they got there, they would establish a lodge for lodging, for sleeping, for food, all that kind of stuff. And as the time goes on, the lodge actually becomes the measure of the unit of measurement for a group of Freemasons, like a grouping of them like in a certain location. So not just a physical because then you will have your halls that you meet in and like, yeah. The benefit to these lodges is you can kind of start to see like who's following these 15 articles or these 15 points, who's a better Mason, who's kind of morally better. And then if you need to go, if you're working in Cornwall for three years and then you have to go to Edinburgh for something else,

if you're a good Mason and whoever was the master Mason or the lead Mason on the job knew that you were a good Mason, and he was kind of a part of this guild that was starting to form, he would do things like he would teach you a secret handshake. So as you were to show up to a new job site, a new construction site with a new master's, Mason or a new leader involved, and he knew the other guy, and you gave him the same handshake, he would know that you're a reputable Mason that he would want on the job or to put in charge of something important. It was your credentials. Yeah.

It was your resume. It was your CV. You walked up there, and they're like, how do I know you know how to do this kind of stuff? You hold out your hand, get him a little do, do, do, do. And they'd be like, oh, shit, okay, when can you start? It also, again, people could move to these other places. They didn't have to always stick with the same group of Mason's.

and they could leave for work in this other place, and there would be a lodge for them to stay at because they were part of this group. It also allowed the opportunity for these masons that were more experienced and better at their craft. When you're working all day, and you're trying to have a group of guys that are cutting stone that are sizing it,

you have groups of guys that are moving it and mortaring it into place. You know, you have guys up there with the plum and the level, making sure everything's coming together correctly. There's probably not a lot of time for you to learn on the job. you know, another craft or like a step up for how to, you know, not be the guy chisling. You want to be the guy moving stuff into place. So. Like working your way out through a kitchen.

Exactly. And so when you have this time with these lodges where you have a, you're basically living there, you have these other masons that are able to take time to teach you these additional crafts. And then you can progress your way up to a more skilled mason, you know, a journeyman and then eventually a master mason to where then you could go and you could kind of run your own crew and you could develop your own lodge and you could spread these kind of like this basically you could carry on with this union that's been created yeah and this new group would end up growing so big that it would become almost impossible for somebody that wasn't a member of the stone mason group the freemasons that the pre-freen basin stone mason group the free

base and freemasons that if you weren't a part of their guild you would have a lot of trouble finding work. And this group was big enough to where anybody that was outside of that was kind of known as somebody that would give you subpar work. So all the masons that were in the groups that were getting these jobs were getting a better wage. They were getting paid what they were worth instead of getting paid what the cheapest bid would be. Well, and it also, you know, if you just had a group of like independent masons that you had hired to, you know, the crown hires you to build this a prison or whatever, you build it. And then all of a sudden at the end, they're like, well, you know what?

We're only going to be able to pay you like three quarters of what we said here. They're like, no, fucking pay us. They're like, well, it's already built. And you guys are actually, you know, I could just have you guys thrown in prison. Well, now instead, because you have this grouping and this union together, what ends up happening is if someone tries to go ahead and stiff a group of your guys, you don't do projects for that group anymore, whether that be possibly the crown. And guess what?

It's not like they can take all of you in and arrest all of you. They need you to build the shit. So it almost gave people a layer of protection as well that were doing these jobs. Yeah, it was almost a union. It was basically a union. It was the proto-union. Yeah. The union.

This is where things kind of start to get a little bit more flowery. The euclid stuff is pretty flowery, but this is where we really start to get some... We're going back now, you're right? Some creativity to it, yeah. There's this guy named Anderson. He wrote, his last name was Anderson, I believe. He wrote these histories in 17, 23 and 1738. Now, understand these two dates are going to be pretty important for what I'm going

to try to convey and get across here. They point to the construction of King Solomon's temple in pre-biblical times. The temple's architect was a man named Hiram Abiff. Just so everyone knows King Solomon's Temple, it doesn't exist anymore. It was torn down and destroyed, but they believe... It may never have existed. Okay, the belief of where it existed and the fact that it does not exist anymore. But where they believe it existed was, I believe it was the temple mound in Jerusalem, correct? They believed that potentially the only thing still standing from King Solomon's temple is the wailing wall, which he believes in Jerusalem.

Okay. The temple's architect, Hiram Abiff, was said to have had direct communications with God. There was supposed to be a secret word that he would say, and this would help God start to lay out the plans for King Solomon's temple. Pumpernickel. You gotta be, right? Something crazy that you could... That's my safe word.

You could never just guess. This wasn't a, a, uh, Beatlejuice situation where you had to say it three times. He had a safe word with God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it was. Um, and the story goes, he was stopped by three stone masons that were demanding the secrets

of the master mason, kind of as King Solomon's temple was getting close to done. They wanted the word, right? Yep. They wanted the word of God. He refuses all three attempts to question that, that they would have after each time they would ask a question and he would deny them, he would then be hit in the head

with a different or different masonry instrument. The way that it's described is like, it's like what you would see in like Shakespeare Festival like a Greek play where basically he goes to like he walks into a room and there's three exits. So he starts heading toward one and one of the guy's steps

and he's like, what's the word of God? And he's like, well, I'm not going to tell you. And so he smacks him over the head with I can't remember what the three, a gavel, a level, a trow, probably. Something like that. And so he gets hit, and he's like, oh, and he's so he looks and he staggers over to the other door to try to get out. And all of a sudden, the other guy jumps in front.

He's like, the word of God. He's like, I'm not going to give it to you. He gets hit in the head again with something. So then he's like, oh, my God. Oh, and he stumbles over to the third door. Guy jumps in front, surprise, surprise, give me the word. Doesn't give him the word. And then that guy ends up, like, delivering the third.

the killing blow. Yep. They freak out. They cover up his body. Later on that night, they come back. They take him outside of the city, dig him a shallow grave. There's some sort of like an olive bush,

which I think, yeah, olives come off a tree, so maybe it was some sort of bush that grew around, all the trees, I don't know. But they put some sort of delineation marker on top of where they had buried him. The next day, Solomon's looking for Hiram, can't find him, doesn't know what's going on, sends out a search party,

They end up stumbling upon this grave. He's dug out of the grave. He's carried. This is sort of ridiculous. The reason we're describing it like this is because this comes into place symbolically during certain Masonic rituals. Yes. So he's raised directly out of the grave, lifted straight up in the air out of the grave, then carried back and given a proper burial. This all kind of sounds like a wild and crazy story.

every time that I heard. I was like, there's no way that this is how this all came about. After he's given his proper burial, the secret word of the master is lost with Hiram. Is what Solomon says.

Solomon then replaces the word with another secret word. This would become the first kind of secret of the masons. The reason that I just explained all that and that I gave you those two dates, and I truly believe this, is Masonic temples,

would begin to open to outsiders that they called Speculative Masons. There were the O.G. Operative Masons that were the Stone Masons from the start. They were the ones that were out there doing the work every single day. Think of it practicing operative operating. Yes.

They're practicing Masons. Yeah. These speculative Masons would begin to join the fraternity in like the 17th and 18th centuries right around the time of the Or the Temple, Solomon Temple origin story. The reason that I wanted to point that out is because this coming, these, this Solomon story starting to show up 1723, 1738 is, excuse me, in the 18th century, you're already going to have a certain amount of time that these speculative masons, the ones that aren't actual stone masons coming in, and they're going to be more intellectual. And as they hear the way that the stone masons are doing things, they hear the origin story.

like, well, that's really great. If you want to blow this thing up and get more people to show up, more people to pay into this freemasonry that you're building, this whole society that you're building, if we come up with a little bit more creative story, if we build upon this, like Chris was talking about earlier, if we take the story back even further and connect it closer to God in pre-biblical times. What sells, baby? Yeah. Nothing sells harder than God.

And that's like, One of the core tenants, basically the one thing that you have to do, the first thing to become a Mason is that you have to have a belief in a higher power. They're not specific. It doesn't have to be specific, but you do have to have a belief in a higher power. Yeah. So there's Jewish Masons. There's Hindu Masons. There's all sorts across the world. The Masons essentially are known as like a fraternal order. They're the largest. They are worldwide. secret society, but people know they exist. And they exist in nearly every country, and they like to think in those countries that they're not allowed to exist, that there are still what you would consider like underground groups

of free masons. Yeah, which is, they're there. I mean, the only reason that you would think there's underground groups of masons is for nefarious purposes. Just to kind of get into masonry a little bit, there were three degrees of masonry that could be achieved. There was the first entrance in as an apprentice. Then there would be the second level of fellow craft. And then eventually you would get to the third degree, which was the master mason. An apprentice would focus on the basic principles and foundational concepts of masonry.

So this is literally like you're rolling up your sleeves. If you are an operative mason, they're teaching you how to build. Yeah. So walk with us to the quarry. When you go to the quarry, this is the stone you need to look for. When you're pulling the stone off the wall, when you're, you know, this is the blocks that you need to carve it out of. Here's how you work a chisel. And I believe at certain points within the apprentice, journeyman, or fellow craft, and then the master mason, you're provided a different set of masonry tools. Yeah, you basically have to earn what you're using as you go forward.

The fellow craft emphasizes further learning and development of skills and knowledge. And then the master mason is the completion of the masonic. journey and the attainment of wisdom and moral character. Now, this sounds perfect if you're an operative mason because you're literally out there learning the basic principles and the foundational concepts of masonry. That's super important when you're an apprentice. If you're a speculative mason, you're going to need to look for more meaning in that because you didn't join the Freemasons to go out and build the temple.

Yeah, here's the thing too with these speculative masons. It wasn't like one day they just opened the doors and were like, does anybody want to be a Freemason? No, so you had to, at this point in time, you had to have some fucking clout. You had to come from a family with means. You had to have some type of like social advantage to actually get in on this. And like Adam was saying, this is where my mind starts to kick into like a different gear. Is you open the door to have these speculative Freemasons come in who are not practicing masons, which in order to keep someone there,

and to provide them the benefit to want to not only attend and be part of this, but at the same time to also donate their money and support this, you have to be able to provide something that is of use to them in their field. So we were, and this is why we had to have this conversation even before we started recording, is because we're kicking back and forth this idea of when did these teachings go from strictly masonry related to using the tools of Freemasonry as an allegory or as like symbolism to these other types of skills that you're learning throughout the course of earning these degrees. And that's one thing that's kind of short on information is it tells, you know, they receive lessons in leadership and

community service and, you know, betterment and self-improvement. But then it's really just, that's it. Like, I want to know specifically, like, what kind of skills are they? learning because a lot of these guys, especially founding father time frame that end up coming out of here, are going to be some big hitters. Yeah. It stands to reason just logically that anybody that would be a speculative mason coming in is going to have to know about the Freemasons. If you're walking down the street and you ask 10 people back in that time what a Freemason was, maybe you'd get two people that know. Anybody that knew how the Freemasons operated and how quality their skills were, were going to be people of means.

They were going to be government officials. They were going to be church officials. They were going to be somebody that can bring something more, not to say that people couldn't all bring intellectual things to the table, but these people were more intellectually adept to be able to go in there to learn from what the masons were talking about, to learn about the morality of Freemasonry. And then once they figured that out, they can start to expand and expound and to build these ideas and to create these allegories to point to a plum level and talk about how your life needs to have a good balance of rest, of learning, of family time, just all of these different things. They're opening up this membership window and initially people have to

look at that and be like, why would we go and try to learn how to carve and cut rocks and stack? we're never going to that's not our job we hire the people that actually do that stuff and then someone ends up you know either having send in their kid and be like no you're going these guys have an excellent it's like an excellent corporate structure yeah it's like you go work for a company like hurts hurts rent a car yeah excellent corporate structure you're going to go learn these skills that these people are providing what you get over the course of time and it might have been a slow burn what i believe anyway is you get this influx of these speculative masons who start to kind of merge the craft of freemasonry and the lessons of morality that they're

teaching into the established knowledge that they already have, and that's more specific to their craft or their business, those guys, then it's not just like you walk in and there's a list of teachers at these, you know, at these lodges. As soon as you were part of this, once you started going up in the levels of degree, you could then start passing the knowledge that you have crafted onto the people coming in. And so as more speculative masons come in from different backgrounds, from different professions, with different skill sets, you're getting this mixing and blending of the Freemason structure, corporate Freemasons. And then you're basically getting all of this, you know, expanded knowledge. of all these different fields coming in and kind of merging together, but because it's used in this really refined and honed structure, it just starts to, it just starts to take off. Well, you're also, too, talking about the 17th and 18th centuries, which what's going on all over the world, the age of enlightenment.

Yeah. So you're getting these free thinkers to come in here and look at something very differently. There's guys like Voltaire that was, I believe, very important during the first. French Revolution that are bringing their ideas to the table as to how to be able to use these concepts in a more broad term to refer to anything in anybody. You're getting political types that are coming in and seeing how to be able to maybe train people that are coming up as apprentices into more of a governmental, know how to speak in front of people, know how to talk to Congress, know how to talk to Parliament, anything like that,

where these certain specific skills are being passed on to people that are just more adept in those fields. They have a stronger pull towards a guy who's a specialist in something. And so there has to be a point in time, and I have no idea what it would be, is when the masonry aspect just becomes simply symbolic. There's no practicality, but the lessons are still, masonry themed. You also can get into the free mason still nowadays by just being a regular mason, like a stone mason. You're able to go ahead and get in there and not have to be a person of means to actually get in the door. So they still leave that available.

So think of the advantage that you would have if, because a stone mason, that was a job that anyone could really try to begin to do, especially if you're just carving and cutting rocks out of a quarry. and then you get yourself into a position where you're then I, you know, an apprentice. So by getting your foot in the door, you know how have access to all of these resources that you couldn't imagine having in your wildest dreams. You have people from completely different echelons of society and fields that you're sitting and hearing about. And all of a sudden, you're gaining this skill set. You're like, well, fuck, I'm not going to be breaking rocks anymore. I'm going to start doing this. or I'm going to start making connections, because that's what this thing turns out to, you know,

I think that might be the true power of this thing is simply just the connections that these people make. And not only that they make within their own lodges, but the fact that they're able to go to these other lodges and know that simply by entering into these lodges and communicating and interacting and interacting with other Freemasons, they already have kind of a measure of this person that they're speaking to and kind of know what this person, And maybe kind of what, not so much what their mindset is, but kind of how they like to look at things. Like, you know that they're going to be intellectually open. Yeah. And just to translate to modern times, there can be a garbage man sitting next to a small business owner sitting next to a CEO and a lodge or in a temple.

Because there's no separation. Once you walk in there, you're all masons. Yep. You may be on a different degree, you may be on a different step, but there's a level playing field between everybody. Nobody can buy a higher means in this situation. That's the thing is just because you have these degrees doesn't give you a position of power over someone with lesser degrees. It affords you more ability in which you can then like teach and things like that. But it's not like, and we'll get into essentially once a different form of, you know, free masonry comes up where there's additional degrees.

but like Adam said, it's essentially just a level playing field when you walk in here where everybody just has kind of the same intent and it's like just to learn and for self-improvement. Yeah. Or so they say.

Well, and we'll get into kind of some of the ins and the outs of that. Basically at this point in time in certain portions of the world, mostly ours, they're segregated to a certain extent. You have something called Prince Hall, Mason, and we'll talk about that a little bit later.

There's no women. Mason's back then. I believe there are a few lodges now that accept women. But it's 99.999% white dudes. So not all white dudes, but... Dudes. Yeah. So a comparison that Freemasonry has always kind of faces being essentially a religion.

And they're very adamant. They're not a religion. I can't remember what the comparison that I made to you last night was because I was kind of stoned. But it was something along the lines of, I feel like the difference here to distinguish it is a religion or a church is someplace you go to be kind of told what to think. Like they're telling you something. You're thinking about what they're telling you. Freemason Lodge or group, you go there to essentially think for yourself. You're going there to propose ideas and to bounce those off these other people.

Yeah, that's what we were talking about. It's like going to see a comedian at a comedy show and then being a comedian and bouncing bits off of other comedians. Yeah. Like a religion is just sitting there and watching the comedian do his act. Whereas these lodges, Freemasonry, the secret society is more like any idea can flow from any mouth in the room. Yeah. And because of the comparison to religion, one of the other reasons that that's there is because there are so many different sex of, um, Freemasons. And they're all able to use the term Freemasons, but there's things that are like the

ancient order of Freemasons and then the Scottish Rite Freemasons and there's there's all these different sex and they're able to do these little, you know, differences in how they want to approach things, but generally they all kind of follow the same structure. Like I was saying, there are certain Freemason sex now that I think actually do allow, that are allow men and women, but for the most part across the board. It's a fraternal order, so it's strictly mad. Yeah. Oh, I just lost it. We'll keep going then. The Vail Royal Abbey would be the first

to mention, or the first mention of a worksite lodge in 1278. 1278, that's pretty far back. Just to think about the longevity of the masons. first known use of the word Freemason in English dates back to 1376. The Cook manuscript of around kind of 1450 set the Gothic constitutions or what's known as the older regulations of the craft. Older Mason imagery that they would like put on clothing or anything like that would be adorned with something called the Biller or the Pillars of Boaz and Jankham, which this is interesting to me because if this is 1450

this is prior to the talk about Solomon's Temple in the 1700s Boaz and Jankham were both columns in the front of supposed Solomon's temple

so there is a mention of King Solomon's temple prior to they tie that in I think one of the things that they come up with for the prequel story is that so freemasonry euclid all that stuff there was kind of a lull with freemasonry and then crusader masons revived the craft upon returning home from the crusades and i'm trying to remember when the crusades were but i think that's also because they came back from the crusades

maybe they had some information about the pillars or maybe because that was like part of their origin story they, I don't know. It could be. It definitely gives them an in to tie it back to that. Well, these pillars were said to contain like the secrets of geometry. So these were like, this is where the geometric figures came from to build the temple. By the mid-16th century, guilds would be abolished as their power would begin to challenge the reformation that's going on in the church, where I believe it was Henry the 8th is

separating um oh boy I forgot what they are separating from the Catholic church yes Protestant yeah the Protestant Reformation yeah uh Crusades 1095

so yeah that was one of the little orchon portions yeah um but it would be repealed basically the next year after it was put in that all of these guilds would be abolished because the Freemasons were so useful to the government

yeah because as soon as they pushed them all away, the masons were like, okay, well, even though you abolished us, none of us that were in the guild before are going to work for you. And they're like, oh, didn't think about that. We could also head across to, you know, France or Ireland or any of those places and maybe find some work. Or footprints bigger than just England. Yeah. In 1717, there would be four lodges. This is one of my absolute favorite things about these guys. These lodges were basically named after where they met. So the first one was the goose and gridiron.

The second one was the Crown Ale House. The third one was the apple tree tavern. And then the fourth one was the rummer and grapes tavern. Hell yeah. So they're not meeting in like churches. They're not meeting in holy buildings. These dudes are showing up to the tavern and the alehouse. They're meeting.

They're Adam. Okay. So that's what's so weird is. So they have this requirement of believing in a higher power. And I don't know. And I want to say I heard something or read something that they have that. in there because someone that believes in a higher power is someone that you can trust to recognize consequences because if you believe in a higher power, you know at the end of the line that there's

consequences for your actions. Yeah. So yeah. I don't think either one of us, well, we might believe in a higher power, but I don't think that's where my consequences come from. No, that's, those are from my own actions that I figured out that there's consequences to things. But they were not, they wanted nothing to do with the church. And frankly, the church has, for the existence of the Freemasons, the church has not liked the Freemasons. Yeah. Especially the Catholic Church. Well, if you think about the things that the Catholic Church doesn't like, it's somebody else having power and authority over people, the mixing of religions, because we said it just has to be a higher power.

There can be any other sort of religious people inside. It wasn't just Catholics inside the masonry. We talked about this too last night when we were trying to figure out and kind of nail down what would be the biggest beef the Catholic Church would have with these guys. And with the church, they have a monopoly on hope or on self-improvement or on, you know, giving people, you know, some type of fulfillment. Now you have this other order who, while not accessible to the public, is offering an alternative to that while offering fulfillment and self-improvement. and tools that someone can use to enrich their actual lives, not tools to try to enrich their afterlife. They don't make threats of hell and damnation.

Yeah. So that probably helps. These four different lodges that would meet in 1717, they met to form something called the Grand Lodge of England, which gave all the lodges basically a number based upon their acceptance. They created something a little bit after called the Book of Constitutions. I believe that was the word I was looking for. They were called Constitutions.

We're created by a guy named George Payne to kind of the layout of general regulations of a Freemason. This whole formation of the Grand Lodge confused a hell of a lot of other lodges that were already in, like, Scotland and France. Because they look at the situation, like, we're older than you guys, though. So why are you guys too and why don't we have a number? because we're all Freemasons, right? And so they start to look at that and they're like, well, fuck, if you guys can do it in your country, we'll go ahead and do it in France. They have a wild name for theirs. The Orient.

The Orient. Yes. The Orient Orient. The Orient word confused me because we know that that's associated wrongly with another place. But this goes to show that the whole idea of masonry, there's no grand government. running body. That's what's so crazy is there's no like, which is one of the coolest aspects of it is because they can utilize the structure and teachings of the, you know, Freemasonry and everything. But at the same time, they're not really answerable to some, you know, grand poobah

or anything like that. That can work for the benefit if someone sees something deficient about aversion and they want to go ahead and, you know, correct that in theirs. It can also work out on the other side in a negative way as we'll kind of get into a little bit later. Yeah, but at the same time, you can't look at the masons and be like, they're a part of the cabal because they're all kind of autonomous in their own areas to the point to where it's not like there's this group of four million masons around the world that are all interconnected by masondom. If that's not a word either, if they're not all on the same page, by masonry, yeah,

if they're not all on the same page. by mortar if you will these oaths that were commonly taken to enter into this fraternity with the rituals were first recorded taking place in like 1696 in Edinburgh these kind of rites of passage

and rituals to me are very very interesting and part of it is because we'll talk about this a little bit later I had some crazy religious awakenings during this that I had no idea we're coming. But these rituals all kind of take a form of grandiose things that would go on. And we'll talk about kind of into detail how you're brought in to become an apprentice.

But basically, you have to relive everything that happened to Hiram Abiff in order to become a member. So you would go through the procedures of they would separate you in a room. You would have to take off all metal objects, everything like that. You would be dressed in all white. They would leave you in there to kind of let you start to gather your thoughts. Then you would be blindfolded. And I believe they would tie a rope around your wrists.

A neck. Neck. And they would lead you around the room while all the other masons were sitting around watching. You had to expose your. your right part of your chest or left part of your chest. You had to have that exposed like a button up. I don't know if it was like a button up shirt. It was over the heart.

So the left side, right? It was one of the sides. And it was for the reason. So there was, I'm not saying it's rational rationale, but their rationale behind it. And you had to have like one of your pant legs rolled up. And basically the reason they were looking at this is you had your chest exposed so they could see you were not a woman.

you had your leg shown so they could see you were a whole or something like that and I'm trying to remember what the other like blindfold was like for trusting there were there were all of this had little pieces of symbology all

tied into it then they would get the shit kicked out of them just like happened to Hiram they would be fake stabbed they would be hitting the head they'd be beating around a little bit and that would be symbolic of the killing of Hiram.

It would actually be hurt. Some of them sounded like they could get pretty rough. Really? Yeah. Like it wasn't like being jumped into a gang, but it was... Do they do it now with just like pillows? Probably. Yeah, it's probably a lot nicer now.

Then they would be symbolically buried in the shallow grave. Then the members would come and pick them up directly out of the shallow grave, just like they did with Hiram. Then they would carry them back. and you would essentially be a party to like your own funeral. And this is big for the ritual, but it's also something that I didn't ever really think of until I had heard it. On a podcast,

this guy was brilliant. He talked about being a mason was almost like insurance that you would be buried properly. Like if you didn't have family or anything like that, that you could depend on to give you like a right and proper burial, you would have this group of masons, this group of brothers, this fraternity, that would make sure that you were given a proper burial and you would be taken care of after you've passed away. It's like the people that are like, I'd rather get sent to jail because at least I can get food in jail. Yeah, it was almost like an insurance policy. It was like a life insurance policy that at least your funeral would be covered and you would properly be buried.

Which the fact that that that was scary enough to think that, A, you were probably going to die at a young, age back then, but B, you don't know if you're just going to be thrown off the cart. Well, geez, the other thing, too, is how much time are you investing in here? You're just sitting through these things being like, just remember, when you die, you're going to get buried. When you die, you're going to get buried. So they would do kind of these grand showings to bring them. That was it, right? They would pull them back out after the funeral and then they would be accepted in.

So they got, like, they were risen, like, they had been raised as, like, they had been raised as, like, their rebirth or something like that. And I know at some point I think they had to get on their knees and they had to like put their hand on like they were allowed to pick which type of religious text that they could actually be brought in to put their hand on. Sworn in. Yeah, it could be your Bible, Quran. It kind of whatever, because it just had to be a higher power.

Old Testament. Yeah. So what's the? Oh my God. Why can't I think about it? Quran Torah, the Torah. But yeah, so I mean, and then I think you had to take some type of oath. And the oath that you were taking basically was to make sure that you wouldn't share the secrets. And it was just basically like if you share these secrets and then they would tell you what your penalty would be basically like you could be stabbed or you could be killed and all this kind of stuff.

It's mostly for show. They still do it now and it's mostly for show for the symbolism of how they've always done it. it was probably a little bit more serious back then as far as the threats going and everything because it was probably more of the secrets that they had were probably a little bit more valuable, a little bit more closely guarded. Everybody was probably a little bit more prone to murder than they are now to. Yeah, just a little bit. But yeah, so we would go through this process and then bingo bingo bingo bongo, you were a Freemason or you were in as an apprentice.

Yeah. And it's symbolism plays such a huge role in this. And we see this everywhere. college fraternities are huge on this for Pledge Week and going through and initiation rituals and all that. Churches are very big on rituals. The Mormon Church in particular that I grew up in, I saw a lot of rituals that felt very similar and kind of had meanings that I could connect with things that I had done in my life growing up. And kind of to go along that thread, they would be given the handshake and they would be

be given the secret word, right? So, and it, it was different by different levels. So how you determined essentially certain things that you were able to discuss with each other is if someone came up to you and they gave you the handshake that was the apprentice handshake, you would know what that was, you would know what the word was. And if there's any, if we have any Freemason listeners, please feel free to send us this and correct it because there was a lot of stuff to sift through. So if you could set us straight on anything, we'd be grateful.

Yeah, tell us what we got right. tell us what we got horribly wrong. But yeah, you would be able to determine what someone's essentially knowledge base was and kind of what they were privy to and what they should or shouldn't hear based on how they could do this, you know, these handshakes and these code words or whatever. Yeah. They would also kind of be given a general questionnaire, almost like a script that you would be taught to question a Mason as to how valid they were or how legitimate they were. there would be questions like, uh, what way does your temple face? And I believe it was like east to west to face the rising of God's son or something like that. There were like code phrases that you could recognize. We talked about this too, that it seemed like kind of from the get go, they were able to kind of

suss out people that were there for the wrong reasons just through these types of processes, not only the time investment to have to get to know everybody because getting into these things was not easy. Sometimes it would have to be a completely unanimous vote from everybody in the lodge to allow you to get in, which meant you had to go during the time before you were an apprentice and talk to all these people and get to know all these people and they would have to get to know you. And if any of them had a sense that you weren't there for the right reasons, they could just go ahead and cast. I think that's where they had black balls that they actually voted. That might be where the term blackball came from. White balls and black balls, I believe white was a yes, a black was a no. So is that where blackball came?

Probably. So, and in some places, one of those would be enough to, you know, decline your membership. Some places you would have to have three of them to go through with declining your membership. But you had this vetting process of getting to know all these people. And over the course of probably what would take weeks to kind of get to know everybody and even get to the point of even trying to be presented with a vote to try to get in there, someone would probably end up sniffing something out because you'd probably get tired of performing. Yeah, and there's certain things that they do as far as like social gatherings and getting together and having a drink or having a meal together or anything like that where you can kind of look at a person's actions and tell kind of how they're wired and what they can do.

If they're offering to fill somebody else's water glass or their beer picture before they fill their own, is that somebody who's more selfless and looking out for everybody else's needs and wants? Or is that somebody who's selfish and just fills their glass and doesn't ask if anybody wants anything? Well, that's still a huge cornerstone of this, is that moral, that ethical and moral goodness, I guess, is what they're looking for. Which, again, conspiracy theories abound about how they control the world, all that stuff. If you're looking for morally good people, morally good people probably aren't going to be the ones behind these terrible acts that are happening. Yeah. The reason why a lot of this stuff is suspect early on is because, It wouldn't be until the 1720s that minutes for meetings,

along with like full-blown membership roles, would be kept in these lodges. So we didn't have a whole lot of documentation on what was going on or who was an actual member and who wasn't. And we still only have what we're allowed to basically have her what snuck its way out. Which honestly, I don't give a shit. I don't think these guys are up to anything funny. If there was, besides the fact that it's an all men's group,

that's usually something that I'd be like, hmm, I wonder what's going on behind those doors. They don't invite kids to these things. So I'm not too worried about what's going on behind closed doors. They don't seem overtly racist. So again, not really my issue. The fact that it's an all men's group that usually will perk your ears up. And then when you hear it's a predominantly all white men's group,

you're kind of like, hmm, yeah, might want to know a little bit more. But they haven't really done anything besides one guy to make me really question what's going on. in 1682 a Scotsman named John Skeen came to New Jersey and he would become known

as the first resident Freemason in America so we have this history that potentially dates all the way back to 1278 when this first work site lodge pops up to 1682

to when they finally make it over to America plays a huge role that we didn't find America for a very long time before this thing kicks off

but 1682 is kind of when it gets its first foothold. Even if you're trying to break it down and say Columbus 1492, which was, again, not North America, but for then the British to start coming over all the colonies, and in less than 200 years, you basically have a Freemason lodge or a guy basically being a resident, but then what just a few, what, like 50 years,

later, the first grand lodge of England basically grants the American lodge to take to basically form itself in Boston. So now, not only do they have a footprint in really any of the areas that British have colonized, so you have, you know, this is already kind of spanning the globe. You know how it have its first, you know, iteration in what would become the United States. And it's, it's something that spread like wildfire. It was in the Middle East. It was in the Middle East. It was in North Africa. It was in Egypt. It was in France. It was in Germany. It was in Scotland, of course, because they're shared the same island. It was in Ireland. It pops up anywhere that England kind of has its fingers. And China, I think, right? I don't know. I didn't see China. I wouldn't doubt it. I don't know where their higher power belief is. I'm sure they have one. That's just ignorance of my part thinking that they probably wouldn't because I'm sure China isn't a godless society like we always. always talk about they are. But when you have imperialism seeping into India and you start to have these lodges showing up,

these lodges... The Communist Party is outlawed Freemasonry. However, there are Masonic lodges in Hong Kong and Taiwan. That makes sense. Yeah. Because they had some problems with the fascist regimes and dictatorial regimes. Fuck. I forgot where I was going with it.

Oh. When imperialism seeps its way into India and England starts asserting their influence, these lodges are either already established or popping up in greater numbers, and you're seeing the mix of them bringing in Indian masons. And they start kind of teaching them their ways. And I asked you this earlier today because I don't know if it's a net positive or a net negative. It almost feels like you're sort of honey-dicking them with masonry. And then England comes in and is like, hey, you're under a rule.

our power. Yeah. But at the same time, it almost feels like a net positive because coming out of the other side, when India first establishes its parliament, almost half of the members of parliament are masons. So you see almost the teachings of this ability to be a good governor and somebody who can be involved in politics to separate themselves from everybody else, partially probably because they learned it through Masonic teachings.

Two ways I look at that. Not sure if we can consider it a net positive overall due to the British colonization of India. Little victories, maybe. I see it two ways. I want to think it's they learned a skill set. They learn these skills that they may not have had the opportunity to learn and they able to use those when forming parliament and able to do good with those skills. Yeah.

The other way I see it is if any of those people had any time. type of loyalty still to England because it was from the, you know, the English were the ones that brought the Masonic lodges and Freemasonry down there. Maybe that was a tool for them to keep a little bit of control or anything. I want to think it's the other one, but we know too much. Yeah, it's a toss-up, but it's a way to toss-up. Before we get into Freemasons, Free masons in the USA. Can we do a bathroom brick? Yeah. Well, hey there, all you sexy historians, how are you guys doing? It is time for socials.

Where can they find us on Instagram? If they want to follow us, they can find us at Historically High Pod on Instagram. That goes the same for threads as well. You can also find us on Twitter. Tell them about Twitter. Historically high. That's historically high. on Twitter.

And if you want to email any of your comments or suggestions, where can they find us at, Adam? Historically High Podcast at gmail.com. Gmail. All right, and back to the show. All right. Freemasonry takes the New World by Storm. And it literally did. Between 1733 and 1737, England approved lodges in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania.

in South Carolina. Wild to me that it's South Carolina. Like, just the thought of, because it's nowhere near kind of this upper, New England. It's not in the sense of money from industry. But think of all that money from like plantations and farms. It may not have been the workers on the farms that were in, you know, in these lodges. But you had a lot of farms and a lot of people that were running businesses down there

that we're making a lot of money. Well, it probably had a lot to do with just immigration. Was that a voice crack? Oh, my God. Puberty. 30-plus-year-old puberty, buddy. Yeah, immigration could have been a big thing, just where these masons immigrated to. Well, didn't it just say we just looked up a fact?

Wasn't it like 50,000 Scottish people had immigrated kind of around that time? Yeah, so definitely in the South, that could be huge. Which also, if those people are members of the Scottish, freemasons, chances are that some of them would have brought it over with them. Yeah. This is where we get into the heavy hitters, the big names. Ben Franklin would become a

Grandmaster in Pennsylvania. Even before lodgers were recognized they were holding meetings over there, so Ben Frank got his name in quick. He rose to the rank of Grandmaster in Pennsylvania. George Washington would be initiated into the lodge of Fredericksburg in 1752.

He was 20 years old. That feels like pretty early to jump into this, but his whole life was kind of on fast forward from the beginning. And remember, this is at a time, too, when you were a man at like 14 or 15. Yeah. You were sent to certain, like, finishing school, all that kind of stuff. Chances are if you were someone from means that you would be pursuing a career in the military as an officer and then into politics is kind of where the career path would go, if not coming back to run the family business or whatnot. And so, yeah, at age 20, he's probably like, looking at this thing, like, hmm, Ben Franklin's in it. A lot of other people are.

admire. I'm going to give this thing a go. But even then, do you think he knew anything about Ben Franklin? Because he was quite a bit older, but at the same time, we're talking about Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Yeah. I mean, at that point, yeah, there's spread pretty far apart. Travel takes a long time. But you got certain people who are like the rock stars of the era. And I think Ben Franklin was probably one of those people where even if he didn't know him personally, correspondence, anything like that.

Never met. never met in certain circles during like get-togethers and stuff, there had to be talk of like, did you hear about this guy Franklin up in Pennsylvania or something like that? So he was probably a known entity. And the fact that if it came out and Washington knew, hey, you know, Ben Franklin's a Freemason up in Pennsylvania. He was like, oh shit, like, okay, let me get in on this. And we also see figures like Paul Revere and Joseph Warren that would be initiated in Boston.

We also get the myth of the Boston Tea Party, potentially the belligerents in the Boston Tea Party were Freemasons that had met at a meeting. I believe it was Samuel Adams' brother or cousin, Bob Adams or whatever his name was, that may have been Freemasons that had talked about this revolt and this pushback against England. So potentially the Boston Tea Party could have come from a Masonic meeting that was being. being held where they decided to do this. I know John and John Quincy weren't Freemasons, but that's not to stand a reason that other family members Yeah.

It's very true. I thought John Quincy was, but then after he sees what goes on later on, he They said he was a vocal critic to Freemasonry. Hmm. Blows my mind. At least eight of the signers of the Declaration

of Independence were Masons. There were 13 or more that signed the Constitution. we had 15 U.S. President Freemasons with the last being Gerald Ford. 40% of the guys who drafted the Declaration of Independence were Freemasons. Ben Franklin, a guy that wrote the shit out of it, that wrote a lot of it. So you've got to imagine that a lot of the stuff that they picked up during these, you know, earning these degrees or speaking with these other people sharing these ideas,

a lot of them, when you look at the Declaration of Independence and you're kind of breaking down what the core beliefs of Freemasonry were, you know, equality being ethical, things like that, you can really kind of see where the inspiration and kind of wear some of the tone in like the Declaration of Independence also, like you said, 13 of the 39 to sign the Constitution. So you did have input from those guys going into how the Constitution was drafted. There's a lot of this same type of themes in there. If there was positive groups, These dudes had been positively groomed by other statesmen that were masons to maybe form a more cohesive constitution to kind of get things running better. Because again, with those guys being higher degree masons coming in the new generation or whatnot, they're learning from these guys.

Yeah. Again, this is all conjecture on our part. There's really no fact. This is just kind of what makes sense to us. Yes. Just based upon the information given we're not punching any of this stuff up. This isn't anything that we didn't learn over this week. But then there's also the element of being like, well,

Occam's Razor says this is the most likely reason that it happened. So this is kind of where we're getting this from. During the Revolutionary War and also during the Civil War, this is just still kind of outlandish. As these two sides were fighting, whether there would be somebody that was injured on the battlefield or somebody that was taken as a prisoner of war, usually

masons would be treated with more respect than other masons they would be given kind of special treatment not to say that they wouldn't turn around and shoot each other because that was the problem at hand but they were kind of treated with more respect than other soldiers

that weren't of the belief I think this could be kind of a byproduct because back in the Revolutionary War 40% of the generals in the Revolutionary War were free Masons. That's a lot. Yeah. And I kind of see that as a trickle-down effect of after that was over, you know, the country was brand new, but it was unified as the United States. You would have a lot of

those guys that were training that, you know, there were guys that trained up north that were fighting for the South. In the Civil War? Yeah. Yeah. And stands to reason that those people would maybe know of each other, things like that. And so it kind of stands to reason that people that were then officers making decisions about POWs, things like that, were in a position. But maybe they were Freemasons as well, recognized the other ones and knew that there was a certain type of treatment that would be expected or they wouldn't be freemasons anymore because it wouldn't be moral. Well, at the same time during the Revolutionary War, when England occupied Boston, they were still allowed into the, Masonic lodges within Boston. So even though these soldiers were over there

were fighting war, there was kind of an agreed upon understanding that you were both masons, you could both kind of seek refuge. And that had to come from people in command. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it would probably piss a few soldiers off when, if two of you were

masons and the four of the others weren't, like, hey, we're going to stop in here and grab a couple drinks. I'm like, those people are going to spit in your food. There's no way this is going to happen. They're not going to give you anything. You're like, no, no, no. You're like, oh, And we didn't even discuss that. One of the rules inside these lodges, or like within these groups,

but when they meet in like the Masonic halls or wherever, I keep on to say because it's called the Masonic Lodge, but what it means is the individuals that belong to that. And they meet inside the temples. And they meet inside the Masonic temples, that's right. So again, probably another reason why there's the whole religious comparison,

calling something a temple. The fuck, I forgot where I was going with this. They would be a lot of passage, even though they weren't member of that lodge into the temple. That's what I'm saying. Okay. So yeah. So if you're, one of the rules was you don't discuss politics and you don't discuss religion. That's not part of the discussion. You can discuss forms of religion and forms of politics, but it's never going to be, well, I think this because

I am this. You're having more intellectual conversations. And I think maybe, and I might be trying to look at more of a similar lining, more of an optimistic output here. But I feel like that probably one of the places or one of the very few places that people could get together on each side of that during the Revolutionary War and just maybe have a little bit of a fucking break from it. Yeah. Or some of the people that maybe understood that there were two sides to that and could coexist within the walls of that place. And really, when we talked about the Revolutionary War before, this wasn't all of the English soldiers hating all of the American, Continental Army. A lot of them lived there, probably had girlfriends. Yeah.

Or wanted to, like, probably thinking, hey, there's a lot of fucking opportunity here. As soon as I'm done with my service, I'm going to have to go back to England, but then I'm heading right back here. There was an understanding that this was business and not personal. Yes. And I think that that plays a huge part of it. Again, we've kind of hinted at this earlier on as far as you can't throw, that's not the right expression. something about spoils a bushel, a bad grape spoils a bushel or something spoils a bunch.

A bad apple doesn't spoil the bunch. Yeah, we'll go with that. There were lodges that... Not the same as Turton a Punch Bowl. That ruins the entire bowl of punch. Yeah. There were lodges that just did things that were outside of the purview of what the kind of belief system was the Mason's had.

And kind of the biggest one that happened in 1826, there was this guy named William Morris or William Morgan that disappeared from Batavia, New York. There was a lodge in Batavia, New York. He had joined it. And after he had been in, he got snuffed out pretty quick that he was there more to collect the story on all of the secrets behind the organization. Had he already, like, got a publishing deal or had already, yeah. Yeah. So he'd, what they didn't know before was he had already signed this deal.

with, his name was, he was a publisher, his name was David Miller. And the deal would be that Morgan would receive a quarter of the profits from the book that they would print. Miller owned a newspaper. And after it was found out that Morgan was in there trying to get these secrets

so he could then bring them back and sell them in for the book, the Mason's got pretty angry. I'm trying to, I'm painting this in my head much more elaborate than it probably was. But, I mean, do you think he gets found out? Because there's definitely going to be people within either his lodge or his area that have connections to people maybe in publishing houses or in the newspaper industry, things like that. All of a sudden, word gets around, hey, someone signed a publishing deal to go ahead and reveal the Freemasonry secrets or things like that. And then they go back and they find who it is.

I think they snuffed him out. I think he asked too many questions. I think it was, he was too eager to try to, like you were talking about, or there was too eager to try to skip the steps. He went full beaver. Yeah, exactly. And once he kind of started digging it, I mean, if you're there on your first day and you start asking about all of the secrets of the Freemason world.

So where's the Lost Arkat? Mm-hmm. Your, yeah, what's this future Dan Brown guy going to be writing a book about that I need to know about? Mm-hmm. And along with that, once they kind of figure, this out, Morgan would be arrested twice for some bullshit. The first time was like he was thrown in debtors jail and he was also charged with stealing a shirt and tie. I believe it was Miller ends up bailing him out. So now there's really no question of the connection between Miller

and Morgan. He'd be re-arrested and thrown in jail. While he was in jail the second time, there were kidnappers that came in and took him and they took him up to Fort Niagara. So right on Niagara Falls, right on the river up there. There's questions as to what happened to him. He's never been seen again. They found a body, but it turns out that it's pretty doubtful that it was his body that they found. Excuse me. I wanted to throw a conspiracy in here because I think it's kind of interesting.

If they just kicked Morgan up to Canada, because they're on the river right there, they're on the border with Canada. like, hey, don't come back. We know that this book's going to come out. We know you're going to make your money. Take your payment across the border. Stay up in Canada. Don't ever come back. That's one.

Somewhere else. Yeah. Take a boat. Go to Nova Scotia. Take a boat. That's what I would like to think happened. I don't think that's what happened. But I think that there is a chance when they're like, yeah, he was disappeared and he got

disappeared and was never seen again. Like, is there a chance that they just told him? don't come back or will kill you? I mean, this is definitely at a time when, even as a speculative Mason, which is the majority of them at this point, I believe so, right? Yeah, it would have to be. You still have to have a certain level of status to actually get in to the Freemasons. And because of that, I feel like there would probably be, again, these aren't insanely

huge like law enforcement or police departments, whoever is in charge of the military for policing the areas, which means that some of those guys in those positions are probably Freemasons. Yeah. And because of that, kidnapped out of his cell or anything like that, all you got to do is he sends the message over to the freaking lodger at the temple. And he's just like, yeah, we have him down here. You guys can come, just come grab him whenever.

I'll leave the handcuffs on him to make this easier for you guys. Yeah, no kidding. So whatever happened, I don't have an opinion on. what happened he I want to believe based on the fact that this is you know the big kicker here is that it's supposed to be believing in a

higher power consequences morality that yeah they just kicked him up to Canada and said hey grab some puttin on your way out hit Nova Scotian don't write I don't know like you said there could also be there's people that buy into things

regardless of how mild they might be or how good natured they become fanatical about it. Yeah. And they will tie their entire identity. We see that a lot in recent times. People tie in their whole identities to certain ideologies. But there are people tied to that that will do some real extremist shit across the board

that could maybe, you know, the guys that end up taking care of this guy could be looking at it from their perspective and saying, like, we're protecting Freemasonry. Yeah, you're loose end. Yeah, we're the enforcers of this. When in actuality, they're looking at that. being like, no, we meant just, yeah, do what you said. Fucking pay him and send him across the border. Get what you needed out of this deal, and then we never want to see you again.

Then we might kill you. I would probably say if I was a betting man, which I am, they definitely killed him and threw him in the river. But I would like to believe that they, he lived a great life in Canada with the quarter of the book deal. They never came out? No, it did. Oh, it did. Yeah, it did. and in between that,

after Morgan was put in jail, Miller's print shop, the reason that I think that they killed them also, Miller's print shop just mysteriously burns down. Yeah, the fucking fire marshal is a Freemason, dude. If they were willing to burn down this guy's newspaper, print business,

they were probably willing to kill somebody. Sir, sir, there's a building on fire. Is it at 827, 4th Avenue? Yeah. You guys take a lunch? We'll get to in a little bit. the book would end up being published eventually it would become a bestseller

they would make a ton of money on it all the kidnappers that they rounded up that they said committed the crime basically were lightly punished they didn't get a whole lot out of this probably because the whole court system was full of masons that were

sympathetic to the cause and again this is where it's one of those things where it's like I'm not saying these guys are bad people did they lean on the scale to maybe get favorable sentences, yeah. There's no doubt in my mind that that's what happened. But public backlash was pretty swift against them. There was a pretty big anti-Masonic political movement. There were parties that were formed that would be running against the incumbent Andrew Jackson, who,

surprised, surprise, was Mason. They wouldn't ever really get close. Andrew Jackson ends up getting reelected. But it's like the issue that was just in New York was then put on a national stage for the presidency. So then everybody else all over the country finds out about it when if it didn't become like a full presidential issue, then everybody else would have never found out about it. So kind of everywhere you start to see a decline as people don't want to be on the Masonic roles. They don't want to be associated with it because this fantastical story about these one group of crazy dudes, that there's really no connection to any other Masonic lodge around,

you start to see these numbers dwindle. It declines by the mid-1830s, only to be revived in the 1850s, just in time for the Civil War in the 1860s. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I forgot. So William Morgan's widow, Lucinda Morgan, would remarry. This is what you were talking about. Text me about?

Yes. Okay. She would end up... This is what was giving you PTSD. Mm-hmm. She would end up moving to the Midwest. And in the Midwest, they would go ahead and run into Joseph Smith and the traveling Mormons.

There are stories and things written that Lucinda Morgan would become one of Joseph Smith's plural wives. There was a point in time when Mormon people do this thing called the best. baptism for the dead. It's kind of like you described it. Mother Teresa would catch people on their last seconds and try to convert them to Catholicism. If you don't even have. You're not even alive enough to be like, don't. Yeah. But in the LDS scenario, in the Mormon scenario, they do something called baptisms for the dead, which means posthumously, they will baptize somebody in the name of someone who died in order for them to be able to accept the church and to be able to get into heaven. I know that. sounds crazy. If you believe it, cool. If you don't, I don't blame you for not believing in it. Or not believing in it. But William Morgan would be baptized for the, or get his name baptized posthumously through the Mormon church. And at the same time, the whole idea behind some of the

Masonic rituals are very closely related to things that go on in the Mormon church. As far as things that go on in the temple as far as dress, as far as baptisms, as far as some of the rituals that are done, there's a lot of crossover that really makes me wonder if maybe William Morgan didn't share this stuff with Lucinda and then Lucinda shared it with Joseph Smith. And Joseph Smith was like, well, I don't have to worry about creating that part of the religion because this stuff sounds pretty good. And then everything sort of takes a turn away from divine intervention. You're telling me that I could use this kind of stuff that's been working for these guys for the last 400 years.

Okay, that works. Is there anything, I don't know if you mentioned this, was there anything like symbolism-wise that like was close or anything like that? As far as baptisms go, there's not a whole lot. And again, it's, I'm a little fuzzy on my Mormon history, but I know an okay amount of it.

Temple workers inside the temple, when they're performing any sort of temporal duties, or they're working there anything like that, are required to be dressed in all white. So they'll literally, like, women will have white dresses. Men will have all white suits with white shoes, white ties, like everything. Looks like Brother Love from WWF back in the 80s just without the red shirt. Like, they are just complete celestial beings. And in the Masonic temples, whenever they original...

Is there a color scheme in there? Like, is everything, like, monochromatic? And then it's just people's natural skin colors. that's the weird thing that stands out? I wasn't allowed in a lot of the parts of the temple, but the parts of the temple that I was allowed in, everything is so grandiose and gold leafed and just the fanciest, most eloquent marbles

and stones are used, all sorts of just incredible stuff. They're pretty phenomenal buildings to be in, but when rituals or anything that are done in the Masonic temples, they also wear all white. And I'm sure it's a sign of purity. I'm sure there's a lot of other people that do that. It can't just be these two that do it.

But the fact that a religion that kind of came into being in 1820 is mirroring something that came into being potentially in 1,200 makes me think that there could be more connections there. Everyone's just barring from everybody else. Yeah. So like I said, Miserie in America would decline in the mid-1830s, only to be revived right before the Civil War in the 1850s. by the Civil War membership had risen from 66,000 to 200,000 in the United States.

200,000 Masons in the United States alone. That's a lot of people. That's a pretty common thing in a lot of cities, I'm sure. And that's why kind of nowadays we have Masonic temples. We were talking about it. There's a Masonic temple in our city that we, I don't think, really thought twice about, but it's a building downtown that says Masonic Temple on the front of it. Mm-hmm.

And a lot of places that get these temples early, because people are moving there when these cities are developing, if you have state capitals, there's more than likely going to be a cornerstone to the state capitals that has Masonic etchings on it because they were the ones that laid the cornerstones for these buildings. Because dating all the way back to the beginning, they were the masons that built the temples. So all of these new structures that are being built that are still capitals, these government facilities that are being built, that are being built, that. that cornerstone of that building that's so important in the architecture of it, but also in the symbolism of it is usually something

that's been laid by a mason. I think that's why there's so many things about like D.C. When they're like, there's a Freemasonry symbols everywhere. They're like, it's because there's masonry everywhere. Yeah.

It's because there's fucking buildings that they... Somebody had to build these buildings. Yeah. That's what they did. The Civil War is so interesting to me. Oh, that's right. So there were 200,000

there were more than 5,000 lodges nationwide. That's what I was going to get at. So 200,000, that's men. That's just men. That's not only 200,000 men. That's 200,000 men who are probably somewhere between the ages of 20 to however much older. Yeah. You're starting at the guys that are going to be fighting in the Civil War.

And it's all men. So how many of these guys are taking part, like we were talking about, on different sides of the battle? I heard stories that they would be, like, on a battlefield and everything. And someone would hear somebody calling out some type of, like, Masonic phrase or code that was, like, recognized it, like, the apprentice level. Will someone come to the aid of the widow's son? Something like that. Which dates back to Hiram, who is a widow's son, and that's how they would know each other. would someone as will no one help the widow son?

Yeah. That was like a catchphrase that they would give. And it would be someone from the other side. And there would be instances where they would try to like drag them out of harm's way or get them back for medical attention. But it was like this thing transcended the lines of, of war and loyalty for some. Yeah, they were fighting a political war. And that's really what it was. It was for sure 100% of moral war.

But your morals were different depending on where you grew up. But because you were part of that where you were taught to essentially try to kind of be more free thinking to maybe try to view things from different viewpoints and try to see the commonality in something. And again, these aren't just 200,000 of the farmers' kids. These are 200,000 of the people that are of the higher ups in society that are going to be your generals and your officers and everything when this fighting starts. Yeah, and it's fought with both of these sides being just packed to the gills with Masons. Excuse me, there's a gentleman that we're going to kind of focus on a little bit more. From 1870 to 1920, it's known as the Golden Age of Fraternities, because all of these fraternal organizations like the Freemasons start to spread and start to grow.

There's one called the Odd Fellows that sounds kind of fun to me. The Odd Fellows just sounds like a fun name to go on, but they have similar beliefs. It's just kind of like a take on the world and sort of like a philosophy. The Shriners are actually an offshoot of the Freemasons. I believe so, yeah. They're the guys that in parades, they wear the little fezzes and drive around the little cars. And have children's hospitals that don't charge. They don't charge, yeah.

Yeah. Freiners hospitals. Great things that are done and stuff that I don't know if it really gets talked about it anymore. I hope that it's not dying out because all the good works that they do, and I do like the Fezzes and the funny little cars. But a gentleman, Albert Pike. Albert Pike was born December 29th, 1809 in Boston, surprising for how this story goes. He would join the masons in his 40s. He would create something out of a kind of a pre-held style of masonry called the Scottish Right. The Scottish Right would entail 30,

three degrees instead of just the original three. Include the original three. And then after you reached third degree, then it just kept going for another 29. Yeah, it was like a, you got the sequel to Freemasonry, basically. And these things, rights, basically it was just the version that these were going to be operating under. There were already a ton of rights. You had the Swedish right, the French right.

And then within Sweden, you could have had two other rights. Like, there were different versions of all of this. This one just borrowed. heavily essentially from an already established right that I believe was its origins were probably in Scotland. Yeah, it would have to be somewhere around there. Or a Scottish person was the one that created it. Yeah.

But essentially, he would write this book based upon the 33 degrees that was, it had the word dog, it was a long, boring title, if I'm going to be honest with you. But kind of redefining this Scottish rite for these 33 different degrees. And again, the reason why there's so many different styles of masonry, is because there's no universal governing body. Like, there's nobody to be like, this is what we do. This is how it all goes. It almost allows the free thinking ability to continue on to put more into kind of these teachings

to maybe expand upon some of the things that you're learning during the first three. Like if there's sections and chunks that are specialized based upon how they've been written by somebody who knew more about that subject. It almost felt like they had the mindset at times of, as long as the core message is getting across, as long as the core belief is getting across, the fact that it's maybe a little bit different doesn't outweigh the fact that it's expanding

and it's reaching more people. So that would outweighed essentially any of the negatives from the tweaks or changes. Yeah, it's almost like you would play campaign mode in a video game and then there's just the open world after that that's still based upon the game. Yeah. Albert Pike, interesting guy, very smart.

He would become a captain for the U.S. military during the Mexican-American War in the Battle of Buena Vista. In the Civil War, he would become a general for the Confederacy, surprising, sort of unsurprising, because he had moved to Arkansas, and he had kind of started to create a life for himself down there. That's where he called home. he did some very bad, bad things to the Native Americans. He was a general at this thing called the Battle of Pea Ridge and basically he had gone around to the local tribes that were in the south around there and he's like, hey, if you guys support the Confederacy

and you guys fight with us, once we win, we'll give you your own land. We will create a nation for you to live on. Again, probably in the shittier area of what we get. That's just what anybody was going to do. duty, but we want to make sure that you guys are taking care of if we end up winning this thing. And so these Native Americans join in on the fighting with the Confederacy, and he was such a dog shit general that they just got swept in Peeridge.

Just everybody ended up getting killed, mostly the Native Americans that he had just recruited to come help them fight the Northerners on the hopes of getting their own land. after the war he would end up moving up to Canada probably because his side lost and he felt like there was maybe a little bit of heat on him that he was a general in the Confederacy so he moves up to Canada spends a little time up there

President Andrew Johnson who he would write to later on in life I think it was like five years later after the war he would write to Andrew Johnson and he'd be like hey I did some things that were a little sketchy hullabaloo Timbuck 2 I'm a Mason, how about you? And Andrew Johnson's like,

loud and clear, gotcha, go ahead and come back to America, I'll pardon you, everything will be okay. Pike ends up coming back to America. He ends up getting his pardon for taking part in the civil war on the side of the Confederacy.

Well, then what does he do when he comes back? He's like, by the way, I still, you know, I'm still part of this moral organization that we're part of. And what is an extremely moral person do as soon as they get back in the country? Probably start to

create the building blocks and foundation of the Ku Klux Klan in Arkansas. There's some debate as to how far he was into the Klan. Masons would claim that there's no documentation that he was an actual Klan member. It's pretty easy to claim that because the Klan's a very secret of organization itself and wouldn't let their roles out to the public for anybody to see.

And of course, you're going to say that he wasn't. Yeah. Because he definitely was a Freemason. Yes. So there was no denying that, but you could try to deny, deny, deny that he was, you know, instrumental in the KKK. Pretty hard to deny a picture. I'm sure pictures were pretty shitty back then, so maybe you could say that it wasn't him.

There's a picture of him standing pretty front and center with a group of Klansmen in Arkansas. Also, it doesn't take a real large leap. I mean, there's definitely other Freemasons that could have been a part of the clan. But the fact that a grandmaster in Freemasonry is called a grandmaster because he's a leader. And there is a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. There's also a Grand Dragon, I think. Yeah, Grand Dragon, Grand Wizard. All of these grand titles seems like that could be something that's right along there.

As far as their dress, he would probably help out with some of the iconography of the clan, as far as what he chose for the symbolism and things like that. This guy kind of looks like a shitty Billy Connolly. I didn't look him up, but I can see him now. He's wearing his 33rd degree, like, a sash and everything in his picture. Yeah, it's, I mean, not a good thing. And I'm sure by the Mason's reaction to it, even though he was somebody who kind of reformed this Scottish right that started out in Europe

and is one of the main, I believe we decided that it was kind of like the main style of masonry. Look at it this way, man. Why is fucking Baskin-Robbins so popular? You got 31 flavors or however many flavors they have. You never walk into an ice cream parlor and they have three flavors.

The one that's going to get the business is the one that offers more selection. So I think that's why the Scottish right version is kind of the more dominant one now. Yeah, would you rather go to a place that has vanilla chocolate and strawberry? Would you rather go to a place that's got 31 flavors?

Yeah, This place had prelings and dick. And dick? And Dick. It's a Wayne's World reference. But Masonry today, I believe, this is where it's kind of one of those things where when I hear the way that they describe this, I love the way they describe it, even though I'm not really big on symbolism, but they described themselves as a beautiful system of morality,

veiled an allegory and illustrated by symbols. it's a pretty cool way to look at a system of a secret society and just hope that that's what they preach, that they preach morality and they preach good values. And honestly, I can't really say that they don't because I don't know enough about it. Even after, I mean, double-digit hours of studying this week, trying to wrap my mind around all of this, I still don't quite have a feel of what it is just because I think I have a hard time getting over like the cachet and the stuff that they talk about as far as in pre ancient times and all that kind of stuff. I just, I can't quite vibe with that,

so I can't really get a handle on what they would teach. The waters are murky, and it's hard to like, every so often, like, the dirt moves to the side, and you can kind of see what's on the bottom. You're like, oh, shit. And then it gets, like, a little bit murky again. So it's hard picking out what's sensationalized and what's factual.

And as far as the term morality goes, everybody kind of has a different set of morals that they live by. Some of us have looser morals and others, but there's still kind of the main architect of just being a good person that I hope is the morality that they're trying to teach. And I could believe it just kind of based on the works that they do. They donate millions of dollars to charities and organizations in need. Part of the reason I think that they get such a bad rap is because they use symbols that are kind of questionable. symbol, symbols such as the all-seeing eye on the pyramid that's on the back of the dollar bill.

Yeah. Something like that to where it's Freemason iconography that's also kind of been co-opted by this Illuminati that people talk about and something. It's also like an Egyptian symbol too. Yeah. The symbol of the eye, it's, I hate to make this comparison. The Pinkertons used it. Yes. It's kind of like, prior to the Schwastika,

being ruined. Wasn't it a Hindu or like a Buddhist symbol? I believe it was Buddhist. It was for like peace? Yes. And it's only when someone fuck something up for everybody else that these symbols become, you know, something negative. Something that you see pretty frequently, the compass that has the G in it, the G is said to have either stood for God or geometry. Yeah. So it's a square pointing down like a V. Then it's a compass like an A above it. And then the G's in the middle. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And if you don't really know what these symbols mean, they can kind of make your mind wander. You can start to wonder.

The square is something that is so crucial in masonry, and it's something that shows up everywhere. We're talking about the square, not a square. But a square is also very big for symbolism for them, too. There's a conspiracy theory that I just certainly don't buy. into that George Washington had the builders of Washington, D.C., because he knew it was going to be in his name, he wanted the city to be built in a square to symbolize masonry. It's weird how it was laid out because Washington, D.C. is really unique in how it's not, if you're planning a city and you get to start from scratch, like they got to plan Washington,

D.C. You'd think you would just laid out directly, strictly in a grid pattern. Everything going east to west, north to south. This actually has a bunch of like diagonal streets that cut across like large portions of the city. And looking at it, he brought in, I believe he was another Freemason. He was a French like civil designer to design the city. Civil engineer, something like that. And they said that you could say that it was to get from one end to the other faster, which it makes sense. But you can also look at DC.

when it was first designed from the top down. And I know you can find different things to draw in and everything like that. But you can get some pretty crazy symbolism, not just connecting buildings or like the cross streets, but literal, like little circular areas, like little, not pavilions, but like roundabouts that are located throughout Washington, D.C., and then also connecting them to like the fucking capital building

and like the Washington Monument. You can get some pretty crazy shit. You can. You also have to play into the ease of efficiency for what was being used in that city. No, no, I completely get that. What I'm saying is it's symmetrical in ways that make these shapes. Yeah. In these areas.

I'm not putting on a tinfoil hat. What I'm saying is, if you're planning a city and free masonry is that big and everything, why wouldn't you just pepper it in there? Yeah, I think that they probably had a little bit more on their minds than building the city in a certain symbolic way in trying to get the country started and have everything going. Buddy, I'm going to tell you right now. I heard something else about the Freemasons that made me think that there wasn't really, I'm not petty. Petty is not the right word. But vindictive? No. Like, they wouldn't be above, like, putting their own spanner signature on something.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, I don't know if we talked about him when we were talking about Stalin or or the Vatican, but he was essentially known as the father of Italian independence, and he was also a Freemason. Now, in Rome, you know, yeah, Vatican Hill, and then there's a section above Vatican Hill, they put a statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in a position on that hill to where you could see it from the Vatican, so they could look at a known Freemason, father of Italian independence, who broke up their Catholic empire and everything. And then they took it and they had it previously facing Vatican City,

him sitting atop a horse. They took it and they turned it the other way. So they were looking at the horse's ass. So I just do not put it above them to be like you're designing this city. Throw a couple fucking Freemason symbols in there. Yeah, it's all possible. Probable, I would say less. I did forget to mention it was

Masonry under a dictatorship or under a fascist regime would suffer pretty badly because obviously if it's a think tank basically somebody that can throw around ideas that's where revolution comes from. That also accepted people that certain other people were trying to round into camps. Yeah. And also less accepting of the idea of nationalism

over just being human. So you're telling me that there was a time in Italy and Germany when Freemasonry was not welcome? There was, but at the same time, Hitler was able to kind of try to use Freemasonry to his advantage just because of his beliefs in the occult and things to where he could try to almost infiltrate them and use them as a power mechanism

to try to get them on his side. Whereas Stalin and Mussolini we're just like, no. This stuff isn't happening. Well, it doesn't sound like Freemasonry has a home where communism is. No, definitely not. You can't be a free thinker in that way.

They use something, oh. The symbolism. Oh, yeah, symbolism. So square, obviously, for keeping everything square and imbalance in your life. The trial for the work that needed to be done as far as personally and in your own life. So I have a whole list of the symbols.

Oh, perfect. So, and there's, I thought there was just like the five. There's a lot of them, apparently, that they use in masonry. So you have the square in the compass first and foremost. It's the masonic symbol. So the square is used to determine angles. And they have meaning both in the act of masonry in which they were used initially. And then what they actually mean as far as the symbol in modern free masonry. So operative and speculative kind of. Exactly. Yeah, there you go. So the square was used to determine angles. It's a reminder to act with integrity and fairness. The compass in the symbol pointing toward heaven, the square pointing toward Earth in the symbol together. So basically you have the divine and then you have the earthly. The G for either geometry or God, like you were saying. There were also these different tools that you could get at different levels as well. So there was these things called Ashlar's. And basically it was just a block of stone.

One was rough and one was perfect. The rough one was given to new. masons and then the perfect one is provided to learn mason so like you were to show essentially how they came in like a rough uncut piece of stone and then they were polished and crafted i like it you had the gavel that was the symbol of continual self-improvement and growth the all-seeing eye that was the concept of a higher power observing us and like divine oversight you had the level which was the fundamental of equality of all free masons, the plum, which I had to look up how a plum worked. It's pretty rudimentary, but at the same time, it makes total sense. Yeah, so basically,

it is like a weight on a string, but then it goes through a block of wood, and that block of wood is the holes in the middle of it, and it's as wide or just a little bit wider than the actual, like if the weight was a circle, it would be a little wider than what the diameter of that circle. And you would hold it against a wall and you would let that drop to the ground. And if it touched the wall at any point,

it meant the wall was leaning backwards. If it separated and started going out further from the wall, it meant that the wall was leaning forward. You would set it on the side of something to make sure all the bricks were lined up. So it was a very integral tool for the Freemasons. It's still today. Exactly.

for carpentry or anything else. So that was for living upright and honorable. You would have the mosaic pavement. Now, you ever wonder where the origination of that checker pattern is, the black and white? 50s diners, right? Yeah, that's in all Masonic temples.

And basically, it's the black and white checkered representing the floor of King Solomon's temple and the dual nature of life. Light and dark, life and death. You have the 47th problem of Euclid, which is also known as Pythagorean's theorem. Ah. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. And that's about uncovering life's deeper meaning.

The hourglass, which was time and the brief nature of human existence. The broken column signified the untimely death of Abith, Abif, and the fragility of life. The Ark of the Covenant is one of the symbols and represents the pursuit of divine truth, the trowel, unity and connection. which if you're spreading mortar connection unity, I guess. And then the lamb skin apron, which represented purity and innocence. You missed my favorite one. Okay. The 24 inch gauge.

Okay. The 24 inch gauge was used to symbolize the balance between physical, emotional, and spiritual needs in managing time. So essentially it would be a gauge that would be broken down into three, eight-inch segments. These eight-inch segments were meant to signify the eight hours of service to God, you were to perform the eight hours of vocation that you would do, and then the eight hours of refreshment and sleep that you would need to fuel those other 16 hours. So it teaches you to break up your day into, I mean, eight hours of service to God feels like a lot of hours of service to God.

Yeah. But at the same time, if you're basing things on higher power makes total sense, eight hours of vocation, you're out there spread mortar, stacking bricks. You're out there. Well, we do that now as far as parentheses, stack and mortar, stacking checks. Yep. And then you have to have eight hours for refreshment, time with your family, sleep, all that kind of stuff. I'd like to see that number raise, but, you know, it is what it is at this point in time. I could probably cut into that God time a little bit for that refreshment period.

Yeah, I'd like that. Kind of what we were talking about before with this racial divide that's happened. It's definitely more prevalent in the United States, unfortunately. there are integrated um integrated lodges more in Europe um

basically as African American, free African Americans were trying to enter into freemasonry they would start creating their own lodges but you would have to get an endorsement from a grand lodge in order to be taken in

eventually after they had been rejected enough after being brought in it was kind of a will they won't they for a very long time. They finally just said, fuck it. There was this guy named Prince Hall. He would end up creating Prince Hall Freemasonry in 1784 for African Americans. He was a free

black man that lived in the community of Boston. And to this day, they're the oldest and largest with 300,000 initiated members in this predominantly black fraternity in the United States. Fuck yeah, man. Booker T. Washington, Mejure Evers, and John Lewis for all free masons. Yeah, I got some

some fun masons to go over. It just, it blows me away. Prince Hall, there are 4,500 chapters nationwide. So good reach. A lot of people that are involved. As far as these famous masons go, this is a list that I was pulling to just try to separate out to be like, all right, this guy did this, this this guy is this, this. And I believe that I put

together the most random list in order of freemasons that you would ever see in one room together. We have Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Dave Thomas, the guy that founded Wendy's, Shaquille O'Neill, Thurgood Marshall, Booker T. Washington, Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, I don't think Sebastian Bach is a Freemason. Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, John Elway, the quarterback, Sugar Ray Robinson, the Box, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scotty Pippen, shocking,

Clark Gable, Charles Lindberg, Freemasonry didn't carry him all the way. Almost, maybe. Douglas MacArthur, of course, Arnold Palmer,

the golfer, Brad Paisley, the country singer, and Harley Race, the old professional wrestler, and Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Let's not forget Davy Crockett,

Buzz Aldrin, 14 United States presidents, including FDR and Gerald Ford. I also, I kind of was talking about this the other day, you know, Churchill FDR even before, because Churchill came in right kind of as World War II was kicking off. So he didn't really have a relationship with FDR prior to being on war footing. I wonder if the fact that both of them being Freemasons kind of gave them a little bit of an advantage in that relationship. knowing kind of the moral fiber of the guy. Maybe they were less willing or they felt it was less necessary to question the other strategy or what they believed was going on.

They kind of knew at least directionally, maybe like a little bit of where their moral compass was pointing. Yeah. That's huge in a situation like that. Oh, yeah, definitely where you're just looking for any aspect of solidarity of your trust. Yeah. Stalin, obviously not a Freemason. Sugar Ray Robinson. and Jack Dempsey, Harry Houdini.

Unfortunately, here in Henry Ford, and we'll get to that when we do Henry Ford's episode. And Colonel Harlan Sanders. How did we forget Colonel Sanders as a Freemason? The King of KFC was a Freemason. But, I mean, and this is where I come back to trying to rack my brain of being like,

this thing is extremely prevalent, not only in our country but worldwide. You just told me just in the Prince Hall version that there are 4,500 chapters nationwide. That's just in that one. Yeah. And so just thinking about... We have 50 states. Yeah.

And how large it is not only worldwide, but just how big this thing has been throughout the course of history. And I mean, you can't go through the list. without being like, this thing touched like a lot of people that were very pivotal at certain points in history. I mean, Arnold Palmer, lemonade and iced tea, had he not been around, how would we have that? Wouldn't have such a delicious beverage today without Arne Palmer? No, we wouldn't. But, you know, it's, I don't know, it's, this list is like a murderer's row of like influential

figures. Scotty Pippen hurts the brand, though. I don't think so. Pippin playing second fiddle to Jordan the entire time. If Jordan was a Freemason, now we'd be talking. Had he not been a Freemason, maybe he wouldn't have accepted that partnership, and you wouldn't have the Chicago Bulls. True. Yeah, he was sort of the Robin figure and the Batman and Robin type deal.

But it blows me away to know that this organization is so big, and that they're just so relatively unknown, which kudos to them for being a secret society. They've done a good job. But also... The simple fact that they can still be... considered a secret society because there's still so many fucking secrets. It's pretty bonkers in this day. Well, they also benefit from the fact that they are a secret society that people take an interest in. Because when you start to get conspiracy theorists...

We're talking about it right now. Yeah. Well, we tried to do it justice. When you get conspiracy theorists online that are trying to theorize and figure out all these secrets and put it out there, eventually if there are people that want to take the Freemasons down and did go through and aren't Masons anymore and know all the secrets. If you put out that YouTube video, you're on a list of about 50,000 other crazy conspiracy theory YouTube videos about the Freemasons that are going to muddy the waters for any sort of truth to ever get out because there's 15 different truths by 15 different people. And in comparison, for me anyway, the simple like questioning of what were these guys learning and how are some of these guys so successful? And to what degree did this contribute to that?

that to me is the biggest question this raises and it's driving me fucking nuts that's my conspiracy on this is like what what are they putting in the fucking special sauce that's making all these guys you know who they are yeah you also have to go over just the sheer numbers and understand that even though we gave this murderer's row of famous important figures that were freemasons there's still so many other freemasons out there like we just hit the key ones as far as their famousness. And again, it's not, you know, membership, like no one's required to disclose if they're a Freemason. So with as many chapters that are out there, you probably know at some point in your

life, if not currently, someone who is a Freemason and they just may not talk about it. There are probably so many people in positions of power and influence that are Freemasons that we have no idea about. And they probably don't disclose that because keeping a secret's kind of cool. And also the fact that there is this. stigma about it about like some weird conspiracy like kooky shit that's why i don't think i could be a freemason is because i don't know if i could keep the secret just i don't even want the secrets you don't even have to give me the stuff that's behind closed doors just tell me some of the stuff you're teaching and tell me how this shit is structured that's all i want to know

shoot me straight pull the symbolism out of it yep all right buddy you got anything else no very cool good entrance into secret societies hell yeah all right guys thanks for joining us this week and we'll catch you next time. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button. Follow us. If you didn't like what you heard, still hit that anyway because we'll probably cover

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