The Rest Is History - 335: The Freemasons: History's Greatest Conspiracy Theory

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

A grubby, secretive cabal of devil worshippers that run the world, or a fraternity of like-minded individuals who enjoy eccentric rituals? Freemasonry, originating in the Middle Ages, played a significant role in the formation of the new American nation under George Washington, held the British empire together, and later served as a tool for authoritarianism and revolutionary conspiracy.  Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are joined by historian John Dickie on a journey to uncover the true history of the Freemasons, a society which has counted among its ranks Mozart, Benjamin Franklin, the Duke of Wellington, Shaquille O'Neale, and many more… *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. In 1885, the French Catholic Church celebrated a spectacular propaganda coup. One of its fiercest critics, the anti-clerical writer Léo Taxil, had at last seen the light and was eager to tell the world about his conversion. Above all, Taxil was determined to expose the grotesque and hateful network to which he had belonged since his teens, the diabolical world of Freemasonry. The great architect of the Masons, Taxile announced, was the devil. Their lodges housed

statues of goat-headed beasts. Their rituals involved bestial forms of carnality and prostitution, last seen in ancient Babylon. The worst masons of all were the new reformed Palladians, led by a devil-worshipping lesbian called Sister Sophia Sappho. In public, Sophia Sappho seemed a genteel spinster. But in private, she would writhe with passion as she spat on a consecrated host before forcing a newly initiated sister to have sex with the sacramental bread stuffed up her vagina. Published in a series of best-selling books, Taxil's revelations transfixed France. He was invited to an audience with Pope Leo XIII, who told him that he had read every word. And then, after 12 years of headlines, Taxil called a public meeting at the Geographical Society in Paris and revealed the truth.

So Dominic, as you will well know, that's a review by a top critic of the book, The Craft, How the Freemasons Made the Modern World by John Dickey, who is Professor of Italian Studies at University College London. And that top critic was yourself. Yes. So that is the ultimate Sunday Times review opening. So that's the kind of thing that the literature of the day loved. He always used to say, loads of sex, please. And so when I came across this in this wonderful book,

it's one of those books, actually, The Craft, it's called. And it's one of those books where, as you read it, the scales kind of fall from your eyes. Because I had always been interested in who were the Freemasons? Where did they come from? What do they believe? Is that, Dominic, because you yourself are a Freemason? No, I'm not. I'm absolutely not, Tom.

But as you are now going to say of course i would say that uh wouldn't i if i was part of this diabolical conspiracy as we will see the truth that tax seal reveals is is is surprising shall we say so are we going to reveal the truth now i think should we get um should we get the author of the book that you reviewed who is has very kindly agreed to come on the show and talk about free masons Should we get him to tell us what the truth was? I suspect we should. So, John Dickey, thank you so much for joining us. A wonderful book. Now, come on, Leo Taxil. Was he telling the truth about Sister Sophia Sappho and the New Reform Palladians and the devil or not? Well, it's great to be here. And I'm tempted to suggest that people read the book to find out,

but perhaps I'm not giving away too much by saying it was actually a gigantic hoax. I mean, one of the biggest hoaxes in modern history that certainly had large parts of the Catholic Church fooled and lasted 12 years, and tells us a lot about this still ongoing paranoia that the Catholic Church has about Freemasonry. But there'll be lots of people listening to this who will say, okay, fine, well, it wasn't, you know, okay, maybe the Freemasons aren't devil-worshipping lesbians. But there are still all kinds of mysterious things.

It's a network that, you know, people of our generation always talk about the police in Britain that has infiltrated this institution, that institution. So when you come to write about it as a historian, to what extent were you yourself, you know, how much of that did you have in your head? Because you've written about the mafia before, haven't you? So you're very good on shadowy, sinister organisations. Yeah, I came to it through the mafia, really, haven't you? So you're very good on shadowy, sinister organizations. Yeah, I came to it through the Mafia, really, because I'd been on radio a lot, TV a lot, talking about the Mafia. And when asked to define the Mafia, I did exactly the way Sicilian Mafiosi do. And I said, well, it's like a Freemasonry for criminals. And I got a message from the head of communications at the United

Grand Lodge of England at the end of the day saying, would you like to come in for a chat because our members are up in arms. So I went along and had a chat with them and did the tour of the museum. And based on what I already kind of knew about Freemasonry in the Italian context. Particularly, I realized there was a big story there because there are really only two narratives out there about the Freemasons. One is this sort of either it's a conspiracy theory or it's a sort of grubby cabal, the kind of story we grew up with. Or on the other story that you have out there is the Freemasons version, which

is it's all a noble and misunderstood tradition of brotherhood and charity work and that sort of thing. And both of those stories have some elements of truth in them, depending on where you go in history and where you go across the world, because Freemasonry is a global phenomenon. But there's an awful lot in the middle that neither of those stories captured. And that is huge fun. I mean, I've never had so much fun writing a book as I did writing this one. But the other mystery that I've always kind of been aware of and never, until I read your book, probably got a handle on is the origins. Because the origin story, the Freemasons themselves say, I mean, it goes back to the time of Solomon and Masons building the temple in Jerusalem.

And somehow the Templars fit in and they worship a head of a demon called Baphomet. And somehow the Illuminati are there as well. And that great swirl of historically themed conspiracy theories, the Freemasons seem to be sat right in the middle of it. And I'm guessing that in part, the secrecy of that is, I mean, it's a huge part of the fun for the Freemasons. But also, what is the actual history of how the Freemasons came to being? Presumably, it doesn't go back to the Middle Ages, let alone back to the time of Solomon. No. I mean, you really need to look at two moments that were the key moments in the development of Freemasonry. One was the court of James VI of Scotland, future James I of England, at the very end of the 16th century,

when you had a sort of law, L-O-R-E, of stonemasons. Stonemasons had created their own sort of corporate mythology, if you like, that included all of these things like Euclid and Solomon's Temple and all of that sort of stuff. And in a very interesting political move, a man called William Shaw, S-C-H-A-W, who was James I's basically Minister of Works, Minister of Public Works, made a kind of alliance with these senior stonemasons who were building things like James' new chapel at Stirling Castle and introduced them, it seems, to certain versions of Renaissance philosophy,

classical philosophy, and particularly the art of memory, which I'm sure you know all about. The idea that you memorize a speech by visualizing going through a whole building with various things like an interesting floor, memory palace, or columns here and pictures there and that kind of thing. And in the Renaissance, the Renaissance philosophy of Hermeticism, that became a sort of portal to the secrets of the universe.

And William Shaw introduced these stonemasons to this mythology to this sorry this renaissance philosophy as a sort of flattering overture if you like and uh promised to help them organize themselves and that suited their sort of they had to become a stonemason, you had to memorize quite a lot in terms of the mythology and so on and so forth. It helped them organize their initiation rituals. It gave, it turned the cells of their organization that they called lodges into theaters of memory. And if you go to a Masonic lodge today, a Masonic temple, you will see a chessboard floor. You will see columns and globes and various symbols moving around that are a memoir, they're mnemonics to help you negotiate your way through the long and complicated rituals.

And the new and exciting idea was that this had a kind of philosophical content, that this was giving you access to some kind of truth, whether it be an ethical truth or a philosophical truth. All sorts of different kinds of truth have been superimposed on that. So that's the one moment. And at that moment, it becomes fashionable, gentlemen start to join these lodges of stonemasons in search of fashionable, intellectual concerns of the age. And it spreads around the country, albeit in very

sort of small and low-key forms. And by country, you mean Britain or just Scotland? It enters England. I mean, one of the main vehicles seems to have been Scottish forces involved in the Civil War, the Civil Wars. And it's by the beginning of the 18th century, it's kind of national, but rather uncoordinated, it seems. And then we get the second big moment, which is in 1717, when a group of four lodges come together to found what's called a grand lodge, a sort of supervisory body to enforce the rules and decide who is legitimately a Freemason and who isn't. At this time,

they're beginning to call themselves Freemasons. And a Freemason and who isn't, at this time they're beginning to call themselves Freemasons. And a Freemason is someone who works freely with stone rather than kind of slavishly cutting, is that right? That's the origins of the word. But it has many meanings in the sources. It keeps its original meaning, which is the guy who, you know, elaborately shapes the stone and then hands it over to a guy to just bung it in a

wall or a you know church or whatever um but i think the connotations of freedom and so on um were helpful in its becoming the name for the freemasons because by the beginning of the 18th century um freemasonry has separated it off from any real concrete in fact that that foundation of the grand lodge in 1717 seems to have been a key moment in that process separated itself off from any of that stonemasonry stuff and the the accoutrements of the stonemason, the gloves, the apron, the set squares, the lead weight things, all of those sorts of tools, stop being tools of stonemasons and just become part of the metaphorical kit of these masonic rituals. So, John, they meet at the Goose and Gridiron pub. It's in 1717. Don't they to hammer it out? And Tom and I were discussing this beforehand.

I said to him that it's a bit like the foundation of the Football Association, hammering out common rules. And Tom said, well, it's actually, it's 18th century, so it's more like the rules of cricket. But there is a sense of that, isn't there, that there is a sort of, you know, you were talking about gentlemen earlier, that these are actually quite well-born, well--educated well-off people who are coming together to create the rules

of a it's not quite a game but it's a kind of ritual isn't it and they do regard it i think one of the things that comes through from your book is they regard it as fun from the beginning that there's that's an important part of it it's a kind of that sort of brotherhood element is actually quite jolly rather than sinister yeah absolutely it's part of that 18th century world of clubs and uh and all of that sort of thing very very much part of that in a way the most successful and long-lasting part of that and and you know the comparison with sort of cricket or whatever also stands up in the sense that through the empire, it's then spread around the globe, particularly once you've got a rule book set up in 1723. Yeah, boozing and drinking and so on has always been an absolutely key part of

Freemasonry. Also, the lack of women is also another very distinctive 18th century club aspect. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the Masons have always been, quite rightly, I think, given a hard time for this. But that rule book from 1723, the Andersons' Constitutions, as it's named, the Constitutions of the Freemasons, is the first to actually officially say, look, you can't have any women, can't have any slaves, can't have any, you know, whatever. And that's created a lot of problem that, you know, as you'll know from the book, there are versions of Freemasonry that have incorporated women in various forms, right up to kind of full equal membership, mixed logics. But the norm is still, I think, very, you know, male. This is a book, as I said, about male

eccentricity and their history. Although you do introduce someone who may have been female, or maybe not, who is the Chevalier d'Eon, who is, I guess, representative of the spread of Freemasonry from England across the channel. And the Chevalier d'Eon is either a man who dresses as a woman or a woman who dresses as a woman but pretends to be a man and somehow become a Mason. Yeah, no, it created obviously great hilarity the masons have all as well as having good time themselves have always uh provoked enormous laughs uh among everybody else because of their strange you know hauling their trouser legs up and and bearing their chests and all that kind of stuff um and uh one of my major course of hilarity during the 18th century was this story of the Chevalier d'Anne, who was basically a French spy, a French government agent, and kind of scandalous, who ended up joining a lodge in London.

And for whatever reasons, again, the story is complicated, it depends who you believe, started as a woman uh and actually claiming to be a woman um and eventually would be welcomed into the bosom of freemasonry back in as it were in france yes uh where they did allow uh they did a lot they did have a form of female freemasonry at the time so-called adoption lodges. But in the meantime, there was a huge betting market opened about whether Chevalier d'Or really was or wasn't a woman. And eventually, I think probably because of bribery, somebody was, a witness came up and said,

well, I actually had sex with Chevalier d'Or and she's definitely a woman. And yeah, the truth wouldn't be revealed until he died. And we found out that she was anatomically male. Wow. So I'll tell you a strange thing that I had never realized before reading your book was that Freemasonry is linked to wiggery. So there's loads of wigs. It's sort of the Robert Walpole era. So is it a sort of political patronage group at this stage? Well, kind of everything is in the 18th century. But yes, I mean, they absolutely, particularly

because of the secrecy code they've got, which I think we probably need to get into at some stage. They need the protection of the Whig elite. What I think happened, and it's still, you know, opinions are divided among historians. What I think happened with the setting up of that Grand Lodge was that was effectively a kind of Whig coup within Freemasonry. And they elbowed out the Tories who'd previously been in charge, you know, the fate of Christopher Wren, who had been in many, it seems to have been a kind of figurehead

of the exception, as Freemasonry was called kind of in London before. Because he was an architect. I mean, he was literally building temples. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and all of, you know, many, many of the builders, the contractors and people that he used in building St Paul's and all the other churches were Freemasons, were members of this thing called the Exceptions,

as was Christopher N's son, and so on and so forth. And I think what happens in the transition into the Whig regime is that they kind of want to move on from that Tory version of Freemasonry and create a new version. And so does that association of Freemasonry with kind of Whiggish principles of liberty and freedom and enlightenment thought, does that explain its success on the continent where there's this kind of Anglomania, this fascination with England as Voltaire comes here and says that it's the great home of liberty? Is that part of what explains its success? Definitely, I think so. You know, Freemasonry is a kind of vehicle of enlightenment values

again and again. And it's not just in, you know, when it's first exported to France, that people see it as something modern. But again and again, you know, we see it in the early republic in the United States or in the early movement for Indian independence. It seems to offer itself as a very good school of modern politics and of the kind of skills and values that you need to take part in a modern state. So all that sort of supreme being stuff and all the quite vague, well, the simultaneously very detailed, but also kind of vague religious stuff, my sense is that that's a product of

the Enlightenment. And it's designed for an age where they don't want sectarian passions to sort of, you know, people are arguing all the time about high and low church and Catholic and Protestant and stuff. And this is a good way of smoothing that over. But it's also, it is very Whiggish and very enlightened and very mid-18th century. You can absolutely see why it appealed to the founding fathers

of the United States, for example, can't you? Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. You know, we better come on to the secrets. Am I allowed say the secrets online yeah i can see you're itching to tell okay because you know freemasons swear uh the most terrifying oaths during their rituals to maintain the secrets of freemasonry do we know what these oaths are because presumably they have to keep them secret oh yeah yeah no you can feed oaths are? Because presumably they have to keep them secret. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, you can fiend them online. You know, yes, you've got to keep them secret and it all happens in a secret place

and it's all hidden by symbols and stuff like that. But once you strip all of the, you know, the kind of funny walks and oaths and all that out of the way. I love the quote you give of, what was it, Custos, a Portuguese, was he Portuguese? I can't remember he was london based but he was a huguenot yes who gets kind of abducted by the inquisition in portugal and

tortured and confesses to all kinds of stuff and then comes back and he you think that that basically the secrecy is is just a way of getting people to join. As secrecy naturally excited curiosity, this prompted great numbers of persons to enter into this society. So the secrecy is basically a marketing tool. Among other things, it's a very good marketing tool. But the secrets, once you get three main rituals to really begin your career as a Freemason, the Entered Apprentice, the entered apprentice, the fellow

craft, and the master Mason ritual. Once you've been through those, you are a Freemason in the full sense of the word. And each one of those has this terrifying secret that you're supposed to learn. And the first one that you learn in the Entered Apprentice, you know, after all of this palaver of blindfolding and swords pointed at your breasts and all of this kind of stuff, is that you've got to be a nice chap. And the second secret at the end of the fellow craft ritual, again, lots of palaver, is that it's a good idea to find out more about the world and the third secret you can tell i'm not a freemason of course because of course he would say this yeah of course you would yeah we're not falling for that it's probably as good a proof as you're going to get um if if somebody gives away the secrets like this. But you can find them on the internet anywhere you want. Anyway, and the third secret after the Master Mason ritual,

which is an extraordinary bit of theatre, you know, you're sort of ritually beaten to death by other Freemasons and then sort of zipped into a body bag and carried around the lodge building and then symbolically revived by this sort of Masonic manhug. And the secret you learn at the end of all of this is that death is quite a serious business, and it kind of makes you think a bit. In other words, the secrets are just towering, towering banalities. And that tells us a number

of things. One is, that's quite ingenious. Rather than making some terrifying political or theological secret the truth, the secret, they're making it this kind of empty form of secrecy, which is open to everybody. Nobody can disagree with these, whatever religious faith you are and so on and so forth. They're a vehicle of tolerance. But what they do do is borrow the whole kind of aura of secrecy and mystery of secrecy to create a certain sort of quasi-religious feeling around the rituals and around Freemasonry and a sense of sacredness around their rituals while not treading on anybody's toes. And is that why it's so popular with the founding fathers who like that kind of watered down deist kind of approach to things, do you think?

Yes, exactly. I mean, it works very well for them. There were Freemasons on both sides in the American War of Independence. The military is full of Freemasons on both sides. But it's really once they set about setting up the rules of the Republic and Washington's in place that Washington, particularly, who was a Freemason, sees, well, look, we haven't got religion to legitimate what we're doing. And all the lessons of history are that republics don't work. We know that. Wherever you are, particularly in classical history, republic, it's going to collapse into anarchy or tyranny sooner or later. So what we need is something to give us a sense of sacredness without having any particular religious kind of input, without offending anybody. And the

Freemasons are perfectly fitted for that task. So that's why Washington is very public about his Freemasonry when he's president and why he, for example, in the laying of the cornerstone of the Capitol building in Washington, it's a ceremony I kind of reconstruct in the book, you know, this is, you know, Washington, he knows this city is going to carry his name. He knows that it's going to have a big statue of him at the center. And, you know, at the moment, it's just a have a big statue of him at the center. And at the moment, it's just a plan drawn out in the mud on the banks of the Potomac. And yet he uses a Masonic ceremony, and the Masons are very good at ceremonies and rituals and all that stuff, to give this sense of sacredness. Here we're founding something really important.

And when reports of that reach around the country, it really sets off this fashion for Freemasonry and for Masonic cornerstone laying ceremonies in the early American Republic. And what about the dollar bill? So that's something that comes up. If you spend any time on social media, that's something that comes up on if you spend any time on social media that kind of thing comes up again and again that you know it's part

of a globalist conspiracy and has been from the beginning the eye what is it the eye of providence or whatever it's called i can't remember what it's called you know the pyramid all that stuff is the genuine sort of masonic influence going on there yeah what better evidence do you need of a global conspiracy than the fact they're advertising it on the dollar bill no that didn't it was originally that symbol the pyramid with the all-seeing eye uh was at some point the obverse of the seal of state uh and that was i forget in the 1780s sometime. That was early 1790s was kind of put in place. But at the time, it wasn't a Masonic symbol.

And as far as we know, none of the people who designed it were Freemasons. No, it gets incorporated onto the dollar bill under FDR in the 30s. And FDR, when using this new design for the dollar was proposed, which resurrected, if you like, this obverse of the seal of state as part of the design of the dollar bill. really worried that that would kind of offend his catholic base because by this time the freemasons who have been hoovering up symbols left right and center nothing masons like more than than symbols and there will get them from anywhere um hence the confusion about their origins because the templars you know ancient egypt it's good. It all makes for good ceremonies. So he wanted to actually check that his Catholic base wouldn't be offended if he put a sort of what some might interpret

as a Masonic symbol on the dollar bill, and he was reassured. Unfortunately, he wasn't to know about the conspiracy theories that would grow up around it much later. a bill and he was reassured. Unfortunately, he wasn't to know about the conspiracy theories that would grow up around it much later. Well, so talking of conspiracy theories and Catholic dislike of Freemasonry, which we opened the episode with, we should come to that, I think, in the second half, look at the role that Freemasonry is supposed to have played in the French Revolution and the role it definitely plays in kind of polarising Catholic and secular opinion in France in the 19th century. So we will come back and talk about that after the break.

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head to therestisentertainment.com That's therestisentertainment.com Do you know Dominic I was going to try and do the aria of the queen of the night yes um from mozart's opera the magic flute which uh i gather john maybe you could confirm this supposition is about a masonic rituals it's kind of mozart's version of the rituals that you go through

anyway my voice isn't up to singing the Hour of the Queen of the Night. If any of our listeners, by the way, want to excerpt that, put it as a little clip on social media, I'm not going to stop them. Yeah, my reading of that is that Mozart was like his mate Haydn, Haydn was a Freemason, and he definitely Freemasonry influenced the Magic Flute. But being a good Freemason, he wasn't going to give away the Masonic secret. So what he produces is a sort of very strong, very recognisable Masonic flavour while giving him sort of a bit of deniability about it.

Just before we come to the French Revolution, which I know Tom said we were going to talk about just before the break, for all those people, George Washington, Mozart, all these people in the 18th century, am I right in thinking that for them, joining the Masons is, you know, it's fun, there's the rituals, it's open to everybody, it's tolerant, it's kind of enlightened.

It's a bit like joining a private members club today if you're a kind of hipster. Is there a bit of truth in that, that it's kind of enlightened it's a bit like joining a private members club today if you're a kind of hipster is it is there a bit of truth in that that it's kind of cool and you meet lots of interesting people but there's no great you know there's no metaphysical importance to you necessarily it's not an existential thing to be a mason or am i underplaying it um i think you are underplaying it a little bit i, you have to remember that people join Freemasonry for lots of different reasons, and it means different things to different people. In the same way that the secrets are a kind of empty center that then lead people to imagine and project all sorts of things onto them, whether they're Masons or non-Masons,

there are different ways of living out your Freemasonry. Certainly 18th century, you know, it felt very modern and temporary. It's also about status. You know, there's lots of badges and stages to go through. And, you know, as Freemasonry went on, they invented, you know, they didn't just have, there were just two degrees when Freemasonry went on, they invented, you know, they didn't just have, there were just two degrees when Freemasonry started off. Then they added another one. And then this growth became kind of exponential. And that, because people love the badges of status, the kind of the outside world, but is a kind of refracted version of it. So there's all sorts of aspects. But in cases, it kind of erases status, doesn't it? Because the gloves that Masons wear are designed to ensure that you can't know whether you're shaking the hand of a duke or a dustman, I read in your book. Yeah, that's the conventional explanation within Freemasonry. Certainly, there's a sort of

utopian, egalitarian vibe. The idea of brotherhood, you know, if I'm an ordinary member of a lodge, and so is, you know, the Duke of Kent, in theory, we are just brothers, you know, we are equal, formally equal. And that's very exciting. That sort of temporary suspension of the rules of the outside world. So liberty, equality, and fraternity. And so you could, I guess, see why in 1797, a Catholic abbé wrote about the revolution that everything in the French Revolution, everything right down to the most appalling deeds was foreseen, premeditated, arranged, resolved upon and decided. Everything was caused by the deepest wickedness because everything was prepared and directed by men who alone held the thread uniting the intrigues that had long been

woven within the secret society. So the idea that these principles that the French Revolution flaunt are actually deriving from Freemasonry, and it's all a kind of scam and is a veil covering what is in fact deep wickedness. And this is a Catholic theme that runs right the way through the 19th century, and it's what Leo Taxil is basically exploiting. Yes, absolutely right. I mean, we owe the birth of the conspiracy theory in its modern form, the idea of the secret elite behind the scenes controlling everything. That fantasy we owe to Catholic fear of Freemasonry,

the idea that somehow it's just a front, that there's some demonic purpose behind it, that fear, which is systematized, as you said, by this guy, the Abbe Barwell, who's sitting in his house on the Edgware Road in London in exile from the French Revolution, trying to make sense of the consternation caused by the French Revolution, the overthrowing of throne and altar, it's got to be a conspiracy. Somebody's got to be to blame, and it's got to be the Freemasons, who the Pope had excommunicated as long ago as 1738. And that idea becomes very, very contagious. And the Freemasons are perfect for it, because they've got this sort of Russian doll. Firstly, they've got their code of secrecy,

you know, and they may well say, oh, no, honestly, there's really nothing to it. They would say that, wouldn't they? And then even their structure lends itself to this, this Russian doll thing of, you know, ever higher degrees. And the myth that was created was that this was all kind of machinery for depriving people of their free will until they became sort of Satanist robots by the time they got to the high... Guillotining everyone. Yes, exactly. By the time of the higher degrees. And it was all aimed at overthrowing throne and altar, bringing about exactly what happened under the Jacobins.

But there's a tiny degree of... So in the first half, we were talking about how Freemasonry was identified with wiggery, with Enlightenment principles, with tolerance, with free thinking, with brotherhood, erasing distinctions underneath the gloves, whatever. So when the Abbe Baruel says, oh, well, this is all a result of Freemasonry, there's a pitiful, minuscule little germ of sense there, is there? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, even if you take Freemasonry at face value, you know, for what it is in the 18th century, it looks deeply, deeply dodgy. You know, it's a centre of aggregation away from the court, away from, you know, free thinking. So it's subversive and heretical. And therefore, even in the most innocent interpretation of it for the church is positively dangerous. Does the Catholic Church have a sense of it as being from Britain, being in that sense, Protestant or not? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's also, it would soon become associated with Judaism and all sorts of, you know, anything and everything that they didn't like. I think primarily for them, it's heretical. Because what happens is the Freemason, and it has its roots in all of the most ancient heresies, you know, the Man has its roots in all of the most ancient heresies,

you know, the Manichaeans and all of these people. So basically they're buying into what the Freemasons are saying. I mean, are they thinking that it comes from Babylon and from… Yeah, that's exactly it. The Templars or whatever, you know, who, as we all know, ended up rather badly. That's the point. The Freemasons have gone round during the 18th

century assembling these vast sort of museum of symbols, display cases of symbols that they can use to say, you know, to show that they're very ancient and they go back to the Old Testament or whatever it is, and they've given them all these symbols for the sort of mise-en-scene of their ritual performances. And all the Abbé Barwell and those who followed him had to do would say, well, Manichaeanists, clearly, you know, heresy, you know, the Templars, good grief, devil worshippers, Baphomet. So they take the irony of this, of course, they take the Mason's version of their own history at face value and just, you know. Yeah, because we did some various episodes on the Cathars and how essentially the notion of Catharism was invented in the 19th century by nervous Catholic writers. And I guess that this is all part of that swirl and mix. But meanwhile, while all this palaver is going on in France, in the British Empire, it does seem to be playing a role slightly analogous to cricket.

So we mentioned this before, but it is being taken out, say, to India. And just as Indians start to play cricket and it becomes a game where Indians and British can meet on the playing field. So in India, the whole idea of brotherhood and the erasure of race and religion and things like that means that these lodges become places where British and Indians can meet and become Masons. Is that right? Meet on the level in Masonic jargon. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, Fre masonry does so much work for the british empire um for a start it's a kind of welfare system for imperials and

a social network you can be if you're an imperial soldier particularly or a sailor or if you're uh you know a bureaucrat or a merchant, whatever it is, you can find a kind of home from home, the familiar. You can find a welcome. Your Masonic credentials are your passport to a world of mutual support and a social life and a bit of fun and so on and so forth. So that is very important. But then you're absolutely right.

There is this element of kind of allowing the native elites a bit of conditioned access. You can check them beforehand, check they're okay. But particularly if they're politically useful, like whatever various members of the Indian elite are, you can bring them on board and flatter them and, you know, flatter them with this sort of formalized equality that you get on the playing field or indeed in the Masonic Lodge. You have this brilliant stat, and I'm quoting from your wonderful book,

by the outbreak of the First World War, there were at least 10 brothers in India who put Maharaja in the occupation column of the lodge register. And Kipling said the man who would be king starts with a, there's a whole section about masonry there, isn't there?

Brother this, brother that, they're all kind of shaking hands and giving each other the wink and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the two rascals are at the center of the man who would be king kind of are freemasons and use masonic rituals to create a bit of woo-woo kind of authority around their their reign and kipling of course you know arch imperialist and the great poet and writer of imperial Freemasonry. And the hatred, going back to Tom's point about the hatred,

the anti-Masonic conspiracy theories, I mean, they are extraordinarily long-lived within Catholic societies, aren't they? So, I mean, one thing that I've always found absolutely mystifying is that Franco, so after the Spanish Civil War, or during the Spanish Civil War, or during the Spanish Civil War, Franco is completely obsessed with Masons. And there's all kinds of- Well, he got blackballed, didn't he? Well, there's all kinds of anti-Masonic legislation, isn't there? I mean, really virulent,

are there that many Masons in Spain? Wasn't he blackballed by his own brother? Yeah, that's the theory. We don't know. And his brother who later disappeared in a suspicious plane crash. But let's not go down that rabbit hole. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot said about, you know, the Masons themselves love to talk about their martyrs, if you like, and they love to tell stories of their oppression and how the world has misunderstood them. And the key baddies in their narratives are the Nazis, who did indeed ban Freemasonry in 1935. But actually, much, much worse than Hitler when it came to clamping down on Freemasonry was Franco, as you say. I mean, the Spanish military at the time, and anybody from a Catholic background in Spain at the time, and imbibed very, very profound hatred and suspicion of Freemasonry. You know, the culture wars that we saw in 19th century Catholic Europe that led to that taxil hoax, you know, the sort of free-thinking taxil taking the mick out of the church's obsession with Freemasonry, were

particularly virulent in Spain. And that Catholic anti-Masonry is really the reason why Franco was much more brutal in repressing Freemasons than were either Mussolini or Hitler, who both all the same did abolish Freemasonry. Yeah, Franco, I mean, was fed information for a long time by this group, a sort of secret network that uh claimed to be you know from some deep throat inside the international masonic conspiracy and this goes on from pretty much the end of the spanish civil war right until the mid-60s i think uh and they're telling me yeah they're out to get you and you know you know, when Truman becomes... And who were they?

Well, we don't really know who was behind this. I mean, it was all completely fake information. They'd been making up, you know, bulletins from Masonic Central Command internationally and, you know, letters from Truman or whoever it might be, or Roosevelt and Churchill, making all this intelligence up to feed Franco's paranoia. And the best guess is that they were just using it to kind of get at enemies within the regime.

But Franco also set up this special tribunal to repress, to put Freemasons on trial. I mean, minimum sentence sentence 12 years for membership of freemasonry or indeed of you know any of the masonic supposed masonic front organizations like the rotary club or the rotary club yeah you're speaking esperanto or any anything like that made you a freemason and in the the end, although, you know, there were at most 1,000 former Freemasons left in Spain at the time, there were 80,000 Freemasons listed. And you can still visit, I've visited the kind of archives in Salamanca where they have all these paranoid records of Franco's regime.

And there's a terrible museum, isn't there, with awful waxworks in Salamanca? Yeah, that's right. Because, of course, like all of these authoritarian regimes, they claimed that they finally, finally, finally were able to expose the secrets of Freemasonry. And so when they raided and closed down the lodges, they kind of pinched the best bits of kit from the lodges filled up these showcase propaganda lodges with all this material uh with sort of dummies in cloaks and and things like that and said oh you see you know demonic conspiracy that's what they're at and they made great um uh visitor exhibits it's not difficult to make freemasonry look kind of macabre and weird

because a lot of the rituals have kind of death and skulls and coffins and all of that sort of stuff in. So that's Spain. What about Italy? Because, of course, in Italy, I mean, you've written about the mafia, particularly in the 1970s with the P2 Lodge, which is this sort of ultra right-wing breakaway lodge that's in, if you read any sort of slightly conspiracy theory book about 70s,

80s Italy, P2 are controlling everything. They're involved with the Vatican Bank, the death of Roberto Calvi, who's hanging. Where is he hanging from? A bridge? Blackfriars Bridge, isn't he? So he was a banker working for the Vatican, God's banker. God's banker. Wasn't he God's banker? Yes, that's right? So he was a banker working for the Vatican. God's banker. God's banker.

Wasn't he God's banker? Yes, that's right. And he was a member of P2. Is that true? Yeah. I mean, this is where, you know, this is really where the most, perhaps not Satanist, but the most outlandish conspiracy theories actually proved to be true.

The P2 is a kind of limit case of real conspiracy. And what happened basically is this guy, Licio Gelli, who was a former fascist, basically. Freemasonry is in deep trouble in Italy in the post-war period because both of the dominant political parties, the Communist Party and the Christian Democrats, are both anti-Masonic. They both won't let Freemasons join them. There's an article in the new Italian Constitution that bans secret societies without explicitly mentioning the Freemasons. So the Freemasons are worried, and they really want to get back to their glory days in the 19th century when they were very influential in Italy.

And this guy, Licio Gelli, comes along and says, look, you know, I've got loads of really important friends. And I can make sure they come into Freemasonry and we can do something really, you know, like back in the old days. Because back in the old days, all the elite Freemasons in Italy belonged to this lodge called Lodge Propaganda, which was right under the control of the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, almost his personal lodge. So they weren't bothered by ordinary Freemasons asking them for favours or, you know, selfies or whatever they did back in those days. And Gelli eventually took control of this, re-engineered it, and turned it into his personal

kind of patronage and blackmail engine, which he uh you know that whole series of scandals where he brought corrupt people together and so how did the vatican and calvi fit into all this well calvi was at the time uh in in an unconnected development the. The church was looking to get money to fund its anti-communist activities in Eastern Europe, you know, Pope John Paul and all that. And so Vatican money was going in and also mafia money and all mingling around in these dodgy banks, which were really the center of the P2 system. And they were the sort of financial lung of what Jelly did. They allowed him to offer, you know, offer to lend money on mates rates terms to troubled businesses in return for them joining and lending support and building the empire.

I mean, a lot of Gelli's power was based on bullshit, basically. You know, there's a story, I don't know whether it's true or not, but it ought to be true, is a guy called Alighiero Noschese, who was the sort of Mike Yarwood of Italy of the time. He was the great impersonator. Like you, Tom. Yes, exactly. And he was found to be a member of P2, although he died before it was discovered.

And the theory is that when a potential member would come in, Gelli would get this guy to call and put him on speakerphone, and Noschese would pretend to be, I don't know, Giulio Andreotti, would come in, Gelli would get this guy to call and put him on speakerphone, and Noskezi would pretend to be, I don't know, Giulio Andreotti or the interior minister or somebody really well, and say, oh, Giulio, my mate, you know, what can I do for you? And all this kind of thing. Well, here's a scam for us.

Exactly. But if that story's not true, and it probably isn't, I'm afraid it gives some idea of how you know generally love to boast about all his contacts because of course that attracted more influential contacts into his network and that all came apart in the late 70s 30s is that right it was all exposed when the best particular bank collapsed. Calvi was found, who was handling the money, was found hanged in London. Yeah. Hanged, probably hanged by the Mafia, not by the Freemasons.

We still don't know. I mean, you know, it seems to be the most likely explanation that the Mafia were a bit angry because all their money had gone up the spout. Right. But we don't know but we don't know we don't know um but yeah it was 1981 i think it was that the raid discovered the membership lists and lots of other compromising material in his uh office in arezzo in tuscany should we end on a slightly more wholesome note because obviously we don't want to give the impression that freemasons are actually all involved in conspiracy and people hanging in bridges and things so i thought one of the um sweetest things in your book was the discovery that not only had buzz aldrin being a freemason

but that he um he'd got special permission from the grand lodge of texas to set up a lodge on the moon yes so yeah yeah tranquility lodge tranquility lodge on the moon. Yes. So, Tranquility Lodge. Tranquility Lodge on the moon, exactly. It's still there if you care to visit, I'm sure. But if the Chinese get to the moon, they won't want to go there, will they? Because it's illegal in China. Yeah, they'll have to stay well clear. But also, there are lots of implausible people.

I mean, American basketball players and things. Shaquille O'Neal. Clive Lloyd, the great West Indies cricket captain. Shaquille O'Neal, yeah. Clive Lloyd, exactly. And it does have captain. Shaquille O'Neal, yeah, Clive Lloyd, exactly. And it does have an appeal among African-Americans, doesn't it? A surprising appeal among African-Americans. Yeah, the chapters about the States were the ones that I most enjoyed writing because despite Freemasonry's sort of enlightenment credo of racial, religious,

and social tolerance and so on and so on, the United States, really, right since the foundation of the American Republic, Freemasonry has been divided along racial lines because of racism, basically. The earliest black Freemasons, among whom was a man called Prince Hall, were prohibited from joining and founded their own tradition, now known as Prince Hall Freemasonry. And Prince Hall Freemasonry has an extraordinary record of involvement in the fight against slavery. You know, the first black troops to fight in the Civil War in 1863 were recruited, and most of their NCOs were Prince Hall Freemasons. Wow.

You know, the civil rights movement is full of Freemasons. You know, the NAACP was largely funded by Masonic donations. Thurgood Marshall, who, you know, led the sort of brown verse of the Board of Education case, was a Prince Hall Freemason. Medgar Evers, you know from the bob dylan song or any opponent in their game and all that he he was a prince hall freemason rosa parks was a member of a female masonic organization and both her father and her grandfather were prince or Mason. So it's got a long history of involvement in civil rights and what they call uplift endeavors.

Doesn't that tell you something about the nature of Masonry that actually it's a club for people who like joining and doing things and being activists and meeting like-minded people? And that ultimately more than anything else, more than the ritual. I mean, the rituals are fun for a lot of people. I mean, maybe there are people who believe in them, but I get the sense from your book, looking at the great span of Freemasonry, that actually it's clubbable.

There's an awful lot of clubbable, public-spirited kind of people, and also people who are ambitious, who want to meet people who will help them, know italy or wherever well that's the core of it i wouldn't underestimate the power of that sense of the sacred you know he does tend to underestimate that right you know as i've tried to because i'm free missing partly about death and it's about coming to terms with death together with your mates uh in those rituals and that's you know that is at the core of many religions. Bertrand Russell said that the core work of all religion is dealing with fear. And we shouldn't forget as well that Freemasonry,

as well as in any, however we might define Freemasonry, in any sort of vaguely narrow sense, it's not just that that's influential. Freemasonry is an organizational template. This idea of a society of men, a brotherhood of men, fraternity, linked by rituals and a certain mythology, organized in cells, but with access to a much broader network, that's Freemasonry. But it also gives its origins to the Sicilian Mafia. You know, the Sicilian Mafia very much has Masonic DNA in its origins, in its beginnings.

And tons of other organizations have borrowed that Masonic template. The Ku Klux Klan, millions of other fraternal organizations, the Mormon Church, lots and lots of stuff. The early history of the Mormon Church and the history of Freemasonry are very closely intertwined. Such a fascinating way of, I mean, basically all post-18th century history is there to some degree, isn't it? There are Masons everywhere. You mentioned Roosevelt. What was Roosevelt? 32velt 32nd degree yeah that's right so he had gone through 32 rituals or whatever yeah although that is the scottish rite okay which is the most elaborate system of rituals and there are tons of these things uh but yeah i mean it's fairly these days it's fairly

easy going through they make it easy for you to go through all those rituals. They're kind of performed for you. Often in packs, you know. But I mean, it's the list of, so let's end by just listing some of the people who've been maced. So five Kings of England, you say, 14 presidents of the United States, Robert Burns, Arthur Conan Doyle, Goethe, Mozart we've mentioned, Hayden, Sibelius, Arnold Palmer, Sugar Ray Robinson, Peter Sellers, Nat King Cole, Oliver Hardy, Henry Ford, Cecil Rose, Davy Crockett, Oscar Wilde, Walt Disney, Winston Churchill, Duke Ellington and the Duke of Wellington. Amazing. It is pretty amazing. So as Dominic said, all of history is there.

And your book is kind of therefore not just about the freemasons but about the world since the early modern period so that's the craft how the freemasons made the modern world um john thanks so much it was absolutely wonderful my pleasure and of course if you've listened to this and you think it was a bit too soft on freemasonry then that's that's proof that we're all secretly masons we We've been lying to you all along. And if you think we've been too harsh, then you're a mason and you know that we're not. So everybody's a winner. Everybody will come away.

Everyone comes away a little bit disappointed, which is how we like it on The Rest Is History. And on that note, thank you, John. And goodbye, everybody. We'll see you next time. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community,

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