I possess more exalted titles than I have ever been able to count. I am supposed to know more secret signs, tokens, grips, passwords, and grand-words than I could learn in a dozen lives. An elephant would break down under the insignia I am entitled to wear. Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley @ p684
After I am dead, people will say I gave birth to the twentieth century. Aleister Crowley, 1921
At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries many Freemasons travelled to Tibet where they were initiated into the esoteric, defined as intended for or understood by only a chosen few, as an inner group of disciples or initiates. Madame Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, founder Theosophic Society
It is curious to note too that most of the bodies which work these, such as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Rite of Avignon, the Order of the Temple, Fessler’s Rite, the Grand Council of the Emperors of the East and West, Sovereign Prince Masons etc. etc. are nearly all the offspring of the sons of Ignatius Loyola. Madame Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled
The accusations against Masons have been most half-guess-work, half-unquenchable malice and predetermined vilification. Nothing conclusive and certain of a criminal character has been directly proven against them. Even the abduction of Morgan has remained a matter of conjecture. The case was used at the time as a political convenience by huckstering politicians. When an unrecognisable corpse was found in Niagara River, one of the chiefs of this unscrupulous class, being unformed that the identity was exceedingly questionable, unguardedly exposed the whole plot by saying, Well no matter, he’s a good enough Morgan until after the election! Madame Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled vol II
It developed in Britain out of the building trades and fraternities, whose history goes back some six hundred years in England. I do insist, however, that our present day speculative freemasonry is directly descended from the operative Masonry whose beginnings we can trace back to the earliest record of organisation among Masons in 1356. Harry Carr, 600 Years of Craft Ritual
The Masonic movement when it can be divorced from politics and social end and from its present paralysing politics of inertia will meet the need of those who can and should wield power. It is the custodian of the law; it is the home of the mysteries and the seat of initiation. It holds in its symbolism the ritual of deity, and the way of salvation is pictorially preserved in its work ... It is a far more occult organisation than can be realised, and is intended to be the training school for the coming advanced occultists. Alice Bailey, Externalisation of the Hierarchy
Can the unity of the world be accomplished by Freemasons? Yes, and by Freemasons only. Albert Churchward, Arcana of Freemasonry
In this new Aquarian age, when many individuals and groups are working in various ways for the eventual restoration of the mysteries, an increasing number of aspirants are beginning to recognize that Freemasonry may well be the vehicle for this achievement. W L Wilmshurst, The Meaning of Freemasonry p4
He begins his Masonic career as the natural man; he ends it by becoming through its discipline a regenerated man ... The evolution of man into superman – was always the purpose of the ancient Mysteries, and the real purpose of modern Masonry is, not the social and charitable purposes to which so much attention is paid, but the expediting of the spiritual evolution of those who aspire to perfect their own nature and transform it into a more god-like quality.
Freemasonry, through its mysteries, will soon usher in a New World Religion for the New World Order. A modern day Tower of Babel and the ultimate unification of the world's religions. The New Age welcomes these goals and looks to the light of Masonry as its esoteric basis for occult initiation into the New World Order. ibid. p46
Is it not possible from a contemplation of this side of Masonic teaching that it may provide all that is necessary for the formulation of a universal religion? Foster Bailey, The Spirit of Masonry p113
Mystic Masonry is not only the key to the religion taught to all men in all ages from the very beginning of conscious life up to the present, but it holds the keys to these religions as is in fact the very repository of religion itself. R Swinburne Clymer, Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry
European aristocracy transferred its lighted candles from Christian alters to Masonic lodges. The flame of occult alchemists which had promised to turn dross into gold reappeared at the centre of new circles seeking to recreate a golden age. James Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men introduction
36,240. A recurrent mythic model for revolutionaries – early Romantics, the young Marx, the Russians of Lenin’s time – was Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods for the use of mankind. The Promethean faith of revolutionaries resembled in many respects the general modern belief that would lead men out of darkness into light. ibid.
Let us first consider the Restoration of the Mysteries. It is well known among members of the co-Masonic movement that its work has been faithfully continued up to the present and that its number of Lodges has steadily increased. I imagine that at such an auspicious time when the inner and outer worlds will have come much nearer together, some of the great leaders of the Hierarchy might take part in the outer work of reconstruction and will then become the recognised leaders of the new World Government. N Sri Ram, Lucifer Theosophist Magazine January – August 1960
In a very short time Sister Besant founded new lodges: three in London, three in the south of England, three in the north and north-west; she even organised one in Scotland. Travelling in 1904 with her sisters and brothers she met in Holland other brethren of a male obedience, who being interested, collaborated in further expansion of Le Droit Humain. Annie continued to work with such ardour that soon new lodges were formed: Great Britain, South America, Canada, India, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. The lodges in all these countries were united under the name of the British Federation. The International Bulletin 20th September 1933
Masonry ought for ever to be abolished. It is wrong – essentially wrong – a seed of evil which can never produce any good. John Quincy Adams, Letters on Freemasonry
Masonry will eventually rule the world. Paul Fisher, Behind the Lodge Door
But if one of you could put in a word for me, I’d love to be a Freemason. I was a bit on edge just now but if I was a Mason, I’d just sit at the back and not get in anyone’s way. I’ve got a second-hand apron. Monty Python’s Flying Circus s2e4: The Buzz Aldrin Show, The Architect’s Sketch, BBC 1970
Having once identified a Mason, immediate steps must be taken to isolate him from the general public. Having accomplished that it is now possible to cure him of these unfortunate Masonic tendencies through the use of behavioural psychotherapy. ibid.
I realised I had met an honest genuine high-level Freemason who told me there were thirteen levels of Freemason above the thirty-third degree, that these people were God. There wasn’t no God – they were God. So I asked him about their plans to kill people, and he said yes, there are too many people on the planet: we need to get rid of several billion. And war doesn’t seem to work so we’re going to use disease and starvation. Benjamin Fulford
The point within the circle is an interesting and important symbol in freemasonry ... The symbol is really a beautiful but somewhat abstruse allusion to the old sun worship, and introduces us for the first time to the modification of it, among the ancients as the worship of the phallus. Albert Mackey, A Manual of the Lodge
You must conceal all crimes of your brother Masons ... and should you be summoned as a witness against a brother Mason be always sure to shield him ... It may be perjury to do this, it is true, but you’re keeping your obligations. Ed Ronayne, Handbook of Masonry p183
The first recorded making of a Mason took place at the height of the Civil War. He was the antiquarian Elias Ashmole, who later gave his name to the Ashmolian Museum in Oxford. His admission to freemasonry is recorded in his diary for 1646 ... The year 1717 marks a great watershed for freemasonry. It was then that four London Lodges met at the Goose and Gridiron in St Paul’s churchyard to form themselves into a Grand Lodge, electing Anthony Sayer as the first Grand Master. The Freemasons, 1987
It was during that period that I became interested in freemasonry ... In the eighteenth century freemasonry became expressive of a militant policy of enlightenment, as in the case of the Illuminati, who were the forerunners of the revolution; on its left it culminated in the Carbonari. Freemasons counted among their members both Louis XVI and the Dr Guillotine who invented the guillotine. In southern Germany freemasonry assumed an openly revolutionary character, whereas at the court of Catherine the Great it was a masquerade reflecting the aristocratic and bureaucratic hierarchy. A Freemason, Novikov, was exiled to Siberia by a Freemason empress.
I discontinued my work on freemasonry to take up the study of Marxian economics ... The work on freemasonry acted as a sort of test for these hypotheses ... I think this influenced the whole course of my intellectual development. Leon Trotsky, My Life: The Rise and Fall of a Dictator @p124
The Freemasons’ secret history begins inside a sacred temple one thousand years before Christ with the shadowy figure at the heart of freemasonry, Hiram Abiff, also known as the Widow’s Son ... As he died he cried out, ‘Who will help the widow’s son?’ Decoding the Past s3e7: Mysteries of the Freemasons – The Beginning, History 2007
There is little evidence outside the Bible that either Hiram Abiff or Solomon’s Temple ever existed. ibid.
The story begins in England where the first Grand Lodge of Freemasons was founded. The guilds and lodges of medieval stone-masons were transformed in the seventeenth century by well-educated gentlemen into an entirely new organisation. These new Freemasons created a secret club to advance their own blend of enlightenment ideas: Science, Reason, Equality and Freedom of Thought. Mysteries of the Freemasons – America