Mystery Babylon II (Bill Cooper) – 02 – Archeology of Freemasonry

Welcome to The Hour of the Time. I’m William Cooper. Once again, make sure you have pen and paper by your side, for tonight we resume your education into who and what and why, what they believe and remember ladies and gentleman, as I impart this knowledge to you it does not mean, that I believe any of it. I hope you understand that. Some fanatic called my home today and said that in last nights broadcast I had attacked the Christian religion. Well, folks, those of you who know me can image my reply.

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[Reading from Ancient Freemasonry: An Introduction to Masonic Archaeology by Frank C. Higgins]:

With the explorations in the Soudan region of Africa of the ruins of Napata, the ancient capital of Ethiopia (which is the Kush of the Old Testament), bringing to light an ancient temple of Amon containing a huge, [a very large, a huge] Masonic altar, and with archaeologists getting ready to renew their explorations in Palestine and the Euphrates valley, antiquarians expect further additions to the vast mass of evidence of the world wide spread of primitive Freemasonry, which concealed, [ladies and gentleman,] in its rites, symbols and ceremonies the teaching and belief in the „Grand Architect“ and „Great Geometrician of the Universe“, a one and supreme God [but as I’ve told you before, not … as many of you might believe who have been initiated into the lodge in the lower levels … not the God of the Bible. No, this god is a pantheistic god, as you will find out as we proceed. And, not only a pantheistic god … well, all of it will be made clear. ]

We can expect the explorations eventually to bring to light a lot of new material that will link the mound builders of the Mississippi Valley, the Mayas of the Yucatan, the ancient Egyptians and the Chaldees, [ladies and gentleman,] into one [distinctly,] primitive brotherhood. [And when you follow the thread, you will find out that it leads up right to the present day. ]

[You see, the illumined ones believe that] Freemasonry is the parent of all religion, the original world-wide cosmic gnosis, diffused in ancient times to the uttermost ends of the earth, [scattered, as it were.] Freemasonry, [they believe,] is the Pompeii of prehistoric science. [And indeed, it is, if you understand that its prehistoric science and has no basis in actual science at all.] All of the Masonic ritual, its Egyptian signs, its Chaldean grips, its Sanskrit passwords, its ancient Hebrew symbols, its cabalistic allusions and its historical records are supremely scientific [in an ancient way] and is a survival through long ages, [ladies and gentleman,] by various underground channels, of the knowledge of the universe which was gained by Sabean astronomers from the temple tops of Chaldea, India and China and recorded by the equally learned geometers and mathematicians of the ancient Orient.

It was of this knowledge, concealed within the brotherhood, that enabled them to build the gigantic sun dials, such as that at Stonehenge, in England. The two pillars of Masonry today are the same as those which stood before the Temple of Solomon, erected by the same building fraternity, [known as the „builders“,] under the supervision of the priest-architects who built the Sun Temple at Tyre, before which similar pillars stood. They are the [very] same pillars as those that stood before the ancient temples in America when Cortez gazed in wonder on the civilization of the Aztecs [and then set out to destroy them.] They are the [very] same pillars that fixed the solstitial points in the first crude circles of stone, with a central stone representing the sun, and the same pillars which became the temple of Janus amongst the Romans, the totem poles of modern savages, and the Jachin and Boaz of European cathedrals.

[You see,] the key to the entire secret system is to be found in the ancient method, preserved from ages long anterior to their reputed time by the Israelites, of using identical characters for letters and numbers, a system called gematria [which I have discussed before. Notably in the series which we called the Mystery Schools or the Mystery Babylon series. Gematria,] and upon this system which a simple mathematical formula, 10-5-6-5, [Figure 1] is shown to be the basic source of all manifested existence – that formula when presented in the Hebrew letters corresponding to the numbers being „Jod-Ha-Vv-Ha“, or in English „J-H-V-H“, [or Jahveh,] or Jehovah.

If this remarkable fact had been confined to the sacred writings of the Hebrews it might be accepted as a peculiar outcropping of the national genius, but this is not the case [and most of you just cannot understand it when I tell you its not the Jews. Its the brotherhood of which many Jews are a part, but so are many Episcopalians, and many Catholics and many Atheists and many Agnostics are all a part. You see,] my researches reveal the presence of an „esoteric“ [… esoteric means hidden, secret …] or „mystery“ Jehovah worship throughout the entire ancient world as a basis of all of the outwardly pantheistic cults. [Not the God of the Bible but a pantheistic god.] The real knowledge being concealed from the mass, [or what they call the profane,] by the priesthood and the rulers, because [they claim] it was too high for them to grasp [but the truth is, this hidden knowledge was used to control them throughout the ages.] The worship of the Great First Principle, defined and also hidden by the mathematical Jehovah glyph, [and you don’t know what I’m talking about yet, so don’t form any premature conclusions,] was at one time spread over the whole expanse of anciently civilized America, whether represented by the vanished race of mound builders of our own United States or the perished races of Mexico, Central and South America. And this latter wonderful fact may as readily be verified by the visitor to such a purely American collection as that in the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, or the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, as by the digger in Euphrates mud or Egyptian sands. [For the proof stands out once you understand the symbols. ]

The crowning secret of the ancients, as well as of our own time, is that the study of the structural proportions of our universe as evinced in lines of force and direction, cyclic time periods, celestial areas and visible parts, reveals, ladies and gentleman, the fact that it is of definite form, perfectly balanced proportion and just such a synthesis of the principles of pure geometry as to show that the features exhibited are from the same causative source as that which geometrizes the snowflake, the crystal and the [flower] blossom. Hence the expressions used in Freemasonry of the Grand Architect and the Great Geometrician of the Universe.

The ancient Egyptians adopted as the key to this great cosmic philosophy the famous Pythagorean triangle of 3x4x5 [see inside Figure 1] proportions, which is the basis of the celebrated forty-seventh proposition of Euclid. [The understanding of this forty-seventh proposition of Euclid is an absolute requirement of members of the brotherhood.] They called the three sides Osiris, Isis and Horus, considering the first two as spirit and matter and the latter as nature, evolved from the wedding of the other two. [In other words the doctrine, the church and the full body of initiates, the practice of it all.] This triangle, represented as the „Eye of Horus“ and typifying the sun, became the „All Seeing Eye“ of Freemasonry [and it is clearly visible on the reverse of the great seal of the United States of America on every single 1-Dollar bill that you have in your wallets right this very moment. ]

The value of the Hebrew letters in the famous triangle [Figure 1] is 543, [ladies and gentleman], which is half of an oblong of 3×4, the other half of which (also shown) is 345. The sum of both equals 888 and is the value of the letters in the Greek New Testament name Jesous. An oblong of 3×4 contains three of 4×9, and vice versa. [I know this is difficult for some of you to understand and you’re going to have to do some study, for it took me years to understand it.] The oblong of 4×9 was represented symbolically as the Atef crown on the head of the Egyptian Sun-god Ra, whose name really means „light“.

And from this simple proportion alone, according to the methods of the ancient Egyptians, can be at once correctly delineated all the main physical features of our universe in absolutely correct astronomical proportions, and in so doing is evolved a sacred ancient symbol, the trapezoid of 10-5-6-5 proportions [Figure 1], which became known as J-H-V-H among the Jews, [or Jahveh or Jehovah,] I-H-O-H in Phoenicia, I-H-U-H in Chaldea, H-U-H-I in Egypt, OI-HA-HU in India, HO-HI and FO-HI in China and I-O-W-A in ancient America. We find [this symbol,] the Jehovah symbol as the shoulders and arms of Osiris, as he judges the souls in Amenti, in the Egyptian „Book of the Dead“, and as the apron worn by the mysterious stone Colossi of Quirigua, Guatemala, copies of which are in our own American Museum of Natural History. [Remember this is an apron and it becomes a little more clear as we go along. ]

We find the Masonic keystone to be not merely an architectural requisite but the angle of exactly 23,5 degrees, or the correct inclination of the axis of the earth to the pole of the ecliptic, and to embody the vertical section of the great Pyramid of Gizeh four times repeated. We find the little clay idols of the departed aboriginal races of Colombia, South America, decorated with the geometrical glyphs of this secret order, the ornaments of the robes of the ancient Inca priests of Peru, but exemplifications of the same sacred figures, and the amulets of the Mayas and Toltecs, in Mexico, [are] also engraved with them.

That there must have been some world-wide organization to distribute these symbols in ancient and prehistoric times in evinced by the fact that by common consent the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Mexicans constructed pyramids, which as shown by the great pyramid of Gizeh, in Egypt, and the Teocalli of Chizen Itza, Yucatan, as leading examples, were component parts of a single geometrical problem, the key to which is the simple Masonic apron as worn today and the graphic symbol of which covenant is still preserved as a cosmic figure among the Hopi Indians, [right here] in the state of Arizona.

In discussing the Masonic keystone Mr. Higgins displayed examples picked up in his travel from China, India, ancient Tyre, Egypt and Palestine that were all cut on the [exact same] angle of 23,5 degrees, but perhaps his most precious specimens were several black serpentine amulets from Yucatan and Central America more than three thousand years old that displayed the keystone and also the inverted Tau cross, so familiar to Masonic brothers in their lodge work. [Figure 2 and 3] In pointing out the triangle of „equal areas“ on the forehead of the amulet and the keystone nose Mr. Higgins drew attention to the fact that the Jewish worshiper today describes with his fingers the triangle in the same place when making his invocation on the Day of Atonement.

Another [very] rare specimen was an early Akkadian or Hittite seal, expressing a triangle with three masonic dots and the sacred proportions of 3×4 and 4×5, a total of sixteen, meaning „J-A-H“, [which means] the universe.

[Now] while these keystones are very valuable in proving the contentions that Freemasonry was widespread even in prehistoric times. I consider the Masonic apron pre-eminent as the symbol of the hidden mysteries of Masonry. It, too, is based upon the Pythagorean triangle which, as I said [earlier,] was used to conceal the mysteries of the Egyptian religion. The priests knew that the letters I, O, H or J, V, H, which were publicly applied to the sides of the triangle and called Isis, Osiris and Horus, were the secret mathematical formulae which they considered the key to the universe. [Today you may see this miniature keystone hanging from necklaces of prominent Freemasons, sometimes prominent politicians, rampant in the New Age movement. ]

If you will read in a good book on mythology the story of the death of Osiris, slain by his brother Typhon, and the long search for his mutilated body by his disconsolate widow, Isis, you will eventually understand, especially if you studied the mysteries, how the hope of humanity was fixed on the „widow’s son“, [Isis of course was the widow. Horus was the widow’s son. Now, if Osiris was the doctrine, and the doctrine was murdered, killed, the church was left as the widow, widowed by the doctrine, the word was lost, the lost word of Freemasonry, her son, the initiates or the sons of the widow were then, ladies and gentleman, left without a doctrine. These were the full body of initiates. So the hope for humanity was fixed on the „widow’s son“,] the youthful Spring Sun God, H-U-R-A-M, as his name was abbreviated, whose birth also constituted the resurrection of his father, Osiris, with whom he was identified.

The development of the very famous Pythagorean triangle also forms the triangle that is the base of the Masonic Tau cross. The multiplication of the Pythagorean triangle by four gives the base for the Magian’s philosophy and develops the form of the Masonic apron just as worn today in the lodge room, it is the sixty-four square that I refer to, and this square (the familiar checker board) also has hidden within it the exact geometrical proportions of the Gizeh Pyramid. [Many of you have a checker board in your home.]

Perhaps the most interesting Egyptian cut that I have is that showing Pharaoh invested with the triangular Masonic apron, holding in his right hand the grand Masonic emblem and the last grade attained — the Ankh cross — in Masonic communication with one of that order, whose head is covered with a mask, representing the head of the god Thoth. And when you examine the old Egyptian monuments, or pictures of such, they reveal the fact that the apron is the badge of all the gods, kings, hierophants and priests engaged in the rites of public worship [and ruling of the masses] and the apron of the ordinary celebrant appears to be a triangle of white cloth suspended from the waist in front and pinned at the corners to the tunic at each side. And in case of the Grand Master the apron is very elaborate in design. The figures, you see, represent the rising and setting sun in the lower corners and the sun at meridian. The rays of the sun are so directed as to describe a regular progression of geometrical angles, such as seen on a Gnomon. Over the sun apron is worn the serpent apron. The modern Masonic apron as worn in lodge and chapter has descended intact in every [exact] particular from these ancient brethren of the square and compass. [And many of you call you researches, called yourself good researchers, have ridiculed me because I have made this connection over the centuries and the millennium and have refuted your ignorantly conceived ideas that Freemasonry began in some lodge in England during the medieval times. The brotherhood is as old as man. ]

It can be readily shown that the secret of the apron resides entirely in its proportions and showed by a diagram that they were based on a triangle having an apex of exactly fifty-four degrees and two bottom angles of sixty-three degrees each. It is said that these two numbers were both eminently sacred Masonic numerals, belonging to the „Nine“, [and remember I have told you this before,] or „Three times Three“ series. It can be demonstrated that the proportions of the Egyptian Pyramids were all concealed in the same geometrical figure upon which the Masonic apron was constructed and from that cases of relics brought out several amulet aprons that were true in angle and indicated by dots or indentations the very true same proportions. There is a copy, which came from a Peruvian vase, which shows a priest of the Incas carrying a staff with a six pointed star in one hand and holding a masonic apron in the other. This figure, folks, which may be seen in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, is displayed throughout the Andean ruins or modifications of the apron are run into borders around the Incan pottery. Maybe the very best example in America is that found on the statues and little clay images of the ancient Mayas which litter the jungle forests of Yucatan on the sites of the ruined cities. These images, shown by specimens, are all clothed as Master Masons in the very same apron as the Egyptian kings and priests and point irrefutably to a universal knowledge of secrets behind the square and compass. [And it was this knowledge that was used to subdue the masses and make government work. ]

We see thus indicated throughout the world, [ladies and gentleman,] the Masonic brotherhood [known as the Illuminati, those who are illumined collectively, known as the Brotherhood, known as the „Sons of Light“, known as the „Sons of the widow“, or the widow’s sons,] erected thousands of years prior to any civilization of which we have any present record, to the same ever living God whom we worship and reverence as the „Great Architect of the Universe“ [today around the world in the lodges of all the brotherhoods by whatever name, by whatever occupation. It is the same. It is not the same God that we worship in the Bible, whether the followers of Mohamed, the Christians, the Jews, except some Jews, that subscribe to the cabalistic teachings, they know the true meaning. ]

Through the mists, [ladies and gentleman,] of antiquity loom the history, the monuments and crumbling ruins of the vast Mesopotamian empires, all so inter-related that historians find it hard at times to distinguish between legend and fact, but there are, still intelligible despite the beating of the winds and rains, carved in stone or engraved on tablets buried in the ruins of the temples, evidences that Freemasonic craftsmen met in lodges then, just as they do today.

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If we were to attempt to trace Freemasonry back from generation to generation, lodge to lodge, for only a few hundred years, we would have a very difficult task. [This is what many of you run into and you don’t know how to get over the wall.] The mystery hedging about [what they call] the craft and the long periods of persecution and suppression make the difficulties nearly insurmountable [until you learn to stop looking for names and lodges and follow the thread of their belief, teachings and symbols.]

[And] if you are willing to credit Masonry’s own legends of its past, which aver it to always have been a guild of sacred and symbolic architects, temple builders and furnishers, than we leap back over the enormous periods of time which separate us from the earliest historical records of the human race. In our own day we worship Almighty God under the abstract name of „Jehovah“, giving the latter no more technical significance than that of an ineffable name representative of the Divine power and majesty, [simply because somebody told us that that is what we supposed to do. Cant challenge what you are told? Cant challenge what you are presented with? My God, read you own Bible that you say cant be challenged and study the story of Job, who challenged God himself and came out the victor. What is the matter with you people? ]

[You see,] Freemasonry is what remains of the vast, ancient science which derived countless expressions of this sacred word from the geometry of the universe and translated them into the ground plans, elevations, individual stones, symbolic designs and sacred furniture of all the great temples of antiquity. One of the most curious discoveries of modern times is, contrary to the generally accepted idea, that Jehovah has ever been the center of a pure, monotheistic religion like that of Israel and unassociated with idolatry or ‚graven images‘ as reprobated by Jewish sacred law, Jehovah worship was originally the secret adoration of the hidden source of life, conceived only by the illuminated Priesthoods and their pupils, because discoverable only through a science far above the heads of the [sheeple or the profane, as the people in the mysteries call all of us before we learn to use our brains. ]

So in almost all the ancient culture lands of the Orient, Jehovah reposed, veiled in a gorgeous external imagery, symbolic of the forces of nature and material features of our physical universe, which was held out to the ‚profane‘, [that’s you,] in an elaborate pantheism. [PANTHEISM.] If would fathom the remoteness of the origin of the devotion to a unique Deity we must take into consideration the vast number of evidences extending back into the neolithic and bronze ages of primitive humanity, [for these stories, legends existed long before any written Bible.]

When the pride of wealth and conquest among the great civilizations of the Near East, Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria were displayed in the palaces, towers and temples abounding in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Jehovah was already older than the eternal hills and set forth in a thousand symbols which only the priesthood could interpret. The great human headed, lion bodied, bull-horned and hoofed and eagle winged monsters which stood at the temple gates were symbols of Jehovah and rebuses of his name. [And the story of Ezekiel’s vision is not a recounting of the landing of a flying saucer but is his own encounter within himself with this god Jehovah. ]

[You can read the Bible a million times if you wish and you can claim to understand it and you can spout out your memorization of the verses and your interpretations of what it means all you want to. But until you have studied gematria and you’ve studied the ancient history from which the bible was written you will never understand it, not in a million years, not ever. ]

[And the region of the Tigris and Euphrates,] this region which has produced almost all of the familiar Old Testament legends — the Creation, First Fratricide, Deluge, Tower of Babel, Samson and dozens of other symbolic myths which have been found in the cuneiform scratched clay libraries of that distant land and day. There are many evidences that the original legend which crystallized into the world-wide Masonic epic [… and yes, thats exactly what it is …] had its first concrete expressions on the banks of the Euphrates.

And throughout that region are found the first evidences of the cultivation of Masonry, [or the brotherhood,] in a purely symbolic or speculative sense in the existence of innumerable miniature stone amulets cut in the sacred geometrical dimensions principal among them being the keystone, discovered during the investigations of the ancient sepulchres of that region. And these little keystones, each of which is pierced for suspension, are made of the same stones as the famous Babylonian cylinder seals and are cut at a uniform angle of 23,5 degrees, that of the inclination of the axis of the earth to the pole of the ecliptic. [How could they have known?] There are also double keystones of 47 degrees and both are but miniatures of the conical „Bethels“ reverenced by the primitive Jehovah worshipers in the East.

[You see, you look back on this ancient people as some kind of some stupid caveman. With a club in one hand and a blather of wine in the other and it is not so, ladies and gentleman. For they knew many things back then that we are just now beginning to rediscover. And i say „rediscover“ because they knew it and it was lost over the centuries. ]

There is a tradition in Freemasonry, within the brotherhood, that the mythical ‚King Nimrod, of Babylon‘ was protector or ‚grand master of every trade guild‘, including that of the architects, but while the light of modern research has failed to locate the existence of that famed monarch, it is a fact that sitting statues of Babylonian governors have been found bearing architects‘ plans of temples or palaces that they had erected, on their knees. One of Gundea, Patesi, or Viceroy of Erech, so posed, is now in the British Museum.

And not only are innumerable Masonic symbolism of our own day discoverable among the remains of these people but remarkable sculptured scenes which will at once be recognized by anyone who studied the mysteries as correct representations of scenes of ancient initiation [and to those, who have been through these initiations or who have studied them as I have, they are very familiar,] strangely familiar.

And the ridicule of the „profane“ at the vaunted association of Freemasonry with the tower of Babel was entirely uncalled for because every bit of historical evidence brought to light among the ruins of Borsippa, the ancient capital of Babylonia, indicated to the Masonic antiquarian the close association of the craft to that Tower.

[And you will see on the murals in the new temple of initiation erected in Las Vegas known as the Luxor, which means the ’source of light‘, depictions of the Tower of Babel and the ancient order, the brotherhood, the builders associated with it are all over the place. ]

Birs-Nimrud at Borsippa

The Tower of Babel still exists as the ruins of the ancient Birs-Nimroud, at Borsippa, [and you didn’t even know it.] This was the tower temple of Marduk or Jupiter, and the King who abandoned this city to build a new capital and a more gorgeous temple to the sun-god Bel at Bab-Ilu, the Gate of God, on the opposite or eastern bank of the Euphrates, was the great sage and law giver, Hamurabi, the Amraphel of the Bible and reputed original author of the laws of Moses.

The facts are these: One of the titles of the sun-god Bel, which was widely adopted by Eastern monarchs of a later period, was Salmannu-Sar, or Saviour-King; this was literally ‚King Solomon‘, which is also the meaning of the Babylonian royal name Shalmanesar. The King was the ’servant of his God‘ and the executor of his mandate in erecting a temple to the Most High.

The name of the architect given in Second Chronicles, chapter 2, verses 12-13, who was sent to King Solomon by King Hiram of Tyre, ‚one skillful to work in gold and silver, in copper, in iron, and in wood, in purple, in blue and in fine linen and in crimson; also to execute any manner of engraving or device, every kind of work of art, which may be given him‘, was Churam or Huram Abi, which is self-evidently a mere alliteration of the Babylonian name Chamurabi or Hamurabi [or Hiram Abif. ]

The fame of Hamurabi is just of the sort which would have made him the hero of countless legends for centuries to come [and indeed, that is exactly, what has happened.] You see, his name is a cabalistic one connecting him with the Babylonian god Nebo, whose Hebrew name is Raphael, both meaning the planet Mercury, the closest satellite and constant companion of the sun, whom the ancients considered the executor of all the latter’s mandates. Mercury’s color, the blue of heaven, is that of the Masonic Order.

The precepts of Hamurabi concerning the habit of daily prayer in the temple, the protection of females, the humane treatment and just wages of laborers and artisans and the relief of widows and orphans are all of a truly Masonic character. [It is the font, from which Socialism sprung. ]

The best, [the very best] Babylonian representation of Hamurabi is on a Steele in the British Museum containing a transcript of his Code of Laws and on which he is shown receiving them from the sun-god Shamash (King Sol-Om-On), the edge of whose robe is an angle of 66,5 degrees, or the inclination at which the earth’s axis crosses the plane of ecliptic. To a Freemason, [folks,] there is much meaning in this statue to Hamurabi. Geometrical analysis of Rawlinson’s architectural reconstruction of Babel’s famous tower from actual measurements of the ruins shows that it was one of those vast puzzles in which the ancient seers absolutely delighted, the squares of its elevations being evenly divisible by a vast variety of the cosmic proportions perceived to be those employed by the Great Architect and Geometer in the construction of His universe and foreshadowing the destiny of man.

The names of the materials in which the great artist who built King Solomon’s Temple was to work were not merely those of material colors or substances but the symbols of the seven planets and four elements — earth, air, fire and water — which play an equally prominent part in the mythology of the ancient Babylonians, the symbolism of the Jewish tabernacle and temples and that of modern Mystery Babylon.

Each of the planets, [ladies and gentleman,] known to the ancients, which was at the same time a god, was represented by a metal and a specific color. The Chaldean temples were of seven stories, each smaller than the others as they rose. The lowermost chamber was that of Sheb or Saturn, colored black; the next that of Marduk or Jupiter, colored orange; next a red stage for Nergal or Mars, then a middle chamber covered with plates of gold for the sun, Samash, then the chamber of Istar or Venus, a pale yellow; then blue for Nebo or Mercury, and finally silver for Sin, the moon, which was left unfinished or open at the top as an astronomical observatory.

[We observe those colors and symbology on flags and emblems the world over.] The Freemasons preserve the colors of the four elements in the veils of the Royal Arch Chapter.

The sun in its three phases of rising in the East, at meridian in the South and setting in the West became ‚Sol-Om-On‘. Hence the ancient morning greeting of ‚Sal-aam‘ and the designation of the dying sun-god, who will rise again as ‚Om-On-Al‘ or Emanuel and the Hebrews turned Salmannu-Sar into Sar-Shalom or Prince of Peace and played many other strange tricks with the old cabalistic lore of the Chaldeans which is preserved by the brotherhood even today.

The Phoenician vessels no longer sail the Mediterranean Sea and the secret of their famous Tyrian purple dye was lost and just recently rediscovered, but no traditional association of the ancient Craft possesses more absorbing interest for the modern student of the mysteries that which links the fame of ancient Masonry to the venturesome searfarers whose winged argosies visited at least three-quarters of the globe in the morning of the human record. [This is indisputable. ]

Freemasonry is not altogether oblivious of her debt to the brave Phoenician race, aside from the lustre cast by particular characters of Phoenician origin [and the infamy, or fame to which they are due. ]

The ‚Ancient Charges‘, [folks,] especially, tell us of Masonry’s indebtedness to the ‚Venetians‘, as the Phoenicians are quaintly denominated in the same naive language of medieval England, which calls Phytagoras, ‚Peter Gower‘, [you didn’t know that, did you? You have read about Peter Gower and you never connected it with Pythagoras. Medieval England called Pythagoras ‚Peter Gower‘,] and they called Euclid ‚clerk and pupil of Abraham‘. Mr. Higgins says, „The Biblical association of Hiram, the great monarch of Tyre, Phoenicia’s chief city, with his brother ruler of Israel and the participation of the former in the construction of the wonderful Temple of Solomon, the story which enters so prominently into [Judaeic history, the Christian religion, the religion of Islam and of] the brotherhood tradition has been heard over and over [and over and over] again and is better told in Holy Writ than it ever could be recounted in modern terms. And that which particularly interests me is the question of what profane science and mere archeology has to show of the presence of the Punic peoples of that same great cosmic cult which overspread the whole ancient world and which was based upon the geometry of the universe and the secret worship of [Yahweh or] Jehovah.

[You see,] the bible proffers direct testimony, ladies and gentleman, of a complete community of faith between the ancient Tyrians and their Hebrew cousins, in the complaint of the Prophet Ezekiel, until the apostasy of the former and their search after strange gods – the erection of a polytheistic pantheon.

And if we examine the subject from a completely secular standpoint without invoking the aid of sacred annals we find an enormous fund of genuine evidence that the Phoenician branch of the Semitic race played the chief role in the distribution of the arts, sciences, architecture, symbolism and religion from the ancient culture centers of India, Egypt and Babylonia to the newer civilizations which were scattered among the isles and along the shores of the Mediterranean as well as to the western coast of Europe and most probably, [as the evidence tends to indicate,] prehistoric America.

The assumption that the Phoenicians were nothing but pagan idolaters can no more be sustained in the face of modern research than could be the notion of God, Dieu and Bogu being three different divinities, instead of English, French and Russian for the same Almighty Creator. The people of ancient Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Byblus, Berytus and other Phoenician localities spoke a language so closely allied to Hebrew that one must necessarily have been a dialect of the other. [And it is absolutely true, folks, that if you claim a heritage there must be a root in the language or there is and cannot be, is not a heritage.]

Early Phoenician and Hebrew alphabetical characters were practically the same and all recorded lapses of the Israelites into idolatry were [always] into Phoenician idolatries showing that basically these two peoples were but one and the same differentiated into maritime and agricultural branches of the Canaanitish stock. The Phoenicians may have had „many gods“, but to the priests they were attributes of Jehovah, while the Hebrews had the distinction of a dogged adherence to the thought of a monotheistic deity, „All in All.“, Jehovah.

Phoenician remains found over the whole expanse of the continent of the ancient world, from Skandinavia to Ceylon, prove that this clever people studied the arts and superstitions of their foreign customers and [they] manufactured for each the peculiar idols, amulets and symbolic ornaments with the same commercial acumen which once sent cargoes of brass idols from Birmingham to India with every shipload of Bibles from Oxford.

King Solomon’s Temple is shown by archeology to have been a typical Phoenician edifice [… a Phoenician edifice, folks, a lot of people don’t want you to know that, but thats exactly the truth …], an adaptation which that race of clever architects made from the symbols the various nations had of the Jehovah cult. It must not be forgotten that what we today call Freemasonry was the religious science of the ancients, [the state of the art of that day. Right or wrong made no difference. It was] a symbolic reconstruction of the universe in all its parts, amidst which gorgeous furniture, imitating the host of heaven and the powers and properties of nature, splendidly robed priests and acolytes celebrated allegories of the great celestial cycles and the spiritual birth, life and regeneration of man, the word man, in Phoenician, being Ish. [And the symbology was always in the sun, spelled S-U-N.]

„The greatest of all contemplations among the Phoenicians“, said Mr. Higgins, [who was one of the prominent experts,] „as evinced by their architectural remains, not only in their home land, at the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean Sea, but on the sites of the numerous Phoenician colonies on the northern coast of Africa, many of the Greek Islands and in France and Spain, was the so-called ‚dual principle‘. The theory of the universe as a marvelous equilibrium between forces seeking to destroy and forces seeking to preserve it was the basis of all the Eastern religions symbolized in different countries in different ways.“ [Today you know it as the positive and the negative. The Yin and the Yan. The male and the female.]

The Mongols employed the Yan and Yin symbol, the Hindus, twin fishes [… That’s really what the twin fishes stand for, folks]; the Egyptians, twin serpents and twin pillars. The Phoenicians copied the fishes, the serpents and the pillars, but the greatest contribution they made to the brotherhood was in the prominence they gave the pillars. [You see,] they used such pillars on the porch of their great Temple of Melkath at Tyre and copies thereof wherever Punic settlements were effected. The modern Mason can recognize these pillars in his lodge [and they were the two pillars flanking the entrance to the Temple of Salomon. They were not original, they were copied from the Phoenician temple in Tyre.]

The worship of Melkarth was something which has had most wonderful consequences in the distribution all over the world of peculiar rites and mysteries bearing upon the existence of [what they call] the divine spark in man and its survival of the grave. [Its the principle that they use to convince their initiates that man is god. It is the Luciferian principle.] Melkarth is said to have meant „king of the city“ (of Tyre), and was identified by the Greeks with Hercules, because like Hercules, he was an incarnation of the solar principle [of the sun] and was afflicted in some peculiar manner by each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, which lay in wait to slay him. Melkarth was also called Baal, „The Lord“, and Adonai, [The Lord] which means [exactly] the same thing. The Adonai above was the spiritual prototype of the Adonai below, and the Phoenician mysteries showed the blameless life, tragic death and glorious resurrection of the being as an example to mankind.

All of the Phoenician symbolism shows that wheat and grapes were the symbols of matter and spirit in this connection. Joseph’s dream of the baker an butler was but a Phoenician allegory of the death of matter and survival of spirit.

[End of reading]

Good night, and God bless you all.