NECROMANTIC ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY EARLY MASONIC RITUAL AS SHOWN BY CAPT. MORGAN: The first publication of Masonic secrets resulted in the author's death, a scandal, thousands of resignations from Freemasonry, and a political party (The Anti-Masonic Party, our first third party). Capt. Morgan's Exposition of Freemasonry in 1827. THE RAISING OF HIRAM ABIFF: We have by now all heard the rigamarole about Hiram Abiff's murder to get the Master Mason's Word, that he was resurrected and a substitute word provided, and that the initiate goes through a mockup of all this. There may have been changes in detail of the ritual since then, but these details Morgan gave show where this cult's founders and maybe some select inner circle were coming from. (And would explain the frequent experience by Christians of a negative spiritual flow, or "inerited empathetic resonances," as someone put it, of an evil or spiritually suffocating sort.) Briefly, the ritual and its explanation do not describe a resurrection, they describe a necromantic experiment, the calling of a spirit into a farily recent corpse. This might involve blood sacrifice, and a male virgin child is best for an assistant, for purity, and considerable danger is involved. The corpse becomes animate but is stiff, a spirit speaks through its vocal chords, but this doesn't last very long. On page 84, two unsuccessful efforts to raise Hiram are made using lower rank grips. The Master Mason then says he will do it himself using the Master Mason's or strong grip, also called the lion's paw. This procedure involves both a grip that wraps around the hand to wrist, and a head to foot contact and breathing on the "dead" initiate, reminiscent of what Elijah did when he raised the widow's son to normal (not necromantic) life. "They then all assemble round the candidate, the Master having declared that the first word spoken after the body was raised should be adopted as a substitute for the Master's word,..." since Hiram Abiff died without any but himself knowing it. That in itself is interesting, since it implies that the word to be spoken will not be the original one, therefore what will speak is not Hiram ABiff, but one lacking the knowledge, yet somehow giving the substitute word authority by having it come out of the dead man's mouth. Otherwise, why would it be a substitute? Why could not the risen Hiram Abiff tell the true one? Somehow (according to the Royal Arch Masons) the original one was rediscovered after 470 years. Morgan didn't live long enough to reveal it. Now note this: "In this position the cadidate is raised, he keeping his whole body stiff, as though dead. The Master, in raising him, is assisted by some of the brethren, who take hold of the candidate by his arms and shoulders; as soon as he is raised to his feet they step back, and the Master whispers the word Mah-hah-bone in his ear, and causes the cadidate to repeat it,..." Note the candidate doesn't get up like lazarus, he keeps stiff as a board, evidently dead the whole time. The history which follows this, which Morgan says barely a third of which is given to most Masons, if at all, shows that this pseudo resurrection is strictly temporary. In fact, it was not even intended at the start of the search! They went looking for his grave, not to rescue their master from death, but to shake down the corpse for anything bearing the Master Word on it. Failing to find anything, the efforts to raise him ensue. "It is also said that the body had lain there fourteen days,...The body was raised in the manner herein before described, carried up to The Temple, and buried as explained in the closing clauses of the lecture." The initiate is usually given a brief story about Hiram and referral "to the manner of raising, and the [catechism style] lecture...." The latter incl. "What did they do with the body?" Ans. "Raised it in a Masonic form, and carried it up to the temple for more decent interment." "Where was it buried?" Ans. "Under the Sanctum Sanctorum, or holy of holies of King Solomon's Temple, over which they erected a marble monument," with a weeping virgin referring to the unfinished state of the temple, a broken column, a book and time with his hands in her hair's ringlets. This shows the story is false, put together by someone mostly ignorant of The Bible and of Mosaic Law, or with blasphemous intention, probably both. (1) THE TEMPLE WAS NOT LEFT UNFINISHED. (2) NO SUCH REPRESENTATIVE ART WAS ALLOWED, especially of any personification of things like time, which risked its being viewed as a demigod. A bell and pomegranate, alternating around the hem of the priest's robe, and two kerubs one at each end of The Ark, were the exception, in such controlled contexts that no way could idolatry result. (3) IF THIS MARBLE WAS PLACED OVER IT, PRESUMABLY TO BE SEEN BY ALL, WHERE WAS THE SANCTUM SANCTORUM AND THE ARK, ETC., PLACED, OR WAS THE SLAB BURIED? (4) NO WAY WOULD A CORPSE HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO BE BURIED IN THE TEMPLE ITSELF, LET ALONE UNDER THE HOLY OF HOLIES. Later on, kings were in the habit of being buried near The Temple, which God denounced as defiling to it. All this can be shown from The Bible, but even Protestants didn't read it that carefully. Themes were sought more than specifics in much preaching and teaching, even today. Necromancy like stuff figures in Templar mythology. (The groundwork for some morbidity may have been laid in excesses of keeping segments of saints' bodies. At least one saint was minus head, or body.) (1) A Templar knight, in love with a noblewoman, dug up her body when she died, and he had sex with body. It spoke afterwards, and told him to return in nine months. When he did so, he found a skull and two crossed thigh bones on her body, and took these, the implication is this is the "head" they had. (2) The Templars' great relic was the severed head of some man, supposedly John the Baptist. These may have been several, not all of them real. Allegedly those who saw the head felt great fear. Magic and alchemy were down played later, but the earliest known Masons were involved in all this. A meeting of Rosicrucians was held in the same building that held the first speculative Masonic meeting, the same year or before. The earliest speculative Masons. incl. Inigo Jones and Elias Ashmole, who knew John Dee and Edward Kelly, who aside from the crystal and ritual magic they did, also performed necromancy in a graveyard once. "So mote it be" famous in witchcults etc., and "blessed be" are both Masonic terms. Masonry does not have these because it originated from withcults, but vice versa. However, that vice versa is interesting in itself. The origins of all these movements involves some of the same people, some of them early or later Masons. Round robin? The Hiram Abiff story, can imply also that: (1) The idea Jesus' Resurrection was really a case of greave robbing, if all death-and-resurrection stories are treated as symbols of Jesus. (2) The idea sorcery was involved in Jesus' Resurrection. (3) If the necromantic angle is overlooked, one will note that Abiff eventually dies anyway, like the heretical idea Jesus died later. Later, Masonry led in wrongly distinguishing Lucifer from Satan (although Lucifer is addressed in The Bible as evil and as a fallen angel, who had tried to set himself above God). Also in saying we were given freedom and intelligence in The Fall. (Obviously false since without these we couldn't have sinned in the first place.) The idea that one must stand above good and evil to be superhuman, and/or participate in both to be well rounded, along with the foregoing ideas, are key central ideas in Satanist thought.
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