Updated:04/05/2022 01:17h
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Five kings of England, fourteen presidents of the United States, several of Spain, Goethe, the Duke of Wellington, Churchill, Disney, Mozart or Kipling… The list of freemasons with historical pedigree is endless and blows the imagination even, as minimum, the Moon, where the astronaut Buzz Aldrin established in July 1969 a Masonic subsidiary in the name of the Grand Lodge of Texas. A small step for man, and a giant one for Masons.
British historian John Dickie has written ‘The Order’ (Debate) just to return the feet to the ground to those who imagine the freemasons involved in all the great conspiracies and to puncture the myths that surround these secret organizations that still have millions of brothers in their ranks.
«To become a Mason you have to swear some terrible promises that include very violent punishments if the secrets are revealed, but the reality is that there is a great disproportion between the secrets, which are very banal, and all the architecture of rituals and symbols that cover them », assures this professor of University College London.
Masonic secrets resemble an endless matryoshka doll that, in its latest figure, is hollow. «That idea that you need to know more is what motivates Masons not to stay in the first three degrees, but, I who have read hundreds of thousands of pages of Masonic rituals, I can assure you that you would die of boredom before to reach anything with meaning”, considers Dickie, who clarifies that he, although he shares many values promoted by the Freemasons, does not belong to any lodge because, among other reasons, he is an atheist and does not like “his sexism, his machismo and that they have not confronted their links with British imperialism’.
the new cathedrals
The book recounts how Freemasonry was founded in London around 1717 as an attempt at brotherhood after a series of civil strife that fragmented society. Their most important symbols were taken from the world of medieval masons, the master builders who created the great cathedrals. «Those masons built buildings and they, from the 18th century, said they were going to build better men. By creating a community, they developed networks of influence outside the classical frameworks of the court and religion, which was very risky, ”says Dickie about the activity of the lodges, converted into schools for public life.
The rules of Freemasonry, in the most orthodox sense, forbade talking about religion or politics in meetings, but its influence in disseminating secular ideas in Europe during the 19th century or as a support network for British elites is undeniable. “It is a fact that those years the british government resorted to lodges as sources of information and that it was rumored that in Italy and in Spanish America they also served revolutionary interests,” he points out.
The hostility of the Church towards the secular values they represented made, in Dickie’s view, the Freemasons inevitably take on an increasingly political profile. “They were in the front line, but it was before there were political parties as such. Since then, all attempts to turn Freemasonry into a party have failed because its members disagree on almost nothing, except their opposition to the Church », he explains.
Most of the promoters of India’s independence belonged to lodges, as did the founders of the Second Spanish Republic, but for the simple reason that they came from the intellectual elite and these associations were the best political training ground for them. «President Truman he developed his Masonic career not because he wants to know the secrets of the world, but as a way to create a reputation as a trustworthy man”, says the Briton, who draws attention to how much the lodges like to put celebrities in their windows , although then «most get bored soon».
The persecution in Spain
Beyond the personal networks created, the author of ‘The Order’ dismisses the idea that there is a secret global agenda and attributes his black legend to his secrecy. «secrecy it is what creates the feeling of belonging and fraternity, but it is also what has generated the idea, very contagious, that they control global affairs». An idea that has infected dictatorships, whether right or left, of all time. “Freemasonry has been banned in all communist societies, in all Muslim societies, except two, and makes the degree of its persecution a reliable indicator of the democratic climate in each country,” says Dickie, recalling the difficult existence it has , without going any further, today in Russia.
One of the chapters ‘The order’ is dedicated to the persecution ordered by Franco, who felt a personal aversion towards these groups, and which affected, among hundreds of Freemasons, the Protestant pastor friend of Unamuno who was assassinated in the Salamanca of 1936. “I don’t think they posed any real threat to him. In fact, his anti-Masonic court continued to collect documentation and bring alleged Masons to trial long after Freemasonry had been completely destroyed in Spain. I think Franco was a paranoid fanatic who inherited the long Catholic tradition against Freemasons. He was much more brutal against them than Hitler or Mussolini because he was also the most Catholic of those three dictators », defends the British.
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