As an organization of builders, Masonry gradually faded in importance, but segued into an entirely new organization whose purpose was to protect the men of the Enlightenment -- a period beginning in about the middle of the 17th century with the emergence of such intellects as Copernicus and his heliocentric theory, Descartes and his theories of mathematics and mechanism, and Montaigne and his skepticism -- and their knowledge from the tyrannical church which regarded this knowledge as threatening and heretical, and its possessors as infidels. This movement from builders to intellectuals was facilitated by the fact that Masons had in fact been the keepers of scientific and technical secrets -- secrets which permitted them to perform their amazing feats of building. That is, as an organization of technical people, the Masons moved naturally into the role of a haven for intellectuals who had a strong interest in science -- a role which put them into natural opposition with the Church which saw science as a challenge to orthodoxy.

And while Masonry may not have begun as an organization intended to challenge the Church, the scientific knowledge of Masons virtually forced them into this role. For this reason, Masonic secrecy remained a fixture of the organization in its transition from professional group to intellectual protectorate.

As a gathering ground for the intellectual elite of the Enlightenment, it was natural for Freemasonry to be the wellspring of revolution, as it certainly was in both the American and French revolutions. The problem is that revolutions often do not pay sufficient heed to traditions which are important social mechanisms; so that while the American Revolution produced basically good effects by throwing off rule by a hereditary elite claiming 'the divine right of kings' in favor of rule by an elite empowered by the consent of the governed whose power was restrained by Constitutional limitations, the French revolution carried these ideas to an undesirable extreme by killing off the old elite and replacing it with an 'illuminated' one not subject to the people's will, adopting a bizarre program having similarities to that of the Communist manifesto, and disestablishing the old religion and replacing it with the worship of Reason.

In speaking of economic freedom, it is well to note that there were two basic ideas emerging during this historical period -- first, the idea of the free market as described by Adam Smith's 1776 book The Wealth of  Nations, and second, a concern with the abuse of the working class who had been in some sense enslaved by the Industrial Revolution. From the first idea grew the American system, whose solution to abuse of workers was to permit them to 'go West, young man' -- ironic, in view of the fact that 'to go West' is a euphemism for 'to die' -- while in Europe there was no West to go to, so that worker abuse simply remained and festered. It was this latter circumstance which led to the development of socialist ideas in Europe, first manifest in the French Revolution, but developing real momentum in the following century which saw the Revolutions of 1848, the Communist Manifesto, the emergence of the Fabian Society, and finally in the next century, the communist revolution in Russia, the Fascist revolution in Italy, and the National Socialist revolution in Germany.

It has been asserted that the purpose of the Illuminati -- a group founded by the apparently-Jewish but Jesuit-trained Adam Weishaupt on May 1st, 1776 -- was to create a 'new world order' which was anti-Christian, and therefore evil and 'Luciferian'. What is more, it has been observed by 'conspiracy theorists' that the Illuminati infiltrated the Masons beginning shortly after their founding and turned this secret organization into a tool for achieving Illuminati ends. It is undoubtedly true that Weishaupt and his cronies wanted power and that his movement was anti-Christian; but the notion that it was 'evil' rather than well-intentioned is, in my view, purely a projection by those whose Christian beliefs equate evil to everything anti-Christian. As to whether a desire to rule the world is evil, we may acquiesce in Lord Acton's remark that 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely', but there is no necessary reason to believe that Weishaupt's efforts were evil in intent. Indeed, as we have already noted, if the Illuminati were communists, as some have asserted, this is undoubtedly because communism was seen as a means of correcting the abuses of the capitalism of the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, we need not blanch at those who wish to create a 'new world order'; for while we can -- under Lord Acton's axiom -- concede that this is less than desirable, it remains a fact that men seek power, and that as the world becomes more connected, men will struggle to control it. Our only hope is to create safeguards sufficient to make this control benign.

Besides the charges of being evil and socialistic, another charge which has been lodged against the Illuminists/Freemasons is being 'occult' -- a charge which stems naturally from the assertion of opposition to Christianity. There is in fact good reason to believe this charge, except that the 'guilt' is not quite what it has been made out to be. To begin, it is useful to understand that the Masons have the trappings of a religious organization -- after all, their 'compass and ruler' logo contains a 'G' at its center in representation of 'the Great Architect of the Universe'. This, we may reasonably presume, is an artifact of the sham religion of its Enlightenment forebears, who found it necessary to speak much of God for social reasons while not bothering with much in the way of actual belief. We see such genuflections in the Declaration of Independence, for example, when it is perfectly clear from historical studies that Jefferson, Washington and the other Founders were not only Masons, but also Deists, which is a polite way of saying 'atheists'.

But if the leaders of the Enlightenment rejected Christianity, there is good reason to think that they -- or at least those who followed them -- discovered that there was more to religion than was dremt of in Christianity. In particular, while occultism has always been around, as in the 'pagan' religion which the Christian fathers so energetically tried to stamp out by dubbing pagan monuments, heros and celebrations as Christian ones, post-enlightenment atheism has given rise to intellectually- respectable occultism which we see in such things as Theosophy, yoga, lamaism, parapsychology, spiritualism, Christian Science, kabbalism, psychedelica, and what is generally referred to in the present day as 'New Ageism'. Occultism has had a major effect in shaping the history of the 20th century -- nazism was based on it, the drug culture is suffused with it (perhaps a reason why our 'Christian' government is big on the War on Drugs'), the American and Soviet governments have researched it in a major way, well-known personalities have been involved with it (Steiner, Crowley, Yeats, Swedenborg, etc), and, while not much mentioned by the major media, Satanism (so-called) has taken root among the governing class and even among the traditionally religious (see John DeCamp's The Franklin Coverup).

We mentioned earlier that present-day occultism has sometimes been called 'Luciferian', and in fact there have been Masons and others of the occult stripe who have claimed to be followers of Lucifer. For example, conspirologist A Ralph Epperson has written a book in which he argues at great length that 33rd degree Mason and Confederate general Albert Pike was a Luciferian; there is at present something called the Lucis Trust, nee Luciferian Trust, which is involved in a major way in New Age projects; and even Mme Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, associated herself with Lucifer. While this comes as a great shock to Birchers and other sensitive Christian souls, it seems to me that this is merely a logical extension of the rejection of Christianity, which has traditionally been hostile to knowledge including occult knowledge, and an embracing of the opponent of the Christian god, Lucifer, the god of light or enlightenment, whose expulsion from heaven stands as a symbolic rejection of the 'lucidity' which knowledge brings.

While on the subject of religion, we might ask whether there is any relationship between Masonry and the Jews. To answer, while I have on several occasions heard the bald assertion that Freemasonry is Jewish (sometimes expressed as 'Judeo-Masonry'), I have never seen any evidence of it, tho it may well be true. Certainly, Masonic lodges may have been attractive to Jews for several reasons -- as bastions of anti-Christianity, as oases of Enlightenment thinking, as an avenue of rebellion, and so forth -- and certainly Jews have been involved in Masonry, even sometimes having their own lodges. In my mind, the most likely reason for the association of Jews and Masonry is that Masons have been anti-Christian, but in view of our earlier discussion, and in spite of the fact that Weishaupt was alleged to be Jewish, there is no reason to suppose that this was due to Jewish influence.

The bottom line is this: The Illuminati-Freemasons, to the extent that they are real, are not necessarily bad, or at least no worse than any organization (and there are many) which is trying to obtain power and whose members stick together for protection and advancement. The idea that Freemasonry involves 'Luciferian conspiracies', 'the Antichrist' and other supposed 'evils' which have gone under the rubric of 'conspiracy theory' doesn't amount to much, which is not to say that fighting accumulations of power (as in the NWO), opposing the nepotism of brotherhoods, or exposing the genuinely evil Satanism which John DeCamp describes is unimportant. The major point is to understand the forces which are at work, and to learn to separate the good from the bad, and the threatening from the benign.

Postscript: I am currently in the process of reading William Guy Carr's 1950s book Pawns in the Game. While Carr's religious beliefs are off- putting, while virtually none of his statements are documented, and while he makes several notable factual errors, he gives the appearance of having a much better grasp of what is going on than even celebrated conspirologist Nesta Webster, and his explanations make sense of facts which Webster, at best, merely recounts. His basic theory is that the Rothschilds founded the Illuminati, and that the 'international bankers' have been slowly but surely seeking world dominion and undermining Western civilization ever since that time. The need here is to attempt to verify Carr's statements; and if they can indeed be verified, his book may well turn out to be the most important work of 'conspiracy theory' ever written.