"The Secret Freemasonry of a Priest in the Temple of Nature" w Bro. Josef Wages

The Secret Freemasonry of a Priest in the Temple of Nature with Bro. Josef Wages

Bro. Josef Wages returns to the show to discuss The Secret Freemasonry of a Priest in the Temple of Nature, an eighteenth century Rosicrucian Masonic system recorded by Johann Samuel Mund. The manuscript predates the Golden Rosy Cross by three years, and until Bro. Wages and his research partners transcribed, translated, and published it, no one had ever studied the system at all. The book appeared in a limited run of only 500 copies, and the last of them are disappearing fast.

The conversation ranges across the wild landscape of continental high degree Masonry: the Chevalier de Beauchêne peddling degrees from a wagon behind the French army at Frankfurt, the patents of Bouchère de Lennoncourt, and how the trail leads directly to Étienne Morin and the Kadosh degree. Along the way, Bro. Wages makes his case for why primary sources matter, why the era was far more organized than the old assumption of institutional chaos suggests, and why researchers who rely on Gould and Mackey are recycling secondary sources.

The episode closes with a frank discussion of stasis in English speaking Freemasonry since the middle of the nineteenth century, and the growing appetite for variety: French Rite and Rectified Scottish Rite craft lodges are now at work in the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia, and brethren with ideas are finding brothers who are open to them.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• The Secret Freemasonry of a Priest in the Temple of Nature by Johann Samuel Mund, transcribed, translated, and edited by Bro. Josef Wages and his research partners. A bilingual German and English limited edition of 500 copies.
• The Lost Ritual, the Bonseigneur Rituals retranslated by Bro. Josef Wages, coming from Cornerstone Book Publishers on August 21st.
• Étienne Morin: From the French Rite to the Scottish Rite by Bro. Arturo de Hoyos and Bro. Josef Wages.
• The Green Book of the Élus Coëns: A Treasury of Coën Texts, two volumes, edited by Bro. Josef Wages, translated and annotated by Bro. Stewart Clelland.
• The Master's Voice: The Rituals and Letters of Martinés de Pasqually.
• The Secret School of Wisdom: The Authentic Rituals and Doctrines of the Illuminati, edited by Bro. Josef Wages and Reinhard Markner.
• The Correspondence of the Illuminati Order, Volume 2, edited by Reinhard Markner.
• The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson.
• Espionage, Diplomacy and the Lodge by Bro. Ric Berman.
• The Genesis of American Freemasonry by Bro. Ric Berman, discussed in our previous episode.
• Bernhard Beyer's 1925 German study of the Golden Rosy Cross, Das Lehrsystem des Ordens der Gold- und Rosenkreuzer.

Also mentioned as forthcoming from Bro. Wages: the Élu Parfait volume drawn from the Morin manuscript, a collection of the Jacobite high degrees, and an edition of the Golden Rosy Cross rituals of 1763 and 1777 with its ninth degree.

Bro. Wages' next book, The Lost Ritual, arrives from Cornerstone Book Publishers on August 21st, and copies will be at the book table at the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference in Seattle on Saturday, September 19th, where Bro. Wages is slated to present. Tickets are available at esotericmasonry.com.

Links and resources

• Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference: masonicconferences.com
• RSVP for the upcoming conference: esotericmasonry@gmail.com
• Mystic Tye website and event calendar: mystictye.com
• Patreon (early episodes, extended cuts, artwork, extras): patreon.com/mystictye

Support the show

If this episode resonated with you, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We are also building a directory of Freemasonic events and publications. If you know of something coming up, send Troy an email at troy@mystictye.com.

Graphics and web hosting by Art Szabo Creative. Theme music by Organist.

Happy to meet, sorry to part, happy to meet again.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Mystic Guy Podcast for I am your host, Troy. You can find us online at mystictie.com. Support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash mysticguide. Email me feedback, guest suggestions, and any other questions at Troy at MysticTye.com. For generations, students of Esoteric Freemasonry have searched for the missing links between the Rasa Crucia manifestos of 18th-century high degree masonry, hermetic philosophy, and the practical traditions of alchemy. Much of that history has survived only in scattered manuscripts, obscure archives, and references to organizations that seem to disappear almost as quickly as they emerged. Brother Joseph Wagis joins us today to talk about the secret Freemasonry of a priest in the Temple of Nature by Johann Samuel Mutt. This text survived from a time closer to the original Rossakrucian movement in its original German. Brother Joseph and his research partners translated it, and a limited run of copies is still available. Please welcome Brother Joseph Wages. Welcome Joseph Wages. Hey, we're already on the record. No time to catch up. But what do we need to catch up for? Isn't this like that? How many times we talked this year?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

I don't know. Probably not enough. We're gonna have to put in at least five or six more, maybe five.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Not for nothing, but hypographia is common amongst cult leaders. Okay. And and people with certain types of autism. I just thought I'd point.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Yeah, to be clear, it's autospective disorder and also temporal lobe epilepsy. Those two combos made for hypographia.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yeah, and it's just especially new religious movement leaders often have hypographia. Just saying, you don't strike me as any of that.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

But would you like to try some of my delicious Kool-Aid?

SPEAKER_00 2:21

I get come to Esotericism and Freemasonry Conference.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

In Seattle. And that's Seattle. That is Saturday, September 19th. Of course, we get together on the Friday night. Doug Russell's gonna do a meditation for us. And then Saturday all day, we're gonna have a list of the speakers. We've got more speakers this year than we've had in previous years. You guys might get the hook sooner than you want. Or we just run long. Uh this year, as the best format that we've come up with, um is that sometimes we do something on Sunday. We might do something on Sunday this year, but I think it's gonna be Breakfast of Champions on Sunday morning and maybe do a little bit of chatting around the lodge. But we do the Saturday all day, and then we go out to our local pub that Brett Wolf, it's his local, and we always have a blast there. Okay. And and there's quite famous pictures of people being taken. The pub where we go was at one time a sex club. Oh it isn't anymore, but some of the some of the physical remnants are still intact. So we look at the fixtures, in fact. Yes, very it's a very Seattle experience. And once you have it, you can't unhave it.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

I can promise you there'll be no photographs of me in awkward postures.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Oh, that there's plenty of famous photographs of people making the sign of their grade under this quite famous arch in the space. And we are we will get compromising photos of you, Joseph, for sure. Most likely. Anyway, thanks for agreeing to come. We're we're super excited to have you. And I know for us you're gonna be talking about we've got that book by Mund.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

The Secret Freemasonry of a Priest in the Temple of Nature.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

And this is uh historically significant work because it it comes at a time before any of the Masonic Ross-Acrucian orders are really founded, right? This is foundational document for Rossacrucian Freemasonry, wouldn't you say?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

I would say so because it predates the existing Golden Rosie Cross system by three years. And the other thing that's significant about it too is no one has ever studied this system before or looked at it, let alone transcribed it, translated it, published it, what have you. So it's largely like an obscurity, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:43

And and it's a beautiful work. And I b I believe we're gonna be getting the last of because it was a limited run, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Yeah, they only did 500, so technically it's the bonus book for German QC. And so they did it as the bonus book that year. I believe it was 24. I'm endeavoring to get the last of the ones available. I hope you do, because like the like pretty much every book I've done, like they all like they they start out with a normal black cover price, and then like the prices just shoot up to the moon.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Well, that's that look, my original copy of of Secret School of Wisdom is worth a few bucks. Yeah, like you're probably pushing four to five depending on condition. And I'm gonna keep a copy of one of these Mund books around. Please do. I'm not I'm not gonna, I got I think I got four of them here, but I'm gonna get some more. Uh, I'm not quite sure how that's gonna work, because I don't know if all of that stuff is being tariffed. Now, there's a famous Canadian occult story about guys making books and using drug money to make them, but that's for that's for an off the record story. Uh fair enough. We'll have that. People who know will know what I'm referencing. Um anyway, you uh you published this and then you sent me you sent me sort of an outline of a talk you're gonna give based on this book. Is that correct? That's right.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

So that outline is like the front end of it, like the super occult stuff that you guys are after is gonna be put in between here and there.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

That's good. And then we'll record it, and if it's sub if it's okay for published consumption, maybe at some point we might publish it. But if it's too secretive or too controversial, we'll just tease everybody with it and then not release it. Which is what we've done before. It's what we've done before with P. D. Newman and Jamie Paul Lamb and Lawn Duquette and a few others. But maybe we wait a while before we release it. Anyway, uh thanks for coming today. I want to give you a chance to talk about uh what's going to be released next. I see you all over. We last talked about the Secret School of Wisdom, and then you had your book on the Echo Say Masonry that you talked about at Grand Masonic Day, and you're I don't know how many books you're gonna put out this year. You've got The Lost Ritual. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that's going to be?

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Yes, that one is very special. So, what it is, it's a retranslation of what's called the Bonsignor Rituals. Brother Michael Paul, he's famous on YouTube. You should look him up. New Orleans Scottish Rite College. He does lots of excellent talks on it on the Scottish Rite. But he was given the opportunity to print this book. It was done by the Latomia Foundation. The original guy was Jerry Prinzen. And then I think in sometime in 2008, he gave him the rights to go ahead and publish it. And they did, and it but it's a decent copy, right? But it has problems in the sense that the French transcriptions are errant, and the other thing is that the translation into English, it's also not philologically correct because you, if you're going to translate from a language that needs to be your native language, and so he's a Dutchman, right? So he went to French to English, and he did an okay job, right? But there's serious readability issues too, and comprehension issues. And so a lot of the terminology and stuff, if you think about it, a lot of these French rituals, like all of the French speculative forms of Freemasonry, like they're derived from English sources, right? Some of the terms that the French used for senior warden would be like literally first warden, and junior warden would be literally second warden, and then their worshipful master is the venerable master. But these are all approximations. Unfortunately, he left all of those artifacts in there, and so it has accessibility issues, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

But the other thing was is that in his introduction, he wrote he went off the deep end. He was because Latomia Foundation did the Sharp documents, he tried to try it, tie into the intro, the connection to the sharp documents, because there was this lodge in Porto Pay that Morin sets up, but it ends up not being recognized by the Loup Parfait and it disappears. What he was trying to argue in the introduction is that these are those rituals, or this is the descendant of that lodge. It's not the case though, because what you'll see in the introduction of the book is I was able to track down the Bonsignor family as they are in Sandomang and then migrate over to the United States. And the reason why they're called the Bonsignor rituals is in the margin, John Bonsignor wrote his name on a bunch of pages and stuff. And so what it is, it's like it's a later edition in the 19th century. But these were recorded in 1785 in Paris, and they were taken to Sandomang, and they were used by what are called Afranchi people or freed people, or they're basically mixed-race people with rights, and so they own slaves, they're landowners, they're part of colonial society in the sense that they're contributing economically, but a lot of there's like an escalating regime of like racial tension, and so they see their rights eroded over time leading up to the revolution, right? And so on the one hand, these people contribute materially to the society, but on the other hand, they're marginalized. And it's largely the same thing in Freemasonry, too. And so in that introduction, I tie it together, there's another the the lodge is in English is the perfect equality, and there was another lodge of the same name at exactly the same time in Guadeloupe, and they wrote to the Grand Orient to be recognized. But unfortunately, because you had to be free-born, right? Like at this point in time, like people who are of African descent, they did not descend from like being free-born people, even if they're like the descendants of these people, right? Because they don't have the same rights recognized. And so it wasn't that it was a racist thing necessarily, but like a strict adherence and dogmatic insistence upon the regulations, right? So it's it probably is a racial move, but not overtly, right? It's a tacit one. The point is, though, is that this thing's happening in Guadalupe and it's also happening at the same time up in Sandomang, too. And then later we find the lodge, like in the records, like, and there's only like one thing that connects it to it, but largely these are the rituals of these people, right? So these are who the Bonsignors are because like all of their descendants, when they enter the United States in 1798 through like the early 1800s, they're all mixed-race people. And then also in Louisiana, they're also, again, slave owners as well, right? And so like these are these marginalized people, and these rituals like preserve like this culture. And so on the one hand, like it's these rituals are every bit as significant as Prince Hall Freemasonry, into the sense that these are the rituals of marginalized people. But on the other hand, though, they're more significant for another reason because they preserve some of the oldest rituals like that exist, right? And so, like, in in point of fact, like the Scots master degree, it's called originally Ekosei de Dervenvater, and maybe I'm saying that wrong, but he was like the last grandmaster in 1737, the English guy, and then the whole Jacobite uprising happens and he gets kicked out. But this is the Scots master work under that form, then it translates into Ecosei de Paris or the Parisian Ecosei, then it becomes Echo Sei Trinitaire. And then so in this one book, you have all three forms of it, and so you're able to go through and see chronologically how did this ritual evolved. But the other cool thing about it too is like you get like the proto-Marin forms of all of these high degrees. And so if you want to see what materials Marin was working from before he made alterations to it, the alterations he makes are to make a cohesive system, right? And so he's a gentle editing, but not like anything over. But he's like trying to make cohesion in a ritual sequence that makes sense, right? And that that's really what it is. So from that perspective, these are quite significant as well. And so, like you put these things together and you've got a really interesting book that's a hundred percent accessible now to anybody who's interested in reading it.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

It's I'm hearing you check a lot of names off that we've talked about, and I saw you talk about when you were here. So this does inner this new book intersects with the last work you did with about Etienne Moran and his Echo Safe Freemasonry. That's right. You want to talk a little more, you want to, but you're going backwards, right? It's just, oh, here's the source for the Scottish right, this Moran in their Echo Safe. One of the primary sources, and then here's one of his primary sources, right? And how much further are you going back? I guess if you find older work, you're gonna keep going.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

What's funny is like art and I, we've got material and stuff like to the very, very, very beginnings of French Freemasonry and all that stuff will come to light at some point. There's also really interesting, like the Jacobite high degrees. That's uh uh a book that I'm working on right now, kind of putting all of it together. And of course, I because I work things like out of chronology, so I did all the high degrees first, and now I'm going back to the symbolic degrees. And so what's interesting in those is like there's modifications and things that so like at the same time that Morin is doing like his first system, the Lou Parfait or the perfect elect, is the same time that this other system dies off, right? It's really like the collection of the Jacobite high degrees, like going into the early 1740s. That's a real interesting one. But yeah, there's all kinds of cool stuff I've got maybe going like right back to the very early 1740s. And when we really need all these sources in English, I think, because we for too long, and that's what's really in that Marin book that we were talking about. One of the cool things about it, like I don't know if you remember from my talk, but what we showed was is that there really wasn't a lot of like difference between English and Bordeaux Freemasonry and what became Irish Freemasonry. And in point of fact, they're all interconnected through a trade network. And so, like when you understand that network, you're able to see how these materials are able to be exchanged and cross geographical boundaries like in the 18th century very quickly. And it's because it's happening like through these this merchant network because these guys are hopping on boats, going to new places. Well, there's no lodge here. I guess it's time to start one. And that that's the way these things happen, right? So they're taking home with them and setting up home where they're at.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah, it's not who knew what, it's who knew who. It's that network of that square in the tower that you two that's right. The first time we talk. You should go back and read that book though, because like it was I've got it. I got it. I I ordered it immediately. And I isn't in a great book. I yeah, and I've read uh some key sections. And then what's your head doing? It's hard because like I really like to crack a book open and read it, right? And I normally have four or five, sometimes as many as six books I'm actually reading at any given time. But right now I'm completely off the reservation. And using the the new AI tools for research, it it's terrible because you could summarize anything, but you don't I'm not interested in a summary. I'll use AI to help with stuff. I got I got what it gave me on Mund right here. But I'm not interested. It like a summary is helpful. You don't want to smell the steak dinner, you'd rather have the bite. I want to read this stuff. That's right. Right? It's but but everybody I've talked to since you told me about that square in the tower, and I've glanced that, like I said, I got a copy and I've glanced at it, and I've read certain sections that you know how I've been reading it is when I find anybody has a footnote from that book, I'm like, I've got that. And I go and I read the footnote. So anyway, and it it has been footnoted several times on stuff I've read lately. Anyway. Um But the seeing your scholarship with Moran and then the presentation that you gave, and it's seeing how that network effect is so important. Now tying in these other historical figures and their rituals, one can see how these belief structures evolve. That's it. We came to talk about a different book today. Now, when is Cornerstone gonna release your The Lost Ritual? When is that coming out?

SPEAKER_02 15:43

Yeah, it's good. It should be August 21st, if memory serves.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

So we can have copies at the book table at EFC. Please do it.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Brother, brother Paul will be happy to send them up to you.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, no, we'll make sure that he's got our order in advance because then he can plan his initial order. I don't know how many he's gonna do, print on demand or how he's gonna do it. But we we need to get copies. And oftentimes I would have imported stuff over the border, but I'm not doing that anymore, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:10

So you only have to go to Seattle on this one.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, yeah, no, no, it and there again, we'll uh we'll get some copies and have them there. But it does tie it this whole conversation ties directly back into the Mund book because again, at Esotericism of Freemasonry Conference, uh not just early Ross accrucianism, but alchemy, natural philosophy, and of course early Freemasonry, it all ties in, right? This is like uh a tri perfect storm, a quadrant of perfect early masonry research. Do you want to talk a bit about the book and why it's significant in its place and time?

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Sure. And then one thing to keep in mind, like all my research, it's all interconnected with each other. No, nothing I did and nothing I wrote was random. It was all calculated. And the thing was, I also did it like a Tarantino film. I did break like like break scenes where they're out of chronology, right? And so it's the same thing with these books too. That's one thing to keep in mind, like when you're reading the material I've written, like it's it's deliberate and it's done in such a way to get the right effect because I have to do things in sequence, right? But the the other thing is if we want to tie in the Moon book back to Marin, we can do that too, because the way it works is in about 1758 during the Seven Years' War or the French and Indian War, depending on which way you want to call it. We'll call it the Seven Years' War because that's the right way. In any case, what ends up happening is the French army, like they take Frankfurt in Germany, right? And so they march in with the army, and then right behind him is this guy, the Chevalier de Beauchain. And so, what this guy is, he's a degree peddler. He's got this wagon with 44 degrees, and anyone who can stand upright under their own power and has a few coins to rub together in their pocket, they can get whatever degree they want, right? And he's got not only does he have like rituals, but he's also got patents and things like this, right? One of the things that's very attractive was his patent for his lodge that he says founded by Charles Edward Stewart, which is already suspect, right? And so one of his acolytes.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Now, excuse me to interrupt you. Where is this character active?

SPEAKER_02 18:05

He starts out in Paris, right? So he's an original member like from the 1730s, and he's he's a pretty well-to-do gentleman. In a lot of ways, like his like little private grand lodge that he has, effectively it's well better organized than all the other ones, and he's got beautiful certificates. So like he's really got the whole commercial bent about it, right? And that's kind of his place. One of his acolytes during this period is this guy named the Boucher de Lenincourt. And Boucher de Lenincourt, like he copies this same patent, has his own engraving. This is what and he's also a signer of Marin's powers in 1762 or 1761 before he goes back to Sandomang, right? And so the the point is like if you go back to that other Marin book that we did, we show an image of his of a Boucher de Lenincourt patent, right? From about that same period, in fact, the same year. So this is what Morin has one of these for the high degrees, right? And so that that's where he's getting the authority to put that Kadosh degree, and it's why in the Marin manuscript it's dedicated. Who's it dedicated to? To Frederick the Great, right? And so that's what's interesting about it is that's the whole connection, is that he gets this Kadosh degree and a patent from Boucher to Linencore, is what ends up happening. And so that's how we can tie it all back to Mund, so that way I've closed the gap for you. I think he's looking on the shelf over there.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

No, I thought I knew where that one was, but it's this is the those rare Elu Cohen ones that you Oh yeah. You told me to hang on to these. Oh, please hang on to the new.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

I know, so now that the value is way up. If you can ever get Stuart Quellen to sign it, you're going to be a maid man. You'll have the only signed ones. Yeah, that's right. Where is Stuart? Oh, he's up in Scotland. You're gonna you're gonna be interviewing him too, I think.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, I'll get over there. Scotland's not it's only a nine-hour flight from here.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

What are you that's a hop, skip, and a jump.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yep. I'd probably probably pay for itself. Not that I'm ever gonna sell. I got two sets of these. I'm never gonna sell these.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Get him on by because like he and have him talk about the Cohen's book, I think, because like he is super like excellent, and I just love Stuart to death. He's like one of the best guys out there.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Sorry to walk away from you while you were talking. It's just you were dropping hints of books that I know I have. Yeah, it's like a library's like my mind. Only much more obstreperous, even than that. If only I could lay my hand on the right thing. It's just one of those I got stuff stacked everywhere right now. Just Mart Martin Fox, you villain, you beautiful as evil man.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Like this uh perfectly ordered, uh autistic shelf like that. It looks like this on a couple other walls, too.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yeah, no, good for you. Uh so yeah, so these guys all have common connection, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:45

That's it. That's what I'm showing is it's all interconnected, every last little bit of it. And that's why I did the Cohen's book because there's Cohen's degrees that's gonna be in the Marin manuscript, but I have to contextualize it first. And then also what kind of came up in the research is well turns out Pasquale, yeah, he's got some cool stuff, but he's a totally a con man.

unknown 21:02

Yeah, look.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

Yeah, and there's guys that that won't want to hear that, but it again, it it's not go read the master's voice and read the actual correspondence in English, and then also read the 1766 Grand Lodge of France report on him, and you tell me what you think.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah, no, and it look, these are Masonry in England at the time, the early Masonry, early 18th century, late 17th century masonry, it's highly political and it's there's religious conflict going on. But in Europe, natural philosophy and uh what we would call Western esotericism, right? That these hardcore uh uh mysticism, Rossicrucianism, alchemy, magic, all of these law sciences now, right? They're all extremely popular amongst a certain class of people. Right? And masonry brushes up against that. And that's why so much of this High degree stuff, unusual stuff, all the Martinism, it all comes from the continent.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

And Sharia's really late to the game in 1887 when they put that together, or 1883, whenever Westcott and his friends put that together, right? And it's usually borrowed from Mund, and you can see it. So Westcott had Munn's papers or a translation of his papers or something. There's some intermediary there. I'm sure you already know what it is. Right. So I just like episode 44 with Alex Ropha, and they like Korea was super open. He was a great interview and he was really good talking about it. Um and a lot of people, like the Grimwark occultists or people from a Solomonic tradition, would be like, Oh, how could you follow that Rossacrucianism? They just made it up in the 15th century. It's like all of this stuff has been made up by somebody somewhere. That's the point.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

That's the point.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Right? And so was did Rosenkreutz live around 1450? Did was his grave found 120 years later? What were the text releases around 1612, 1614? Did were those influential texts? Did a brotherhood ever exist? None of this matters. What matters is the living tradition that people are basing their current practice on, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:26

How does it fit in with the chronology of the known and published and printed works, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Sure. And you could be informed by that. But again, if your esoteric teacher is saying something that contradicts the history, you need to kind of ask yourself the question what else might contradict the practice? Again, any any advanced practitioners taking direction.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

In Sri and their spiritual forces anyway, but even Sri and the modern incarnations of the Lou Cohen, right? They're all fragmentary systems, loose, very loosely based on the original. And the reason in the Lou Cohen's case is that the system still wasn't complete even when Pasquale died. He was making revisions literally in the last letter that he sends, right? Yeah, yeah. So there is no comprehensive system. But what you have to divine from it is, in fact, there was an earlier system before the one he started in 1767. And the reason why he started the one in 1767 is because the Grand Roger France said, check, please, this guy's a con man. That's literally what they said. And so he starts that new thing. And so, really, if you want to talk about what's the cohesive thing throughout the whole deal, it's the Roqua degree. That's the one thing that's in every incarnation of his system. And if you look at it, he also signs the certificates that you interacted with La Chose or the thing or whatever it is. And so it was a certificate proving you had the vision of the thing or whatever it is. And so that's really what it is. And so these other little degrees that he copied or put into the system, that doesn't even really matter because those were like commercial products, effectively, right? So it's like the regular French high degrees reworked, and then we're going to take out the content, we're going to put in my mystical things or whatever. I'm going to come up with and put them in there. And that's really what it is. If you want to understand the Cohen system, it's really study the Roe qua degree because that's the real, as they say, the royal arts, the heart and the marrow of it. And the same thing, it works for Mund too, because a lot of his system is built on, again, these same French high degrees that he received from the Chevalier de Beauchesne. And he's taking these things and he's modifying them. And so to contextualize Mund, he's an outsider, right? So in Frankfurt, the Lodge Reinekide or the Unity Lodge, it's an English provincial Grand Lodge, effectively. And what ends up happening though is he's on the margins of it. And he starts this own thing because he received this degree from Beauchain. Even after the French leave after the Seven Years' War, and it goes back to home rule under German control, right? Because he's made an irregular French Mason, he's not getting into a regular lodge. And so he builds this whole system out of necessity, right? Because again, he's marginalized. And a lot of the times, if we look at like the really interesting high degree systems, on the one hand, a lot of these guys are bent towards being conmen. But on the other thing is, but why is that? It's because they were marginalized from the get-go. And it's so these very marginalized people that I think are the most fascinating things to study, because that's where you get the biggest push of creativity.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

They're not going to get included. So they got to make their own thing.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

I can do whatever I like.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Exactly. You're already that in that if you're already irregular or don't qualify some for some other reason, like in this case, that might have been slaves, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

And it's like you've been pointing out, like it's that's where the creativity comes from. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

And that's why you get these interesting things in there that you don't find in other systems. What's funny is even like in Mund's system, he starts his own Rosicrucian system, right? But he's doing it under the influence of Jewish people, like in the Frankfurt ghettos, right? And he's also corresponding with the Ball Shim in London, which is why I think you might be able to figure out where Westcott and those guys may have got some of those ideas because he they were getting it from that source and not from him, right? And so they were getting it from the root, not from the uh not from the branch, as well as where you're well that's so okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

So let's get do you want to talk about that or is that subject of future publishing material?

SPEAKER_02 27:00

We can we can look into that one probably more like in our talk, right? Because I don't want to do something that may go against another book I'm doing later.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Okay. I will leave that alone. See, I was always under the impression that the especially since this Mun book was released, but it's the natural philosophy, alchemy, and Ross Ecrucianism close to the source that that was the source of Freemasonic Ross-Acrucianism, right? And it's people in Germany that that really put that together and pushed it forward. Even though these orders were tiny, right? But it's the materials they left behind that's been used since.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Much of like the corpus, or at least the origins of like Western terrorism, right? Though like it comes from like these mystical Jewish texts, right? That's what that's if you wanted to get right to the base of it. That's what it is. And so he's tapping into that stuff. So like he he works as a painter and like uh and he also has a drawing school that he does later with his daughter as he gets older and can't really do those things anymore. And what's interesting about it to me though is like he's corresponding with these guys. So here he is, a marginalized Freemason also interacting with marginalized people, right? Right, and so that's where he's pulling this stuff from. And it's not like overtly, there's not a whole lot of overt like Jewish mysticism. It's a true Rosicrucian Christian-oriented type system. He's a Protestant, right? And you start like putting all these things together though, like, and you look at where he's coming from, and it's fascinating too because like his collection of rituals and texts, it turns out later in the 1780s, he's out down on his luck, and he's looking to he's looking to uh put a little bit more coin in his pocket, so he's considering selling his collection. Immediately both the golden rosy cross and the Illuminati jump on the idea. I think in those yellow books back, you know, that one right there in the background, those were Reinhard Martner's the correspondence of the Illuminati Order in volume two, it talks quite a bit about this, where they're like trying to buy his ritual collection, and then so they send a guy to come check it out. He's like, Yeah, this is not for us, this is not very good. But what he thought he was getting, though, is the root of the rituals for their competition, the golden rosy cross. Ultimately, that though, those guys ended up not making a pass for the materials either. And so Mund ends up selling them to the Lodge Zarinekide himself, and then he ends up getting regular lized and is able to attend Lodge in his old age. And so that's the price he paid for a mission and some coin.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Wow. Now, do you want to talk at all about maybe any SOTR interpretation out of the Mund book? Do you want to save that for the presentation?

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Let's hold it for the presentation.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Anything you might want to say about this is this is really early for natural philosophy, right? Which is and then a lot of humanism comes out of that. Sure. The modern world is hugely influenced by this, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Well, even like the Enlightenment, it arrives late in Germany, doesn't it? So like by the middle 1760s, it's starting to be taught in a lot of the different institutions, but it this again it precedes all of this stuff, too, right? And so like he's like an early adapter of ideas and putting things out there. But the thing is, like, I don't know that he ever has very many members of his system. And from what it appears, though, is that like he's got like a few adherents that he's brought into this system. One of like his jewels, oddly enough, was in a museum. Then, like, the of course the Nazis grab it up, and then it ends up of all places in Norway. Like, and I don't know how it ends up in Norway, but it does. And so it's in their museum of Freemasonry in the Grand Lodge of Norway, and it's this Mund jewel. And if you look at like the the the it looks like something that Mund probably made himself with like a very poor sand cast, right? And so it's just not all that great. And so, like, it's more evidence of really a small community consuming this stuff. So if you think about it, like there's no commercial motive here, so this is pure like intellectual curiosity and creativity, and so like he's riffing, he's pulling different sources. A lot of that stuff we'll dive deep into in the talk. But the point is that like it's all his own unique hybrid things, but the most like impressive thing about the collection isn't necessarily the rituals themselves, but the artwork because this guy was prolific and he was extremely talented. And I think it's funny too, because Germans being Germans, like they were critical of his painting abilities. This scene is this, that, and the other. But these are the same guys that would see something very nice and be like, uh, it's the most beautiful thing ever. That's not bad. And so, like, I think there may be a bit unfair criticism there too, as well. But the point is that like his illustrations and stuff, like they're captivating. In fact, on the cover of this book, like if you look at it, that's one of the things that he draws for like a tracing board, right? Except for, of course, the text in the middle, but all the symbology and stuff. And then when you start like breaking into it, like clearly the guy was like, he was he was working like with Jewish people in the ghettos. He's also got access to early German Rosicrucian texts, and that's another thing, too, that a lot of people don't appreciate is a lot of these alchemical manuscripts and stuff that are really they're popping up really hardcore, like in the 17th century, like early 18th century, even middle eighteenth century. So it's got like from maybe like the mid like 1650s or so all the way through like maybe 1750, a good hundred-year run of this stuff. And it's from the same like current of these manuscripts and stuff like that. He's clearly drawing inspiration from, but it's also the same sources of inspiration that the Golden Rosie Cross do. Right. And that's another book we're doing too, because we've got the 1763 and the 1777 rituals and the missing ninth degree as well. And the thing was the ninth degree was really, I'm not gonna tell what it is, but it was really never missing at all. And then so when you start looking at those rituals, how we're talking about SriA, those guys like had to like basically invent it out of whole cloth because they're outside of the Bernard Bayer book, like in 1925, if you don't read German, then you're it's really not gonna do you any good. But that material, even that Bayer put out was faulty, and what he called the ninth degree was faulty as well, and you have to go track these things down. And when you put it together, really what the Golden Rosie Cross system was a great way to make a small fortune out of a large one. And was it was largely a con and a rip on very wealthy people, particularly like around like in the Prussian state. And what it was is they were effectively you start in, uh, start off as a Freemason, you come in the door, the first degree has got a very, very loose Masonic connection, but after that, it's pure operative alchemy, right? And then there's the exorbitant degree fees and so forth. And I won't spoil too much, but the the point is that what they're teaching is this operative alchemy, and it's deliberate because you're going to need all these things in the ninth degree to build a certain device. And then what's funny is if you they even give the specific formula like for the alloy of this device, and it all has to be implementally pure things, right? And so you do these this particular recipe for electrum. If you were to take, and then I ran the calculations like in 22, and of course, because I'm an engineer and also a dork, I went ahead and figured out how to make this thing. And so it turns out it'll give me about $45,000 US in raw materials 2022 prices to cast the necessary amount of electrum to make this device. So that's again, it's more evidence that really what they were doing was fleecing super duper rich guys, and that was about it, as far as I'm concerned. And actually, it needs to be studied further because, like in the book, what we do is we show the obvious like French high degree sources, we give a pretty darn good biographical thing on it, but mainly it's a complete like reassembly of the system, and it's not just one manuscript, it's disparate manuscripts that you have to put back together, right? So we did like part one for us is we laid the foundation, but there's a future edifice that needs to be built on this book, and we gave you all the tools to do it with, right? So, like that, I think that's actually a very worthwhile thing to study, Troy.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

It might. And it now with Peterson's translations of many of the popular grimoires at the time, like for example, with all of the work and attention that's been on D's Enochian system, it's like what magic system was D using? And based on that, it's it was probably Arbitel or something very similar to that. I think so.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

That's the other part. And that's why if you were trying to write about Freemasonry and you weren't a Freemason, it might be difficult.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Yes, it's one thing, it's one thing to have the words, and I'll say this to people. I'm not gonna edit this out. It's one thing to have the words, but unless you've been shown the rubric, best of luck with that. If you're gonna figure out the the the word is yours, begin you. If you're gonna figure out the particular order of that from a video or from a book, it's not easy unless you've been shown. Particularly with all the variation from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and over time, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Or even think about like Corpion Espionage, right? Like they can go and seal the blueprints for a product, right? But having the blueprints and building the product and having the knowledge and the manufacturing ability and understanding the processes and all the different things you have to do to get the product, again, good luck, right? Like it's even like with I remember the Rosenbergs, they stole like the hydrogen bomb stuff, right? And sent it over to the Soviet Union. They didn't build that thing right away, did they?

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Maybe they didn't have all the right information. That's it. But you you we were talking about the Electra Magicum. Do you know how to make that without killing yourself? Shouldn't a novice attempt, should a novice attempt without being shown? Like some of those some of those metals require specific lab handling, right? And in a fume hood too, for that matter. So you have to have a crucible within a fume hood. Yeah, and uh again, an alchemist might have been shown how to handle this stuff. They also expect to be changed, right? This is the difference between alchemy and chemistry, is that locality fails in alchemy. You are not expecting or you are expecting yourself to be changed by the material. You usually want to expect yourself to get killed by the material.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Yeah, drinking button, it's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Why this particular Mund book? Like, how did you come across this? And why this at this time? I know it's been out for a while now, but and and it didn't get the attention that some of your other books have gotten because it's okay, it's a more marginal sort of tradition, right? When the It's on across accruciations is a it's a tiny subculture within a an already small intriguing subculture, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Like I'm already I'm already the world's worst book salesman because I'm of the opinion if you don't want to read my book, don't that's we've talked about that.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Like I'm always saying, Lawn says, yeah, you don't have to read the books, but please buy them, put them on your shelves. Somebody will find it one day. Or you can resell it for twice what you paid for it. Like that's that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 37:08

Like I'm that's my value proposition to you. Is like that. You don't want to read it, great. You got some sexy shelf art that you can totally hawk for hundreds of dollars more in a few years.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

That seems to be the the occult bookseller's secret to success, and it has been when I was attending esoteric book conference in Seattle. It's like that was the model. And don't get me wrong, all of the super fancy stuff I picked up during those days not meant to be read. It's a beautifully curated item. Some of the mass market paperbacks you've put out, they're inexpensive, they're meant to be read. But but this book in particular is beautiful, limited edition golden.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

It's a it's by the German publisher, Bastian Saliba, who does like this. He does like a bunch of like hand binds, all leather, like super duper high quality. Um, and then even the ribbons and stuff that are inside of it too. Like that, we put a gold and a red one in there because you got to.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

You you want to show it again? Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

It is a very like shiny, beautiful thing. You can even see the uh tessellated border there. Backside is gorgeous too. Um, it's got a super duper nifty ribbon. I don't know if you can see it in there. Yep. Pretty cool. And then the book format is it's it's bilingual, so it's German verso English recto. And then so like it's super duper nice, and it's a really like kind of a groundbreaking thing. So, like, it's really for like other people to pick up on this because clearly we didn't pick up every little source in there, and someone I might know might be looking for them. I don't know. And that's what the thing is, like a lot of these, like even in like the stuff that we did on the Luke Cohen stuff, right? No one's really dug into hard that stuff hard. And so that's what we did with all these books was we laid the foundation, here's what the texts say, here's all the research that we were able to do in the short amount of time, but by no means is it exhaustive. And even like in the next book that Art and I have coming out, it's the same kind of situation where a lot of that book and that the that Alu Parfait book that's coming out, it's a complete rewrite of the understanding of the evolution of Masonic ritual from like the 1300s up, specifically though, like from about 1717 up. And what it really does is it kind of reframes all of this stuff, and that's really like the point of what we're doing here is laying a foundation and pointing out that this isn't exhaustive. This is just meant to if you wanted to learn how to do something, you would go and consult an expert at it and you would learn what they know. And the reason is you don't want to start at zero, you want to start where they left off because like you've leaped all of that stuff, at least intellectually, like you've leapfrogged it, you've got their skills that took them 20 or 30 years to put together, and that's the point. And that's how like human knowledge increases, and that's how we make advancements as a species, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Yeah, and I find it interesting that your scholarship touches in so many areas. And here you've got uh you've got craft masonry, which specializes in introducing a man to himself, I think, uh from a initiatic standpoint. You get the high French degrees and their influence of uh more natural philosophy and other types of philosophical study, and then the brushes up against the Elu Cohen and the Martinist stuff, which is more about uh theurgy and experiential spirit work, very secretive, uh quite schismatic too. It's built just talking to I can't remember I was talking to somebody else influential about this very thing, how that organization kind of splits up. It's built to split or the Golden Dawn is very similar. And then you've got uh these German Rossicrucians, which again, natural philosophy, but more transformative alchemy and uh continental influenced occult magic, grimoric traditions, all coming together to build a a a bigger, uh a bigger, more inclusive craft, right? We're collecting all of this stuff, all of this stuff that's uh othered third way, however you want to say it. Anyway, I just think it's that your scholarship touches on so many of these areas, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:00

Well, it's important too because if you think about it, take the Marin book, the that Alu Parfait one that's coming out next. One of the things about it is that people have assumed that, oh, that they have this idea in their head, oh, it's just this institutional chaos, it all just came out of wherever, and all these people were creating stuff. That's so wrong. And the reason why it's wrong is because no one bothered to check for the primary sources. No one bothered. They thought that guys like Gould and Mackey, if you're in the US, that they did everything. But the problem is, first off, these guys are all lay people, right? So they're writing these books in their old age, right? And so it's not really a means of supporting themselves, but they're using the best sources they have. These guys were not primary source people, right? And so if you don't have primary sources, you're doing recycling because you're now relying on secondary sources, sometimes even tertiary sources, right? And you're that all that research is predicated upon the assumption that everybody in the beginning did the work and that there are no more new sources to add to it, and that everything was looked into exhaustively. And it turns out, as far as this scholarship, not just with Freemasonry, but it could also be with Rosicrucianism, it could be with theurgy, it could be all these things like that. We assume for too long that everyone did the right thing and it would, that's not the case. And that's literally across history, across the board. It doesn't even have to be about this, it could be about a lot of other historical subjects too. But the point is if you're going to write anything at all, you really need to make it a value. And the only way to get that value is to get to the primary sources. Because if you don't push out the primary sources and it doesn't rest upon it, and that's why, from this perspective, us laying the foundational primary sources of all this stuff, that's the key to doing all the real work in the future. And so I'm not trying to be one of these guys who's going to uh interpret this thing. I'm laying the foundation, but that's for the framing crew to come in and start erecting that building on. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 42:43

When you and Art were here, we had this conversation, and you guys answered questions to this effect quite famously at Grammy Sonic Day, and I put it in the podcast that I produced since then on the QA's that we did. And I really like this idea. The forces that wanted to regularize everything. It kind of corporatized and made everything kind of bland. Made it suck. I didn't want to say that out loud.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Nobody can do anything to me. It's okay. I don't think it was right. There's nothing you can take away from me.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Yeah, you're just for providing the historical facts, right? But one of the things one of the things that our Arturo and he could he could weigh in, I think he's earned the right to have an opinion. It's like I like the variety. I like having some variety. Like in this jurisdiction, we got four formal varieties, but many lodges have their own traditions and the variety, not just from the standardized ritual, but the variety in lodge culture and the variety in table lodge habits and the all these different things. The variety is what makes the science so personalizable, right? And so beautiful. Do you want to talk a bit more about? And then maybe it'll encourage people who've got these I who's got who've got ideas. If you've got ideas, the the craft isn't open necessarily to your ideas, but there are members in the craft that are open to your ideas. Why don't you talk about that a bit?

SPEAKER_02 44:19

Sure. And so one of the things I think we should consider is that largely from the middle 19th century, it's a it's stasis throughout Anglo-speaking Freemasonry, right? So it doesn't matter what English-speaking country you're from, there's largely stasis going on here by the middle 19th century, right? And it makes sense, this is the natural order of things. The problem with stasis is one is it gets stale, right? So you've got a product that's got an 18, we'll say 50 manufacture date, and here we are, how many years later selling the exact same product? First off, there's there's even people that like when you start like doing the work that they don't even understand the language, right? And so you have to explain it to them so they can figure it out and they can actually do the work. I've seen this before. So that's already a problem. But the other thing is, it's about as fresh as a fog hat concert, right? And I like some of their songs, but I liked them probably back when they first came out. They don't really touch people's things because they're not built in the same time in the same culture, speaking to the same values to the people's hearts, right? And that's really what we're dealing with here. And up until maybe the last, I don't know, three or four years in the United States, you largely had a one-flavor ice cream store, right? And the other problem is that you've got your ritual book, and then you go look at your law books, and the law book outweighs the ritual book by three times and is also three times longer. And so what's the raison debt? What's the raise reason for being of any system, right? It's the ritual. It's not the law book. The law book regulates the system that's supposed to be popular, right? And so we see, we see and think about it. It can let's not talk about Freemasonry. This could even apply to religion, too, for that matter, right? Because why is there all these social institutions in decline? Like the naysayers among us would say, oh, it's just the natural order of things. We're in the fourth turning, this, that, and the other. Society's shifting, it's changing, they're finding less value in these systems. I don't think that's it at all, though, because I think what we have, take like Protestant Christianity in the United States, right? There's all these different guys who have a loudspeaker and a steel frame building, they call themselves a pastor, and they and then everybody comes in there and they start doing all that stuff, but that that's nothing new because there's nothing new that speaks to the people's hearts or whatever like that. You're largely getting recycled approaches of recycled approaches that are really all based on one product. And a lot of the, as far as all the denominations and stuff go, a lot of these things, again, were worked out in the 19th century. They were frozen in time and they've been selling the same product over and over again. So the problem isn't with the institution, the problem is with the product, right? Because in take Freemasonry's case in the U.S., people don't want to eat vanilla ice cream. They like sprinkles, they like chocolate, pistachios, whatever. And in the US, particularly in the which I'm a member of in the Grand Lodge of DC, we now have a French right craft lodge. We now have rectified Scottish Rite craft lodges. There are the orders of wisdom are popping up as independent chapters in the United States right now from the French right. And so what we what I think the other thing that's pleasing to me is a lot of the materials and stuff that we've written on, really they're inspiring people. Hey, look, there are other flavors of ice cream. Here's it's like we're in the back alley showing them, hey, you want the goods or whatever like that. That's not what we're doing. We're putting the information out there and it's reaching people's minds and it's picking their intellectual curiosity. Take the ritual, right? There's a lot of people that I know that when they were made of mason, they were like disappointed because the form of the ritual they thought they were getting wasn't the form of the ceremonies they wanted, right? But it turns out a lot of those continental forms, those were exactly what they had in mind and were exactly what they'd seen in the movies, right? And that's exactly why these same people now are like moving to make changes in this stuff. And so my advice would be like one, recognize you've got a bad product that passed its sell-by date, sometime in like the 1860s or 70s, right? Because the one constant thing throughout the history of Freemasonry was the evolution of these systems and the constant change. There was no standardization, right? Like even within English craft masonry, the moderns had a good run from about 1717 to about 1751. Then ancient Freemasonry gets clandestinely created and then ends up taking over the system, right? And so what we see is even all the way up until the very beginning of the 19th century, as far as England goes, right, until the until the union of 1813, you had two competing systems, but it was that competition, that diversity of products, that thing that look at it economically from this perspective. And another thing I would caution people is look also at the way that these grand lodges and things are structured, right? We have too many stupid laws that don't make any sense at all, right? The only thing that matters is that people attend lodge, but they're not gonna attend lodge if they don't have a product they want to use, right? And so that's what ends up happening, right? Like you can't, this doesn't work anymore because you've got something that's passed its sell by date and adapt to change because that was the history of where we came from, and things are gonna change, right? And the thing is, it's not saying you have to jettison your own ritual, you still have lodges working it, but you also charter within your Grand Lodge provincial Grand Lodges of these other systems. And now, guess what? You regulate and control the whole thing. And so actually it doesn't hurt your power at all, it expands your power, but you have to think about it from a different perspective and be a little bit more obtuse and abstract about it, and then but the the goal is the same, right? Lighten up on the laws, embrace diversity, and that's the future.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

I just saw today um on Facebook when I was posting about the podcast that the Oakland Scottish Right building. I just looked it up, it's on the Collier's website. 58,000 square foot building, beautiful uh sandstone bow relief, beautiful temple, and it's for sale. And it I can't help but think that some of the difficulty can be laid at the feet of the affection you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

I think so, and because look at those spaces, right? Like that one was built, if I remember correctly, like in the early 1920s. I spoke there, I spoke there once and then also attended a board of directors meeting for the research society there. But in point of fact, though, that place is beautiful, it's very well maintained. If you're looking at a hundred-something year old building, it's really well off and it was taken care of. But the problem is though, is that the people stop coming and the people stop attending. Why is that? Yeah, what changed? The product, nothing changed on the product in that.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Yeah, the the the the the society changed, but the product didn't change.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

That's it. And so it's just like Fog Hat, like it was great when it first came out. It was probably a jam maybe for like maybe five years after, then went into obscurity. Then these people's kids came and found mom and dad's records and played Fog Hat again, like I did, and then I really liked it. But the problem is that, in point of fact, Fog Hat, like it was written for a time to speak to a certain people in a place, right? And so what you decontextualize your ritual to the values and the needs of the people today, and that's why things have to change, right? So, like stasis, especially artificial stasis, and especially one that's dogmatically enforced, is it is contrary to your best interest. Embrace change, open up to diversity, and you can still maintain control. You just gotta get creative.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

I don't know if you listened to the Rick Berman episode, it was just released. But oh no, I wanted to, man, but I didn't get a chance. Yeah, I dropped it on Thursday. It's Sunday. Very 72 hours later, what's wrong with you? You haven't listened to this?

SPEAKER_02 51:07

I did Michael Gellman put it in the drawer. Okay, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

What the hell? But we talked because his book is Genesis of American Freemasonry, and I talked about originalism and the founders of this of the American states and how they and the founders of Freemasonry did this too, but not with an intent to do it this way. But it's really that the church and the state intentionally separated. You've removed defanged the power of faith politically. I think from a philosophical perspective, a rationalist, humanist, positivist, right? This makes sense to do this. And yet, everywhere we look, there's uh there are political forces at work to enrage young men and get them ensnared in these old religious ideologies, right, to try and recapture some old mythical glory that existed sometime in the past.

SPEAKER_02 52:14

And even like in the US, like there's a big move for guys like going Catholic now because that's what I'm talking about. Because like a lot of the Protestant like religion, like if you look, if you like objectively approach it, and doesn't matter which one, right? Like you go and you any given Sunday, right? It's the same rock concert, it's the same vapid hollow theology that isn't based on anything scriptural, it's the same preacher taking one verse out of context and then making a whole sermon on it, and somehow it ends up with you putting coin in the plate and passing it forward, right? Like that's it's vapid, it's hollow, and it's foolish, right? And the beginning again, it's superficial, right? So if people like want to be like good Christians and stuff like that, like really consider if are by actually studying the Bible here, right?

SPEAKER_00 52:52

That's it, and that's again in the Canadian work in the inner apprentice degree, we we strongly exhort the candidate to a serious study of the volume of sacred law. We what we don't say, and I say this all the time, what we don't say is, and you keep your own counsel on that. You can discuss it quietly with other people, but we don't discuss that formally in lodge because it's up to each individual to know their own deity. That's the the the holy book is useful as a key to your own spiritual efforts. Uh much of religion, especially nowadays, and especially in my immediate southern neighbor here, seems to be to subvert the spiritual impulse for political means. And it I think Freemasonry is uh one of the institutions that stands against that. If we've got nobody left to stand against it, does that mean we just capitulate and let the the Catholics and the Protestants fight it out again? Do we need secular violence?

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Or does Donald Trump says we're all become Godless communists?

SPEAKER_00 53:51

Because there's only one choice or the other, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_02 53:54

It's all we only have operators, Troy. That's uh that's exactly how Siths don't deal.

SPEAKER_00 53:58

You'll be a complete, completely blind, blind faith, you know, follower of uh people who want to call themselves Christians that would have nothing to do with the Jesus I read about.

unknown 54:10

Right?

SPEAKER_02 54:11

Basically he was hanging out with all the sinners, and why? Because they needed him.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

Yeah, and it's more than that. This I don't want to get into religion so much, but we're already here. Um Jesus really did popularize the idea of a brotherhood of man. Now I know he was a Jew and he was mostly talking to other Jews. I I get that the Jews would say that. He's like, this is a Jewish rabbi talking to other Jews, right? And it was co-opted by Saul of Tarsus and all of that. Great. But really, when you read his words and you look back at his philosophy and the philosophical impact on Western society, what he comes up with is this the brotherhood of man. Whether you're a slave or you're the king, we're all equals in the eyes of God. And so the American founders come along and they're like, How can we divorce this very humanist, very equalizing idea, divorce it from the religious background? We could still point to Jesus as the source of this stuff, but we can apply it to everybody. We can apply it to everybody. Why don't we apply it to everybody? That's right. And then uh and then every person deserves at least the basic level of respect, right? This is something that Freemasonry has been good at teaching, but has forgotten that's what it was for, I think. In lots of places. And guys uh especially as more and more conservatives have come on board and then by into the culture war, and it's just, are you forgetting what we're doing over here? Right? Anyway, that's highly political. Rick had excellent thoughts on it and talking about how the Enlightenment philosophy and humanism really blossomed with within the bounds of the craft, and now we created an excellent firmament. And uh you got anything you want to say about that? You're nodding over there.

SPEAKER_02 55:57

Yeah, like I ever I love everything that Rick's written, right? Like it's the his best book. I'm still saying this is Espionage, Diplomacy, and the Lodge, right? And then we even like lift a few lines from it in our next book, too, because it was so good. And then also his counter-arguments to the whole 1717 thing, like that. I think Rick knocks it out of the park on that one because it's okay, they got a couple details wrong. But it was still written within five years of that, so maybe they got the place wrong, but does it matter? No, it does not.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

And why would anybody be offended at you don't want to necessarily rewrite history, but why not look back at it in a sober fashion? Because nobody who was there is alive anymore.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

And it doesn't matter because all the things that happened after the fact already happened.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

Yes. And it's just a matter of being realistic about what our origins are and why people did the things they did. It's one of the issues I have with the spiritual traditions that come out of Freemasonry is that they want a mythological origin story. That's it. You see the rise of the neo-templarism that we've got going on right now. And I just I have no patience or respect for people that just want to again, a lot of this stuff is made up. Okay, great. But don't be making up and then claiming it as actual history, which and can prove that it's false.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

Yep. I want the history warts and all. I don't care if you're ugly, I want to see it.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

There's plenty to dig into that is factual. Sure. You know, and ultimately the spiritual practice, and I keep saying this to people, it's most of it's done on yourself, with yourself, by yourself, and it's a personal relationship with whatever spiritual forces you're aligned with. And the the lodge will help you. Having good guys around you will help you with that. But don't come to Freemasonry expecting to be given the book of secrets that's gonna explain everything. You're just gonna leave with more questions.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

And that's also ride on the Masonic jet. Turns out it doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

What? Oh, I've been working so hard to get my ride on.

SPEAKER_02 57:52

I know you're frequent flyer miles.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

Look, perhaps we should plug the EFC one more time. How did we treat you when you were here for Grand Masonic Day? How was your hospitality?

SPEAKER_02 58:04

Oh, it was fantastic. I really enjoyed where you guys put me up at. It was a whole lot of fun. But the event overall, like it was really nice to get up there and see everybody, and also just the the questions that followed from the talks, and those were really good. And hopefully we put on a good show for you guys.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Yeah, no, it was good. EFC tends to be the same thing, only it's a it's usually smaller attendance. We'll get less than a hundred people there sometimes. That's fine. I like intimate. But it's more the more students that are interested in this the factual practice of the craft, but also the more uh spiritual, esoteric end of things. And so I think you'll enjoy some of the presentations, and I really hope you can arm our I aim to please too. Yeah, no, that that'll be excellent. And and we want to sell books again. Don't you don't have to read the books, but please go home with a whole armload of them because you don't have to take an invoice, don't leave an invoice lying around. That's evidence, right? Why incriminate yourself? Plausible deniability. Yeah, it costs a lot of much cash accepted. Cash is delicious, and nobody needs to know. We we your brothers will keep it sub Rosa. That's what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_02 59:09

That's right. And when your wife does complain, you just sell them and then you just take the indifference and then tell her what you bought it for.

SPEAKER_00 59:14

That's right. That's right. And it's an excellent investment.

SPEAKER_02 59:18

That's right. So it's an academic arbitrage, is what I call it.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

I like that. Arbitrage, that's the technical investment term.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

It's an arbitrageur.

SPEAKER_00 59:27

Now we're back to now we're back to uh to trade networks.

SPEAKER_02 59:30

There we are. We've made it all the way back.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

Joseph Wages, thanks for agreeing to talk to me yet again. I think we've spent probably eight or nine hours together now this year, and it's I'm sure it's starting to encroach on the rest of your life. I'm sorry about that.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

No, no, no, just keep having me back. Like I said, with my conditions, I can talk on this subject at infinitum, and I'll never stop and it'll never get old or tiring to me. So have me back as much as you like and keep keep putting my name out there because you actually made my phone start ringing again. Come to find out.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:01

You you mentioned that. Um and there's other influential Freemasons that insist that I am getting kind of blowtorch level attention. I just don't see it in the downloads or on my Patreon place. People, please, you don't have to listen to the podcast, but please go pay for my Patreon. I've made no further plans for my family's future.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:22

I'm a bad father.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

All right, brother. Thanks again. We will be checking in with you with the travel arrangements for your trip here, and we will be getting some books ordered.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:34

Sounds great, brother Troy, and I'm gonna put on a heck of a show, I promise you that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:39

Thanks for listening today. You can support the show by liking, sharing, and subscribing on your favorite podcast indicator. Even more helpful, leave us to review. We are looking to create a directory of Freemasonic events and updates. If you are aware of something coming up, please let me know by email. In the meantime, check out Masonic Conferences.com. Esoteric system and Freemasonry Conference will be held on Saturday, September 19th. Our keynote speaker will be Brother Law and Milo Ducco, author of The Tarot Architect, brothers Ike Baker, Doug Russell, Dago Rodriguez, and Joseph Wages are all slated to present. Get your tickets at EsotyrixMasonry.com. For other events, check out our calendar at mystictie.com and don't forget to sign up for our newsletter while you are there. Graphics and web hosting are by Artsaboth Creative. A special thanks to Organized for our theme music. Happy to meet. Sorry to part. And happy to meet again.