The mystery schools, just like the major religions, were started by good people who knew what they were talking about and wanted to help other seekers. Then the fucking Matrix gets wind of it and proceeds to invade and hijack.

By following the clues and connecting the dots, it may be possible to reverse engineer the Lie back to the Truth, but you’d have to be willing to find out for yourself what the truth is about everything no matter what it turns out to be - that’s the secret ingredient.

So, some people are worshipping the light bearer; the Matrix (aka the Archons) corrupts it and turns it to serve entropy/darkness/negative - but keeps the name lucifer, and invents all this mythological bullshit about refusing to obey God and getting punished, when refusing to obey the half-maker is the very way to the truth. This is just the sort of double triple twist we should expect from Twisted Shadowy Creatures who hate us for having the divine spark they lack.

Most fascinating is the similarity between the Shriner symbol and the New Orleans Police logo - actually it’s the same. And it’s the Islamic Start and Crescent!

But the conclusion i came to with masonry was not a pure teaching, symbology or doctrine… just the same controll system everywhere… And even if the “masters” and founders practice some serious wierd ritual stuff in the top degrees they teach confusing symbology to the lower degrees to make them even more cut of from their normal social networks…

Well, isn’t that exactly the whole point of mystery religions, Jay? That it’s a mystery? Of course it’s going to be confusing and hidden from the lower levels of initiates. The way I understand it is that it’s got everything to do with levels of psychological and spiritual preparedness, and the levels of iniation are designed to induce and/or recognize them. I think your apparent frustration with it seems like exactly how you’re supposed to be feeling. It sounds like you want to just skip ahead to the end, without going through all the middle stuff.

I think the Bektashi Dervish order are very much a survival of the earlier root of Masonry though. They might be worth a look. Big in Albania.

I’m a little surprised of that you’re not more interested in the big picture of masonry.

I very much am interested in it, but thought it would be easiest to carve it off in chunks and ask people for help. It seems to be working.

The Islamic/Masonic links are many and obvious - even on the overt level (exclusion of women, the black and white chequerboard patterns, the appellation of ‘bey’ in early US Masonry as well as links to the Shriners who reference Mecca rather than the Temple of Solomon) but there is an even more interesting and under-researched aspect in the figure of Satan.

Satan, in the Sufi reading (ie not orthodox Islamic) is the original true monotheist and hence regarded as someone who is the Sufi archetype. Unlike in Christianity, his ’sin’ was to refuse to bow to Adam as God commanded him to - hence he was exiled. But in the Sufi belief he was a good Muslim for refusing God in this way as no-one but God should be worshipped. hence the Sufis hold Satan in very high regard - this is alter seen in such Sufi-derived groups as the Yezidis and also, in this instance, the Masons.

There is much more to the Sufi/Masonic connections (including the fact that the Ka’aba was built wit 33 degrees or courses of stone and wood) but I won’t bore anyone with them here