Reddit mentions of Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry

Snakes - and serpents in general - have been used to represent about a thousand things throughout history, in large part because they are archetypical images which resonate in nearly all cultures. You left out the serpent in the Garden of Eden: arguably the most common and popular mythological image of a snake (serpent)!

As for all the freemason loopiness, you're doing what anti-masons have done since the beginning: you're describing their system through a (Judeo) Christian lens.

As far as I can tell, having read a fair amount of masonic texts (not the conspiracy stuff - the stuff freemasons themselves publish), Freemasonry is largely compatible with and complimentary to Enlightenment values (no, I am not a freemason and my Catholic grandfather would spin in his grave if I ever tried to become one, which I couldn't anyway because I'm an atheist):

(a) The biggest vector of attack on freemasonry is its essential Deism, or the idea that religious discussion, which leads to discord, is forbidden from lodges. Because freemasons take Jews, or Muslims, Christian authorities get all bent out of shape that they're not asserting a single religion as authoritative.

(b) As a result, the "Great Architect of the Universe" is used as a general term for whatever freemasons conceive of as God. This is smeared by anti-masons as some kind of pagan God. A common theme in esotericism of the masonic variety is that many paths lead to the same light - hence ancient religions, modern religions, and so on, all struggle toward a single universal truth. This isn't good enough for the "my religion can beat up your religion" types - including and especially the Catholic church. Hence the hostility between the Church and Freemasons (mostly one sided - it is mostly the Church that has an issue with Freemasonry rather than the other way around, unless you believe in the theory that the roots of freemasonry are with the Knights Templar, who were sold out by the Church. See the intriguing Born in Blood which makes this argument.)

(c) This is fundamental to understanding the concept of "freedom of religion," the origin of the United States, and the interest in this concept. If freemasonry had one lasting impact on the United States, it is lending its support to the concept of freedom of conscience/belief.

> The Freemasons believe that they are guardians of the secret knowledge of the Temple of Solomon - the principle religious site of the aforementioned semitic people. "Sol" is a Latin prefix designating a sun god... In this case, named "Omon". It is a Hebrew name, so the vowels are interchangeable, e.g. Amun or Amen. You probably know that a sun god represented by a serpent is very, very bad news within the paradigm of the Hebrew bible, and yet the Freemasons - who believe very, very deeply in the truth of the Hebrew bible, and believe themselves to be guardians of its secret esoteric side, choose to worship it as the "true" god.

This sounds like typical anti-freemason propaganda. I've also heard that they worship a pagan god called jahbulon who apparently looks like this:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/20/tc2jahbulon1.jpg/sr=1

Anti-masons need to get a mailing list together or something and agree on the list of apparent heresies Freemasons engage in.

Attacks on freemasonry are similar to allegations against the Knights Templar. I see little indication that most of these claims have anything to do with freemasonry, and this is from reading what the masons themselves write, publish, and what has been written and published of masonic ritual without their approval.

Lastly, freemasonry proposed a radical concept: that man can be improved morally. That he can be transformed - that he can make the perfection of his moral life a central concept in life. This threatened established churches, and oh yes, it threatens the hell out of states, and the justifications for states. It proposes that men of different social classes - rich and poor - of different religions, can gather together in a fraternal arrangement peaceably. If indeed they saw themselves as custodians of a new era, it was a new era grounded in religious tolerance and other enlightenment values.

These are all necessary foundations for statelessness. Where anti-masons see American history as a product of Freemasonic conspiracy, I see Freemasonry's influence as a positive one, from which we have all benefitted.

There are two principal criticisms I have of freemasonry:

(a) They don't take women, and

(b) The esotericism gets a little thick for my rationalistic tastes. Which also disqualifies me from membership, not that I ever seriously considered it.

I first became aware of freemasonry through its critics - through the conspiracy angle. I found, upon reading deeper, that freemasonry itself (what it believes/teaches/advocates) is far more interesting than what critics have to say about it. That said I've read probably 5 times the amount of criticism/conspiracy stuff about freemasonry than I have actual masonic texts, however I'm currently reading Albert Pike's so-far excellent Morals & Dogma, which should shed some further light on the more psychedelic aspects of the masonic worldview.