During the course of my studies, I am frequently amazed at the amount of anti-Masonic materials I come across; all one needs to do is type in "anti Freemasonry" or "Freemasonry Secrets" into a Google search to be confronted with millions of web pages decrying the Craft.  In fact, a cursory Google search of "Freemasonry secrets" at the time of publishing yields 1,740,000 results.

Now seeing as I have not yet received my degrees, I have been cautious to visit any of these sites for fear of ruining my experiences.  In addition, I have been told that many of these sources do not present the true secrets of Masonry and instead substitute their own radically demented accounts of an entity they have never even been a part of.  Truth be told, if Freemasonry was in reality a secret society hellbent on world domination, they sure do a horrible job of keeping quiet about their existence and meeting places...

Perhaps it's my esoteric side speaking, but I believe no one should undertake anything without first learning the truth behind it - or at least trying their damnedest to.  For me this doctrine even extends to my religion; I don't believe in blindly following the Bible without first taking into account the fallibility of the men who transcribed it - a theme which I will touch on later.  We must never forget the true value of knowledge for through it we learn that all things are possible; even in the face of great evils or oppression, no matter how powerful the aggressor, they may never divest us of what we know - a fact alluded to by one of Freemasonry's most famous Brothers:

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." 
Benjamin Franklin

 
 

One of the most egregious anti-Masonic lies I have come across, owing its origins to Leo Taxil and usually promoted by Christian evangelists, is that Masons worship at the altar of Satan himself whilst behind closed doors.  I have never even sat in a Lodge and yet I can tell you that this is absolute bunk perpetrated by people so blinded by their predjudices and misconceptions that they would rather remain ignorant to the truth lest having to disturb the foundations upon which they build their beliefs.  We must learn from the mistakes of these people and be cautious of falling into the same traps in our own lives.

But I digress...

Perhaps the most infamous quote used by these anti-Masons comes from Albert Pike's 861 page tome, Morals & Dogma, which was published in 1871 as a companion piece to the newly revised Scottish Rite rituals Pike had worked on between 1855 & 1861 (minor changes were again made in 1873).  Written in a flamboyant and verbose manner, most would struggle to even completely read through this exhaustive text, let alone understand it. 

And this is what Pike failed to realize when writing Morals & Dogma: far too few take the time to seek meaning in the words they read.  Never one to let deep understanding of the topic at hand get in the way, these anti-Masons went all  "Captain Literal" on us.  To the chagrin of Brethren everywhere, once they came across this single line of text, buried deep within the covers of Morals & Dogma (page 321 to be exact), they had finally found something to sink their teeth into:

"Lucifer, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!"
Albert Pike - Morals & Dogma

 

At first glance, it would be a reasonable assumption that Pike is actually talking about the prince of darkness himself... but we all should know what happens when you assume.  As any statistics major can profess to, you can make the numbers say whatever you want if you fiddle around enough or ignore certain elements; the same can be said about Pike's literary musings.

Remember that whole "not believing everything you read - including the Bible" thing I spoke about before?  Good.  What I am about to say is no doubt controversial, but I would ask that you keep an open mind and at least give this some consideration.  The genesis of the name Lucifer in the Christian "fallen angel who now presides over hell" sense is the King James version of the Holy Bible which was translated in 1611 by scholars who were ordered to ensure the Church of England's positions on various points were incorporated into the finished work.  Already we're on shaky ground when the Word of God is subjected to guidelines imposed by a mere mortal, King James.

To further the complications, the King James version of the Bible was not translated directly from the original Hebrew texts but instead from the Roman Catholic Church's Latin Vulgate (which itself was a translation from the Hebrew and Greek texts conducted in 382 AD under the order of Pope Damsus). At this point, I would ask you to consider what happens when you make a copy of a copy of a copy of a... on a Xerox machine.  What happens when you play a round of the child's game "Telephone"?  Often times, what you end up with is remarkably different than the original.  For this argument to have any weight whatsoever, we must go directly to the source - the Hebrew texts - and this is where things start to get interesting, especially when you consider that the name Lucifer doesn't exist in the Hebrew Language.

So how did the Latin name Lucifer wind up in a Hebrew text that was written before the Latin language was even spoken?  According to research done by John J. Robinson (which - I must profess - influenced this exposé greatly), Lucifer appears only one time in the King James version of the 14th Chapter of the Old Testament book of Isaiah : "How are thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!  How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!".  After this appearance, Lucifer must have exited, stage left, because he is never heard from again. 

According to a Hebrew scholar, this story as it reads in the King James bible was translated incorrectly.  In actuality, the original Hebrew text of the 14th Chapter of Isaiah tells the story of a fallen Babylonian King and makes absolutely no reference to Satan.  At all.  He could only speculate as to why the story was changed but he believed that Christian scribes altered it in order to promote the idea of a fallen angel who holds dominion over hell after challenging the authority of God - a fallen angel that doesn't exist in the original version of the Word of God.  This is the fallibility of man of which I spoke earlier. 

What then is the true meaning of the word Lucifer?  Why is it used?  The name Lucifer is the Roman version of the morning star Eosphorus (Greek Ἐώσφορος, "bearer of dawn") or Phosphorus (Greek Φώσφορος, "bearer of light") which appears in the sky just before daybreak - the same morning star that has since been renamed "Venus"; at its core, Lucifer is derived from lucem ferre, "bearer of light".  Back to the original Hebrew text of the Word of God, we can find that the true subject of chapter 14 of the book of Isaiah - the fallen King of Babylon - is described as Helal, son of Shahar or "Day star, son of the Dawn". 

Day star... morning star... bearer of dawn/light... son of the dawn...  Sound familiar?

It follows to reason that the Latin Vulgate confused, whether intentionally or not, "Day star, son of the Dawn" for "bearer of light" and hence incorrectly translated the original Hebrew version to say "lucem ferre".  As time went on and more and more translations of the Bible were produced, this error was magnified until Lucifer became the devil when, during the conversion to English, King James' scholars incorrectly translated "lucem ferre" as  "Lucifer".  It has been only recently that this error was corrected when The New English Bible, translated directly from the most archaic of Hebrew documents, was published.  In Isaiah 14:12, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!" has become "How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations!".

Taking all of this into account, one can reconcile the classical Roman name for "Morning Star" with Revelation 22:16: "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches.  I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." as follows: if Jesus = Morning Star and Morning Star = Lucifer then Jesus = Lucifer.  The powers of deductive reasoning, indeed.

And the poetic justice of it all?  It would seem that in their zeal to expose Masonry as the devil's work, the anti-Masons put just as much effort into studying their Bible as they did Morals & Dogma.  Much in the same vain as when they pulled 3 sentences out of Pike's Morals & Dogma and then callously discarded the rest of an 800+ page book, they pulled 2 sentences out of Isaiah 14:12 without even bothering to read Isaiah 14:4 which reads in the King James Version, and I quote, "That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!"  Who needs reading comprehension when you can randomly pull sentences out of books and misconstrue them to fit your agenda!

Now... for arguments sake, lets just throw all the above out the window and say that Pike was really talking about Satan.  It still doesn't matter.  Even if Pike was the first coming of Anton LaVey, he still didn't hold the position of authority over Masonry that his detractors would like you to believe.  While Pike was indeed a very influential Mason, his authority was only over the Southern United States Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite - an appendant body to Freemasonry.  And while he did, at one point or another, hold offices within Freemasonry, they were only on a limited jurisdictional basis and by no means could it be said that he had any palpable affect on the other Grand Lodges throughout the globe.  Any claims that Pike was chairman of some 33-degree-new-world-order-devil-worshipping-council that controlled all of Freemasonry and in turn the world is an absolute abortion of the truth.  But then again, the truth doesn't really matter to some people anymore...

In truth and knowledge,
Scott G. Arnold

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
Richard Feynman