00:04What are some of the most shocking theories around Freemasonry?
00:09I think perhaps the most shocking thing is that Freemasonry has always been deeply involved in the occult.
00:20And in the form we have it today, it was very tied up with the start of the Royal Society,
00:31which was the beginnings of modern science.
00:34And all those guys were Freemasons.
00:38And they've kept this secret underground stream of occult wisdom going right through to the present day.
00:49So would you say it's not as simple as, because some people think, oh, no, it's just a little club
00:54and people help each other out.
00:55But it goes far deeper than that, doesn't it?
00:57Yeah, I think there are different levels of initiation in Freemasonry.
01:04And some people at lower levels are probably not involved in that stuff.
01:10And then there are also Freemasonry-adjacent secret societies like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who practice ritual
01:22magic.
01:23They are all Freemasons.
01:25There's a society I was invited to speak to called the Societus Rosicruciana in Anglia.
01:34They are fascinated by the occult.
01:39And just to give an example of how it manifests itself, how it's kind of hidden in plain sight.
01:46In the late 19th century, Freemasons took two obelisks from in front of a temple in Egypt.
01:56And they shipped one to the banks of the Thames, that's Cleopatra's needle, and the other twin obelisks went to
02:06Central Park in New York.
02:08And they raised them simultaneously at an astrologically propitious time to mark the end of the Kali Yuga.
02:18Now, the Kali Yuga is the dark age in Hindu religion.
02:24So it was the end of the Kali Yuga, but they were also invoking, summoning down the god of the
02:33new age to help them rule the new world order.
02:40You've been quoted or said to be, according to newspapers, one of the inspirations for Dan Brown and the Da
02:48Vinci Code and those kinds of things.
02:50So all this kind of secret society stuff.
02:52So tell me, the Freemasons, I mean, where does that actually start?
02:56And, you know, what really is it?
02:59Well, I think that in the form we have it today, it arose in the age of the Enlightenment and
03:06it was connected with the Royal Society.
03:08But its roots are much older.
03:10All scholars agree that in the ancient world, next to the great public temples, there were institutions called the mystery
03:20schools.
03:21And these were highly secretive organizations.
03:25They were a bit like a Freemasonic lodge in that everyone knew they were there, but very few people knew
03:32what went on inside.
03:34And if you were an initiate of one of those schools and told people what you'd experienced, well, that was
03:45punishable by death.
03:46But fortunately, we've been left a few hints and it is possible to piece together what happened, the sorts of
03:57things that happened.
03:59And people, what would happen is that the candidate would receive a long period of instruction and then be led
04:08underground through a long series of tunnels by priests wearing masks, often animal-headed masks.
04:20And they would be asked to drink something called the water of forgetfulness.
04:27People sometimes speculate that there may have been hallucinogens in that.
04:32Wow.
04:32They were suddenly hit by a blow across the forehead so that they fell down.
04:39They were sometimes pushed into a pit of snakes.
04:45They were menaced by monsters.
04:49And at one point, this was very important, they really believed that they had done something wrong.
04:58They'd failed the initiation tests and were about to die.
05:03But then, at the last minute, they were led upwards into a light-filled space where they met beings of
05:15light.
05:22And when they emerged again, from the Mystery School, they not only had this knowledge, but they had a new
05:35form of consciousness.
05:36They felt they'd met the gods.
05:41They were very confident of life after death.
