Persuaded they held the key to great treasure and were targets of a Masonic plot, members of the aristocratic de Védrines family turned over their lives, fortune, and ancestral château to a shadowy “grand master.” Then came captivity and torture—and a bizarre escape.

BY MICHAEL JOSEPH GROSS
AUGUST 2010

Far, far down the High Street, long past where Oxford’s golden spires give way to neon strip malls, you come to a dense residential zone of tidy town houses, row upon row. In one of these, in a small room, a woman sits immobile in a chair.

She has been held prisoner in this room for days. Eight? Ten? Hard to keep track, when they won’t let you sleep. In shifts, day and night, her captors take turns berating her:

We know you know the number.
You have to tell us.
Why won’t you tell us?

The woman is 58 years old. Not long ago she was the mistress of a château near Bordeaux—elegant, soignée, an aristocrat. Now she is fed a single meal each day. She is not allowed to bathe or use the bathroom. She is drugged, and sometimes she is beaten.

The captors include members of her own family. They say she knows the number because she is The One—the possessor of knowledge that will free her and the rest of them to fulfill their destiny. They want the number of a bank account in Brussels that will lead them to a secret that will save the world. They were selected for this mission by a global network of secretive grandees, whose head, named Jacques Gonzalez, is said to be a cousin of the Spanish king Juan Carlos, and reputed to be more powerful than the presidents of France, Russia, and the United States.

Full story

RACHEL DONADIO, July 21, 2010

[...] As a heretic he could not be given a proper church burial. But for years after his death, his followers in the circle of the grand dukes of Tuscany pushed to give him an honorable resting place.

Nearly a century later, in 1737, members of Florence’s cultural and scientific elite unearthed the scientist’s remains in a peculiar Masonic rite. Freemasonry was growing as a counterweight to church power in those years and even today looms large in the Italian popular imagination as an anticlerical force.

According to a notary who recorded the strange proceedings, the historian and naturalist Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti used a knife to slice off several fingers, a tooth and a vertebra from Galileo’s body as souvenirs but refrained, it appears, from taking his brain. The scientist was then reburied in a ceremony, “symmetrical to a beatification,” said Mr. Galluzzi.

After taking their macabre souvenirs, the group placed Galileo’s remains in an elegant marble tomb in Florence’s Santa Croce church, a pointed statement from Tuscany’s powers that they were outside the Vatican’s control. The church has long been a shrine to humanism as much as to religion, and Galileo’s permanent neighbors include Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Rossini.

Leigh Phillips, 19.07.2010

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Brussels is to hold an EU summit with atheists and freemasons in the autumn, inviting them to a political dialogue parallel to the annual summit the bloc holds with Europe’s religious leaders.

While the EU is a secular body, the three European presidents, of the commission, parliament and EU Council, alongside two commissioners, on Monday met with 24 bishops, chief rabbis, and muftis as well as leaders from the Hindu and Sikh communities. The annual dialogue, which has taken place since 2005, is for the first time this year made legally obligatory under Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty.

Under pressure from Belgium, which constitutionally protects and financially supports humanist organisations as well as churches, the EU has been forced to hold a mirror-image summit, but of atheists, scheduled for 15 October.

However, in a move that perplexed and annoyed humanist groups, the EU atheist summit will also welcome under the rubric of ‘non-religious groups’, the Freemasons, the secretive fraternal organisation, according to commission spokeswoman Katharina von Schnurbein.

Full story

—–

See also: The Masonic “Reconquista”

Sami Zubaida, 20 July 2010

[...] An important venue for this Ottoman cosmopolitanism were the Masonic lodges. Ottoman Muslims were admitted into these lodges in the 1860s and many intellectuals and public figures embraced Masonry with enthusiasm. The lodges they favoured followed the French Grand Orient, which, unlike its British counterparts, jettisoned the references to a Supreme Being, and the Immortality of the Soul, the deistic principle of earlier Masonry. It also embraced the slogan of the French Revolution of Equality, Liberty and Fraternity (to which the later Young Turks added Justice). In effect, those lodges favoured secular positivism and rationality, which was part of its attraction to Ottoman liberals. Membership included Greeks, Armenians and Jews, as well as European residents. Turkish was introduced as one of the languages of proceeding in some lodges. Many Ottoman intellectuals combined Masonry and positivism with heterodox Muslim mysticism, notably Bektashism, a historic Turkish Sufi order, outlawed in the 1820s and organised in secret societies. Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), the main reference of Muslim mysticism, was embraced alongside Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte. What the two strands had in common was the rejection of religious authority and institutions. Masonry was equally prevalent in Egypt, where the Muslim reformer Jamal-ad-Din Al-Afghani (1838-1897) was the master of a lodge, which also embraced some of his followers, including Muhammad Abdu (1849-1905). It played an important part in the politics of the elites. The Iraqi poet, Ma`ruf al-Rusafi (d.1945) was recruited into a lodge when in Istanbul, but renounced that affiliation in statements in later life as an Iraqi and Arab nationalist.

The conspiracy which culminated in the Young Turk revolution of 1908 took place within the Italian Masonic lodge in Salonica. The legal immunities of the foreigners and their homes in that city offered protection for the military conspirators from Hamidian police and spies. In 1909 there was a counter-revolution in Istanbul, in support of the Sultan and the Islamic shari`a, led by religious figures. This was put down by army contingents from Salonica, and culminated in the deposition of the Sultan. The four member delegation which went to the Palace to inform Abdul-Hamid of his deposition were all from minority communities, including the Jew Emmanuel Karasso, a prominent Mason. Of course this fed into later conspiracy theories about Masons and Jews plotting to end the last Islamic caliphate. Karasso, in fact, was an Ottomanist, and explicitly rejected Zionist claims.

Predating Argentina itself, the Freemasons have been in existence since 1795

Ian F. Thurn

Freemasonry in Buenos Aires was started with the consecration of a “Logia Independencia” in 1795 consisting of young intellectuals mostly with higher European degrees. Some of the most prominent members were Juan José Castelli, his cousin Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Paso, Feliciano Chiclana, Matías Irigoyen, Nicolás Rodríguez Peña, Hipólito Vieytes, Juan Larrea, Domingo Matheu and Antonio Luis Berutti.

Going forward in time and leading up to May 25, in 1808 Don José de San Martín joined his first lodge, the “Logia Integridad” in Cadiz, where the Worshipful Master of the lodge was General Francisco Solano, Captain General of Andalucia. It was at this time that San Martin, who was only a junior Mason at the time, met Lord Mac Duff, a noble Scotsman, who was plotting the liberation of South America.

San Martín travelled to England where he was put into contact with Alvear, Zapiola, Berro and Guido who formed part of the Lodge Lautaro created by Francisco de Miranda, who along with Bolívar, were already fighting in Venezuela for its liberation.

Full story

Maria Guineva - May 28, 2010

Exclusive interview of Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) with Dimitar Nedkov, top Bulgarian expert on Freemasonry.

A Novinite.com special report on Freemasonry in Bulgaria READ HERE

Dimitar Nedkov was initiated into one of the first Bulgarian Blue Lodges shortly after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. He is an active participant in the restoration of Freemasonry in Bulgaria and has served as Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of Bulgaria. Nedkov is a Mason 33 Degree (the highest), co-founder of the Supreme Council, 33C of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, member of the International Academy of the Illuminati in Rome, former Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of the Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons in Bulgaria. An avid Masonic scholar, he is the author of “The Freemasons Returned to Bulgaria” (1998) and “The Third Millennium of Freemasonry” (2000). One of the founders of the Masonic magazine Svetlina (Light), he is also the web master of www.freemasonry.bg.

Recently, the expert in Freemasonry took a stab in fiction and, for the first time, wrote a novel, titled “33 The Menace Dan Brown,” unveiling the secrets and rituals of the Masons, their initiation oaths and some real events from the life of the Bulgarian Brotherhood.

Nedkov says that he wrote the book quickly but thought about its messages for 10 years. He heart the word Freemasons for the first time when he was 26 and a college student and had studied the secrets of the Brethren since then. Nedkov often explains that only after plowing deeply in the truly secret archives of the Freemasons, he realized the history of Freemasonry is the real history of the human kind. He proclaims his book a challenge to Bulgarian Freemasons and a demand for change because, as he says, the Brotherhood in Bulgaria did not happen the right way.

Full story

Temple of Man: Freemasonry, Civil Religion, and Education

Terry Melanson | 2010-05-20 - In Europe and North America, “culture war” was the socio-political preoccupation of the mid- to late-19th Century. However, the struggle for control of the educational establishment actually began a hundred years earlier during the Enlightenment.

Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel, 14 May 2010

Excerpt:

Curiously, many of its rituals and symbolism draw its roots from the Kabbalah. In the Kabbalah, the interest in a knowledge of sounds, written letters, and words was intensified. Each sign was given a magical value that had a religious meaning and a numerical relationship. For example, the Hebrew letter alef became the symbol of mankind and the abstract principle of material objects.

Most importantly, Freemasonry taught that they are building a spiritual temple in heaven. Each member regardless of his religion must fashion himself into a perfect living stone to fit into the spiritual temple of God. Indeed, this idea bears considerable similarity to the Tikkun Olam “Repairing the world” which the Kabbalists stress, is every human being’s duty. This concept is referred to as the “Common Gavel.” The common gavel serves as a metaphor for the breaking off the rough and superfluous parts of the stone, so as to be fit for the Supreme Architect’s use. Accepted Masons, are taught to make use of it for the more noble and glorious purpose of divesting their hearts and consciences of all the vices and superfluities of life: thereby fitting the Mason’s minds as living stones for that spiritual building. The Mason thus, makes himself fit for heaven by bettering himself through eliminating unwanted qualities. This spiritual lesson holds true for any Mason, regardless of his god or religious persuasion. The Kabbalists also refer to this same process as “etcafiyah” – bending the material impulses to the service of the Divine.

Tr.: Every May 1st, a procession of Freemasons take place at the Père Lachaise cemetery in front of the Communards’ Wall, to pay tribute to the martyrs of the Paris Commune.

What did I tell ya?!

April 24, 2010, by Anonymous (for henrymakow.com)

(Read French? See This Blog “The Masonic Plot Against Quebec“)

It seems counterintuitive but both Canadian nationalism and Quebec Nationalism were born in the late 1960’s out of the globalist plan for North American “free trade.” Canadian nationalism was needed to repatriate the Constitution, a prerequisite for Free Trade; while, Quebec nationalism was needed to reassure French Canadians their rights would not be jeopardized by this action.

This illustrates how the Illuminati often get what they want by appearing to seek the opposite. In Arnold Toynbee’s words in 1931: “The harder we press our attack upon the idol [of national sovereignty], the more pains we take to keep its priests and devotees in a fool’s paradise - lapped in a false sense of security which will inhibit them from taking up arms in their idol’s defense….”

Full story

David M. Kinchen, Apr 18, 2010

BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Genesis of Freemasonry’: To Understand American Freemasonry, It’s Important to Explore Its Origins in England, Scotland

Reviewed by David M. Kinchen

English historian David Harrison, PhD, explores the origins of Freemasonry in a scholarly but very readable book The Genesis of Freemasonry (Lewis Masonic, an imprint of Ian Allan Publishing Ltd., Hersham, Surrey, England, 244 pages, $31.95, available on Amazon.com and other online booksellers).

Harrison sent me a review copy of his book after reading my reviews of books on Freemasonry on this site. He suggested that it would be useful to understand the intellectual underpinnings of Freemasonry via a scholarly book like his. As I write this review, I’m watching a program on American Freemasonry on the History Channel, which has an endless fascination with the subject, along with the Illuminati and the Knights Templar.

Full story

Sincerus Renatus - 9 Mar 2010

Freemasonry forms an important part of the Golden Dawn tradition. The founders, Dr. William Wynn Westcott, Dr. William Robert Woodman and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, where all high ranking Master Freemasons. They were all also initiated into the Holy Royal Arch and belonged to several other Freemasonic Rites. They were also high ranking members of the freemasonic research lodge or Rosicrucian organisation called Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, or S.R.I.A. for short.

Their predecessors Kenneth MacKenzie (who wrote the Royal Masonic Cyclopedia), Fredrick Hockey and Adolphus F.A. Woodford, all had the same firm freemasonic foundation. And each and everyone of these English gentlemen somehow connected to the mysterious Cypher Mss. of the Golden Dawn. Therefore it is not strange that there is lots of evidence of freemasonic origins seen in the Golden Dawn tradition and its symbolism.

Full story

Rather than being ostensibly concerned with charity, helping burn victims, or “chipping” children, Grand Orient masonry is presently consumed with exerting political influence; “reconquering,” and remoulding Europe in the name of secularism and humanism; in direct opposition with religion (sects of any kind) and the Vatican in particular.

T

Lesoir.be (Martin Pascal, 17 Feb 2010)

The influence of religion upon MEPs is considered too strong

Is the religious sphere strangling the work of the European Parliament? It’s a gradual but insistent question, as ethical issues (abortion, stem cells, etc.) become the subject of debate between supporters of a secular Europe and those who would like to see tomorrow’s society moulded by their religious beliefs. For some freemasons, it is time to reconquer lost ground.

In 2008, Marcel Conradt, Freemason and parliamentary assistant to the Socialist MEP Veronique De Keyser, denounced the assault of “religious lobbies and sects” on Europe (Le cheval de Troie. Sectes et lobbies religieux à l’assaut de l’Europe, in Editions du Grand Orient de Belgique). Their objective: influence legislation and decision makers, especially MEPs. Around 80% of the national legislation of member states is developed at the European level. The author described the influence of the churches, but also cults such as Scientology or the Raelian movement, and urged the secularists to maintain a Europe that would leave God out of politics.

(more…)

Lisa Pham - February 19, 2010

A once mysterious fraternal society continues to put itself in the public eye with the opening of the completely renovated Museum of Freemasonry, which opened in a newly renovated location in Paris last week. The Grand Orient de France, the oldest and largest Masonic organization in the country, has been collecting items dating from as far back as the 1720s, around the time that Freemasonry was established in France. It now has 10,000 objects in total, including a collection of 18th-century earthenware that was recently purchased with the help of the French government.

Full story

Theresa Winslow - 02/07/10

Helen Brockmeyer just got out of a 20-year relationship, so it’s understandable that she’s been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster lately. But at least she’s got a lot to show for it.

The Annapolis resident’s relationship, or maybe a better word would be obsession, was with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - and it ended in December when she released her exhaustive book about the Austrian composer. Specifically, about his death in 1791.

Brockmeyer spent two decades and tens of thousands of dollars investigating her theory that Mozart was murdered. She even learned German and worked as an au pair in Germany so she could personally visit the composer’s stomping grounds.

The 55-year-old spurns accepted dogma about an illness claiming Mozart’s life, and instead believes his throat was slashed by Freemasons as retribution for insulting an Austrian prince. Mozart and the prince were both Freemasons, but the prince’s aristocratic standing spelled disaster for the composer when the complaint was aired, she said. Her exact reasoning is spelled out in great detail in the 452-page, textbook-size “Echoes of a Distant Crime: Resolving the Mozart Cold Case File.”

Full story

—

Interesting stuff. I, for one, will surely pick up a copy.

Through a bit of poking around at the Mozart forum and at Brockmeyer’s site, the main culprit in the alleged murder seems to be Illuminatus Prince Christian Karl von Lichnowsky. Here’s a short bio on him from my book Perfectibilists (p. 349):