John Dickie, author of The order. A Global History of Freemason Poweranalyzes and demystifies the importance of the movement throughout the centuries and reviews the list of notables who have militated in its ranks.
The writer assures that its creation proves “the trust and pride” that men showed towards the United States and that many cosmonauts belonged to this secret society created in Scotland in the 18th century.
“It makes an ironic sense, but it is a fact that silk flags (of the same material as Masonic shawls) were carried by astronauts on their space missions and are now displayed in Masonic museums,” Dickie said.
To the author, among other books, of the best seller Cosa Nostra (2006), it is not shocking either to write almost 500 highly documented pages of some lodges whose foundational key lies precisely in secrecy.
«It is a paradox generated by themselves and by external people. Their secrets haven’t really been secrets. People were afraid of them, especially the Catholic Church, because they thought they wanted to deceive others and that they harbored sinister arcana. When John Coustos, a 40-year-old jeweler from London, was tortured by the Portuguese Inquisition in 1743, he revealed everything, but his captors did not believe that he was telling them the truth, because the so-called terrible secrets were so banal,” he says. the.
Dickie claims that the great occult secret of the Freemasons is that “we are all going to die.” The three great Masonic degrees or levels are summed up, he continued, in “being a good person, trying for a better world and that death is something very serious to reflect on. That’s all”.
The Scottish writer and historian believes that the element that unites the brotherhood is not so much the set of secrets as the dark ceremonial that surrounds it and “the feeling of union”. He considers, however, that the rites, which include the tearing of clothes, delivery of symbols, kneeling or swearing, “should not be taken literally. If we did so, we would have to understand that the communion of Catholics would be properly speaking cannibalism. And no one thinks of such a thing.”
The writer, who is a professor of Italian Studies at University College London, maintains that the confrontation between the Church and the Freemasons has its roots in the 18th century, a time of important religious struggles.
«To understand Freemasonry, it must be considered a religion of the second order, because its members can belong to any of them. You can’t be an atheist. Death is a fundamental element of religions and Masonic rituals include its symbols, as well as those of the resurrection. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell said: ‘Religion revolves around the fear of death’. Masonic as well.”
The historian believes that the great error of Pope Pius IX was to give the Jesuits “a crucial role” in his fight against the Freemasons by putting them in command in 1850 of the magazine Catholic Citya publication designed to spread the message of the Holy See among the largest possible number of readers.
«Because the Jesuits thus became the number one enemy of the Freemasons. This gave the latter a lot of visibility and gave them greater importance than they had as a secret society. The Catholic Church was, at the time, traumatized by revolutions in Europe that were calling secular values into question. The Jesuits’ response was to blame the Masons for all the ills of the world and invent a conspiracy. Freemasonry was delighted with the relevance it was given », he says.
Dickie’s book puts on the table the contradictions of the universal values of Freemasonry with the sometimes brutal actions of its members. For example, US President Harry S. Truman, a Freemason, ordered the dropping of the first atomic bomb and caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
“The Freemasons were crucial to the British Empire and to all the crimes that were committed. They also supported an anti-Semitic program long before Hitler came to power. There are many more examples, such as the division by social levels, its anti-African tradition in the United States or the exclusion of women. However, Freemasonry takes many principles from the Enlightenment: modern society, transparency, equality between people, human rights. It is a huge paradox », she details.
Dickie, in his book, offers many names of historical figures who have belonged to the lodges of half the world. He mentions Garibali, Bolívar, Washington, Conan-Doyle, Gothe, Oscar Wilde, Sibelius, Peter Sellers, Newton, Oliver Hardy, Walt Disney, Buffalo Bill, Nat King Cole, Mozart, Haydn… “His membership is more than proven. The problem is whether they were Masons because they were important or they were important because they were Masons. Freemasons love to brag about them, but it is clear that Winston Churchill, for example, did not have time to attend the required meetings. But he was an exception, that’s why he let his name be used as one of his members. The cases of Mozart or Hayden were different, the freemasonry It was part of their enlightened culture. His mission in life was to follow the objectives of Freemasonry ».
Freemasonry, according to the British, has influenced movements and groups as disparate as the Ku Klux Klan or the mafia. “Freemasonry is everything in the history of the Western world. Most people think that it was everywhere conspiring, but it is just an organizational model, a brotherhood that is made up of local cells, the lodges, that form a larger network. This idea of interconnectedness is very contagious and that is why it was adopted by criminal groups such as the Sicilian Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan and, why not, by the Mormon Church or the Rotarians, who have imitated many of their rituals. They all have Masonic DNA.”
However, Dickie cannot guarantee that Francisco Franco – “I have not found him, although there are people who support him” – was a Freemason, although his brother Ramón tried and was not admitted. The writer thinks that the dictator firmly believed in the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy.
“He was a conspiracy theorist,” he laboriously said this last word in Spanish because he remembers that it doesn’t exist in English, but it sums up a vital attitude very well. “Franco represented the culmination of a long tradition of confrontation between secular and religious values, very important in Spain, Italy and France at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th,” he points out.
The historian recalls that, after the French Revolution, the values had been reversed, which gave rise to modern conspiracy theories to explain the change. “The idea that there was a cultured elite pulling the strings of traditional society, that was Freemasonry, becomes very contagious in Europe and merges with Catholic anti-Semitism. This is how the false image of a Jewish plutocracy that manages capital and wants to undermine society together with the Freemasons originates. It is an idea that is adopted by the extreme right, like Hitler, and the extreme left, like the Bolsheviks. Franco took on that tradition, because he was the most Catholic of European dictators. He considered himself the heir to those culture wars and became the biggest proponent of the conspiracy theory.”
Dickie, who makes it clear that he is not a Mason, gives a compelling reason for not having entered a lodge. «It could not be because I am an atheist and to be a Mason you have to believe in God, in a supreme being. My grandfather, on the other hand, was. For him ethics was very important. One thing that is shocking when one of its members is asked what Freemasonry means to them is that their eyes begin to water and you realize the importance of the feeling of belonging to a lodge, that they are trying to achieve something in life. life and the metaphor of belonging to a group with values similar to those ancient masons that built churches and cathedrals in the Middle Ages. They have committed many hypocrisies, but I have respect for them.
Dickie was confident in his answers at the Ateneo Madrid, where this interview took place, a building full of Masonic symbols. For all questions he has an exact answer, except when asked about how it is possible that, if symbology is essential for Freemasons, the English pub where the Grand Lodge was created in 1717 -Goose and Gridiron- was demolished and not they prevented it. “I imagine it will be for a reason as ridiculous to Masons as its real estate value,” laughs the man who points to Henry Ford, William Lever, the pioneer of industrial detergents, or Cecil Rhodes, the world mining magnate, as Masons copies.
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