Thread by @HMEnglund

CHAPTER V
OUR CONNECTION WITH THE KABBALISTS

P.95f
"But this word 'Acception' is worthy of study. It has become obsolete, and its meaning is not quite understood now. It is somewhat ambiguous, for it means 'Reception,' but it referred more to the things RECEIVED by the Candidate

than to the admission of the Candidate himself. As a matter of fact, it was simply and English rendering of the Hebrew word KABBALAH, which means 'Reception,' although, strangely enough, no Masonic scholar has ever noticed it.
After the Jews were expelled from Spain, at the

close of the fifteenth century, many of them emigrated to the Levant on the one hand and to Holland and England on the other. But wherever they went they took their Kabbalistic lore too. They were stripped of their wordly possessions, but the secret treasures of the Kabbalah none

could take away from them.
During the following century the Jews sunk to a very low condition socially: they were a sort of pariahs who seldom rose above the position of petty traders and artisans. Yet some Christians were willing enough to learn from them. Happily the

increased zeal for the study of the Bible in the original languages, which was a result of the Protestant Reformation, created a demand for Greek and Hebrew teachers. This placed the Jewish scholars in an advantageous position, and this, in turn, helped to promote the spread of

Kabbalistic ideas and of Masonry among Christians.
Of course in Spain, owing to the Moorish conquest, there were quite a number of Christians who knew Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek; and therefore it is not surprising that some of them were admitted to a knowledge of the Kabbalah,

as, for instance, Raymond Lully. But when the Spanish Jews came to England a strange development took place and Kabbalism became the parent of Freemasonry. The transition from the one to the other is not recorded in history, probably because it was gradual, but there is abundant

evidence for it.
The Jews were expelled from Spain soon after the fall of Granada at the close of the fifteenth century; but before that date England seems to have had its Raymond Lully in Adelard of Bath [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelard_o…]. For when he went to Spain, about 1130,

he must have come in contact with the Kabbalists, for he was an orientalist of no mean order.
The first occurence of the word 'Freemason' is in 1375, and it is in connection with the Masons' Company, which we saw was the patron of Masonry under the name of 'The Acception.'

[Insert from Douglas Knoop's, "The Genesis of Freemasonry", Manchester University Press, 1947:

"Masoun, in the form mazon, occurs as early as the twelfth century,' but was perhaps used most frequently in the fourteenth. In the York Minster Masons' ordinances of 1370, which were

written in English, the word used is 'masonn' [? Msoun].

The first occurrence known to us of the word 'freemason' is in the City of London Letter-Book H., under date of 9 August 1376, when the Common Council was elected from the mysteries instead of from the wards: an entry

showing Thos. Wrek and John Lesnes as 'fre masons' is struck out and replaced by another showing Wrek, Lesnes and two others as 'masons'. From this time onwards the word 'freemason' occurs in various documents, though never as frequently as 'mason'. In the two earliest versions

of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, the Regius and Cooke MSS. of circa 1400, the word used is always 'mason', the term 'freemason' not occurring at all."

phoenixmasonry.org/genesis_of_fre…]

It cannot be mere coincidence that, fifteen years after the first occurence of the word Freemason, the Regius MS., the oldest of our Masonic Charges, was composed by an unknown hand.
Bro. J. S. M. Ward says about the Regius MS.: 'At first it was taken for granted that these

Charges referred exclusively to operatives, but closer investigation convinced such eminent Freemasons as Gould and Albert Pike that there was much which could only be described as speculative and only capable of comprehension by fairly intellectual men.'
We have already

referred to the Jews at Rhode Island in 1658. They were Speculative Masons. The record of their doings is in English, implying that those men were English-speaking Jews. They had come from Holland, but their names show that they had originally come from Spain; that they were

Sephardim; in other words, cultured Jews.
And we may note incidentally that the oldest Synagogue in London is that of the so-called 'Spanish Jews.'
In this connection we should bear in mind that Holland, and the whole of the Netherlands (whence they are said to have

emigrated to the American Colonies), had before been under Spanish rule.
Now, the significant thing about those Jews is that they 'conferred the Degrees of Maçonrie' AFTER A SYNAGOGUE SERVICE; for it implies, not merely that they were religious Jews, but that their Masonry

must have been of a type to be compatible with the sacredness of the Sabbath and consonant with the Jewish religion; in other words, Kabbalistic. Bro. Songhurst tells us that 'the Masters' Lodges' at the beginning of the eighteenth century also used to meet on Sundays.

Of course we know nothing of the doings of those men, when in Lodge, any more than we know about 'The Acception.' But Aubrey in 1691, who confessedly was a cowan, and all the earlier writers who referred to the Freemasons, assert that they had secrets and mysteries which could

not be divulged and that the outside world knew nothing of these. It will not assist us, therefore, to inquire as to the nature of those secrets, and if we find anything it will be indirectly and way of inference.
An American Mason wanted to ignore the record at Rhode Island

because he could not conceive Masonry prior to 1717. But the original document was traced, and neither its age nor style could be questioned. It had every characteristic of truth; it was written with no ulterior purpose; it harmonised with all the facts of the case; while

incidentally, and quite undesignedly, it accounted for the evident Hebrew influence in Freemasonry.
We have already seen that, in 1784, Bro. General Rainsford, as the representative of English Freemasonry in Paris, admitted that the word Harodim, used in England for a Degree

in which the Candidates were all Installed Masters, had reference to the Kabbalah, and indicated 'the Mount of Jehova'; that is, a Supreme Degree, for 'Mount' signifies a climax.
Dermott mentions a contemporary Jewish Lodge of 'Masons,' and quotes the Prayer which used to be

offered up in it. This prayer is of the highest evidental value, reflecting the view which the Jews of 200 years ago took of 'Masonry,' confirming all that has been said thus far as to its origin. We shall give it here, and afterwards comment on the words:

'Oh Lord, excellent art Thou in Thy Truth; and there is nothing great in comparison with Thee; for Thine is the Praise, from all the works of Thy hands, for evermore.
'Enlighten us, we beseech Thee, in the true knowledge of Masonry; by the sorrows of Adam, Thy first-made-man;

by the blood of Abel, the Holy One; by the righteousness of Seth in whom Thou wast well pleased; by Thy covenant with Noah, in whose architecture Thou wast pleased to save the seed of Thy beloved. Number us not among those that know not Thy statutes, nor the Divine Mysteries of

the Secret Kabbalah.
'But grant, we beseech Thee, that the Ruler of this Lodge may be endued with Knowledge and Wisdom, to instruct and explain his Sacred Mysteries, as our Holy Brother, Moses, did in his Lodge, to Aaron, to Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron and the

Seventy Elders of Israel.
'And grant that we may understand, learn, and keep all Thy Statutes and Commandments of the Lord, and His Holy Mystery, pure and undefiled, unto our lives' end.—AMEN, Lord.'
The prayer is so characteristically Jewish, and at the same time so

thoroughly Masonic, that its genuineness is beyond question. The composer, whoever he was, was well versed in the Theosophy of the Kabbalists; certainly he was not Dermott, who could never have used certain Hebraisms that occur, reflecting peculiar Jewish ideas, such as 'Thy

beloved' for the 'faithful men,' and 'AMEN, Lord,' which implies a knowledge of the Jewish forms: Amen being a prayer, the Being to whom it was addressed had to be mentioned at the close as at the beginning. Dermott did not preserve this prayer for any special purpose; he simply

handed it down for what it might be worth; but it seems to have been traditional.
In this Prayer we see that the Masons who used it deprecate being numbered among those who have no knowledge of the Law 'nor the Divine Mysteries of the Secret Kabbalah.' This is said

undesignedly, without any intention to put us on the scent; yet it verifies our main thesis, enabling us to trace our decent as heirs of the Kabbalists.
After the ejaculation: 'Oh Lord, excellent art Thou in Thy Truth,' there is a petition for Light as means of obtaining

'the true knowledge of Masonry,' and this is based on four distinct pleas: 'By the sorrows of Adam ... by the blood of Abel ... by the righteousness of Seth ... and by the covenant with Noah.' The last, Noah, is referred to as an Architect; that is to say, a 'Mason.'

Quite naturally there is a clause about 'the Ruler of this Lodge,' the W.M. [Worshipful Master], called 'Ruler' because in Hebrew the Installed Masters were called Harodim, 'Rulers,' as we have already seen. He stood for the first Sephira, Kithar, 'Crown'; but now they pray that

he may have 'Knowledge and Wisdom,' viz. the first and second Sephiroth—Hokmah and Binah—to instruct the Brethren under him, and 'explain their secret Mysteries,' by which is meant, not merely what he says in opening and closing the Lodge, nor even the words uttered in making

Masons, but the exposition of the secret doctrine which used to be imparted for the improvement of Masons; in other words, the unwritten elements of the Kabbalah."

P. 95-104 from the book
Antiquity of the Holy Royal Arch
by F. de P. Castells (1867-1935)

(ISBN 0766155722)

Free reading and downloading:
archive.org/details/Antiqu…

The article "Did the Romans Create both Christianity and Islam?" could be found with the DuckDuckGo search: "romans created islam".

But it had now been deleted. Here is the link to a backup version:

web.archive.org/web/2017032208…

Lastly,
DID THE ROMANS CREATE BOTH CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM AND TRANSFORM JUDAISM?

"The Hebrew Bible is not a 'Christian' text, and especially not 'ecclesiastical'. The Old Testament came into being over a period of perhaps a thousand years: The Song of Deborah in Judges chapter 5,

probably the oldest text in the Old Testament, may perhaps date to the 12th century BC and the probably youngest, the book of Daniel, seems at least in its final state to belong in the 160th century BC. The entire Hebrew Bible is thus created in an environment that is not the

least bit Christian.
But - and this is important to point out - neither is it 'Jewish' in the sense one normally puts in the word today. Classical, rabbinic Judaism gradually emerged in the last centuries before the beginning of our era, after the return from the Babylonian

exile in the 5th century BC, and it became the dominant Jewish religious direction only after the failed revolts against Roman supremacy in 60s-70s and 130s AD. When the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed (for the second time) by the Romans in 70 AD the old temple-centered

sacrificial religion disappeared, and step by step the Jewish religious life was reorganized with prayer and interpretation of the law as central points - it is this reorganization, the rabbinic, which eventually became what is today seen as Judaism - where the huge debating text

collection Talmud in many ways is at least as important as or even more important than the Hebrew Bible in practice."

Translated page 13 of Gud är ett verb [God is a verb] by Ola Wikander (2014)

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