The symbols are on the currency. The handshakes are in the halls of parliament. The lodges are on the high street of every town in the western world. Freemasonry has never been fully secret — it has simply relied on the assumption that most people wouldn't bother to look closely, and that those who did could be dealt with swiftly.
Three degrees of initiation in the Blue Lodge. Entered Apprentice. Fellow Craft. Master Mason. And above that, for those invited to continue — 33 degrees of the Scottish Rite, each one unlocking something the last didn't. At the lower degrees, it's handshakes and charity dinners. At the upper degrees, the nature of the brotherhood changes. The rituals draw from Kabbalah, from Hermeticism, from ceremonial magic traditions that predate Christianity. The God of the lower lodge — the Great Architect of the Universe — is, according to Albert Pike's own writings in Morals and Dogma, revealed at the highest degrees to be Lucifer. The Bringer of Light. Pike called him the angel of light who has been misrepresented by the church and reclaimed by those who know better.
The roster of Freemasons reads like a directory of the men who built the modern world — 14 US presidents, the founders of nations, the architects of constitutions, the judges and generals whose decisions shaped the last three centuries. Whether the brotherhood is a philanthropic gentlemen's club or the organizational skeleton of a parallel power structure depends entirely on which degree you've reached and what you've been told.
This is the collection for everyone who understands that the checkerboard floor isn't just a design choice.
