Chuck Gould wrote in news:f42da1fc-950c-482b-
:


"Some Masons claim a link to the Knights Templar", but there is no
question that those Masons *could be* wrong.


http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...22488652468125
Here's an excellent Templar/Freemason/Lightbringers video from England.


Larry
--
QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
"I have been to several major Chinese cities and have seen first hand shops
crammed with obviously fake American products." - Jon Dudas, Undersecretary
of Commerce for Intellectual Property Rights.

How can they be fake? The Chinese make all "American Products" I use!

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:57:47 -0800 (PST), Chuck Gould
wrote:

On Dec 20, 7:09?pm, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:15:38 -0800 (PST), Chuck Gould





wrote:
On Dec 20, 3:39?pm, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

The two are more entwined than you might imagine.

Masons often claim to be the philosophical descendants of the Knights
Templar.

The only connection between the Knights Templar and Freemasonry is
with the Order of DeMolay which is a youth organization named after
Jacques DeMolay. It is a mentoring organization that the development
of civic awareness, leadership skills and personal responsibility.

There is a charitable organization outside the structure of
Freemasonry that is named The United Religious, Military and Masonic
Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes
and Malta which is sometimes called the Masonic Knights Templar, but
has no direct connection to Freemasonry other than the fact that the
members are all Master Masons.

There are only three degrees - Entered Apprentice. Fellow Craft and
Master Mason. ?Other "degrees" are declared, or to put it another way,
awarded depending on the Master Mason's involvement in the charitable
organization like the various Shrines or the Masonic Knights.

None of the Free Mason rituals are based on the rituals or theology of
the Knights Templar.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

From Wiki:

Despite Freemasonry's general disclaimer that no one Masonic
organization claims a direct heritage to the medieval Knights Templar,
certain degrees and orders are obviously patterned after the medieval
Order. These are best described as "commemorative orders" or degrees.
Nevertheless, in spite of the fraternity's official disclaimers, some
Masons, non-Masons and even anti-Masons insist that certain Masonic
rites or degrees originally had direct Templar influence.

And what exactly did I say? There are only three degrees in
Freemasonry - count 'em, three. Anything beyond Master Mason is
strictly commerative or social awards that have nothing to do with
Masonic degrees.

The base ritual in all lodges is exactly the same. The officers,
symbols, words, signs and signals, opening and closing ritual, pieces
of note are exactly the same. The altar is exactly the same. What is
placed on the altar is exactly the same in exaclty the same place
facing in the same direction. There are minor differences sometimes
by Grand Lodge, regional or even local, but the base ritual and ranks
of officers of the Lodge are set in stone - so to speak.

The differences involve things like meeting times or commerative
formatting but even there, it follows the same order. An example of a
"difference" between lodges would be the local lodge here in Woodstock
which is called a Moon Lodge - lodge is held on the night of a full
moon unless it's a regular Sunday in which case it is held Saturday
the night before the full moon or if Sunday is a religious holiday
(like Easter Sunday or Christmas) the day after. (Interesting note:
You can count the number of moon lodges in the US on one hand and most
of them are out west - the Woodstock lodge is the only one in New
England). The lodge up in Southbridge is a Blue Lodge - meaning it is
one of the original chartered lodges by the Grand Lodge of
Massachuetts and has no numeric designation.

The whole base ritual of all Masonic ritual is the "story" of Hiriam
Abif and the building of the Temple of Solomon. Most of it is made up
history, but it sounds good. There are certainly magical and mystical
elements to it, but what fraternity doesn't have similar features.

It has nothing to do with Knights Templar other than what I stated and
those Orders do not have anything in common with base level
Freemasonry.

American Masonic youth organizations such as the Order of DeMolay for
young men are named after the last Grand Master Templar Jacques de
Molay who was executed in the final suppression of the Templar order
in the early 1300s.

~~ snip ~~

Many other old and new organizations are called "Knights Templar".
However, organizations like the Order of the Solar Temple, Militi
Templi Scotia,or the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of
Jerusalem are in no way related to Masonic Knights Templar, and share
no relationship in either history, hierarchy, nor ritual.

Nothing I said contradicts this - these are commerative or honorary or
associative "degrees" and have nothing to do with Masonry other than a
casual relationship of having to be a Third Degree Master Mason to
participate. They bear no relationship to where the power of Masonry
lies which is with the local lodge.

In Freemasonry, there are no higher degrees than Master Mason.

Like much pertaining to various systems of belief and ritual, few
things are reducible to absolutes and discussion continues, and
continues, and continues........ :-)

"Some Masons claim a link to the Knights Templar", but there is no
question that those Masons *could be* wrong.

I would suggest you actualy talk to a Mason who has spent some time in
lodges and as an officer. I might also suggest that you stop reading
DaVinci Code.

Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.


Actually Christ is the last in a long line of Astrological Symbols that
began with the Egyptian sun god, Horus, 3000 BC. All the dates of all of
them are related to the Zodiac. Born (again) DEC 25th, 3 days after the
winter solstice when the sun (son) can be detected to move 1 degree
Northward in its battle with "evil" that drove it South for the winter.
They were all crucified just in time for the Spring Equinox (Easter) when
the sun (son) wins over "the darkness" as the days are now longer than
the nights. They were buried for 3 days, then resurrected into "Heaven",
where the Zodiacals live.

Next time you see a Christian with a fish on the back of his car, ask him
what it means. JC was the sun god in the Zodiacal age of Pisces, the two
fish. He will "reign" until the next Zodiacal age, the Age of Aquarius,
the Waterbearer who brings us the spring rains every year.

http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/...s/zodiac_clock
.gif
It's hard to find a good Zodiac on the net. They are usually highly
stylized, for religious reasons, and don't show you a good clock like
this one. Notice the first (beginning) is Virgo, The Virgin. All the
Sun gods were born of virgins. There's a whole list of them between
Horus and Jesus across the planet's northern hemisphere, of course. The
solar year is one trip around the clock in the clockwise direction. The
ages, however, go BACKWARDS. Notice the time of Jesus occurs at the
beginning of Pisces. Zodiacal Ages last about 2250 years, so JC has a
ways to go, beyond our lifetimes, so we won't be here to see what
happens, "at the end of the age", so the clerics don't have to explain to
us why nothing happens for another hundred years.

This is a great time of year to see the Astrological birth of these sun
gods. On Dec 22, the "Three Kings" follow the "Star in the East" and
point to the Son...er, ah, SUN, there, that's better. You can see this
wonderful even EVERY Christmas eve for yourself if you haul your ass out
of bed a little before the sunrise that blots out the stars. The "Three
Kings" are the belt of the constellation Orion that's easier to see at
midnight directly over your head all winter. Orion, the warrior:
http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/astro/...es/orion_l.gif
has a belt of 3 stars across his waist. These are the "Three Kings". In
mid-December, if you look at the "Three Kings" upright like this picture,
and line them up in your mind from right to left, they point to Sirius,
the "Star In The East", at sunrise (or all night if you want a better
look). Sirius is the brightest star in the sky by a wide margin....a
marker in the sky.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/...8cb7917a_o.jpg
...and here it all lines up on Dec 22, the Winter Solstice, which gave
the ancients a point of reference so they could detect the 1 degree
northern movement of the sun, completely ignoring the reason why, on Dec
25th when all the sun gods were born of Virgos whos name, like the
Zodiacal sign for Virgo, all began with M....no coincidence, either.

http://www.icstars.com/CDO/photos/CD...n_11_10_04.jpg
Here's an actual photo on Dec 22nd from some amateur astronomer's nice-
looking observatory. Best picture of it that's real I've seen. Now you
can sleep in on Dec 22, WHICH IS TOMORROW MORNING!

No matter what your religious persuasion, you should really see the movie
"Zeitgeist", which gives a great explanation of all this Zodiacal
nonsense as one chapter of the larger movie about elite humans having
control over "lesser" humans.....until those humans get fed up and
something really bloody happens, over and over, in history.

The "Cross", that's so important is the Zodiacal Cross, like you see
behind Jesus he
http://z.about.com/d/gaylife/1/0/v/8/jesus.JPG
All the old likenesses of what they think he might have looked like in
their mind's eye, have Zodiac crosses behind him because the Sun...er,
ah, Son...is the center of the Zodiac. The cross part depicts the two
Equinoxes and Solstices as the sun travels through the 12 Zodiacal
constellations in a year, whos 12 months is also no coincidence. For a
long time, Church crosses had zodiacal rings and looked like this
zodiacal measuring instrument:
http://www.crichtonmiller.com/Copy%2...s%20measuring%
20Draconis.jpg
but I suspect too many people were seeing a resemblance in the last
hundred or so years, so they dumped the Zodiac Ring to reduce the
embarrassing questions about it.

Part 1 of Zeitgeist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeZB2EsPqGE
shows you this information all in one place in 3 youtube parts.

The movie is fascinating....

Larry
--


Larry, why try to make a mountain out of a mole hill?

Here's a more simplified version on who Jesus is:

Matthew 16:13-16 (KJV)

13When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his
disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

14And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some,
Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

15He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

16And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God.

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:15:38 -0800 (PST), Chuck Gould
wrote:

On Dec 20, 3:39?pm, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

The two are more entwined than you might imagine.


As Christ and Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, et al, are
entwined.
--
John H

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:59:51 -0800 (PST), Tim wrote:

On Dec 20, 8:15*pm, Chuck Gould wrote:
On Dec 20, 3:39?pm, John H. wrote:

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

The two are more entwined than you might imagine.

Masons often claim to be the philosophical descendants of the Knights
Templar. During the Crusades, the Templars literally guarded the
Temple in Jerusalem, and were additionally responsible for the safety
of pilgrims and, believe it or not, banking. People who wanted to
travel from Europe to Jerusalem on pilgrimage were often reluctant to
carry large sums of money on their person en route. There were too
many *opportunities to be waylaid by bandits, etc. So if the Herring
family wanted to travel from Paris to Jerusalem, for example, you
could go to the local office of the Templars and desposit, let's say,
a chest of 2000 gold coins. You would be given a receipt and you would
carry that with you to the Holy Land. Upon arrival in Jerusalem, you
would turn the receipt into the Templars and receive 2000 gold from
the Templars depository there, less of course a "carrying charge" of
perhaps 20 percent. Between the interest charged for banking services
and the number of people who simply died or were murdered along the
road to Jerusalem and never showed up to collect anything, the
Templars eventually got so rich that they were loaning money to
European kings.

Anyway, while hanging around Jerusalem and guarding the temple the
Knights Templar became aware of an entire school of Christianity that
had been fairly well stamped out in Europe. Gnosticism. Gnosticism was
one of two predominate forms of Christianity in the first couple of
centuries AD. Sometime around the year 300 or so, the 20-30 Christian
"gospels" were examined by a committee and four were deemed worthy to
be included in an official collection of religious documents that
would thereafter be called The Bible. None of the gnostic texts were
included, and before long gnostic groups were being
persecuted as "heretics" by the othodox church. Several attempts were
made to locate and burn every copy of the gnostic gospels, but there
were successful attempts made to hide some of them away. (see "The
Dead Sea Scrolls" as one example). Some of the gnostic texts were
found in Jerusalem during the Crusades.

Many of the Knights Templar adopted gnostic Christianity, and some of
the Masonic traditions were supposedly inspired by gnostic literature.

Hmmm.....


I always thought they traced their roots back to the master builder of
Solomans Temple, by a guy named Huram (Hiram) [1 kings chapt. 5-7]

Where he supposedly got the name 'Hiram Abiff' I don't have a clue.
And actually the biblical acct of "Hiram" is a bit confusing. King
Hiram of Tyre, that sent Solomon the materials for the temple? or
Hiram the master builder who was from Tyre and was the son of a widow?

Now I don't really know but, When Julia Howe was visiting a Union army
camp, and was inspired to write the words to the Battle Hymn of the
Republic, I sincerely doubt if Freemasonry was really on her mind.

Some rationality, at last.
--
John H

GOOD ONE !!!

"John H." wrote in message
...
...but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all. This is
a beautiful rendition. If the pictures are bothersome, shut the monitor
off!

http://www.trdaniel.com/Battle%20Hymn/index.htm
--
John H

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:37:03 -0500, Gene Kearns
wrote:

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry penned the following well
considered thoughts to the readers of rec.boats:

John H. wrote in
m:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

I have attended Blue Lodges in most of the states East of the
Mississippi and I have NEVER heard "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"
played. FWIW, I have never heard it played in any appendant body,
either.

Yes, but wasn't the one posted a good rendition?
--
John H

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:00:00 -0500, Gene Kearns
wrote:

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:51:21 -0500, John H. penned the following well
considered thoughts to the readers of rec.boats:

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:37:03 -0500, Gene Kearns
wrote:

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry penned the following well
considered thoughts to the readers of rec.boats:

John H. wrote in
m:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

I have attended Blue Lodges in most of the states East of the
Mississippi and I have NEVER heard "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"
played. FWIW, I have never heard it played in any appendant body,
either.


Yes, but wasn't the one posted a good rendition?

I didn't listen and....

....well, I guess you reminded me that I have a project.

I had this really great idea to wire the deck and pipe Sirius from the
computer out there via the stereo amplifier for listening. Problem is
that now I don't have a neat way to "unplug" the stereo and use the PC
speakers. I'd have to punch the "go" button and then stand out in the
rain to listen....

I use a JVC receiver for my computer sound. I just plug into the
accessories jack on the back. The receiver is also a CD player, so it gets
used a lot. If I wanted to do what you're doing, I'd get a receiver with
outputs for two sets of speakers, which the one I've got doesn't have.

Here's a link to the same song by the same high school choirs showing the
kids doing the singing.

http://tinyurl.com/35plpm



--
John H

Tim wrote in news:e96f7861-68ca-49dc-a8a0-
:

Larry, why try to make a mountain out of a mole hill?

Here's a more simplified version on who Jesus is:

Matthew 16:13-16 (KJV)

13When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his
disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

14And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some,
Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

15He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

16And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God.




If you want to find out the truth about any product.....do you REALLY
only read the company's website and believe everything its salesmen write
or say, or are you independent and free thinking enough to dare venture
out and find truth on your own?

How many times has the Bible been re-written to suit the salesmen's
agenda at the moment? KJV is, what, the 12th or 13th edition? It's
loaded with errors and guesses and outright fraud.

Larry
--
QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
"I have been to several major Chinese cities and have seen first hand
shops crammed with obviously fake American products." - Jon Dudas,
Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property Rights.

How can they be fake? The Chinese make all "American Products" I use!

Gene Kearns wrote in
:

Good and informative post, Larry.


Thank you. The Zeitgeist movie on YouTube free is a fascinating look at
our history and the future the elite have planned for us.

Larry
--
QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
"I have been to several major Chinese cities and have seen first hand shops
crammed with obviously fake American products." - Jon Dudas, Undersecretary
of Commerce for Intellectual Property Rights.

How can they be fake? The Chinese make all "American Products" I use!