What People Are Commenting
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Deposition of an Ex-Rosicrucian
The opinions expressed in this section - What People Are Commenting - do not necessarily express those of TIA
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I decided to send you a condensed version of the long letter I wrote concerning my membership in AMORC (Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis) in the hope that it might help you to determine whether or not Pope Pius IX was ever a Freemason. You probably already know most of what I will tell you, as all may be found in publications, if one knows where to look.
I was a member from 1957 to 1973, from age 10 years old. My parents had joined when I was about three. We continued with our Lutheran Church; however, a Rosicrucian interpretation was given to everything. It has taken me a long time to sort out truth from untruth. I have been a traditional leaning Catholic for about a decade.
In the first place, literature written by active Freemasons is decipherable, however, not trustworthy in the ordinary sense of the word. There is a double meaning to everything. Basically, it is a sort of simplified and Westernized Hinduism, with kundalini meditation, a Hindu view of the formation of the material world and Hindu occult practices of healing, psychic phenomena, amorality, the reconciliation of opposites and a hierarchical view of society and the State. It is all about man through his own efforts realizing the soul which is a part of God as a current in a light bulb is connected to the power plant.
I am going to start this elucidation with a publication called The Broken Cross by Compton in pdf. because if one is able to recognize one lie, one may recognize another which is similar. Part II starting at page 29: Concerning Roncalli’s’ election as Pope John XXIII in Turkey, Roncalli feels isolated and has a “vision” of his “Master.” This is similar to Spencer Lewis’ vision upon leaving for France after WW I where he was initiated Imperator of AMORC. Now, this is the difference. Lewis never told the particulars of his Initiation, only that the garden and part of the house was damaged from bombs and that it involved a ritual. Right away I suspect the authenticity of the Roncalli account, as no sincere member of Freemasonry or AMORC would tell anyone not their superior of the particulars of any initiation rite. So how could Roncalli have written this description of his “initiation” into Rosicrucianism?
The description of his “Master” fits that of most other “mystics.” One may easily be led through auto-suggestion to a suggested image which is to be meditated upon and that person staged later. A couple of incidents illustrate this.
AMORC sends weekly lessons to its members, covering philosophy and exercises in metaphysics, from magnets to meditating in order to see auras. They interject sentences which influence the member. One such sentence is “When the student is ready, the Master appears.” Interspersed through random lessons will be a description of an “ideal Master,”
I read my parents monographs and they were written in the 1920’s-40’s. They described this ideal Master as having slightly slanted eyes, a slight beard, pointed at the tip, a dignified bearing and a round face. One day at the local Lodge, a woman exclaimed excitedly that she had met her “Master” and it was Spencer Lewis, the very image she had envisioned. Another artist drew Spencer Lewis’ eye as the All Seeing Eye, which stayed on the Shekinah, or triangular table in the center of the temple for a long time. People expected that I would identify my “Master” at the next Conclave in San Jose, California (called Rallies, back then).
Well, when I was “graced” to meet that expected “Master,” I did not recognize him as such. In fact, my “Master” never appeared, because by 1960 the new Imperator was Spencer’s son, Ralph M. Lewis (related to Lewis of Lewis & Clark, by the way), and he did not look like the “ideal” to me, though he did to members who had recent monographs! So that was one case of the brainwashing not working. Word got out. The Order promptly forbade Colombes (loosely based on Grecian vestal virgins, Spanish name for dove) to read older monographs.
Other forms of their brainwashing worked quite well. By the time I went to Lutheran High, I was interpreting Scripture according to AMORC. Jesus was not God, He was God-Realized. He was one of many Avatars, along with Spencer Lewis. Jesus did not die on the Cross but went into suspended animation through the occult powers He had learned in India during the silent years of His youth.
I have two little gold crosses with rubies in the center [which I am trying to figure out what to do with, as I believe I have thrown out all other Hindu-AMORC related stuff]. I would wear one as a necklace to Lutheran High. A girl questioned its meaning. I promptly said the ruby stood for the “Heart of Jesus” (there is another story to that for some other time). AMORC said it was a rose, the rose cross Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, which stood for the evolving soul which the trials of life refine. No Savior, here, except man.
It reminds me of the John Paul II Shrine, Knights of Columbus, Chapel. Mosaics of Saints abound and the Altar features the twisted “broken cross” of Paul VI with a vial of JP II’s blood in it. One does not know if it is Christ’s crucifixion or JP II’s sufferings that gained him this mosaic depiction of heaven. It can be taken two ways. This is the essence of The Order. One interpretation for the uninitiated and one for the initiates. Enter Vatican II.
The description of Roncalli’s initiation does not fit any I had ever seen and. as Colombe, I had access to all the Temple degrees (12 of them, plus three “Levels”) if they needed a Colombe to light the candles and incense the temple before class or lecture. I have heard that there is a pentagonal room in the Scottish Rite Lodge, however. Also, Freemasons have a Rose Cross degree which people often mistake for Rosicrucians. I am unfamiliar with their ceremonies.
There is a reference to a book which describes all the degrees of Freemasonry in Walsh’s Phillip II, by the way. I can get it for you if you do not already know of it. Walsh’s book is timely to read as it gives an accurate Catholic account of the Protestant Revolt times, in the news today.
“Roncalli” is alleged to describe the effect of his “initiation” giving super human strength. Simple hyper-ventilation can give one a feeling of super-human strength. A flaming sword is described in the ceremony. Anti-Catholic sentences were dispersed throughout the monographs. Tricks were played upon the members. One older member replaced a rose bud with an open rose during an experiment which convinced the entire room that they had mystically opened the rose with their own thoughts. (I peeked and saw the fellow replace it. Typical teenager!)
One of the practices was to do a sort of modified yoga sun salutation breathing exercise every morning, facing the East and honoring “the God of your heart” and saying a little prayer for the “Beloved Imperator.”
One story was told of a knight who would find the Highest Virtue. He was ordered by his “Master” to take his horse and gallop along a path at a certain time. When he saw a rose laying across the path, he was to unsheathe his sword. An innocent man would run across the road just then. He was to behead him. Then he realized that the highest virtue was blind obedience to his “Master.” I read that in 1973 in the Fourth Degree and quit the Order! I had had enough amorality.
The Blacks in the Order never got the sentences about the “superior Aryan Race,” which was touted as mystical superiority. Of course, Spencer was a member of the Aryans. The Whites did. The Catholic Spanish-speaking group never got the anti-Catholic sentences. I asked them. But the Protestant members did.
It was claimed in The Broken Cross that Christian Rosencrantz founded the Order of the Rose and the Cross sometime after he was born in 1378. Any AMORC Neophyte knew that this was a mythic entity, no such person ever existed. AMORC was able to get the story in the Encyclopedia “for the uninitiated ‘ignorant mundane world’” as they were too ignorant to accept an esoteric beginning of the Order, so a man had to be made up for it. This shows that it is a false story.
One will never find a membership list for those who have left the Order. My name was erased from everything in 1973. It is an ancient Egyptian custom, to efface those no longer for a conquering Pharaoh. Egyptology was all the rage in 1920. AMORC made up a nice ancestry for itself.
In reading the New Rite of Ordination, certain phrases like “worthy-mystery-benefit of mankind-brotherhood of man-brothers” and the stripping away so that double meanings are easy to apply, reminds me somewhat of an AMORC ritual. So does the new baptismal rite for adults. Population control was advocated. So was the equality of all religions. Androgynous philosophy and clothing was encouraged. When I read the statement on religious liberty I immediately recognized it as of The Order.
Rasputin, Julius Caesar, Descartes were all heroes and the Kings and Czars were bad. There were a number of Jewish people and Catholics in the Order; few Lutherans and no Baptists. It struck me that Pope Benedict XVI was extremely upset when he lifted the excommunications from the SSPX Bishops to find that Williamson was caught on video denying the number of Jews killed during WW II. There is such a strong favoritism of Zionism in Novus Ordo. It makes me wonder if the Vatican is not held hostage to some sort of Bank of Zion.
Well, that is the summary. Spencer Lewis knew President Harry Truman. We little people had no idea of the deep intrigues that go on in the Order, though sometimes we would get wind of things. When Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Robert Kennedy, the President’s brother, was caught, a Rally was going on, and Ralph M. Lewis had to be evacuated as there was an “assassination threat” against him. It may have been staged, to get the members minds off the fact that 3 months of AMORC monographs were found in Sirhan’s apartment. He requested them. The Order said all they knew was that he had paid his membership. This story was in the LA Times. …
Most Lodges today are financially disconnected with the Grand Lodge Orient today, I am told, and are nothing more than do-gooder organizations. But probably not all, and they are recruiting again. But the philosophical perversion is still there plus the dangerous occult practices and auto-suggestion to influence people.
We were taught well to subvert the Lutheran Church; how to influence a group to our way of thinking, how to cast doubt, how to try and recruit. My entire family of my generation, except for myself and two grown children, are all influenced by the New Age or are atheists. This is the legacy of my Freemason grandfather, one Uncle and Aunt and AMORC parents. I only have one cousin who goes to a Novus Ordo church. So we must have been successful, along with society in general.
Now I try and get them back to Christianity with little headway. If it were not for one Tridentine Mass I attended in Jr. High and the older rite of Confirmation for myself and children in 1981, we never would have sought the Truth. Even so, it was “a devil” to eradicate that occult influence. It took a long time. But, Our Lady always triumphs.
A reader who asked that neither her name nor initials
be placed at the end of this letter