Hi Richard,
Richard Thomas wrote:
Thanks for the info. Whether its new world order or new order of the ages it doesn't sound good to me though.
Depends what you
want to believe: I'm no expert on American history but it makes complete sense to me that the designers of the seal for a new country would use a motto that reflected their idealism and hopes for achieving a new society free of what they perceived as the burden of undemocratic monarchy.
Richard Thomas wrote:
In my column when I used the word "Illuminati" I wasn't referring to the historical group, its a catchall phrase people use to refer to a network of secret societies many believe (myself included) pretty much rule the world.
OK, understood that you weren't referring to the historical group.
As for the world being run by a network of secret societies, the advocates of this idea that I have come across (present company excluded

) are
severely lacking in credibility. If they had respectable academic qualifications, or weren't religious fundamentalists, didn't cynically prey on people's prejudices by promoting outright lies, knowing that their audiences don't bother to check facts
and weren't trying to make a living by selling books/DVD's based on their irrational and unsupported claims, I might give them some credibility.
Honestly, I would, and I say that as someone who does believe in at least one conspiracy theory (just not this one!) but the material available, such as the documentary you kindly pointed me to is of such bad quality (I was counting almost one clanging factual error a minute as I watched it during one segment), designed only to achieve ratings and preying on prejudices/gullibility, that it just made me shake my head in depressed amazement. One of the interviewees, an American masonic author, Brent Morris,
is on record as stating that the pyramid has no association with freemasonry, but it was obviously inconvenient for the programme-makers to have him say that - assuming they asked him - as it would have spoiled the myth!
Richard Thomas wrote:
Maybe the Freemasons don't actually use a pyramid as a symbol exactly but I think the triangle is one of their symbols, which is pretty close, and aren’t their stories in Freemasonry that the first masons built the pyramids and other ancient tombs.
Freemasonry doesn't use the pyramid as a symbol
at all and never has AFAIK. I challenge anyone to produce a genuine article of (regular) masonic art, literature or regalia that uses it. The triangle
does crop up as a symbol in one branch of freemasonry, Royal Arch, but like the "Eye of Providence" it is a symbol for God. It might appear elsewhere, but it's certainly one of our lesser used symbols. If you'll forgive me blowing my own trumpet here, I'm a mason of 14 years, a past master, a member of two other orders, very well-read in freemasonry and even I had to look up the use of the triangle as a symbol, so fuzzy was it in my consciousness. It certainly doesn't get a mention in
Symbolism in Craft Freemasonry, a standard - and well written - reference on a very esoteric subject.
Some of the earliest masonic manuscripts do try to make a (now naively laughable) historic connection with ancient historical/mythological figures like Moses, Noah, Pythagoras, Hermes and co. in an attempt to give the fraternity an aura of importance and respectability. I don't recall any of these manuscripts referring to the ancient Egyptians/pyramids, but I'll do some digging around. Certainly if there is reference to them it would have been understood by later (and historically
much better informed) freemasons that such connections were fanciful and mythological, simply because speculative freemasonry cannot trace a historical lineage for itself any further back than the 17th century, let alone the pre-Christian era!! You can make the comparison with Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain": not history but good rollicking myth that stirs its readership's imagination.
Richard Thomas wrote:
Whatever the truth the pyramid is definitely a symbol associated with the Illuminati.
I'll concede that in "New World Order" conspiracy lore it has
become associated with the "Illuminati" by conspiracy theorists but if that is because they think it's masonic then they are definitely barking up the wrong tree!
BTW, I loved Blade Runner and watched it when it first came out. I'm going to get the Director's Cut DVD and look for all this symbolism now

Hwyl fawr!