Edition 134 - Robert w Sullivan IV
This edition features US historian and lawyer Robert W Sullivan IV on “EsotericFreemasonry”.
This edition features US historian and lawyer Robert W Sullivan IV on “EsotericFreemasonry”.
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained. | |
Good to know you're still there. | |
Thank you for spreading the word about this show. | |
Thank you for keeping in contact as well. | |
I'm going to get to some of your emails in a future edition and name check some of you. | |
No time for that right now, but thank you very much. | |
Please keep those emails coming. | |
You can email me at www.theunexplained.tv. | |
That's my website, www.theunexplained.tv. | |
And then just follow the link, send me an email, and all of your messages I personally get to see and I personally get to act on. | |
And the website designed and created by Adam Cornwell, a creative hotspot in Liverpool who does really great work for us. | |
Now, I said I wasn't going to name check anybody, but I do want to just say hello to Keith Dulley, who emailed me from the UK. | |
Most of my emails, although by no means all, come from the US, primarily and the UK. | |
If you're in another part of the world, I'd love to hear from you. | |
I've heard from people all over the world. | |
But as I say, those two places are where most of my email traffic comes from, although I know I have listeners just about everywhere. | |
But Keith raises a question that I think is pretty fundamental. | |
I'm not sure whether he knew that when he wrote this to me, but he's just stirred something in me. | |
He says, it's like most people are blind in this world, he says. | |
They only live in the same small square box, and anything outside this lifestyle can't possibly be true to them. | |
And he says, do you have the same feeling? | |
In other words, what Keith is trying to say here, I think, is that there is more to this world and this life than we see. | |
Well, I think over the course of all of these shows that we've done over all of this time, I think that's probably true. | |
It is a weird world, and there is much that is truly unexplained. | |
That is why all those years ago, when I was sitting down at the radio station where I devised this show, first of all, we were trying to find a title for it. | |
And we came up with all sorts of stuff like The Truth Is Stranger Than and all kinds of weird titles. | |
And then suddenly I just said, I've got it. | |
The unexplained. | |
Because all of this stuff, or a lot of this stuff, is unexplained, or it's attempts to explain something. | |
But I think that's right. | |
In this day and age, particularly, without sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think we are encouraged a lot of the time to just believe the orthodox line on everything. | |
And the disturbing thing about life now, too, I think, is that we're just not encouraged to ask any questions. | |
I'll leave that thought with you. | |
Let me know what you think. | |
You can drop me an email if you'd like to. | |
A lot of my recent emailers, by the way, have been suggesting that I get onto the stream that is being put out on Art Bell's website. | |
Well, the news for you is that I'm there. | |
So check it out. | |
But please keep getting our shows in the way that you've always got them. | |
If you're used to getting them through iTunes, that's cool. | |
Via the website, www.theunexplained.tv, that's fine. | |
However you get my shows, just enjoy them. | |
And if you can make a donation to the show, please do. | |
Go to the website and there's a way to do that very simply by a fast and safe PayPal link. | |
Now, this time round on the show, I'm going to be talking to a man called Robert W. Sullivan. | |
And he's a guy who suggested himself for the show. | |
And periodically, people do that. | |
And I decide to give them a go on the show. | |
And we'll see where we go. | |
This man, I've been looking at his background here. | |
He's some theologian, historian, writer. | |
Tells me that he went to Oxford University. | |
I've got his biogue here, his biography. | |
Robert W. Sullivan IV is a philosopher, historian, antiquarian, jurist, theologian, writer, lawyer. | |
And we're going to be talking mainly about his book, The Royal Arch of Enoch, which is kind of to do with Freemasonry. | |
Now, you know, we've had people like David Icke and various others on this show who talk about Freemasonry. | |
And there are many people out there who say that Freemasonry is the root or at the root of many problems in this world. | |
There are lots of conspiracy theories, and I don't know what to believe because there are many people who are quite happily Freemasons and part of the ordinary community. | |
Look, my father, when he joined the police in Liverpool many, many decades ago, he was told that if he wanted to get on, then he needed to become a Freemason. | |
He needed to join the Masons, as they said, simply because of the esprit de corps, I guess, that these people had, and everybody knew everybody else, and that's what it was about. | |
I've never really understood it, and perhaps Robert W. Sullivan will help us to explain this, but he's been doing 20 years of research for this book, and he's come out with some pretty interesting findings as far as I can see. | |
So we'll get to him very soon. | |
Thank you very much for supporting me and this show. | |
Keep your email traffic coming. | |
Keep your support coming, because I've got this feeling that we're going to do our best to achieve some pretty big things in 2014. | |
We've hit well above our weight in 2013. | |
So I think, you know, there's more to come in this new year if we work very hard at it. | |
This is a small show. | |
There's only me and Adam Cornwell, my webmaster. | |
We work on no resources to do it. | |
But I was just determined from the very beginning that we were going to try and achieve something. | |
And I think maybe we're on our way to doing that, but we can't do any of it without you. | |
And I'm very, very grateful for all the support, believe me, that you've given me during this year of 2013. | |
Let's get to Baltimore, Maryland now and cross to this man, Robert W. Sullivan, author, theologian, historian, writer, jurist, and all those other things. | |
Let's find out more about him. | |
Robert W. Sullivan IV, thank you very much for coming on The Unexplained. | |
Thank you, Howard, for having me on your show today. | |
It's great to be here. | |
Now, Robert, you suggested yourself for The Unexplained, and I'm always willing to go with people that I haven't heard about before because quite often we get some very good results. | |
I know absolutely nothing about you, but let's start from the basics here. | |
That name, Robert W. Sullivan IV. | |
Now, the only fourth I ever knew over here was a country singer called George Hamilton IV. | |
But Robert W. Sullivan IV sounds like quite a lineage. | |
Yes, it's a name, obviously, that started with my great-grandfather, and it just got passed on down the line. | |
My father's the third, and I'm the fourth, and that's where we're at. | |
And it's just, like I said, it's just a family name that's just been passed on down. | |
I've met in my lifetime only a couple other people who have the fourth as a suffix. | |
I've met one person who is actually the fifth, so he can pull rankle me. | |
But yeah, just a family name, and there it is. | |
Well, the only fifth I ever knew was an English king, but that's a whole other story for a whole other time. | |
Now, your biography describes you as a whole variety of things, philosopher, historian, antiquarian, jurist, theologian, writer, and lawyer. | |
How did you get to be all those things? | |
Well, the lawyer part just started when I went to law school. | |
The other items, I just kind of categorized myself because it's all doctrines contained in my book, The Royal Arch of Enoch. | |
There's some philosophy in there. | |
There's some theology in there. | |
There's a lot of history in there. | |
There's a lot of mysticism in there. | |
So when I was putting this out, I thought, well, let's just go with the doctrines of the book to describe myself. | |
And I listed all that stuff out. | |
And the book is 700-page load and pages long, and it's chocked full of philosophy, history, mysticism, esoterica, religion, theology, all sorts of good stuff. | |
Now, there are, if you do a show like this one, you are sometimes presented with requests to be on the show from people who are researchers, they call themselves, but you sometimes get the impression that they've read an awful lot of other people's books, and that's about the limit of the research. | |
But from what I've heard about you, you do a lot of your own primary research. | |
Yes, that's correct. | |
Of course, you have to rely on other authors at some point to create a foundation for your book. | |
But the Royal Arch of Enoch is original in the fact that it presents this undocumented historical anomaly going on. | |
That is, that the Book of Enoch, or one Enoch, which dates to around 350 BCE to the Second Temple period, which describes Enoch's visions in heaven, which was lost to history, to Western civilization from around the second, third century, all the way up until 1773, when copies were returned to Europe, and then they just remained untranslated until 1821. | |
So for lack of a better words, the Book of Enoch was lost to Western civilization up until 1821. | |
Yet this book of mine documents this historical anomaly, is what I call it, that this one particular high-degree Masonic ritual, which is actually named after the biblical patriarch, the degree ceremonial is called the Royal Arch of Enoch. | |
It's being developed in France in the 1740s, 1750s, and it is containing elements, components, philosophical doctrines. | |
Its underlying history contains symbolisms and philosophies, all coming out of the Book of Enoch, which should not be happening. | |
Okay, well, I want to get into the mechanics of that, because that is principally what we're here to talk about. | |
But of course, the roots of this are Freemasonry. | |
Now, if you say the word Freemasonry or Masons in the UK, some people get a little jumpy because they start to think of conspiracy theories, bunches of people meeting once a week behind closed doors, wearing funny outfits, giving themselves handshakes that we've never seen before, who know something that we don't and have a control over us that we don't have. | |
Can you either dispel that as a myth or tell me a little bit more about that impression, where that might have come from? | |
Well, it comes from basically, it's been like that since Masonry's inception, where you have, you know, this concept of meeting behind closed doors. | |
It's certainly, you know, it's more of a fraternal organization than it kind of is a secret society. | |
If it was truly secret, we would never have heard about it. | |
But in the day and age we live in, most of this material can be found online now with the passwords, handshakes, things like that. | |
I don't really talk about it in the book. | |
I would say this. | |
I don't think it's a control mechanism or anything like that. | |
Certainly, I think it's a fair argument, or it's a fair case to say that you've had influential people in Freemasonry and that the philosophical doctrines of Freemasonry have influenced them. | |
And then you could craft the argument, well, since it's influencing them, it's influencing modern society, you know, or society as a whole. | |
That I kind of don't dispute. | |
I don't view it as like, you know, this sinister, you know, kebab goal along where people are trying to control other people's lives. | |
It's more of an influential force than it is a control mechanism. | |
But it is influential. | |
There's no doubt about that. | |
Are you a Freemason? | |
Yes, yes. | |
I am a Mason. | |
I became a Freemason in Baltimore, Maryland, which is where I'm speaking to you at from right now. | |
I became a third degree Master Mason in 1997, and I became a 32nd degree of the Scottish Rite in 1999. | |
Which sounds massively impressive, but I have to say all my life long, apart from the fact that when my father, God rest his soul, joined the police force in Liverpool many years ago, he was told that if he wanted to get on in life, he had to join the Masons, which actually ultimately, because it was a time commitment he didn't want to give, he didn't do. | |
But he was reliably informed that anybody who was anybody and anybody who wanted to get on in the police force back in those days had to be a Mason. | |
But most of us don't understand what the Masons are and what they do. | |
I think that's the difficulty. | |
If you make anything slightly secret, then you get all kinds of people whispering behind their hands saying, you know, who are those people? | |
I think that the secrecy point comes into it when you're dealing with some of the symbols and the rituals and the philosophical ties to them. | |
And what I mean by that is it's even, even for a mason themselves, it's not exactly 100% explained what the symbology is of the rituals, what the meanings of the rituals are, what a lot of the symbols are. | |
In this day and age, the tide seems to be turning, but up until recently, the last hundred years, it was basically more almost seen as perfunctory, the rituals and the symbolism. | |
It was basically just, you know, people wanted, the Masonic Lodge, at least in the United States, was just really more anxious to get the numbers growing than it was more in the esoteric tradition. | |
I think that that tide is slowly turning. | |
In fact, I know it is. | |
But as far as like, you know, you've got to join the Masons to advance yourself. | |
I mean, when you join, you will definitely meet people of influence. | |
You know, you will definitely meet people who can help you out. | |
I wouldn't go so far as to say that, you know, you have to join to get ahead in life or anything like that. | |
I mean, when I joined, I was a lawyer at the time, and one of my brothers was on the federal Court here in Baltimore, and I used him as a recommendation to get on. | |
I mean, so, you know, I mean, I've done stuff like that. | |
But, I mean, I wouldn't think that's anything, you know, heinous or anything like that. | |
But, you know, whatever your father's experiences are with it, you know, I really couldn't speak to that. | |
I mean, I've heard stuff like that before. | |
And of course, you know, you had a lot of that going on in the early days of the United States where you had a lot of the policymakers, people in power, governors of states, things like that, who are Masons, you know, and formulating policy over state lines. | |
You know, that certainly happened. | |
I would say, again, that, you know, in the day and age we live in, you definitely have people, you know, in power who have become Masons. | |
I would say it's more of a case of Masonry has influenced them and may have influenced decision-making processes that they make. | |
But I wouldn't say that it's some sort of like, you know, heinous secret conspiracy going on. | |
So if ever in the history of people who've been Masons, there's been anything sinister going on, those people would have been sinister anyway, is what you're saying. | |
Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say they've been sinister anyway, but it's just a matter of time. | |
It's a matter of how you look at it. | |
For example, what I'm talking about in the early days of this country was the Masonic Lodges in this country, this is post-revolution, this is after 1776, you know, all the way up to 1781. | |
There was never created a United States Grand Lodge of Freemasonry. | |
Each state was beholden unto itself. | |
And the reason this is important is because the state Grand Lodges only monitor the Blue Lodges of Freemasonry. | |
That's degrees one, two, and three. | |
But at the same time frame, you have these proliferation of these higher degrees in the United States. | |
And this is coming from a Freemason named Thomas Smith Webb. | |
But at any rate, the higher degrees were essentially a way for Masons to work outside of the Blue Lodge and outside of the Grand Lodge and talk to each other over state lines, meet across state lines to effectuate policy. | |
Now, these guys would have seen it as a positive thing. | |
And I presented it, it is a positive thing. | |
But what happened in this country was in 1826, you had the Morgan affair, where you had this guy threatening to expose these secrets, some of his handshakes and passwords. | |
He was ultimately taken over the New York line into Canada, killed. | |
A kangaroo court happened, and Masonry was basically demonized. | |
And people didn't like the fact that these high-ranking Masons were meeting in secret. | |
Masonry was almost wiped out because of it. | |
It does survive it, but instead of Masonry being seen as a patriotic order, it was seen as this secret cabal. | |
The guys who were involved with this wouldn't have seen this as evil at all. | |
They would have seen it as a way of trying to help society along, moderate society. | |
But because of the real secretive nature of it, and it just turned people off as to what happened with Morgan, Masonry takes a big hit because of it. | |
It does survive it, but in order to survive it, Masonry definitely distanced itself from the esoteric and mystical tradition. | |
Well, that was the myth that used to circulate. | |
Now, remember, this was pre-internet. | |
This was when I was a kid. | |
We couldn't have envisaged the internet. | |
It was something that was in science fiction. | |
So people didn't communicate as readily as they do today. | |
But the word used to go around that, you know, if you betray the secrets of the Masons, they'll probably kill you. | |
No, when you join the Masonic Lodge, you take oaths not to reveal any of the secrets. | |
This is done on pain of penalty of death. | |
I do not deny that. | |
This is, of course, allegorical. | |
No Mason that I'm aware of is going to kill somebody for doing something on the internet or something like that. | |
I mean, you might be disciplined for it within the lodge. | |
What they really frown upon is, and I kind of mentioned this in the book, if you're talking about the history, the symbolic importance of the ritual, the philosophies, the interpretations of the symbolisms, that's all fair game. | |
There have been numerous Masonic authors, very revered Masonic authors such as Albert Mackey, who say, if you're writing about Freemasonry and you are a Freemason, you know, this is kind of the public domain now. | |
You can talk about the rituals if you're doing it in a historical, allegorical context. | |
You can talk about the symbols. | |
You can talk about the history, the philosophy. | |
What they don't want you talking about and putting out there is like the passwords, the handshakes, the pass scripts, the tokens, things like that. | |
That's the stuff they frown upon. | |
But let's face it, if you go to work for IBM or a big company, they're not going to want you betraying the passwords to their various online portals and stuff like that if you're an employee. | |
So it's the same kind of thing, I guess. | |
Yeah, that's one way of definitely looking at it. | |
Like I said, if you're talking about the symbolic interpretations, things like that, I mean, again, you know, I don't do it in my book. | |
There's a couple of times in there where I have to write down a password. | |
So I don't write it down. | |
I just put the initials down. | |
But I mean, the truth be told, and I've been on other podcasts and radio shows where people have tried to ask me the passwords. | |
I don't answer it. | |
But what I give is the next best answer. | |
That is, I mean, this stuff is all out there on the internet. | |
I mean, if a person wants to learn the secret handshakes of the third degree, just Google it, and I'm sure you'll get a thousand hits on it. | |
Well, listen, we're not that kind of broadcast here, and it's not relevant, and I wouldn't do that. | |
That's not the point. | |
Two big questions, though, I think, before we can proceed, and I will get to your book, I promise. | |
Number one, because I've always wondered this, what is Masonry for? | |
That's number one. | |
And what are its roots and origins? | |
I heard once that it does it originate from the Knights Templar, the Knights of the Round Table, that kind of thing. | |
It's a great question to ask, and the answer is a little nebulous. | |
I'll answer the second question first. | |
The roots of Freemasonry depends on kind of who you want to listen to, because you have these two competing forces at work. | |
And depending on who you want to listen to and who you want to believe, you could go either way. | |
You can kind of combine both of them. | |
You have this legendary history of Freemasonry presented by a Presbyterian English minister named James Anderson. | |
This comes shortly after the formulation of the Grand Lodge in 1717 in England, where this man named James Anderson writes this thing called the Constitutions of Freemasonry. | |
And what he does is he traces the, I mean, again, I have to underscore the word legendary here. | |
He traces the history of Freemasonry all the way back to the Bible, to these biblical stone workers who were building things like the Tower of Babel. | |
And he presents that these secrets, these mystical stone working secrets have been handed down through the ages, incorporated into these Gothic cathedrals, that these stone guilds were meeting in secret, started letting in non-members to talk philosophy where they could talk freely away from the prying ear or eye of the Vatican, of the monarch, things like that. | |
And that's the true roots of Freemasonry. | |
A couple years later, in 1737, an Englishman living in France named Andrew Michael Ramsey puts out this thing called the Oration of the 1737 Oration. | |
And what he does is he splits off from Anderson, and he goes another direction. | |
He says, Anderson's correct. | |
He said, I don't doubt what he's saying about the stonework and the astro components of these cathedrals and the stoneworking, and the incorporation of the golden ratio, things like that. | |
He said, yeah, there's truth to that. | |
He said, but the real origins of Freemasonry lay with this Roman Catholic warrior monk class known as the Knights Templar. | |
He said, they're the real true Freemasons. | |
He said, and the roots of Freemasonry lay in these Mediterranean mystery school religions coming out of Egypt, out of Persia, things like the Egyptian mysteries of Isis, Osiris, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, elements of the mysteries of Aleutius. | |
He said, and it's basically a mystery school coming, it's a continuation of these ancient mystery schools. | |
So you have these two competing forces at work. | |
The truth is it's probably a little bit of both because you will clearly see within masonry, you know, elements of these ancient mystery schools. | |
But of course, in operative masonry, you know, or civil engineering, you will clearly see the incorporation, you know, of things like alignments to certain star systems or constellations or the equinoxes and the solstices. | |
So there's probably some truth to both of it. | |
But again, a person can believe either one or whatever the person wants to believe. | |
Okay, so it's a way of passing on knowledge and some of that knowledge perhaps linked to very much, as you say, to the esoteric. | |
But also, and we forget this point, and you're making me think now, that if we look back at the very long history of my country, the United Kingdom, free speech was something that we've only become used to, perhaps, in the last couple of hundred years. | |
The idea of free speech is something we take for granted now. | |
But way back, if you go back hundreds of years in this country and many, many others, if you wanted to have an open say on what you felt the king was up to or your local, the man who was in charge of your local fiefdom, whatever it might be, very hard to do unless you could find a place on a bunch of people where you felt secure. | |
That's absolutely correct. | |
And I totally agree with you. | |
And of course, also, you had, you know, the Vatican who was always, you know, you had the Inquisition. | |
You couldn't, you know, say anything too dangerous because of them also. | |
And of course, with the English monarchy, you know, you're absolutely correct. | |
And this kind of answers your first question that you asked, is like, what's its purpose? | |
It's clearly, you know, it's formed as a fraternal order. | |
It's a secret society. | |
But one of the things that Freemasonry does in its early days, and like you said, it's founded in England. | |
So we have to look at this. | |
I mean, we have to look at the English roots is it's coming along in 1717. | |
And what it's trying to do is it's trying to unite people, unite Englishmen of different backgrounds and belief systems. | |
You know, Anderson, right off the bat, you know, I don't want to use the word, you know, cleans out, but what he does is he does not require in his constitutions a religious requirement to rejoin Freemasonry. | |
He turns it into deism. | |
What he does is he says, you have to believe in a supreme being, but you don't have to be Christian. | |
You don't have to be Jewish. | |
You don't have to be a Muslim. | |
You just have to believe in a God figure, which is in Masonry called the great architect of the universe. | |
If you're a Christian, that's fine. | |
If you're Jewish, that's fine. | |
If you're a deist, that's fine. | |
You just can't be an atheist or agnostic is really what he does. | |
But then you also have, within English society at that time, you still have these competing forces between the Stuarts and the Catholic side of the Stuarts and the Hanoverians who are coming in. | |
And there was still some sentiment towards Cromwell and the Protectorate. | |
And it was trying to unite these different factions in English society at the time to just kind of bring everybody back together and work for the betterment of society. | |
And that's really, and you're right also, it is definitely trying to pass on at the same time these esoteric secrets, Kabbalistic knowledge through the rituals, through the symbolisms. | |
You can argue that maybe it hasn't done a very good job of it. | |
I think as of today, the pendulum is swinging back the other way where people are joining Masonry because of the esoteric tradition. | |
But Freemasonry as a modern organization comes along in 1717. | |
But you clearly have Masonic lodges, meetings with these stone guilds going on in the 1600s in England. | |
We know that for a fact, no doubt about it. | |
And the esoteric nature of this. | |
There is a lot of talk about some knowledge that comes from places that we don't understand. | |
But look, if you look at many aspects of religion and what have you, some religions incorporate knowledge that it's very hard to know where it came from. | |
So no big surprise that that is also the case with Freemasonry, that some of this stuff has origins that are, well, I won't say unexplained, but certainly eyebrow-raising. | |
Yes, you have a lot of pre-Christian iconography going on. | |
You have some Gnostic themes going on in the third degree ritual. | |
This is the Master Mason degree ritual in the Blue Lodge. | |
Concepts of the dying and resurrected solar person, which is, you know, in Gnosticism, you know, is the igniting of the divine spark, the God within you, as it were. | |
This is sort of ties into, you know, the third degree ritual, concepts of the legends of Osiris and Isis coming out of Egypt. | |
You will see elements of Mithraism, which was a secret solar group associated with Zoroastrianism, which was the religion of ancient Persia. | |
You know, coming out of Mithraism, you will see things like the secret handshakes, the secret passwords, things of that nature. | |
You will see clear references to solar iconography, to astral iconography within the Blue Lodge degree. | |
It's controversial. | |
One could say that you'll see this paralleled in Christianity and Judaism as well. | |
That's a very controversial subject matter. | |
But you have the concept in the Blue Lodge ritual, you know, of the resurrection of the candidate where he's allegorically dead and brought to a new life. | |
This is symbolizing the secret of masonry, that the divine spark has been ignited within that individual mason. | |
And this concept comes out of Gnosticism. | |
It comes out of the ancient mystery schools of Egypt, of the Mediterranean, of the mysteries of Aleutius. | |
So, yeah, you will clearly see these incorporations of these ancient mystery religions into modern-day Freemasonry. | |
Now, if you look on the internet, and I have, of course, you type in the word Freemasonry or Masons or whatever, you get your fair share of wacko stuff coming up. | |
And, of course, you have your conspiracy theories and talk of witchcraft and devil worship and all of that. | |
How do Masons counter the accusations that that is some of the stuff they're really up to? | |
The way they kind of did it in the 20th century was just to ignore it. | |
They've kind of been more active about trying to dispel this stuff, and I try to dispel it in the book. | |
But, you know, the issue that you get into with it, I mean, some of the conspiracy stuff online is just really out there. | |
But, you know, like with reptilian people and stuff like that. | |
But with stuff like devil worship, I mean, I'm in the lodge. | |
There's nothing at all demonic about this at all. | |
I mean, it's deism. | |
I mean, I will grant that, that it is, you know, it's not necessarily, you know, it doesn't have a Jewish or Christian or Muslim requirement to it. | |
It's just deism. | |
Technically, I mean, if you're a Christian and you come from the sort of more to fundamentalist right-wing view of Christianity, it may not be for you because you're invoking the Supreme Being instead of Jesus Christ. | |
I have met people who are friends of mine who fall into this category, who went through the first ritual and dropped out and thought it was too mystical for them. | |
If you're a Christian and your blend of Christianity is sort of non-denominational and just sort of, hey, you know, I do unto others as they do to me, and I'm kind of cool with this. | |
You're probably not going to have a lot of problems with it. | |
Freemasonry has admitted some controversial people in the past. | |
It certainly tries to be open-minded. | |
The requirements to join are belief in a supreme being. | |
Freemasonry doesn't tell you what to do in your pastime. | |
And of course, some of the, you know, when you get into people like Aleister Crowley, who was a Mason, who, of course, worked with the Golden Dawn and some of these more esoteric groups and was more into the, you know, maybe some more of the mystical, darker side of things, Freemasonry doesn't matter. | |
Let's put, you know, not too fine a point on it, but magic stroke witchcraft stroke some very peculiar things. | |
Yeah, I mean, I mean, you're getting to Crowley, clearly, you know, you know, he's involved with these groups like the Golden Dawn, the OTO. | |
These aren't really tied to Freemasonry, but they're Masonic-like. | |
He is a Mason. | |
He joined a Lodge at Paris. | |
I believe Freemasonry had a profound effect on Crowley. | |
You know, really, you don't understand. | |
You know, I say in the book that, you know, Crowley, you know, clearly, you know, was using Freemasonry to develop these other magical working systems. | |
That's really, you know, where Masonry takes a, you know, kind of a negative hit. | |
But it's unfair to judge Masonry by one person. | |
Through history, though, let's not lose this point. | |
Through history, and we can bring this right up to the present day. | |
How do you get vetted? | |
Say I say, I make contact with my local group here, and I say, I'd kind of like to do this, and I think that I can be a great help to your organization. | |
Please may I join. | |
Do they do any checks on me, or do they just say, sure, we meet at 7.30 in the local church hall or the local village hall, whatever? | |
Well, here's the way it worked for me. | |
And I'm not sure how it would work over there, but I imagine it would be similar, but every lodge probably does this a little differently. | |
So I can only speak from my experience. | |
The way I did it was, is you fill out an application. | |
I believe they ask you on there if you have a criminal background or have been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude. | |
They're not going to care about speeding tickets or anything like that. | |
You can technically lie about it, but if they find out, you're going to be thrown out. | |
And what happened with me is you fill out the application. | |
I mean, they just, you know, you put your name, your address, your phone number, and then you send in a check, an application fee. | |
I want to say, I don't know what it is today. | |
I think for me it was around $100. | |
And then what happens is the petition will go before the lodge, and they'll set up a committee of three brothers to interview you, or for me, to be interviewed me. | |
Some do it over the phone. | |
Some wanted to meet you in person. | |
When I did it, I think two of them met me in person. | |
I think the third one interviewed me over the phone. | |
They just want to see you, make sure you're an upright person. | |
The questions that were asked me, the two most pertinent ones were, of course, do you believe in God? | |
Do you believe in a supreme being? | |
And you say yes. | |
If you're truly an atheist and you want to lie, you can, but I've been asked this before, and I'll say it again. | |
If you truly are an atheist, Freemasonry probably wouldn't be for you anyway. | |
And then they'll ask you, what's your motivation for joining the lodge? | |
The answer I gave was that, you know, I come from a long line of Maryland Masons. | |
We talked about my name being the fourth before. | |
Robert W. Sullivan Sr. and Jr. were both Masons. | |
Sr. was a past master. | |
That's a person who served as a worshipful master for a year. | |
That's basically the guy who runs the lodge. | |
Now my father skipped over him, but people on my grandmother's side as well. | |
Her father was a Mason and a worshipful master, past master. | |
So I come from a whole line of Maryland Masons, so I wanted to join to keep the family tradition going. | |
But, you know, and they'll ask you what's your motivation for joining, and unless you give some crazy far out answer, they'll go back and vote on the petition, and it should pass. | |
It's got to be unanimous by the brothers voting on the lodge. | |
You know, you've heard the term black ball. | |
You know, the voting booth, it's white balls and black cubes. | |
If you drop the white ball, you're in. | |
One black cube will disqualify you. | |
But usually, if a black cube is dropped, the worshipful master will call, ask like, is this a mistake or did someone really have a problem with this guy? | |
But usually, if there's a problem, it'll come out before the vote. | |
And then your petition would pass, and you'd probably get a phone call in the next 48 hours saying, come up to the lodge. | |
We want to start the ritual proceeding, basically. | |
And do you think that it was quite easy for you to get in because you had a background, a family background, and also a man of the law professional guy you are? | |
When I joined, I wasn't a lawyer at the time. | |
But this would have been, let's see, this would have been 1996 was when I petitioned. | |
I got in through a friend of my mother and father's who was a Mason. | |
I asked him, I was good friends with him, and he said, Yeah, I'd love to recommend you. | |
I wasn't a lawyer at the time, but you know, I mean, basically, unless you have some sort of screaming problem, you know, that comes out in the interview process or, you know, a rap sheet that's a mile long or something, I mean, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't admit you. | |
The only other reason I could think of is, and this does happen, is you apply to a lodge and there's someone in the lodge, there's a brother in the lodge that let's say you were this person believes you wronged 10 years ago. | |
Maybe you stiff this person over some money or something like that. | |
And the guy will come out and say, hey, you know, I know this guy. | |
You know, 10 years ago, he did X, Y, and Z and I don't want him in. | |
I mean, that can definitely be a reason for being denied. | |
And I guess in some more extreme cases, the brothers will go to the guy applying and say, look, we can't have you in this lodge. | |
This guy's on budging. | |
You know, you're going to have to apply to another lodge. | |
Or alternatively, you know, you try to make amends with the guy who is trying to keep you out or come to a reconciliation of your differences and go on from there. | |
But by and large, unless something like that happens, I mean, I don't see a reason why you wouldn't get in. | |
I promise you we will get to the book because that's what we are here to talk about. | |
No, it's good stuff. | |
It's good stuff you're asking me. | |
Well, these are questions I think that an awful lot of us have wanted to ask for an awful long time because I'll tell you truthfully, apart from what I've read on the internet, and you never believe everything that you read on the net. | |
I didn't know the answers to these questions or even have an inkling of them. | |
Just quickly, to finish up on this, what do you think that you've got out of being a Mason? | |
For me personally, I mean, I can't speak for other Masons, but for me personally, what I got out of it was this concept of the importance of these Masonic symbolisms and the lessons in Freemasonry, the morality that it teaches, its underlying philosophies, the moral lessons, the symbologies of these rituals, what they're really trying to tell you. | |
And for me, it was this esoteric mystical concept that when you do the research, you're really going to find how much it's influencing and impacting society, not only past, but present as well. | |
And the book wouldn't exist. | |
If I wasn't a Mason, I can tell you that book would not exist. | |
I mean, I can tell you that 100%. | |
To be able to do the research that you've done, you've got to be able to do it from the inside. | |
Not only necessarily for the inside, but you have to have an understanding of the rituals. | |
And I would say, you know, going through them certainly helps rather than just reading about them or seeing them. | |
Going through them helps. | |
Understanding, going through the lodge, understanding who some of the great Masonic thinkers were that before I went through the lodge, I had never heard of. | |
But after I had gone through the lodge, some of these names started to become more apparent to me where I could read their books and really think, oh, okay, now I understand this. | |
Oh, I see what this is trying to mean. | |
Oh, I get this now. | |
Okay, oh, that's Egyptian, you know, things like that, which, you know, the Masonic experience would not have provided me. | |
And again, the book would not have existed but for my membership in Freemasonry. | |
So you came to ask the question, this ritual to do with Enoch. | |
You began to question what that was about, and you made some discoveries, and that's the point of the book. | |
I mean, from what I've read about the book, there's 20 years of research in here. | |
Right. | |
Well, what you have, I'm just going to capsulize this because it's a real, you know, it's like you said, it's 700 pages and it's 20 years of research. | |
But what you have going on is, and the reason that ritual is so important is it's part of the higher degree system. | |
And it ties in to understand what's going on in the degree, you have to kind of understand what's going on in the Blue Lodge. | |
And just so we're clear for your listeners, the Blue Lodge is degrees one, two, and three. | |
These are called the Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason degrees. | |
It is not until you complete the third degree ritual, and even in some lodges, the catechism that's associated with it, till you can hold yourself out to the title Master Mason. | |
And in a nutshell, what's going on in that last ritual is it's an allegorical telling of the story of the building of King Solomon's Temple, where the architect is, the candidate portrays this architect named Hiram Abif, who's building the temple. | |
He possesses what's called the lost word of a master mason. | |
It's the secret name of God. | |
It's through the correct pronunciation of this name that all learning is made possible that comes from a lot of underlying Masonic manuscripts. | |
And at any rate, these three fellowcrafts who are helping him build the temple seek to extract this word from him. | |
He won't give it up. | |
He's murdered. | |
He's ultimately resurrected. | |
But when he's killed, the word is lost. | |
The secret name of God is lost in the Blue Lodge. | |
And again, it's called the lost word of a master mason. | |
If you fast forward ahead to the higher degree systems, or the higher degree system, both, you know, which in the United States is called the York Rite and the Scottish Rite, both of these higher degree systems are born out of what's called the Rite of Perfection. | |
This is being developed in France in the 1740s, 1750s. | |
At any rate, you have this one higher degree called the Royal Arch of Enoch. | |
It's the 13th in the Scottish Rite, 13th in Rite of Perfection becomes the 7th in the York Rite, where you have this symbolic restoration of this lost word of a master mason. | |
They find it. | |
This ties into the book of Enoch, where Enoch beholds the secret name of God as an emanation of Hebrew Kabbalah, from which all learning is made possible. | |
And it's the recovery of this word. | |
And what I say in the book is it's the symbolic lessons, the philosophies, the allegories, the symbols of this one particular degree that's carrying forward from this Blue Lodge degree that's really helping define things like the United States of America, the architecture, and its importance within modern society as a whole. | |
So this is the big secret. | |
This is the key to everything. | |
Well, I wouldn't, there's a lot of, there's, you know, each ritual, one could argue, contains its own secrets, but I think that this is a big one. | |
I mean, you know, I get into, what's important within the book is I get into a lot of the symbolic allegory of the Blue Lodge as well, especially the third degree, because without that, the Royal Arch kind of, just to start with the Royal Arch ceremonial kind of wouldn't make a lot of sense. | |
So I'd give the background of the Blue Lodge. | |
But what's really unique about this, which I said earlier in the broadcast, was not only is this degree of very symbolic and ritualistic importance, but the ritual is being developed and is incorporating elements of the Book of Enoch, which is lost to history at this time. | |
So clearly, whoever is, the people who are developing this ritual clearly must have seen a copy of this thing prior to Bruce, James Bruce returning to Europe with copies and prior to their translation in 1821, which is this major historical mystery going on. | |
So this harks back to some very ancient knowledge and some very important knowledge that, as you said, was lost to history. | |
Yes, I definitely would agree with that. | |
You get into concepts of the Book of Enoch. | |
And again, just because of time constraints, I'm just going to plow through a lot of material. | |
But you'll get into concepts of divine monarchy, of the candidate becoming a citizen, hermetic, godlike being. | |
And I need to stress the word god-like, not God himself. | |
You'll get into astral references within the ritual. | |
These are also echoed in the Blue Lodge ceremonial, where you will clearly see astrological references here. | |
Again, the Book of Enoch has an astronomy astrological book. | |
You have concepts related to solar light, and the sun being the source of esoteric wisdom. | |
So are we going back to the time that is pre-the Egyptians here? | |
You're going back to Egyptian. | |
You're going back to the second temple timeframe, which is around 350 BC, but you are definitely incorporating elements of solar iconography, of concepts of the resurrected sun person or solar deity of Osiris, things like that. | |
Horus, Apollo, Helios, the sun being the source of wisdom, of light or enlightenment, as it were. | |
So yeah, you will definitely see ties into pre-Christian Egyptian, some of these ancient mystery schools like Zoroastrianism, Pythagoreanism, Mithraism, things like that. | |
These are definitely being incorporated. | |
And you'll also see parallels with this lost Hebrew text that is ultimately left out of the Bible, which is off the history books from around the second, third century to 1821. | |
This is going to sound like a crass question. | |
Well, I hope it doesn't. | |
Go ahead. | |
Enoch, who or what was Enoch? | |
Enoch was a chronicler? | |
No, it's a good question. | |
No. | |
He turns up in the Bible at Genesis. | |
The only mention of Enoch prior to the book of Enoch is at Genesis 5, 18, 24, and in Jude 14, 15. | |
He is one of two people in the Bible never to experience a physical death. | |
He's carted off into heaven in corporeal form. | |
The other person who does this is the prophet Elijah. | |
These are generally referred to as the two witnesses to Revelation. | |
Enoch in Hebrew means the initiate. | |
So again, we have this tie into a candidate or to an initiate, to a supreme esoteric initiate who's seeing these secrets in the afterlife, which Enoch is ultimately returning to earth with. | |
And the book of Enoch, one Enoch, describes what he sees in his little journey into the afterlife. | |
And it's some pretty interesting things, some things that kind of contradict what you would call Orthodox Christianity, even Orthodox Judaism. | |
And again, you have right off the bat, you have another solar reference to Enoch himself in the book of Genesis. | |
It's told that Enoch's years were 365. | |
That's an obvious reference to the solar year. | |
He's not a stranger, but the book of Enoch really documents what he sees and what he encounters in the afterlife. | |
And it's these elements, philosophy, symbolisms, iconography that you'll see in this Royal Arch of Enoch degree, which is ultimately named after him. | |
So is this story allegorical or was Enoch a being or person? | |
That depends, again, on who you want to listen to. | |
You will hear everything from allegory. | |
You will hear everything from that Elijah and Enoch that these trips to the afterlife are extraterrestrial interventions, that they're being taken off into outer space and seeing the secrets of creation. | |
I've heard that one before. | |
You will hear that this is actual literal, that Enoch did, in fact, have some sort of afterlife experience or experience in human form. | |
I have talked about this on other shows. | |
This is completely paralleled in the work of the Divine Comedy by Dante, where Dante is taken into the afterlife and sees all these esoteric secrets, sees the way it works. | |
This is kind of an Enochian parallel where Enoch goes off, learns these esoteric secrets, and comes back. | |
In the underlying Masonic philosophy, Enoch catches when that the flood of Noah is coming and preserves these secrets. | |
He conceals this underground vault to conceal these secrets, to survive the flood of Noah. | |
This is ultimately which leads to a lot of anti-Masonry where Masonic, where anti-Masons view Masonry as the preservers of this anti-diluvian, you know, angelic, you know, even quote-unquote demonic wisdom that Enoch gleaned, that God was trying to eradicate. | |
Some of this wisdom comes from Enoch through this group of fallen angels known as the Watchers. | |
If you're familiar with the Old Testament, the Watchers are a group of fallen angels who have come to earth and had sexual relations with earth women, creating this race of giants called the Nephilim. | |
He interacts with them. | |
He actually serves as sort of an intermediary on their behalf to try to get them in the good graces of God. | |
So you can take it, you know, I've heard it's just strictly allegorical. | |
I've heard that maybe there's some real truth to this, that someone out, you know, in ancient history sort of preserved these lost secrets. | |
And you can also go with the ancient astronaut theory that the Enoch and Elijah are actually learning the secrets of the universe from our true creators. | |
But however you look at it, it is a key in a way, because from what you've said, if I've understood you properly, way back there, there is a lot of core knowledge there and people who are just suddenly starting to read about and get interested in ETs and life after death and all that other stuff that is so popular now. | |
The key to all of this is way back there and it gets lost for a long time and then it comes back to us through Freemasonry. | |
I think that's a very good way of putting it. | |
It definitely is lost, and it's definitely coming back through Freemasonry, especially in this particular degree. | |
I tend to agree with that. | |
And again, it's almost like, you know, if you want to go, it's like back to the future. | |
If you want to go forward into the future to understand, you have to look to this ancient past. | |
And clearly, the Book of Enoch seems to be one of the keys to all this as to what he's learning. | |
And again, it's a more controversial element. | |
I talk about it in the book. | |
But you will clearly see, if you read the book, you will clearly see that the Book of Enoch has influence upon the creation of the New Testament, of the Jesus story. | |
There's no doubt about that. | |
I mean, just right off the bat, you know, the whole concept of Jesus being the Son of Man, that comes straight out of the Book of Enoch, where Enoch is referred to as the Son of Man. | |
That predates the New Testament. | |
So you will definitely clearly see some references, and it's more of a controversial tie-in to the Book of Enoch, even in the New Testament. | |
So yet, it seems like to understand this material going forward, you have to delve into the ancient past. | |
And what have you unearthed about this that hasn't been unearthed before? | |
What have you discovered? | |
Well, what you have going on, just in the Royal Arch ritual, you have the recovery of this tetragrammaton. | |
You have a lot of solar iconography, a lot of astral iconography. | |
We get into concepts of royal arch symbolism. | |
And again, the time here, but you'll definitely see references to this in solar references to the creation to a lot of the architecture in the Federal District of Washington, D.C. You will see this in the philosophy of the country, of the United States, even in Blue Lodge Freemasonry, where you have the triple division of government in the United States is triple divided. | |
This comes out of Blue Lodge Freemasonry. | |
This is another solar reference with the triple division of the sun on a daily basis with the rising sun, sun at noon, and setting sun. | |
But with the Enochian tie into all this and just getting away from the United States, and this is one of the more controversial doctrines in the book, you will clearly see, and it comes out of this astronomical book, where Enoch is told the importance of the sun, the moon, the stars, things like that. | |
And again, in the Royal Arch of Enoch book, I talk about that the book, or in the New Testament, you will clearly see a lot of astral symbology, a lot of solar symbology surrounding a lot of the characters of the New Testament. | |
It's a more controversial topic in the book, but I get into more of the influence perhaps of the book of Enoch on the New Testament and, again, being incorporated into this Freemasonic higher degree, which is, you know, again, is being used to symbolically define and outline a lot of things going on in the United States of America regarding its architecture, its creation, its inner workings, things like that. | |
You studied, according to your biography at Oxford University, which is comparable to the likes of Harvard. | |
It's a great seat of learning here in the UK, possibly the greatest, although people who went to Cambridge would probably disagree with that because Oxford and Cambridge are the two big universities. | |
That's important, isn't it? | |
Because some of this knowledge re-emerged via the famous Bogleian Library. | |
You're absolutely correct. | |
I'm glad you brought that up because I was at Oxford. | |
The first time I was there was 1992, 1993. | |
So you're talking 20 years ago. | |
Just so I don't want to hold myself out to something that I'm not. | |
I never matriculated at Oxford University. | |
I was an associate student at St. Catharines. | |
My alma mater is Gettysburg College. | |
I was a history major. | |
I was accepted at St. Katz to be an associate student for the year. | |
Again, this is 1992, 93. | |
And I was studying over there at Oxford, you know, and like you said, the Bodleian's right there, of course. | |
You know, history, European philosophy, things like that, European history. | |
And it was really over there and just through the courses I was taking that I was, you know, and this happened, you know, this really is what got the ball rolling on all of this, where I was introduced to the works of a real famous British historian named Frances Yeats, who was a woman who wrote extensively about like how the Hermetic tradition coming out of the Renaissance into the Enlightenment and being carried on in these modern-day secret societies like Freemasonry, | |
Oddfellows, things like that, was really impacting material culture. | |
And it was my time at Oxford that I really became influenced by this. | |
I just became fascinated by it. | |
Obviously, at this point in time, I wasn't a Mason or anything. | |
But my time at Oxford really got the ball started on this, the ball rolling on this. | |
And it just fascinated me how one of the motivating forces with Yates on writing her books was she was becoming frustrated with these mainstream historians just kind of ignoring this material. | |
And she just wanted to bring it back into the forefront. | |
And her books are very scholarly. | |
I really enjoy them. | |
And being introduced to her, and then you get into these philosophical, symbolic doctrines coming out of like Rosicrucianism, alchemy, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and again into these modern-day secret societies just really influenced me and left an impact. | |
And it's my time at Oxford where really the seed of the Royal Arch of Enoch was planted. | |
Is there a tie-in here with Kabbalah? | |
Because we had all these celebrities like Madonna, for example, queuing up to get involved in that for a while. | |
Is there some kind of connection there? | |
Yeah, you will clearly see Kabbalistic influence upon Freemasonry. | |
You know, and Kabbalah is, you know, Hebrew Kabbalah. | |
There's three ways you can spell Kabbalah, and I distinguish it in the book. | |
You have basically Kabbalah with a K, which is the Hebrew mysteries, Kabbalah with a C, which is a Christianized version of the Hebrew mysteries, and then you have Kabbalah with a Q, which is more the hermetic alchemical side of it, but they all tie in together. | |
Yeah, and it's basically like a secret esoteric doctrine. | |
And again, this just ties into base Freemasonry, where it's a secret society trying to pass on these esoteric mysteries, you know, through these rituals and these symbols. | |
But if you just want to see like a flat, you know, Kabbalistic influence, you can look to the higher degrees, and especially the Scottish Rite system here in America, where you have 32 degrees with the 33rd being honorary. | |
This, of course, is Kabbalistic, where you have the 10 Sephirot and the 22 paths of Hebrew Kabbalah. | |
If you add 10 plus 22, you get the number 32, which is the highest degree of Scottish Rites Freemasonry, which is the 32nd. | |
You have this other degree out there, this 33rd degree, which is purely honorary. | |
You cannot solicit it, it has to be offered to you. | |
And of course, if you go back to the Hebrew Kabbalah, you have this hidden Sefirot called Daf, which is a combination of all the other Sefirot. | |
So you add 11 plus 22, you get 33. | |
So, I mean, you definitely will see a Kabbalistic influence upon the Scottish Rite. | |
Other Masonic authors have mentioned this as well, such as Albert Pike. | |
So, yeah, you will clearly see a Kabbalistic influence, especially upon the Scottish Rite, no doubt about it. | |
You talk a lot about the lost book of Eloch. | |
That's what this is all about. | |
How was it lost? | |
We need to be really clear about this. | |
How was it lost, do you believe, and how was it found? | |
Yeah, what happens is it disappears from the history pages around the second, third century. | |
It's rumored, it's not confirmed, but one of the people, one of the last holders of a copy of this was a Christian mystic named Origen, who is an early Christian mystic, and he's one of the chief compilers of the documents that become the New Testament. | |
From the second and third century till 1773, it's lost to Western civilization. | |
There's no copies floating around Europe. | |
There's no translations floating around Europe. | |
Again, we're limited to Genesis 5, 18, 24, and Jude 14, 15 for non-Masonic, quote-unquote, knowledge of Enoch. | |
So all we have during this dark period are references to it, people talking about it. | |
Well, you have the quotes in the Bible and these two passages from Jude, but it's not until 1773 when an English, a Freemason named James Bruce, he's traveling Ethiopia, he's traveling the Nile, and he returns to Europe with four copies of the Book of Enoch. | |
They're in Greek and Latin. | |
I can't remember which language they're in. | |
It escapes me. | |
I'd have to go look that up. | |
And what happens is they come back and they just are deposited in the basement of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where they just sit and collect dust until 1821 when they're finally translated into English. | |
But clearly, as we were talking about earlier, you have this Masonic high degree, you know, incorporating elements from the Book of Enoch. | |
So clearly a copy must have been out there. | |
I have been asked this before, and I think it's a very pertinent question. | |
Well, if a copy was out there, who was it, who had it, or where did it come from? | |
I have suggested, I mean, I can't prove this 100%, but there's a lot of strong evidence that points to an English Renaissance master named Dr. John Dee, who most likely could have been a source for this book. | |
We know we have compelling evidence that points us in this direction because one is his library was very extensive. | |
In fact, at one point in time, I believe he had one of the greatest libraries in Europe. | |
So to suggest he didn't have a copy or perhaps a translation or at least a highly detailed summary of this thing is certainly not beyond belief. | |
Two, is he, of course, develops this magic, this ritualistic magic called Enochian, which is, of course, named after the biblical patriarch. | |
This is, of course, the language of the angels, which Enoch, you know, in the book of Enoch, he's talking to the angels. | |
So, I mean, you know, we have that as well, and that's very compelling, you know, that out of all the stuff he could name this magic after, he names it after Enoch. | |
And then third, and this is the most curious one of all, is you have Sir Walter Raleigh in his History of the World actually references the book of Enoch and mention that it has the astronomy book in it. | |
Well, where is not Raleigh getting this from? | |
Well, he's probably getting it from his fellow spy master, Dr. John Dee. | |
All these guys were involved with Walsingham in protecting Queen Elizabeth I, who, of course, was persona non grata with the Vatican at that point in time, with the Jesuits, and Walsingham forms the spy ring with people like Raleigh, Drake, Dee, Kelly, Cecil. | |
Bacon even was involved with this to protect her. | |
So, you know, you have these three references. | |
So to say that Dee is a likely source for this is very possible. | |
I can't prove it, but the evidence points us in that direction. | |
This information, this book, do you believe that it was lost or was it deliberately disappeared? | |
Was it suppressed? | |
I think you kind of have a bit of a combination of both going on there. | |
It's lost, that's for certain. | |
It's definitely left out of the Bible. | |
So in that aspect, you could say you could craft an argument that it's suppressed. | |
The reasons that it's left out of the Old Testament is one is because the Book of Enoch is very bizarre. | |
It's definitely one of the more stranger books out there. | |
You know, you have references to demonic interactions with Enoch. | |
He's speaking to these angelic and fallen angel-type characters. | |
The difference between this information that Enoch learns from these beings is, despite the fact that he's learning it from these fallen angels, in the book of Enoch, the wisdom is still considered divine. | |
It's still considered godlike. | |
Where in Genesis, with the flood of Noah, the knowledge is considered evil, quote unquote. | |
So you have this conflict going on right there. | |
That's one reason it's probably left out of the Bible and suppressed. | |
And another reason is, and this is again more controversial, but I talk about it in the Royal Archbook, is you have this influence of the Book of Enoch on the development of the New Testament, where you will clearly see astral references, solar references, astrotheological references to a lot of the characters of the Bible, and direct references to the Book of Enoch in the New Testament. | |
So it's kind of like, well, if this is what we're using to, you know, influence this book, let's suppress the latter. | |
Let's suppress the book of Enoch. | |
So, I mean, you know, to say it's lost is definitely true, but to say it's left out of the Bible on purpose, there's some truth to that as well. | |
And do you believe that this is perhaps at the core of some of the what you might see as being misconceptions, misunderstandings about Masonry, in that these people had the key to this very ancient stuff, which, by the sounds of it, incredibly powerful. | |
It comes back from such a long way back to such core and fundamental things. | |
Now, the Masons have a part of this. | |
And they're a secret society, and their symbolism is reflected, as you've said, in governments and corporations and all sorts of places. | |
So that would engender suspicion, wouldn't it? | |
Yes, I agree with you there. | |
It definitely can engender, as you say, I agree with you, suspicion and mistrust and things like that. | |
What I would kind of craft an argument around that is to say that basically you had a lot of people who have been interested in Freemasonry, who have gone on the positions of power and are being influenced by the doctrines of Freemasonry. | |
Whether this is for policy decisions, things like that, whether that's a positive or negative is sort of up to the individual to decide. | |
I don't really see it as a negative. | |
But it can definitely create suspicion, mistrust. | |
And since Masonry's inception, you've always had a class out there that will dislike it no matter what. | |
That just seems to walk hand in hand with the nature of kind of keeping something secret through allegory, through ritual. | |
It just seems to be that way in life. | |
Well, the thought that these people have this information that dates back so far, it's very powerful, maybe the key to all sorts of abilities and powers. | |
And maybe they're using it against us. | |
I suppose that's how the poor, frightened masses might feel. | |
I don't know. | |
Well, I wouldn't say they're using it against us or anything like that. | |
I mean, or anything like that. | |
I think it's more, I think what I've described before in the book and on other shows is it's really what they're doing is they're using the symbols, the teachings, the morality, the lessons of Freemasonry to nation-build. | |
And that's really what it's coming from. | |
I wouldn't see it as necessarily a control mechanism where people are out to get people or anything like that. | |
It's using these philosophical, mystical doctrines as nation-building devices. | |
That's really the best way I can kind of describe it. | |
Okay, and what would you say to people who might email me and say that by doing what you've done, being who you are, writing what you've written, that you're in a way, and I get these kind of emails, that you're an apologist for Freemasonry? | |
Well, I really wouldn't call myself an apologist. | |
I try to explain it and what's going on. | |
I'm a Freemason, of course, so I mean, you know, a person can decide whatever they want to think about me because of that. | |
Obviously, I'm not anti-Masonic. | |
I try to, when I present this book, I try to present both sides of the coin. | |
You know, I explain a lot of what is causing anti-Masonry. | |
You know, and of course, I'm here in the United States where your first third party in the United States was the anti-Masonic Party. | |
I mean, what's its doctrine? | |
Well, here you go. | |
I mean, the convention is right where I'm at. | |
Their convention was in Baltimore, Maryland. | |
So I'm very familiar with this. | |
You know, and I definitely get into, you know, some of Masonry's more controversial aspects. | |
I don't shy away from things like the Illuminati or even the Jesuit influence, you know, which I see a lot of Illuminati doctrines going on in the early days of the country. | |
I don't really see it so much anymore. | |
But I wouldn't call myself an apologist. | |
I try to present all sides of the material. | |
And my attitude is kind of let the individual person make up their mind once they get through the book. | |
And now that you've got this information, you've done this research, what is to be done with it in the future? | |
What use is it? | |
What's that? | |
Well, what are you going to do in the future now that you've done this research and you've gone back to the roots of all of this? | |
Where do we go from here? | |
How can this information... | |
Oh, I think the information, I understand what you're asking. | |
I think the information can benefit us because I think a lot of the mysteries, and I think why it's important is a lot of the mysteries, it sheds light on a lot of mysteries, a lot of the mysteries of the Bible. | |
I believe that if you have a good understanding of the book of Enoch and what's going on and you tie it into these Masonic rituals, almost you will see a parallel going on with the Bible. | |
I believe that you will see the importance of this material coming to light now. | |
I talk about this in the book, in the Royal Archbook. | |
It's one of the more controversial doctrines of the book where you will have concepts of solar ages, where you have one solar age coming to an end and a new solar age starting. | |
We seem to be experiencing that right now with a lot of the change that's going on, not only in the middle. | |
But I was going to say, there is clearly a message for us now, because we do seem to be at some kind of confluence or crossroads, don't we? | |
Yeah, I tend to agree with you there. | |
I definitely believe that. | |
I ascribe this to this solar changeover that's going on right now based on what's called the platonic year, the procession of the equinoxes, where in a nutshell you have Pisces coming to an end and this Aquarian age starting. | |
And I believe, and I say this in the book, that the Aquarian age, or at least the Jumpstart, is the realization of this esoteric wisdom, this mystical wisdom, which seems to be coming out more and more. | |
And the Book of Enoch, or the Royal Arch of Enoch, tries to put a spin and interpret this allegorical solar symbology going on both in the New Testament, the Old Testament, and being carried forward in these Masonic rituals. | |
And if I was one of those guys who puts things in very simple terms and said, okay, we've got this knowledge, we know where it comes from and what it does. | |
How can we harness this to make this world, which has many, many flaws, which seem to be multiplying all the time to make it a better place? | |
Right. | |
Well, I think just by having the information is a good start and just understanding what's going on. | |
I think that's really the good starting point to all this. | |
How an individual person wants to use it and make use of it is up to them. | |
But I think the key to it is just understand the material, understand how this ancient book is being used, how it's influencing things like the Old Testament, the New Testament, why it's being left out. | |
And again, you will clearly see this being paralleled in these Masonic rituals, which is ultimately, and you'll see this in the iconography of the United States, the Great Seal, where you have these symbols trying to herald, we're announcing this new solar age that's coming and symbolically departing the old solar age. | |
I think that's really the ultimate crux of the book. | |
And have we anything to fear at all from this ancient knowledge? | |
No, I don't think there's anything to fear. | |
I wouldn't say there's anything to fear, but I would definitely say it would be a good idea to become definitely Aware of this information and to check the book out. | |
Okay, and how do people do that? | |
If they want to go online, check you out, check the book out, how do they do that? | |
Sure. | |
My website is www.robertwsullivaniv.com. | |
You can find more information about me there. | |
You can watch some YouTube videos. | |
There's links to social media, to Facebook-like pages, to my YouTube channel, to Twitter. | |
There's links there to buy the book. | |
It's in Kindle Nook, you know, e-book format for $9.99. | |
It's a 700-page book. | |
If you want the oversized paperback, I'd recommend my publisher's website, which is all lowercase. | |
It's www.rsplaunchpad.com. | |
You can go there. | |
You can also buy the e-books there. | |
But just, you know, for a starting place for me, www.robertwsullivan with two L's, IV.com. | |
And there's all sorts of links there to purchase the book, to watch videos, you can find out more about me. | |
And there's links all over the place to my various social media. | |
You are a hugely, I can hear it in your voice, you pack every 60 seconds with 60 seconds full of meaning. | |
You're a very motivated individual. | |
So what are you going to do next? | |
Yes, I am actually working on two books right now. | |
I actually have another book I'll explain real quick. | |
The Royal Arch of Enoch book, the last chapter deals with Masonic and Enochian and solar symbolism going on in popular movies. | |
I talk about movies like Being There, the National Treasure movie, Da Vinci Code, things like that. | |
That's the last chapter of the Royal Arch of Enoch book. | |
And there were other movies I wanted to talk about that necessarily weren't necessarily Masonic, but had things in it like tarot card symbolism, Jungian archetypes, you know, mysticism, occult symbology. | |
So I actually wrote another book called Cinema Symbolism, A Guide to Esoteric Imagery in Popular Movies. | |
That's with my publisher right now being edited. | |
That book should be out most likely in January or February of 2014. | |
That book's done. | |
And that book will be out in, like I said, January, February of 2014. | |
People go to my website. | |
You'll find links to that book as well. | |
I'm currently writing two books right now. | |
I'm writing a sequel to Cinema Symbolism called Cinema Symbolism 2, which I even do more movies. | |
These were movies that were left out of the first one. | |
I mean, you can only do so much. | |
And I'm also working on my first work of fiction, which I'm keeping top secret right now. | |
That's about three reasons why we've got to talk again. | |
Oh, absolutely. | |
Yeah, when Cinema Symbolism comes out, you know, we talked about Kabbalah and things like that. | |
You'll see a lot of capitalism going on in these movies. | |
And yeah, when Cinema Symbolism comes out, I would definitely love to return to your show, and we'll do a whole program on that. | |
Robert, thank you so much for talking with me. | |
I appreciate it, Howard. | |
Thank you for having me on your show, and have a great one. | |
Well, you make up your own mind about what you thought, about what you've heard on this show today. | |
Robert W. Sullivan is the man's name, and his book is The Royal Arch of Enoch. | |
As you heard, an awful lot of research. | |
Some of it had its roots and germination here in the United Kingdom, but an awful lot of work has gone into that. | |
You can get a link to him and his work on my website, www.theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv. | |
And of course, the website, designed, created, and maintained by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool. | |
Thank you very much for your support. | |
Keep your emails coming. | |
Thank you to Martin for the theme tune. | |
We will be updating the theme tune at some point, but we'll keep with the spirit of this one because you tell me that you like it. | |
So it'll be an evolution, not a revolution, that we do with it. | |
Thanks very much. | |
More great shows in the pipeline. | |
My name is Howard Hughes. | |
This has been The Unexplained, and I will return to you soon. |