Dionysiac reveries with the Maenads
One critical fault in Freemasons is the ability drawing a distinction between fact and legends, and legendry plays heavily into Freemasonry. Rather than see the pageantry of the Master Mason Degree as a symbolic drama, it is taken as a legend — or worse, as fact. Rather than seeing it as the Hiramic drama, which allows the pageant to stand on its own as a transformative experience for the candidate and as a morality play of its own merit, it is seen as the Hiramic legend, and this is the origin of much dubious speculation. As a legend, it clearly has gaps, and those gaps need to be filled in. This leads to not only spurious scholarship, but also an unlimited number of new degrees. If it were only seen as a drama, there would be no need for the Shrine, the Chapter, Council, Commandery, the twenty-nine degrees of the Scottish Rite, the vast range of invitation-only bodies, et al.
On the scholastic end of this, we get a plethora of totally unfounded and capricious claims, such as the Freemasons built the Pyramids of Giza and used to hold initiations in the King's Chamber. Other bogus claims include that Adam was the first Freemason and his fig leaf was the first apron. This one in particular bothers me, because the fig leaf is a badge of shame, whereas the Masonic apron is supposed to be badge of honor and pride. There is no end to the things from the ancient world and mythology that Masons will claim were originally Masonic. And this is an issue we must work through. Oftentimes there are curious yet legitimate things from antiquity that get misconstrued, and Masons (most especially esoteric Masons) love to take these and run with them.
These esoteric aspects of history that Masons are fond of taking out of context and running with it are almost always subject to Brandolini's Law or the "Bullshit Asymmetry Principle," in which "the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.” Ultimately, this fits within the essay by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005), in which he posits that bullshit is more dangerous than lying. Lying implies that there is a truth, but it is being concealed, whereas bullshit has no regard for truth whatsoever. The truth is altogether irrelevant when it comes to bullshit. This is an issue that plagues esoteric writers, and most especially esoteric Masons.
Yet, Masons are in love with their plethora of degrees, as well as their claims to antiquity ("from time immemorial" literally just means "before anyone can remember"; I don't remember the last time I ate collard greens, so that is from time immemorial). As a result ancient mystery cults are construed to appear more like modern day Freemasonry in order to fit an agenda to the claims of antiquity. Esoteric Masons are not concerned with understanding these ancient mystery cults on their own merit, but rather they are interested in fitting these cults into their agenda to validate Masonry's antiquity.
Let me give an anecdote. In 2019 I gave a presentation at the Colorado Masonic Symposium on the Mithraic tauroctony (the great image of Mithras slaying the bull) and compared the symbolic essence of this image to the Masonic circumpunct (the point within a circle bounded by two parallel perpendicular lines and the Holy Scriptures). I based much of my interpretation of the tauroctony on the work of Roger Beck, one of the leading contemporary scholars of the Mithraic cults. I wanted to show that the symbolic interpretation of both the tauroctony and the circumpunct are identical, though their representation is vastly different (I will post this paper in a different post at a later time). However, I did not want anyone to think the cults of Mithras are in anyway genealogically connected or related to Freemasonry, because they are not. To illustrate how symbols can be universal and nearly identical in signification, though their signifiers are vastly different, I began my presentation with the image of Yggdrasil and a Navajo sand painting commonly known as "the healing way." The two images are very different: one is of a tree and the other of a corn stalk. Yet, they have a lot of common features, such as three roots and three upper branches (or three ears of corn); they have a rainbow bridge, and there is a bird on top. The cultures that produced these are separated by an ocean and a continent, as well as several hundred years. My point was to illustrate that just because they are similar in content and essence does not mean they are genealogically related, but rather that the image is far more powerful because two separate and distinct cultures produced such similar images. Sadly, Masons are so accustomed to claims of antiquity and Freemasonry being founded in the remote past that the Masons I was lecturing to could not grasp this. They immediately started trying to conceive of a way the Vikings who landed in North America could have transmitted their image of Yggdrasil to the indigenous peoples there, and through trade and other routes it could have made its way to the Navajo. Despite there not being a single scrap of evidence to validate any speculations they were making, they were more concerned with how there could be a genealogical connection rather than accepted that the symbols that spring from the collective unconscious are universal unto themselves, and that a genealogy is unnecessary to demonstrate the power of symbols themselves. It was frustrating to see my point being immediately disregarded, as that would taint the rest of my presentation, and it did. As would be expected, these Masons still tried to conceive of ways that the Mithraic cults could have become modern Freemasonry. This is still the problem at hand when it comes to other mystery cults, such as the cults of Dionysus.
One particular issue with trying to connect Freemasonry to the Dionysiac cults is: why? Why do Masons want to be connected to them? The cults of Dionysus were wild and their rites were revelries of drunkenness. Of course, the various cults devoted to the god Dionysus evolved and changed over time, but it is safe to generalize them as drunk and wild. Dionysus himself is usually presented as a drunken god. The Maenads, the mythological nymphs and devotees to the god, and the Bacchantes, the women devoted to the Roman equivalent Bacchus, are usually illustrated as dancing naked, revelries of song and music, sex (the term orgy, from the Greek όργή orgé is primarily associated with the mystery rites of the Dionysiacs), intoxication on wine, and ripping apart wild animals and eating them raw. In most sources, Dionysus is killed and devoured by his followers who in their inebriation mistake him for a wild animal. It is not my intention to dive too deep into the various cults devoted to Dionysus, nor really to explore too extensively their rites and practices. However, even basic generalizations about them show they were largely women engaging in what Nietzsche describes as "titanic and barbaric" (Birth of Tragedy §9). How anyone could whitewash this into a fraternity that excludes women and practices temperance and restraint is beyond me, but surprise, surprise, Masons managed to do it.
Even the Dionysiac Artists were considered immoral, or at least unenlightened, and mostly drunk. One of two ancient sources for this group is Aulus Gellius, who in his Attic Nights §20.4 gives the following tale:
"A wealthy young man, a pupil of the philosopher Taurus, was devoted to, and delighted in, the society of comic and tragic actors and musicians, as if they were freemen. Now in Greek they call artists of that kind οί περί διόνυσον τεχνιται or 'craftsmen of Dionysus.' Taurus, wishing to wean that youth from the intimacy and companionship of men connected with the stage, sent him these words extracted from the work of Aristotle entitled Universal Questions [On Interpretations], and bade him read it over every day: 'Why are the craftsmen of Dionysus for the most part worthless fellows? Is it because they are least of all familiar with reading and philosophy, since the greater part of their life is given to their essential pursuits and much of their time is spent in intemperance and sometimes in poverty too? For both of these things are incentives to wickedness.'" (trans. John C. Rolfe, 1927)
Yet Masonic authors like Lawrie, Macoy, Mackey, et al want to portray them as a society of builders with high morals. Lawrie in particular is guilty of misrepresenting this group, as he specifically cites Aulus Gellius in his The History of Free Masonry (Edinburgh, 1804), but then claims they were a moral fraternity of good ethics and charitable. He clearly has disregarded certain aspects of the source material he is looking at in favor of fitting this group into his agenda of validating the antiquity of Freemasonry.
Let us not dismiss that whitewashing is not the only crime here. Freemasons are a fraternity of men, and the cults of Dionysus were largely organized by women. Dionysus's devotees are primarily women, and that is a fact that cannot be ignored... except by Masonic authors. Peruse any legitimate authority on the cults of a Dionysus and you will only ever find mentions of priestesses, because there were no male priests. Never mind that! Writers like Mackey, Macoy, Moses, etc all claim they were run by priests (male). One finds it difficult to determine whether it is misogyny or pure stupidity.
So why would any Mason want to connect the moral fraternity of Masonry to such a wild and drunken cult of women?
Ultimately, we are dealing with a few key aspects that all weave together to create the problem at hand. Firstly, they must whitewash the negative traits of the devotees of Dionysus in order to present these ancient cults in a positive light to be congruent with modern day Freemasonry. Second, having whitewashed these cults, they must represent them as a prototype in direct lineage to modern day Freemasonry by establishing a precursor to the Roman collegia and the Medieval guilds. Third, they must present all ancient mystery cults as being more or less the same thing, if not identical cults under different names, so as to inherit the lineage of all mystery religions of antiquity.
Such a perverted Masonic agenda renders all ancient mystery cults as plastic, pliable to the whims of later Masonic "scholars," and thus any mystery cult of the ancient world can be fitted into any mold desired. The agenda is to somehow establish a direct genealogical lineage of Freemasonry back to the far distant past without any concern for the historical evidence of anything in particular.
The fact of the matter is that Freemasonry grew out of the stonemason guilds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This is a fact, and there is no way of getting around it. However, even the guilds are plastic to whimsical Masonic "scholars," because even they are plastic concepts that can be shaped to fit current Masonic concepts. There really is only one book I have ever been able to find that is a true and faithful relation of the development and system of the guilds, and that is Wage Labor & Guilds of Medieval Europe by Stephen Epstein (University of North Carolina Press, 1991). Epstein is a scholar on Medieval economics and social systems. In this text he details how the the Roman collegia developed as trade associations, and then follows their decline into tyrannical ruin. The way the collegia ended was terrible, pretty much being under the direct tyranny of the emperors to feed the hungry Roman machine. Members of certain colleges were more or less slaves. All colleges that existed at the latter end of the Empire really only existed to serve the Emperor. When the Empire collapsed, the collegia dissolved with it. Europe enters a dark age that lasts for a few centuries. Starting in the 10th and 11th centuries, we begin to see the emergence of the guilds. These were government sanctioned monopolies on any particular trade. There can be no lineage between the collegia and the guilds because there was not a sophisticated enough economy to warrant any sort of trade associations during the dark age. Even the name "guild" implies economics, as they are a part of a wage labor economy (i.e. you trade your time and body for money; just like today). Epstein traces and details the particulars of the guilds: their system of training and payment, their hierarchy, their situation within the community, the rules and regulations upon them, their development and evolution, etc. It truly is a fascinating book and one which any person interested in an intense and detailed analysis of the guilds should consider. What ultimately ended the guilds was two competing economic systems, both diametrically opposed to each other, but both equally at odds with the guilds: laissez faire capitalism and communism.
By this point though, the moral and ethical teachings within the stonemason guilds — which also had a religious function — had developed a sister organization: Speculative Freemasonry or Free and Accepted Masons. This is the result of non-operative patrons' involvement in a guild. As Epstein explains the patrons, these were usually aristocrats or other nobles who may not be, say a goldsmith, but they own a gold mine, so the use of the gold was important to them. So they were patrons of the goldsmith guild, ensuring the guild maintains the patron's expectations and will work with the local government on behalf of the guild to maintain the guild's expectations. Stonemason patrons grew exponentially for some reason not fully understood, but these patrons would later form their own "speculative" (i.e. non-operative) lodges, of which there is evidence that even operative stonemasons would join. (As a note on Epstein's book, for Masons interested in reading it to understand Freemasonry, you will be sorely disappointed. Epstein spends very little page space on the stonemason guilds, and the very little he does, addresses the bogus claims of the stonemasons having received their charter from King Athelstan to go wherever they pleased, which is contradictory to the nature of the guilds as local organizations. So your York Rite College ritual is not only spurious itself, but based on something historically spurious as well. To read Epstein's book is to understand the guilds, not Freemasonry).
— Even the whole concept of Freemasons as traveling artificers is more wishful thinking. There really is no evidence they moved about freely, and it is not pragmatic either. Up until very recently, buildings took decades, even centuries to construct. The idea that a guild would build a structure and move on to the next town is preposterous (Latin for "ass backwards"). Guilds were usually confined to a specific locale, as they were under the governance of the king or governor. Of course there is the notion that the laborers themselves were free to move about, but that was common practice anyway. You left a guild in one town and joined in another. Any guild member could do that, not just the stonemasons. With the Dionysiac Artists, writers like Lawrie latched onto the fact that they moved about and interpolated Masonic concepts onto that, rather than just accept that traveling entertainers are not a novel idea. —
Based on this, and looking back at the Dionysiac Architects, we may begin to wonder if the period of 1000 BCE to 150 BCE had a sophisticated enough economy to warrant a trade association of architects. In short, no, it did not. Certainly not in 1000 BCE to about 300 BCE. By the Hellenstic Era, there may have been, and Epstein certainly acknowledges that there were loose bands of tradesmen that could be considered trade associations, but nothing like the collegia, and certainly nothing as formal and legalistic as the guilds.
This is the issue, and probably why the Dionysiac Architects are conceived in the first place: they provide a direct lineage from King Solomon's Temple to modern day Freemasonry. However, history cannot support such. This is where the theories of the Dionysiac Architects turns into a conspiracy theory: several of the writers on this organization purport that they go underground. This is a common tactic in conspiracy theories, namely that lack of evidence is proof that they are secretly at work. We see this in the theories that the Knights Templar went underground, taken in by early stonemason guilds and concealed for centuries, and then reemerge as Freemasons (see Born in Blood by John A. Robinson, 1989). So even though there is no historical evidence of the Dionysiac Architects in antiquity, that is proof of how secretive they worked — even though they built the greatest monuments of the ancient world, but never mind that! They didn't need the credit for that back then, but suddenly in the last few centuries we miraculously discover this great secret. Then there is the gap between the collegia to the guilds, but that is because they went underground. Problem solved!
One can begin to see the issues with examining such claims of an ancient fraternity of builders: the closer one looks, the more one inquiries, the more everything tears at the seams. None of this holds up to any scrutiny beyond wishful thinking. All it does is illustrate an agenda to validate Freemasonry as more ancient than it truly is so that it may claim to be inheritors of all the great things of the ancient world. Sadly, to claim all the great things, it must whitewash all the terrible things, so as to not stain its pure white apron. Just as these authors took whiteout to the testaments of history, so too are they applying whiteout to their aprons.
If all this sounds incredibly and viciously critical of Masonic writers, it is supposed to be. The third noble tenet of Freemasonry is Truth. In the Stair Lecture of the Fellow Craft Degree it is stated concerning the liberal art of logic that we "direct our inquiries after truth." One could propose the Pyrrhonic philosophy of that which is true (αληθης alethes) versus that which is truth (αληθεια aletheia), as in the difference proposed by Sextus Empiricus in Adversus Mathematicos §7.38-42 in which truth is more important than what is true. A doctor may know there is little hope for a patient to recover, yet will tell them that they will. It is not just bedside manners, a good mental disposition is conducive to recovery. Is the doctor lying? Kind of, but they are embracing hope for the patient, which is important. Hope over facts, and that has merit. However, the etymological roots of these terms alethes and aletheia literally translate as "not concealed" or "not forgotten," and yet these Masonic writers are clearly making a deliberate attempt to conceal source information in favor of an agenda. To return to the beginning of this post, a lie acknowledges that there is a fact, there are true things, but deliberately conceals them. That has produced something more dangerous: bullshit. The subsequent writers that follow Lawrie, such as Hipolito Jose da Costa and Albert Mackey and ultimately Manly P. Hall, are taking these falsehoods, these concealments of facts and running with it, which has bred several generations of bullshit (i.e. no fact checking, no cross-referencing source materials, just accepting it and piling on more). And what good does it do any of these writers to conceal who the Dionysiac Artists truly were, and what does it serve to present them as architects? It is detrimental to any Mason's legitimate inquiries concerning the Dionysiacs, and it bolsters a false image of Freemasonry to cater to the egos of members who just really wish the Fraternity was thousands of years old, and not just a 300 year old boys' club. (I enjoy my boys' club, but let's not hype it up to anything more than that).
Now we have reached a point where the source material needs to be addressed, factual material needs to presented, and the genealogy of corruption needs to be illustrated. It is an order of magnitude larger to disprove it than it took to make it up. And I personally have hit the point that I can no longer read another Masonic "research" paper nor sit through a another Masonic presentation that discusses the Dionysiac Architects. I personally need to be able to point to this material and hope at least one person will stop before proceeding with more bullshit.
This research track was in part inspired by Sam Block's piece The Kybalion is Still Crap, No Matter Who You Think You Are, but more particularly Nicholas E. Chapel's The Kybalion's New Clothes: An Early 20th Century Text's Dubious Association With Hermeticism. At some point, someone needs to address decade's old bullshit and refute it in a critique of sound reasoning and scholarship. For me, it is the Dionysiac Architects, which needs to be dropped entirely in favor of admiring a unique band of entertainers devoted to a delightful deity and who travel around to bring people laughs and good ole fun and joy.
