and conspiracy theories because so much organized crime he uses the masonic she crit system and the good old boy network to be able to get away with murder and i mean murder welcome to the world all of free masonry so are false the masons are secret society no there it's that's false u c l a history professor margaret jacob is one of the world's leading experts on freemasonry that's a sonic right no it's everybody says messiah in fact it's a commonplace in the eighteenth century that particular set of symbols true freemasons laid the cornerstone of america well it least some of its most i conic structures so what is freemasonry simply put it's the world's oldest and largest fraternity its membership who's who of world history george washington benjamin franklin winston churchill mozart davy crocket franklin roosevelt harry houdini gerald ford henry ford john wayne even colonel sanders if you want to be a mason you can petition the local laws for membership you'll need to demonstrate good character and belief in some sort of supreme being oh and in almost all lodges it's men only and i think it's a very relevant organization i think one of the things you hear a lot about today and today's youth specifically is that there are so many distractions in life you have a cell phone a blackberry an i phone a computer and i pod and you can be so distracted from the world i think everyone sometimes tends to forget that the world goes around because people make the world go around i think masonry is one of those beautiful things that for that time for that hour that i want to have the two hours on that wednesday night or that saturday night that everyone is in that l shins and i've always tried to seek ways to serve my community and i don't think there's enough emphasis on people having values on on wanting to do their best on wanting to do the right thing and wanting to treat others right masonry builds on that not from the aspect of trying to get other people to do good but trying to get each of us to do the best that we can with ourselves and not to be as judge mental on other people it's a way to make good men better my father's advice and i just didn't get in right away in fact on the last one in my family to have gotten the message and i did it on my own and so did my brother so my father really had no influence on us although we have five or six generations of our family on both my father's side my mother's side going back to some grand masters and of course as far as the united states plays a major role because most of the founding fathers were were ma and you can see the lessons and twined in the different documents that they wrote the letters that they wrote back and forth to each other and the decisions that they made that framed our country more and more young people in the blue lodges are coming in a lot of young people that i see former military business people are finding in us what we have said all along that we are which is the opportunity to take good men and make them better oh my first surgeon in my first unit was a freemason and  noticed that he had a lot of community service activities going on i just really wanted to be a part of that i was in baghdad when i had this conversation with them and he was just an outstanding guy and always there for the troops go in and so i would say more relevant today than we might have been years past but part of it too is i've seen masonry change a lot and we used to not be willing to say who we are and what we did we had these rules about you have to ask me for some stuff that might have been good in decades previous but it is not what we need today in order to share the good works that happened in masonry since being a freemason as an emergency department bedside taking care of them give me freemasonry for dummies i mean the one i want to why is this group fascinating they're fascinating because we live in a world where different cultures are killing each other over who's version of god is accurate and here you have an organization a global organization that is spiritual and yet will bring muslims jews christians and even just people are confused about the religion bring them together and say look we all agree that there's some good big thing out there but we're not going to put a label on it let's worship together masonry is really without equal in terms of a belief system which is that no one can be told what to believe especially when it comes to the very personal nature of belief in our power one of the reasons that i'm very comfortable being a mason and contribute in my own way financially is because we do good things and we do i'm for a lot of people who are not masons but who are americans and that makes me very happy to be part of it so i think that's how to i think freemasonry today is more relevant than some other periods of time because now whereas you know when the whole golden age of fraternal isn't one you know you have friends who are mason so you joined now it's people looking for something else to to fill a different part of their life my name is jason or i'm going to lecture ition i'm a sergeant the army national guard give every larger freemasons in the united states has a book of rules and rituals compiled and authorized by the grand lodge of each state these rules and rituals change slightly over time and from place to place but every maimed essentially the same for the last two hundred years are the rituals as written by albert g mackie published in eight hundred seventy three and this is the authorized ritual book of freemasons in washington state as published in nine hundred seventeen the smaller book is what is called a cipher and for many years and even now in many lodges men use their ciphers to help them remember the lodge rituals as you can see the cipher is a condensed form of language designed to keep the details of our rituals confidential the lettering on the left side of the page refers to the office on this page for example we see senior deacon junior warden and down here the worshipful masters talking to brother senior deacon of course with the internet much of the former secrecy has become obsolete though there are still a few things young man an older man can learn only within a tiled lodge of master masons tiles meaning the door is closed and nominations are kept at a safe distance i'm so glad that the person who own this book inscribed it shortly after we got it this is the date on this inscription is from our am davis am d april seventeen and as i said the book is copyrighted eight hundred seventy three manual of the laws and monetarily instructions and american system of lectures albert  i will read a section from the maquis ritual and then read the same section from the masonic monitor of nine hundred seventeen the masonic monitor for washington state published nine hundred seventeen is very close to what we use in twenty eighteen this is the prayer at the opening of large most holy and glorious lord god create architect of the universe the giver of all good gifts and graces that is promised that when two or three are gathered together in the tend to the glory and to our advancement in knowledge and virtue and we beseech thee o lord to bless our present assembling and to illuminate our minds that we may walk in the light of the countenance and when the trials of our probationary are over be admitted into the temple not made with hands eternal in the heavens and the same prayer fifty four years later and in one nine hundred seventeen the prayer read most holy and glorious lord god a giver of all good gifts and graces the highest promise that when two or three  gathered together in the name that will be in the midst of them and bless them in the name we assemble most commonly beseechingly two glasses in all our undertakings that we may know and serve the a right and that all our actions may tend to the glory and to our advancement in knowledge and virtue and we beseech thee o lord to bless our present assembling and to eliminate our minds that we may walk in the light of that countenance and when the trials for probationary state are over be admitted into the temple not made with hands eternal in the heavens  word for word exactly what the monitor was for mackie fifty four years earlier word for word what our prayer is in two thousand and eighteen in washington state this is the tradition of freemasonry this is how we make good men better hello i am ed cohen grand master of masons in virginia and on behalf of the more than forty thousand masons in virginia greetings when i first heard about freemasonry i was curious when i learned that many of the founding fathers of this great nation were masons and that so many men in this country and all over the world were masons i was intrigued and when i found that so many good men moral men community minded men that i was meeting were masons i was interested interested in learning more about freemasonry i did and i liked what i found i learned that it is a serious organization with serious purposes composed of men i am proud to associate with and who my wife is proud for me to associate with too and i was impressed by the good that freemasonry does in the community and around the world i like the opportunity to meet new people and make new friends and i like the fellowship that masons share and the fun they have so i joined the fraternity and it was all that i expected and more and today i hope you are as curious intrigued and interested as i was and that you will learn more about us and the great institution of which we are a part thank you freemasonry what is it movies like national treasure cove have stimulated interest and curiosity about freemasonry so just what is freemason just construction they taught the seven liberal arts and sciences they taught a system of morality they were bound together by a common desire to seek truth and knowledge  brother and they were most notably marked by their respect for others and the toleration of sincere beliefs which differed from their own education  truth and toleration these were the marks of ancient masons and continue to distinguish masons today in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries modern masonry was born gentlemen of education and position even royalty were attracted by this ancient system of teaching based on allegories and allusions of the building through the free association of men bound together by their belief in a creator a curious mix of high social rank and common worker seeking knowledge side by side these men were allowed to join the operative masons as speculative or accepted masons to improve their minds the accepted masons embrace these ancient teachings and eventually separated from the operative craft the modern system of freemasonry the world's oldest fraternity proud to be part of an organization that cares about children providing surgery medical care and treatment for children with burns and orthopedic problems and children with language or disorders proud to be a member of an organization that secret is out to be a mason you must ask me some centuries of teaching are waiting for those who have my name's tim hogan i have been lecturing over the years on the symbolism and esoteric practices associated with alchemy and particularly its association with freemasonry and the western mystery school tradition through my books and lectures i've been asked several times over the years too if there was a video available outlining some of these processes and showing some of these connections which i tell this time has not been available however it's my great pleasure that we can now make this video vailable and hopefully it can bring light into your path and to y lodge most freemasons in particular when they hear that there's a possible connection between alchemy and freemasonry first ask the question what is  masons aren't very well versed in the subject even though it's something that is highlighted within the degrees themselves in particular the stages of alchemy are something that are highlighted in the craft degrees or symbolic bluebloods degrees but they're veiled in such a way that you wouldn't immediately recognize it is my hope through my books and through this video that we can outline and show how some of these connections exist in order to educate each freemasons freemasonry actually has a long history of involvement with alchemy us from its earliest alchemize as was jean philip put the if bill as does the guy who was the some people believe created the third degree of masonry or at least in in europe to this day there are lodges that have alchemy labs in them and the interest in alchemy is started to increase substantially amongst lodges in the united states particularly of the traditional observance variety there are even some rumors that in the lodges of wolf gone on a day as mozart there was an operative lab that  so therefore it's important that we examine alchemy how it could possibly as be associated with the craft itself in what is or agendas are we find out could be being mentioned in the earliest techs of human civilization it was certainly a science that was propagated by the ancient egyptians the ancient chinese you find it in babylonian myths in the greek societies philosophers like aristotle were had been proponents of alchemy some even believe that alexander the great discovered the grave of the patron bacon and later with the development of the royal society where people like sir isaac newton studied alchemy and who worked with people like robert boyle to develop our chemical operations so whether we're looking to ancient origins of masonry to the knights templar to the elizabeth in court or even to the royal society as many masonic historians have done everywhere we turn including with the very cathedrals themselves and those who are building them we find the science  emphasized again and again and again