The “Brotherhood” prefers to be regarded as a “society with secrets” rather than a “secret society”.  I suppose this is because it is illegal in Britain to be a member of a secret society under the “Unlawful Societies Act 1799”.  It is also unlawful under this Act for Masons to have meetings, because gatherings in lodges are only permitted if yearly returns, providing names, addresses and description of brethren are submitted to the local, Clerks of Peace.  Most gatherings in Masonic lodges are therefore held in breach of this law.  The reason no one bothers to enforce the law is that the legal profession, from the top downwards, is inundated with Masons. LINK

It is also often denied by Masons that Freemasonry is not a secret society on account of the fact that everyone knows it exists.  This denial does not stand up under examination because, given the same litmus test, MI5 and MI6 would not be secret services because everyone knows they exist.  So a secret society it is!

To appreciate the influence that Freemasonry exerts on society we must never forget the incident reported by the Edinburgh Evening News' front page lead on 27 June 1991, a story headed: “Mystery over Masons’ cash”.  We had proof positive then that the operations and objectives of Freemasonry are unknown, are unaccountable and can operate with impunity outside the law.  The article was basically about a “nameless” lodge member (a Mr McQueenie, according to rumour) who misappropriated a large sum of money, believed to involve tens of thousands of pounds from the funds of Lodge Canongate and Leith No 5, Queen Charlotte Street, Leith, Edinburgh - a Metropolitan Lodge on the roll of the Grand Lodge of Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland.  Leith Police Station is just across the street from where Lodge No 5 stood.  This fraud occurred when the lodge was bordering on insolvency with debts purported to be in excess of £100,000.

The police received a letter from Lodge Secretary, William Simpson, on 23 May 1991, reporting details of the crime, but he was forced to withdraw the report after a directive from Arthur Owen Hazel, the then Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, 96 George Street, Edinburgh, ruled that there should be no external investigation.  Before detectives led a full inquiry, William Simpson sent a second letter to the police saying there had been a “misunderstanding”, advising the police that the transgression would be dealt with internally.  They gladly complied.  A Brother, who asked not to be named, said: “We have been gagged by protocol and the hierarchy.”

As a matter of no interest, Mr Arthur Owen Hazel was initiated in 1956 in the Celtic (Metropolitan) Chapel No 291, Brodies Close, 304 Lawnmarket, Edinburgh.  He was the holder of the Order of Merit of the Grand Lodge of Peru, and Proxy Master of Lodge Thistle No 1013 in Panama.  He made himself available for the representative position at the Grand Lodge of Scotland from the Grand Lodge of New Jersey, USA.  He made himself unavailable for comment to the Evening News about the fraud.  The then Assistant Grand Secretary of Grand Lodge, Norman Malcolm Thomas Michael McLeod, said he thought it should be a matter for the individual lodge and referred the matter back to William Simpson. But William Simpson had previously said: “I am not going to confirm or deny anything.  I might know more than others do, but I am not authorised to speak on behalf of the lodge.”

Assistant Grand Master of Grand Lodge, Norman McLeod, is also the representative at the Grand Lodge of Scotland from the Grand Lodge of West Virginia, USA, and doubles up as the Proxy Master of Lodge Carbonear No 1049 in Newfoundland, Canada.

Returning to the different attitudes to the fraud, a comparison of their respective testimonies indicates serious contradictions, because when two people give conflicting accounts about the same issue, either one or both of them are lying.  Of course, Freemasonry could not exist without such wholesale falsehoods.

What must be asked, however, is what made the Grand Secretary, Owen Arthur Hazel, assume, or, rather, make him know, that the police could be subordinated by a ruling made in the lodge.  This saga brought many questions from the public, including myself, about how the police can be requested to ignore crimes committed in the citadels of silence.  I mentioned in a letter to them that I believe the Corleone family was partial to meting out their own form of justice without external assistance from the police.

Shortly afterwards, Grand Lodge ordered the closure of the Leith lodge and put the premises up for sale.  Sources say it was wound up as a form of punishment because the Leith No 5 Secretary should not have reported it to the police in the first place as it brought unwelcome attention to and publicity about the lodge.  It would appear to be of no consequence to either the police or Grand Lodge that the attention and publicity over the fraud was warranted and was in the “public interest”.

The fact remains that a fraudulent deficit was covered up and an entire lodge held responsible for trying to perform a public duty, in the interests of justice.  So it must be assumed that these Office-bearing knuckle crunchers take the view that crime is more welcome than attention or publicity.  Bad publicity would harm the hierarchy infinitely more than it would low-level Masons, simply because the hierarchy uses Freemasonry for infinitely more personal purposes.  This is why these parasites consider it so objectionable to open the doors to public scrutiny.  Perhaps low-level Masons and the public in general would then discover what they really get up to when they swan off to some of the most exotic places in the world as representatives of Grand Lodge.

Questions must continue to be asked about where police officers' true allegiance lies when they submissively comply with the wishes of the lodge, in total disregard of the city’s taxpayers who pay them handsomely to detect crime and arrest offenders.  The real skulduggery, therefore, must have taken place well above the heads of both the Leith constabulary and the Leith lodge.  Individual lodge members are not totally innocent.  They must shoulder some of the blame themselves for not having the mettle to speak out against the closure of their lodge.  By remaining silent they have shown they are no better than compliant little lambs who have relinquished the divine spark of reason provided by God when he created all men equally.  Were it up to me, I would go further than just closing one lodge; I would proscribe them by statute - which should have happened a long time ago under the “Unlawful Societies Act 1799”.

Needless to say, this one fraud on its own may not be of earth shattering import, but the circumstances surrounding the case is certainly an indicator of the exclusive nature of Freemasonry and the damaging effect it has on everyone’s lives, past, present and future.

The circumstances surrounding the closure of one of the oldest lodges in Britain (in existence since 1688) must have pressed the panic button in Edinburgh’s forty other lodges at the time, rousing great concern over just how precarious the continued survival of all the lodges actually are.  Pressure was probably put on Grand Lodge to some degree because Lodge Canongate & Leith No 5, according to the 1994 Grand Lodge Year Book, is back in business at new premises in Trafalgar Hall, 1 St Anthony’s Place, Leith, Edinburgh.

I wrote to Arthur Owen Hazel, the Grand Secretary, at the Grand Lodge of Scotland on 18 May 1993 on a separate issue.  I asked him if Albert Pike LINK was identified by Grand Lodge as embracing the purported Masonic tenet of Brotherly Love, of equality amongst men, and of moral teaching and support of those who are in need.  I asked him this in the light that Pike was a Confederate General during the American Civil War before being placed under arrest on the orders of Confederate Brigadier General D H Cooper on charges of falsehood, cowardice and treason.  He was also subsequently indicted for treason by the Federal or Union authorities.  He was one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan.

In a reply dated 20 May 1993, Arthur Owen Hazel wrote: “I think you will understand that in any organisation there are those who transgress against its principles.  That is a fact of life and no doubt Mr Pike may have come into that category, but as I do not know his background, there is no point in making an assessment in this particular instance.  May I just say to you that within our Order we can suspend or expel members who bring our organisation into disrepute for whatever reason.”

Albert Pike was the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, USA, arguably the most powerful man in World Freemasonry in his day.  The Scottish Rite performs the obligations of high-ranking Masons between the 4th and up to the 33rd degree.  You might say it “oversees” the top thirty degrees and “overlooks” the lower three basic ranks.  The Grand Lodge, on the other hand, oversees the lowly first three degrees, which are Entered Apprentices, Fellow Craft and Master Masons respectively.  They comprise the vast majority of Masons, called “Blue Masonry” whose members are referred to as the "knife-and-forkers”.  The evil cultivated by Albert Pike and the Supreme Council are addressed in more detail in other chapters. LINK

However, I found it very strange that the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of the Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland was unaware of the background of a man who rewrote the Scottish Rite rituals and whom the Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry characterises as, inter alia, “a master genius of Masonry”.  I was not surprised when the Grand Lodge Year Book the following year, referred to three quotes of Albert Pike’s from page 95 of a book Pike authored called “Morals and Dogma”.  Not included was his verse about the Ku Klux Klan. LINK

So much for Mr Hazel’s claim that he was in no doubt that Albert Pike may have come into the category of transgressing Masonic principles.  But his claim that he was “unaware of Pike's background” is ludicrous!  Freemasons are entitled to have opinions but they are not entitled to lie or invent facts.  The Supreme Council for Scotland of the Ancient Free and Accepted Scottish Rite, which lionises Pike LINK, is housed at 94a George Street, Edinburgh, and is part of the same building as the Grand Lodge of Scotland.  If the Grand Secretary can freely lie or invent facts, it gives us a clear insight into the standards held by his disciples in the many lodges in Scotland, including Lodge Canongate & Leith No 5.

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