Post by Tamrin on Oct 15, 2008 6:11:14 GMT 10
Freemasonry: The Study of a Phenomenon
Alexander Piatigorsky, 1999, The Harvill Press, London
[originally published as, Who's Afraid of Freemasonry?, 1997]
[Excerpt]
Alexander Piatigorsky, 1999, The Harvill Press, London
[originally published as, Who's Afraid of Freemasonry?, 1997]
[Excerpt]
In its form and structure the text of the Masonic Manual strictly follows the almost ubiquitous general pattern of the world’s ritual instructions. Recently I staged a curious, though quite elementary, experiment. I made a copy of a couple of its pages, deleted all references to Freemasonry, replaced them with xs, ys and zs, and showed this piece of text to several scholars, asking them (after having established that none of them had anything to do with Masonry) for their opinion on its origin and character.
The first, Professor D., an authority on Zoroastrian religion, said: “This is very similar to a late, and rather degenerate version of a certain group of Medieval Zoroastrian rituals.”
The second, Dr. C., a specialist in Tibetan religion and northern Buddhism, remarked: “The form is absolutely the same as that of the classical Sogshods (Buddhist Tantrist Ritual Manuals) of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. More than that, some passages even look as if they were literally translated from the Tibetan.”
The third, Professor E., a renowned orientalist, returned it to me with a cynical laugh, saying: “The text from which you claim to have extracted these pages does not exist. You must have faked it since it is far too standardized and common to all religions to be genuine.”
The first, Professor D., an authority on Zoroastrian religion, said: “This is very similar to a late, and rather degenerate version of a certain group of Medieval Zoroastrian rituals.”
The second, Dr. C., a specialist in Tibetan religion and northern Buddhism, remarked: “The form is absolutely the same as that of the classical Sogshods (Buddhist Tantrist Ritual Manuals) of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. More than that, some passages even look as if they were literally translated from the Tibetan.”
The third, Professor E., a renowned orientalist, returned it to me with a cynical laugh, saying: “The text from which you claim to have extracted these pages does not exist. You must have faked it since it is far too standardized and common to all religions to be genuine.”
p.272
