I take this opportunity to introduce the publication of my latest book titled “An Enemy Within, How Freemasonry Shaped the Church and Modern World.” It’s a topic central to the ongoing cultural disintegration witnessed over the past 60 years, and yet surprisingly few Americans and Christians fully understand the connection. What has been hidden from their eyes is the reality that Masonry is essentially a fashionable, modern day reiteration of the oldest Christian heresy of Gnosticism, going back to the 1st century, an ancient heresy that is no mean threat to human society. I propose that the greatest existential threat to the Church and State today is not Communism, Islam, or terrorism but the globalist Gnostic juggernaut which insists that human knowledge and reason alone can defeat the power of evil and create a worldly utopian paradise.

Yet we see this attitude constantly promoted through today’s public education establishment which, for a century or more, has gradually undergone a paradigm shift from its former Christian basis to a fully Gnostic orientation. In fact one could credibly argue that public education, from the university level downward to the elementary, has now become the de facto state religion in this country. Gnosticism worships knowledge as the ultimate good in human existence; knowledge as an end in itself ~ the key to power and fulfillment; the power to create our own ‘reality.’ But in the Christian perspective knowledge is directed to a very specific goal, to know God. It is a means, not an end, whose intended object must be Truth: the absolute Truth Incarnate who is Jesus Christ.

Gnosticism is antithetical to the pathways of salvation laid out by Christ. It proposes a different pathway through so-called ‘enlightenment’ meaning the acquisition of secretive knowledge in order to attain some higher state of being. It is not Christian humility but human pride of accomplishment which leads one to salvation. Knowledge, not faith; action, not grace, is what one needs to attain happiness. Morality and truth become purely subjective values in the scheme of things because after all it is we who ultimately get to determine what is right or wrong.

The Encyclopaedia Judaica plainly states Gnosticism “is the view of esoteric “knowledge” as a redemptive factor, which enables a group of select people to bridge the abyss separating the human from the divine.” Notice that such ‘knowledge’ is meant only for a privileged few, not humanity at large, which explains why Masonry as a Gnostic cult is riddled with its own ‘esoteric’ (meaning hidden) secrets, handshakes, symbols, etc. Only a select few are allowed admittance to the inner divine mysteries. Yet it is this same secretive lack of transparency which, unfortunately, has become a hallmark of modern governments who seem to feel that ordinary citizens have no right to know what they are doing.

One of the tenets of Gnostic systems is that there is one level of knowledge for the uninitiated as against a different, often contradictory cache of knowledge reserved to the inner circle. This ‘dualism” leads to the obvious assertion that the falsification of truth is permissible or even desirable at times in order to protect certain Gnostic ‘secrets.’ In fact, one of the primary sources of these Gnostic secrets is the Jewish Kabbalah, “the traditional and most commonly used term for the esoteric teachings of Judaism and for Jewish mysticism.” Again, the Encyclopaedia Judaica explains, “The development of the Kabbalah had its sources in the esoteric and theosophical currents existing among the Jews of Palestine and Egypt in the era which saw the birth of Christianity.” It later adds, “a Jewish Gnostic sect with definite antinomian tendencies was active in Sephoris… From this source a considerable number of esoteric traditions were transmitted to Gnostics outside Judaism.

But the Gnostic tree’s roots reach even deeper than the speculations of Jewish mysticism. Gnostic Freemasonry is but a more recent manifestation of that far more ancient spirit of revolt which first reared its head in the Garden of Eden. For it was Satan the first revolutionary (his true motto being non serviam “I will not serve”) who seduced Adam and Eve. The Father of Lies used the deceptive lure of some ‘secret knowledge’ to entice Eve into rebelling against God. One could rightly say that Eve became the first Gnostic because she allowed herself to be led by the light of human reason rather than the light of faith. At that moment the cult of Freemasonry, whose roots are clearly Gnostic, germinated in the soul of mankind. But what eventually brought this poisoned seed out of dormancy and into common currency was the Gnostical Kabbalah.

Historian Nesta Webster observed, “This method of borrowing from other races and religions whose ideas useful for their purpose has always been the custom of the Jews. The Kabbalah, as we have seen, was made up of these heterogeneous elements. And it is here we find the principal progenitor of Gnosticism.” Webster then quotes the Freemason Ragon who says: “The Kabbalah is the key to the occult sciences. The Gnostics were born of the Kabbalists.”

Various early Gnostic sects perverted and corrupted both Christian and Jewish doctrines with a dualism that set the physical and spiritual realms in stark opposition to one another. The inevitable net effect of that base naturalism, flowing from Gnostic beliefs, was to deify human nature and glorify sexual license. Thus, Eliphas Levi observed that the Gnostics. Under the pretext of “spiritualizing matter, materialized the spirit in the most revolting ways… Rebels to the hierarchic order… they wished to substitute the mystical license of sensual passions to wise Christian sobriety and obedience to laws.” Gnosticism is the extension of that first revolt in the Garden of Eden which placed human prerogatives above divine precepts. A large part of their doctrine is intentionally secretive and Kabbalistic; not to be shared with the uninitiated so that “in this “idea of one doctrine for the ignorant and another for the initiated,” the Gnostics had restored the very system which Christianity had come to destroy.”

In the end, Gnostic dualism creates a system of moral ambiguity where truth and morality are more subjective than objective. Duplicity then becomes the order of the day, even lying openly to one’s own followers. That is why Albert Pike, the ‘high priest’ of Freemasonry, could openly boast, “To the crowd we must say: we worship a God… To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors, we say this to the brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th degrees: all of us initiates of the high degrees should maintain the Masonic religion in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine… Yes, Lucifer is God… Religious philosophy in its purity and truth consists in the belief in Lucifer… Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good… Pike,the author of Morals and Dogma which is considered the Bible of Freemasonry, saw no inconsistency in claiming allegiance to God before one group of his followers but vowing allegiance to Lucifer, the devil, among a higher ranking cadre of Freemasons. He thus demonstrated the level of depravity to which Gnosticism can lead men and why the Church has consistently condemned it.

For centuries the Church fought to restrain and subdue Gnosticism in its various forms though it would occasionally flare up as in the 13th century Catharist and later Waldensian movements. But the most serious resurgence of Gnosticism began in the 17th century as the old Catholic feudal order began to collapse. European society deriving much new wealth through trade, was also experiencing revolutionary and religious chaos, savage wars, and powerful monarchs like Louis XIV consolidating the former feudal allegiances. This new social order did not explicitly reject God’s sovereignty, but it allowed latent Gnostic tendencies to resurface among the expanding nouveau riche classes and nobility who had much more time and money on their hands than ever before. The Enlightenment era zeitgeist only fanned the embers of incipient Freemasonry which would pull together various secretive Gnostic doctrines borrowed from Rosicrucian, Kabbalist, and Templar sources. As such, the Gnostic soul of Freemasonry was, from its inception, in full harmony with the spirit of the Enlightenment which birthed the modern Masonic system.

Of course, there is much more to this story than can be summed up in a single post. But it is important to realize that in our day this Gnostic Kabbalistic ideology has potently infiltrated our institutions, both social, religious, governmental, and educational to consolidate power into the hands of concealed, select oligarchs who are euphemistically referred to as the “Deep State” or Deep Church.” More than simply stripping away basic human freedoms, as witnessed during the Covid Plandemic, this global syndicate’s primary target has ever been the Catholic Church which early on saw beneath its disguise of humanitarian “brotherhood,” to peer into its secretive and nefarious aims and condemn it. Pope St. Pius X thus identified Masonry’s soul deadening progeny as the heresy of Modernism, which he explained had become “the synthesis of all heresies.” In time Modernism would insinuate its error-filled ideals deep into the bosom of the Church herself, largely through a Vatican Council which, in 1962, one Modernist cardinal crowed would become an Ecclesial French Revolution.

To get the whole story you will have to read the book, though I suspect that you may have to readjust your whole view of our modern Western world, and your sense of recent history after doing so. We’ve all been indoctrinated by closet-Gnostics, often without our even realizing it, because our culture is so completely saturated in Masonic, i.e., Gnostic, ideology. But if we do nothing to recognize the presence of “An Enemy Within” we will not be able to resist, nor teach our children to resist, this enticing modus vivendil draped under layers of disarming humanism and material comforts. E-mail me at franscomp@yahoo,com if you wish to learn more.

Francis J. Pierson +a.m.d.g.