Arturo de Hoyos

I'm not a Mason, nor do I have the time, money, or inclination to become one, but I have never been of the mind that they were closet Luciferians or paganists. I mean, do you honestly think Ben Franklin and George Washington were Satanists? Ha. Hoyos and Morris take many of the oldest and oft-repeated myths to task, like Pike's Lucifer quote and the meaning of Jabulon. In fact, their analysis of Jabulon is quite convincing. The authors talk about the prime Christian critics of Masonry and show more the result is the same each time, they take Masonry's rituals too seriously, they use outdated copies of the rituals, and they go in biased. In fact, each chapter is a bit redundant, as the same quotes are repeated in each. Chapter 9 is over-long. We get the point, the man you're corresponding with is not a good researcher and he's biased. Also, there should be analysis of Knight and Lomas and, I recently saw a third degree ritual on TV - incorporate some of that. The work is well-footnoted and there is a nice bibliography. Let's hope the next edition has an index. show less

I didn't even know that I needed this book, not having heard of it before, but it is an absolute gem to add to my Lodge library. As usual, Arturo de Hoyos and the Scottish Rite Research Society have outdone themselves and surprised me with this important Masonic History work. The first American cipher, using multiple coding techniques. I plan on shelving it with Webb.

The Cloud of Prejudice focuses on one particular anti-Masonic document: the audio cassette Freemasonry and the Masonic Lodge by Ron Carlson, produced and distributed through Christian Ministries International in Minnesota. The general tone of deHoyos's treatment is one of detailed, scholarly critique. He is at special pains to demonstrate how Carlson and other anti-Masonic authors have distorted Masonic writings, and he does a thorough job. The Cloud of Prejudice includes a thirty-seven page show more bibliography listing hundreds of the works consulted in this effort. But the fact that deHoyos has the upper hand in scholarship sometimes leads him to an unseemly sarcasm, for instance when he puts scare quotes around the title of "'Pastor' Ron Carlson." Derision of his antagonist does not help deHoyos represent Masonic rationality and uprightness. The level of textual detail makes this book well-suited to Masons who want a more thorough understanding of the falsity of charges leveled against the fraternity. But other readers will probably lack the motivation to follow deHoyos's arguments. In essence, deHoyos is "preaching to the converted" in hopes of preventing their de-conversion. show less

Committed to the Flames is essentially a study of a set of Masonic cipher manuscripts from the 19th century. Roughly the last two-thirds of the book consists of decrypted versions of the manuscript texts. In the first third, de Hoyos and Morris provide the history of the manuscripts' decryption and the context of their origins. These chapters have some real value to those interested in old-fashioned cryptology and cryptanalysis. They also set forth a pretty fascinating story of the early show more development and difficulties of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the New York area. The cipher scribe, Robert Folger, was a chief exponent of the Cerneauist faction of Scottish Rite organizing during a particularly contentious period. The historical chapters of the book suffer from some redundancy in their details, and they look as though they might have been composed in parallel by the two authors, without much editorial attention given to reconciling them into a single whole.

The greater part of the actual manuscript contents is given over to Craft rituals drawn from the Rectified Scottish Rite, a Continental derivative of the Rite of Strict Observance. Folger had evidently intended these for the use of symbolic lodges working under the direct authorization of a Supreme Council of the 33° (in contrast to the typical arrangement in Anglophone Masonry, where A&A "Scottish" Rite jurisdictions charter bodies only to work their 4° and above). There are also some rituals for the Knight Templar degree, which is not part of the 33° system. The three Folger MSS provide among them multiple copies and versions of the rituals.

The other principal ingredient of the manuscript texts is a version of Crata Repoa, which differs in few but sometimes signficant respects from the English translation first published by John Yarker in The Kneph, and more recently available in Manly Hall's Freemasonry of the Ancient Egyptians. Crata Repoa, originally in French or German (depending on which sources one trusts) is an attempt to reconstruct the ancient mysteries in their original Egyptian form, on the basis of a fundmental analogy to Freemasonry, and with recourse to classical documentation regarding Greek mystery-cults.

The plaintexts of the Folger MSS are reproduced here as extensively as possible, to the point where they will provide a virtually primary source for research. But the repetitions within the manuscripts are fairly extensive, and even a technically-informed Masonic reader who prods himself to read all of Committed to the Flames may agree with me that the real substance of the volume could have been presented in half the page count. show less