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The Boy Who Cried Wolf: The Book That Breaks Masonic Silence

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If your real interest is in the true origins of Freemasonry, this isn't the book for you.

Instead, I recommend that you read 'The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590-1710', by David Stevenson.

Stevenson's book is the only work on the origins of Freemasonry I have ever seen that ignores the movement's vast myth-making literature (which includes everything Albert Pike wrote) and focuses instead on the surviving records of the earliest known masonic lodges. Stevenson--who teaches history at the University of St. Andrews--paints a solid, sober, believable portrait of Freemasonry's rather prosaic origins in the operative masonic lodges of early 17th-century Scotland.

His study is a welcome and refreshing antidote to all the junk that has been written about Freemasonry in the past three centuries. It explodes Masonic authors' extravagant claims for an origin in ancient civilizations and possession of power supernatural secrets. It also undermines anti-Masonic authors' equally bizarre accusations of pacts with supernatural forces of evil. It replaces these fanciful images with the story of a remarkable human institution whose recent, humble, workaday origins are far more interesting than its myths.

If you only read one book about Freemasonry in your lifetime, that book should be David Stevenson's 'The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590-1710'.

Richard Thorn's book presents what amounts to the party line from Masonry. He was both diplomatic and polite to the religious right - something worthy of praise.

It is sad that, in the name of their G_d, the religious right can 'bear false witness against their neighbor.' Fortunately the secular society in which we live - there being a wall of seperation between church and state - allows BOTH thinking and believing to exist in the same communities.

While the premise of this book is laudable, and Rev. Carlson deserves every slap on the hand he gets for his many prevarications in the name of God, Mr. Thorn's book is nearly identical to an earlier book by A. DeHoyos, "The Cloud of Prejudice." Interested parties should get both books and judge for themselves whether Mr. Thorn has acted questionably.

Dr.Thorn does an excellent job of debunking the specific attacks on freemasonry by Ron Carlson and Pat Robertson. As mentioned by Dr. Thorn, it is easy to present passages from the bible out of context. It is also easy for anti-Masons to quote Albert Pike's "Morals and Dogma" out of context. This book also has a full transcript of Ron Carlson's attack on Freemasonry. Please read the book. Then read Fundamentalism & Freemasonry by Gary Leazer, Ph.D. Leazer's book will give you one Souther Babtists view of Freemasonry.

I thought that Dr. Thorn framed his case very well against Ron Carlson and other detractors of Free Masonry until I read his Appendix B, which is about half the book. I was amazed! Dr. Thorn has done exactly what he spent his entire book criticizing Ron Carlson for doing. He has, on page 61, quoted only carefully chosen words from a passage in Morals and Dogma thereby effectively avoiding the point and adulterating Albert Pike's original meaning. The fact that he had to have read the whole section and gathered the true essence of it in order to know what words to choose and which parts to ignore shows that his motive was to deliberately conceal Free Masonry's inheritance of the Ancient Mysteries. When Albert Pike's writings are read intact, the message of Dr. Thorn's book, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, is destroyed, but Ron Carlson's revelation still stands. Between the front and back covers of this book we find that the 'boy who lied' has changed characters, but the 'Wolf' is still the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rites.