Freemasonry has not figured prominently in most of the displays and debates on slavery and abolition in 2007. Yet the society was an important eighteenth century institution and one whose extensive archives have the potential to offer interesting - and sometimes unfamiliar - insights into social processes and relationships that shaped the Atlantic world of which slavery and abolitionism were prominent features. This review of the exhibition at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry begins to uncover this complex and sometimes ambiguous history. As well as being an age of slavery, slave-trading, slave resistance, abolitionism and eventual abolition, the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were an age of burgeoning Masonic sociability in Britain, and indeed right across the Atlantic world. The creation of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717 gave a degree of organizational co-ordination to a network of Masonic lodges that by the end of the 1730s was already embracing the Caribbean and the North American continent. Merchants, colonialists and military men, caught up in the eighteenth century's larger dramas of imperial expansion and economic exploitation, were prominent both among the agents and among the beneficiaries of this Masonic expansion. An interest is Freemasonry - in its networks of social connection, of philanthropy, of information - thus offers an intriguing prism through which to view many of the salient themes and issues in the period's history. The histories of transatlantic slavery, of abolition and emancipation, can all be illuminated from this angle.
Thomas Clarkson was among the foremost British campaigners against both slavery and the slave trade. He was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, on 28 March 1760 and educated at the grammar school there where his father, the Rev. John Clarkson, was headmaster. In 1775, he went to St. Paul's School in London where he excelled. He went up to Cambridge in 1780 where he was an outstanding student. His awareness of slavery originated in an essay, originally written in Latin, as an entry in a Cambridge University prize competition, which it won. (In fact, Clarkson had already won a BA competition, and he wanted and became the first person to win the MA competition as well.) The question - and there was only one - was "is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?" (Anne Liceat Invitos in Servitutem Dare?). After 1823, when the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery (later the Anti-Slavery Society) was formed, Clarkson again traveled around the country. He covered 10,000 miles, and activated the network of sympathetic anti-slavery societies which had been formed. This resulted in 777 petitions being delivered to parliament demanding the total emancipation of slaves. When the society adopted a policy of immediate emancipation, Clarkson and Wilberforce appeared together for the last time to lend their support. In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. Clarkson lived for a further 13 years. Although his eyesight was failing, he continued to campaign for abolition, focusing on the United States. He was the principal speaker at the opening of the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in Freemasons' Hall, London in 1840, chaired by Thomas Binney. The conference was designed to build support for abolishing slavery worldwide and included delegates from France, the USA, Haiti and Jamaica. The scene at Clarkson's opening address was painted in a commemorative work, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The emancipated slave, Henry Beckford (a Baptist deacon in Jamaica), appeared in the right foreground. Clarkson and the prominent abolitionist Quaker William Allen were to the left, the main axis of interest. In 1846 Clarkson received the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a former slave who had escaped to freedom, on his first visit to England.
Benjamin Creme (born 5 December 1922) is a Scottish artist, author, esotericist and editor of Share International magazine. He asserts that the second coming prophesied by many religions will come in the form of Maitreya the World Teacher. Maitreya is the name Buddhists use for the future Buddha, but Creme claims that Maitreya is the teacher that all religions point towards and hope for. Other names for him, according to Creme, are the Christ, the Imam Mahdi, Krishna, and the Messiah. Creme says Maitreya is the "Avatar for the Aquarian Age" and is currently living in London since 19 July 1977. Benjamin Creme is the reincarnation of Thomas Clarkson.
The Hierarchy has plans already made and ready to put into effect. These involve the reconstruction of the world financial and economic order. A group of high initiates, themselves economists, industrialists, and financial experts of great experience and achievement, are working with the Hierarchy and have evolved a series of blueprints, alternative inter-related plans, which will solve the redistribution problems which are at the basis of the present world crisis. These can and will be speedily implemented when the need is seen and accepted, which acceptance will be forced on the United Nations of the world by the weight of a now informed public opinion. The cry for help and justice from the poor and starving nations will be too loud and too dramatic to ignore. The Plan of the Hierarchy of Ascended Masters is a New World Religion and a New World Order, with a "Christ" and one "Sanat Kumara" at its head.
In principle, the ending of the terrible and inefficient system of slavery should have produced progress, optimism, and gratefulness on all fronts. To many, however, the end of slavery in the Caribbean was a big disappointment. On average, the ex-slaves did not become yeomen farmers nor did they improve their income and status as free plantation workers as many had hoped. The abolitionists in Europe and North America, who had fought so gallantly to get slavery abolished, were dismayed. The pessimistic predictions of their adversaries about a dramatic decline in plantation output had proved all too real. Most abolitionists had not expected that so many of the freedmen would leave the plantations or that so many would fail to become the hard working, God-fearing peasantry that they had envisioned. Unwilling to admit that the fault lay with an unrealistic assessment on their own part; they attributed the blame to the planters as well as to the colonial and home governments. Obstinacy or obstruction on the part of the planters and the colonial civil servants could only lead either to the stagnation that the freedmen had experienced, or, worse, to a decline in their living and working conditions. Yet, the planters were also disappointed. They realized that their slaves had not been emancipated in order to improve the profitability of their plantations, but only a few planters had expected that their supply of permanent plantation labor would be reduced so dramatically. In order to fill the gap they were forced to search for reliable laborers in such far away places as India and China. In sum, the abolition of slavery seemed to have produced nothing but disappointment all round.
As Nazi Germany demonstrated, when a New Order is ushered in to crush the old one, there is always a lot of death and destruction. This is because the "useless weeds" that allowed former corrupt systems to exist have to be violently uprooted or demonstrate radically reformed behavior to justify their existence in the New Order. The fact that the Nazi movement was based upon strange occult fantasies doesn't seem to matter. If the goal is radical change, then any means serve to justify the end. The swastika is an ancient symbol. No matter what direction it spins, it denotes never-ending change. Social change has come to be directed by high ranking Freemasons. According to Bill Cooper, 32nd degree Freemasons of the Scottish rite are involved in making us believe in UFOs and extraterrestrials. Their goal is to achieve the 33rd degree through meritorious work to bring about the completion of the Great Work. The destruction of the Church, the State and the enslavement of the mob. David Icke, doesn't realize it yet, but his X Factor involves drastic population reduction. This is a fundamental requirement of the New Age. “Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.” Eckhart Tolle
Just like the vague concept of Western Civilization, the dream that David Icke could somehow awaken spiritually is still just ONLY a good idea. An unlimited mind - the very pinnacle of all human potential is still lost in the false paradigms of us versus them, Reptilians versus Plejarens, Nazis versus Jews? Is Icke STILL a holocaust denier, does Shirley MacLaine STILL think the Jews got what they deserved?
Truths of great import are hidden in plain view, but few, so very few, ever get to see them!
Most of the biographical data relating to famous living, dead or reincarnated persons was either copied directly from articles found at Wikipedia or slightly modified. It therefore remains free under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).
Past life readings were supplied by trained expert Brianstalin who has studied with various gifted healers and teachers including the Dalai Lama.
Brianstalin reminds us that although the Akashic Records remains the ultimate source of all knowledge, we must access this source directly in order to determine the truth of what he or anybody else is telling us.