The strange and mysterious world Podcast
Sep 22, 2026 · 1 hr 30 min · 19 segments
Has Freemasonry lost its deeper teachings—or are they still hidden in plain sight? Author and Freemason Jaime Paul Lamb joins Strange & Mysterious World to explore Masonic symbolism, initiation and…
Jamie Paul LambGuest
William CollinsonHost
Lee StrydomHost
And I think it's one of those things that if you've developed the sort of aperture of awareness to kind of see it, you know, what could I compare that to? It's like, you know, there's certain things that are conceivable, you know, that there's a threshold of conceivability.
What can you... except without it being like a priori ridiculous, you know what? So it's, so I think in Freemasonry, that structure is there.
In fact, Albert Pike, a Freemason and a Scottish Rite Freemason, um, He once said, and this is a bad paraphrase, but he said he approached Freemasonry and he's having a background in history and philosophy, et cetera.
He saw that it stood in mute testimony of its former glory, right? Where it had been sort of, I don't want to say mistreated, but it had been just scooped out of, it seems to have been scooped out of its, the soul of it has been scooped out, but he saw around that and he saw the structure and he was able to sort of decode those mysteries that had sort of faded into the background.
In fact, it says, at least in the United States, when you get your petition to petition a lodge, it says you're petitioning for the hidden mysteries of Freemasonry.
And a lot of people have zeroed in from those various angles on Masonic ritual and symbolism and literature.
So there's a lot of different ways you can approach it to get at the sort of the hidden recesses of the craft and find you know where it has been imbued with these particular western esoteric ideas it's almost like it's almost like a trojan horse from the pre-enlightenment era through our you know the scientism of today the the sort of um the sort of atheistic materialism, this secularization of society, particularly the West.
Freemasonry has carried the payload of Western esotericism through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
And it's only really over the last maybe 10 years or so that a good chunk of the craft the membership the members of the craft the fraternity are starting to um open up to that uh secreted payload if that makes sense
so so what so you're saying it was kept like that piece that hollowed out they haven't they've kept it like mysterious and secret for the last 10 years and now they're actually willing to open it up more
prior to 10 years prior to 10 years the secret over the last 10 years seems to be coming out more
Whereas what happened was is in and around the two world wars that the United States were in.
I can only talk about North America with any confidence, but around our World War I and World War II.
uh the beginning of the 20th century thereabouts that's when you start to get the big influx of fraternal members people who were more interested in dining experiences and social events and uh philanthropy and uh altruism all good things these are good things and they are part of the craft they're the external part they're the exoteric part of the craft of freemasonry but um So so we had a big inflation of members.
And I think it's one of those things that if you've developed the sort of aperture of awareness to kind of see it, you know, what could I compare that to? It's like, you know, there's certain things that are conceivable, you know, that there's a threshold of conceivability.
What can you... except without it being like a priori ridiculous, you know what? So it's, so I think in Freemasonry, that structure is there.
In fact, Albert Pike, a Freemason and a Scottish Rite Freemason, um, He once said, and this is a bad paraphrase, but he said he approached Freemasonry and he's having a background in history and philosophy, et cetera.
He saw that it stood in mute testimony of its former glory, right? Where it had been sort of, I don't want to say mistreated, but it had been just scooped out of, it seems to have been scooped out of its, the soul of it has been scooped out, but he saw around that and he saw the structure and he was able to sort of decode those mysteries that had sort of faded into the background.
In fact, it says, at least in the United States, when you get your petition to petition a lodge, it says you're petitioning for the hidden mysteries of Freemasonry.
And a lot of people have zeroed in from those various angles on Masonic ritual and symbolism and literature.
So there's a lot of different ways you can approach it to get at the sort of the hidden recesses of the craft and find you know where it has been imbued with these particular western esoteric ideas it's almost like it's almost like a trojan horse from the pre-enlightenment era through our you know the scientism of today the the sort of um the sort of atheistic materialism, this secularization of society, particularly the West.
Freemasonry has carried the payload of Western esotericism through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
And it's only really over the last maybe 10 years or so that a good chunk of the craft the membership the members of the craft the fraternity are starting to um open up to that uh secreted payload if that makes sense
so so what so you're saying it was kept like that piece that hollowed out they haven't they've kept it like mysterious and secret for the last 10 years and now they're actually willing to open it up more
prior to 10 years prior to 10 years the secret over the last 10 years seems to be coming out more
Whereas what happened was is in and around the two world wars that the United States were in.
I can only talk about North America with any confidence, but around our World War I and World War II.
uh the beginning of the 20th century thereabouts that's when you start to get the big influx of fraternal members people who were more interested in dining experiences and social events and uh philanthropy and uh altruism all good things these are good things and they are part of the craft they're the external part they're the exoteric part of the craft of freemasonry but um So so we had a big inflation of members.
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