The Truth About Freemasonry

Thanks to Edelweiss Pirate for posting this incredibly well-written and well-researched piece on the ugly truth about Freemasonry entitled, The Freemasons Nudge! Nudge! Wink! Wink! I've posted it in it's entirety below, but I highly recommend searching through the other excellent articles at his Happy Truther blog.




The following story appeared on the ICN North Wales news website, it has since been removed.

Former Birmingham police officer Raymond Ketland, 66, of Nant y Coed, Glan Conwy, became involved with the girl after noticing sexual activity on Llanddulas beach. He admitted two charges of sexual activity with a minor, taking indecent photographs of a child and facilitating a child sex offense, and was jailed for two and a half years. Ketland had become involved partly through a fellow Mason. Andrew Thomas, prosecuting, said: "He recognized one of them as a fellow member of his Masonic Lodge, who walked up to him and asked 'Do you want to have a bit of fun?' He pointed out a girl who was with them." Mr Thomas later confirmed Ket-land had refused to divulge the identity of his fellow Mason to investigating officers. Catholic Bishop Gerard Crane, called as a character witness by Ketland's defense, said his friend was "totally distraught" at what had happened.

Here we have substance to the rumor that the masons run child abuse rings. The reason for their doing so, apart from the sheer unbridled exercise of all things evil, is for control. If they can implicate somebody in child abuse and pedophilia, they will have ammunition with which to blackmail that person for the rest of their lives. If this person is powerful or in a position of authority, it provides perfect leverage for the Masonic organization to operate on society. They used to blackmail homosexuals in a similar manner before it was decriminalized, and the secret services often try to compromise foreign agents into working for them, in a similar manner. Sex has always been a good way for these people to incriminate people and hold them at their beck and call. Whether the threat of compromising pictures of a man with his bit on the side (who he incidentally met through Masonic connections) being sent to his wife if he doesn’t do a ‘little favor’ for his brothers. Not only does it seem in connection with freemasonry that some of them practice pedophilia, but indeed that they actively encourage it in others.

For these people the ends justify the means, and despite them using the most evil and disgusting methods conceivable, for them, it is a means to an end. This proves that all their high talk of morality is so much cobblers designed to lure in naive and fresh faced idealists. Nothing could be further from the truth, the tree must be judged by its fruit and as we shall see, the harvest is a rotten one.

Here is another story which made the press, this time illustrative of the brutality and atmosphere of terror which masonry seeks to instil in its members. One can only surmise how the soldier died, whether through drinking too much and suffering a sudden heart attack, or indeed, more sinisterly but equally plausibly, that he was murdered by fellow masons for either divulging Masonic secrets or for attempting to avoid his proper initiation. One can only guess.

Mannheim soldier’s death has element of Masonic mystery
21 Year Old GI Freemason Killed in Masonic Mystery
GI found dead hours after scheduled secretive rite

Stars and Stripes, European edition
By Steve Mraz
Sunday, February 12, 2006

Courtesy of the Wilder family Spc. Donald Anthony Wilder, 21, was found dead Jan. 8 at Spinelli Barracks in Mannheim, Germany. Questions loom involving the details of Spc. Donald Anthony’s death. An autopsy was inconclusive. The Masons are a secret society that dubs itself the world’s oldest and largest fraternity. Masons rise in rank by performing degree-work.

MANNHEIM, Germany — Weeks before Spc. Donald Anthony Wilder was found dead in a barracks shower, his parents say, he told them he knew he was going to be beaten. On Jan. 7, Wilder, 21, was set to become a third-degree Mason with the Prince Hall Masons in Mannheim. A radio communication security controller repairman with the 512th Maintenance Company, Wilder had become active with the Prince Hall Masons in the fall of 2005.

In order to become a third-degree Mason, Wilder knew he would have to endure being beaten on his buttocks with a paddle by fellow Masons. His plan was to get so drunk for the Jan. 7 ceremony that he wouldn’t feel the pain of the beatings, according to a friend, Spc. Tony d’Ercole. His mother, Diane Wilder, said her son told her that if he got so drunk that he passed out, his fellow Masons would take his blows. On Jan. 8, just hours after the evening ceremony that took place inside Mannheim American High School at Benjamin Franklin Village, Wilder was found dead in a friend’s shower in the barracks at Spinelli Barracks in Mannheim.An autopsy performed last month at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center was inconclusive, pending further studies, which are due back next week. Marie Shaw, a Landstuhl spokeswoman, said preliminary findings show Wilder experienced a “sudden, unexpected death.”

He told them about the paddlings he took when he became a first- and second-degree mason last fall: how he would lie in his bed at Spinelli Barracks in Mannheim, icing his body after the paddlings, his mother said. “He talked about the beatings a lot … and he was very afraid of them,” Diane Wilder said from her home in Seal Rock, Ore. “Prior to the … ceremony, he was throwing up because he was so nervous, that’s what we were told.” He said the beatings were to show the other Masons just how badly you want to be a member.

“ ‘If you can’t put up with a little discomfort for a little while in order to do some good for people, you don’t want it that much,’ he told us,” she said. On Christmas, Diane Wilder talked to her son twice. During those conversations, she says, Donald Wilder expressed concern about the paddlings he knew awaited him. “His plan was to get so drunk that he wouldn’t have to take all the beatings,” Diane Wilder said. “There was something about it, obviously, we didn’t like,” Diane Wilder said. “It made us nervous. It just didn’t seem right.” The week before his death, the Wilders talked to their son every other day.

On Jan. 5 — three days before he died — Wilder promised his mother he would not go through with the third-degree ceremony, she said. Donald Wilder would not stay true to his word. “I think he just decided not to tell us because we disapproved,” Diane Wilder said. Also on Jan. 5, Wilder went to Murphy’s Law Irish Pub in Mannheim. He met friends that evening, including Maria Testai, a German acquaintance, and d’Ercole, a soldier in Wilder’s unit who served with him in Iraq. The two soldiers talked for about an hour at the bar, d’Ercole said, and Wilder seemed relaxed. Testai said Wilder told her that he would like to go to a movie with her during the coming weekend.

“I have another friend married to an American,” Testai said. “She told me about the Masons. She told me that they would beat up the people and drink a lot when they have parties. I didn’t like it so I didn’t ask for more. “He sounded, I don’t know, not really nervous,” Testai said. “He talked a lot. I don’t know if excited is the right word.” The initiation ceremony took place inside Mannheim American High School. The group initially requested to use the facility on Jan. 6. Because of school rehearsals, the high school was not available, said Dennis Bohannon, public affairs officer for Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Europe. A key to the school was checked out to the Masons on Jan. 5. The group used the key to enter the facility without authorization on Jan. 7, Bohannon said. When asked how school officials knew that the Masons were in the facility on Jan. 7, Bohannon said, “someone in the school has personal knowledge.” Sometime during the morning of Jan. 8, Wilder was found lying unconscious and unresponsive in the shower of a friend’s room at Spinelli Barracks, said Diane Wilder. Medical professionals, military police and the German police were called to the scene. Shortly after noon, Spc. Donald Anthony Wilder, a 21-year-old veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was pronounced dead.

To date, no charges have been preferred against anyone in relation to Wilder’s death. Until further autopsy studies are complete, it is unknown whether Wilder died of alcohol poisoning or something else. Officially, the command that Wilder’s unit comes under is working with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, known as CID, to find out what happened. “We have multiple, ongoing investigations to ensure that the facts are known and everything that can be done to prevent this from happening to other soldiers,” said Maj. Allen Hing, 21st Theater Support Command public affairs officer. To protect the integrity of its investigation, CID is not releasing details of the investigation at this time, said Christopher Grey, CID spokesman. Soldiers are not prohibited from joining such groups as the Masons. D’Ercole estimated about six or seven soldiers in his roughly 250-man unit are Masons.

To reduce a strong young man to such a state requires an extremely hard hand. This is a boy who got through combat training with all its psychological and physical rigors. This case reminds me of the recent series of deaths at the army's Deep Cut barracks in the UK. Again, we have a case where four young trainee soldiers are killed mysteriously in separate incidents and the MOD refuses to hold and enquiry.

Is it a coincidence that all 13 members of the British Army Enquiry board are Freemasons? This is the problem with 'secrecy'. The fact that we are told so little allows us to assume that something quite bad is going on. I also know that the freemasons and the military are intimately connected. All the soldiers I know underwent a freemason initiation which involved being followed around and physically attacked. A stress inducing exercise to create a climate of fear in the candidate. Fear being essential for subservience.

Again, my opinions of Freemasonry are not sound bites scrabbled from conspiracy writers (though what's wrong with that?) but actual personal experiences of an attempted indoctrination into their cult. I write for the simple reason of wishing to inform people that there are always two sides to every story. Here’s another example of unaccountable and sudden deaths while inductees are being subjected to initiations:

Freemason Shot Dead in a Masonic Ritual

A Freemason was accidentally shot dead in a Masonic ritual in a Lodge in New York state, in March 2004: A secretive initiation ceremony in the basement of a Long Island Masonic lodge went "tragically wrong" when a member mistakenly pulled out a loaded weapon and fatally shot an inductee in the face, police said Tuesday.

William James, 47, of Medford, N.Y., was pronounced dead at the scene of Monday night’s shooting inside the Southside Masonic Lodge, said Suffolk County Detective Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick ... Fitzpatrick said the ceremony was designed to create "a state of anxiety" for the inductees. Police also found a guillotine, rat traps, and a wooden board that Fitzpatrick surmised was used in some type of "walking the plank" routine in the basement of the one-story building ... While officials of the lodge denied that guns play a role in ceremonies, Fitzpatrick said members told police the rite involving a gun with blanks goes back at least 70 years.

Or the truly chilling story of Sarah Paine who was snatched from a street in West Sussex on July 1, 2000. Her body was found 16 days later, ten miles away. A pedophile Roy Whiting was convicted of her abduction and murder, and sentenced to life in prison.

Open and shut? Not quite. Because there's this painting Sarah left behind, displayed in her classroom, which was reproduced in the Sun newspaper four days after her disappearance: a man standing upon a 13-square checkered floor, between columns bearing Sarah's name. He wears what appears to be an apron of 33 studs, and holds an object in his left hand. His right sleeve is also missing. All suggestive of a Masonic ritual and the interior of a Masonic lodge.

It is quite apparent that the well-known 'initiation' procedure where the candidate is 'hoodwinked', has the point of a sharp compass thrust to his breast and his threatened with all manner of torture and punishments if he reveal any secrets, is an example of hazing. Hazing is prevalent in secret societies, rugby clubs, and well documented in the American University fraternities (which are in effect secret societies). The following story is suggestive of strange goings on behind the closed doors of University fraternities:

Goat was going to be used in Fraternity Initiation Ritual

Last month, police officers happened upon a Kentucky University fraternity party and found a live goat cruelly kept in a storage room that was going to be used in an initiation ritual. In this case, a 19-year-old was charged with a second-degree count of cruelty to animals. According to the report, the university has had three hazing incidents on campus since 1996.

This procedure is only the public image of the initiation, much much more is involved. Hazing is used to disorder the thinking of the candidate to such a point that they become 'suggestible'. It is also a way of breaking the candidates preconditions about reality itself. This is not peculiar to Masonry however, many of the major religious sects use this to conditioning to 'illuminate' their disciples. It is and was quite common in Christian Convents and Monasteries, flagellation, prolonged fasting, were all forms of early hazing. It is used anywhere people seek to control other people’s minds for the aims of the group as a whole.

Gangs such as Combat 18 and the various black street gangs which operate in society, are equally part of this discipline. One finds that prospective members are often given an unpleasant and dangerous task to undertake before they can become full members. Of course, the future member is assured that if he completes his task then he or she will be rewarded in some way, whether by fame, fortune or an assured supply of their drugs of choice. One can see why the crack phenomenon in the United States is so prevalent in the gang culture. It is their currency, it is also their means of control.

Above left is violent extremist group Combat 18’s logo. Below is one of the Wiccan logos. Strange huh?

In a similar way to what was previously mentioned regarding sex of various kinds as a means of blackmailing, controlling, and keeping gang members in their place, we can imagine how knowledge of hidden deed of an unpleasant and illegal nature, could be used to assure absolute obedience to the group. This is why we see so few, if any Masonic secrets being revealed by dissatisfied members, the bonds of secrecy, the threats and the potential blackmail, are all so strong as to ensure nothing but cowed silence on the part of the member.

I have personally met members of Combat 18 as friends of former school mates. What I noticed immediately is that among the fairly normal seeming working class lads who are involved, there is always one other person who seems to stand out. He is often well educated and professional and seems to be able to ‘arrange’ all sorts of things for his ‘friends’. This man is the freemason who runs and directs the street gang. It is also he who instils the culture and the ideology of the gang. The members I knew would constantly talk in Masonic clichés, for example, if getting drunk and high, the feeling they described as ‘being on the level’. Goodness only knows why but one of these Combat 18 members decided to tell me that while in prison (for racially motivated assault) he was further initiated and when he came out he was given instructions to burn a suspected pedophile's house down. Ok, we can hardly have much sympathy for pedophiles, but clearly having people running around enacting a vigilante agenda and burning down the houses of people they are ‘told’ are pedophiles, whether they are or not, is more than slightly dangerous and irresponsible. It is an especially cynical tactic, when as we have seen, the masons on the one hand encourage sexual deviancy and abhorrent acts, and with the same hand they seem to think they have the right to punish these acts. Acts which they themselves are responsible for.

This is what gangs do. They 'clean-up' things. They clean up drug pushers, they clean up each other. They are an unofficial police force. They take their orders from Masons. They ask no questions, to leave the gang means death. Street gangs of all kinds are the masons' eyes on the street. Many of these gang members have scars above their eyes, just like many Masons...they are usually physically attacked with bottles or hard objects which leave specific scars so they can be identified on the street by the police and other members. Know any masons or gang members? Look for scars on the forehead: the mark of Cain I suppose it’s supposed to represent. This sort of thing is very common. I have a friend who was beaten-up as part of their induction into a secret society within the British army. It helps set the tone of fear and intimidation under which they operate. This is explicit in the initiation into the third degree:

"When a freemason is being initiated into the third degree he is struck on the forehead in the dark, falling back either into a coffin or onto a coffin shape design. His fellow masons lift him up and when he opens his eyes he is confronted with a human skull and crossed bones. Under this death threat how can any freemason of third degree or higher be trusted, particularly in public office? He is hoodwinked literally and metaphorically, placing himself in a cult and under a curse." -Ex-masonic judge

I also met a strange gang who call themselves Arthurs. The gang is highly unusual in that it is comprised mostly of homeless alcoholics who, according to my observations, have advanced schizophrenia. These poor destitute and broken hearted people, seek to do some kind of good turn to a world they feel has failed them and which they have failed. Because they are schizophrenic, they have a strange ‘sense’ about people, and I was told, that they can sense when someone is on the street who is what they would term a bad man, they give chase. The men I met assured me that they can make people disappear, it could have been bravado, but something about the menace in the words as they spoke them assured me there was more to it than that. Again the example I was given is that if they spot a rapist they will take them down a dark alley and deal with them.

It's got to the point now where nobody neutral can seriously deny that something very dark is at work in Freemasonry. Those that do have an interest in protecting themselves and their craft. Personally, my interest is in truth, I have no career riding on being a brother of good report nor do I fear anyone arranging for me to have a little 'accident'. The pressures must be great for the masons however and they're under the constant burden of their anxiety. I quite feel sorry for them.

We know that many of our democratically elected leaders have been assassinated by a 'black-hand' protecting its own interests. We know that Masons are involved in organised crime (exposure of their crimes being one of the reasons they went underground in the UK). We also know that Masons are corrupt and involved in perverting the course of justice. The following article, from a Scottish newspaper, is very illuminating of just such a case. But first, it is necessary to remind the reader of what the Dumblane Massacre was:

The small Scottish town of Dunblane was racked with grief and horror last night as details emerged of the killer who had lived in their midst until yesterday, when he shot dead 16 small children and a teacher in three minutes of carnage in a primary school gym. Thomas Hamilton, aged 43, a disgraced former Scout master whose behaviour had attracted the attention of the police, turned one of his four guns on himself after killing or injuring all but one of a class of 29 five- and six-year-olds at Dunblane primary school, near Stirling. Investigation: By Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor

Also See: http://www.propagandamatrix.com/blair_protection.html

And here we see the curious obfuscation of government papers relating to this case. What are they trying to hide? It does all seem rather strange, that is, until the magic word: freemasonry is thrown into the mix.

LETTERS between Labour and Tory ministers and correspondence relating to Thomas Hamilton's alleged involvement with Freemasonry are part of a batch of more than 100 documents about the Dunblane mass murder which have been sealed from public sight for 100 years. The documents include a letter connected to Hamilton, which was sent by George Robertson, currently head of Nato, to Michael Forsyth, who was then Secretary of State for Scotland.

Until now it was thought that a 100-year public secrecy order had only been placed on one police report into Hamilton which allegedly named high-profile politicians and legal figures. However, a Sunday Herald investigation has uncovered that 106 documents, which were submitted to the Dunblane inquiry in 1996, were also placed under the 100-year rule.

The Scottish Executive has claimed the 100-year secrecy order was placed on the Central Police report, which was drafted in 1991 five years before the murders, to protect the identities of children named in the report. Hamilton had allegedly abused a number of children prior to his 1996 gun attack on Dunblane primary school in which 16 primary one children and a teacher died before Hamilton turned his gun on himself.

However, only a handful of the documents, which the Sunday Herald has discovered to be also subject to the 100-year rule, relate to children or name alleged abuse victims.

The most intriguing document is listed as: 'Copy of letter from Thomas Hamilton to Dunblane parents regarding boys' club, and flyer advertising Dunblane Boys' Sports Club. Both sent to Rt Hon Michael Forsyth, MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, by George Robertson MP.' Also closed under the 100-year rule is a 'submission to Lord James Douglas Hamilton, MP, Minister of State at the Scottish Office, concerning government evidence to the Inquiry'.

Another document relates to correspondence between the clerk of the Dunblane inquiry, which was presided over by Lord Cullen, and a member of the public regarding 'possible affiliations of Thomas Hamilton with Freemasonry ... and copy letters from Thomas Hamilton'.

SNP deputy justice minister, Michael Matheson, said: 'The explanation to date about the 100 -year rule was that it was put in place to protect the interests of children named in the Central Police report. How can that explanation stand when children aren't named? The 100-year rule needs to be re-examined with respect to all documents.'

Matheson has written to the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, asking why the 100-year rule applies and how it can be revoked. He has so far had no response. He also asked First Minister Jack McConnell to explain the reasons for the 100-year order but received 'no substantial answer'. Matheson is to write to Colin Boyd a second time, in the light of the discovery that more than 100 other documents are also sealed, asking him to account for the decision.

A spokeswoman for the Crown Office said: 'In consultation with the Crown Office and the Scottish Office, Lord Cullen agreed that in line with the age of some of the individuals involved and named in the inquiry, the closure period would be 100 years. The Lord Advocate is considering issuing a redacted copy of the productions, which would blank out identifying details of children and their families. A decision on this has yet to be made.'

Other sealed key reports on Dunblane include:
-A 'comparative analysis of Thomas Hamilton' by Central Scotland Police
-Information about Hamilton's 'use and possession of firearms'
-Pathology reports, Hamilton's autopsy report, and analysis by Glasgow University's forensic science lab on blood, urine and liver samples from Hamilton's body
-Details on firearms licensing policies
-A review by Alfred Vannet, regional procurator fiscal of Grampian, Highland and Islands, of 'reports and information in respect of Thomas Hamilton submitted to the procurator fiscals of Dumbarton and Stirling by Strathclyde Police and Central Police'
-A psychological report on Hamilton
-Guidance from the British Medical Association on granting firearms licences
-'Transcript of and correspondence relating to answering-machine tape which accidentally recorded conversation between police officers at the scene of the Dunblane incident'
-Correspondence and witness statements 'relating to allegations of sexual abuse made against Hamilton'

Furthermore I happened upon this internet news article connecting freemasons to organised sex slavery and yet more pedophilia:


Once a man joins his local Masonic lodge, he can complete three levels to become a Master Mason who can then join other "appendant" groups, such as the Shriners. Within the Shriners is a secret sub-group called the Royal Order of Jesters, made up of invited Shriners. The Jesters have been linked not only to this prostitution scandal but to the possibility that 19 others may have first hand knowledge of child sex tourism after a fishing trip to Brazil. According to a Department of Justice announcement, the task force was created in November, 2006 and "is a collaboration of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and non-government service organizations working together to identify, rescue and assist victims of human trafficking, human smuggling and other civil and human rights offenses in the 17 counties of the district, through aggressive investigation, prosecution, training, education and outreach to law enforcement, non government organizations, vulnerable and affected persons and the general public."

It seems that this conduct may be the result of Shriner by-laws that state "Shrine law does not include the law of the land." Here is an update as to how the law of the land is being applied to a member of the Royal Order of Jesters, which is a secret sub-group made up of invited Shriner leaders. This Jester, retired police captain John Trowbridge, got caught by the FBI and pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Mann Act. The following is, in part, about his sentencing date. The rest of the article describes how a FBI application for a search warrant reveals how those Jesters caught by the FBI were involved with more than prostitution. This fifteen month investigation was initiated in September, 2006, by the FBI and US Border Patrol on a tip that one of the acupressure businesses was a front for prostitution. Per the document, "full sets" refers to sexual intercourse and "half-sets" can be used to refer to either oral sex or hand-jobs (that is, anything less than intercourse). Other terms used are "mouth" or "oral," both meaning oral sex.

Sandy Frost
July 29, 2008
Starbucks, WA

Teacher Charged With Sex Crime

Affidavit: Robert Louis Rosseau Formed 'Secret Society'
POSTED: Tuesday, October 27, 2009
UPDATED: 1:17 pm CDT October 27, 2009

SAN ANTONIO -- An eighth-grade teacher at Christian Academy of San Antonio is accused of forming a secret society so that he could get intimate with young girls, an affidavit stated. Robert Louis Rosseau, 37, is charged with sexual assault of a child, the affidavit stated. He was being held in the Bexar County Jail in lieu of $100,000. A student who attends another school told police that she was asked by two other girls to join Rosseau's secret society, referred to as the "order" which was based on the occult, magic, freemasonry and Christianity, the affidavit stated. In order for someone to become a member of the order, the pledge would have to "become intimate" with Rosseau to establish trust, the affidavit stated. The girl who went to police told investigators that she was being pressured to have sex with Rosseau because he was "receiving pressure from his superiors to have her submit to him," the affidavit stated. The girl got into a fight with two other girls who tried to recruit her into the "order," the affidavit stated. School Principal Jim Bazar told KSAT 12 News that Rosseau was placed on administrative leave. "We take all charges like this seriously. We have to protect our students," he said. Rosseau, a science and information technology teacher for three years, has had no other complaints against him, Bazar said.

http://www.ksat.com/news/21437213/detail.html

Freemasons are also involved in the multi-million pound drug industry, as portrayed in Chanel 4’s dispatches program. The program was about a convicted drug smuggler who now gives lectures to criminologists and he clearly explained how Masonic lodges are used to penetrate customs and bribe people and making the multi-million pound drug shipments work.

My intention in printing these stories was to make some of the people who are considering Masonic membership to seriously search their hearts and think again. This is a personal opinion based on my personal experience of the Masons. What strikes me most from taking part in various internet forums is the number of people seemingly interested in joining the Masons and the seemingly 'kindly' Masons posting on various internet websites, drumming up recruits and subverting the truth movement.

Unfortunately the masons are the last people who are fit to represent the truth behind freemasonry, and what we tend to hear from these people online is a non-existent fantasy version of their craft. Almost like the romantic tales of brave warrior knights that we are told from childhood when the reality was that Knights were hired murderers, cutting swathes through populations of civilians at home and abroad. The truth you will never hear from a Mason, it is more than their lives are worth. And the truth is that Masons are in Hell. A hell of their own making. It is the price they pay for turning away from the true light of God. It is all however a false paradigm, a game of Hegelian dialectics they are caught up in, and since these people rule the world, we unfortunately are also caught up in this delusion.

On one side you have damnation for witchcraft and on the other, redemption by Jesus Christ. Both sides are the same game. Even the Jesus character, who although a real and sincere prophet of God, has had a whole demonic system based around him despite himself. This is why so many ex CIA men are born again Christians, he is the archetype who will save them. In reality they are being saved by their own fear as fear itself has the remarkable effect of twisting reality out of shape and creating a continuous nightmare world in which destruction and death comes in time. We see in a later chapter the precise chemical changes in the brain and body which take place as a result of prolonged involvement with the freemasons, and what is the real significance of ‘illumination'.