Freemasonry, in the account Timothy Hogan gives Billy Carson in this episode of the 4biddenknowledge Podcast, is not a shadow government but a preservation system: a set of initiatory degrees built around the philosophy of Hermes, or Thoth, designed to end the fear of death and to carry the knowledge needed to rebuild civilization after a cataclysm. Hogan, a past master, Knight Commander of the Court of Honour and grand master of a Templar lineage, walks Carson through what the degrees teach, how the Knights Templar fit in, and why both traditions keep returning to the Emerald Tablets.
The subject matters because Freemasonry is the most accused and least explained institution in the alternative-history world. Carson, who has never joined a lodge, says he is called a Freemason as an insult whenever he posts pyramid geometry, and a working Mason explaining the rituals lets readers weigh the conspiracy theories on evidence. Several of Hogan's historical claims are contested, and this article notes where historians and Egyptologists differ.
What the video covers
Why Carson wanted this conversation (from about 3:00)
Carson opens by saying he wants to dispel the false theories about Freemasonry and show what it is, "good or bad, light or dark." Hogan describes his route in: initiated at eight into a youth tradition founded by Masons and Templars, he later learned that both sides of his family had been involved for generations, back to General Joseph Warren of the American Revolution. He has since served twice as master of his lodge and as Master of Kadosh in the Scottish Rite.
The third degree and the fear of death (from about 9:00)
The third degree stages a symbolic death and raising, which Hogan traces to the rites of Osiris that Egyptian priests and pharaohs underwent. Its purpose, he says, is an out-of-body experience; a person who has had one no longer fears death and cannot be ruled by the archonic forces that govern through fear. That is why Masons so often become leaders, and why outsiders mistake a few prominent members for a controlling hand. He adds that American lodges give two to three million dollars a day to charity, and repeats his grandfather's advice that if everyone lived by the tenets "all people would be good people."
Grand Lodges and statehood (from about 14:15)
The one conspiracy Hogan says he can verify is that the federal government would not admit a territory as a state until it had a Masonic Grand Lodge, because the degrees teach civil order and contain the keys to rebuild civilization. He extends the pattern to Liberia, which he says Prince Hall Masons founded, and insists Freemasonry has always fought for freedom of thought and speech.
What the 33rd degree really is (from about 19:40)
The three lodge degrees are the foundation and, in Masonic teaching, the third is the highest: "we're all on the level." The Scottish Rite, shaped philosophically by Albert Pike, adds supplemental degrees to the 32nd, drawing on Egyptian, Vedic, Persian, Mithraic, Kabbalistic, alchemical and Gnostic mysteries. Above that sits the Knight Commander of the Court of Honour, and the 33rd is honorary, awarded for service or donations. "I don't think there's any grand secret that's going to change your life with it," Hogan says.
Numberless worlds, Hiram and Solomon's flying ship (from about 25:00)
Asked whether the degrees touch on other worlds, Hogan says yes, though not overtly. The second-degree lecture teaches that numberless worlds surround us, a line he attributes to Giordano Bruno, burned by the Church for saying it. The degrees as a whole are built on Hermes, whom the Egyptians called Thoth, and the central character Hiram is a cipher: strip the vowels from the Hebrew and HRM transliterates into Greek as Hermes. In the American third-degree drama, fugitives try to board Solomon's ship from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, a route no ship could sail in the 1700s, when the degree was written. But James Bruce had just published the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast, which describes Solomon flying to the Queen of Sheba in a couple of hours, and Hogan argues the ritual's ship is that flying ship. Carson connects it to the sky-ships of the Emerald Tablets and to the Queen of Sheba's place in his Compendium of the Emerald Tablets.
The lodge as a Hermetic diagram (from about 32:30)
Hogan reads the lodge room itself. The two pillars carry a celestial and a terrestrial globe, which the Bible's account of Solomon's Temple does not require; in Greece a pillar was a herm, named for Hermes, and the globes stand for as above, so below. The deacons carry rods topped with a sun and a moon, which he traces to the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, "its father is the sun, its mother the moon," and he derives deacon from the decans, the 36 rulers of ten-degree segments of the sky carved on the Dendera zodiac. Temple, he says, comes from templum and means time, because temples were aligned to the stars. All of this exists to preserve Thoth's science through a collapse like the Younger Dryas, and Carson notes that the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean open with that theme. See Who was Thoth and the Emerald Tablets of Thoth explained.
Where the tablets went (from about 39:10)
Carson repeats a rumour from Masons that the Emerald Tablets ended up in the Vatican archive, and Hogan has heard it too. He became a Templar in 1996 and says the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean were the entire second year of his lineage's study programme. For the originals he offers an account from his book Entering the Chain of Union: a colonial priest in the Maya region recorded a culture hero called Votan who held jade tablets describing the same things as the Emerald Tablets and handed them to the Church. Since V and W interchange in Latin, Votan could be Wotan, or Odin, the Norse counterpart of Hermes. Hogan adds the Tulli papyrus, an alleged Egyptian text describing fiery discs under Thutmose III, and royal titles he reads as masters of the Stargate.
The Sphinx, the Templar story and the vaults (from about 51:40)
Carson summarises the tablets' message as "you are to seek the light and become the light," and both men believe something lies beneath the Sphinx; Carson recalls a 2017 Discovery Channel programme on scans beneath the paw that was pulled before airing, and cites the ScanPyramids void. Hogan then gives the Templar history as his lineage teaches it (from about 56:30): founded in 1096, nine knights from southern French Gnostic circles sent to recover artifacts before other Crusaders destroyed them, digs in Jerusalem leading to Egypt and a commandery at Philae, where the Isis and Horus image became the Madonna and Child. They recovered several arks, which he calls capacitors from a pre-Egyptian civilization, the first at Abydos. Suppressed in 1307 for hoarding Gnostic texts, befriending Islamic and Jewish scholars and building a banking system that bypassed kings and popes, the order went underground, moved its holdings to the Americas and hid inside the stonemasons' guilds. "Freemasonry really came out of the Templar tradition," he says. Asked where the artifacts are (from about 64:00), Hogan says his lineage once had seven vaults, including one on Oak Island emptied in 1765 to fund the American Revolution, and now keeps two in the Americas holding six arks and bones he says Templars removed from the Talpiot tomb in Jerusalem, whose ossuaries bore the names of Yeshua, Mary of Magdala and John. The Ark of the Covenant and Solomon's Temple articles cover the mainstream record on both.
Key takeaways
Hogan presents the third degree as a symbolic death drawn from the rites of Osiris, and the 33rd degree as an honorary recognition of service rather than hidden power.
In his reading, every lodge is a Hermetic diagram: pillars as herms, globes as above and below, and deacons' rods as the sun and moon of the Emerald Tablet.
The third-degree ritual's ship from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, he argues, is the flying ship of the Kebra Nagast.
Both men hold that the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean preserve a pre-cataclysm science and point to something beneath the Sphinx.
Hogan's Templar history, in which the order recovered arks in Egypt, fled to the Americas after 1307 and became Freemasonry, is a lineage tradition that historians do not accept.
Billy Carson's reading
Carson treats the episode as confirmation of the thread that runs through his work: one Hermetic science, taught by Thoth in Egypt, carried by Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, preserved by the Templars and encoded in the Masonic degrees. He wanted listeners to hear it from a Mason so it does not look like "Billy just wants to sell us this information." His own contributions are the tablets' opening theme of rebuilding civilization, his view that they anticipate 1980s physics, and his conviction, shared with Edgar Cayce, that a hall of records waits beneath Giza. For the full argument, see the Emerald Tablets hub and the earlier companion piece on the Emerald Tablets and the Knights Templar.
What mainstream scholarship says
Historians date the Knights Templar to about 1119, when Hugues de Payens and a few knights were quartered on the Temple Mount; the order was recognised in 1129, arrested in France in October 1307, dissolved by Pope Clement V in 1312, and Jacques de Molay was burned in 1314. The Templar letters of credit are well documented. There is no record of Templars at Philae, of arks recovered in Egypt or of vaults in the Americas, and the Oak Island story begins in 1795. Academic histories trace Freemasonry to Scottish and English stonemasons' lodges of the late 16th and 17th centuries, with the first Grand Lodge in London in 1717; the Templar origin enters Masonic lore with Chevalier Ramsay's 1737 oration, and most historians regard it as legend.
On the details, the Hiram of the ritual is the craftsman of 1 Kings 7; philologists derive deacon from the Greek diakonos (servant) and decan from dekanos, and templum is a space marked out for augury, not a word for time. Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1822. The Tulli papyrus has never been located, and no Egyptian royal title means master of the Stargate, though sba does mean both star and door. The Talpiot tomb was excavated in 1980 with bone fragments still in its ossuaries, and its names were common in first-century Judea. Votan is a Chiapas culture hero recorded by Bishop Núñez de la Vega in the 1690s; the Odin link is folk etymology. The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean were published by Maurice Doreal in the 1930s and are distinct from the medieval Hermetic Emerald Tablet that Hogan quotes.
Watch, read and go deeper
Start with the Emerald Tablets hub for every article on the tablets and the Hermetic tradition, then read Who was Thoth for the figure behind the Masonic Hermes. Solomon's Temple explained gives the archaeology behind the lodge's pillars, and the Ark of the Covenant article tracks the theories about where it went. This conversation is an episode of the 4biddenknowledge Podcast, and the audio is on the podcast episode page.
Frequently asked questions
What does a 33rd degree Freemason actually mean?
According to Hogan, it is an honorary degree in the Scottish Rite conferred on 32nd-degree Masons for exceptional service, marking the Rite's leadership rather than secret knowledge. Masonic teaching holds that the third degree is the highest and the rest are supplemental education.
Are the Knights Templar and Freemasonry connected?
Hogan says Freemasonry grew out of Templars who hid among the stonemasons after 1307, which is why the higher degrees of every rite include Templar degrees. Historians trace Freemasonry to 17th-century lodges and treat the Templar descent as an 18th-century legend.
Why do Masonic lodges have globes on two pillars?
The pillars recall Jachin and Boaz at Solomon's Temple, but the Bible describes only spherical capitals. Hogan reads the celestial and terrestrial globes as the Hermetic as above, so below, and links the pillar to the Greek herm, named for Hermes.
Are the Emerald Tablets of Thoth in the Vatican?
Rumours that the originals, or jade copies from the Maya region, sit in the Vatican archive circulate among Masons, and both men find them plausible. No catalogue record has ever been produced.
Sources mentioned
Hogan cites the Masonic degree lectures, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes and the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean, Giordano Bruno, the Kebra Nagast as published by James Bruce, the Dendera zodiac, the Tulli papyrus, Albert Pike and Albert Mackey, George Hunt Williamson, the colonial account of Votan, and his own books The Alchemical Keys to Masonic Ritual, The 32 Secret Paths of Solomon, Revelation of the Holy Grail and Entering the Chain of Union. Carson cites his Compendium of the Emerald Tablets, Edgar Cayce's hall of records prophecy and the ScanPyramids muon survey. Standard references include Malcolm Barber's The New Knighthood and David Stevenson's The Origins of Freemasonry.
