America is supposed to be a melting pot. However, a certain cultural-religious group of people claimed ownership from the beginning. Not just ownership of industry and government, but ownership of Americanism. This should be obvious when people outside of the United States refer to Americans as Anglo-Saxons. However it doesn’t seem to register with ordinary Americans. Does anyone wonder about the nature of these people? Who are these Americans?
Angles, Saxons and Jutes Meet in Britain
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes originated in modern-day Denmark and Germany. They migrated to England after the withdrawal of Rome from 410 to 450 AD, and eventually merged to became the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons ruled England until the Norman Conquest in 1066. However, in their day they adopted Christianity and established kingdoms that spoke Old English. The Anglo-Saxons shaped English culture, language, and law.
For Britons on the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon takeover was an unwanted incursion. Often it was deadly. Perhaps that explains why the US government makes immigration so difficult; they haven’t forgotten that they were once immigrants to Britain.
The English Civil War
In the seventeenth century, Anglo-Saxonism was a major ideological construct used to justify the English Civil War (1642-1651). The so-called Norman Yoke was another ideological construct and was used in a similar way. Adherents to these constructs could pose as people who were reclaiming ancient liberties that the Norman conquerors stole from them. These liberties included free parliaments and common law. In this way, English parliamentarians and radicals were able to invoke a romanticized, pre-1066 Anglo-Saxon past as marching orders for the politics of their time. Specifically, the Norman Yoke construct provided the rationale for challenging the divine right of Kings.
Many of these concepts sound universal. But it’s important to note that these constructs belonged to a unique culture and religion at a specific time. The doctrine of the absolute authority of kings was no more universal than the doctrines of Anlo-Saxonism and the Norman Yoke. It arose after the religious wars spread chaos, instability and destruction all over Europe.
In addition, it can be argued that the position of the parliamentarians and radicals in the seventeenth century was politically convenient. Divine kingship may have been a problem in itself, but the problem only became pressing when the radicals disagreed with Charles I. And subsequent historical events demonstrate that some of them wanted to take upon themselves the powers of kingship. Anglo-Saxonism and the Norman Yoke constructs were useful tools.
The English Civil War ended with the execution of Charles I and the takeover by Oliver Cromwell, who proceeded to act like a dictator from 1653 to 1658.
Factions in the Church of England
It is also true that Charles acted recklessly. It was as though he was unaware of the fragility of the political and religious consensus that he enjoyed. The Church of England had been dealing with competing factions under Queen Elizabeth and James I, but everyone remained united by a Calvinist theology of grace. This consensus broke under Charles I.
The king’s policies tended toward Anti-Puritanism in matters of liturgy and organization. The theological equivalent was Anti-Calvinism. Charles’s authoritarianism would prove his undoing at the hands of the Puritan faction. However, neither his behavior nor the parliament’s displeasure dictated his execution. Many of the agitators merely hoped to force his cooperation.
The Puritans
People in the United Kingdom and the United States often hear about how King Charles I overreached his powers as a king. But his execution was not a foregone conclusion. Many of those who opposed him were shocked when he was killed by the radicals and parliamentarians. But as argued above, this faction was acting according to its own peculiar beliefs.
The Puritans were ethnically English, predominantly of Anglo-Saxon descent, and identified with this ancestry. As 16th and 17th-century English Protestants, they viewed themselves as a “remnant” continuing a divine, Anglo-Saxon tradition of piety and liberty. They were not genetically distinct from other English people, but were primarily a cultural/religious group from East Anglia.
Traditional Freemasonry
Anglo-American style Freemasonry has played a part in the cultures of the United States and Great Britain. (This branch of Freemasonry is distinguished from Liberal Freemasonry.) It is the traditional, conservative branch of Freemasonry requiring belief in a Supreme Being and avoiding political/religious debate within the lodge. Anglo-American Freemasonry may not have played a part in the English Civil War because it only appeared in England as a formal organized fraternity in 1717. However, the first recorded initiation of an English gentleman, was of Elias Ashmole in 1646.
But regardless of its past influences, I would argue that the most problematic influence of Freemasonry in our time stems from its adoption of Tubal Cain as its founding ancestor. This goes at least as far back as Albert Mackey.
Freemasons believe there are two strains of people in the world. One comes from the line of Cain, and the other comes from Seth. The term, Sons of Cain, is derived from the Freemasonic tradition of referring to Tubal Cain as their ‘Masonic ancestor’.
The Temple Legend
Albert Mackey wrote about Tubal Cain in the Legend of the Craft. Mackey also wrote about him in the Lexicon of Freemasonry : Tubal Cain…
…introduced many arts into society which tended towards its improvement and civilization. Tubal Cain is the Vulcan of the Pagans, and is thought to have been closely connected with ancient Freemasonry. Faber says that “all the most remarkable ancient buildings of Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor, were ascribed to Cabirean or Cyclopean Masons,” the descendants of Vulcan, Dhu Balcan, the god Balcan, or Tubal Cain. Oliver says, “In after times Tubal Cain, under the name of Vulcan and his Cyclops, figured as workers in metals and inventors of the mysteries; and hence it is probable that he was the hierophant of a similar institution in his day, copied from the previous system of Seth, and applied to the improvement of schemes more adapted to the physical pursuits of the race to which he belonged.”
(As cited by Freemason.com)
The mention of ‘the previous system of Seth’, is interesting, to say the least. The Book of Genesis, says the entire human race is descended from Seth. It doesn’t say anything about a system that follows it. In verse 4:25 Eve says that God granted her Seth in place of Abel. Then, Genesis chapter 5 presents Seth as the ancestor of Noah. The descendants of Seth survived the flood through Noah. The descendants of Cain did not. More to the point, if Seth was the ancestor of Noah he was also the ancestor of Christ. This claim is never made for Cain.
The claim that there are two strains of people in the world is especially troubling when one considers Rudolf Steiner’s embellishments on the Temple Legend1. Steiner interpreted the Temple Legend symbolically, and argued that it represents humanity’s evolution.
The New Temple Legend
In The New Cain, we are told the Temple Legend was originally introduced into Europe by Christin Rosenkreutz. Later it became the core of diverse types of masonic rituals. However, Steiner did not adopt the Temple Legend from masonic sources. He reconstructed it from his independent spiritual research.2 He also incorporated his version into masonic rituals. The New Temple Legend is an occult-imaginative means to school and develop the soul’s spiritual capacities.
From the very outset, the Temple legend points to humanity’s dual origins in the children of Cain and of Abel. The former emerged from asexual procreation, the latter from dual-gender procreation. The origin of the sons of Cain reaches back to the pre-Lemurian period, that of the sons of Abel – or of Seth, who was given to his parents as a substitute after Abel was killed – to Lemurian times. The first became tillers of the soil, scientists and technologists, who had to elaborate everything for themselves, while the latter became shepherds, priests and artists who were given inspiration from above. In a soul-spiritual sense, we can also speak here of a masculine and feminine spirit.
We have before us here, therefore, a primal opposition in humanity’s evolution. To reconcile this was the aim of the theosophical, and now and in future of the anthroposophic world impulse, as well as of a freemasonry renewed through anthroposophy.
(p. 10)
One could argue that Steiner’s interpretation is more extreme than the original Temple Legend, implying that the original Legend is more benign. But the original version had already traced Freemasonry’s ‘masonic ancestor’ to Tubal Cain, in spite of the fact that his descendants did not survive the flood. Steiner merely expands on the occult implications of this mythology. In Steiner’s version, Freemasonry is the worship of Cain in the condition he had been in before his sin.
It’s important to add that we are not presented here with the story of an ongoing rivalry. Cain’s vision is presented as the final victor over the vision of the sons of Abel-Seth. (p. 11)
Paradise Lost
It has been said that Milton’s Paradise Lost is the Protestant epic equivalent to Dante’s Inferno and its Catholic view of sin. The two poems clearly demonstrate corresponding differences in theology and focus. Although neither one of them is scriptural, they both exert some influence in the thought of religious believers.
For the purposes of this article, it’s important to mention that Milton was influenced by Anglo-Saxon culture and history. In addition, he was very much a part of the English Civil War. There is a YouTube Video on the Chris Hedges channel that elaborates on the important points in Milton’s work. The interview covers important points and issues that resonate with American culture. Once you start to look for similarities you will find them everywhere.
Misjudging Milton?
In the Hedges interview, Orlando Reade argues that the finest moments of Paradise Lost are true to the New Testament. I am aware that I haven’t studied this poem as much as it probably deserves, but I still think it’s fitting to discuss Paradise Lost in an article that also deals with the rehabilitation of Cain. I worry about the modern ability to deal with such material on a poetic or literary level because the religious concepts these poems deal with are not fictions.
In this work by Milton, the devil is a somewhat sympathetic character who was treated unfairly by God. Milton seems to identify his own plight with the devil, and he’s not the only one to do so. But of course, the devil was a sympathetic character because Milton created him that way. Other oppressed peoples have identified with Milton’s characterization of the devil in the same way. But if you take biblical concepts seriously, there is a difference between oppressed people and the devil.
For one thing, Milton rebelled against the king while the devil rebelled against God. At best, you could argue that this is a powerful object lesson against divine kingship. For Milton, rebelling against the king was almost the same thing as rebelling against God. But, killing a king is another matter. Surely the comparison breaks down there?
Donald Trump and the Idolatry of Kingship
Today, history seems to be reorganizing itself with Donald Trump acting as an absolutist king who presides over a willing Anglo-Saxon government. In a rational world this would end Anglo-Saxonism as a meaningful construct.
Who are these Americans? They are all of these things.