The Joshua, Giordano, Galileo and Freemasonry Story

By Fu Ceyi

This article is a result of an interesting exchange amongst participants and friends on the controversy of the “missing day” in the Bible. In modern times, the legend of the “missing day” first emerged in 1936 with a book entitled The Harmony of Science and Scripture written by Harry Rimmer. Rimmer cited an 1890 publication as his “proof” of the calculations behind the story. Scholars and scientists then dismissed Rimmer’s claim as baseless but despite being discredited the legend continues to spread amongst devoted Christians.

This legend was resurrected again by Harold Hill In 1974. In his book, How to Live like a King’s Kid, Hill devoted a whole chapter to claiming that “NASA scientists have discovered a ‘missing’ day in time that corresponds to Biblical accounts of the sun's standing still in the sky.” He was not a "consultant in the space program," and neither was he "involved (in the space program) from the start, through contractual arrangements with my company" as he claimed. He was President of the Curtis Engine Company which merely had a contract with NASA to service its electrical generators.


His version of the legend "missing day explained" spread amongst Christians via various church bulletins and was eventually picked up by the then mainstream media as well and now occasionally still makes its rounds in the internet via e-mail. Blinded by faith, devoted Christians kept it alive; faith ultimately is the inexplicable acceptance of something for which no proof exists and neither is proof required for the extremely gullible devotees. His claim has been debunked by http://www.snopes.com/religion/lostday.htm. as false. His claim of the “missing day explained” depends purely on dubious scientific processes, misrepresentation of his status and some very selective and questionable interpretations of scripture.


For the benefit of those not familiar with this “lost day” in time story, it originates from two passages taken from the Old Testament. The first is from the Book of Joshua and describes Joshua's defense of Gibeon from the five kings of the Amorites. In order to provide Joshua with additional daylight hours to finish off the Amorites before they could escape under cover of darkness, Yahweh provided the additional daylight by causing the sun to stand still in the sky for nearly a day:-


Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. [i]


Interestingly this passage was also quoted by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) amongst others from the scripture in the indictment of both Bruno Giordano (1548 - 1600) and Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642). The inquisition cardinals found Father Bruno Giordano, a heretic who endured almost eight years of imprisonment and repeated torture by the inquisitors guilty on 8th February 1600. Giordano was charged with eight counts of heresy; amongst the eight included the Cathars' belief that the transubstantiation of bread into flesh and wine into blood was a falsehood, that the virgin birth was a myth and perhaps most damning of all, his conviction that we then lived in an infinite universe with the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Giordano refused to recant and was burnt at the stake. Most scholars maintained that Giordano was burnt more because of his Copernicanism and his belief in the infinity of inhabited worlds than the other heresies cited together.

Saint Robert Cardinal Bellarmine (1542 - 1621)

Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit professor of theology at the Collegium Romanum, personal theologian and advisor on all matters of doctrine to pope Clement VIII (1592 - 1605) despite his academic brilliance could not understand science and on that fateful day made Bruno the first scientific martyr supporting the cause of free thought. Bellarmine, besides the Lord Cardinal Severina, was the other leading theological "Hammer of Heretics" in the reign of Clement VIII. Clement VIII, a self proclaimed ascetic, suffered much from gout, moved his residence constantly, incurred household expenses four times greater than pope Sixtus V (1585 - 1590), appointed three of his nephews to cardinals, one at the age of fourteen. He ruined the papal finances by the extravagances of the gifts he bestow on them.[ii]


The "Holy See" on record has never sentenced a heretic to the stake directly; it was always done through the civil authority. The official statement with incredible characteristic hypocrisy from the Holy Office to the Governor of Rome never varies in text or consequences:-


Take him (the heretic) under your jurisdiction, subject to your decision, so as to be punished with the due chastisement; beseeching you, however, as we do earnestly beseech you, so to mitigate the severity of your sentence with respect to his body that there may be no danger of death or of the shedding of blood. So we Cardinals, Inquisitor and General, whose names written beneath decree. [iii]


This statement couched in euphemism was effectively an order to the secular court to take Bruno and burn him alive. Invariably throughout the centuries of inquisition, not a single governor or judge has ever failed to obey this disguised papal demand without exception. Not a single case exist where a such sentence was ever commuted, though empowered officially, no governor or judge dared to ignore the instruction of the Holy Office, they feared instant excommunication and perhaps the agony of having to face the same situation where they may find themselves facing the death sentence without "the shedding of blood".

Such hypocritical corrupted piety was always displayed in the church's official transactions, all confessions extracted from "witches" and "heretics" with horrendous instruments of torture by Hammers of Heretics were always recorded as given voluntarily. Though the most painful forms of torture were permitted, "the shedding of blood" must be avoided. This could have derived from the superstition that if a prisoner was cut and bled profusely, he might identify himself with Christ and thereby derive inner strength from it. The other possible reason is that by attentively avoiding the shedding of blood, the Inquisitors superstitiously believed that they were distancing themselves from any possible link to Christ's persecutors and torturers who shed Jesus' blood during the crucifixion.


The public burning of Giordano on 19th February, 1600, a feast day in Rome was a well publicized event. A newsletter, Avvisi e ricordi printed in advance announcing "An entertaining judicial burning was expected" was distributed to inform the people of the coming event. The route to the stake was packed with the "virtuous" and the curious and Bruno led in chains were mocked by the crowds. In response to their yelling, Bruno comforted himself with animated quotes from his books and the sayings of the ancient teachers. The procession was halted, a jailer with another two held Bruno's head rigid; a long metal spike was thrust through Bruno's left cheek pinning his tongue and going through the right cheek, another spike was then rammed vertically through his lips. Bruno was physically gagged with two iron spikes forming an iron cross even before he was burnt.[iv]

Bruno Giordano (1548 - 1600)

Bruno is perhaps best known for his system of mnemonics (art of memory) and as an early proponent of the idea of extra-solar planets and extraterrestrial life. From 1583 to 1585 he lived at the house of the French ambassador in London. It was during this period he published his two most important books, Cena de Le Ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper) and De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi (On the Infinite Universe and Worlds). Both were published in 1584. In Cena de Le Ceneri, Bruno defended the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. In De l’Infinito, Universo e Mondi, he argued that the universe was infinite, that it contained an infinite number of worlds, and that these were inhabited by intelligent beings.


To Bruno, "Time gives all and takes all away; everything changes, but nothing perishes", all things are recycled and interdependent. "This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death and dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere in nature, from time to time renews itself by changing and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the centre of things." [v]

He was obviously very much into ancient Greek (Democritus & Heraclites) and other eastern mystical teachings. This position is akin to Indian (Death is no loss and birth is no gain) and Chinese teachings, especially the teachings of I Ching (The Book ofChanges) and Lau Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Like other Renaissance scholars and philosophers, he was very much against the use of violence by the church in enforcing its dogma on the populace:

"The procedure which the church uses today is not that which the Apostles used: for they converted the people with preaching and the example of a good life, but now whoever does not wish to be a Catholic must endure punishment and pain, for force is used and not love; the world cannot go on like this, for there is nothing but ignorance and no religion which is good." [vi]


Fifteen years later, Bellarmine instigated the arrest and trial of Galileo. Galileo after being shown the deep dark dungeons with rats the size of cats running around and the torture instruments recanted publicly, promised never to preach such "nonsense" about Copernicus heliocentric (sun-centered) system ever again and was spared the pain of torture and death by fire. Bellarmine and other powerful figures in the church feared Galileo as "the resurrected Giordano".

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) was a monk, astronomer, mathematician and classical scholar. His book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) published in 1543 banned by the church came to mark the starting point of modern astronomy and in turn of modern science encouraging young astronomers, scientists and scholars/philosophers to take a more skeptical attitude toward the established primitive superstitious church dogma which then permeated the lives of the populace in western Europe.

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium 2nd edition 1566 by Nicolaus Copernicus.

Galileo Galilei was an Italian scientist who formulated the basic law of falling bodies, which he verified by careful measurements. A professor of mathematics at the University of Padua (the University of the Republic of Venice) he taught mainly Euclid's geometry and geocentric astronomy. He constructed his own telescopes and during the summer and fall of 1609 and the winter of 1610 he focused his telescope on the night sky and began to make remarkable discoveries that would change the world. The astronomical discoveries he made with his telescopes were described in a short book called the Starry Messenger published in Venice in May 1610. This work caused a sensation. Galileo claimed to have seen mountains on the Moon, to have proved the Milky Way was made up of tiny stars, and to have seen four small bodies orbiting Jupiter.

Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)

In 1611, Galileo took his telescope with him and went to Rome to present his findings to the pontifical court. Initially many were impressed by his findings as they have yet to appreciate the implications this would have on their religious dogma. It was Cardinal Bellamine who first pointed to Galileo that “You can prove no such thing with your mathematics” and that “physical reality is explained not by mathematics but by the Scriptures and the Church Fathers.” [vii]

Galileo invited Bellarmine to look through his telescope, Bellarmine looked through the telescope and though he has the same physical eyes as we do, he saw only the scriptures. Or may be he saw what Galileo saw but realized the implications that it would be detrimental to his authority and the authority of the Church. Or else being a literalist he could not possibly accept the heliocentric theory because it contradicted the “divine” words of god in the bible. How could Galileo’s findings square with other biblical verses such as: “The world also is established, that it cannot be move”; “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he arose”; “He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down”?

As chief theologian, he must have been familiar with the teachings of 4th century St. Augustine. In The City of God, Augustine described the distinction between the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly which defined the life of man and his spiritual journey from the earthly realm to the heavenly one. Though Augustine’s distinction was certainly allegorical only, however, over the centuries, the church fathers have come to see the images as a reality.

The City of Man was located here beneath the moon. A temporary earthy abode for humankind; ruled by Satan, materialistic, sinful, painful and corrupted. Earth below the moon was chaotic, imperfect, unpredictable and changeable because the devil had disturbed god’s originally perfect world by persuading Eve and Adam (humankind’s first couple) to eat an apple (forbidden fruit of knowledge). Hence, all descendants of Eve and Adam are deemed to be born with original sin. The City of God was in the heavens above the moon, it shone in the night, was indestructible, unchangeable and always beautiful and pure reflecting god's perfection.

Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition

The scripture said that the heavens and earth were created for the benefits of men; that earth is the center of the universe; that heaven and hell are actual physical locations and that Jesus defied the law of gravity and physically ascended into heaven. How could these be so if according to Galileo, earth was just another planet revolving around the sun? How are we to locate heaven and hell in the Copernican system? Where is the resurrected Jesus, heaven and hell? How are we to locate them amongst the billions and billions of stars and galaxies in existence? It is now not a simple case of just heaven above and earth below. According to Cardinal Bellarmine, “Hell is a subterranean place distinct from the tombs” and he concluded by saying that hell must be at the centre of the earth based on his so called “natural reason”:

The last is natural reason. There is no doubt that it is indeed reasonable that the place of devils and wicked damned men should be as far as possible from the place where angels and blessed men will be forever. The abode of the blessed (as our adversaries agree) is heaven, and no place is further removed from heaven than the centre of the earth.

Bellarmine’s argument is silly and awkward, earth is one of the billions of billions of planets in the heavens, and heavens are every where. Today, I believe it would be difficult even to find Christians who would believe in such primitive nonsense. While Mulla Sadra was teaching Muslims that heaven and hell exist in the minds of men, Bellarmine was strongly arguing that they have exact geographical locations. While Kabbalists were reinterpreting the bible symbolically, Catholics and Protestants were reading the bible literally as historical facts.

Spanish Inquisitor Leon of Castro asserted in 1576, “Nothing may be changed that disagrees with the Latin translation of the Vulgate, be it a single period, a single little conclusion or a single clause, a single word of expression, a single syllable or one iota.” To accept Galileo’s findings would be to accept that earth is orbiting in heaven and heaven is here, there and everywhere and that all planets in heaven are subjected to changes, destruction and renewal. How are we then to locate the City of God? Is not the City of Man already located in heaven?

For Bellarmine and the Church fathers, the City of God was the loveliest, the most desirable and magnificent thing in the universe their minds could imagine but could not describe whereas Galileo had little or no interest in Augustine’s City of God. For him, the heavens held an extraordinary splendor different from that as imagined by Bellarmine, for Galileo, the heavens with all its beauty could be studied, understood and appreciated with reverence and wonder.

Galileo was thrilled to observe the “inner workings” and processes of nature and the heavenly bodies. For those who have penetrated the "veil of darkness" as manifested in the invisible "inner workings" of nature/universe, the greatest beauty is found in reality, the "light is but darkness visible". If the findings of Galileo were accepted, the City of God would never again be viewed in the same way as taught by the church. Jesus said, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God” but the church wanted the exclusive control of both the City of God and the City of Man, it ended with neither.


In 1616 Galileo wrote The Letter to the Grand Duchess in which he vigorously attacked the followers of Aristotle. In this work, addressed to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, he argued strongly for "a non-literal interpretation of Holy Scripture when the literal interpretation would contradict facts about the physical world proved by mathematical science" in order to avoid “the terrible detriment for souls if people found themselves convinced by proof of something that it was made then a sin to believe.” Here, Galileo stated quite clearly that for him the Copernican theory is not just a mathematical calculating tool, but is a physical reality:-


I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it. Moreover ... I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many for the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with this other position and confirm it.


The work described Galileo's new scientific method and contains a famous quote regarding mathematics:-


Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.


This surely is what got him into trouble with the church, “The Book of Nature” according to him “is written in mathematics” and geometry is the heart of mathematices, hence the idea that God may well be “The Grand Geometrician of the Universe.” Galileo was much more courageous than Copernicus and Descartes who wrote their books with obvious constraint. Galileo in contrast was actually asserting that the church had no authority to determine physical reality; he was actually defying the church’s authority in the physical realm leaving the church with influence only in the spiritual realm. It was obvious to the church fathers that if that was to be the case, the church would loose its authority on earth. For the church truth is not as important as control, thus Galileo and others have to be silenced.

In February 1632 Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican. Soon after its publication, the book was banned and Galileo was summoned by the inquisition office to Rome. Illness prevented him from traveling to Rome until 1633. Some admirers of Giordano see Galileo as a coward for recanting, this is a silly notion, and he was already old, frail and sick when summoned before the inquisition. Even a strong young man today if shown the deep dark dungeons and various instruments of torture in the torture chamber of Castel Sant' Angelo would submit.

For more than a thousand years, every important prisoner of the Vatican had been incarcerated within its metre-thick walls, Castel Sant' Angelo was home to prisoners of the inquisition. Within, the darkness is all pervading; passageways link tiny, low-ceilinged six foot square dark dank chambers. Beyond a dozen such chambers is a twenty foot square high-ceilinged torture chamber equipped with some of the most ingenious instruments of torture ever designed by men. The works of the inquisitors were carried out in absolute secrecy and no one knows exactly what horrors were perpetrated in the name of Jesus. In this dark chamber "may be found the very heart of darkness, the epicenter of Christian evil, the torture chamber of the Roman Inquisition."


After the burning of Giordano and persecution of Galileo, many European intellectuals, scientists and philosophers wanting to continue their research fled to England. They were reportedly given shelter by freemasons. Such Europeans together with their English counterparts including freemasons eventually became members of the "Invisible College". Members of the Invisible College subsequently petitioned the Crown and formed the Royal Society of London. The strong connection between the Royal Society and Freemasonry is well established.

Within this historical context, the Joshua story and Galileo's heresy may have been linked and found its way into Freemasonry's second degree ritual. The Q & A leading to the second degree appears to be a reaffirmation of Galileo's truth or rather "heresy", known and transmitted in secret and allegory to selected candidates at that time. This is of course a long shot in the dark; I believe only the author/authors that included this story into the ritual would know for sure its intended meaning and purpose. Some Masonic scholars read the Joshua story symbolically, the sun standing still is taken symbolically to mean meditation in stillness (timelessness) until the minds are purified of impure thoughts; enemies of men are their impure desires.

I wonder if such Zen like Buddhist notions were prevalent in the western minds of the Masonic authors at that time. Others see the obvious connection in the character of Pythagoras also known as Peter Gower in English. He is affectionately referred to as “Dear friend and Brother Pythagoras” by freemasons. Of the mystery schools in ancient Greece, the first major school of imminence was the Pythagorean School. Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher and mathematician. Besides mathematics and philosophy, he taught music and the doctrine of metempsychosis, that is the transmigration of souls or reincarnation. He then believed that he has been reincarnated four times. His religious philosophy is parallel to that of Siddhartha Gautama; and likewise, believes that earthly desires and material possessions are obstacles to the discovery of divine truths. Jesus also taught that "It is harder for a rich man to enter heaven that for a camel to go through the hole of a needle." This Joshua story is to be taken either symbolically or in allegory but not literally.


Galileo as professor of mathematics for twenty years at the University of the Republic of Venice must have taught many of his geometry students Euclid's 47th proposition which forms part of the English PMs jewel and is the most popular proof of Pythagoras' theorem. In case you have forgotten, when you build up squares on the sides of a right triangle, Pythagoras' Theorem then claims that the sum of (the areas of) two small squares equals (the area of) the large one. In algebraic terms, it means a2 + b2 = c2 where c is the hypotenuse while a and b are the sides of the triangle. Of the hundreds or rather possibly thousands of proofs of Pythagorean's Theorem, this basic proof first attributed to Euclid in 300 B.C.E. known as Elements I.47 (First Book, Proposition 47) is probably the most well known, it is also popularly known as Bride's Chair amongst other names.[viii]


In the second degree, Freemasonry is described as a progressive science integrating science with God, the science of darkness visible, the science of happiness, knowing, meaning and being. God is referred to as the "Grand Geometrician of the Universe" and is identified with the symbol of the compass and the square, and that as craftsmen, they are expected to make the liberal arts and sciences including mathematics and astronomy their future study in order that they may be enabled to discharge their duties as fit and regular members of societies and to estimate and appreciate the wonderful works of the Almighty.


What was a hidden mystery and secret known to a few is now common knowledge because of the demise of the papacy brought about by the reformation and revolution in Europe supported by freemasons. On 31 October 1992, 350 years after Galileo's death, the late Pope John Paul II gave an address on behalf of the Catholic Church in which he admitted that errors had been made by the theological advisors in the case of Galileo. He declared the Galileo case closed, but he did not admit that the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because of his belief that the Earth rotates round the sun and this is despite the fact that every school children now knows that earth orbits around the sun thus giving us the 365.24 days solar calendar. He did not mention anything about Giordano and towards the end of his life through his inquisition office in 2000 reiterated the infallibility of popes and reaffirmed that there is no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church. Other non Catholic Christians even today are officially considered "defective".

Bellarmine, arrogant, ignorant and incapable of ascertaining truth was canonized a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1930, Giordano suffered the pain of torture and the agony of being burned to death, Galileo confined to house arrest died a lonely man. Both suffered so that others may progress and learn more truth about humankind and our universe.


Only keen historians of medieval European history would remember Cardinal Robert Bellarmine and pope Clement VIII whereas Giordano and Galileo are known by people old and young all over the world. Bruno Giordano’s T shirts are worn by millions in the world and NASA honors Galileo by naming one of their satellites Galileo. Truth will be made known and it will set you free from ignorance.

Cheers and happiness,

Fu Ceyi

Endnotes

[i] Joshua 10: 12-13 (King James Version)
[ii] Michael J Walsh, Lives of Popes, 214.
[iii] Michael White, The Pope and the Heretic, Little, Brown & Co., London, 2002, 4.
[iv] Ibid, 159/160.
[v] Bruno, De la causa, prinipio et uno (On Cause, Principle of Human Culture), London, 1584.
[vi] Quoted by Michael White, The Pope and the Heretic, Little, Brown & Co., London, 2002, 130.
[vii] Charles Van Doren, A History of Knowledge, Ballantine Books, New York, 1991, 201.
[viii] For more details on further proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem refer to W. Dunham, The
Mathematical Universe , John Wiley & Sons, NY, 1994. He cites a book The Pythagorean
Proposition by an early 20th century professor Elisha Scott Loomis. This book is a collection of
367 proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem and has been republished by NCTM in 1968.