Masonic Plots and the Chilean Mine Rescue?

The perennially demented VigilantCitizen.com website, where "Symbols Rule the World, Not Words Nor Laws," has peered carefully through its hairy eyeball at the rescue of the Chilean mineworkers this past week, and found it to be *somehow* Masonic in nature. Really.

No, really.

33 miners were brought "from darkness to light." 33 days to drill the escape hole. The rescue date 10/13/10 adds up to 33.

You get the idea.

Read it here: http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=5145

No, I'm not hot-linking to it. I just won't. And don't ask me for those five minutes of your life back, because I don't give refunds.

Why do the Masonophobes see "33" and only come up with "evil Masonic plot"? The number 33 was not selected at random by the developers of the Scottish Rite. It has long been considered sacred within Christianity for several reasons. It is the multiple use of three, signifying the Holy Trinity. Christ was thirty-three years old when he ascended into heaven, and the gospels list, by some counts, thirty-three miracles performed by Christ. (Dan Brown incorrectly claimed, appropriately on page 333 of The Lost Symbol, that God is mentioned thirty-three times in the Book of Genesis. God is actually mentioned thirty-two times, in the first chapter of Genesis in the King James version of the Bible.)

Thirty-three also appears in the Old Testament and other Jewish writings. The Temple of Solomon stood for thirty-three years; Jacob had thirty-three children; Mosaic Law required that a woman purify herself for thirty-three days after her male child was circumcised; the holy day of Lag B’Omer occurs thirty-three days after the start of Passover; and the Seal of Solomon, or Star of David, made up of two intersecting triangles, is considered a graphic representation of three plus three. It also plays a prominent role in Kabbalah. And the religions of Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism all associate sacred meanings with the number 33.

There are even thirty-three vertebrae in the human spine.

Given its widespread usage, the number stands as a symbol of the Scottish Rite’s universality as well as the perfection that every man should aspire to achieve in his soul. But it is by no means a purely Masonic reference. Not by a long shot.

But while we're at it, the crest of the University of Chile must give these folks nightmares.