Holy Bones!! Batman a Bonesman?!

by Christopher Hodapp

In a previous life, Alice and I co-wrote Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies (which is woefully out of date by 15 years, at least, yet still a hot seller in Turkey, if you can believe it). Every once in a while it pops back up in our daily doings.

One of the banes of Saturday night ritual at Hodapphaüs is that we are forced to suffer through an episode of the old 1966 Adam West Batman TV series, obtrusively airing between the Svenghoulie presentation of a classic old horror film and Star Trek - TOS. We usually take that half hour to walk the dogs, lube the cars, or unclog a toilet - anything but suffer through that silliness. We'd both had enough of that show with its cartoon villains when we were 8 years old. But somehow we managed to have about 7 or 8 minutes of the show inflicted on us last night, when this popped up.

The scene is a fundraiser at stately Wayne Manor. The guest list is made up of millionaires, who are milling about making idle chitchat. A guest approaches Bruce Wayne's befuddled old Aunt Harriet Cooper and points to a portrait on the wall:

“And that is Bruce Wayne’s grandfather, Mrs. Cooper?”

“His GREAT-grandfather,” she says.

He's referring to a painting of a handsome young man sporting a white football jersey with a navy blue 'Y' on the front, marking the old mister Wayne as a Yale University alum.  He then cryptically says, “I understand he was tapped for Skull and Bones.”

To which Aunt Harriet swells up with indignant pride and replies, “Tapped for it? Why, he FOUNDED Skull and Bones!”

This is 1966, long before Skull and Bones was the topic of bad History Channel programs and Alex Jones paranoia podcasts. And somebody went to a lot of trouble in 1966 to execute a pretty decent painting of old mister Wayne as a young college lad for this one, single scene.

Now, none of this is to suggest that the 1966 version of Bruce Wayne aka Batman (in his silk and spandex alter ego) himself was a Bonesman, only his great-grandfather. According to aficionados of Batman canon and lore, it's the only known reference to Batman and Skull and Bones, and no serious Batman fan counts the 1966 TVG creation, with its Happy Halloween-style costumes, grade-school art direction and Catskills humor as anything but a bad-taste aberration of an otherwise dark and sinister character of deep seriousness.

No, I don't think the S&B's Tomb was the first Batcave

On the other hand, in doing a little poking around, I did come across a single comic book reference that showed Batman/Bruce Wayne's private study with a Yale Law diploma on the wall. ('Night of the Stalker,' 1974; Detective Comics #439, p.16). 

The topic is interesting enough that it warranted an article by Chip Kidd in the Yale Alumni Magazine 15 years ago, when Skull & Bones mania was all the rage in the media.

By the way, if you're REALLY obsessive, according to lore, Bruce Wayne's paternal great-grandfather was named Kenneth Wayne. Kenneth was the son of Alan Wayne and Catherine Van Derm, and the father of Patrick Wayne, who in turn was the father of Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne's father. You're welome.

"It's A Big Secret. Everybody Knows About It."

by Christopher Hodapp

Brother Mike Comfort posted a link on Facebook last week to a 2017 Super Bowl ad I'd completely forgotten about, pimping for - of all things - Mexican-grown avocados. Us sooper-secret 96nd degree Supreme Sovereign Grand Master Templar High Priest Freemasons control those, too. 

That's right.  Without you even knowing, we lurk everywhere.

Even in your party dip.

Illuminati and Secret Society Tales Still Flying Off Shelves

(This post has been updated 4/10/2019)

It seems like every time I post a story with the word 'Illuminati' in it, my comment in-box gets flooded with spam and crackpot messages. It just goes with the territory. Unfortunately, the Illuminati has been tied to Freemasonry in the public imagination since the 1780s, off and on. Today, they are unfortunately interchangeable in a fair-sized swath of the public's perception. And recurring interest in the subject seems to sprout every couple of years like biennial beet plants.

The National Geographic History Magazine has a short, deeply flawed, introductory article about Adam Weishaupt and the origins and brief lifespan of the Bavarian Illuminati. If you are new to the subject or don't really know how or why Freemasonry and the Illuminati get schmeared together by conspiracy mongers when hunting boogeymen to blame for world events when they get overcharged at the Starbucks, have a look at 'Meet the Man Who Started the Illuminati' by Isabel Hernandez.

The original article appeared back in 2016 and was taken apart by Josef Wäges back then for its anti-semetic propaganda. Those references still appear in the article. See The Illuminati, National Geographic, and Anti-Semitism and the comments that followed. It demonstrates the easy ability to perpetuate errors and compound them - the article continues to resurface as a popular top Google link.

Since this post is already attracting the tinfoil hat troll farmers anyway, I might as well also mention that History™ has reissued a 2016 special magazine, Secret Societies with very brief articles about 19 different secretive groups, going back to the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries and the Pythagorian Brotherhood, Templars and Rosicrucians, Illuminati and Masons, right up through the Order of the Solar Temple. It's all pretty thin, thumbnail stuff with a drive-by shooting take on everything. The Freemason chapter is painfully weak, with the usual child-like glee of 'exposing' ritual 'secrets.' Suitable for teenagers at best as a too-simple introduction to these groups overpowered with glossy photos to keep the boredom level down. On grocery impulse racks everywhere this month, next to the National Enquirer, the Archie comics, and the Betty Cooker Crockbook quarterly cake recipes.

What I do find interesting is that both magazines have enough ongoing interest in these topics to keep revisiting them on a regular basis. In fact, Brother Thomas Johnson commented on this in an earlier post:

"This month's "H" (History) magazine is a reissue of a Special Edition on " Secret Societies " which was first published in 2016. It is flying off the shelves on a Naval Base where I do business. Approximately 40 copies sold out in less than two days at $14.00 a copy. Now some might say, well, Sailors need reading material while away at sea. That may be true. But some may also be hungry for what we have to offer."

(Here's the shameless plug.)

For those who are looking for a basic primer on conspiracism and secretive organizations and movements, real or imaginary, or if you just can't get enough on the subject, I've got just the book for you...

Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies For Dummies by Christopher l. Hodapp and Alice Von Kannon.

You're welcome.

The Order of the Pug, or Mopsorden

Around 1740, the German sculptor, Johann Joachim Kaendler, master model maker of the Meissen porcelain factory in Germany, was commissioned to create a curious series of sculptures. They were a group of porcelain Pug dogs designed as secret emblems for a German underground Masonic-styled lodge known as the "Order of the Pug."

According to an exposure published in 1745 in Amsterdam, L’ordre des Franc-Macons trahi et le Secret des Mopses rélélé, the Order of the Pugs was likely designed as a fraternal group for Roman Catholics who had been forbidden to join the Masons by Pope Clement XII 's 1738 bull, In Eminenti Apostolatus Specula. It is believed to have been started in Bavaria by the elector of Cologne, Clemens August of Wittelsbach.

According to the exposure, the members called themselves Pugs. Initiates were required to wear a dog collar, and gained entrance to the lodge by scratching at the door. Initiates were hoodwinked and led around a symbol-filled carpet nine times while the assembled "Pugs" of the Order barked loudly and yelled “Memento mori” ('Remember you shall die'). The blind candidate was required to kiss the Grand Pug's backside under his tail as an expression of total devotion (in reality, a porcelain pug dog).

The pug was chosen as a symbol of loyalty, trustworthiness and steadiness. All members had to be Roman-Catholics, and the Order of the Pug allowed women as members. The Grand Master was a man, but each lodge required two lodge masters or Big Pugs, one man and one woman, who shared the governing role.



But why the Pug?

Apparently, the Pug became something of a subversive emblem of the Enlightenment, and England in particular. Pug dogs came to England with King William III when he was brought from the Netherlands in 1688 by Parliament to replace his uncle and way-too-Catholic father-in-law, James II, who was booted out of Blighty. This "Glorious Revolution" created a constitutional monarchy that was watched over carefully by Parliament. Europe’s intellectuals began to admire this new style of English government and free thinking, and owning a Pug was a subtle way of showing solidarity with England's revolution without getting locked in the stocks or hurled into a dungeon. In Paris, Pugs became associated with Voltaire and Diderot.

The Order of the Pugs was outlawed in 1748.