Talk:Taxil hoax

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[edit] A Critical View of the so-called 'Taxil Hoax'

User:Lightbringer tries for some time to augment the article with a very different view of the subject. I've reverted earlier attempts for clearly failing editing guidelines. The last attempt [] is a good deal better, but - even when considering only the formalia - not good enough. Perhaps other editors can help improving it (and decide what's worth saving). Of Lightbringer himself is invited to discuss the points here.

The most strinking formal point:

  • Quite a bit of the addition gives information about Léo Taxil, contradicting our current article. This part should be removed from here and discussed at Talk:Léo Taxil. I assume it would need some reference before claiming he was a free mason.
  • About the half of the additions, starting with The theological dogma of Albert Pike is explained in the 'Instructions' issued by him, is not related at all with the subject of this article. Please bring it to the relevant articles.

Pjacobi 19:17, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Pjacobi, that section that says that "Lucifer is God" is the substance of the Taxil hoax.--SarekOfVulcan 16:36, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
But if my confusion is still below the fatal threshold, wasn't it presented as backed by evidence from a completely different source? And the "old part" of the article says fictitious eyewitness verifications of their participation in Satanism. Eyewitness verifications would be something other than statements by Pike. --Pjacobi 16:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Now I'm confused. You mean other than statments by Taxil, right? BTW, I think that the quote was removed from here because it was duplicated on the Freemasonry page.--SarekOfVulcan 17:43, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, let's try to un-confuse (and keep in mind that I'm not a native speaker of English and sometimes overestimate my language competency)
  1. Taxil's books on Freemasonry hold as central motif detailed accounts of satanism
  2. There is a quote of Pike saying [...] Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also God. [...]
  3. 1 and 2 are unrelated (except that both are about free freemasons and satanism)
  4. Therefore the Pike quote doesn't belong into the Taxil hoax article.
Did I get this right? BTW: Is the Pike quote generally considered authentic?
Pjacobi 18:17, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
SarekOfVulcan did a good re-edit, I added the info connecting Albert Pikes' letter to the 23 Supreme Councils, Luciferian Doctrine, and the Taxil hoax. I know it is a bit confusing but what we are dealing with is a situation where some of the material both 'sides' agree with, and some they dont'. It probably still needs to be polished up a bit, but the majoy points of the 'critical view' are there now. I guess we could do a seperate page on Freemasonry's alleged Luciferian Doctrines or teachings on Lucifer and that contested quote could be included in it. I would like to add that Dreamguy and MSJapan repeatedly deleted my attempt to post additional quotes, giving book particulars etc.. about this in the 'Satan' section of the Freemasonry page.Lightbringer 18:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Pjacobi, it is not generally considered authentic: supporting details of the Pike "letter" are provably false (the office he is claimed to hold never existed, for example). See http://www.srmason-sj.org/web/SRpublications/DeHoyos.htm#i8 for heavily researched and cited details. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SarekOfVulcan (talk • contribs) Pjacobi 19:38, 12 October 2005 (UTC). (Thanks, I was about to get that -- Sarek)

To save some reading from the link I cited above, I'll cut to the chase:

The real evidence of a hoax comes in de la Rive's footnote, which neither Lady Queenborough nor anyone else has ever bothered quoting. The footnote refers to Diana Vaughan, the matchless creation of Léo Taxil's twisted mind, who, despite her illustrious pedigree created by Taxil, never existed.

Ce fut la Sur Diana Vaughan qu'Albert Pike,--afin de lui donner la plus grande marque de confiance,--chargea d'apporter son encyclique luciférienne, à Paris, pendant l'Exposition Universelle.
It was the Sister Diana Vaughan that Albert Pike,--in order to give her the greatest mark of confidence,--charged to carry his luciferian encyclical, to Paris, during the Universal Exposition.

So, the Luciferian quote is indeed part of the Taxil hoax.--SarekOfVulcan 22:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Please discuss changes

@DreamGuy: You can't simply revert

The critics of Freemasonry say that although 'The 'Taxil Hoax' was a 'sting' against the Church in France for it's teachings on Freemasonry, it's modern usage by American Freemasonry is in reality an attempt to confound and confuse the issue of Freemasonry and Lucifer, especially in regard to it's appearance in Masonic writings.

with the edit summary

revert to the NPOV version - User:Lightbringer's sole agenda is to attack Freemasons on any article here he can, see his edit history and talk comments

This is a non sequitur. The sentence in the article is an statement about critics of Freemasonry, so it is no attack to Freemasons, and Lightbringer's agenda, if it exists (which will be the ArbCom's task to decide) is irrelevant.

@Lightbringer: The above also essentially delimits the possible content of the "critic" section you want to add. It shouldn't be a general Why Freemasonry is evil treatise.

@All: What's about the membership in the Grand Orient of France? References? Is this a widely accepted claim? A minority claim? A fringe claim?

I've tried to edit Lightbringer's addition into a more encyclopedic styla and shortened a lot. Please take this just as an example of the possible direction how to proceed.

Pjacobi 09:44, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Your edit was not helpful at all, because the section still violated Wikipedia policies on verfiable resources, NPOV and so forth. Leaving the statements there making such unsourced allegations is absurd, and by doing so you give them a legitimacy that the source does not have. You can't treat information from highly biased info like that as if it were real. IT wasn;t encyclopedic in the slight to say "they alleged" in a couple of sentences and then just accept the rest at their word. Lightbringer is here making edits based solely out of opposition to a group based upon rumor and innuendo. That sort of behavior is unacceptable. Compromising with it and allowing policy violations to continue in the process is simply unacceptable. DreamGuy 09:57, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
You don't get it, that the absurdity of claims make it only more pronounced, that the entire section is a statement about the critics of Freemasonry and not about Freemasonry. --Pjacobi 10:06, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Another example of encyclopedic treatment of rather absurd allegations: Blood libel against Jews. --Pjacobi 10:18, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Pjacobi you're not dealing with a rational thinking, feeling, person here, you are dealing with a Militant Freemason. Masons simply will not tolerate ANY opinions, histories, truths about their beloved 'craft' that is critical. What he is doing here is precisely what he did to my edits on the Freemasonry page - he deleted them, said the violated Wikipedia guidlines, that the sources 'were not accepted by academics'(but provided no examples other than one url to a Masonic webpage). Again and again and again. He deleted links DOZENS of times, using the same rational. He did it again in the past day also on the link I tried to post on the Jack the Ripper page about the Freemasonry Theory. For heavens sake there was two popular Movies, BBC Documentaries, and books which advocate that P.O.V., but for Dreamguy all it is was the serial deletion coupled with vague caustic comments and a complete refusal to discuss the edit.
This is why I phrased the para additions I did in the framework 'of the critics say this' or 'the opposing view of this is'. It didn't make a stitch of difference to him, he deleted it entirely just the same. There is no middle ground with him. The longest I have been able to keep an edit up on Wiki is three hours before Dreamguy deletes it. The others just follow his lead and join in 'reverted to last edit by Dreamguy' etc..Lightbringer 18:04, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
If editors by consensus are removing your edits as a violation of policies here, maybe that should give you a clue that you need to stop your agenda-pushing strategy here. DreamGuy 22:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Pjacobi, the Blood Libel allegations are citable. Where are the credible citations for some critics of Freemasonry say? Are there any, that are documented, other than one wiki-user's claim that there are, which would be original research, and pretty much unusable in the article. Vidkun 19:11, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comments copied from Talk:Freemasonry

I copied the following two comments from the Talk:Freemasonry page as they are highly relevant here:

However, if the paragraph is the same one that was there before, the one negating a provable fact with a conspiracy theory by saying - (to paraphrase) "Some claim that Taxil, who wrote material discrediting the Masons, was in fact an invention of the Masons" is once again not a question of POV, but rather verifiability and believability.
Just because some people believe it doesn't make it true, such as the world being flat, or the Moon being made out of green cheese. There is factual evidence disproving those statements, and anything in the same vein is really not appropriate for an encyclopedia entry. IIRC there is a Wiki policy on "relative weight" that should clear this up. Even if that policy doesn't convince you 100%, the fact that Wikipedia is not democratic and is edited by consensus does cover it.
Is it too much to ask to quit all the nonsense until ArbCom deals with this and either work on the article or do nothing? MSJapan 20:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
To clarefy, the relavant policy is found at WP:NPOV#Giving "equal validity". It is also usefull to look at the policy on WP:NPOV#Undue_Weight. Actually, all of the Category:Wikipedia official policy is interesting reading, and I recomend everyone to look throught it. WegianWarrior 21:12, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Simply put, having some fringe group claiming all sorts of weird things does not make it encyclopedic. The information must meet Wikipedia guidelines on encyclopedic sources and its coverage must not be unbalanced, giving it the appearance of more validity and acceptance among scholars than it really does. A long, rambling multi-paragraph statement from the anti-Freemason conspiracy theorists based upon bad sources and so forth is absolutely not encyclopedic. It should be given a brief mention, if at all, because I think it's safe to assume that the anti-Masons dispute the factualness of anything and everything they can if they think they can try to use it as "proof" that Masons are corrupt and ruling the workd and blah blah blah. Of course the anti-MAsons are going to come up with some bizarre story, that's nonnotable. This is an encyclopedia, not a place for every fringe theory to get more space than expert opinions back up with sources and qualifications. DreamGuy 22:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

What's with the new section added here recently? Why on earth would you give so much space to that? It's like handing half of the Evolution article over to creationists. Victrix 06:54, 13 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] His real intent

I want to make it clear that I'm not one who is predisposed to conspiracy theories, including those concerning Freemasonry; I don't think Freemasonry is a conspiritorial organization, and I think most POV issues concerning Freemasonry come from the anti-freemasonry editers (as they tend to be conspiracy theory quacks). That being said, there is atleast one POV issue with this article. Does anyone have a reference for the following sentence:

His real intent, however, was to publicly slander the Freemasons (who had rejected him for membership), and simultaneously embarrass the Roman Catholic Church.

I don't think the author of that sentence intended to make a POV statment, but it seems pretty silly to claim one knows what the "real intent" was of someone who died long before the author of the sentence was born.--Brentt 07:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, you can find his intent at http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_confessiontaxil.htm, http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_confessiontaxil2.htm, http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_confessiontaxil3.htm, http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_confessiontaxil4.htm, http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_confessiontaxil5.htm, and http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_confessiontaxil6.htm (I pasted all of the links because there's a misspelling in the "Next page" references). It's the full text of the April 19 press conference referenced on the main page. Seems clear enough.
Last comment was me. Sorry.--SarekOfVulcan 23:10, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
SarekOfVulcan, I concur. Mousescribe 00:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

the list of titles of leos writings interested me. is there a website i could read some of those writings?

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