The real meaning of Baccalaureate

As part of a totally bizarre rant about masonic conspiracy and the control of higher education by the occult elite, David Flynn demonstrates a level of scholarship and understanding that makes the rest of his conclusions more understandable. In other words he’s so wrong about these simple things that you can readily understand how he made a hash out of more complex issues.

“This accomplishment [completion of a bachelor’s degree] earns the student a Bacchus laurel, for this is really what “bachelor” means. Bacchus is the Roman version of Dionysus, Greek god of wine revelry and facades, lies, and drunkenness.”

Correcting this in reverse order the baccalaureate degree was nicknamed the “bachelor’s degree” because at that time virtually all university students were unmarried men, bachelors, and of course, many people still think the B in B.A. or B.S. stands for bachelor’s, but of course, b stands for baccalaureate, the fruit of the laurel. Some college catalogues even make this mistake, all the more shameful for a scholarly institution. It was the custom in ancient Greece to crown champions with wreaths of laurel leaves, the noble laurel, Laurus nobilis, which is also found in your cupboard as bay leaves. And this custom gave rise to titles such as poet laureate. So you receive a degree as the fruits of your academic labors, and the fruit of the laurel, unlike the fruit of the grape, has no connection Dionysus. But then this author was intent on taking something traditional and noble and casting it as tawdry, but in the process Flynn reveals himself to be either a poor scholar and/or one who deliberately misleads. Me, a member of the occult educational elite, I’m betting on the combination of the two.