Artists of the 18th and 19th centuries striving to evoke republican ideals commonly used representations of Liberty.[16] A figure of Liberty was also depicted on the Great Seal of France.[16] However, Bartholdi and Laboulaye avoided an image of revolutionary liberty such as that depicted in Eugène Delacroix’s famed Liberty Leading the People (1830). In this painting, which commemorates France’s Revolution of 1830, a half-clothed Liberty leads an armed mob over the bodies of the fallen.[17] Laboulaye had no sympathy for revolution, and so Bartholdi’s figure would be fully dressed in flowing robes.[17] Instead of the impression of violence in the Delacroix work, Bartholdi wished to give the statue a peaceful appearance and chose a torch, representing progress, for the figure to hold.

Are you promoting democracy as a good gift from the ancient world?

And the Statue went up just at the time millions of Jews began flooding into the U.S. Fancy that.

Why would the French be thinking Pagan ideas and symbology for the USA at a time (1880′s) when they were immersed in Jewish Freemasonry in their country?

Use of symbols and myths from the ancient Graeco-Roman world is very common in art. Even Arno Breker did this. You ought to know that, since you have training in art.

It has nothing particularly to do with Freemasonry, except possibly insofar as Freemasons like to use references from outside of the strictly Christian tradition. They like to believe that all religions are really the same and all convey essentially the same truth.

In The Golden Ass, Lucius dresses as Helios as part of his initiation into the Graeco-Egyptian Cult of Isis, which coincided with his transformation from beast of burden to free man. (Plutarch claimed that the name Isis was really Greek: it looks as if it could be related to Greek words for knowledge, vision, and light.) A Freemason might see joining Freemasonry as the same kind of transformation, but Freemasonry did not exist when that story was written, and it is therefore anachronistic to see it as really being about Masonry.

Why is a woman dressed as Helios? Probably to symbolize that she is realizing the divine fire within her and fulfilling her freedom. I think that’s what it represents when Lucius dresses that way in The Golden Ass. It’s Pagan, not particularly Masonic.

Why would the French be thinking Pagan ideas and symbology for the USA at a time (1880’s) when they were immersed in Jewish Freemasonry in their country? The National Park Service page says: “The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States and is a universal symbol of freedom and democracy.”

Where the idea came from:

Known as the “Father of the Statue of Liberty,” Edouard de Laboulaye first proposed the idea of a monument for the United States. Born on January 18, 1811 in Paris, France, Laboulaye was a prominent and important political thinker in his time, a leading expert on the U.S. Constitution, and an abolitionist and supporter of President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. Edouard de Laboulaye believed whole-heartedly in the “common law of free peoples,” an ideal in which every person was born with an inalienable, sacred right to freedom, and spent much of his political career pushing for the return of democracy to France.

In 1865, Laboulaye proposed creating a monument for the United States. The recent Union victory in the Civil War, which reaffirmed the United States’ ideals of freedom and democracy, served as a platform for Laboulaye to argue that honoring the United States would strengthen the cause for democracy in France. As the president of the French Anti-Slavery Society, Laboulaye believed that the passage of the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery in the U.S., 1865) was a milestone and it proved that justice and liberty for all was possible. Ten years later, with the help of friend and sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, Laboulaye turned his proposal into a reality. In September 1875, he announced the project and the formation of the Franco-American Union as its fundraising arm. With the announcement, the statue was given a name, Liberty Enlightening the World. The French people would finance the statue; the American people would be expected to pay for the pedestal.

Laboulaye’s love for democracy and freedom was channeled into the iconographic Statue of Liberty in hopes that the Statue would commemorate the alliance between France and the U.S. and ultimately inspire the French people to call for democracy. To Laboulaye, the United States’ government was not so much a story of triumph against odds but rather the “natural end-product of two centuries of work and freedom”. He wanted France to learn from the United States’ struggles, defeats, and triumphs.

The architect who designed it:

Auguste Bartholdi was the French sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty. Early in his career, he extensively studied art, sculpture, and architecture. From 1855 to 1856, Bartholdi embarked on a life-changing trip throughout Europe and the Middle East with some fellow artists. When they visited the Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Bartholdi discovered his passion for large-scale public monuments and colossal sculptures. In 1869, the Egyptian government expressed interest in designing a lighthouse for the Suez Canal. Eager and excited, Bartholdi designed a colossal statue of a robed woman holding a torch, which he called Egypt (or Progress) Brings Light to Asia. When he attended the canal’s inauguration, however, Bartholdi was informed that he would not be able to proceed with the lighthouse.

Although disappointed, Bartholdi received a second chance to design a colossal statue. In 1865, Edouard de Laboulaye proposed that a monument representing freedom and democracy be created for the United States.Bartholdi was a great supporter of Laboulaye’s idea and in 1870 he began designing the Statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World.” Bartholdi visited the United States once more in 1876 to display the Statue’s massive arm and torch at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Afterwards the pieces were displayed in Madison Square Park, New York City until 1882 to assist in fundraising. Additionally, Bartholdi assisted with setting up the American Committee for the Statue of Liberty for fundraising in the United States for the pedestal. The Statue was fully constructed in Paris and presented by the Franco-American Union to the United States Ambassador in 1884.

It was not a gift from the French Government, but a private project. And it wasn’t intended to welcome immigrants to America, but to represent “Democracy” and “Enlightenment” for everyone.” An anti-nationalist, universalist philosophy. Maybe that’s why they chose to make it a woman.

I think it’s pretty obvious why a lighthouse in the form of an anthropomorphic statue would have a torch worked into the design. The ancient Colossus of Rhodes(a lighthouse in the form of a statue of Helios, rather than a woman posing as Helios) exemplified that.

Why is a woman dressed as Helios? Probably to symbolize that she is realizing the divine fire within her and fulfilling her freedom. I think that’s what it represents when Lucius dresses that way in The Golden Ass. It’s Pagan, not particularly Masonic.

“…our terrible power of the purse.”

In Protocol No. 1 — “In our day the power which has replaced that of the rulers who were liberal is the power of Gold.” [Probably meaning that those rulers who were liberal, i.e. spent too much or wasted money, became in debt to those who held the Gold.]
Also “The despotism of Capital which is entirely in our hands, reaches out to it [the liberal state] a straw that the State, willy-nilly, must take hold of: if not — it goes to the bottom.”

The Jews already had this power when this was written, and had been building it up already for a long time.