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Other Pocket Essentials by Giles Morgan:

ByzantiumThe Holy Grail

St George

Freemasonry

GILES MORGAN

POCKET ESSENTIALS

This edition published in 2007 by Pocket Essentials

P.O.Box 394, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1XJ

www.pocketessentials.com

© Giles Morgan 2007

The right of Giles Morgan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in

accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 10: 1 904048 87 0

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Printed by J. H. Haynes & Co Ltd., Sparkford

Contents

Introduction 7

1: What is Freemasonry? 11

2: The Fellowcraft and the Master Mason 29

3: The Temple of Solomon 43

4: Mystery Cults and Secret Societies 57

5: The Knights Templar 77

6: The Development of Freemasonry in Europe 93

7: Freemasonry in America 111

8: Freemasonry in the Modern Era 133

Bibliography 153

Web pages 155

Index 157

Introduction

Freemasonry is a topic that polarises opinion. Much ofthe controversy which surrounds the subject has centredon the perception that Freemasons represent a secretsociety with sinister aims and objectives that has wieldeda powerful but unseen influence through history. Itsmany critics have labelled it as an organisation that isvariously corrupt, manipulative, self-serving and evensatanic.Those who have attempted to defend the reputa-tion of Freemasonry have often pointed out that it can bemore realistically regarded as not so much a secretsociety as a fraternal society that has its own secrets.Advocates of Freemasonry argue that the secrecysurrounding its rituals and meetings is mainly limited tocodes of recognition within what its members call the‘Craft’.

Freemasonry is a global phenomenon and examplesof Masonic-type groups can be found throughout theworld. Many view Freemasonry as holding high moralaims and ideals. Membership is potentially open toanyone over the age of 21 with a belief in a supremebeing. However, in order to become a Freemason,

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candidates must be nominated and vetted by existingFreemasons. For the critics of Freemasonry this processis indicative of the elitism and protectionism that is thetrue nature of the order.

Perhaps one of the most puzzling and perplexingaspects of Freemasonry is the way in which it definesitself. During initiation ceremonies candidates arecommonly asked the ritual question, ‘What isFreemasonry?’The answer generally given is,‘A peculiarsystem of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated bysymbols’. Freemasonry also states that its three grandfounding principles are ‘brotherly love, relief and truth’.Entrants to Masonic societies are very often required toprogress through a series of ceremonies in which themysteries of the Craft are revealed to them before theyreach the rank of Master Mason.The circumstances andcontent of these rituals have led many, both within andoutside Freemasonry, to question how they began andwhat meanings they contain.

It is often claimed that Freemasonry is the oldestsurviving secret society in the world and the numerousbeliefs about its beginnings seem to point towardsancient and esoteric origins.The origins of Freemasonryare obscure and uncertain but a body of different theo-ries has emerged in an attempt to answer the seeminglyfundamental and basic question of how the Craft began.It has been variously argued that it derives from thepractices of medieval stonemasons, that it dates toevents surrounding the construction of the Temple of

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F R E E M A S O N RY

Solomon and that it is connected to ancient MysteryCults. One of the major and often disputed claims madefor Freemasonry is that it is directly linked to theKnights Templar. Best-selling books The Holy Blood andthe Holy Grail and more recently Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code have linked Freemasonry to a supposed secretorder known as the Priory of Sion which is the guardianof the true nature of the Holy Grail. Freemasonry alsofeatures heavily in Brown’s novels Angels and Demons andThe Solomon Key.

The earliest written documentary evidence ofFreemasonry dates mainly from the sixteenth centuryalthough some have claimed references to it can befound in older texts.The creation of the Grand Lodge ofEngland in 1717 is often seen as a major turning point orevent in the history of Freemasonry as the order becamemore visible to a wider public for the first time. It hasbeen argued that Freemasonry has played an importantrole in the shaping of American society and it is knownthat a number of key figures in American history such asGeorge Washington and Benjamin Franklin were them-selves Freemasons.

Some have claimed that Freemasonry also influencedthe French Revolution and draw parallels between theslogan ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ and its own threegrand founding principles. On a more sinister level it hasbeen claimed in recent years that the Victorian serialkiller Jack the Ripper was a Freemason and the brother-hood has been linked to organised crime. However, it is

I N T RO D U C T I O N

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perhaps less well known that many thousands ofFreemasons were amongst those persecuted and killedby the Nazis during the Second World War. Adolf Hitlerattacked the Freemasons in Mein Kampf and consideredthem to be enemies of the Nazi party. Its members werebarred from holding public office and arrested andinterned in concentration camps as political prisoners.

In more recent times Masonic-type groups such as P2in Italy have been involved in corruption scandals thathave perpetuated the image of Freemasonry as a secre-tive and self-serving network involved in nefarious activ-ities. Conversely, many Freemasons have pointed totheir charitable work, collecting money for a number ofcauses, and their tradition of scholarly research andeducation as important and positive aspects of theirorganisations. Freemasonry can boast many famous anddistinguished members throughout its history, rangingfrom Mozart and Sir Isaac Newton to Sir WinstonChurchill and Buzz Aldrin in the twentieth century.Freemasonry has played an important and often little-known role in the shaping of Western culture and, in thissense at least, its development can credibly be claimed torepresent something of a secret history.


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What is Freemasonry?

Attempting to answer the basic question of whatFreemasonry actually is and the associated one of how itoriginated has proved a surprisingly complex and diffi-cult task for both Masons and non-Masons alike. In1984, following a flurry of interest in the Brotherhood,a leaflet was produced by Freemasons and issued by agroup with the slightly Pythonesque title of the ‘Board ofGeneral Purposes’. The leaflet, entitled What IsFreemasonry?, describes Freemasonry as:

one of the world’s oldest secular fraternal societies… asociety of men concerned with spiritual values. Itsmembers are taught its precepts by a series of ritualdramas, which follow ancient forms and use stonemason’scustoms and tools as allegorical guides.

(The Craft, John Hamill, p.12).

The simplest definition of Freemasonry then is that it isa fraternal organisation found in one form or another ina wide and varied range of countries around the world.

However, Freemasonry can also be regarded as a

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secret society in that many of the inner workings of theorganisation are not revealed to the general public.Freemasons aim to improve themselves by learningmoral and spiritual lessons taught within the fraternity,not only to develop and benefit their own characters,but also in order to contribute in positive ways to thefraternity and to wider society.

Its members traditionally share a moral code andvalue system with a belief in a single Supreme Being ordeity. It is essential that prospective Masons have a beliefin a Supreme Being or deity in order to pursue a courseof spiritual growth. Providing that this criterion is met,the candidate is free to adhere to more or less any reli-gion that they choose. One of the tenets of Freemasonryis that its members are at liberty to follow their ownseparate beliefs but it safeguards this freedom by forbid-ding religious discussion within its meetings. Similarly,discussion of political issues is prohibited withinMasonic meetings in order to promote unity andharmony amongst its members. As we shall see, this hasnot always been the case but, none the less, it is an idealthat is central to Freemasonry.

The vast majority of Freemasons belong to what iscalled ‘Craft’ or ‘Blue Lodge’ Freemasonry. Its membersusually meet together under the guidance and leadershipof a Worshipful Master and other Masonic officials at alocal level. The officers of the lodge, led by theWorshipful Master, will initiate new members and dealwith issues relevant to the lodge or local area.An impor-


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tant aspect of Freemasonry is that its members shouldcontribute actively towards charitable and worthwhilecauses. There are three levels or ranks within CraftMasonry: the Entered Apprentice referred to as the firstdegree; the Fellowcraft which is the second degree; andthe third degree of Master Mason.

It is also important to recognise that Freemasonrycannot be regarded as one coherent and single body.Rather Freemasonry today is the culmination ofdiffering historical traditions and trends that will bediscussed in greater detail in later chapters. IndividualMasonic Lodges are governed by a Grand Lodge thatvaries from territory to territory. For example inBritain there are different Grand Lodges for eachcountry within the United Kingdom. English Masonryis presided over by the United Grand Lodge of Englandwhilst the Grand Lodge of Ireland and the GrandLodge of Scotland preside over their member’s activi-ties. The central image or symbol around whichFreemasonry is organised and teaches its spiritual andmoral lessons to Masons is the building of the Templeof Solomon. Just as the Temple was intended to beperfect in its form and function in providing an earthlyhome for God, so Masons are taught that they muststrive to perfect themselves and thus contribute towider society.

W H AT I S F R E E M A S O N RY?

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Masonic Principles

The basic principles on which Freemasonry is said to bebased and which are intended to inform the thoughtsand actions of Masons are Brotherly Love, Relief andTruth.The principle of Brotherly Love emphasises toler-ance and mutual respect and working towards a harmo-nious and productive society. Relief is widelyinterpreted as offering assistance and aid to those whorequire it within society through charitable donationsand aid. The principle of Truth requires that a Masonshould strive to attain high moral standards and aim tofulfil his responsibilities as a Mason and as a citizen.

Freemasonry instructs its members through a seriesof symbolic and allegorical moral lessons that aredescribed as degrees. It has been argued that theseMasonic principles played a major part in determiningthe idealised qualities and beliefs upon which theConstitution of the United States of America is claimedto have been founded.As we shall see, the Masonic prin-ciples of Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth also had aconsiderable influence upon the ideals of the FrenchRevolution, one which can be recognised in the famousRepublican rallying call of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’.

Masonic Lodges

A Masonic lodge is the term given to a group of Masonsand does not denote the meeting place in which they


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attend. The lodge rooms where Masons meet may varyin size or relative grandeur but they do share a core setof characteristics. Within Freemasonry it is importantthat the room in which the lodge meets should have analignment running from east to west. Essentially, and aswe shall discover significantly, the Worshipful Master isalways seated in the East corner of the lodge room.Lodge members are seated on benches along the southand north walls that are themselves split into east andwest groupings. One of the most distinctive and recog-nisable characteristics of the lodge room is usually thefloor upon which a black and white chequered pattern ofsquares features prominently either as a carpet, tiles ormosaic. Conversely the ceiling often has a depiction ofthe sun or the heavens. On a practical level the lodgewill generally have its warrant from its Grand Lodgevisible, that demonstrates its right to assemble and func-tion as a Masonic lodge.

The personnel at the core of a lodge hold seven posi-tions; the Tyler, the Inner Guard, the Junior Deacon, theSenior Deacon, the Junior Warden, the Senior Wardenand the Worshipful Master. The Tyler has the role ofstanding outside the doors that lead into the lodge and isrequired to prevent any unlawful entry into the innerchamber and to make sure that the business of the lodgeis not being overheard by outsiders.The Tyler also greetsall those entering the lodge and must ensure that Masonsare properly dressed (usually in black suits with blackties and white shirts) before allowing them entry to the


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lodge room. Traditionally the Tyler stood guard with aceremonial sword to stop eavesdropping or forced entryto the lodge. The Tyler’s Sword often has a wavy bladebecause, in the Book of Genesis, a flaming sword wasplaced in the east of the Garden of Eden to guard theTree of Life.

The Inner Guard performs the same role as the Tylerbut within the lodge room. Ceremonially, the InnerGuard will check that the Tyler is performing his dutiesby knocking on the door of the lodge to which the Tylermust reply by knocking the outside of the door.

Initiates are met within the lodge by the Inner Guardwho then escorts them to meet the Junior Deacon.TheJunior Deacon helps candidates to prepare for cere-monies of initiation and monitors those who enter andleave the room during a lodge session. He must ensurethat any that do leave or enter do so only with thepermission of the Senior Deacon or Worshipful Master.He carries messages on behalf of the Senior Deacon.

The Senior Deacon performs the same function forthe Worshipful Master and has responsibility for theintroduction of Masons from other lodges to membersof his own. Within the lodge the Senior Deacon plays asignificant part in initiation ceremonies, leading candi-dates and participating in ritual speeches. The SeniorDeacon will generally progress within the hierarchy ofthe lodge and so must undergo training to prepare himfor his next role in a ‘lodge of instruction’. The role ofthe Junior Warden is to arrange the business of the lodge


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in terms of liaising with visitors from other lodges and(importantly) of covering the duties of the SeniorWarden and Worshipful Master if they are absent. TheSenior Warden is second in command and must be ableboth to help the Worshipful Master and to take his placein his absence and prepare for his own ascension to thatrole.

The Worshipful Master is the highest-ranking positionwithin a lodge and he must govern its business and cere-monies and play a central part in its rituals. TheWorshipful Master is the most important point ofcontact between the lodge and its respective GoverningGrand Lodge. The Worshipful Master is responsible forthe opening and closing of lodge sessions and for main-taining order and appropriate behaviour within it.

There are a number of other non-ceremonial offi-cers who operate within the framework of the lodge.Typically there would be around eight such officersalthough, in some lodges, there are more. The leastsenior of these is the Junior Steward and his primarypurpose is not to participate in the rituals and cere-monies of the lodge but to assist with lodge activitiesbefore sessions are opened and when they are closed.The Junior Steward would provide assistance to theSenior Steward and help the Junior Warden with theprovision of food and drink. Those serving as JuniorSteward are seen as gaining experience and knowledgein order to progress within the framework of thelodge.The Senior Steward also plays an important role


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during meals, checking that everything is runningsmoothly whilst also providing support and assistanceto the lodge officers. All lodge meetings begin and endwith prayer and it is the responsibility of the Chaplainto lead the lodge in this activity. He is also responsiblefor the safekeeping of the Volume of the Sacred Law.The Chaplain must also attend the funerals of Masonswhere he would be expected to say prayers for thedeceased.

Contact between the lodge and its members is theresponsibility of the Almoner. It falls to the Almoner toalert lodge members to any of their number who mayneed assistance due to ill health. Donations and links toexternal charities are maintained by the Charity Stewardand he coordinates charitable fundraising within thelodge.The financial affairs of the lodge are the preserveof the Treasurer who is expected to maintain exact andhonest records of the income and outflow of the lodge’smonies. The Worshipful Master will also receive helpand assistance from the Immediate Past Master who willbe the predecessor of the current master. The adminis-trative needs of the lodge are largely met by theSecretary who deals with paperwork generated throughmeetings and links with other lodges. The Secretary isresponsible for maintaining an accurate and up-to-datelist of lodge members.


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Regularity

Freemasonry today is often viewed as a homogenoussingle global entity but, in reality, there are manydifferent Masonic organisations that have developed overtime and through diverse circumstances. An importantissue to arise from this is the question of regularity. Putsimply, the Grand Lodge of a particular territory orjurisdiction must give its approval for a lodge to beconsidered ‘regular’.

There is an obvious need for Freemasonry to monitorboth its own activities and any potentially fraudulentorganisations claiming an unjustifiable link with thefraternity.Together with the central principles on whichFreemasonry is said to be founded, the question of regu-larity and whether a lodge is recognised or not is widelyregarded as one of the fundamental issues ofFreemasonry. Participating in irregular lodges would bepunishable by expulsion from Freemasonry and so, ofcourse, is perceived as an issue of some considerablegravity. Different Grand Lodges are described as being‘in amity’ when they are in a state of mutual recognitionand members are permitted to interact officially at lodgelevel.

The First Degree

In order to become a Mason, individuals must ful-fil a number of basic requirements. They are usually


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recommended for membership by other Masons andmust be of legal age. (Depending on the jurisdiction,that may be 18 or 21 years of age.) They must be withoutcriminal convictions and be observed to be of goodmoral character. It is often stated that they should be‘free-born’, an archaic survival that would originallyhave meant that they were not slaves. Importantly, theymust also hold a belief in a single Supreme Being with anassociated belief in an afterlife. On this pointFreemasonry claims to be non-specific and would beopen to any monotheistic religion such as Christianity orIslam.The suitability of candidates is voted on by a secretballot of the lodge to which they are attempting to gainentry. In order to be successfully accepted all membersof the lodge must agree to the suitability of the candi-date.Traditionally, during the vote, black and white balls(or sometimes cubes) are used to register votes.A whiteball signifies a ‘yes’ vote and a black ball registers a ‘no’.The common term of ‘blackballing’ someone (usually inconnection with membership of an organisation) isthought to derive from this Masonic process.

As has already been mentioned, Freemasonry ismost commonly divided into what is known as the‘Three Degrees’ or ‘level’ of Mason. Many other higherlevels within Freemasonry can be achieved but, for thevast rank and file of the Brotherhood, these ThreeDegrees are the norm. The first degree or step inFreemasonry is that of the ‘Entered Apprentice’, thesecond degree is known as ‘Fellowcraft’ and the third


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degree is that of ‘Master Mason’.The first degree of theEntered Apprentice is marked by a ceremony known asthe ‘Rite of Destitution’ in which initiates symbolicallytake their first step into the world of Freemasonry.Initiates are required to wear simple clothes such aswhite cotton trousers and a shirt provided for the occa-sion that are intended to focus their attention on theirinner selves rather than on worldly status or wealth.They are typically blindfolded or ‘hoodwinked’ and allmoney and metal objects on their person are removed.One foot is fitted with a slipper, a state that is referredto as being ‘slipshod’. Each initiate has his left leg baredto the knee and his left breast exposed. A rope orhangman’s noose called a cable tow is fitted looselyaround his neck and a sword or dagger is held to his leftbreast.

After the guard has knocked on the door of theTemple, the candidate is led into the room. The initiateundertakes a vow of secrecy during the ceremony and heis led by the cable tow around the floor of the Temple.The reasons for the candidate being led around theTemple in this way are a mixture of practical andmetaphorical concerns. Being led around the Temple ina system of ritual patterns gives the other members ofthe lodge the opportunity to see the candidate and thathe is ready to undertake this next phase of his develop-ment within Freemasonry. It also has symbolic value.The candidate can be imagined as undergoing theprocess of threading his way through a labyrinth and


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being orientated within the world of Freemasonry. He isreferred to as ‘a poor candidate in a state of darkness’and introduced to the Lodge.

During this symbolic ritual the hoodwinked appren-tice asks to be shown ‘the light’ and is brought before theWorshipful Master who stands at the altar. When theblindfold is removed the candidate’s attention is drawnto what are referred to as the ‘Great Lights’ ofFreemasonry that have been laid upon the altar. Theseinclude the volume of sacred law, which is typically theBible, but could be another text related to the candi-date’s faith system, the Square and the Compasses. TheBible is the guide by which Masons should live their liveswhilst the square symbolises truth and the compassesrepresent knowledge and expertise.

It is interesting to note how many concepts andphrases that are commonly in use today derive fromFreemasonry and its attendant imagery. For example, anindividual who is believed to be reliable, honest andtrustworthy may be described as a ‘four-square fellow’or equally as being ‘on the level’. Similarly, a commit-ment or deal might be described as being ‘fair andsquare’.As we shall also see, people commonly describean individual who has been put through a rigorous ortesting ordeal of some kind as having been subjected toor given ‘the third degree’, a reflection of the gravity andseriousness which the process of becoming a MasterMason is perceived to have.


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Masonic Aprons

Candidates take a solemn oath of allegiance at the altarthat lays out what their fellow Masons expect from themand what their responsibilities and status within thelodge are. Because the oath is sworn at the altar in thepresence of the Bible or other sacred text, it is seen as asacred promise sworn within the sight of God. At thenext stage of the first degree ceremony the initiate willbe presented with a white apron made from lambskin.This symbolises the innocence of the entered appren-tice. (Different degrees within Freemasonry are repre-sented by different apron designs.) It is expected that theentered apprentice will fulfil his duties to theBrotherhood and society and conduct himself in a moraland upright manner.

Like the square and the compasses, the apron isthought by some to derive from the time when groupsof working stonemasons organised themselves intofraternal groups and all three items had a practical appli-cation. These stonemasons, who are credited withbuilding the great cathedrals and abbeys of the MiddleAges, are referred to as ‘operative’ freemasons. Overtime Freemasonry developed into what is referred to asa ‘speculative’ form in that it became increasingly opento, and dominated by, individuals who did not actuallywork as masons. The role of the apron within modernFreemasonry is symbolic and modern Masons see muchof their work as inner activity and personal development


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rather than the physical labour of the old stonemasons.The white apron made from lambskin also relates to thestory of the building of the Temple of King Solomon andthe unlawful killing of its chief architect Hiram Abiff thatis central to the allegorical lessons that Freemasonryteaches to Masons and which is discussed in greaterdetail in Chapter Two.

Working Tools

When the candidate has been presented with his apronthe next phase of his initiation into the world ofFreemasonry involves presenting him with the ‘workingtools’ of the Entered Apprentice. These are actualbuilders’ tools of the kind that, it is said, medievalapprentice stonemasons would have used but, in thisinstance, their value is symbolic rather than actual. TheEntered Apprentice is shown a ruler called a 24-inchgauge and a stonemason’s hammer known as thecommon gavel. The symbolism of the 24-inch gauge,which is used to take measurements, is that it folds upinto three sections. The apprentice is informed that thegauge represents an individual day and that the way itdivides into three sections illustrates the use that Masonsshould make of their time. Within one eight-hoursection Masons should carry out their work or job, theyshould spend a further eight hours devoting themselvesto their religion, improving themselves and performingcharitable works and the remaining eight hours resting


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themselves through sleep. Candidates are then intro-duced to the symbolism of the hammer or commongavel and it is explained that they should work on them-selves and their own characters. Just as the stonemason’shammer would be used to refine and shape stone, theapprentices must try to rid themselves of behaviour orunwanted characteristics in refining and improving theirmoral worth as Masons.

The Immovable Jewels

During the next phase of the ceremony the apprenticeMason is led to stand in the north-eastern corner of thelodge. The symbolism of placing the candidate in thisarea of the room is that it is traditional to lay the firststone of a building in the north-east corner and it isreferred to as the cornerstone.Therefore the apprenticeis symbolically creating the basis for the building of hisown spiritual temple through Freemasonry.

Significantly the Worshipful Master sits in the eastbecause this is believed to be the place of light, the pointfrom which the sun rises, whilst the north is a point ofdarkness for Masons. The candidate is moving towardsthe light of instruction and the attainment of wisdom isrepresented by the presence of the Worshipful Master.

The apprentice is shown the three pillars that supportthe lodge and which symbolise wisdom, strength andbeauty. In Masonic lore the three pillars also representthe three Grand Masters on which Freemasonry is


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based: King Solomon, Hiram, King of Tyre and theMaster Builder, Hiram Abiff.The three pillars are shownto be linked to the roles of the three Lesser Lights of thelodge that are the persons of the Worshipful Master,Senior Warden and the Junior Warden. The apprenticewill also be shown the Immovable Jewels of the lodge:the square, the level and the plumb line. The squaresymbolises morality, the level represents equality andthe plumb line stands for goodness.

The Movable Jewels

The apprentice will also be shown the so-called MovableJewels: the rough ashlar, the perfect ashlar and thetrestleboard. An ashlar is a square-cut stone used inbuilding and appears here in rough-hewn form and alsoin a perfected and prepared state. The trestleboardwould, in building work, have been used to hold theplans of an architect. Within the symbolism ofFreemasonry, the rough ashlar represents the spiritualstate of the Entered Apprentice, the perfect ashlar corre-sponds to the Fellowcraft Mason and the trestleboardrefers to the work that a Master Mason should under-take in building a spiritual temple within himself.Tracing boards are another traditional tool used withinFreemasonry for teaching and educating its members.They often consist of a colourful series of symbols andimages that to non-Masons can appaear surreal andbizarre but which have philosophical and instructional


• 26 •

meaning to Masons. They take their name from thetracing boards used by medieval stonemasons to cutstone to specific shapes and dimensions.


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The Fellowcraft and the Master Mason

The Second Degree

The next stage in the development of a Mason is theceremony of the second degree where he becomes whatis referred to as a ‘Fellowcraft Freemason’. On asymbolic level the candidate is seen to be spiritually‘coming of age’ and entering the mature, adult phase ofhis Masonic development. Initially, the candidate entersthe Temple wearing the white lambskin apron thatsymbolises his status as Entered Apprentice. He is askeda series of ritual questions and provides answers tothese. Upon completion of this part of the ceremony thecandidate must leave the Temple to don the same simplecostume that was required for the ritual of the firstdegree and re-enters the Temple with his left leg bareand his shirt pulled back from his right breast.

Just as the ceremony of the Entered Apprenticefeatures specific working tools of symbolic value, so theritual induction to the level of Fellowcraft Mason isaccompanied by an introduction to further such imple-ments. The working tools shown to the Fellowcraft

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Mason are described as the three immovable jewels ofthe lodge. As previously mentioned, they consist of thesquare, the level and the plumb line. The symbolism ofthe square within Freemasonry is that its two sidescreate a perfect right angle. In order to build a strongand stable wall a builder or mason must ensure that itstands completely upright forming a 90-degree anglewith the ground.

The importance of this image and idea withinFreemasonry is that a Mason must strive to ensure thathis behaviour and conduct are similarly upright andwithout deviation. Without maintaining this high stan-dard the Mason risks a metaphorical fall. The levelteaches Masons that, regardless of the circumstances ofour birth, we are all equal within the sight of God andmust work to improve ourselves both in the physical,material world and in terms of spiritual and inner devel-opment. The plumb line is a Masonic working tool thatemphasises the importance of fair play and treatingothers equally and acts as a symbol of equal justice for alluntainted by unworthy bias.

The Winding Staircase

The symbolism of the winding staircase is central to thesecond degree of Fellowcraft Masonry. This image istaken from the architectural design that Freemasonsbelieve that the Temple of Solomon followed. During theritual of the first degree the ceremony symbolically


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takes place on the ground floor of King Solomon’sTemple. To advance to the next degree the apprenticeMason must symbolically ascend by the winding stair-case to the Middle Chamber of the Temple.The image ofstairs or ladders or even mountains within the symboliclanguage of Freemasonry is a common one and denotesthe ascension of Masons within the Brotherhood. Toreach the second degree within Freemasonry means thatthe Mason is entitled to what is known as increasedwages.These wages are symbolic and are represented inthe form of corn, wine and oil.

The symbolism of ascension within Freemasonrydraws on the biblical story of Jacob’s Ladder. During adream Jacob saw a ladder that connected the Earth withHeaven, and God told him that the Jewish people wouldbe given the land that stretched from the RiverEuphrates to the south-west. As a monument to thedream, Jacob took the stone upon which he had laid hishead whilst asleep and set it upright. He dedicated thestone to God by pouring oil upon it.The numbers threeand seven are significant within Freemasonry.There are,of course, three degrees within Blue Lodge Masonry, thethree principles of Brotherly Love, Relief and Truthupon which Freemasonry is founded; there are threeprincipal officers within a lodge and there are the threevirtues of faith, hope and charity that lead to heaven.Theseven liberal arts and sciences are symbolised by sevensteps on the winding staircase. The formulation of theseven liberal arts and sciences can be dated to the fourth

T H E F E L L OW C R A F T A N D T H E M A S T E R M A S O N

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century AD and many Christian thinkers believed that togain mastery of them was a means of achieving a greaterunderstanding of God.They are generally said to be thesubjects of rhetoric, grammar, geometry, music, mathe-matics, astronomy and logic.

Another central image to the second degree cere-mony is that of the two pillars that appear at theentrance to all Masonic lodges which are a reference tothe pillars that were set at the entrance to KingSolomon’s Temple. The initiate is informed that theyrepresent strength and establishment and signify controland power within the lodge. It has also been argued thatthe image of the two pillars at the entrance to the Templeoriginated with the biblical account of the Pillar ofCloud and the Pillar of Fire that led the Israelites to thePromised Land. From the eighteenth century manylodges chose to place globes on top of the pillars and,although there is no evidence available to prove thispoint, some have claimed that such spheres surmountedthe pillars of the Temple of Solomon. They are some-times said to symbolise the two different spheres ofearth and heaven. However, in some lodges, the globeswere displayed on tripods close to the seat of theWorshipful Master.

When the Fellowcraft reaches the middle chamber ofthe Temple he is due the previously mentioned wages ofcorn, wine and oil. Their symbolic value is that theyrepresent spiritual and mental wealth and plenty. Cornis, of course, symbolic of sustenance since wheat is used


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to create bread, one of the basic foodstuffs upon whichwe all depend. Wheat also appears in Masonic imagerywoven into the shape of a cornucopia, often overflowingwith fruit and berries. The Senior Steward of a lodge,who has a non-ceremonial role, is responsible forrefreshment in the form of food and drink during meet-ings and commonly wears an emblem or badge,described by Masons as ‘jewels’ and featuring the motifof a cornucopia set between the points of the MasonicCompass.Wine denotes peace and good health and, in aChristian context, is arguably linked to the ceremony ofthe Eucharist. Oil is believed to symbolise happiness andjoy. For the Mason receiving these wages, they representa just reward for leading a good life. The wages withinMasonic lore derive from the ‘wages’ or tithes that KingSolomon paid the King of Tyre for the help he provided,in the form of builders and materials, for the construc-tion of the Temple.

The Third Degree

During the ceremony of the third degree, when theFellowcraft Mason is said to achieve the ‘sublime’ statusof becoming a Master Mason, the candidate is requiredto enact the role of the Grand Master of the building ofthe Temple of Solomon, Hiram Abiff. Through thisdrama the candidate undergoes a figurative death, burialand resurrection. The Worshipful Master of the lodgenarrates the story of Hiram Abiff, a legend that is central


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to Masonic ceremony, lore and culture. As we shall seein later chapters, the theme of resurrection can be foundin many cultures and legends and has fuelled consider-able speculation about the origins of Freemasonry. In thestory that is related to the candidate by the WorshipfulMaster it is said that the Grand Master Hiram Abiff, whowas the principal architect of the Temple of Solomon,was murdered shortly before its completion.As a GrandMaster Hiram Abiff was in possession of the ‘genuinesecrets of a Master Mason’ and it is said that 15Fellowcraft Masons junior to him formulated aconspiracy to extract those secrets from him unlawfully.

On the night before they planned to demand thesecrets from Hiram Abiff, twelve of the fifteenFellowcraft abandoned their disreputable intentions butthe remaining three remained determined to confronttheir Grand Master. The three Fellowcraft stationedthemselves at the east, south and west gates of theTemple of Solomon whilst Hiram Abiff was insidepraying to the ‘Most High’ at the hour of ‘high twelve’.When Hiram attempted to leave the Temple through thesouth gate he was confronted by one of these lawless‘ruffians’ who demanded that he provide him with thesecrets of a Master Mason and threatened to kill him ifhe did not supply the information. Hiram replied thatonly three individuals knew those secrets and that hecould not impart them without the agreement of theother two. The Grand Master offered words of encour-agement to the Fellowcraft, suggesting that, in time and


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with his own personal development, he would be able togain those secrets lawfully. However, he, Hiram, couldnot reveal them before that time because of the ‘sacredtrust’ that his position involved even if it meant his owndeath. Greatly angered, the Fellowcraft struck a blow atHiram’s forehead that actually hit his right temple. Theblow knocked Hiram down onto his left knee.Staggering back to his feet, Hiram attempted to leavethe Temple through the west gate but was met by thesecond ruffian who made the same demand as the first.Once again Hiram refused to give up the secrets of aMaster Mason and the man struck him a blow with alevel on his left temple that, this time, drove him downonto his right knee.

Injured and bleeding, the Grand Master finallyattempted to leave through the east gate of the Templewhere he was confronted by the third ruffian whorepeated the demands of his companions. Hiram stayedresolute in his determination to fulfil his obligation notto reveal those secrets entrusted to him and refused toanswer.The Fellowcraft then struck him viciously in thecentre of the forehead with a heavy stone maul thatkilled him instantly and the body of the Grand Master laysprawled on the floor of the Temple.

After the murder of Hiram Abiff, when the variousworkmen who had participated in the construction ofthe Temple met together, it was noticed that three oftheir number were missing. At this point the 12Fellowcraft who had originally plotted against Hiram


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Abiff confessed the conspiracy to King Solomon andrevealed all that had been planned. Greatly concerned bythe absence of the Master Mason in light of what hadbeen revealed King Solomon ordered that 15Fellowcraft begin a search for him to determine whetheror not he had been slain by the remaining three conspir-ators.

A date was agreed that they should return toJerusalem and the men joined themselves into threeLodges and set out on their search from the three gatesof the Temple. One group searched without any successat all and returned without answers. The second madean important discovery when one of their number, whowas resting on the ground after searching for theMaster Mason, dislodged a shrub from the ground andfound that the earth in which it grew was loose andcame away easily. Investigating further, they discoveredthe hastily buried body of Hiram Abiff. They thenrecovered the body but marked the place of its burialby sticking a sprig of acacia near where the head of theGrand Master had lain. (It is interesting to note that inMiddle Eastern cultures the acacia is associated withsuch themes as rebirth and new growth because it is anevergreen plant. Some traditions maintain that thecrown of thorns that Jesus was forced to wear at thecrucifixion was made from acacia.) Returning swiftlyto Jerusalem, they informed King Solomon of theirunhappy find. King Solomon ordered that they shouldreturn to the site of the burial and create a sepulchre


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for Hiram Abiff that reflected his status and impor-tance. He also informed the men that, because of thedeath of Hiram Abiff, the secrets of a Master Masonwere now lost.

The third lodge of Fellowcraft had been searchingwestwards and had arrived in Joppa and happened uponthe three disgraced murderers. A member of the groupheard one of the murderers whose name was Jubelawailing that he would rather have had his throat cut andhis tongue torn out by its root and buried in the sand acable length from the shore where the tide passes twicein the course of a day than to be involved in the murderof Hiram Abiff. The second villain Jubelo cried that hewould rather have his heart ripped out from his chestand given to the vultures than to have played his part inthe killing of the Master Mason. The third villainJubelum declared that because he had struck the blowthat killed Hiram Abiff he would rather that his body becut into two parts and those separate parts be takennorth and south and his bowels burnt to ashes andthrown to the four winds than that he be guilty of themurder of the Master Mason.The searching Fellowcraftwho heard the lamenting killers took them prisoner andmarched them back to Jerusalem where they confessedtheir guilt to King Solomon. As punishment for theircrime they were all sentenced to the grisly deaths forwhich they had yearned. In Masonic lore the threemurderers of Hiram Abiff are referred to as the Juwes,pronounced ‘Joo-ees’. Hiram was said to have been


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reburied close to the Temple and the Fellowcraft whohad searched for him attended the funeral wearing whitegloves and aprons that served as tokens or symbols oftheir innocence.

During the ceremony that echoes this story, theinitiate is described as being raised to the sublime degreeof a Master Mason. In the course of the ritual the candi-date is actually physically raised from the floor by hisfellow Masons.

The Master Mason

The working tools of the degree of the Master Masonare the skirret, pencil and the compass. A skirret is apointed building tool that can be set in the ground andused to plan a true line from which to work. This, ofcourse, is metaphorically extended to the behaviour anddeportment of Master Masons who should use the reli-gious teachings of their own faith system in tandem withthe standards required of them by Freemasonry. Thesymbolism of the pencil lies in the fact that, whilst anarchitect or builder can use it in planning a structure, italso serves to record the actions of individuals.

The Master Mason must bear in mind that his actionswill be judged by his fellow Masons and by God. Thesignificance of the compass is that, as an instrument, it isused to determine calculations to a high standard andthus it represents the role of the Supreme Being as theultimate judge of mankind. The ceremony of becoming


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a Master Mason can be seen as representing the thirdphase of human life.

The Entered Apprentice relates symbolically to child-hood and beginnings and the Fellowcraft symbolisesadulthood and ‘coming of age’.The ritual of the MasterMason equates to old age and the gaining of experienceand wisdom, together with a realisation of our ownmortality but one accompanied by the comfort of beliefin the immortality of the human soul.

The ceremony of the third degree of the MasterMason also includes a number of other images andmotifs whose symbolic significance is explained to theinitiate by the Worshipful Master.A pot of incense repre-sents an individual whose heart is pure and a worthysacrifice to offer to God.The Mason is told that, just asthe incense pot glows and burns with internal heat, soshould our hearts in gratitude to God for our lives andfor such blessings that have been bestowed upon us.Theimage of the beehive is a common one in Freemasonryand the Mason is instructed that it represents the themeof hard work and industry and the importance of dedi-cation to our labours. Importantly, the motif of thebeehive is also a reminder to Masons that they shouldwork to provide charity, relief and help to those in needand emphasises that this is particularly the case if it iswithin our power to do so.

The emblem of the Book of Constitutions that isguarded by the Tyler’s sword symbolises the importanceof being perpetually aware of our actions and thoughts.


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Masons are taught to be cautious in discussing theprivate matters of Freemasonry and to be careful ofwhat they say or reveal to others, particularly those whoare hostile to Freemasonry. The symbol of the nakedheart with a sword being pointed toward it representsdivine justice that knows all and sees all of our actionsand will reward or punish us on the basis of these. TheAnchor and the Ark draws on the story of Noah andsymbolises a life that is well grounded. By living virtuousand upright lives Masons will be protected by the safetyand reward of a metaphorical ark where the soul will berewarded after death.

The candidate is also taught to regard Pythagoras’stheorem, referred to as the 47th problem of Euclid.Thesignificance of this within the ritual is to remind theMason to understand and appreciate the importance ofscience and the arts.The Worshipful Master will ask thecandidate to regard the emblem of the hourglass and torecognise that, just as the sand runs quickly through it,so our lives are passing and will soon end. Our lives areshort and so time must be valued and used well.Similarly the motif of the scythe is a reminder of how allhuman life rises and is cut down. The Mason mustunderstand and acknowledge that this is the final fatethat we all share.

However, the brooding images of mortality and deathare followed by the symbol of a sprig of acacia thatreminds the Mason that, although our physical selvesmust die and be lost, our souls survive and live on.The


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image of the sprig of acacia comes from the Masonicstory that it bloomed at the head of the grave of themurdered Master Mason Hiram Abiff.


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The Temple of Solomon

The biblical figure of King Solomon has always been saidto have possessed great wisdom and, for Freemasons, herepresents an archetypal leader or Grand Master whoinspires reverence and offers an ideal role model.Solomon was the son of King David and Bathsheba. Hismother assisted in Solomon becoming King after thedeath of his father in 961 BC. However, it is the story ofthe building of the Jewish Temple named after him thatholds the greatest relevance for Freemasons.The Templebuilt by King Solomon is central to the iconography andtraditions of modern Freemasonry. It is described in theBible as being the first temple to be built by the Jewishpeople in Jerusalem. King David originally proposed thebuilding of the temple and, during his lifetime, he hadmade preparations for its creation. As well as gatheringworkers for the project he drew up plans for its struc-ture. It was intended to house the legendary Ark of theCovenant.The Ark was made from acacia wood and goldand held the pair of stone tablets, inscribed with the TenCommandments, that Moses had been given by God. Italso contained the rod of Aaron and a jar of manna.The

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lid of the Ark of the Covenant was called the mercy seat.In 1 Chronicles 22 King David tells Solomon that he

must build a Temple for the God of Israel and that he hasprovided him with 100,000 talents of gold, one milliontalents of silver and so much iron and bronze that itcannot be weighed. He also outlines how he hasprovided stone and timber for the building as well asmasons, stonecutters and carpenters. In 1 Chronicles 28King David gives Solomon not only instructions on theform that the Temple should take but detailed informa-tion about items that should be used within the buildingsuch as lamp stands, bowls and cups and the weight thatthey should be dependant on the material used such asgold and silver. King David reveals to his people thatGod had spoken to him and said that he could not buildthe Temple himself because he had been a warrior whohad spilt blood. Instead God told him that he had chosenSolomon to build the Temple and that he would establishhis kingdom forever if Solomon followed his command-ments and kept the covenant that had been agreed withGod. The Temple was to be built on Mount Moriah inJerusalem where Abraham had offered his own son Isaacas a willing sacrifice to God.

Solomon decided to build a temple for the name ofthe Lord, and a royal palace for himself. Solomonconscripted 70,000 labourers and 80,000 stonecuttersin the hill country, with 3600 to oversee them. Solomonsent word to King Hiram of Tyre:


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Once you dealt with my father David and sent him cedarto build himself a house to live in. I am now about to builda house for the name of the Lord my God and dedicate itto him for offering fragrant incense before him, and forthe regular offering of the rows of bread, and for burnt-offerings morning and evening, on the Sabbaths and thenew moons and the appointed festivals of the Lord ourGod, as ordained for ever for Israel.The house that I am tobuild will be great, for our God is greater than otherGods… So now send me an artisan skilled to work ingold, silver, bronze and iron, and in purple, crimson andblue fabrics, trained also in engraving, to join the skilledworkers who are with me in Judah and Jerusalem, whommy father David provided’. (2 Chronicles 2: 1)

Hiram Abiff and Hiram King of Tyre

As we have seen, the unlawful murder of Hiram Abiff,architect and builder of the Temple of Solomon, is adramatic story that is central to Masonic ritual. Thebuilding of the Temple of Solomon, as recorded in theBible, actually mentions two individuals named Hiram.The first is Hiram King of Tyre whilst the second is acertain Hiram-abi who is described as a gifted mastercraftsman. It seems most likely that this is the Hiramdescribed in Masonic lore. Hiram King of Tyre informsKing Solomon that:

I have dispatched Hiram-abi, a skilled artisan, endowedwith understanding, the son of one of the Danite women,his father a Tyrian. He is trained to work in gold, silver,

T H E T E M P L E O F S O L O M O N

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bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and in purple, blue, andcrimson fabrics and fine linen, and to do all sorts ofengraving and execute any design that may be assignedhim, with your artisans, the artisans of my lord, yourfather David… We will cut whatever timber you needfrom Lebanon, and bring it to you as rafts by sea to Joppa;you will take it up to Jerusalem... (2 Chronicles 2: 13)

In Freemasonry Hiram Abiff is often described as being‘the widow’s son’ and this epithet is based on the follow-ing passage from the bible.

Now King Solomon invited and received Hiram from Tyre.He was the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali, whosefather, a man of Tyre, had been an artisan in bronze; he wasfull of skill, intelligence, and knowledge in workingbronze. He came to King Solomon and did all his work. (1Kings 7: 13-14)

Work is said to have commenced on building the Templein the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign on the secondday of the second month. This puts the date at around957 BC. The Bible itself does not provide much moreinformation about Hiram the master craftsman and thestory of his unlawful murder by Jubela, Jubelo andJubelum as the temple was nearing completion belongsonly to Masonic ritual and to legend.As we have alreadyseen, King Solomon paid for the help of King Hiramwith a form of tithe. In return for the cedar, cypress,manpower, skilled artisans and other materials for the


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building of the temple King Solomon provided food forthe household of King Hiram.According to the Bible, hegave him a yearly supply of 20,000 cors of wheat and 20cors of fine oil. During the building of the temple,Hiram produced furniture and adornments made fromprecious metals, including an important pair of pillarsthat were set at the entrance to the temple.

Jachin and Boaz

The pillars cast by Hiram and set up at the vestibule ofthe temple have special symbolic significance within theiconography of Freemasonry. Their importantsymbolism and meaning is explained to candidatesduring the rituals of the First and Second Degrees:

He cast two pillars of bronze. Eighteen cubits was theheight of one, and a cord of twelve cubits would encircleit; the second pillar was the same… He set up the pillarsat the vestibule of the temple; he set up the pillar on thesouth and called it Jachin; and he set up the pillar on thenorth and called it Boaz. (1 Kings 7: 15-21)

Boaz, the pillar that stood on the left of the porchway ofthe Temple of Solomon and which is recreated inmodern Freemasonry lodges today, symbolises strength.Jachin stood as the right-hand pillar and symboliseswisdom and the act of establishment.When united theyprovide ‘stability’. In Masonic images pillars are often


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shown surmounted by globes that represent the celestialand terrestrial spheres of existence.

As well as making the bronze pillars Jachin and Boaz,Hiram from Tyre, the son of the widow, created the ‘sea ofbronze’. This huge bowl-like receptacle was set on thebacks of 12 bronze oxen with groups of three set at eachcorner of the compass. The giant bowl was around 4.5metres in diameter, 2.4 metres in depth and was able tohold around 45,000 litres of water. The purpose of the‘sea of bronze’, sometimes called the ‘brazen sea’ or‘molten sea’, was to give the priests of the temple a meansof purifying themselves through ritual immersion andcleansing of their bodies.Authors Christopher Knight andRobert Lomas, in their book The Hiram Key, have arguedthat the mysterious figure of Hiram Abiff is in fact basedon the real-life Theban pharaoh Tao II the Brave.

As well as constructing the Temple itself, Solomon’sbuilders made enormous efforts to provide the sacredsite with fresh water which was essential to the rituals ofpurification that were held there. To this end hugeunderground cisterns were carved out of the stone uponwhich stood the citadel known as the Haram thatdefended the Temple itself. Water was conveyed to thecisterns by a specially constructed aqueduct called the‘aqueduct of Etam’ because this was the origin of theflow of water. It has been estimated that one of the stonecisterns said to have been created by Solomon close tothe temple was capable of storing 12 million litres ofwater.Appropriately enough, this underground chamber


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is referred to as the ‘Great Sea’.Work continued on thegreat Temple of Solomon for seven years. According toMasonic legend it was at this point that Hiram Abiff, theMaster Architect of the temple, was killed. Afterresolving the circumstances of his death, Solomoncontinued with the construction of the temple andappointed new trustworthy and loyal officers to carryout this work who were known as intendants of thebuilding, a title that can still be found at higher levels ofMasonic teaching.The temple was finally finished in 960BC, the eleventh year of the reign of King Solomon.

When the new temple was complete, the Ark of theCovenant was brought from the tent temple called theHoly Tabernacle, where it had been kept, and was placedin the part of the building known as the Holy of Holies,the Kadosh Kadoshim. Before the Ark was put in place,King Solomon assembled all the people of Israel andthey offered innumerable sacrifices of sheep and oxen toGod. Once the Ark was placed inside, a cloud appearedin the temple and the building was filled with the gloryof God. There followed a feast of dedication that lastedfor seven days where prayers were said and sacrificesmade marking a new chapter for the people of Israel andtheir relationship with God. The First Temple, as it isknown, survived until 586 BC and its destruction at thehands of the Babylonians led by King Nebuchadnezzar.The Babylonians took the Hebrews into a captivity thatlasted until they were finally set free when the PersianKing Cyrus defeated the Babylonians in 538 BC.


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The Hebrews returned to Jerusalem where planswere made for the erection of a new temple led byZerubbabel. A second temple was begun on the site ofthe ruins of the first in 515 BC.When the Jewish leaderJudah Maccabee took Jerusalem in 164 BC, he orderedthat work be carried out on the Temple as it had falleninto a state of disrepair. King Herod also carried outwork on the Temple until it was finally finished in 64 AD.However, this second temple was also destroyed in 70AD, this time by the Romans.Today the only part of theTemple of Solomon that still stands is the famous WailingWall which remains a site of pilgrimage and veneration.

Hermes Trismegistus

Two other figures from the ancient world whose influ-ence looms large in the iconography and symbolism ofFreemasonry are the man-god Hermes Trismegistus andthe famous Greek philosopher and mathematicianPythagoras. It has been suggested that the roots ofFreemasonry may lie in the culture of Ancient Egyptwith its great traditions of temple building. Egyptianimagery and symbols are commonly found within theworld of Freemasonry. The Egyptian God HermesTrismegistus, meaning ‘three times great Hermes’ inGreek, is a figure who has appeared in Masonic legendand is equated with the Egyptian God Thoth. AfterAlexander the Great conquered Egypt a subsequentconsequence of the Greek presence was the


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Hellenisation of the native Gods. In Greek cultureHermes was the God of writing just as Thoth was inEgyptian culture. Their roles were combined inHellenistic Greece in the form of Hermes Trismegistuswho became a deity associated with astrology andmagic. Both Gods also served the purpose of acting asguides to the souls of the dead. Hermes Trismegistus issaid to be the bringer of wisdom who was the messengerof the Gods. He is also associated with trial and initiationand is credited with inventing writing and architecture,astronomy, geometry and other arts and sciences. Manyof the ancient written sources of Egypt were said to havebeen produced by Hermes Trismegistus.

These written records formed a body referred to asthe Hermetica or Hermetic literature and formed themagical education of Egyptian priests. These papyrusdocuments contained esoteric information about suchsubjects as rites of initiation within the Egyptian priest-hood and the conjuring of spirits. It was believed thatspirits could be trapped within statues and be made toperform a prophetic function by the priests, andHermetic literature gave detailed information about howsuch magical feats could be achieved. It has been consis-tently stated by ‘Hermeticists’ that there are 42 worksthat can be attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. In sometraditions, Hermes Trismegistus is seen as a real personwho was the offspring of the great Hellenistic-Egyptiandeity. The so-called Hermetic tradition was to have adramatic impact on the development of alchemy, partic-


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ularly in medieval Europe. However, it has been arguedthat the influence of the figure of Hermes Trismegistusalso extended to the Islamic world where he is identifiedwith Indris, the nabi of Surahs. He has also been identi-fied with the biblical figure of Enoch in the Arabic world.

Hermeticism became popular in Western Europe aftera body of texts known as the Corpus Hermeticum wasbrought to the Italian city of Pistoia in 1460. Pistoia wasruled by Cosimo de’Medici who had a particular interestin finding any written texts that had survived from theancient world and used his position and influence togather together such material. (Interestingly, Christianmonasteries of the day proved to be repositories ofesoteric and mystical lore.) The Corpus consisted of 16books written in Greek that take the form of a numberof dialogues between Hermes Trismegistus and otherfigures. The first book involves Hermes being taught byGod about the mysteries of life and the universe and themajority of the following books feature Hermes passingon this secret, mystical knowledge to a number of others.Upon its rediscovery many believed that the CorpusHermeticum was, in fact, a body of work older than theworks of Plato. However, this contention was seriouslychallenged when a Swiss philologist called IsaacCasaubon examined the texts in 1614. Philology is thehistorical or comparative study of language and, whenCasaubon scrutinised the Corpus Hermeticum, heconcluded, on the basis of the style in which it waswritten, that it had actually been produced around the


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first few centuries following the birth of Christ.Subsequent historians have largely supported Casaubon’sverdict on the approximate age of the texts.

Another text that has had a powerful impact on occultgroups throughout history is the Emerald Tablet ofHermes Trismegistus.This work contains the philosoph-ical idea that the pattern of the universe can be compre-hended and understood through a realisation that allthings are interlinked. This concept is the origin of thephrase ‘As above, so below’, that is widely knownamongst many occult traditions. This can also be inter-preted as meaning that individuals who gain an under-standing of themselves can gain a greater understandingof existence.

One legend claims that Alexander the Great himselfdiscovered the actual Emerald Tablet within the tomb ofHermes Trismegistus.The text of the Emerald Tablet ofHermes Trismegistus states that the wisdom of thewhole universe is divided into three sections and that,because Hermes understood them all, he was known byhis title of ‘three times great’.The three areas of knowl-edge in which Hermes is said to have been versed areAstrology,Alchemy and Theurgy or supernatural magic.In the study of Astrology, Hermes looked beyond thephysical aspects of the stars and planets to observe theirsymbolic meaning and the influence they cast onhumanity. The primary goal of Alchemy is usuallythought to be the transformation of base matter such aslead into gold. In Hermetic thought this is a metaphor-


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ical process that describes the transformation of an indi-vidual and the development of the soul. More specifi-cally it can signify the growth and metamorphosis of aninitiate into a Master whose potential is realised.Withinthe study of Theurgy Hermetic students learn practicalskills in working supernatural magic with spirits such asthe angels. Hermetic thought, it is argued, need not berestricted to any one particular religion and need notnecessarily be viewed as constituting a religion in itself,a claim that is also made of Freemasonry. It is, there-fore, a philosophical system for spiritual developmentthat can be combined with religions such as Islam,Judaisim or Christianity. Nor need it embracemonotheistic religions only. It can even extend topantheistic belief systems.

The Rosicrucian movement that began in mysteriouscircumstances in the seventeenth century, although itwas based on Christianity, was influenced by Hermeticthought. It has been argued that the Rosicrucian move-ment had a significant impact on the development ofFreemasonry. Within the structure of the MasonicScottish Rite, the 18th degree is referred to as that of theKnight of the Rose Croix. The history and impact ofRosicrucianism on Freemasonry is discussed in furtherdetail in Chapter Six.


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Pythagoras

Some authors and historians have argued that a link mayexist between the famous Greek mathematician andphilosopher Pythagoras and the roots of Freemasonry.Manly P Hall, for example, examines the influence ofthe teachings of Pythagoras on both Freemasonry andRosicrucianism in his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages.Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, closeto what is now the coastline of Turkey, in around 582 BCand founded his own secret religious and scientificsociety named the Pythagoreans. His father was calledMnesarchus and was a merchant from Tyre whilst hismother Pythais was born on Samos. He is best knownfor the mathematical theorem that bears his name whichstates that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angledtriangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the othertwo sides. Pythagoras left Samos when he was a youthand travelled to the city of Crotone in Southern Italy. Heis said to have been advised by the philosopher Thales,who recognised his talents and ability, to travel toMemphis in Egypt to gain knowledge and training fromthe priests there who were renowned for their wisdomin the ancient world.

It is thought the academic school and secret societythat Pythagoras formed in Crotone may have been basedon the cult of Orpheus. Pythagoreans believed in thetransmigration of the human soul and practiced ritualsof purification similar to those found amongst the


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Orphics.The Pythagoreans used the symbol of the five-pointed star known as the pentagram as an image thatwould be recognised by members of the group and as amotif of health and knowledge and it was used in initia-tion rites. It has been observed that the pentagram is adevice used within Freemasonry during initiation cere-monies and can also be found as a design amongst the so-called ‘jewels’ or badges of office that Masters and GrandMasters of Masonry are entitled to wear. Pythagoras wasparticularly interested in music and Pythagoreans devel-oped a numerical system that expressed the relationshipof musical notes.The Pythagoreans believed that mathe-matical systems underpinned all things.


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Mystery Cults and Secret Societies

The Cult of Dionysus

Masonic historians and other writers have drawn paral-lels between Freemasonry and many of the mysterycults and secret societies of the past.Whilst similaritiescan be observed between such groups and modernMasonry a clear link has never been categorically estab-lished. The cult of the Greek deity Dionysus, forexample, is thought to have extremely ancient origins.The figure of Dionysus is, of course, most closely iden-tified as the god of wine and intoxication and it isthought that his cult may have emerged in one form oranother as early as 6000 BC with the first cultivation ofwine during the Neolithic period. It has been specu-lated that his cult began in North Africa or in AsiaMinor but it is generally held that the cult developedmany of its most recognisable aspects in Minoan Crete.In ancient Greece, Dionysus was the god and patron ofwine and winemaking but was also seen as a fertilityfigure linked with vegetation and wild animals.The firstMystery rituals probably took place on Crete in a

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period spanning 3000 BC to 1000 BC.The cult of Dionysus involved a number of rites of

initiation that marked different stages in the growth ofan individual such as the transition to adulthood.Dionysus is also seen as the god of theatre and, inAthens, groups formed which held masked ritualsenacting myths and legends linked to the god and whichcan be equated to the idea of a Masonic lodge.

The Great Dionysia was the major festival dedicatedto Dionysus and was held in the Greek month ofElaphebolion. This was around the time of the SpringEquinox between March and April. It was held in Athensand the surrounding area during the classical period andtook the form of a festival of theatre, drama and poetry.The inhabitants of Athens formed a procession and setout for the sanctuary of the god carrying symbolic phal-luses as a recognition of Dionysus’s role as a deity linkedwith fertility.The Great Dionysia is thought to have beenpreceded by an older festival that took place in ruralareas known as the Lesser Dionysia that celebrated theproduction of the first wine. This took place aroundDecember and January and it was believed that, with thecreation of this wine, Dionysus was symbolically re-born. Interestingly, Dionysus is also said to haveconverted water into wine and parallels between thecult of Dionysus and Christianity have been noted. It isthought that the Lesser Dionysia and other importantfestivals devoted to the god, such as the harvesting of thegrapes, were times of ecstasy and abandonment and that


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they were times when initiation into the mystery cult ofDionysus would have taken place.

The Eleusinian Mysteries

The Eleusinian Mysteries are amongst the earliestknown Mystery Cults. They were based on the mytho-logical story of Persephone and Demeter and importantrituals of initiation were held in the Greek town ofEleusis, known today as Elefsina, which is not far fromAthens. This ancient cult functioned as a secret society,revealing its ceremonies and beliefs only to the initiated.

It is thought that the Eleusinian Mysteries beganaround 1500 BC and the attendant ceremonies wereperformed every five years.This ancient Greek mysterycult also gained followers in Rome and its rituals werere-enacted over a period of around 2,000 years. Theywere open to a wide variety of people, including slaves,although anyone guilty of murder or ‘barbarians’, thosewho could not speak Greek, were excluded. Womencould participate equally with men in the Eleusinianmysteries.

The central myth around which the mystery cult wasbased was that of the goddess of fertility and agriculture,Demeter, and her daughter Persephone. Demeter is oneof the oldest of the Greek deities and was the daughterof Cronus and Rhea. She is particularly associated withcrops such as wheat which, it was believed, she nurturedand protected. According to the ancient story, her

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daughter Persephone was seen by Hades (sometimesreferred to as Pluto), the Lord of the dead and theUnderworld, whilst she was with her friends theOceanids. He was so enamoured of her beauty that heabducted her and carried her to the Underworld. Shehad been picking flowers and when she reached down topick a particularly lovely narcissus the ground gave wayand Hades dragged her down to the kingdom of thedead.

Although Persephone cried out loudly for hermother, Demeter was unable to find her and searchedfruitlessly for nine days and nine nights. However, thesun god Helius had witnessed the abduction ofPersephone and informed Demeter that Hades hadtaken her daughter. Persephone had been born of theunion of Zeus with Demeter but her powerful father wasnot interested in her fate. So great was the sorrow ofDemeter that she left Mount Olympus, home of thegods, and took the form of an unhappy old woman whosearched the world for her missing daughter.

When Demeter arrived at Eleusis she sat down nextto an olive tree by a well. As she sat next to the well thefour daughters of King Celeus of Eleusis, whose nameswere Callidice, Demo, Clesidice and Callithoe, arrivedto fetch water. When they saw how unhappy she wasthey asked her what was wrong. Demeter answered thatshe had been a prisoner of pirates and asked that theygive her a job in their father’s palace. On meeting thegoddess disguised as an old woman, King Celeus agreed


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that she should become the nurse of his son Demophon.The goddess refused to eat or drink except when afemale slave called Iambe made her laugh and managedto make her drink some barley-water.

Because of the kindness that the King and his wifeMetaneira had shown, Demeter planned to show herthanks by making Demophon immortal. She rubbedambrosia onto the young child’s body and held himabove a fire at night. However, one night Metaneira sawDemeter holding her child above the fire and, frightenedthat she was hurting her son, cried out. It was then thatDemeter revealed her true identity and commandedKing Celeus to build a temple for her at Eleusis, close tothe well.

This, then, was said to be the beginning of theEleusinian mysteries devoted to the goddess and herdaughter. But, even after the temple had been built,Demeter continued to grieve and locked herself away inthe new building away from people and the other gods.As a consequence, her misery and distress had a terribleeffect upon the natural world as plants and trees diedand the land was laid bare and wasted. As crops andharvests failed, the people began to starve. So seriouswas the situation that Zeus finally acted and sent Iris toDemeter to try to remedy the situation.

Iris failed and so Zeus told Hermes to visit Hades andrequest that he free Persephone. Hades agreed to thedemands but, just as Persephone was leaving the subter-ranean underworld, he gave her six seeds of a pome-


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granate to eat. It was a trick. Because she had eaten thesix seeds, she was now compelled to spend six monthsof the year with him in the underworld and theremaining six months with her mother.The months shespent with Demeter created Spring and Summer, whenthe natural world bloomed and was fertile in her pres-ence, and the months she spent with Hades were bare asnature died away, creating Autumn and Winter. WhilstPersephone resided in the Underworld with Hadespeople would prepare for the new growth symbolised bythe seeds she had eaten.

During the Eleusinian mysteries, the return ofPersephone, symbolising the return of spring and newlife, would be celebrated although the details of therituals were kept secret. However, it is known that in themonth of September, six months before the main cere-monies known as the Great Mysteries were conducted,a ritual called the Lesser Mysteries took place. TheLesser Mysteries were held beside the river Illisus thatruns through Athens.The Greater Mysteries were stagedat the sanctuary of Demeter below the Acropolis inAthens. Following the announcement that the Mysterieswere underway, the next four days were devoted tooffering sacrifices and rituals of purification held besidethe sea. Once these rituals were completed a greatprocession of people would assemble and set out fromAthens following a route known as the Sacred Way andtravelled on to Eleusis.

The procession would halt at certain points, often


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shrines, along the Sacred Way where further rituals tookplace. The procession was led by two key figures, theHierophant and the Daduch.The Hierophant was said toreveal ‘sacred things’ to the initiates of the cult whowere known as the ‘mystes’ whilst the Daduch wasknown as the ‘torch-bearer’. Apparently, when crossingthe river Cephissus, the mystes would share jokes withone another and this part of the procession focussed onlaughter and jubilant behaviour.The congregation wouldreach Eleusis late that evening and the main ceremony ofthe Mysteries took place the day after.

It is said that the worshippers offered sacrifices toDemeter and Persephone but that they went withouteating in imitation of Demeter when she was searchingfor her daughter. Like the goddess, they too would drinkonly some barley water. Some historians have arguedthat the drink of barley water known as ‘kykeon’ wasmixed with pennyroyal and that the mixture had a hallu-cinogenic effect on the participants. The authors RGordon Wasson, Carl AP Buck and Albert Hoffmansuggested in their book The Road to Eleusis, that theimportance and longevity of the Mysteries stemmedfrom a powerful psychoactive element in the kykeon. Ithas been hypothesised that it may have been created bythe presence of a fungus called ergot that can be a para-site on barley and is capable of producing a similar effectin people to that of LSD or ‘magic mushrooms’.

The main rituals, about which very little is known,would have taken place within the temple devoted to


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Demeter and Persephone. They would have entered agreat hall within the temple called the Telesterium,which translates as ‘hall of rituals’. Interestingly,although the exact nature of what went on during theceremonies is not known, it is widely believed that theywere held at night and the events were probably illumi-nated by torches. The rituals were divided into threemain sections: firstly, the ‘legomena’, or ‘that which wassaid’, perhaps involving a retelling of the Persephonemyth; secondly, the ‘dromena’, ‘that which was done’,that may have involved some form of ritual drama; andfinally the ‘deiknyomena’,‘that which was shown’. In thefinal part of the ceremony, the deiknyomena, the hiero-phant would enter the most sacred part of the temple,the anactorum or ‘the palace’, where he would show theinitiates relics sacred to the goddess Demeter. Initiatesswore never to reveal what they had seen under penaltyof death.Through the course of the ceremony, the initi-ates attained a state known as ‘epopteia’, a state ofpurity, and also perhaps, through fasting and chemicalmeans, achieved a belief in the potential for rebirth.

Although the Eleusinian Mysteries gained great popu-larity in Greece and in the Roman world, they declinedin importance with the ascension of Christianity. Thesanctuaries sacred to the Hellenistic gods were bannedfrom performing their rituals under the RomanEmperor Theodosius I who issued a decree to that effectin 392 AD. It has been observed that there are similari-ties between the Eleusinian Mysteries and Freemasonry.


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There are parallels to be found in the insistence onsecrecy and in a hierarchical system of initiates who arethreatened with death for revealing the inner mysteriesof their order. Similarly, both the Eleusinian Mysteriesand Freemasonry hold their ceremonies in templesclearly divided in terms of symbolic importance andmeaning. They also both have as their aim the develop-ment and growth of the individual through a series ofrevelatory rituals in which the candidate achieves ahigher state of self-knowledge.

Gnostic Gospels

The authors Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, intheir speculative study of the origins of Freemasonry TheHiram Key, have argued that Gnostic thought may haveplayed an important part in its development. The termGnostic is usually applied to a body of early Christianwritings that diverge from the teachings of the NewTestament, as it is understood today. The word comesfrom the Greek ‘gnosis’ meaning ‘knowledge’ or ‘under-standing’ and, in this context, it relates to spiritual,secret or inner knowledge that can illuminate a path toGod. The discovery of the preserved early Christianmanuscripts called the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with theGnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in UpperEgypt, has caused considerable debate about the ‘true’nature of Christianity in recent years.

In December 1945, an Arab boy accidentally stum-


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bled upon the Gnostic Gospels, contained in a sealed jarthat had been buried in the ground close to the Egyptiantown of Nag Hammadi. The jar contained 52 scrollsmade from papyrus and written in Coptic. They arethought to date from around 350 to 400 AD. Althoughit must be remembered that they do not necessarilyrepresent a single overall coherent religious viewpoint,they are notable for offering a radically different inter-pretation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.Knight and Lomas point particularly to the Gnostictheme of an individual obtaining resurrection whilstalive. In this interpretation, the living are effectivelyspiritually dead until they undergo some form of spiri-tual awakening and are therefore viewed as having beenresurrected. Knight and Lomas quote from the GnosticGospel of Philip that makes this point, saying, ‘thosewho say they will die first and then rise are in error,they must receive the resurrection while they live’.(Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key,p.50)

For Knight and Lomas, the concept of achieving aliving resurrection can also be found within the Masonicceremony of the Third Degree and they have speculatedthat a link might exist between Gnostic thought andFreemasonry. They also observed striking parallelsbetween the ritual of becoming a Mark Mason andconcepts found within the Gospel of Thomas in whichJesus says, ‘Show me the stone which the builders haverejected. That one is the cornerstone.’ The Gospel of


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Matthew, Mark and Luke record differing versions of thesame event but the Gospel of Thomas resembles mostclosely the ritual carried out during the Masonic MarkMasonry degree. They also argued that the Gospel ofMatthew points to a hidden tradition of the teachings ofChrist when Jesus tells the disciples that only they havebeen instructed in the ‘mysteries of heaven’.

Mithraism

Many have observed clear parallels between what isknown of the ancient mystery religion of Mithraism andFreemasonry and, for some, these hint at a possible linkbetween the two.The worship of the god Mithras in oneform or another is thought to date back as much as3,500 years and it spanned cultures as far apart as Indiaand Roman Britain.The cult of Mithras became particu-larly prevalent in the Western Roman Empire fromabout 67 BC until its fall several centuries later. It hasbeen argued that early Christianity and the cult ofMithras had a surprisingly large number of features incommon and that, if Roman culture had not embracedChristianity, it could have become Mithrasian.

Both religions feature saviour gods born on 25December who offer salvation through faith, knowledgeand compassion. Mithraism was particularly popularamongst the Roman military but was also open to thepoor and to slaves and, like Christianity, involved asacrament in which wine served to symbolise sacrificial


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blood. During a ceremonial meal, small loaves of breadmarked with a cross were eaten and they symbolisedsacrificial flesh. Mithrasians referred to one another as‘brothers’ and were ministered to by a leader called‘father’. Interestingly, the symbols of his station were ahat modelled on the hat of Phrygian origin worn byMithras himself in many depictions of the god, a staff, aring and a hooked sword. D Jason Cooper, amongstothers, has argued that Christianity adopted theseaspects of Mithraism. It turned the staff and sword intothe shepherd’s crook and made the floppy Phrygian capstand upright and, by naming the resulting headgear a‘mitre’, even acknowledged its origins in the cult ofMithras. As well as influencing the attire of bishops,Mithraism also featured a ‘father of fathers’ who, muchlike the pope, resided in Rome and administered to theneeds of the believers.Although little is known about thetheological structure and beliefs of Mithraism, it hasbeen speculated, on the basis of written sources andsurviving archaeological material in the form oftemples, statues and reliefs carved in stone, that its initi-ates passed through seven degrees or stages of develop-ment.

Both Mithraism and Freemasonry, then, feature theconcept of its members passing through stages of devel-opment.They have also both served as secret societies inwhich special knowledge is limited to certain key indi-viduals within the group. Both were groups fundamen-tally aimed at men. Many of those who joined the cult of


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Mithras were drawn from the upper echelons of Romanculture such as the Emperors Commodus and Trajan.Freemasonry in Britain has exhibited a similar tendencyto recruit its members from the aristocracy and nobility.Interestingly, it has been conjectured that, whilst Romanmen worshipped Mithras, their wives may have beenpart of women-only religions such as the cult of Cybele.Cooper has also pointed out that Freemasonry andMithraism ‘represent stages in a wider continuum ofreligion’ (D Jason Cooper, Mithras: Mysteries andInitiations Rediscovered, p.35).

Mithraism was compatible with the old religions ofRome and Greece because it incorporated them into itsworld-view. Freemasonry does not claim to be a religionin itself and embraces a wide variety of faiths, seeing itspurpose as the spiritual development of the individualwithin their own personal cultural beliefs. It is thereforeable to be of relevance to any number of different reli-gions. Both Mithraism and Freemasonry have alsostressed the importance of high moral standards in itsmembers, although it is, of course, possible thatMithraism may also have acted (as some claimFreemasonry has done) as something of ‘an old boys’network’. However, unlike Freemasonry, the cult ofMithras had an established class of priests who adminis-tered to the needs of its members.


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Druids

The common claim that Freemasonry has ancient originshas, perhaps unsurprisingly, led some to conjecture thatit may be linked to the Druids of the Celtic world. TheDruids were the powerful priests of what are broadlytermed Celtic cultures and the description ‘Celtic’ cangenerally be said to apply to large expanses of WesternEurope during the Iron Age. The term ‘Celt’ derivesfrom the Greek word ‘Keltoi’ which was something of ablanket description to denote those tribes that inhabitedthe lands to the west of the river Rhine.What is knownof the Druids has survived largely due to reports bycontemporary Roman writers whose expanding empiresuperseded the existing power structures of which theDruidic class formed an important part. Druidic lorewas said to have been committed to memory, as the soci-eties in which Druidry was found were primarily oralcultures. Julius Caesar observed that the Gauls andBritons only used writing to record such information asaccounts. He records that they used Greek to this effect,although it is likely that, at the time he was writing,Latin was used for this purpose as well.

The British Isles were considered to be a particularlyimportant centre for the Druids and potential candi-dates for education in its practices were sent there fromancient Gaul. It is said that Druids underwent extendedperiods of training in learning and memorising Druidiclore, training that could last up to 20 years.There were


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a number of important centres or schools for Druids inBritain including Anglesey, the Isle of Man and anumber of the Scottish Islands. The importance of theDruids within their societies is perhaps best demon-strated by the fact that they did not have to pay taxeslike ordinary people and were also not compelled togive any form of military service. However, their rolewas more than simply religious. Within Celtic culture,they also acted as judges and arbiters in disputes at boththe personal and individual level and between differenttribes or clans.

What is known of their religious beliefs is that theyvenerated a number of different gods and goddesses butalso saw many elements of the natural world as sacred.According to Roman writers like Pliny, they held theirrituals in sacred oak groves and there is some evidenceto suggest that they may have offered human sacrifices totheir Gods.The Roman writers who reported the luriddetails of such events generally adopt a tone of shock andhorror which is surely ironic when Roman culture itselfcould happily incorporate practices such as widespreadcrucifixion or the bloody excesses of the Coliseum.TheDruids were often called upon to divine the future andact as seers within their cultures but it is likely that,Roman propaganda aside, they were learned andeducated individuals with knowledge of science, thearts, astronomy, philosophy and medicine.

Julius Caesar wrote that the belief that was central totheir worldview was that, when an individual dies, the


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body may be lost but the human soul carries on and iseffectively reincarnated in another body throughmetempsychosis.The secretive nature of Druidic ritualsand customs, the memorising of arcane law and theirpowerful position within their respective societies, andthe belief that physical death is followed by rebirth haveall been linked with the world of Freemasonry. If agenuine link exists between the two it is unknown but itis worth remembering that interest in the Druids wasrevived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries andit seems likely that ideas from the ancient past may haveinfluenced the development of Freemasonry in thisperiod.

Essenes

A controversial and much disputed contention is thatFreemasonry can trace its origins to the ancient Jewishsect known as the Essenes.This religious movement wasin existence between the second century BC and thefirst century AD. Most of what is known of the Essenesand their beliefs comes from the accounts of a Jewishhistorian called Josephus who lived in the first centuryAD. Josephus relates that, at the time he was writing,there were three main important Jewish sects. Theywere the Essenes, the Sadducees and the Pharisees.Many have argued that members of the Essene commu-nity were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls whichwere found in caves near Qumran in 1947. However, the


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term Essene is thought likely to apply to a number ofJewish groups who shared similar ideas and practices butwhich also held divergent ideas on points of religiousbeliefs and practices.

The authors Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas,in their book The Hiram Key, argue that there arenumerous similarities between Masonic practices andwhat is known of the Essenes. Unlike the Sadducees andthe Pharisees, whose members were born into theircommunities, the Essene community, like modernFreemasonry, created its membership through individualinvitations to join. Knight and Lomas also note that theEssene community, based, in their opinion, at Qumran,was extremely hierarchical, with a ‘Guardian’ or ‘GrandMaster’ at its head.

They also point to the fact that the Essene communityhad different stages or levels of membership and thatentry to these required candidates or novices to takevows of secrecy. Breaching these promises in the Essenecommunity could carry terrible punishments. Masoniccandidates who take vows to join the Order are alsowarned that horrible punishments await them if theybreak their promises, although these are understood tobe symbolic not actual. Knight and Lomas also point tothe Essene habit of wearing white robes to demonstratetheir purity and their claim that they possessed someform of secret knowledge.


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Medieval Stonemasons

Many have argued that Freemasonry developed fromstonemasons of the medieval period. They were some-times referred to as ‘freemasons’.This may derive fromthe fact that these men were free to move from onework site to another, enjoying an independence of traveland employment, and were not the serfs of any partic-ular lord. It may derive from the French term ‘francmacon’ meaning a man who works in a lodge in theemployment of the Church and was exempt from taxeslevied on other tradesmen.Another explanation is that itidentifies the type of stone that they were particularlyskilled at working, being ‘free stone’ a softer chalk-basedmaterial. Those who worked in harder material werecalled ‘hard hewers’ or ‘rough masons’. The ‘free stonemasons’ were recognised as being more highly skilledcraftsmen who were able to perform detailed and finelyrendered work in the softer stone.

The earliest known Masonic text to survive to thepresent day is known as the Halliwell manuscript or theRegius poem. It was ‘discovered’ during the 1830s in theKing’s Library of the British Museum. It was subse-quently published by James O. Halliwell in 1840. Themanuscript poem is made up of 64 pages or 794 lines ofpoetic verse. Estimates as to its age have varied.A strongconsensus of opinion puts its earliest possible date asaround 1390 but some believe it was produced as late as1445. Its Latin title is Hic incipint constitutiones artis


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gemetrioe secundum Euclydum which translates as ‘Herebegin the constitutions of geometry according toEuclid’. Its opening section describes a legend thatMasonry was founded in Egypt by the celebrated math-ematician Euclid and goes on to state that Freemasonrywas introduced to Britain during the reign of KingAthelstan.This English king reigned from 924 AD to 939AD. The poem relates how Prince Edwin was an earlypatron of the Craft and is said to have presided over anassembly of Masons.The document also lays out 15 arti-cles and 15 points as to how the society should begoverned and provides guidelines for assemblies ofMasons.


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The Knights Templar

Perhaps the most popular and persistent theory aboutthe origins of Freemasonry is that it has it roots in thecrusades of the Middle Ages and began with the militaryorder of warrior monks known as the Knights Templar.This idea was put forward as early as 1737 in a lecture inParis by Andrew Michael Ramsay.The Ramsay Oration,as many Masons termed it, proved to be very controver-sial and divided opinion as to its credibility. In morerecent years many writers have attempted to link theKnights Templar with the foundation and developmentof Freemasonry, perhaps most notably ChristopherKnight and Robert Lomas in The Hiram Key. They haveargued that many parallels can be observed betweenmodern Masonic practices and what is known about thelegendary order of crusaders. Supposed historical eventssurrounding the building of the Temple of Solomon arecentral to Masonic rituals. The knights took their namefrom that Temple because King Baldwin II, the Patriarchof Jerusalem, had granted them living quarters on thesite where it had been. Knight and Lomas argue thatsecret knowledge, passed down through history by a

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number of different groups, was discovered by theTemplars on the site of the Temple.

They also point to the practice of Templar clericswearing white gloves whilst they were consecrating thebread and wine of the Eucharist and the fact thatmodern day Freemasons also wear white gloves at Lodgemeetings.They also note that Templars would wear tightsheepskin breeches under their outer clothing as asymbol of their chastity and innocence.They draw paral-lels between these items of clothing and the white lamb-skin aprons worn by Freemasons which are said tosymbolise innocence and friendship. They also observethat the battle flag of the Knights Templar, known as theBeausant, could be linked with Masonic symbolism inthe modern era. The battle flag was divided into twovertical blocks, one in black and the other in white. Forthe Templars, the black section of their flag symbolisedthe profane world of sin from which they had turned inorder to commit themselves to the Templar order,represented by the white section of the flag. In modernMasonic ritual candidates are said to move from a stateof darkness towards the light of initiation into theBrotherhood. Modern lodges also have a patterned floormade of black and white squares and Masons areexpected to attend meetings wearing black suits and tieswith white shirts. If they do not do so, they are thoughtto be improperly attired and barred from attending.


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The Founding of the Order

The military order of the Knights Templar was foundedin about 1119 in the holy city of Jerusalem. Upon theirinception they were known as the Order of Poor Knightsof the Temple of Solomon, a title generally abbreviatedto the Knights Templar. Their stated purpose was toprotect pilgrims travelling on the road to Jerusalemfollowing the Christian success of the First Crusade.Their founders were the French knights Hugues dePayen from Champagne and Godfrey de St Omer fromPicardy who had both fought in the First Crusade.

Although the Christians had taken the major cities ofthe Holy Land, the roads were dangerous for thegrowing numbers of pilgrims to travel and groups wereregularly attacked en route to the sacred sites theyhoped to visit. On one occasion during the Easter of1119 a large group of 700 pilgrims was ambushed by aSaracen force who managed to kill 300 of them and tocapture a further 60 for sale as slaves. When the Orderwas first formed, it consisted of nine knights and,according to some sources, it remained at that numberuntil 1127 when Hugues de Payen travelled to France torecruit new members and to have the Order officiallyrecognised.The Knights Templar were an innovation fortheir time in that they functioned both as a military forceand a monastic order.

During their existence as a military order, they devel-oped great power and influence throughout Europe.

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Their numbers rapidly swelled and they gained dona-tions of property, land and money to assist in theirefforts in the Holy Land or Outremer,‘the land beyondthe seas’, as it was referred to in the medieval West.Together with the Knights Hospitaller, on whom theywere partly based, they became the most significantmilitary order of the crusades. As an order of monks,they were provided with a ‘rule’ or code of conduct bySt Bernard of Clairvaux. This was based on the rule ofthe Cistercians, the monastic order to which Bernardhimself belonged. Furthermore, the Templars wereanswerable to no authority other that that of the Popehimself, a condition granted them to provide thefreedom to pursue their goal of safeguarding pilgrimsand protecting Christian interests in Outremer.

The popular image of a Templar is a knight on horse-back, wearing white with a distinctive red cross, but theorder was, in fact, divided into four distinctive groups.These included chaplains, who served as priests, andbrothers who maintained and ran the holdings of theTemplars or performed trade work to support theorder. The Knights themselves acted as heavy cavalryand, as part of their rule, were granted permission towear white habits whilst the sergeants served as lightcavalry and wore brown habits. Knights were recruitedfrom powerful and noble families and the sergeants weredrawn from more humble backgrounds. The Templarswent on to serve not only in the Holy Land, fightingagainst the Saracens, but also in other religious conflicts


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between Christians and Muslims in Portugal and Spain.In many ways, the Templars were like one of today’s

international corporations. They had properties andholdings throughout Europe, they were involved inmanufacture and trade and they also developed a systemof banking that was extremely innovative. Pilgrims trav-elling to the Holy Land were able to leave possessions ormoney at one of the Temple preceptories or propertiesand gain letters of credit that could be reimbursed onarrival.

Charges of Heresy

In 1307, the Grand Master of the Knights TemplarJacques de Molay travelled to France to meet with PopeClement V. The Grand Master was summoned by thePope to discuss the possible merging of the Templars andthe other great military order of the day, the KnightsHospitaller. Discussions were also to be held on a newcrusade.Whilst these issues were being debated Jacquesde Molay also requested that the Pope look into allega-tions made against several Templars of gross improprietythat had led to their expulsion from the Order in 1305.

The incident had damaged the image of the Orderand Jacques de Molay hoped to clear its name. Clementwrote to Philip IV, ‘the Fair’, King of France, to informhim that he planned reluctantly to investigate the Order.Philip had not been given any orders to proceed furtherbut, on Friday 13 October 1307, he had all Templars in


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France arrested and charged with blasphemy, sodomyand heresy. (According to popular legend, the origin ofthe idea that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day stemsfrom the arrest of the Templars on this date.) However,the real motivation for Philip’s actions is thought to havebeen a desire to take for himself the wealth and propertythat the Templars had accrued. Philip, who had a historyof debt and insolvency, persecuted other groups withinFrench society, including the Jews and the Lombards,and similarly seized their wealth.

When, in 1301, Pope Boniface VIII had published apapal bull, Unam Sanctum, that had aimed to assert theauthority of Rome over all other authorities and hadprepared to excommunicate the French King forinfringing that authority, Philip had responded by havinghim arrested on charges of murder, heresy and sodomy.Only the intervention of the people of Agnani, where thePope was being held captive, had saved Boniface, forcingthe French force sent by Philip to leave the city andallowing the Pope to escape to Rome. However, the shockof the ordeal appears to have led directly to his death amere four weeks later.The French King had put consider-able pressure on the new Pope, Clement, to condemn theOrder but, initially at least, Clement was reluctant to doso and, in fact, had castigated Philip for his actions. He hadquickly sent Philip an angry letter stating that:

You, our dear son… have, in our absence, violated everyrule and laid hands on the persons and properties of the


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Templars.You have also imprisoned them and, what painsus even more, you have not treated them with dueleniency… Your hasty act is seen by all, and rightly so, asan act of contempt towards ourselves and the RomanChurch. (quoted in Piers Paul Read, The Templars, p.265)

Now it rapidly emerged that the King was determinedto proceed with his action against the Templars andeffectively bullied and intimidated Clement intosupporting him. Through vicious torture, mass confes-sions of guilt were extracted from the Templars inFrance, including the Grand Master Jacques de Molaywho had been arrested near Paris by Philip’s particularlycruel henchman William de Nogaret. It was claimed bytheir inquisitors that the Order worshipped the deviland that every new recruit was informed upon joiningthe Templars that Jesus Christ was a false prophet. Hiscrucifixion had not been the salvation of the world buthe had been simply a man who was punished in this wayfor his sins. Templars admitted to trampling the crossduring their ritual of admission to the Order and also toperforming obscene kisses upon one another during theceremony.

Particular attention was paid to the confession thatTemplars had worshipped a false idol called Baphomet.The form that Baphomet took varied from confession toconfession. Sometimes it appeared as a cat but, mostcommonly, it was said to be a head of some description.As a symbol of their veneration of their idol, the


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Templars were said to wear cords around their waiststhat had brushed or touched Baphomet.As a sign of theirrejection of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, it wasclaimed by their prosecutors that the priests of theTemplars would leave out the words of consecrationwhilst performing Mass. Other confessions extractedunder torture played upon prejudices that were heldagainst the Order, that they were greedy and material-istic and that their aim was to accrue great wealth forthemselves. The Templars, who had often been blamedfor the loss of the Holy Land, were even said to havebeen in league with Muslim forces.

Trial of the Templars

The charges made against the Order had been met withconsternation outside France but, faced by whatappeared to be general admissions of guilt from themajority of Templars questioned, including Jacques deMolay, Pope Clement ordered the widespread arrest ofits members and seizure of its property. It is thought thatthe Pope was attempting to regain some control over theoutcome of the situation. Encouraged by Clement’sinvolvement, Jacques de Molay, when he met with threecardinals whom the Pope had sent to question him,retracted the confession that he had given. He is said tohave told them that his confession was only made whilstunder torture. Following the Grand Master’s recantingof his confession, others within the Order followed suit.


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However, those who undertook this course of action inthe hope that the Pope would treat them fairly andleniently were also putting themselves in a verydangerous position. According to the rules of theInquisition all relapsed heretics (which is what theTemplars had technically become) were bound to beplaced under the jurisdiction of secular law and wouldbe sentenced to be burnt to death.

When the Pope refused to condemn the Templars, theFrench King threatened to make the same chargesagainst him that had been brought to bear on the Order.But Pope Clement initially stood firm on the matter. InJune 1308, Clement travelled to Poitiers to hear theconfessions of 72 Templars sent by Philip and, underpressure, the Pope agreed to open further enquiries intothe Order. Legal complications in the case of theTemplars meant that the swift action Philip had intendedagainst them was frustrated. However, in June 1308, hesimply returned to the impulsive actions for which hehad become known and had 58 members of the Orderburnt to death as relapsed heretics, a number thatincluded two Templars who had been defending theircase in court. Finally, in 1311, Clement issued a papalbull that dissolved the Order and stated that the prop-erty of the Templars should be handed over to theHospitallers.

In 1313, the final fate of the Grand Master Jacques deMolay and three other important figures within theOrder was decided by the Pope. They were declared to


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be heretics outside the cathedral of Notre Dame in Parisand sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in jail. Atthis moment Jacques De Molay, who was now aroundthe age of 70 and had suffered years of imprisonment,declared that the Templars were innocent of the chargesmade against them and was supported by the Preceptorof Normandy, Geoffroi de Charney, who also recantedhis confession. But Philip moved swiftly against thesenior Templars in order to deny the Order any possi-bility of clearing its name. As relapsed heretics, Jacquesde Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were ordered to beburnt to death at the stake. At around the hour ofvespers, they were taken out on to a small island in theriver Seine called the Ile-des-Javiaux. It is said thatJacques de Molay once again protested the innocence ofthe Order and declared that Pope Clement and theFrench King Philip the Fair would be summoned toappear before God before the year had ended. In theevent Jacques de Molay was burned at the stake but hisfinal wish was granted. Both the Pope and the king diedwithin 12 months.

Rosslyn Chapel

It is thought that the Templars may have had some fore-warning of what Philip was planning against them. Thefabled treasure that the Templars were said to possesswas never found and it has been claimed that importantrelics and/or documents were smuggled out of the Paris


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preceptory prior to the arrests of 13 October 1307.One of the great unanswered questions about the Orderis what fate befell the fleet of ships belonging to theTemplars that was based at the French port of LaRochelle. It has been suggested that the Templartreasure, whatever it may have been, was taken to LaRochelle from where an unrecorded number of shipsleft France. It is known that the fleet disappeared myste-riously but the final destination of the ships is unknown.Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh have argued the casethat a group of Templars fled persecution in France andheaded north by sea to Scotland.They speculate that, inScotland, the Templars found an ally in Robert the Brucewho had himself been excommunicated by the Pope andthat they went on to aid him in his victory at the Battleof Bannockburn. In their book The Temple and the LodgeBaigent and Leigh make the suggestion that the Templarsfound a permanent sanctuary in Scotland and that it wastheir influence that resulted in the development ofScottish Freemasonry.

Many have argued that the architecture of theremarkable Rosslyn Chapel points to the influence andpresence of the Knights Templar in Scotland. RosslynChapel is located in the village of Roslin in Midlothianand was founded as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthewby William Sinclair. Sinclair was the First Earl ofCaithness and a member of an important Scottish familywhich was to develop strong connections with ScottishFreemasonry. The first Grand Master of the Grand


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Lodge of Scotland was also called William Sinclair andwas a descendant of the man who founded RosslynChapel in 1446. A number of other Sinclairs also heldthe post of Grand Master at later dates. The Sinclairfamily name is sometimes also spelt as ‘St Clair’.

The design and decoration of the building has beenthe source of considerable speculation and conjectureand some authors find hidden meaning and significancewithin the fabric of the building itself. The chapelcontains many examples of carvings of the ‘GreenMan’. These carvings depict a human face surroundedby foliage and vegetation, usually with leaves issuingfrom its mouth. They are generally viewed as fertilityfigures and are widely accepted as being pre-Christianimages. Authors Christopher Knight and RobertLomas, amongst others, have suggested that the chapelcontains carvings of the aloe cactus and maize cobs.According to accepted history, at the time that theChapel was built such plants were not known withinEurope because America had not yet been discovered.It has been suggested that this provides evidence thatmembers of the Sinclair family, connected to theKnights Templar, had actually travelled to America andbrought back such knowledge before ChristopherColumbus. More prosaically, the carvings in questionhave also been interpreted as depictions of lilies orwheat. On the basis of archaeological digs carried outin the nineteenth century, some scholars have thoughtthat Rosslyn Chapel was actually originally intended to


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be a much larger building. Christopher Knight andRobert Lomas put forward the hypothesis that the westwall of the chapel was actually intended to representthe Wailing Wall, the surviving part of the Temple ofSolomon in Jerusalem.

Interest has also focussed on three pillars within thechapel, which are known as the Master Pillar, theJourneyman Pillar and the Apprentice Pillar.They standat the east end of the chapel and are the subject of a locallegend. It is said that a mason working in the chapel lefthis apprentice to carve its elaborate surface but did notthink he was skilled enough to perform the work.However, when the apprentice completed the carving,the mason became so angry and jealous of this remark-able feat that he killed him by striking him a cruel andfatal blow to the head with a wooden mallet.

Priory of Sion

Probably the most infamous and controversial theoryabout the Knights Templar to be aired in recent timeslinks the medieval military order to a supposed Masonic-style secret society known as the Priory of Sion. Mostobviously, this highly contentious hypothesis formed thebasis for the best-selling The Holy Blood and the Holy Grailby Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincolnand that led in turn to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.Both books argue that the purpose for the existence ofthe alleged Priory of Sion was to guard and protect an


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ancient secret concerning the real nature of the mythicalHoly Grail.

They argue that a secret order, most commonlyreferred to as ‘Prieuré de Sion’ or the Priory of Sion,created the Knights Templar as its administrative andmilitary arm to protect a previously unknown secretthat the bloodline of Jesus Christ has survivedthroughout history. It is also claimed that this secretknowledge was known to the many prominent figureswho served as Grand Master or ‘Nautonnier’ of theOrder. Nautonnier is an old French word that translatesas navigator or helmsman. Some of the individuals whoare alleged to have been past Grand Masters of theOrder include such famous real-life figures as the artistLeonardo da Vinci, the scientist and mathematician SirIsaac Newton, the celebrated author Victor Hugo, clas-sical composer Claude Debussy and the poet and artistJean Cocteau.

It is often claimed that the Knights Templar, whosestated aim was to protect pilgrims travelling to the HolyLand, were actually involved in carrying out excavationsof some kind beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.The Templars did carry out building work there andthere does seem to be some evidence that they hadcarried out excavations beneath the platform of theTemple Mount where legends claimed numerous holyrelics had been deposited. When the Royal Engineerswere carrying out surveying work beneath the TempleMount in 1894, a number of Templar relics were discov-


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ered, indicating their presence there at some point. It issaid that the Order had been digging in the area knownas Solomon’s Stables and there has been considerableconjecture over what they were looking for and what, ifanything, they found.

Authors Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas,amongst others, have conjectured that the Templars mayhave found a hidden collection of early Gnostic Christianwritings, preserved as scrolls or tablets, and that theseinfluenced their beliefs and led to the charges of heresymade against them. Other suggestions about the natureof the supposed Templar discovery have included the Arkof the Covenant or the Holy Grail, the exact nature ofwhich, as we have seen, has been the cause of great spec-ulation.

However, it is now accepted that the Priory of Sionwas in fact a deception that has an equally bizarre storyrelated to it. The Priory was an association that wasfounded in 1956 by Pierre Plantard, Jean Delaval,AndréBonhomme and Armand Defago. Plantard was at thecentre of the Priory of Sion, which can be viewed vari-ously as a surrealist joke, a hoax or a confidence trick.Plantard, in particular, believed that he was a seriousclaimant to the throne of France and used the group inan attempt to further his ambitions. In order to ‘prove’that the Priory of Sion had originated during themedieval period, Plantard produced a series of fakedocuments that were placed in the BibliothèqueNationale in Paris. He also created a story that, in 1891,


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a priest called Father Berenger Saunière from Rennes-Le-Chateau in the south of France had discovered thesedocuments in his church. Plantard then promoted thisstory, which appeared to validate the authenticity of thePriory of Sion, by working with a French author calledGérard de Sède. The resulting book was published in1967 and was called Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau,which translates as the ‘Accursed Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau’. The book featured Plantard’s fake documentsand claimed that the priest had become rich aftermaking some kind of mysterious discovery.When policesearched Plantard’s house in 1993 they unearthed acollection of false papers that he had produced in anattempt to validate his claims to royal status. He laterwent on to admit that the Priory of Sion had been acomplete hoax and that he had invented everythinglargely to live out his personal dreams and fantasies.


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The Development of Freemasonry in Europe

The development of Freemasonry appears to have hadtwo main phases. The first phase was the establishmentof the craft guilds of operative stonemasons who appearto have had comparatively simple rituals associated withtheir organisations. The second phase in the develop-ment of Freemasonry is the move towards speculativeMasonry where individuals from outside the professionof stonemasonry begin to be admitted to the lodges.

As we have seen, the Regius Poem or Halliwell docu-ment dating from around 1390 is the oldest knownMasonic document.The second oldest known documentthat relates to Masonry is the Cooke manuscript thatdates to around 1450 and is named after Matthew Cookewho edited it for publication in 1861.The Cooke manu-script, unlike the Regius poem, contains information ofa speculative nature and is thought to have been writtenby a Mason. However, knowledge of the developmentand growth of Freemasonry from this period until thelate sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries is sparse. In1425, it is recorded that a decree was issued on behalf ofKing Henry VI (who was only three at the time) that

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English Masons were forbidden to hold assemblies. Ithad apparently been noted that the working lodges haddeveloped links that unified them.

The Schaw Statutes dating from 1598 and 1599 give afuller picture of Masonic practices in Scotland at thistime.They are named after William Schaw who was theMaster of Works and Warden General for King James VIof Scotland and detail the duties of lodge members.Theyalso ban lodge members from undertaking work withunqualified Masons.The statutes reveal that Masons whoproduced poor work of a low standard could expectcertain penalties as punishment. They also allude toMasons sharing knowledge of a spiritual nature.

Interestingly, the statutes also require that the lodgesshould test their member’s abilities in memorising infor-mation. Information about lodges begins to growaround this time in Scotland because these statutesrequire lodges to keep written records. The Minutes ofthe Aitchison’s Haven Lodge and St Mary’s Lodge, basedin Edinburgh, have survived from 1599. It is recordedthat Laird Boswell of Auchenleck was initiated into aScottish Lodge in 1600. Because Lord Boswell was notan operative Mason, he is regarded as being amongst theearliest known speculative Masons. In England very littledocumentary material has survived from before 1717.From this period onwards Freemasonry underwent agrowing process of gentrification.


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The Renaissance

One of the earliest written records of a Freemasonbeing admitted to a lodge in England can be found inthe diary of the noted antiquary Elias Ashmole. On 16October 1646, Ashmole wrote that, ‘I was made a FreeMason at Warrington, in Lancashire, with HenryMainwaring, of Karincham, in Cheshire.’ Born on 23May 1617 in Lichfield, Ashmole had a colourful life,combining an involvement with the politics of the daywith a keen interest in alchemy and astrology. Aroyalist, Ashmole supported Charles I during theEnglish Civil War. His major passion was acquiringunusual and varied artefacts. He combined his owncollections with that of the botanist John Tradescant theyounger and donated the material to Oxford Universityin 1677. A specially commissioned building wasdesigned by Sir Christopher Wren to house the collec-tion and finished in 1682 and named the AshmoleanMuseum in honour of its donor. He appears to havemaintained an active involvement with Freemasonrythroughout his life, recording in his diary entry of 10March 1682 that he had attended a lodge meeting atMasons’ Hall in London and enjoyed an impressivedinner at the Half-Moon Tavern in Cheapside with hisfellow Masons the following day.

T H E D E V E L O P M E N T O F F R E E M A S O N RY I N E U RO P E

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Rosicrucians

It has been suggested that the esoteric RosicrucianOrder played an important part in the development ofmodern Masonry.The origins of the Rosicrucian move-ment have been debated almost as much as those ofFreemasonry. Quite how the Rosicrucian movementbegan is something of a mystery in itself. In 1614, aLutheran theologian named Johannes Valentin Andreaepublished an enigmatic pamphlet entitled FamaFraternitatis Rosae Crucis or The Fame of the Brotherhood ofthe Rosy Cross. It describes how the Rosicrucian move-ment was founded by a German, called ChristianRosenkreuz, who was born in 1378. According to thepamphlet, Rosenkreuz had travelled to the Holy Landand come into the possession of secret occult knowl-edge, taught to him by a number of Eastern masters. Heis then said to have founded the Rosicrucian Order in1407 and deliberately limited its membership to eightmembers only. Rosenkreuz is alleged to have died in1484 at the advanced age of 106 years old. The orderwas then supposed to have been kept a closely guardedsecret, as its founder had wished, until it emerged onthe European stage with the publication of thepamphlet. Further pamphlets followed, the ConfessioFraternitatis in 1615 and The Chymical Wedding of ChristianRosen Kreuz in 1616. Some writers and scholars haveseen these documents as highly symbolic and allegoricalin nature. The events they describe are not to be taken


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literally but need careful interpretation to reveal theirtrue meaning.

An interesting alternative legend exists that describesthe foundation of the Rosicrucian movement by a sagefrom the city of Alexandria called Ormus in 46 AD.Thisversion of the origins of the movement appears to havebeen put forward in the eighteenth century by aRosicrucianist-Masonic group called the Golden andRosy Cross.The legend claims that Mark, the disciple ofJesus, converted Ormus and some of his followers toChristianity. The Rosicrucian Order, therefore, wasbased on a fusion of early Christian teaching andEgyptian beliefs and ideas. The story of ChristianRosenkreuz is incorporated into this series of eventswhen he becomes the Grand Master of the existingRosicrucian Order. It has been conjectured by some thatthe secret knowledge which Christian Rosenkreuz wassaid to have gained in the first theory of the origins ofRosicrucianism could have been absorbed intoFreemasonry. Whilst travelling in the Holy Land hecould have learned from the Eastern masters the storiesand legends of the Temple of Solomon and, upon hisreturn to Europe, shared that knowledge within thesecret order. That knowledge could, in turn, have beentransmitted to the developing Masonic orders via aninitiate and become part of its rituals and iconography.Although such speculative thought has fired the interestof many, it seems that the ‘emergence’ of theRosicrucian movement may, in fact, have an altogether


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more mundane explanation. The author of the pamph-lets, Johannes Valentin Andreae, would later explain thathe had intended the documents to be viewed as a kind offarce or drama designed to make an allegorical point.

As already mentioned, Andreae was a Lutherantheologian and, as a Protestant, he believed that a societyfreed from the restrictions and restraints of the RomanCatholic Church would be able to explore more freelysuch subjects as alchemy and science, thus aidingmankind in the pursuit of a new, more utopian era.However, whatever the rationale behind the pamphletsmay have been, the ideas contained within themprovoked much interest in seventeenth century Europe,although there is no evidence that an actual secretsociety existed before the publication of the papers.Freemasons certainly were interested in the ideasinherent within Rosicrucianism and, in some instances,incorporated the image of the rose and cross into theiriconography. It has been suggested that there are simi-larities between the aims of Freemasonry and itsattempts to effect a kind of spiritual, alchemical changein the world view of an individual Mason and themystical goals of the Rosicrucian movement in devel-oping human potential through mystical study.

In the Masonic Scottish Rite the Knight of the RoseCroix degree is the 18th degree or stage of develop-ment. In addition there exists a Masonic group called theOrder of Masonic Rosicrucians that is open to MasterMasons through invitation. The order focuses particu-


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larly on the Rosicrucian documents and studies themalong with other mystical teachings such as theHermetic tradition.

Invisible College

One of the most influential groups during the renais-sance period that involved active Freemasons was the so-called Invisible College. This society of scientists andphilosophers was created in the seventeenth century andincluded amongst its members such distinguishedfigures as Robert Boyle, Elias Ashmole, ChristopherWren, Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton. The societyoffered a forum for discussion and the mutual exchangeof ideas on subjects that would have included science,alchemy and assorted esoteric ideas. However, the reli-gious and political climate of the time meant that thediscussion of such issues was potentially a dangerousundertaking. Scientists such as Galileo had provoked theire of the Roman Catholic Church by suggesting that theearth moved around the sun and those found guilty ofheresy could be burned to death at the stake. In Englandthe turmoil of the Civil War and the paranoia ofPuritanism led to the appalling witch-hunts, with whichthat period is associated.

It was vital therefore that the exchange of such infor-mation be concealed within the framework of theInvisible College. It has been suggested that the movefrom operative to speculative Freemasonry may have


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taken place during this period because the secrecy of theoperative stonemasons’ guilds provided secure meetingplaces for such freethinkers and philosophers. By veilingtheir intellectual pursuits in allegory, it was possible toavoid the suspicions of the state and the Church. TheInvisible College would emerge into the open when, in1662, Charles II granted them the privilege of a royalcharter. The Invisible College would form the basis forthe subsequent creation of the Royal Society.

Freemasonry after 1717

The year 1717 is a key date in the history ofFreemasonry and was when the Craft became a muchmore publicly visible and recognised organisation. FourLondon lodges of Masons took the decision to form one‘Grand Lodge’ that would subsequently act as thepresiding head of all English Lodges.The four lodges hadpreviously met in taverns and alehouses around the city.The Goose and Gridiron alehouse, close to St Paul’sCathedral, had been the meeting point for Lodge No.1whilst Lodge No.2 had convened at the Crown, close toDrury Lane. The members of Lodge No.3 held theirmeetings at the Apple Tree Tavern in Covent Garden andLodge No. 4 met at a tavern in Westminster called theRummer and Grapes. The separate lodges met in theApple Tree tavern in February 1717 where it was agreedthat they would be combined to become the GrandLodge of England or GLE. On St John the Baptist’s feast


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day, 24 June 1717, the combined lodge met at the Gooseand Gridiron and elected their first Grand Master whowas called Anthony Sayer.The Grand Lodge appeared togo from strength to strength and, in 1721, altered itstitle to the Premier Grand Lodge of England. By thattime, it could count itself the head of over 50 lodges inand around London.

They also elected the Duke of Montague as theirGrand Master, which was something of a departure for amovement that had not, as a rule, previously electedindividuals from the aristocracy. Dr James Anderson, aFreemason of Scottish descent, produced and hadpublished the Constitutions of the Free-Masons in 1723.The full title of this important Masonic document is‘The Constitution, History, Laws, Charges, Orders,Regulations, and Usages, of the Right WorshipfulFraternity of Accepted Free Masons; collected fromtheir general Records, and their faithful traditions ofmany Ages’. One of James Anderson’s greatest innova-tions in his interpretation of the rules and history ofFreemasonry was his shift of the religious emphasis ofthe Brotherhood away from a specifically Christiandoctrine.

He paved the way for modern Freemasonry’s moregeneralised concept of a universal God with the inser-tion of the statement that Masons should recognise ‘thatreligion in which all men agree’ and by establishing inwritten form the concept of a ‘Great Architect of theUniverse’, drawing on the inherent iconography of


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Freemasonry itself and the symbolism of building anddesign. However, Anderson’s history of the order,arguing that the secrets of Freemasonry had passed fromNoah and that Moses had been a Mason, has generallybeen accepted as imaginative invention. Anderson alsoconcluded that Hiram Abiff had been an actual historicalfigure and that he had been chief architect at the buildingof the Temple of King Solomon exactly as Masonic lorerelates.

There has been considerable speculation about thereasons for the creation of the Grand Lodge and itssubsequent growth and influence and its associationswith powerful and aristocratic members of society. Intheir book The Temple and the Lodge, authors MichaelBaigent and Richard Leigh argue that it was a conse-quence of the Jacobite revolution of 1715 that ended infailure and the retaining of power in England by theHouse of Hanover. Because Freemasonry had stronglinks with Scotland and, in the authors’ opinion, wasinseparable from the Stuart cause, there was fear that itcould be seen as a threat to the English monarchy. InFrance, where many Jacobites had sought shelter inprevious years, evidence suggests that Freemasonry wasin favour of the restoration of the Stuarts in England. Byforming the Grand Lodge, English Masons wereattempting to take an impartial stance. They werestressing that they were neither politically nor reli-giously partisan and aligning themselves with the estab-lishment of the day. By placing high-ranking members of


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the aristocracy in its most senior positions, Freemasonrywas effectively declaring that it posed no disruptivethreat to society. In the next few decades Ireland andScotland followed suit, forming their own GrandLodges.

During this period, Freemasonry continued todevelop into the form in which it is recognised today. Anotable example of this development is the introductionof the Third Degree of Master Mason in around 1725.The ritual of the Third Degree is thought by some tohave been instigated by a former Grand Master namedJohn Theophilus Desaguliers. The Third Degree of theMaster Mason was officially accepted by the GrandLodge in 1738 when Anderson’s revised Constitutionswere accepted. Although the Grand Lodge of Englandhad grown in status, there remained large groups ofMasons that operated outside the influence of the newlycreated body. These ‘Old Masons’ tended to be fromworking class backgrounds and felt a sense of separationfrom the increasingly aristocratic nature of the GrandLodge of England. Many Irish and Scottish Masons feltthat they had little in common with the reconstitutedGLE which had, they believed, moved away from whatthey considered to be an ‘ancient’ and more authenticform of Freemasonry.

The working class Masons of London forged greaterlinks with Scottish and Irish Masons in London until, on17 July 1751, a rival Grand Lodge was constituted.Members of five different lodges assembled in the Turk’s


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Head Tavern, at that time located on Greek Street inSoho, and took the step of forming an alternative bodyto the GLE which they called ‘The Most Ancient andHonourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons’.Because of their belief that they represented an older,more undiluted form of Freemasonry they referred tothemselves as ‘the Ancients’ and dubbed the GrandLodge of England ‘the Moderns’.

The formation of the rival Grand Lodge appeared tocreate a schism within English Masonry for over half acentury, although later Masonic historians were quick topoint out that the majority of those belonging to theAncients were, in fact, Irish rather than English.However, in 1813, the two factions were finally recon-ciled and the two groups were merged together tocreate the United Grand Lodge of England. The newbody thus formed from the rival groups tended to favourthe Ancients’ approach to Masonic ceremonies andrituals.

The French Revolution

Authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh havesuggested that Freemasonry first arrived in Francebetween 1688 and 1691 with what remained of theJacobite army of James II. However, the first reliable andunequivocal documentation for the founding of a FrenchMasonic lodge dates from 1725. It is known that, in1728, a number of French lodges formed the English


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Grand Lodge of France. The first Grand Master of thenewly created body was the Duke of Wharton who hadpreviously served as the Grand Master of the GrandLodge of England. In 1737, as we have already seen inChapter 5, Andrew Michael Ramsay delivered thefamous ‘Ramsay Oration’ in Paris. His argument thatFreemasonry had its origins in the Holy Land at the timeof the crusades and that it had survived in Scotland rightthrough to the eighteenth century proved to be verypopular and influential in France.

However, in 1737, King Louis XV of France bannedFreemasonry amidst paranoid anxiety that it might serveas a source of secret plotting amongst the aristocracyagainst him.The Catholic Church was also, and remainstoday, strongly opposed to Freemasonry and, whilst itflourished in Protestant England, it was attacked by theVatican. The first Papal condemnation of Freemasonrywas issued on 28 April 1738 by Pope Clement XII. In hispapal bull Clement stated that:

Now it has come to Our ears, and common gossip hasmade clear, that certain Societies, Companies,Assemblies,Meetings, Congregations or Conventicles called in thepopular tongue Liberi Muratori or Francs Massons or byother names according to the various languages, arespreading far and wide and daily growing in strength: andmen of any Religion or sect, satisfied with the appearanceof natural probity, are joined together, according to thelaws and the statutes laid down for them, by a strict andunbreakable bond which obligates them, both by an oath


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upon the Holy Bible and by a host of grievous punish-ments, to an inviolable silence about all that they do insecret together. But it is in the nature of the crime tobetray itself and show itself by its attendant clamour.Thusthese aforesaid Societies or Conventicles have caused inthe minds of the faithful the greatest suspicion, and allprudent and upright men have passed the same judgementon them as being depraved and perverted.

Despite the ban of 1737, and the fact that Pope ClementXII also condemned Freemasonry and threatenedexcommunication to any who joined it in his papal bullof 1738, the Craft continued to thrive and grow inFrance. Many Masonic lodges in France followed theAncient Scottish Rite that Ramsay popularised. In 1756,French Masonry was divided when the English GrandLodge of France declared itself to be completely inde-pendent and renamed itself as the Grand Lodge ofFrance. Just as the formation of the United Grand Lodgeof England had led to a schism within English Masonry,so the decision to reorganise the structure of FrenchMasonry led to a split between ‘ancients’ and ‘moderns’.The Grand Lodge of France renamed itself as the GrandOrient of France in 1772 and also altered its statutes, amove that led to further dissent within French Free-masonry. Perhaps predictably, some Masons refused toacknowledge these changes and continued under theoriginal name and with the original statutes.

However, events were to take a more dramatic turnwith the death of King Louis XV in 1774 and the ascen-


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sion to the French throne of his grandson Louis XVI.His reign was marked by a series of financial disastersand excess which provided his own circle with wealthwhilst the people of France experienced poverty anddeprivation. Events would lead Louis XVI to hold ameeting of the Estates-General in 1788 that consistedof individuals from the Church, or First Estate, the aris-tocracy, the Second Estate, and the middle classes, theThird Estate. The Third Estate refused to accept theinfluence of the other two groups and assumed theleadership of France.

The French Revolution is often seen as beginningwith the storming of the Bastille, which took place on 14July 1789 when it was believed that Louis XVI intendedto dissolve the assembly and challenge the power of theThird Estate. Many within the assembly were, in fact,Freemasons. Louis was later tried for conspiring withAustrian forces and sentenced to death. It has been esti-mated that as many as 320 of the total of 1,336 membersof the assembly were Freemasons. In the wake of theRevolution, many claimed that Freemasonry had beenresponsible for the turmoil and violence that had rockedFrench society.

However, Freemasonry had actually declined in popu-larity during the French Revolution and, in many cases,lodges were suspended. Many of those involved in theinitial move to revolution were Freemasons and, asnoted in Chapter One, they took their famous procla-mation of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ from basic


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Masonic principles. In many ways it is ironic thatFreemasonry became associated with revolutionaryactivities in France (and in North America and, later,Central and South America) because, according toMasonic teaching, one of the key duties of a Mason is tomaintain law and order and to keep political opinions tothemselves. The earliest Masonic charges or rulesdeclare Masons must not plot or otherwise conspireagainst the King or government.This principle is clearlystated in the revised constitutions of Dr Anderson usedby the Grand Lodge of England. The rift that hadoccurred in French Freemasonry, creating the divergentgroups of Ancient and Moderns, was finally ended in1799.They became reconciled through an Act of Unionand the Grand Lodge of France became part of theGrand Orient of France.

Perhaps surprisingly, Freemasonry in France was tothrive and grow during the reign of the EmperorNapoleon Bonaparte. Initially, he regarded Freemasonryas a form of secret society and therefore a potential threatto his power, and he feared that it might shelter andnurture insurrectionary elements. He issued a decree,stating that official permission must be granted for anyassembly of over 20 people and had investigations carriedout into whether Freemasonry posed a threat to his rule.When his agents reported that Masons were notharbouring any political plans against him, his suspicionswere allayed and the Craft was allowed to flourish.Interestingly, Napoleon’s first wife, Josephine, was


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closely involved in a Masonic-style group. She was theGrand Mistress of the Saint Caroline Lodge of Adoption.

During the late 1870s a major split occurred betweenFrench and English Freemasons on religious grounds.Whilst Freemasons are drawn from a variety of religiousbackgrounds, it is traditionally, and according to DrAnderson’s constitutions, a prerequisite that they expressa belief in God and that a Mason will ‘never be a stupidatheist’. The Grand Orient of France took what wasperceived in England as the dramatic step of admittingatheists and agnostics into its ranks. The ritual of entryinto the Brotherhood was adapted by the Grand Orientof France and the Masonic phrase that refers to God asthe Supreme Being or the Great Architect was removed.The Grand Orient of France also caused consternationamongst Freemasons in other countries when it declaredthat it would involve itself more directly in politics. Butprotests from abroad failed to move the governing bodyof French Masonry and the Grand Orient of France wasdeclared to be irregular by other Grand Lodges.The situ-ation was only rectified in 1913 with the formation of theNational Grand Lodge of France.

The Bavarian Illuminati

Freemasonry was linked to other revolutionary causes inEurope during the eighteenth century. On 1 May 1776,a lay professor called Adam Weishaupt founded a move-ment which referred to itself as the ‘Perfectibilists’ but


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its members became better known as the Illuminati orthe ‘Illuminated ones’. Originally the order consisted ofonly five members but it reached a peak of 2,500members during its existence. It was based in Ingolstadtin Upper Bavaria. The alleged aim of the order wasdramatic: to effect revolution by bringing to an endexisting world governments and replacing them with anew order based on freedom and tolerance. It drewmany of its members from Freemasonry but was notofficially sanctioned by the brotherhood.

It had a Masonic-style structure, being organised intothree primary groups that developed in seniority ofposition.The first stage within the Illuminati was knownas Novice, the second as Minerval whilst the third wasdesignated as the Minerval Illumine, or Master.Although its internal structure held obvious parallelswith Freemasonry, a major distinction between the twomovements was that membership of the Illuminati didnot require any belief in a God or Supreme Being. Aconsequence of this disparity between the two groupswas that many atheists were drawn to the Order. TheOrder became effectively illegal when the Bavariangovernment, led by Karl Theodor, moved to ban anyform of secret society in 1785.The ban applied to bothFreemasons and the Illuminati. The adherents of theIlluminati viewed themselves as enlightened freethinkersand included artists, politicians and writers as well asmany members from aristocratic backgrounds.


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Freemasonry in America

The new world of America was to prove an extremelyfertile ground in which Freemasonry could take root. Ithas been argued that many in the old world of Europesaw in the apparently unspoiled nature of the newlydiscovered continent an opportunity to establish idealutopian societies free from the mistakes of the past. Aswe have seen, Rosicrucianism and its attendant beliefs inperfecting the human soul and working towards anidealised new age of human affairs exerted a powerfulinfluence on the development of Freemasonry. In thissense America, unfettered by the restraints of theRoman Catholic Church, presented enormous scope forthe spread and influence of Freemasonic societies.Information on the early growth of Freemasonry inAmerica is sketchy but the movement of people andideas from Europe clearly meant that it would beinevitable that, at some point, the Craft would becarried there.

The first known Freemason to settle in America, onewhose membership of the Brotherhood is verifiable bycontemporary written records, was a man called John

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Skene. He is thought to have been born around 1649 andhis parents Alexander Skene and Lilias Gillespie lived inthe English town of Newtyle. Skene is recorded as beinga Mason within a lodge in Aberdeen in 1670. In 1682, heemigrated to America where he settled his family on aplantation in New Jersey. Skene appears to have achievedsuccess in his newly adopted country and rose to therank of deputy colonial governor for West Jersey.However, lack of surviving evidence makes it seemunlikely (although not impossible) that Skene created orparticipated in any Freemasonic activity in America.Thefirst recorded settler born in America who became aFreemason was Andrew Belcher. In 1704, he wasinducted into a lodge whilst in England. In 1733 the firstAmerican lodge to receive an official warrant from theGrand Lodge of England was St John’s Lodge of Boston.Masonic lodges were also in evidence in America withinmilitary lodges of the British Army that conducted theirceremonies and meetings in the field.

Benjamin Franklin played a major role in the promo-tion of Freemasonry in America through his work innewspapers such as the Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklinbecame a Mason in 1732 and became junior warden ofthe Pennsylvania Grand Lodge in the same year. It hasbeen argued that the lodge system in America provideda forum for the discussion of views at this time and alsoserved to a great extent as a unifying factor for thecolonies. Franklin became an outspoken defender ofAmerican rights against the controls of the British


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government and he would, of course, play a major rolein the foundation of the emerging nation.

Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party is today remembered as one of themost important events leading to the AmericanRevolution and the achievement of independence fromBritish rule. American Freemasons were directlyinvolved in this symbolic act of defiance.A small party ofmen, who had concealed their identities by dressing asMohawk Indians, stole aboard a British ship on 16December 1773. The merchant ship named theDartmouth was the property of the British East IndiaCompany. Once on board the men proceeded to throwits load of 32 chests of tea into Boston’s harbour. Thevalue of the tea was estimated at 10,000 pounds. Thepurpose of this seemingly bizarre act of sabotage was toprotest against taxation on tea and, more generally,against British taxation without democratic representa-tion. It is claimed that the raid was formulated in the‘Long Room’ of Freemasons’ Hall, an establishment thathad previously been a tavern called the Green Dragon.The group who carried out the raid were known as the‘Sons of Liberty’ but Freemasons were amongst theirnumber. Twelve members of St Andrew’s Lodge,Boston, participated in the Tea Party. It is worthy of notethat a further twelve later became Freemasons followingthis act of subversion.

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The American Revolution

George Washington led the largely untrained colonialarmy against the British forces.Washington was born inVirginia in 1732 and had been made a Freemason in1753 when he was initiated into the Fredericksburglodge. In 1788, he became the charter master of a lodgein Alexandria. However, although Washington, like manyof the generals of the colonial army, was a Mason, itappears that he was not particularly closely involved inlodge activities. Whilst Washington led the conflict,Franklin travelled to France to seek aid. In 1777, he wasinitiated into the Lodge des Neuf Souers or the Lodge ofthe Nine Sisters in Paris. The following year he helpedinitiate Voltaire into the lodge. The friendship betweenthe two men helped sway the sympathy of the Frenchpeople towards the American cause.

As has already been noted, there were Freemasons onboth sides at the time of the American Revolution. Aninteresting and unusual example of a Native AmericanIndian becoming a Freemason is the Mohawk war leaderJoseph Brant, known as Thayendanegea in his ownlanguage. Brant visited Britain in 1775 in order to repre-sent the Mohawk people, who were fighting on the sideof the British, and to ensure that the British Crown andits officials would make good their promises of protec-tion when the conflict ceased. During the 1770s, Branthad risen to the rank of captain in the British army. Uponhis visit to England he was inducted into a Masonic lodge


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and mixed with a number of notable figures fromEnglish society such as James Boswell and Hugh Percy,2nd Duke of Northumberland.Today, the Masonic apronthat the lodge gave to him is held at Barton lodge inHamilton, Ontario. Upon his return to America he wasinvolved in fighting with the rebels and the British laterhanded the Mohawks prisoners for torture. It isreported that when a number of prisoners madeMasonic signs he had them freed.

American Declaration of Independence

When the Declaration of Independence was publishedby Congress in 1776, 15 of the 56 signers wereFreemasons or likely to have been members. It has beenargued that the ideals and values of Freemasonry alsoexerted a powerful influence over the formulation of theAmerican Constitution.The constitution was confirmedon 13 September 1788. It is known that 28 of the 40signers of this document were either definitely Masonsor likely to have been members of the Brotherhood.George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were knownto be Masons, as were John Blair, John Dickinson, RufusKing, Gunning Bedford Junior, David Brearly, DanielCarrol and Jacob Broom. Interestingly, a further numberof the signers of the constitution became Freemasons ata later date.

George Washington was elected as the first presidentof the United States of America on 4 February 1789.


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When Washington took the presidential oath of office on30 April 1789, the ceremony was administered byRobert Livingstone, the Grand Master of New York’sGrand Lodge. (Benjamin Franklin died on 17 April 1789and therefore did not live to see the inauguration ofGeorge Washington.) Freemasons also played a majorrole when Washington laid the cornerstone of theCapitol on 18 September 1793. A great procession washeld and included the Grand Lodge of Maryland, withWashington acting as its master, together with membersof his own lodge from Alexandria, Virginia. The GrandLodge of Maryland was accompanied by other lodgesthat were affiliated to it.

A silver plate had been specially made for the occa-sion that carried the designations of the lodges present.After a group of artillery had fired a ceremonial volleyinto the air Washington stepped down into a trench inwhich the south-east cornerstone was set. He put thecommemorative silver plate on top of the stone.Washington also set offerings of corn, oil and wine injars in the trench and, as we have seen, all these areimportant symbols within Masonic rituals. The assem-bled gathering of Freemasons offered prayers that werefollowed by a second volley of shots into the air.

After he had laid the offerings in the trench,Washington ascended a small rostrum with three stepscommon to Masonic ritual and addressed the assembly.The authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, in theirbook The Temple and the Lodge, contend that the White


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House and the Capitol formed the basis of a geometricaldesign for the city of Washington that has Masonic signif-icance.They argue that George Washington and ThomasJefferson planned them as the focal centres of octagonalpatterns whose shape incorporates the specific cross thatMasonic Templars use in their symbolism.

Washington National Memorial

An important Masonic landmark within the capital cityof Washington is the House of the Temple. This templeserves as the headquarters of the Supreme Council, 33degrees, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite ofFreemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction of America. Thecornerstone of the building was put in place on 18October 1911 and the ceremony of dedication markingits completion occurred on 18 October 1915. Thetemple is also the final resting place of the Civil Wargeneral Albert Pike who was hugely influential in popu-larising the Scottish Rite within the SouthernJurisdiction of American Freemasonry.The architectureof the House of the Temple was based on the Mausoleumof Mausolos, one of the Seven Wonders of the AncientWorld.

Prince Hall Freemasonry

The first African American to become a Freemason wasa man called Prince Hall who was initiated into the Irish


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Constitution Military Lodge in Boston Massachusetts in1775. Prince Hall became a Freemason with 14 other‘free born’ African-Americans. Although few detailshave survived about the life of Prince Hall, some claimthat he was born on 12 September 1748 in Barbados. Hemay have been a slave in Boston and been freed in 1770.He is believed to have fought in the Revolutionary War.After being initiated as Freemasons, Prince Hall and 14other African American men applied for a LodgeWarrant from the Premier Grand Lodge of England.Their application was successful and they went on toform African Lodge, Number 459 (Premier GrandLodge of England) in 1787.

Under the conditions of the Premier Grand Lodgeof England, the newly established African Lodge wasable to give permission for the foundation of otherlodges with itself as the head lodge. Subsequently,further African Lodges came into being in otherAmerican cities such as New York. In 1791, Prince Hallbecame the Grand Master of the African Grand Lodgeof North America and, following his death in 1807, thename of the lodge was changed to the Prince HallGrand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1808 as a tribute tohim. During his life Hall was active in promoting thefoundation of schools for black children from Boston.The African Lodge of Boston became independentfrom the Grand Lodge of England in 1827. It is recog-nised that the African American Prince HallFreemasons contributed greatly to the education of


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black men and women both within their lodges andalso by providing funds for college scholarships.Today,Prince Hall lodges like most Masonic lodges are opento a multi-ethnic background.

The Scottish Rite

As we have seen, Freemasonry was to flourish inAmerica and two further systems of Masonic degreeshave been adopted to allow Master Masons to learnmore about the Craft. For those who have achieved thefirst three stages of blue lodge Masonic development,that is Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft and MasterMason, the Scottish Rite offers an opportunity for candi-dates to progress within a framework of a further 30degrees. However, the final degree, the 33rd degree,cannot be applied for by individuals but is bestowed onMasons who are thought to have made a particularlysignificant contribution to the world of Freemasonry orthe Scottish Rite in particular or who are deemed tohave performed some exceptional service to humanity.The Scottish Rite is recognised by American GrandLodges as an extension of the traditional three degrees.In England it is not officially recognised by the GrandLodge but Freemasons are not prevented from under-taking it.

There has been considerable speculation about thedevelopment of the Scottish Rite. It has been suggestedby authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh and by


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other commentators that this particular branch ofFreemasonry was influenced by and inseparably linkedto the Jacobite cause of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies. In America the Scottish Rite proved to be anoutstanding success and, in South Carolina, the SupremeCouncil of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite wasestablished in 1801, the first such council of the ScottishRite to be founded. The popularity and success of theScottish Rite within the history of the SouthernJurisdiction of American Freemasonry is very oftenattributed to the Civil War general and FreemasonAlbert Pike. Pike was born in Boston, Massachusetts on29 December 1809. He received the fourth to thirty-second degrees in Charleston in 1853 and the thirty-third in 1857 in New Orleans.

Today the Scottish Rite within America is governed bytwo Supreme Councils. The Supreme Council of theSouthern Jurisdiction is based in Washington, DC, whilstthe Supreme Council of the Northern MasonicJurisdiction is located in Lexington, Massachusetts.Masons working through the different degrees of theScottish Rite meet in groups known as ‘Valleys’ overwhich the Supreme Council has particular authority.

The first ten degrees within the Scottish Rite areknown as the Ineffable Degrees and are:

4th degree Secret MasterIn this degree the candidate learns that in order to fulfilhis duties it is at times necessary to be able to keep


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secrets and remain trustworthy. The imagery and alle-gorical content of this degree derives from a storyconcerning the Temple of Solomon and seven Masonsappointed to protect the holy of holies.

5th degree Perfect MasterThis degree addresses the transience of human life butteaches the importance of revering and respecting ourforbears and stresses the need to behave honourably.Themurder of Hiram Abiff is an important part of thesymbolism in the degree of Perfect Master.

6th degree Intimate SecretaryMasons are instructed that they should not involvethemselves unduly in the affairs of their fellow Masonsand the degree is based on a story about King Solomonintervening to protect a Mason accused of spying.

7th degree Provost and JudgeThis degree teaches the importance of fairness andequality within any system of justice and that Masonsshould behave honourably and mercifully. Its symboliccontext is the trial of the murderers of Hiram Abiff.

8th degree Intendant of the BuildingThe theme of the Intendant of the Building is charity andhelping the less fortunate in society and its allegoricalbackdrop is the resumption of the construction of theTemple of Solomon after the murder of Hiram Abiff.


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9th degree Elect of the NineThe title of the degree refers to King Solomon choosingnine Masons to find the murderers of Hiram Abiff. Itteaches the importance of serving others within society.

10th degree Elect of the FifteenThe 10th degree of the Scottish Rite instructs candidatesthat justice will triumph in the end over unfair andunrighteous actions. Its symbolic context is the trial ofthe murderers of Hiram Abiff.

11th degree Elect of the TwelveThe 11th degree is intended to show Masons that thosewho show honesty and fairness and behave with honourwill reap the rewards of their actions just as unbecomingor corrupt actions will result in punishment through fairand impartial justice.

12th degree Grand Master ArchitectThe degree of Grand Master Architect uses the allegor-ical symbolism of the education of the builders of theTemple of King Solomon to instruct Masons in their rolewithin the world and to respect the work of the GreatArchitect.

13th degree Royal Arch of SolomonThis degree concerns the difficulties and hardships thatmay face a Mason in striving for perfection. It teachesthat the achievement of high goals is through persistent


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and, at times, difficult struggle and labour.

14th degree Grand Elect Perfect and SublimeIt is believed that a Mason, once he has reached this stagewithin the Scottish Rite, has been fully prepared toconstruct his own metaphorical lodge of perfection. Inthis degree the candidate discovers that a hidden chamberunder the Temple of Solomon was built to house aprecious artefact referred to as the pillar of beauty.

The next sequence of degrees is called the Chapter ofRose Croix. The symbolic context in which morallessons are taught to Masons is the captivity of the Jewsin Babylon and their eventual release and return toJerusalem:

15th degree Knight of the East or SwordCandidates learn that it is essential to retain theirintegrity and beliefs and not to be dissuaded from them.

16th degree Prince of JerusalemWhen the Jews returned to Jerusalem they undertookthe building of the Second Temple and faced hardship,often having to fight for their freedom. Masons learnthat they must meet their responsibilities even in theface of hardship and danger.

17th degree Knight of the East and WestThis degree acknowledges the lesson that the lasting


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Temple to the Great Architect lies not in the materialworld but within the spiritual world.

18th degree Knight Rose CroixThe ultimate degree of the Chapter of Rose Croixinstructs Masons to build a temple to God within them-selves and concerns the Rosicrucian themes of trans-forming society through the transformation of our ownsouls.

The next stage within the Scottish Rite is referred to as theCouncil of Kadosh and runs from the 19th to the 30th:

19th degree Grand PontiffThe theme of the degree of Grand Pontiff is that theMason should look beyond individual creeds and reli-gions and that those who believe in a divine power andthe immortality of the soul are as one.

20th degree Master ad VitamMaster ad Vitam deals with the problems and require-ments of leadership. It stresses the importance of indi-viduals working together to improve society.

21st degree Patriarch NoachiteThis degree emphasises that Masons must not abusetheir position within Freemasonry and must behavehonourably and within the law. It also teaches respect forjustice correctly and fairly administered.


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22nd degree Prince of LibanusThe 22nd degree takes its title from an ancient name forthe country of Lebanon. In the story of the building ofthe Temple of Solomon cedar wood used in its construc-tion came from Lebanon. The degree teaches the valueand the honour inherent in hard work through the alle-gorical framework of cutting wood.

23rd degree Chief of the TabernacleThe Mason is reminded to strive always to give aid totheir fellows and to perform good works in recognitionof the Great Architect.

24th degree Prince of the TabernacleThe degree of Prince of the Tabernacle is aimed to illus-trate how peoples around the world, apparently fromdiffering cultures, actually have much in common.Through the study of symbolism Masons must learn torecognise these universal concerns and promote co-operation and mutual aid and respect.

25th degree Knight of the Brazen SerpentThis degree recognises that all people must suffer hard-ships but that good will triumph over evil.

26th degree Prince of MercyThe subject of this degree is showing mercy and under-standing to others even if they have offended or wrongedus. Justice and any accompanying punishment should be


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administered with this in mind.

27th degree Commander of the TempleThe 27th degree is based on what is known of thecrusading order known as the Teutonic Knights of theHouse of St Mary of Jerusalem. The Order performedthe dual function of providing medical assistance andserving as warriors.

28th degree Knight of the SunThe degree of the Knight of the Sun is strongly influ-enced by the Kabbalah and the concept of the Tree ofLife.

29th degree Knight of St AndrewThe Mason is shown the importance of treating the ideasand beliefs of others with respect and the degreeencourages a spirit of tolerance within humanity.

30th degree Knight KadoshThe Knight Kadosh is the final degree in the Council ofKadosh and teaches that the difficulties that we faceimprove us as people and that Masons must strive toprotect the metaphorical internal temple within them-selves that they have built through their Masonictraining.

31st degree Inspector Inquisitor CommanderThe subject of this degree is justice and the recognition


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that all people must judge their own weaknesses and fail-ings before judging others. Once again fair and appro-priate justice must be accompanied with compassion andunderstanding.

32nd degree Sublime Prince of the Royal SecretThe 32nd degree examines the difference in humannature between our physical selves and our spiritualbeings. It teaches that the spiritual can overcome selfish-ness and self-interest through struggle and that Masonsmay have to make great sacrifices to help others.

33rd degree Knight Commander of the Court ofHonourAs noted earlier in this chapter, the 33rd degree is anhonorary degree and can only be given by fellowMasons, usually for an outstanding achievement orcontribution.

The York Rite

The York Rite also offers an opportunity for MasterMasons to progress further within the world ofFreemasonry beyond the standard three degrees of BlueLodge Masonry.The York Rite is found mainly as a singlesystem in America and there are differences within thedifferent Orders that teach it. Within the York Rite aMaster Mason is firstly eligible to join the order knownas Royal Arch Masonry, also referred to as the Chapter,


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indicating a group of Royal Arch Masons. The secondbody within the York Rite is the Council of Royal andSelect Masters, often referred to as Cryptic Masonry. Itderives this secondary term of identification becausesome form of underground chamber or crypt-like roomforms a part of the developing degrees that it encom-passes. The third and final body within the York Rite isthat of Knights Templar.

Within Royal Arch Masonry candidates may under-take the Mark Master Mason degree. It takes its nameand symbolism from the practice of medieval Masonscarving individual symbols upon the structures andstonework for which they were responsible in order thatthey might be recognised by other Masons. The nextdegree within Royal Arch Masonry is that of Virtual PastMaster.This is followed by the degree of Most ExcellentMaster and is unique within Freemasonry in that itsimagery is of the completion of King Solomon’s Temple.The final degree in the sequence is that of the Royal ArchMason and this is very often termed the ‘most beautiful’,sublime or elegant degree within Freemasonry. Thosewho reach this elevated Masonic degree are eligible, butnot obliged, to undertake the degrees of CrypticMasonry.The degrees within the Cryptic Rite are that ofRoyal Master, Select Master and Super Excellent Master.

The last part of the York Rite, known as theCommandery of Knights Templar, is unusual in Masonicgroups in that its membership does require a specificreligious belief system.Whilst Freemasonry in general is


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open to individuals with a belief in a supreme being, thedegree of Knights Templar is only open to MasterMasons whose religion is Christianity.

William Morgan

Freemasonry had grown exponentially in America but itwas dealt a major blow in 1826 with the mysterious caseof the disappearance of a man called William Morgan.He was from Culpepper County in Virginia and had trav-elled to Canada to find work, eventually taking up resi-dence in the town of Batavia in New York State. Recordsshow that Morgan was awarded the Royal Arch degree inthe Western Star Chapter No.33 of Le Roy on 31 May1825. Sources differ as to how he became involved inFreemasonry and some within the brotherhood allegedeception and dishonesty. Morgan was then amongst agroup of Freemasons from Batavia who sought permis-sion to establish a Royal Arch chapter. Although theywere successful in their aim, Morgan himself was laterrejected by his fellow Masons.This rejection led him toattack the order by claiming that he had written a bookthat would expose important Masonic secrets to thegeneral public. He also claimed that he had signed acontract for the publication of this book, exposing theinner workings of Freemasonry, that would involve apayment to him of a colossal for the time figure of500,000 dollars.

The publishers of the book were said to include a man


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called David C Miller who, like Morgan, was a disgrun-tled Freemason and two others. Morgan was reportedlyextremely vocal about the book and caused considerableconsternation within the Brotherhood. Events took asinister turn when he was arrested in September 1826for a dubious and unlikely minor offence; he was allegedto have stolen a shirt and tie. Although the charge cameto nothing he was actually jailed for having failed to payan outstanding debt of a few dollars. Morgan was tospend only a single day imprisoned as a mysterious andstill unknown benefactor settled the amount he owed.However, as soon as he was released, it was reportedthat a small group of men forced him to accompanythem away from the jail in a coach.The men apparentlytook him to a disused fort where they detained him.

The news of the apparent abduction of WilliamMorgan led to feverish speculation that he had beentaken by Freemasons who had killed him to preventtheir secrets being revealed. When a body was discov-ered on the banks of the river Niagara it was at firstthought that it must be that of the kidnapped Morgan.The corpse was initially identified by Morgan’s own wifebecause it was wearing Morgan’s clothes. On closerinspection the identification was questioned becausemarks and scars on the body did not match those knownto be on William Morgan’s. After three separateinquests, it was established that the body actuallybelonged to a Canadian man called Timothy Munro whowas identified by his wife, Sara.


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The mystery of the fate of William Morgan had mean-while remained unresolved. Seven men, all known to beMasons, were subsequently arrested for the kidnappingof Morgan but charges of murder were never madebecause of the absence of an identifiable body.The fate ofthe abducted man has never been conclusively provedbut, at the time, the news of his apparent abduction by aband of Freemasons trying to prevent the secret work-ings of their order being made public, sent shockwavesof fear across America. Suddenly Freemasons wereregarded as a sinister and evil force at work withinAmerican society. In the immediate aftermath of thekidnapping anti-Masonic feelings ran high. The Churchcondemned Masons, individuals were forced out of theirjobs for being Masons, newspapers such as the Anti-Masonic Review were founded and there was a signifi-cant decrease in the number of Masonic candidates andLodges across America.


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Freemasonry in the Modern Era

Whilst a diverse and famous range of individualsincluding such figures as Winston Churchill, OscarWilde and John Wayne have been Freemasons, its publicimage in the modern era has very often been a negativeone. Conspiracy theories implicating Masonry in plansfor world domination have abounded and Freemasonshave very often found themselves at the receiving end ofbigotry and intolerance.

Leo Taxil

The reputation of Freemasonry was dealt a serious blowin the late nineteenth century by the so-called exposés ofone Gabriel Jogand-Poges writing under the pseudonymof Leo Taxil. Born in 1854 in the French city ofMarseilles, Jogand-Poges became a journalist and, aftermoving to Paris, produced a newspaper that focussedlargely on scandal and intrigue. He also wrote a numberof contentious books with a similar slant and contentand titles like The Secret Lovers of Pope Pius IX. He becamea Freemason in 1881 but was eventually rejected by the

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brotherhood. Subsequently Jogand-Poges adoptedCatholicism and, perhaps inspired by the Catholic hatredof Freemasonry, wrote a number of books exposing thesecrets of Masonry. Entitled The Secret Revelations ofFrench Masonry, the books portrayed Freemasons assatanic devil worshippers who engaged in the mostappalling and debased behaviour during their rituals.

The books of Leo Taxil were to prove an incrediblepopular success throughout Europe. His works onFreemasonry were also particularly anti-Semitic in theircontent and his vivid descriptions of Masonic secretceremonies were fantastical and demonic. Taxil insistedthat the punishment for Masons who betrayed thesecrets of the Brotherhood was, potentially, death andthat all Masons, as part of their oath or charge of alle-giance, must be ready to commit murder. Whilst manywithin Freemasonry objected publicly to his distortionof the image of the Brotherhood, he was, perhaps notsurprisingly, supported in his attack on the Craft by theCatholic Church.The pope of the day, Leo XIII, went sofar as to award Leo Taxil the special honour of the Orderof the Holy Sepulchre as a reward for his attacks onFreemasonry.

Women in Freemasonry

Although Freemasonry has traditionally been dominatedby men there are Masonic bodies that are open towomen. An interesting example of a woman being


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admitted to a Masonic lodge at a time when Masonrywas essentially a male-only affair is the case of ElizabethSt Leger. It is said that, in 1713, Elizabeth had witnesseda lodge meeting in session at the house of her father whowas first Viscount Doneraile in the Irish County of Cork.Although it might seem unusual for a lodge meeting tohave taken place in her father’s house it was apparentlynormal at that time and the lodge in question had awarrant from the Grand Lodge of Ireland. It is said thatshe took a brick from an internal wall and was able tosee into the room where the lodge was meeting. Herpresence was detected and it was decided that the bestcourse of action was to make her a Mason. She wasactive within Masonry during her life and was apparentlytreated as an equal within the fraternity. Upon herdeath, she is said to have received full Masonic honoursat her funeral.

However, the admittance of women into Freemasonrydid not begin widely until 1882 in France when MariaDeraismes became a Mason, joining the Loge LibrePenseurs, or ‘Freethinkers Lodge’.This lodge was underthe jurisdiction of the Grand Independent SymbolicLodge and had broken away from the Supreme Councilof France. When the Grand Lodge discovered this, theysuspended Les Libres Penseurs. However, in 1892, MariaDeraismes was approached by a member of the SupremeCouncil called Dr Georges Martin who suggested thatthey found a lodge that would be open to both men andwomen. They established a lodge called Le Droit

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Humain, or ‘the Human Duty’ and initiated 16 womeninto its ranks together with male Masons. Over thecourse of the next few years its popularity grew and, in1907, the Order extended the three degrees that it hadoffered to include the 33 degrees of the Ancient andAccepted Scottish Rite.

In Britain, the concept of mixed Masonry was,arguably, most successfully established by Annie Besantof the Theosophical Society. Members of theTheosophical Society were also drawn to the idea ofwhat was initially known as ‘Joint Freemasonry’ andlater ‘Universal Co-Freemasonry’. Le Droit Humain andthe Order of International Co-Masonry are still in exis-tence today. However, the United Grand Lodge ofEngland, whilst recognising and acknowledging ordersof mixed Masonry, does not allow women to becomemembers of its particular Masonic order.

In the United States of America, the Order of theEastern Star was formed in 1850 and its members were(and are) drawn mainly from Masons and the femalerelatives of Master Masons. The Order of the EasternStar was founded by Dr Robert Morris who was himselfa Former Past Grand Master of Kentucky. Initially, DrMorris had planned to develop a form of Women’sFreemasonry but the idea proved so unpopular amongstMale Masons that the compromise position of mixedMasonry was adopted.The headquarters of the Order isin Washington, DC, and housed in the Eastern StarTemple. In order to be eligible for membership a woman


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must currently be over the age of 18 and be the wife,daughter, widow, sister, half-sister, mother, step-mother,grand-daughter, niece or grandmother of a MasterMason.

An interesting variation on Freemasonry is the Orderof Weavers, a women’s group that has Masonic links but,instead of basing its moral and philosophical lessons andrituals on symbols drawn from Stonemasonry, makes useof ideas and images from the practice of weaving.

The Golden Dawn

Freemasonry, along with Rosicrucian thought and theinfluence of the Theosophical Society, was to play animportant role in the emergence of the magical orderknown as the Golden Dawn. Founded in 1887, theorder was secretive in nature and consisted of both maleand female members. The order began with threefounding members, William Wynn Westcott, SamuelLiddell MacGregor and Dr William Robert Woodman.All three were Freemasons and were also linked to theMasonic-style group Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, orthe SRIA. As is the case with Freemasonry, the GoldenDawn was organised around a system of degrees ofascending initiation. Within the order of the GoldenDawn there were 14 different degrees. The order wasstrongly influenced by Hermetic thought and itsmembers were instructed in such subjects as alchemyand the Kabbalistic tradition.


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The members of the Golden Dawn believed that theyconstituted an elite and developed an elaborate systemof personal development, reflected in the fact that theirtraining featured so many degrees of initiation. WhilstFreemasonry was a movement that was well knownwithin its respective societies (or, some might argue, atleast maintained a public image that was widely recog-nised within those societies), knowledge of the existenceof the order of the Golden Dawn was limited. Its mostfamous members included Aleister Crowley, WB Yeatsand Dion Fortune.

The Holocaust

It has been estimated that as many as 80,000 to 200,000Freemasons were killed by the Nazi regime during theSecond World War. In his autobiography Mein KampfHitler declared that Freemasonry had ‘succumbed’ tothe Jews. He argued further that Freemasonry repre-sented an ‘excellent instrument’ for the Jews to manip-ulate and shape society. For Hitler the ‘general pacifistparalysis of the national instinct of self-preservation’ ofGermany following the First World War was directlyattributable to Freemasonry.

It is also a little known fact that the famous Americanindustrialist, Henry Ford, best known for the produc-tion of automobiles, was strongly anti-Semitic and alsoviewed the Freemasons as being part of a Jewishconspiracy to control the United States of America. Ford


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gave his own personal stamp of approval to a 1922edition of an anti-Semitic piece of propaganda called TheProtocols of the Elders of Zion by writing an introduction toit. He also aired his prejudices in the DearbornIndependent, his own weekly journal. He used it as a plat-form to publish a long series of splenetic, paranoidoutbursts against Jewish people and their influence inAmerica. Whilst the titles of Ford’s diatribes, rangingfrom ‘Jewish Gamblers Corrupt American Baseball’ to‘Jewish Jazz Becomes our National Music’, may haveseemed almost comically hysterical, their content wasunrelentingly sinister and filled with hate.

Such was the scale of the obsessive outpourings fromhis journal on the subject that he finally had the articlescompiled into book form with the repugnant title of TheInternational Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. The bookbecame a bestseller both in America and abroad. Itcomes as little surprise to discover that it was greetedwith great personal enthusiasm by Adolf Hitler himself.Such was Hitler’s regard for Henry Ford that he is saidto have kept a picture of him in his own office. Fordwould argue that the role of the Freemasons in Americawas in fact to shift attention away from the labyrinthineanti-American plots of the Jews. Ford was later topublicly apologise for his anti-Semitic outpouringsalthough it seems unlikely he felt any genuine regretabout them.


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The P2 Scandal

Perhaps the greatest scandal relating to Freemasonry inthe twentieth century centred on the Italian Masoniclodge P2 and the murder of Roberto Calvi. Formed in1895 under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy,P2 became increasingly corrupt, particularly underGrand Master Licio Gelli. P2 was actually dissolved as aMasonic lodge in Italy and Gelli thrown out ofFreemasonry in 1976. However, he continued to operatethe P2 lodge, largely as a front for criminal dealings. P2became front-page news when, in 1982, the president ofBanco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi, was murdered andfound hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London. Hehad disappeared shortly beforehand just as he had beenabout to give evidence in court regarding the involve-ment of P2 with Banco Ambrosiano and the Vatican.Originally his death was described as suicide but subse-quent investigations established that he had, in fact, beenmurdered.

Conspiracy Theories

In his book Jack the Ripper:The Final Solution the authorStephen Knight put forward the argument that the infa-mous serial killer, who was never caught, had been aFreemason.The murder victims were all women and thekiller attacked them in a particularly vicious and savageway.Their throats were slit and their abdominal regions


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cut open. The infamous spate of shocking and grislymurders that took place in London’s East End began on31 August 1888 when the body of a prostitute calledMary Ann Nichols was discovered in Whitechapel.

A second murdered prostitute, identified as AnnieChapman, was found in Spitalfields on 8 September. Heruterus had been cut out by her murderer and removedfrom the murder scene. At this point the police were ata loss to identify the killer and the investigation, whichhad initially been conducted at a local level by DetectiveInspector Edmund Reid, was passed on to a larger team.Three Detective Inspectors, James McWilliam, WalterAndrews and Frederick Abberline led the team. On 29September the authorities investigating the murdersreceived a letter, claiming to have been written by theindividual responsible for the killings, who gave hisname as ‘Jack the Ripper’.

By the following day, there was a third murderedvictim, a woman called Elizabeth Stride. In fact, thekiller had struck twice on 30 September as the body ofCatherine Eddowes was also found, this time in Aldgate.As with the killing of Annie Chapman, the killer hadonce again removed the victim’s uterus and also her leftkidney. Following the murder of Catherine Eddowes, afragment of her apron was discovered in a doorway inWhitechapel. A mysterious message had been writtenon the wall in chalk close to where the bloodied scrap ofapron was found. The strange message said: ‘The Juwesare The men that Will not be Blamed for nothing.’


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This vital piece of evidence was scrubbed out on theorders of Sir Charles Warren who was at that time thehead of the Metropolitan Police. His justification forhaving the message removed was that, having translatedthe word ‘Juwes’ as simply being a misspelling of ‘Jews’,he was concerned that it might provoke anti-Semiticfeeling and lead to violence. A second letter was sent tothe police after the murders of Elizabeth Stride andCatherine Eddowes, claiming responsibility for thedeaths of the two women, and once again it was signed‘Jack the Ripper’.

On 5 October 1888, the severely mutilated body ofMary Kelley was found in Spitalfields. She had beenkilled in bed in a boarding house in which she wasstaying. As the investigation escalated, an organisationcalled the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee wasformed to try to help police apprehend the killer. On 16October, another letter was sent to the authorities,purporting to be from the killer who was still at large.This time it was accompanied by a cardboard box thatheld the gruesome contents of half a human kidney.Thewriter claimed that he had consumed the other half ofthe kidney and, infamously, his letter was signed ‘fromhell’.

The contention of Stephen Knight and a number ofother writers is that Sir Charles Warren, who washimself an important figure within Freemasonry,ordered that the strange message regarding the ‘Juwes’be removed because he was seeking to protect a brother


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Freemason. The graphic novel From Hell by Alan Mooreand the subsequent film adaptation starring JohnnyDepp also see the murders as being the work of aFreemason. Knight argued that what many people hadregarded as an incorrect spelling of the word Jews asJuwes was in fact a direct reference to Masonicmythology. In the story of the murder of Hiram Abiff,architect of the Temple of Solomon, his killers arenamed as the three apprentices seeking the knowledgeof a Master Mason who are called Jubela, Jubelo andJubelum. In Masonic lore, they are, as we have seen,known collectively as the ‘Juwes’, a term pronouncednot as ‘Jews’ but as ‘Joo-ees’.

Stephen Knight developed a radically new theoryabout the Ripper murders, linking them to Freemasonryafter obtaining information from Joseph Sickert. JosephSickert was the son of the artist Walter Sickert andclaimed that his father had revealed to him hithertounknown knowledge concerning the killings. From thisinformation Knight reconstructed a new account of theRipper murders. He claimed that the grandson of QueenVictoria, Prince Albert, had a relationship with aCatholic commoner called Annie Crook whom he madepregnant and subsequently married. The marriage andthe child were kept secret because it was believed thatsuch a scandal could have threatened the stability of thecountry. It was believed that it could have such an impactthat the royal family and the government could be over-thrown.


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However, Knight claimed that the girl became a pros-titute and revealed her secret to several other prosti-tutes. He claims they planned to reveal the secretmarriage and child and that in desperation those inpower turned to the Queen’s doctor, a man named SirWilliam Gull, for help. Knight claims that Gull drew upa plan to kill the women. He was himself a Freemasonand used his position to kill the prostitutes, relying onthe aid of fellow Masons to protect him. Masons areobligated to help one another wherever possible shouldthey find their brethren in difficulties.The nature of thekillings is supposed to have reflected Masonic rituals.

However, the credibility of the story is underminedby reports that Joseph Sickert later admitted that thestory had been a fiction. Critics of the theory have alsoargued that it seems unlikely that Gull would have beenphysically capable of carrying out the killings. Aged 72,the doctor is known to have already experienced a heartattack. The identity of Jack the Ripper has never beenunequivocally established and some have argued that thisstems largely from the fact that police methods of thetime were inadequate in dealing with serial killings ofthis nature.

The death of the Austrian composer WolfgangAmadeus Mozart in mysterious circumstances has alsoled to conspiracy theories that implicate theFreemasons. Mozart was himself a Freemason and wasinitiated into the lodge Zur Wahrent Eintrach or ‘LodgeBeneficence’ in 1785. The plot of his opera Die


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Zauberflote, ‘The Magic Flute’, features Masonic themesand subject matter. His librettist Johan EmmanuelSchikaneder was also a Mason and suggested that Mozartproduce the opera as a piece of pro-Masonic propagandato celebrate the coronation in 1791 of the brother ofMarie Antoinette, Leopold II, as Austrian Emperor.Theevents of the French and American Revolution had badlytarnished the image of Freemasonry and Schikanederhoped to influence the new ruler by showing the craft ina positive light.

When Mozart died on 5 December 1791, it wasrumoured that he had been poisoned. No autopsy wascarried out on his body and theories soon began tocirculate about the nature of his death and the possiblereasons behind it. One version of events claimed thatMozart had been murdered for revealing Masonicsecrets in The Magic Flute or that he had been a sacrificeto so-called Masonic deities. However, in a posthumousinvestigation held into the circumstances of his death in2000, a group of physicians concluded that thecomposer had, in fact, died as a result of rheumaticfever. Rumours of a Masonic murder were effectivelyscotched.

More recently, Freemasonry has featured strongly ina variety of conspiracy theories concerning modernAmerican society. It has been argued that the influenceof Freemasonry can be found amongst some of the mostvisible symbols of the United States of America.Attention has focused on the Great Seal of the United


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States that commonly appears in official contexts and ongovernment documents. On the reverse side of theGreat Seal a thirteen-stepped pyramid, surmounted bythe ‘Eye of Providence’, is depicted. Within Masonicsymbolism, the floating, disembodied eye is representa-tive of God who, as we have seen, is often referred to asthe ‘Great Architect’. The eye on the Great Seal issurrounded by a ‘glory’, rays of light that emanateoutwards.The symbol of the Eye was first incorporatedas part of the Great Seal in 1782 and is grouped with thewords ‘Annuit Coeptis’ that can be interpreted as sayingAmerica is favoured or supported by God.

At the base of the pyramid appears the words ‘NovusOrdo Seclorum’ declaring that America is a ‘NewSecular Order’, formed like a pyramid of a broad base ofpeople surmounted and watched over by the Eye ofProvidence. The obverse side of the Great Seal alsofeatures symbolism that can be found in Freemasonry. A‘glory’ that once again symbolises God surrounds the 13stars of the United States. Beneath the Glory is a pictureof an eagle that is said to represent the spirit and carriesthe Arrows of War alongside the Laurel Wreath thatsignifies peace. The Great Seal can be found on theAmerican one dollar bill. Some have claimed that it wasPresident Franklin D Roosevelt, himself a Freemason,who put forward the idea in 1935 that the Great Sealappear on the one dollar bill.

It has also been argued that Freemasonry played animportant role in shaping the structure and develop-


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ment of Mormonism. The founder of the Church ofLatter Day Saints, Joseph Smith Jr, was initiated as aFreemason on 15 March 1842. Many have pointed tosignificant similarities between the ordinances of theMormon priesthood and the rituals of Freemasonry,including such Masonic behaviour as the use of partic-ular hand-grips and the swearing of oaths. Interest hasalso focussed on the symbolism found in the Salt LakeCity Temple which many argue derives from the worldof Freemasonry. The all-seeing eye and the use of thefive-pointed star are examples of images and ideas thatcan be found in Masonic symbolism.

In fact, the architecture of the temples of The Churchof Latter Day Saints, like Masonic lodges, contains manyreferences and influences from the Biblical descriptionsof the legendary Temple of Solomon. Every Mormontemple currently in use incorporates a baptismal fontthat is designed after the manner of the Brazen Sea thatis described in 1 Kings. The fonts within Mormontemples are upheld by 12 figurines of oxen. Manyimportant leaders within the Church of Latter DaySaints were also Freemasons, including Brigham Young,the second president of Mormonism, and his father andbrothers.

It has been argued that Smith’s connection to Free-masonry is borne out by the circumstances surroundinghis death. He was killed in 1844 and it is said that, justbefore he was shot, he raised both hands in the air andcried out ‘The Lord and my God’. Some have speculated


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that this was not simply a final appeal to God for help butwas, in fact, a phrase taken from Masonry, one usedwhen a Mason is appealing to any other Masons whomight be present for their help in a time of danger.

Skull and Bones

Recently there has been considerable speculation aboutthe nature of the American Masonic-style ‘secretsociety’ known as the Order of Skull and Bones. TheOrder is based at Yale University in Connecticut and wasfounded in 1832 by Alphonso Taft and WilliamHuntington Russell. Yale University has a number ofsimilar student societies such as Wolf’s Head and Scrolland Key. In the past the names of newly createdmembers of these groups were made available throughlocal press and they are now made known via the collegenewspaper.

Members of the Order of Skull and Bones are drawnfrom college undergraduates in a process known asbeing ‘tapped’. Members of Skull and Bones are knownas ‘Bonesmen’ and the society was only open to malestudents until 1992 when it was agreed that womencould be admitted to the order. Members of the orderhold meetings in what is known as the ‘Bones Tomb’ and,in the past, they have included individuals who went onto become presidents of the United States of America.Alleged details of the activities of the Order of Skull andBones have emerged in a book called Secrets of the Tomb by


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the author Alexandra Robbins. It is said that members ofthe group refer to themselves as ‘Knights’ whilst non-members are termed ‘Barbarians’. It has also beenclaimed that Bonesmen hold special society meals in theTomb that involve the use of a silver dinner service thatpreviously belonged to the Italian dictator BenitoMussolini. Many influential figures in American society,including George W Bush Senior, have belonged to theSkull and Bones society. In 2004, it emerged that thetwo Presidential Nominees, George W Bush Junior andJohn Kerry, had both been Bonesmen.

In recent years attempts have been made in Britain toforce members of fraternal societies who occupy posi-tions of public office to declare their membership ofsuch groups and bodies. Tony Blair’s Labour govern-ment, prompted by high-profile cases of Masonsinvolved in illegal activities, adopted this strategy duringtheir initial term in office at the end of the 1990s andinto the millennium. However, this was disputed underEuropean Human Rights Legislation. As a result, thegovernment was forced to limit its policy. In 1999 thePolice Service introduced a system whereby Freemasonswho serve within the force can voluntarily make theirmembership public. There is currently no definitivelisting available of individuals who are members ofFreemasonic organisations.

The fears and concerns that secret societies like theFreemasons continue to provoke in the modern era isperhaps best demonstrated by the ways in which such


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groups are depicted in popular culture. Fascination withesoteric groups which hold secret knowledge, hiddenfrom the general public, that provides them with analternative view of history informs the best-sellingworks of the popular novelist Dan Brown. In his novelAngel and Demons the influence of the Masonic-styleIlluminati has persisted to the present day as they seekrevenge against the Roman Catholic Church. Famously,Brown precedes the events of The Da Vinci Code with thestatement that the Priory of Sion is a real Europeansecret society founded in 1099 and still in existencetoday and that its members are the guardians of the truenature of the Holy Grail.

Using an underlying theory that closely matches thatof the best-selling Holy Blood, Holy Grail by authorsMichael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln,Brown’s novel has a plot in which it emerges that theGrail is a metaphor for a holy blood line descended fromJesus Christ who supposedly married Mary Magdaleneand had children with her. The powerful revelation ofthis long-kept secret, suppressed but kept alive by thePriory of Sion, threatens to topple the power of theCatholic Church. It may be a worrying thought that suchparanoia and intrigue can become focussed on groupslike the Freemasons because, as we have seen, it can beargued that conspiracy theories believed by such figuresas Henry Ford led ultimately to the mass persecution ofMasons under Hitler’s Nazi regime. A more benevolentview of Freemasonry can be found in the 2004 film


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National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cage, although onceagain they are portrayed as privy to a complex, hiddenintrigue that has been concealed for centuries.The moremundane reality facing Freemasonry today is that itspopularity is in decline, as fewer and fewer young peoplebecome members. The fading interest in joining thefraternity is in stark contrast to what appears to be agrowing public obsession with the myths and legendsattached to Freemasonry. In the public imagination atleast, it seems likely that Freemasons will continue to beviewed as the ‘men who control the world’.


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Bibliography

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1995

Baigent, Michael, Leigh, Richard and Lincoln, Henry,The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail, London: ArrowBooks, 1982

Baigent, Michael and Leigh, Richard, The Temple and theLodge, London: Arrow Books, 1998

Brighton, Simon, In Search of the Knights Templar, London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006

Brown, Dan, The Da Vinci Code, London: Bantam Press,2004

Cooper, D Jason, Mithras: Mysteries and InitiationRediscovered, Newburyport, Mass: Samuel Weiser Inc,1996

Dedopulos, Tim, The Brotherhood, London: CarltonBooks, 2006

Hamill, John, The Craft: A History of English Freemasonry,London: Crucible, 1986

Harwood, Jeremy, The Freemasons, London: HermesHouse, 2006

Jeffers, H Paul, Freemasons: Inside the World’s Oldest Secret

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Society, New York: Citadel Press, 2005Johnstone, Michael, The Freemasons:The Illustrated Book of

an Ancient Brotherhood, London: Arcturus, 2005Knight, Christopher and Lomas, Robert, The Hiram Key,

London: Arrow Books, 1997Knight, Christopher and Lomas, Robert, Turning the

Hiram Key, London: Lewis Masonic, 2005Lomas, Robert, The Secrets of Freemasonry: Revealing the

Suppressed Tradition, London: Robinson, 2006MacNulty,W Kirk, Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets,

Significance, London:Thames & Hudson, 2006MacNulty, W Kirk, Freemasonry: A Journey Through Ritual

and Symbol, London:Thames & Hudson, 1994Martin, Sean, The Knights Templar, London: Pocket

Essentials, 2004Mavromataki, Maria, Greek Mythology and Religion,

Athens: Haitalis, 1997Nicholson, Helen, The Knights Hospitaller, Woodbridge,

Suffolk: Boydell, 2001Porter, Lindsay, Who Are The Illuminati?, London: Collins

& Brown, 2005Read, Piers Paul, The Templars, London: Phoenix Press,

2001


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Web Pages

www.internet.lodge.org.ukwww.ugle.co.ukwww.irish-freemasons.orgwww.grandlodgescotland.comwww.freemasonrywatch.org

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Abiff, Hiram, 24, 26, 33, 34, 35, 36,37, 41, 45, 46, 48, 49, 102, 121,122, 143

Abraham, 44Alchemy, 51, 53, 95, 98, 99, 137 Aldrin, Buzz, 10Alexander the Great, 50, 53America, 14, 88, 108, 111, 112, 115,

117, 118, 119, 120, 127, 129,131, 136, 138, 139, 145, 146, 148

American Revolution, 114, 145American society, 9, 131, 145, 149Ancients, the, 104Anderson, James, 101, 102, 103, 108,

109Andreae, Johannes Valentin, 96, 98Angels and Demons, 9arithmetic, 32Ark of the Covenant, 43, 44, 49, 91arts, the, 40, 71Ashmole, Elias, 95, 99astrology, 51, 53, 95astronomy, 32, 51, 71

Babylonians, 49Bacon, Francis, 99Baigent, Michael, 87, 89, 102, 104,

116, 119, 150Baldwin II, King, 77Baphomet, 83, 84Bathsheba, 43Battle of Bannockburn, 87

Bernard of Clairvaux, St, 80Blair,Tony, 115, 149Blue Lodge Freemasonry, 12, 31, 119Board of General Purposes, 11Boaz, 47, 48Bonaparte, Napoleon, 108Bonesmen, 148, 149Boniface VIII, Pope, 82Boston Tea Party, 113Brant, Joseph, 114Brotherhood, 11, 20, 23, 31, 78, 96,

101, 109, 111, 115, 130, 134Brotherly Love, 14, 31Brown, Dan, 9, 89, 150Bush Junior, George W, 149

Caesar, Julius, 70, 71Calvi, Roberto, 140Casaubon, Isaac, 52, 53Celeus, King, 60, 61Charity Steward, 18Christianity, 20, 54, 58, 64, 65, 67,

68, 97, 129Churchill, Sir Winston, 10, 133Clement V, Pope, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85,

86, 105, 106Conspiracy Theories, 140, 144, 145,

150Constitutions, Book of, 39, 101,

103Cooke manuscript, 93Corpus Hermeticum, 52

• 157 •

Index

Craft Masonry, 13‘Craft’, the, 7, 8, 12, 75, 100, 106,

108, 111, 119, 134Croix, Rose, 54, 98, 123, 124Cryptic Masonry, 128

Da Vinci Code,The, 9, 89, 150da Vinci, Leonardo, 90David, King, 43, 44Declaration of Independence, 115Demeter, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64Demophon, 61Dionysus, 57, 58, 59Druids, 70, 71, 72

Eleusinian Mysteries, 59, 61, 62, 64,65

Eleusis, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63Emerald Tablet, 53England, 94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102,

103, 105, 106, 109, 112, 114,118, 119

Entered Apprentice, 13, 20, 21, 24,26, 29, 39, 119

Essenes, 72, 73Etam, 48Eucharist, 33, 78Euclid, 40, 75

Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis, 96Fellowcraft, 13, 20, 26, 29, 30, 32,

33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 119first degree, 13, 20, 21, 23, 29, 30Ford, Henry, 138, 139, 150France, 79, 81, 83, 84, 87, 91, 102,

104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109,114, 135

Franklin, Benjamin, 9, 112, 114, 115,116

French Revolution, 9, 14, 104,107

From Hell, 143

Garden of Eden, 16Gelli, Licio, 140Genesis, 16geometry, 32, 51, 75Gnosticism, 65, 66, 91Golden Dawn, 137, 138Gospel of Thomas, 66, 67Grand Lodge, 9, 13, 15, 17, 19, 88,

100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105,106, 108, 109, 112, 116, 118,119,135, 136

Grand Lodge of England, 9, 13, 100,101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108,112, 118, 136

Grand Lodge of France, 105, 106,108

Grand Lodge of Ireland, 13, 135Grand Lodge of Scotland, 13, 88Great Lights, 22Great Seal, 145, 146Green Man, 88

Hades, 60, 61, 62Hall, Prince, 117, 118, 119Haram, 48Hebrews, 49Hermes Trismegistus, 50, 51, 52, 53Hermeticism, 52Hiram Key,The, 48, 65, 66, 73, 77Hiram, King of Tyre, 26, 44, 45, 46,

48Hiram, Grand Master, 26, 33, 34, 35,

36, 37, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49Hitler, Adolf, 10, 138, 139, 150Holocaust, the, 138Holy Bible, the, 22, 23, 43, 45, 46,

47, 106Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, The, 9,

89, 150Holy Grail, 9, 90, 91, 150Holy Land, 79, 80, 81, 84, 90, 96,

97, 105

I N D E X

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Holy Tabernacle, 49Hospitallers, 85Hugues de Payen, 79Human Duty, the, 136

Illuminati, 109, 110, 150Immediate Past Master, 18Immovable Jewels, 25, 26Inner Guard, 15, 16Invisible College, 99, 100Islam, 20, 54Israel, 44, 45, 49

Jachin, 47, 48Jack the Ripper, 9, 141, 142, 143,

144Jack the Ripper:The Final Solution, 140Jacob’s Ladder, 31Jacques de Molay, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86James VI, King, 94Jerusalem, 36, 37, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50,

77, 79, 89, 90, 123, 126Jesus Christ, 36, 66, 67, 83, 84, 90,

97, 150Jews, 82, 123, 138, 139, 142, 143Jogand-Poges, Gabriel/Taxil, Lee,

133, 134Jubela, 37, 46, 143Jubelo, 37, 46, 143Jubelum, 37, 46, 143Junior Deacon, 15, 16Junior Steward, 17Junior Warden, 15, 16, 17, 26

Kadosh Kadoshim, 49Knight, Christopher, 48, 65, 66, 73,

77, 88, 89Knight, Stephen, 140, 142, 143, 144Knights Hospitaller, 80, 81Knights Templar, 9, 77, 78, 79, 80,

81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89,90, 91, 128, 129

Leigh, Richard, 87, 89, 102, 104,116, 119, 150

Level, the, 30Libres Penseurs, 135Lincoln, Henry, 89, 150logic, 32Lomas, Robert, 48, 65, 66, 73, 77,

88, 89, 91Lombards, 82

Master Mason, 8, 13, 21, 22, 26, 29,33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 103,119, 127, 128, 129, 136, 143

mathematics, 32Mein Kampf, 10, 138Minutes of the Aitchisons, 94Mithraism, 67, 68, 69Morgan,William, 129, 130, 131Mormonism, 147Mount Moriah, 44Movable Jewels, 26Mozart, 10, 144, 145music, 32, 56Mystery Cults, 9, 57, 59

Nag Hammadi, 65, 66Nazis, 10Nebuchadnezzar, King, 49Newton, Sir Isaac, 10, 90, 99

Order of Poor Knights, 79Order of Skull and Bones, 148, 149

P2, 10, 140Persephone, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64Pharisees, 72, 73Philip IV, King, 81, 82, 86Pillar of Cloud, 32Pillar of Fire, 32Plantard, Pierre, 91, 92Plumb Line, the, 26, 30Priory of Sion, 9, 89, 90, 91, 92, 150

I N D E X

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Protocols of the Elders of Zion,The, 139Pythagoras, 40, 50, 55, 56

rhetoric, 32Rite of Destitution, 21Road to Eleusis,The, 63rod of Aaron, 43Romans, 50Rosenkreuz, Christian, 96, 97Rosicrucianism, 54, 55, 96, 97, 98,

99, 111, 124, 137Rosslyn Chapel, 86, 87, 88Royal Arch Masonry, 127, 128

Sacred Way, 62, 63Sadducees, 72, 73science, 40, 71, 98, 99Scotland, 87, 94, 102, 103, 105sea of bronze, 48second degree, 13, 20, 29, 30, 31, 32Second World War, 10, 138Secret Lovers of Pope Pius IX,The, 133Secret Revelations of French Masonry,The,

134secret society, 7, 8, 12, 55, 59, 89,

98, 108, 110, 148, 150Secret Teachings of All Ages,The, 55Secretary, 18, 121Senior Deacon, 15, 16Senior Steward, 17, 33Senior Warden, 15, 17, 26Sickert, Joseph, 143, 144Skene, John, 112Smith, Joseph, 147Solomon Key,The, 9Solomon, King, 26, 31, 32, 33, 36,

37, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 102,121, 122, 128

Square, the, 22, 23, 26, 30Supreme Being, 12, 20, 38, 109, 110

Telesterium, 64Temple and the Lodge,The, 87, 102,

116Temple Mount, 90Temple of Solomon, 9, 13, 24, 30,

32, 33, 34, 43, 45, 47, 49, 50, 77,79, 89, 97, 102, 121, 122, 123,125, 143, 147

Ten Commandments, 43Theodosius I, 64Theurgy, 53, 54third degree, 13, 21, 22, 33, 39, 66,

103, 119Three Degrees, 20Treasurer, 18Truth, 14, 31Tyler, the, 15, 16, 39

Unam Sanctum, 82Underworld, 60, 61, 62

Volume of the Sacred Law, 18

Wailing Wall, 50, 89Washington, George, 9, 114, 115,

116, 117Weishaupt, Adam, 109Worshipful Master, 12, 15, 16, 17,

18, 22, 25, 26, 32, 33, 34, 39,40

Wren, Christopher, 95, 99

York Rite, 127, 128

Zeus, 60, 61

I N D E X

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REVELATION

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