by Colin Wilson
It seems that in Scotland and in England an organisation that called itself the Freemasons came into being around 1640. The Catholic Church came to detest it, but in the early days – particularly in Scotland – there seemed to have been as many Catholics as Protestants in the organisation. Freemasonry was basically about the brotherhood of man. In War and Peace the hero, Peter Bezukhov, feels spiritually and emotionally drained, until he meets a Freemason who renews his faith in life. The Mason tells him: ‘No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone, with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which will be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God.’ He goes on to explain that the chief object of the order is the ‘handing down of a great mystery, which has come down from the remotest ages’. Peter becomes a Mason by going through incredibly strange and complicated rituals that involve a symbolic death and rebirth, and he ends up feeling completely refreshed, ‘as if he had come back from a long journey’. Mozart, of course, underwent the same rituals, and put them into The Magic Flute.
The implication of all this is that Freemasonry was a secret society whose purpose was to produce in its members the sense of a great religious conversion. It can be seen that it involves a certain paradox. Andrae wrote the Rosicrucian pamphlets as a kind of ‘hoax’ (as he himself later put it), yet he also intended to cause a spiritual revolution. Nietzsche said, ‘The great man is the play actor of his own ideals.’ Andrae hoped to create greatness by creating high ideals. Nevertheless, a cynic might say that Freemasonry was the unintended outcome of a hoax.
Knight and Lomas had a far more interesting and exciting view of Freemasonry. Modern Freemasons are inclined to believe that the curious ceremony of initiation – with a noose round the neck, a slipper on one foot and the other trouser-leg rolled up to the knee – and the incomprehensible questions and answers are pure invention. As Lomas and Knight studied the ceremonies involved in the thirty-three degrees of Masonry, they increasingly began to feel that its roots lie in the remote past – and not merely two or three centuries ago, but a thousand years or more. As their research project progressed, they quickly concluded that Freemasonry can trace its origins at least to the Knights Templar, and that the most interesting mystery is precisely what those original nine knights discovered below the Temple in Jerusalem.
Although the Templars were on the surface an organisation created by a few Crusaders in the hope of achieving power and influence, behind them lies a strong sense of particular knowledge, of possession of some secret tradition. Did Philip the Fair really destroy them simply because he wanted their wealth? Or did this motive happen to fit in with some other motive shared by the Church?
Again, if the Church persecuted the Templars simply because Philip persuaded Pope Clement V to help him seize their wealth, why did its hostility persist for so long? After all, Philip had been regarded as an enemy of the Church (which excommunicated him) and that feeling must have been strengthened by his later demand that its centre of power should be moved from Rome to Avignon. The Templars, in fact, had been servants of the Pope. After Philip’s death, you might expect a back-swing of sympathy for them, so why did the Church genuinely seem to detest them and to want to stamp them out like plague rats?
Lomas and Knight set out to try and uncover the origin of Freemasonry and began by rejecting the stonemason theory, on the grounds that there were no stonemasons’ guilds in England. They mention the interesting fact that Solomon’s Temple was not, as most of us naturally assume, some huge building covering many acres, but smaller than Solomon’s harem, about the size of an ordinary church, say the size of Rosslyn Chapel. Turning their attention to the Templars, they conclude – as we did in the last chapter – that Hugh de Payens and his knights spent years excavating beneath the remains of the Temple, searching for something specific, something whose presence they suspected in advance.
For what? Lomas and Knight believe the knights found a treasury of ancient scrolls that had been deposited there before the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD 70. The scrolls were the scriptures and secret rituals of a Jewish religious community called the Essenes. When the Jewish revolt against the Romans broke out in AD 66, their books were hidden away in the Temple and in caves by the Dead Sea. The latter were discovered by an Arab shepherd in 1947, who took them home with him, and fortunately decided against using them as fire-lighters. They became famous worldwide as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Lomas and Knight believe that the scrolls hidden in the Temple were even more important. Lomas speculates: ‘They knew that they had found something of immense significance that was probably very holy, so they decided to get them translated… The man with the solution was Geoffrey de St Omer, the second in charge to Huges de Payen…’ Geoffrey took some of the scrolls back to an old priest called Lambert, now known as Lambert of St Omer. ‘Today, one of the most famous of all Lambert of St Omer’s works is his hasty copy of a drawing that depicts the Heavenly Jerusalem.’
This drawing, made around 1120, shows the basic symbols of Freemasonry five centuries before Freemasonry is supposed to have been founded. Moreover, the symbolism also leaves Lomas and Knight in no doubt that the drawing originated in the Temple, and that it was one of the things found by the Templars.
The notion of a Heavenly Jerusalem (or New Jerusalem), they point out, was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, based on Ezekiel’s vision. They conclude: ‘With the discovery of the Heavenly Jerusalem Scroll… we were now certain that the Templars did find the secrets of their Order inscribed upon the scrolls buried by the Nasoreans (or Essenes of Qumran…)’
Unlike Graham Hancock, Lomas and Knight do not suggest that the scrolls contain the secret of Gothic architecture, but they do argue that the tremendous explosion of cathedral building all over Europe, and particularly in France (80 cathedrals and 500 abbeys), was the direct result of that vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem the Templars brought back with them from the remains of Solomon’s Temple.
Lomas and Knight researched Palestine in the time of Jesus, and their conclusions make it clear why the Templars were later persecuted as heretics. Jesus was a member of the sect known as the Essenes, whose ‘lost scriptures’ we know as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The original Essenes were orthodox Jews who disagreed with the teachings of the priests in control of the Temple. In protest they withdrew to Qumran where they lived strictly ascetic lives. Their leader was Jesus’s younger brother James, also known as the ‘Teacher of Righteousness.’
Both Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist were regarded by the Essenes as messiahs who were expected to lead the people in revolt against the Romans and establish the Kingdom of God. After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus became more radical, and spent the period of his year of ministry gathering followers. Convinced that the time for action had finally come, and that God would support the revolt, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an ass, fulfilling the prophecy of Zachariah that the king would arrive on a donkey. He caused a riot in the Temple by attacking the money-lenders, then withdrew to the nearby village of Bethany to await the revolt that he believed would soon follow.
But there was to be no uprising, at least not yet. The Romans arrested Jesus and his brother James. Lomas and Knight believe that James was actually the character known as Barabbas (which is not a proper name, but a title meaning ‘son of the father’). James was released; Jesus was crucified.
Afterwards, when the body of Jesus disappeared from his tomb, it gave rise to the story that Jesus had risen from the dead. The Essenes believed that this was a sign of the fulfilment of Jesus’s mission as the Messiah. So Christianity was born.
The new religion was further transformed with the coming of Paul who, around AD 60, had a vision on the road to Damascus, and as a result became the chief exponent of a new kind of Christianity. It is important to note, Lomas and Knight point out, that this Damascus would not have been the Damascus in Syria, where Paul
would have had no authority, but rather Qumran, which was also known as Damascus.
James and his followers must have been incredulous when their chief persecutor arrived at Qumran, declared himself a Christian, and began asking questions about James’s brother Jesus. But their relief would later turn to rage when they heard the kind of ‘Christianity’ Paul was preaching – that Jesus had died on the cross as a scapegoat for the sins of mankind, and that anyone could become free of original sin by accepting
Jesus as the Son of God. The Qumran Christians began to refer to Paul as ‘the spouter of lies’.
By a historical accident, it was Paul’s version of Christianity that survived. The reason for the triumph of Christianity was entirely political. In AD 66 there was another Jewish revolt, prompted partly by the murder of James, who was thrown from the top of the Temple by the priests. It was at that point, Lomas and Knight believe, that the Qumranians decided to hide their scriptures until peace was restored. The less important ones were hidden in the Dead Sea caves. The more important ones were hidden in the Temple, where the Templars would find them eleven centuries later.
The revolt failed. The Roman general Vespasian stamped it out with incredible brutality, also destroying most of the ‘Christians’. But by that time, Paul was abroad, preaching his own version of Christianity to the gentiles. And this, ironically, was the version that went on to conquer the world.
By AD 300 the Roman empire was falling to pieces, overstretched by its conquests and its need for huge armies. The emperor Constantine had an inspiration. About one in ten of his subjects were Christians. If he made Christianity the religion of the Roman empire, he would have a supporter in every town and village, and a fellow emperor in every city large enough to have a bishop. (Constantine himself never became a Christian – he remained a worshipper of the sun god Sol Invictus.)
His solution worked, and Christianity held together the Roman empire for another two centuries. But by now the Christian Church had taken over the reins of power. Lomas and Knight quote Pope Leo X, a contemporary of Henry VIII, as saying: ‘It has served us well, this myth of Christ’.
And now we can see the possible religious reasons why the Church was so anxious to destroy the Templars. They were the direct descendants of the Jerusalem Church of Qumran. They knew the truth about the original Christianity of the Essenes, how this had been hijacked by St Paul, and how this new version of Christianity had become the religion of the Roman Empire.
It is, perhaps, this horrible secret that was part of the deathbed confession that Beranger Saunière passed onto his priest. If so, then it is not surprising that the priest was so deeply shocked by what he heard.
Rand believes that the sensational find beneath the Temple had little to do with Jesus. He thinks that King Philip and his puppet, Pope Clement V, tried to destroy the Templars for strictly secular reasons. The King was jealous of their power and deeply in debt to the order. He used the charge of heresy as a ploy to cancel his debts and seize the Templar gold. He was not one to worry over theological issues but rather a passionate egoist who only wanted to fan the flames of his own glory. Religion was simply a weapon he wielded like a club to strike down those who did not bow before him.
Rand believes the Templars discovered ancient maps beneath Solomon’s Temple which they used to position their important bases at locations that mirror the geography of the Yukon Pole. It seems that Rennes-le-Château is not the only site associated with the Templars and the pole of nearly 100,000 years ago. Rand explains that it wasn’t until 1127, after the original members of the order had returned to France, that Hugh de Payens began his search for new recruits for a new order. In January 1128, he acquired official recognition for the Templar Order from the Church and he became the first Grand Master. That same year de Payens visited Henry I of England, and was given a royal welcome. The following year, 1129, the first Templar site in England was founded in London on the site of what is now Holborn Underground station.6
When Rand compared London’s co-ordinates to the Yukon Pole he discovered that it was within half a degree of 30 degrees north during the Yukon Pole. This is, of course, the latitude of the Great Pyramid today. And London wasn’t the only British sacred site associated with the Templars to share this latitude. Among them were Glastonbury, Stonehenge, Bath, Avebury, Old Sarum and Tintagel.7
Tintagel is, of course, associated with King Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table and the quest for the Holy Grail. Rand noted that it is 36 degrees west of the Great Pyramid, one tenth of the distance around the globe. During the Yukon Pole, Tintagel was located at 29 degrees, 59 minutes north, precisely the latitude of the Great Pyramid today.
Moving east from Tintagel we encounter Glastonbury. John Michell writes: ‘Glastonbury has been described as Britain’s only true national shrine, the omphalos or Temple of Britain and the English Jerusalem.’8 Like Tintagel, Glastonbury was located at 30 degrees north during the Yukon Pole.
Avebury and Stonehenge are so close to each other that for the purpose of the blueprint they, along with Old Sarum, constitute a single cluster of sacred sites at 30 degrees north during the Yukon Pole. Avebury, like Tintagel, was located at 29 degrees, 59 minutes north, suggesting an ancient link between the two sites. Nigel Pennick notes: ‘Several researchers, including Keith Critchlow and John Michell, have drawn attention to another curious coincidence at Stonehenge. According to their calculations, the underlying geometry and dimensions of the henge have an exact parallel in St Mary’s Chapel at Glastonbury, which is the reputed site of the earliest Christian chapel.’9
Between 1199 and 1254 the Templars had their English headquarters at Baldock, now in Hertfordshire.10 When Rand compared this site to other sacred places he noted that its relationship to the Yukon Pole was precisely the same as a particular Asian site. Once again, as with the case of Rennes-le-Château and Nanking covered in the last chapter, there was a geodetic connection between a European sacred site and an Asian site, and in this case between the ancient city of Pyongyang in North Korea and the Templar’s English headquarters at Baldock.11
Korea has many ancient monuments that are falling into ruin.12 Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is now a busy industrial city but at one time contained pyramids. Korean history is divided into three periods or kingdoms. The earliest was associated with the gods and was called Koguryo. Sarah Milledge Nelson writes of this period:
At least two social classes existed in Koguryo from the beginning; a noble class that lived well and an underclass which may have been made up of conquered peoples. The upper class were ‘fond of constructing palatial buildings’13 lived luxuriously with clothes of embroidered silk and gold and silver ornaments, and were buried in large lavish tombs. Huge Koguryo palaces and tombs have been unearthed in both China and Korea.14
The kingdom known as Choson in Pyongyang dates to 2,333 BC, a time very close to the building of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. Korean legend tells how Prince Hwanung descended upon Mount Taebaeksan with 3,000 servants, bringing the gifts of civilisation and building a great city15
Pyongyang’s co-ordinates are 39 degrees north, 125 degrees, 47 minutes east. During the Hudson Bay Pole, Pyongyang was located at 12 degrees north (along with Babylon in the Middle East and Nikko in Japan). During the Greenland Sea Pole the city was located at 30 degrees north along with the Xi’an pyramids. And finally, and most remarkably, Pyongyang was also at 30 degrees north during the Yukon Pole. Pyongyang’s latitudes through time went from 30 degrees north to 30 degrees north to 12 degrees north. This made the North Korean capital what Rand calls a ‘geological marker’, of which there are only a few others in the world: Aguni, Byblos, Cuzco, Jericho, Nazca, Pyongyang and Xi’an. These cities were all built at the intersection of sacred latitudes. It seems that ancient surveyors of Europe, Asia and South America used their knowledge of the earth’s geological past and their ability to calculate vast distances with extreme accuracy to position geological markers that in time became sac
red sites.
Rand found other Templar sites that seemed to demonstrate knowledge of the former position of the poles. La Rochelle, the main port for the Templars in France – the place where the famous fleet was said to have disappeared – and Montségur were both located on the Tropic of Cancer during the Yukon Pole. The Templars operated out of Rhodes which had been at 10 degrees north during the Yukon Pole while Jerusalem had been 5 degrees north. The more he studied their past, the more he became convinced that the Templars had obtained maps of the world of nearly 100,000 years ago from beneath King Solomon’s Temple.
But the most startling site turned out to be a tiny chapel in Scotland south of Edinburgh: Rosslyn.
William St Clair built Rosslyn two centuries before the first Templars are recorded in England. How do we know that St Clair was a Templar? Lomas and Knight uncovered much evidence at Rosslyn, which they describe in their books The Hiram Key and The Second Messiah.16 One of the most convincing pieces of evidence is a carving they found on the wall outside Rosslyn.
It depicts a freemason ceremony, with the candidate blindfolded and with a noose round his neck. The man who holds the rope is a Templar, with the cross on his tunic, leaving no doubt that St Clair was a Templar, and that the Templars were also Freemasons. In fact, Lomas and Knight believe that the building of Rosslyn marks the first appearance of Freemasonry in the UK.
Lomas and Knight began to look into the history of the St Clairs of Rosslyn. It seemed that William de St Clair was a Norman who came over at around the same time as William the Conqueror in 1066. He was known as William the Seemly. His son Henri went off on the First Crusade in 1095, and fought alongside Hugh de Payens, marching into Jerusalem with him, while Hugh married Henri’s niece, Catherine St Clair. The connection of the St Clairs with the Templars was very close indeed.