The Master Game

by Graham Hancock

In the Holy Royal Arch rituals, however, the so-called Hiramic theme is replaced by a different focus, now concerning the reconstruction of Solomon's Temple by Zerubbabel and his followers. In the Bible Zerubbabel was the leader of the Jews exiled in Babylon who negotiated their freedom from their Babylonian oppressors and heroically led them all back to Palestine. Zerubbabel became governor of Jerusalem and ordered the reconstruction of the Temple which had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Interestingly some researchers believe that the particular obsession of the Knights Templar with Solomon's Temple might likewise have been focused, in a mystical sense, on its rebuilding rather than anything else: The Templars saw themselves as the Warrior-Masons of Zerubbabel, who persuaded King Darius to allow the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem. They inherited the belief from the Gnostics and St. John that the Temple was the mystic centre of the world, and so they secretly resisted the power and authority of the Popes and Kings of Europe. The black and white devices of their order … showed their Gnosticism and Manicheism, the belief in the continuing struggle of the devil's world against God's Intelligence. They bequeathed to the Masons the black-and-white lozenges and Indented Tassels of their Lodges.29

  The alleged dualistic or ‘Manichean’ symbolism of the ‘black and white devices’ used by the Templars (which were numerous and included their checkered battle flag, the beauséant) are not matters that we need concern ourselves with here. What interests us more is this further hint of the continuity of interests, symbolism and ritual that seems to tie the Freemasons, who are still very much a force to be reckoned with in the world, to the Knights Templar who have supposedly been extinct for 700 years.

  To return to the Royal Arch rituals of Freemasonry, there are usually three main ‘actors’ who assume the role of Zerubbabel and his two trusted colleagues, Joshua and Haggia. These protagonists re-enact the clearing of the site where once stood the ‘Temple of Solomon’ and while doing so discover a golden plate upon which are written the ‘sacred and mysterious’ names of God. These turn out to be the well-known name of Jehovah, correctly written as Jahveh (from the Latin consonants JHVH which are all that the Old Testament gives us) and also another, more mysterious name proclaimed to be Jahbulon.30 The name Jahveh is split into three syllables, Ja-h-veh, and written inside a small circle. The same is done for Jahbulon, Jah-bul-on, but in this case inscribed on the corners of a triangle drawn inside the circle.

  Thus combined, these obvious Pythagorean symbols also form the common alchemical device used to show the so-called mystical relationship of the square, the circle and the triangle. Masonic author and researcher Martin Short refers to a ‘mystical lecture’ that is sometimes given in Holy Royal Arch rituals in which it is explained that: … In times of antiquity, names of God and symbols of divinity were always enclosed in triangular figures … In the days of Pythagoras the triangle was considered the most sacred of emblems … The Egyptians termed it the Sacred Number, and so highly was it prized by the ancients, that it became amongst them an object of worship. They gave it the sacred name of God … This sacred Delta is usually enclosed with a square and circle … the word on the triangle is that Sacred and mysterious Name you have just solemnly engaged yourself never to pronounce.31

  Excursion to higher degrees (4) Much fuss about Jahbulon

  Craft Freemasonry uses epithets for God such as the ‘Grand Architect of the Universe’, the ‘Great Geometrician’ or the ‘Supreme Being’. But in the Royal Arch the adepts find it necessary actually to give God a name such as Jahbulon. We cannot be certain how long this name was used before it began to attract hostile attention in the early 1980s. In 1985, however, the Church of England and the Methodist Church urged Freemasonry to remove it from Royal Arch rituals on the grounds that they suspected it to be of pagan origins.32 Many anti-Masonic researchers within the clerical establishments were convinced that the name Jahbulon veiled three ancient deities, namely the Hebrew Jahveh or Yahweh, the Phoenician Baal or Buul, and the patron deity of the ancient Egyptian city of On (Anu, or Heliopolis, the ‘City of the Sun’) who some took to be Ra, and some Osiris.33

  The clerics protested that this sort of pagan syncretism was something ‘which Christianity cannot accept’ and that quite simply Jahbulon, whoever or whatever he was, had to go. The Freemasons retaliated by arguing that Jahbulon was not a name of God at all but merely a ‘description of God’. The clerics, however, were unimpressed and fought a relentless battle over the matter in the media – causing much nervousness in Masonic circles inhabited by people who are normally accustomed to secrecy. In July 1989 the United Grand Lodge caved in under the pressure and announced that Jahbulon would henceforth be replaced by Jahveh alone, a name for God generally regarded as acceptable by Christians. This seemed to do the trick and the media lost interest in the story.

  Not many clerics were convinced at this quick ‘conversion’ of the Masons. Jahveh, after all, was confirmed to have been associated with the first syllable of the name Jahbulon, and it seemed to some that the whole bizarre exercise merely amounted to more or less the same thing as replacing a name by its diminutive – such as ‘Kat’ for ‘Katherine’ and so forth.

  Could there possibly be some fire behind all this smoke about Masonic ‘paganism’?

  Excursion to higher degrees (5) ancient Egypt and geometry

  A 1901 aquarelle illustration made by artist R. F. Sherar of the original interior of the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland, designed by the architect Peter Henderson and located in Edinburgh, makes it immediately clear that this particular grand chapter at least was modeled on an ancient Egyptian pharaonic temple.34 A closer examination of the various illustrations on the walls uncovers scenes taken from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead depicting the god Osiris on his heavenly throne like some monarch of the Solomonic age passing divine judgment on the neophyte brought before him. There is also a very similar pseudo-Egyptian temple at the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, on the floor of which can be seen the winged-uraeus or solar-serpent, the supreme symbol of ancient Egypt. Many other Royal Arch chapters around the world are likewise designed or partly designed as ‘Egyptian’ temples, such as Freemasons’ Hall in Dublin which, in Martin Short's, words boasts two sphinxes and other sculptures ‘aping ancient Egypt.’35 Short similarly draws attention to the modern Holy Royal Arch temple at Petersham, New South Wales in Australia which has an Egyptian room with murals showing scenes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead including images of Osiris.36

  A colleague of Martin Short, the notorious anti-Masonic author Stephen Knight, had been one of the first – as early as 1981 – to take the Masonic name Jahbulon to task. In the refrain that the clergy would later echo he claimed that it was an allegory of pagan deities including the Egyptian god Osiris, the ‘Lord of On’.37 In 1987 Short reiterated Knight's view that the syllable On in Jahbulon denoted the ancient Egyptian holy city of On, i.e. Heliopolis or the ‘City of the Sun’ where had once stood the great sun-Temple of Atum-Ra, progenitor of Osiris. According to Martin Short: … if Jahbulon means anything, it means ‘God, the Lord of On’, or possibly ‘He Who is the Lord of On’. Whether that god is the sun-god Ra or Osiris, the God of the Dead, depends on which period of Egyptian history takes your fancy.38

  Naturally most modern Freemasons vehemently deny all this, arguing that the ancient images and deities found in Masonic rituals are only used in a symbolic manner and then merely to emphasize or represent ideas that are entirely harmonious with Christianity.

  But something that is rarely discussed remains unexplained about the name Jahbulon.

  In Masonic Royal Arch iconography, the Pythagorean triangle is often shown alongside Masonic symbols such as the stonemason's block, the chisel and the mace. Now the pseudo-biblical setting in which the Royal Arch rituals unfold is derived from the so-called Old Charges, already discussed in Chapter Thirteen. The reader will recall that these Old Charges are a compilation of medieval manuscripts which provide an account of t
he ancient origins of Freemasonry. In one of these, the Beswicke-Royds Manuscript dating from the 16th century, there is a description of the so-called ‘seven liberal arts and sciences’ and the statement that all the sciences in the world are to be found in ‘geometry’.39

  Right across the whole spectrum of Masonic writings the discipline of ‘geometry’ continues to this day to be given a place of honour along with its ancient ‘fathers’ such as Euclid and, more especially, Pythagoras. Indeed Pythagoras’ famous square-root-triangle theorem pops up in many Masonic illustrations and can even be seen on the frontispiece of the 1723 Masonic Constitutions. The curious sanctity and reverence that Freemasons give to geometry is such that the letter ‘G’ – commonly seen inside the symbol of the Masonic triangle or ‘Blazing Star’ where it denotes the ‘Grand Architect of the Universe’ – also apparently stands for ‘geometry’. By the same logic, the Masonic ‘Supreme Being’ Himself is often called the ‘Great Geometrician’.

  Now the connections of Pythagoras and also of Euclid with ancient Egypt were well known to 18th and 19th century historians, who read the classics. Many classical chroniclers such as Cicero, Diogenes, Isocrates, Porphyry, Valerius, Strabo, Justinian and Clement of Alexandria, tell us that Pythagoras had long sojourned in Egypt, and Iamblichus even reports that Pythagoras stayed there for 22 years. All agree that it was in Egypt that Pythagoras learned the science of geometry from the ancient sages of Heliopolis. The Greek chronicler Isocrates even maintains that Pythagoras became a disciple of the Heliopolitan sages, and the historian Plutarch went as far as to assert that Pythagoras was initiated by the Egyptian priest Oenuphis of Heliopolis.40 This almost mystical link between Pythagoras and ancient Egypt fascinated the scholars of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and led many to believe that much of the sacred and pristine ‘science’ or ‘knowledge’ of the ancient Egyptians had been somehow brought into Western tradition encoded in Pythagorean geometry.

  In the Old Charges reference is made to a mysterious patriarch called Jabal, the ‘descendent of Lamech’,41 who is known as the ‘Founder of Geometry’ and is often called Jabal of Geometry.42 The reader will recall from Chapter Thirteen that Jabal's geometry and the other antediluvian sciences were said to have been recorded on two stone pillars ‘erected by the inhabitants of the ancient world to carry the knowledge of mankind over an impeding destruction which proved to be Noah's Flood.’43

  After the Flood, the Old Charges go on to say that ‘Hermes the Father of Wise Men’ rediscovered the two pillars ‘wherein the sciences were written and taught them forth’. We're told that the texts recording these ‘sciences’ were later taken out of Egypt by Moses during the Exodus and that in this way ‘was the worthy Craft of Masons confirmed in the Country of Jerusalem.’44 What is interesting about all this is that the Old Charges are adamant that the two stone pillars carrying this arcane knowledge were not those from Solomon's Temple, i.e. Boaz and Jachin, but much older ones somehow connected to the quintessential Egyptian sage ‘Hermes the Father of Wise Men’, i.e. Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus. A reasonable conclusion would be that these ‘pillars’ were thought to be inscribed obelisks from the great sun Temple of Heliopolis, where all the great sages of antiquity were taught the ‘seven liberal arts and sciences.’ As we have seen, in the Bible the city of Heliopolis is called On. So if the patriarch Jabal in the Old Charges was the ‘founder’ of geometry, then it is quite possible that the word Jahbulon is a cipher to denote the ‘sacred geometry’ or ‘sacred science’ of On, i.e. Heliopolis.

  From Grand Lodge to Grand Orient

  Having broached the subject of the higher degrees, and of the esoteric speculation that seems inevitably to arise from them let's now return to the more general story of Freemasonry in France in the years before the French Revolution.

  Most historians believe that Freemasonry took root in France from the Scottish lodges that we know were set up in the 17th century by the Stuart Jacobites-in-exile, and thus well before the creation of the Grand Lodge of England in London in 1717.45 This ‘Jacobite’ type of Freemasonry on the Continent was vehemently opposed by Masonic lodges later established in France under the warrant and jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge. In 1738, however, a general assembly of all lodges, both ‘Jacobite’ and ‘English’, voted that the powerful Duke of Antin, a cousin of King Louis XV, be elected as Grand Master of all Freemasonry in France.46

  After the death of the duke in 1743, the French Freemasons elected another prince of the blood royal, Louis de Bourbon-Condé, the Count of Clermont, as the new Grand Master. Among other things, the Count of Clermont was also the lieutenant-general of the king's army, abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, and a prominent member of the Académie Française.47 More importantly, the Count of Clermont was the son of the Duke of Bourbon and Mlle de Nante, the latter a natural daughter of Louis XIV and his favourite mistress, the influential Mme de Montespan. But an even more powerful royal would be found. On 24 June 1772, a year or so after the death of the Count of Clermont, the Grande Loge de France elected as its new Grand Master, the Duke of Chartres, the future Duke of Orléans, first cousin of King Louis XVI. At his election the name of the Grande Loge de France was changed to the Grand Orient de France.48 French Freemasonry under the Grand Orient quickly become very popular not only with the aristocracy but also, and perhaps more so, right across the middle classes amongst the military, academics, men of letters, the clergy and the bourgeoisie in general.

  In these early formative years of the Grand Orient another important Masonic influence was to penetrate France – an influence that had the unmistakable hallmark of the Hermetic-Egyptian ideologies that Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella had first imported a century before.

  Cagliostro and ‘Egyptian’ Freemasonry

  In the late 1770s there emerged from Italy, like a Bruno or Campanella reborn, yet another Hermetic-Egyptian reformist. He was to prove tenacious and determined and would become, in a most curious way, one of the political catalysts of the French Revolution.

  Giuseppe Balsamo, a man who is better known as the ‘Count’ of Cagliostro, was born in the Italian city of Palermo in 1743.49 Little is heard of Cagliostro until the 1760s, when we find him in Rome working as a restorer and copier of old paintings. There he married a ravishingly beautiful girl called Lorenza Feliciani, the daughter of a wealthy Roman coppersmith, and acquired some knowledge of medicine and alchemy. Along the way Cagliostro also managed to acquire a reputation of his own as a healer, an alchemist, and a very generous philanthropist.

  By 1776, the year the American Revolution began, Cagliostro and the beautiful Lorenza were in England, having travelled there via Malta and Spain. They set up home on Whitcomb Street and Cagliostro began at once to introduce himself to Masonic circles in London. In this he had no difficulty since he carried impressive Masonic letters of recommendation from a certain Luigi Aquino, a Knight of Malta and brother of Prince Francesco Aquino, the Grand Master of Freemasonry in Naples.50

  Within a year Cagliostro was raised to the rank of Master Mason at the Royal Tavern Lodge in Soho.51 A very charismatic and well-spoken person, with an added touch of glamour thrown in by the constant presence of his beautiful wife Lorenza, Cagliostro's reputation as a healer and magician brought him amazing fame. It seems that he much impressed his English friends by guessing correctly the winning numbers of the lottery. This ability, quite naturally, created a huge stir, with everyone trying to buy winning numbers from him. So persistent were these demands that the Cagliostros had to close their home to all visitors except for a few personal acquaintances.52

  An unfortunate incident involving an expensive diamond necklace that Lorenza was lured to accept from a cunning admirer in exchange for lottery numbers, was to bring charges of embezzlement against Cagliostro from the authorities in London.53 After a very embarrassing trial that lasted several months, the Cagliostros left England in late December 1777 in the hope of making a better life on the Continent. They first
went to Bavaria, staying in hostels recommended by fellow Masons, and were well received by the nobility of Leipzig. There Cagliostro is said to have encountered the French Hermetic alchemist, Antoine-Joseph Pernety.54

  Pernety was a Benedictine monk from the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. He had acquired some fame in 1766 for having founded a Masonic rite known as the Hermetic Ritual of Perfection for the so-called Illuminati of Avignon, an esoteric Masonic sect.55 Persecuted by the Jesuits, Pernety had been obliged to flee Avignon, and had spent several years in Berlin under the protection of King Frederick II. The latter was a keen patron of Masonic orders and had himself been initiated into Freemasonry in 1738. Frederick II appointed Pernety curator of the Berlin State Library and granted him membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.56

  In Berlin, Pernety practiced what he clearly believed to be Hermetic ‘Egyptian’ astral and talismanic magic. He frequently performed at séances attended by members of the German aristocracy for whom it was said he invoked the power of angels and spirits.57 During these sessions Pernety addressed his new recruits with words reminiscent of the Renaissance magi: … the science into which I am about to initiate you is the first and most ancient of sciences. It emanates from Nature, or rather it is Nature herself perfected by art and based on experience.58

  Cagliostro reaches France by way of Germany and Russia

  Germany in the 1770s was rife with exotic secret societies and Masonic orders. One of these was known as the ‘African Architects’. It had been founded in 1767 by Karl Friedrich von Köppen, an officer in the Prussian army,59 who is thought to have been behind a strange Masonic tract, the Crata Repoa, which purports to contain authentic reproductions of initiation rituals performed in the Great Pyramid by ancient Egyptian priests.60 As odd as it may seem, this peculiar ‘Egyptian’ Masonic society of African Architects received the sponsorship of Frederick II, who even had a magnificent library built for its members in the region of Silesia in south Poland.61