Chapter 8
In This Chapter
● Understanding the Masonic fraternity
● Discovering possible Templar origins of Freemasonry
● Connecting the Templars, the Freemasons, and Rosslyn Chapel
● Investigating the modern Masonic Knights Templar
A hundred years ago, 1 out of every 4 American men was a member of some kind of fraternal organization, and 1 out of every 25 was a Freemason. Chances are pretty good that someone in your own family’s recent past was a Mason.
No modern organization is more commonly tied to the Templars — by serious historians, conspiracy hucksters, and starry-eyed wishful thinkers — than the Masons. Freemasonry is the oldest and largest men’s fraternity in the world. It may also be the least-secret “secret society” that has ever existed. The name comes from the group’s own legendary origins — from the trade guilds in the Middle Ages that built the Gothic cathedrals and castles of Europe. The fraternity today uses stonemasons’ tools and symbolism in its ceremonies (for example, the square and compasses that have become an identifying “logo” for the group).
For at least 270 years, it has been rumored that Freemasonry may have actually been a direct descendant of the original Knights Templar. The idea first popped up in the 1730s in France. Not long after that, a new group within the Masons began to appear, calling itself the Knights Templar. In 1919, a youth group for boys was started, sponsored by the Freemasons and named after Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Order, who was burned at the stake in 1314. There’s no denying that the Freemasons don’t mind being associated with the Templars.
Compasses: They always travel in pairs
If you took math in the United States, your teacher probably referred to that little device that helps you measure and draw circles as a "compass." We've got news for you: Your teacher was wrong. A compass is that little gadget you can use to figure out which direction you're going (if your car's overhead console doesn't already tell you). A pair of compasses, or just compasses, are what you use to measure circles (and what stonemasons use in their work). If you think of a pair of scissors, pants, or trousers, it'll make sense: You never say, "scissor," "pant" or "trouser" — it's always plural.
In 1989, a historian named John J. Robinson wrote a book called Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, which popularized the concept of the Templars being the source of Freemasonry’s beginnings as a secret society. Born in Blood was a huge hit among Masons but also resulted in an influx of new members who were fascinated by Robinson’s tales of the Templars, Solomon’s Temple, symbolism, and secrecy — and their possible connection to Masonry. Robinson’s book was followed by many others that expanded the premise.
In this chapter, we explain who the Freemasons are, how they developed, and what they do. We fill you in on what the modern Masonic Knights Templar are up to these days. And we reveal the Templar theories of the formation of Freemasonry as a secret society.
For much greater detail about the Freemasons, see Freemasons For Dummies, by Christopher Hodapp (Wiley).
The Masonic Fraternity: Who Freemasons Are and What They Believe
The generally accepted origin of modern Freemasonry is believed to have been from stonemason guilds formed during the Middle Ages in Scotland, England, and France. As early as the eighth century, French Masons were being organized and instructed by the Frankish king Charles Martel. The earliest English documents claim that a guild of masons was chartered in the city of York in A.D. 926 by Athelstan, the first king of a united England.
The first written records of the stonemason guilds appear in the 1300s with a document known today as the Regius Manuscript.
The modern philosophical and fraternal organization that exists today evolved in the late 1600s in England during the Age of Enlightenment. The fraternity was officially established in its present form in London in 1717. It is nonsectarian and open to all men who profess a belief in a Supreme Being. In addition, it draws its members from virtually every faith and every class of society, with no religious, social, or economic barriers.
The most basic level of what is called Ancient Craft Freemasonry initiates and advances its members through three ritual ceremonies, called degrees. (The phrase, “Give him the third degree” is a somewhat cheesy reference to the Freemasons.) These three degrees are conferred in Masonic lodges that can be found in nearly every town across the United States and Canada, and in almost every country of the world. For symbolic purposes, these individual local lodges are referred to as craft lodges or, in the United States, blue lodges, probably emblematic of the “canopy of heaven” referred to in the rituals.
The term lodge can refer not just to the room in which the members meet, but more correctly, to the members themselves, as a group.
The fraternity teaches its members symbolic lessons about character building, using tools, language, and allegories based on the construction of King Solomon’s Temple. The goal of Freemasonry is to make good men into better and more responsible ones. By improving individual men, Freemasonry hopes to improve society as a whole. Freemasonry’s most visible accomplishments are the many charities supported by the fraternity, but that is only a small part of the fraternity’s attraction for millions of men.
The principal thread that runs throughout the three degree rituals is the symbolism of Solomon’s Temple, culminating in the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff, a widow’s son, who was the Grand Architect of the building of the temple. In the Masonic story, Hiram Abiff is attacked by three workmen who want the secrets of the master masons but have not earned them. Hiram chooses to die rather than break his word by revealing the secrets.
During the 1950s, there were around 7 million Freemasons worldwide, and more than 4 million in the United States alone, driven by unprecedented membership gains after World War II. By 2006, those numbers had dwindled to less than 3 million worldwide, with slightly fewer than 1.5 million Masons in the United States. Freemasonry is, by tradition, a male-only organization, although there are women’s auxiliary organizations within mainstream Freemasonry, as well as female and mixed-gender Masonic lodges that operate outside of the accepted mainstream Masonic world.
It’s unknown where the term Freemason comes from. Some historians say that it refers to the fact that the members of the stonemason guilds were not required to stay in a certain city or county, so were free to travel and look for work — thus, free masons. Another is that it may be a shortening of the term freestone mason. Freestone is a generic term for a soft, fine-grained stone that can be carved, like sandstone or limestone (as opposed to harder rock with heavy grain, like granite, that has to be split).
A quick tour of Masonic history
Bear with this section, because it’s important to understand who the Masons are and what some of their beliefs and practices are before delving into why some researchers think they may have sprouted from the Templars.
Freemasons today use the terms operative and speculative to describe the “difference between the two distinct periods of Freemasonry. Operative Freemasonry refers to the time before 1700 — the period when Freemasons were really working with stones, chisels, and hammers. After the operative workers began to be replaced by “admitted” or “gentleman” masons, the order evolved into a philosophical, fraternal, and charitable organization, and became known as speculative Freemasonry.
Operative Freemasonry
The medieval Freemasons built Gothic cathedrals and castles from massive stones. They were masters of the science of geometry and could transform a small drawing into an enormous structure. They were skilled at architecture, physics, hydraulics, and art. Their techniques were jealously guarded trade secrets — secrets not even divulged to the clerics and kings who employed the masons. The guilds developed to train workers in these skills and enforce a code of high standards, along with setting a fair price for their work. They truly were the first labor unions.
Most important, the guilds were established to protect these highly prized trade secrets. A Mason in possession of the right knowledge could travel and work all over the country, wherever the guild was working. Master Masons were taught the Master’s word and grip, secret methods these workmen used to recognize each other. It was a simple way to quickly identify oneself as a trained member of the guild, because the idea of business cards, diplomas, and dues cards hadn’t been invented yet.
Masons established lodges, which were huts or cabins next to their job sites. This was where plans for the job were kept and consulted, training sessions were held, and meals were shared; sometimes they even slept there. Over the centuries, they developed ceremonies to initiate and instruct their new members, or to graduate their master craftsmen.
The Masons claimed a mythical origin dating back to the great building projects of the Bible — the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark, and especially the Temple of Solomon. This is obviously where the inklings of a connection between Freemasonry and the Templars began, because both had a legendary connection to the Temple of Solomon.
The Masons held a unique position in society. True, they were peasants, but they were very skilled peasants. Kings and popes and lords and bishops all needed their services, and needed them in a big way. All over Europe, they were admired both for their expertise and their moral code. In addition, these were very religious times, and the Masons claimed that their practices and heritage dated back to events described in the Bible. The skills they possessed were considered to be both magical and divine, given to the biblical Masons by God himself, and passed down through the ages.
Understanding what Freemasonry became requires a brief understanding of the forces that shaped it. With the dawn of the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was faced with a noisy call for reform on the one side and open revolt on the other. Catholicism was losing its once total grip on the nations of the West, and the 1500s and 1600s were marked by a long, bloody series of religious wars that affected every country of Europe. Cooler heads knew religious wars were a messy way to change society.
The Age of Enlightenment, which began in the 1700’s, is sometimes called the Age of Reason, and it’s important because it ushered in revolutionary ideas about philosophy, thought, learning, and religion. Enlightenment scholars valued the process of acquiring new knowledge, instead of rooting around in dusty manuscripts looking for ancient wisdom, or looking to religion as the explanation for everything. It was during this time that the modern scientific method of experimentation, observation, and reason developed. A scientific conclusion had to be observable, measurable, and provable.
Meanwhile, a curious change began to happen to Freemasonry, beginning in Scotland in the 1600s. Noblemen began to express interest in becoming members of the Masons’ lodges. They had no uncontrollable urge to crawl in the dirt with the peasants and learn to do something more useful than boss around their serfs. Yet, records began to appear showing lodges admitting these nonoperative, “accepted” members. The first recorded instance of such a member being admitted to an operative lodge was Sir Robert Moray in 1640. Moray would go on to help found the exclusive Royal Society in London after the civil wars ended in the 1660s, with a fellow accepted Mason, Elias Ashmole. Masonic lodges were suddenly becoming attractive for some very learned men.
Speculative Freemasonry
Gothic architecture died out as the favored style by clerics and kings by the end of the 1500s, and the stonemasons lost their primary source of work. The Great London Fire in 1666 had provided plenty of opportunities to construct grand, new buildings, but it was a different style. Bricks replaced massive stones as the major building material, and the operative Freemasons (see the preceding section) were out of a job. But as the members who actually worked with stone in the building trade began to drift away from the guilds, shopkeepers, other tradesmen, gentlemen (educated, upper-class men), and even members of the nobility were replacing them. Instead of meeting in lodges on job sites, they began to gather in more comfortable and convenient taverns and coffeehouses.
No one can make a definitive answer as to why stonemason guilds turned, virtually overnight, into dining and drinking clubs, basing their organization, symbolism, and initiatory ritual ceremonies on the old trade guilds. No one really knows how or why it happened, but it did.
A meeting was held in London in 1717 to forge a new governing body for this new kind of Freemasonry. There were four lodges left in the general vicinity of St. Paul’s Cathedral, so the lodges all gathered at the Goose and Gridiron tavern to form what they called a Grand Lodge. The Grand Lodge’s role would be to make up rules for the governing of the organization and issue charters for new lodges. While speculative Freemasonry had been growing across England, Scotland, and Ireland, this was the first time that a central authority had ever been established to unite the individual lodges under one collective roof.
Grand Lodges soon began appearing in Scotland, France, and other countries, and Freemasonry quickly spread around the world on the trading and military ships of the colonial nations of Europe. In less than a hundred years, speculative Freemasons were in every civilized nation of the world.
The brotherhood code of the lodge
Freemasons refer to each other as brothers, and one of the principal obligations of a Mason is to help other Masons and their families. In fact, Masons have what is called the Grand Hailing Sign of Distress, which is a phrase and a special gesture used to signal other Masons when they’re in danger.
Freemasonry has long been tagged with the label of being a “secret society,” usually accompanied by a reference to occult practices and funny handshakes. In North America, Masonic lodges are listed in the phone book and often have signs in their yards big enough to spot from low earth orbit. U.S. Masons themselves wear rings, jackets, hats, and ties with Masonic symbols on them, and their cars often have Masonic license plates or bumper stickers. This is hardly the behavior of a secret society.
In the United States, Freemasons proudly point to the participation of early Freemasons who were Founding Fathers and other notable figures, including: George Washington and 13 other presidents, Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, John Hancock, plus military heroes, business leaders, inventors, movie stars, and more.
Outside of North America, Freemasonry is a little quieter. Many societies have a deep suspicion of Masons, believing them to be part of a mysterious cabal of men who seek to control governments, businesses, criminal empires, or worse. As a result, Freemasons in many countries do not outwardly display Masonic symbols, and keep their membership very quiet. Masonic lodge buildings in other countries are often not identified as such, to avoid vandalism or outright attack.
Non-Masons, anti-Masons, and conspiracy theorists have inflated the notion of Masonic secrecy into something evil, unethical, and perhaps even illegal. The truth is that Masonic secrecy is actually confined to very few subjects:
● Grips (those funny handshakes), passwords, signs, and steps: These are known as modes of recognition, and they’re used by Masons to identify each other and to verify their membership.
● Certain portions of the rituals, especially the 3rd degree Master Mason ceremony: What good is an initiation if you tell everyone about it ahead of time? Masons promise not to write, print, stamp, stain, cut, carve, hew, mark, or engrave any of their ritual secrets in a manner that non-Masons may read.
● Information privately exchanged between individual members (known as on the square), with the exception of murder, treason, or illegal activities that conflict with a person’s duty to God, his country, his neighbor, or himself: Masons are taught to be discreet, but they certainly don’t protect criminals in their midst. Keeping a secret between Masonic brothers is more of a demonstration of a member’s ability to honor his promise to his brethren. Although in their obligations (oaths), Masons agree to suffer dire and bloody penalties if they break the rules, the truth is, the worst punishment a Mason has to endure is having his membership revoked.
Identifying the Possible Templar Origins of Freemasonry
There is another version of the creation of Freemasonry (beyond the one we outline in “A quick tour of Masonic history,” earlier in this chapter).
Well, there are several, but one of the most popular, romantic versions is the formation of Freemasonry by a band of Knights Templar.
In 1989, the author John J. Robinson wrote a book entitled Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, which took the Masonic world by storm. In it, Robinson assembled a series of theories that traced the Knights Templar from their arrest and suppression in France to Scotland. Robinson did not claim to have come up with this connection on his own, but he was the first to make an attempt to prove it.
The Templars already had extensive holdings in Scotland before their suppression, and although there was a brief trial of just two Templars in Scotland, the order there was found innocent of any wrongdoing or heresy.
The story goes that Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland during this period, was already excommunicated by the pope in 1306, which meant that the rest of the country suffered the same fate with him. That meant no Catholic weddings, no Catholic christenings, no burial services, and no Communion on Sunday. The king was in the midst of a war with England at the time, and such saber rattling from faraway Rome didn’t bother him nearly as much as real swordplay and a relentless series of invasions led by England’s Edward I. So when the Templar fleet arrived off the coast of Scotland looking for a refuge from France, Bruce was grateful to have them.
Because Scotland was under an order of excommunication when Pope Clement V issued heresy charges against the Templars, Bruce had a spiritual loophole that allowed him to give them sanctuary. If Scotland was excommunicated, no member of the Catholic Church could read out the charges against the knights — and if no charges could be read out, then the knights were free to call Scotland home.
The biggest part of the legend has to do with the famous Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Robert the Bruce was engaged in a battle with England’s King Edward II, who ascended the throne in 1307, the year the Knights templar were arrested. The tale is told of a mysterious group of fierce knights on horseback, dressed in white tunics, who turned the battle decisively in Scotland’s favor. No evidence or contemporary account of the battle exists, but these mysterious knights have often been rumored to be the Knights Templar.
Robinson lists several Masonic references that may have originated with the Knights Templar to bolster his theory:
Passwords: The Templars were on the run and had to hide from loyal Catholics who might otherwise betray them, so they needed to establish secret passwords and other modes of recognition.
Aprons: According to some claims, the Templars wore a sheepskin “girdle” around their waists as a symbol of chastity, and it’s possible this developed into the aprons that Freemasons wear during their meetings. However, there is no historical record that the Templars did any such thing. They wore a cord around their waists, not a girdle or apron.
Nonsectarian discussions: The Templars considered themselves to be devout Catholics whom the Church had betrayed, so discussion of Catholicism would have been a social faux pas, as well as potentially deadly if a devoted parishioner discovered the Templars’ secret identity. Members of their new inner circle would only have to profess a belief in God, not align themselves with the Church.
● Unprecedented religious tolerance: This goes hand in glove with the nonsectarian discussions. The notion has long been that the Templars had come to a new kind of religious tolerance after their years in the Holy Land (a sort of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” theory of survival), and that they were amenable to allowing Jews and Muslims to worship as they wished, even inside of Templar chapels. The theory is that this laid the groundwork for Masonic tolerance of all monotheistic religions.
● Possible French origins of Masonic words and phrases: Because the Templars were a French order that spoke French in their daily activities, Robinson gives possible French origins to many unusual words associated with Freemasonry. Of course, the French-speaking Normans had conquered England in 1066, and there were constant friendly contacts between Scotland and France in subsequent years, so similarity of words is hardly surprising.
● The similarity between the square and compasses and the Seal of Solomon: The symbol for Freemasonry and the symbol attributed to King Solomon and the Temple are similar, and it can be argued that the Masonic “logo” is a thinly veiled copy (see the nearby sidebar, “The square and compasses and the Seal of Solomon”).
Most historians, Masonic and otherwise, discount Robinson’s theories, and even the present-day Knights Templar order of Freemasons does not claim a direct link to the original knights. Nevertheless, Robinson brings up interesting possibilities and more than a few unanswered coincidences. There are similarities and plausible arguments to be made that may, indeed, connect Freemasons with the Templars, and there is no denying that operative Freemasonry first began to change into speculative Freemasonry in Scotland.
Rosslyn Chapel and the Masons
Templar enthusiasts and Freemasons have long claimed that Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh, Scotland, is chock-full of symbolism for both the Templars and the Freemasons. The writing teams of Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, and Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins were among the first authors to publicize and explore the chapel’s potential connections to the Templars, the Freemasons, and a host of other speculative theories. Many more researchers have followed in their footsteps. We talk about Rosslyn Chapel throughout this book but for the sake of this part of the story, you just need to know a little bit about the chapel made world-famous by the end scenes of The Da Vinci Code.
The square and compasses and the Seal of Solomon
The symbol of the square and compasses (shown on the left in the nearby figure) has become synonymous with Freemasonry. They are tools of the building trades, which use them in the everyday application of geometry.
In North America, the letter G commonly appears in the center. Because the earliest stonemasons believed that the secret knowledge of geometry was a gift to them by God, and that God himself was believed to the Grand Architect of the Universe, the G stands for both Godand geometry. Elsewhere in the world, the G rarely appears in the square-and-compasses symbol.
Some scholars have pointed out the similarity of the symbol's basic outline with the Seal of Solomon, or Star of David (shown on the right in the figure). Today, the Seal of Solomon is most commonly associated with the Jewish faith and the flag of the State of Israel. Jewish legends claim that King David had a shield with the symbol that protected him from evil. His son, King Solomon, had the symbol on a signet ring that came from heaven, which he used to perform magic and control demons.
The symbol, made of two triangles, has had many interpretations to Jews, Christians, Muslims, and alchemists. In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown declared the symbol to be a representation of the masculine and the divine feminine, and many believe it represent good and evil, heaven and earth, and other similar yin-yang themes.
Although the symbol of two inverted triangles appears in some Egyptian archeological locations, the actual symbol itself didn't become identified with the Jews or King Solomon until the 1300s in Prague, and didn't become widespread until the 1600s. It actually appeared more commonly in Islamic art during the time of the Crusades.
When, in the 1400s, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent undertook major renovations of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where Solomon's Temple once stood, he built new city walls and decorated them with the Seal of Solomon as a talisman to protect the city. Because of the Seal of Solomon's connection to the Holy City of Jerusalem and King Solomon, some have claimed that its blatant similarity to the Masonic square and compasses shows a direct progression from the Knights Templar to the Freemasons.
Meanwhile, the square and compasses appear in Christian art and alchemical books all throughout the Middle Ages as symbols of geometry and knowledge, and often are depicted in the hands of God.
The chapel was built in the 1400s by Sir William St. Clair (or Sinclair, depending on the source). The St. Clairs were a noble family descended from Norman knights from France. Historians don’t know when the chapel became associated with either the Templars or Freemasonry, but the connection doesn’t seem to have been discussed prior to the late 1700s, in spite of outlandish claims to the contrary. The chapel was built as a private church for the St. Clair family, and its construction wasn’t started until more than 130 years after the Templars were dissolved. Nevertheless, what makes the chapel unique are the unusual carvings and artwork that are packed into every conceivable crevice.
Masonic carvings?
Among the carvings in Rosslyn Chapel are images supposedly of the Templars. One such carving is said to show the classic image of the Order — two knights on horseback, although it looks to most people more like a mounted knight with a squire, a monk, or perhaps his wife walking behind him.
Another carving is said to depict a Masonic Entered Apprentice prepared as modern initiates are today, with a blindfold (called a hoodwink) and a noose (referred to as a cable tow) around his neck. He appears to be situated between two pillars, perhaps with an open Bible in his hand. Of course, it could also be a figure of a man about to be executed — that’s the funny thing about symbolism. If it is, indeed, a Masonic reference, it should be pointed out that the introduction of the hoodwink and cable tow into Freemasonry’s rituals did not occur until the late 1600s. The chapel was built two centuries before that.
As Robert Cooper has pointed out in his 2006 book The Rosslyn Hoax, the chapel itself was dedicated to St. Matthew. Matthew 15:12-14 may be a clue to the carving’s real origin: “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
Freemasonry is loaded with symbolism. Squares, compasses, plumbs, levels, anchors, arks, gavels, trowels, aprons, and a hundred other images play a part in the ritual ceremonies of the Masonic fraternity. In spite of the many claims that Rosslyn is “loaded” with Masonic symbolism, it is not. In fact, it is fair to say that there are no images that are specific to Freemasonry anywhere in the tiny chapel’s thousands of intricate carvings. No matter how many books and experts claim to see Masonic imagery in Rosslyn Chapel, it is wishful thinking.
The Apprentice Pittar
Central to the chapel’s Masonic folklore is the Apprentice Pillar, a magnificently detailed marble column (shown in Figure 8-1). The tale goes that the Master Carver was afraid of starting work on it without first traveling to Rome to see the original in person. While he was off gallivanting in Italy, his apprentice got both impatient and cocky and carved the pillar himself. When the Master returned, so the story goes, he became so enraged at the perfection of his apprentice’s work that he killed the young man by striking him in the head with a mallet, just as in the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff (see “The Masonic Fraternity: Who Freemasons Are and What They Believe,” earlier in this chapter). A gash on the pillar today is where the Master’s mallet allegedly whacked the column after clobbering his apprentice. Of course, before the late 1700’s, this was called the Prince’s Pillar, and there was no tale of an angry Masonic Master.
Figure 8-1: The dazzlingly intricate Apprentice Pillar in Rosslyn Chapel.
Masonic Knights Templar should know that the chapel contains an inscription that appears in the ritual of their Chivalric degrees: Forte est vinum fortior est rex fortiores sunt mulieres super omnia vincit veritas, or “Wine is strong, a king is stronger, women are stronger still, but truth conquers all.” This quote is from the First Book of Esdras, a part of the Eastern Orthodox Church’s Old Testament, but rejected by Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant biblical scholars as apocryphal.
The Templars' sacred subcontractors
French author Paul Naudon has proposed a different take on the Templar origin of Freemasonry theory, and it’s somewhere between the stonemason theory on one side, and the secret-society-of-renegade-Templars theory on the other. Naudon’s notion is that the Templars had literally hundreds of castles, preceptories, chapels, and outposts, which contained myriads of inner buildings, plus fortifications, docks, and a fistful of other structures, all constructed in a very brief period of time. There is absolutely no record that the warrior monks themselves actually hauled, carved, and stacked the stones to build these massive structures, and there is nothing to suggest that they used prisoners or slave workers. The structures are constructed with precision and skill, and many have survived over the centuries. The Templars had to hire somebody to build them, and those somebodies were the stonemasons.
Naudon postulates that these stonemasons in the employ of the Templars were influenced by Templar philosophy and practices. Moreover, the Templars employed Armenian, Syrian, and Byzantine masons for their projects in the Holy Land and surrounding areas. These other influences certainly rubbed off on the European stonemasons, who made sudden and massive changes to forms of architecture in a very brief time.
The Templars first learned their building practices from the Cistercians, but they quickly adopted designs and practices that they found after entering Muslim cities and strongholds like Tyre. Templars were ingenious military engineers, and became skilled in the building of siege engines — battering rams, mobile platforms, catapults, and other designs that had peacetime uses as well. With little modification, such machines could be used as scaffolding and methods to transport and lift massive stones.
When the Knights built their temples and preceptories in Paris and London in the 1100s, they brought their own builders with them from the Middle East. They weren’t going to trust such projects to just any group of scruffy rock stackers. Simply put, Naudon’s theory is that these Templar contractors introduced much of the symbolism, philosophy, and customs that grew into modern Freemasonry, including an unusually strong sense of religious toleration.
The Masonic Knights Templar and Where They Came From
The most basic degrees of the Freemasons are the first three: the Entered Apprentice, the Fellow Craft, and the Master Mason. You may have heard of men who claim to be 32nd-or even 33rd-degree Masons. They didn’t make it up. The confusion comes from what are called appendant bodies, groups that formed over the last three centuries that confer additional degrees and require their members to already be 3rd-degree Master Masons before “advancing.” These additional degrees developed in a somewhat chaotic manner all across Europe. In North America, these many different individual degrees settled into two different general groups known as the York Rite and the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, and it is in these two different groups of additional degrees that the Templars most blatantly appear.
The best way to think of these two appendant bodies is as two different types of continuing Masonic education. Some Masons join them both, some only join one or the other, and most don’t join either one of them. They are not required, and Masons who have achieved the 32nd degree of the Scottish Rite are of no higher “rank” than a 3rd-degree Mason.
The many degrees found in the Scottish Rite and the York Rite developed in Europe beginning in the mid-1700s. They grew for a variety of reasons. Some tell prequels and sequels of the Hiram Abiff legend (see “The Masonic Fraternity: Who Freemasons Are and What They Believe,” earlier in this chapter). Others use stories from the Bible and describe the building of the second Temple by Zerubbabel in 515 b.c. and its expansion by King Herod in 19 b.c.
The tale of the Knights Templar fleeing to Scotland after the mass arrests in France is not new. The legend of Robert the Bruce and the Templar army riding out of the mists to save the day at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 has been around almost since the battle happened. The modern Royal Order of Scotland claims that Scotland’s King James II created a chivalric order in 1440 called the Order of the Knights of St. Andrew or the Thistle, based on the same Templar legend.
As more aristocratic members joined Freemasonry, especially in France, a series of appendant degrees began to pop up. Plump landowners who hobnobbed with royalty enjoyed the ritual ceremonies and the fun aspects of being initiated into a growing number of impressive sounding groups, but they didn’t much care for the idea that they were joining something that had sprung from a labor union of peasant stonecutters. So they began to invent new degrees. These new degrees were based on chivalric stories — tales of knights and heroic deeds.
The effect of the new degrees went in both directions: It made the nobility more comfortable by inventing a new pedigree for them, and it suddenly gave low-born shopkeepers and laborers an opportunity to have honors and titles bestowed upon them far beyond anything they could hope for in the world outside of the lodge.
Chevalier Ramsay begins a knightly legend
The Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay was born in Scotland in 1686, but he spent most of his life in France. This was a pretty common occurrence during this period. After the English Civil War, Charles II was brought to London and became king. He knew that one of the little personality quirks that had resulted in his father’s head being lopped off was the appearance that he might have been a Catholic. Charles II had no intention of making that kind of mistake, so he kept his religious opinions to himself all through his reign. Unfortunately, his successor wasn’t that shrewd.
Charles II died with no legitimate heirs, so his brother, King James VII of Scotland, rolled into London to be crowned as James II of England. James was a staunch Catholic and proceeded to so enrage most of the country over his choice of religion that he was expelled from the country and replaced by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William. Parliament finally put a stop to the Catholic/Protestant fight by passing laws forbidding any more Catholic kings. The result was a huge wave of English and Scottish Catholic expatriates who moved to France.
France was a very sympathetic Catholic country, and there was a certain adolescent glee over playing host to the enemies of England. Annoying the English was a longstanding French pastime. The supporters of James became known as Jacobites, and there was a sizeable number of them. It is believed that modern Freemasonry came to France from Scotland with the Jacobites, and that it was these disaffected Scots and English who began to develop many of the appendant degrees. In spite of its name, the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry actually began in France.
Chevalier Ramsay briefly was employed as a tutor to the exiled King James II’s two sons, and his many travels were turned into popular books. But he is most important to Freemasons for one document, known as Ramsay’s Oration. Whether Ramsay actually gave it as a speech in public is unknown, but his 1737 paper told a story about how Freemasonry began in the Holy Land and how its secrets were actually brought back to Europe by the crusading knights. He never said that the knights were the Templars — in fact, he actually credited the Knights of St. John. And he never suggested creating new degrees or introducing chivalric orders into the fraternity, but it didn’t matter. Creative Freemasons, mostly in France, took Ramsay’s ideas and ran with them. You can see the scale to which the new degrees can be attributed to these expatriate Scots in the term the French used to describe them — they were called the Ecossais degrees, French for “Scottish.”
Freemasonry's mysterious "Unknown Superiors”
Freemasons traveled across Britain and Europe, and they took their local customs and innovations with them. Certain of these new degrees became popular and were adopted in more and more lodges.
In the 1740s, Baron Karl Gotthelf Hund claimed to have been initiated into a Templar Masonic Order by a mysterious Eques a Penna Rubra (Knight of the Red Feather). He believed this disguised knight was none other than Charles Edward Stuart, the son of the deposed (and now deceased) King James III. The descendants of James III lived on in France and were something of an ongoing boogeyman for England over the years, which regarded them all as a line of pretenders to the throne. And it was no secret that the exiled Stuart family wanted desperately to return to England and take back the crown.
The Baron claimed that he had received a mission from “Unknown Superiors” to reform Freemasonry, and he formed a group called the Rite of Strict Observance, which contained a Knights Templar degree. The Rite of Strict Observance became hugely popular across France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Holland for a brief period, before dying out. Members became tired of waiting for new instructions from the “Unknown Superiors,” and Hund seemed to be too honest to have made the whole thing up. By the 1780s, the Rite had disappeared. But the Templar notion lived on.
Templarism in the American colonies
The Green Dragon Tavern in Boston became famous in U.S. history by being the hotbed of pre-Revolutionary War groups like the Sons of Liberty. Paul Revere, and John Hancock were among the tavern’s regular patrons. It was also the home of an upstart Masonic lodge called St. Andrews. The lodge had not been officially chartered by the Grand Lodge of England or any other legal governing group, so its formation was just as revolutionary as its members (who quietly took credit for the Boston Tea party in 1775). What makes it important for this discussion is that it was also the first lodge in America to have officially conferred a Masonic Knights Templar degree in 1769. In fact, Paul Revere was among the first Knights Templar in America.
In those days in the American colonies, Freemasonry often spread by way of military lodges made up of soldiers who held meetings in tents, in caves, in private homes, in taverns, onboard ships, or anywhere else they could find some privacy. The Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland generally chartered the military lodges, while stationary lodges in the colonial cities were usually chartered by the Grand Lodge of England. The soldiers picked up new ceremonies and customs as they traveled, and they conferred degrees on civilians as well. This is most probably how the Templar degree came ashore in America.
Templar drill teams: The origins of Masonic Knights Templar military costumes
After the end of the U.S. Civil War, fraternal groups were all the rage. Literally hundreds of different varieties of lodges, orders, chapters, councils, dens, encampments, grottos, shrines, and temples, all claimed to be grand, ancient, noble, majestic, or otherwise really impressive. It is not an exaggeration to say that most of them patterned their ceremonies and hierarchy on the Freemasons.
One curious development grew out of the desire of Civil War veterans to recapture the camaraderie they had felt with fellow soldiers during the war, combined with a large number of military supply companies that suddenly found themselves without customers. Thus were born the fraternal military orders. The Masonic Knights Templar, along with similar military-themed orders like the Knights of Pythias, the Knights of Columbus, the Grand Army of the Republic, and many other fraternal groups started drill teams to march in parades, wearing slightly altered Civil War uniforms and swords. This custom survives today.
Skulls and crossbones!
For a long time, one of the common symbols of the Masonic Templars was a skull and crossbones, which appeared on their aprons worn during ritual ceremonies and meetings (see Figure 8-2). They also appear on gravestones of Masonic Templars throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The skull and crossbones were associated with the real Knights Templar, and the skull plays a part in the modern Knights Templar Order’s ceremonies.
Figure 8-2: The skull-and-crossbones style Templar apron has been prohibited for use since the 1920s.
You can find the gruesome-looking Templar aprons in antiques stores and on eBay, but they have been officially prohibited for use by the Order since the 1920s, because of the public perception that they were somehow evil. In spite of its more recent connotation as a symbol of malevolence, during the 18th and 19th centuries, the skull and crossbones was a symbol of mortality and was often used to caution the living to prepare for their own end. This is the way it is represented in the Templar ritual today.
Order of DeMolay
Before World War I, the phenomenon of scouting for children took the world by storm. Starting in 1907, the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and other similarly styled groups spread across Europe and North America, largely based on the writings of Robert Baden-Powell and his experiences with young men trained as scouts for the British Army in India and North Africa. As scouting grew in popularity, so did other types of youth groups, and it wasn't long before many of the popular fraternal groups started their own.
In 1919, a Freemason named Frank S. Land started a youth group in Kansas City, Missouri, for nine young men. Land was especially concerned for boys who had lost their fathers during World War I. The boys were meeting in the local Masonic hall, and they were intrigued by the Masonic traditions of ritual ceremonies and degrees. Land was also a Knights Templar, and he told the boys the story of the fall of the original Templar Order; their last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay; and his tragic martyrdom (see Chapter 5). Excited by the tale, the boys adopted de Molay as their namesake, and a ritual was designed around his story.
The Order of DeMolay (officially known today as DeMolay International, to reflect its growth beyond the U.S. borders) confers two degrees:
● The Initiatory degree: The Initiatory degree teaches its members seven precepts or cardinal virtues: love of parents, reverence for all things sacred, courtesy, comradeship, fidelity, cleanliness, and patriotism.
● The DeMolay degree: The DeMolay degree portrays the suffering and martyrdom of the Grand Master, stressing his love and loyalty for his brother knights.
Today, there are about 20,000 members of DeMolay, and it's open to young men between the ages of 12 and 21 who, as in Freemasonry, profess a belief in a Supreme Being. It is nondenominational. Many of DeMolay's members go on to become Freemasons, but although the Masonic fraternity supports DeMolay, there is no direct connection between the two organizations.
There is, by the way, no relationship between the Freemasons or the Order of Knights Templar and the Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale University, made famous most recently by the membership of both 2004 presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry, other than the use of the same images of mortality. Bonesmen, as the Yale guys are called, are neither Knights Templar nor Freemasons.
The Templars' place within Freemasonry
The Knights Templar Order is part of the York Rite system of additional Masonic degrees, which, in the United States, also include four degrees of the Royal Arch, three of the Cryptic Council, and three Chivalric Orders (the Illustrious Order of the Red Cross, the Order of the Knights of Malta, and the Order of the Knights Templar). Outside of the U.S. there are organizational differences.
Masonic Knights Templar meet in commanderies or preceptories. Their statewide governing bodies are known as Grand Commanderies, and the national organization is called the Grand Encampment (or Grand Priory in Canada).
The Templars are unique in Freemasonry because, unlike most other degrees and appendant bodies, it is one of the few groups that requires a belief in — or at least a willingness to defend — Christianity. The rest of the Masonic fraternity is nondenominational, requiring only a belief in a Supreme Being. In most jurisdictions, men who want to become Knights Templar must also have been through the Royal Arch degrees. Apart from its ritual ceremonies and its drill teams, the Knights Templar is also a philanthropic organization that endows medical-research programs, as well as sponsoring trips to the Holy Land for ministers of all Christian denominations.
Several symbols are identified with the Masonic Knights Templar. The most common is a crown and cross, a cross pattee surrounded by swords, and the motto: In hoc signo vinces, Latin for “In this sign, conquer!”(see Figure 8-3). The motto comes from the story of the Roman Emperor Constantine in A.D. 312, who converted to Christianity after seeing a vision of a chi rho cross in the sun, along with the Latin phrase. Constantine didn’t have a clue what the vision meant, but Jesus appeared to him in a dream and explained that he should use the sign of the cross to conquer his enemies.
Figure 8-3: Typical symbol of the Masonic Knights Templar: the cross pattee, a crown and cross, swords, and the motto In hoc signo vinces (Latin for "In this sign, conquer!")
Earlier in this chapter, we mention the Scottish Rite as being the other branch of appendant bodies in Freemasonry. The Scottish Rite does not confer Templar degrees, per se. However, it does present a series of degrees (the Rose Croix and Knight Kadosh degrees) that are a veiled retelling of the betrayal of knights based in Jerusalem at the hands of a king and an unjust church, and the burning at the stake of their members. That should sound familiar.
The Templar degrees also exist in Freemasonry outside of the United States and Canada, although the York Rite under which they are categorized in North America is different in many countries, and may not exist at all in others. Every country has its own customs. There is no international governing body for Freemasonry in the world. Each country — or in the case of the United States and Canada, each state or province — has its own Grand Lodge, as well as its own governing groups for the appendant bodies.
Nevertheless, one thing all Masonic Knights Templar groups agree upon is that they are definitely not directly descended from the original order of warrior monks. They have based their rules, ceremonies, and governing bodies on the original Templars, but none of them claim to be heirs of the crusading Templar Order.