The Templars

by Michael Haag

  Yet in 1793, at the dedication of the Capitol building, George Washington, in his capacity as first president of the United States, but wearing his masonic apron, placed a silver plate upon the foundation stone and covered it with masonic symbols of maize, oil and wine. An inscription on the silver plate made the identification of the new republic with masonry absolutely clear: the stone had been laid, it stated, ‘in the thirteenth year of American independence, and in the year of Masonry, 5793’–that being the generally accepted number of years since God’s creation of the world. After the successful conclusion of the War of Independence, and for a generation after, Freemasonry was widely considered to be the foundation stone of the republic. The explanation lies in the creation of the revolutionary army with Washington at its head. His officers had been thrown together from a diversity of regional origins, religions and social rank, and had great responsibilities thrust upon them. Freemasonry had been popular among officers in the British army in North America, and the revolutionary army continued the practise of having military lodges, which it turned to good account. Freemasonry’s ideals of honour and fraternity offered American officers the bonds on which to build the camaraderie necessary for the survival of the army, and therefore of the American republic.

  But for mythomanes there is more to it than that. The monumental building constructed to house the Senate and the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill was part of the grand plan for the entire city designed in 1791 by Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a Frenchman who served in General George Washington’s staff as a military engineer throughout the revolutionary war. Though Washington appointed L’Enfant to lay out the new city, L’Enfant was not a Freemason, but the conspiracy theorists insist he was; and they say that his rectangular street grid overlaid by diagonal avenues creates a series of masonic patterns that also reflect the pattern of the stars. The harmony between the heavens and the earth would work its powers on those who inhabited the city, the capital of the new republic. As once the god Shalem had manifested himself on the Ophel Hill as the evening star, confirming Jerusalem as a sacred place, so Washington would become the new Jerusalem, its activities sanctified by its relationship with the spiritual world as symbolised by the stars.

  Powerful masonic symbols have also been discerned in the Great Seal of the United States, which is reproduced on the reverse of the dollar bill. The seal was commissioned by Congress on 4 July 1776, immediately after it had voted its approval of the Declaration of Independence, but it would pass through three committees and take six years before a final design was approved. Benjamin Franklin, who was on the first committee, was the only Freemason involved, and his non-masonic suggestion that the seal should depict the Jews escaping from the tyranny of pharaoh was rejected. The obverse of the seal shows an eagle clutching thirteen arrows, an olive branch with thirteen leaves and thirteen fruits, the eagle defended by a shield with thirteen stripes, and above his head thirteen stars arranged in the form of the Seal of Solomon, also known as the Star of David. Thirteen represents the original thirteen American colonies that rebelled against Britain and came together to form the United States. The motto reads ‘E Pluribus Unum’, meaning ‘Out of Many, One’. The arrangement of the stars has aroused speculation, but biblical and Hebrew symbolism were as common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as classical symbolism. Charles Thomson, a Latinist who was Secretary of Congress and the person who set the various ideas for a seal into their final form, explained simply that ‘the constellation of stars denotes a new State taking its place and rank among other sovereign powers’.

  The reverse of the seal shows a pyramid surmounted by an eye. The pyramid has thirteen courses and is inscribed at its base with MDCCLXXVI. There are two mottoes, one above the eye, the other below the pyramid. Again Charles Thomson gave his explanation: ‘The pyramid signifies strength and duration: The eye over it and the motto, Annuit Coeptus [He [God] Has Favoured Our Undertakings], allude to the many interventions of Providence in favour of the American cause. The date underneath is that of the Declaration of Independence, and the words under it, Novus Ordo Seclorum [A New Order of the Ages], signify the beginning of the new American era in 1776.’

  But ‘alternative histories’ and conspiracy theorists see things differently. They say that the pyramid and the eye on the reverse of the Great Seal are masonic and amount to a code. Expert Freemasons deny this, saying that the seal is not a masonic emblem, nor does it contain hidden masonic symbols. Certainly the pyramid is not masonic. But the eye does figure in masonic imagery, and it even appears on the Freemason’s apron worn by George Washington.

  The point, however, is that there is nothing specifically masonic about the all-seeing eye, which was part of the cultural iconography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For example in 1614 the frontispiece of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World showed an eye in a cloud labelled ‘Providentia’ overlooking a globe. Nevertheless, for those given to conspiracy theories the meaning lies elsewhere. For Robert Langdon, the hero in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, novus ordo seclorum translates as ‘new secular order’, and for others it prefigures the ‘new world order’ announced by George H.W. Bush before a joint session of Congress after Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and the United States was mustering a coalition to drive the Iraqi forces back. ‘Out of these troubled times’, Bush told Congress, ‘our fifth objective–a New World Order–can emerge: a new era.’ The speech was delivered on 11 September 1990, exactly eleven years before that other ‘9/11’.

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  Mormons, Freemasons and the Key to Solomon’s Temple

  In 1844 when Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, was being attacked by a mob in Illinois, he barely managed to cry out, ‘Oh Lord, my God’ before he was shot and killed. These were the first words of a recognised distress call among Freemasons–‘Oh Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow’s son?’ The phrase arises from the ritual enacted by Freemasons who are being admitted to the third degree, that of Master Mason, which allows them to participate fully in all aspects of their brotherhood. The drama at the centre of this initiation ritual is the murder of Hiram, ‘the widow’s son’ of the Bible, whom the Freemasons call Hiram Abiff. The initiate acts out the sufferings of Hiram Abiff, who while vowing to protect the Freemasons’ secrets with his life, calls out, ‘Oh Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow’s son?’

  Joseph Smith was himself a Freemason, as were his brother and his father and many of their friends and co-religionists; Brigham Young, who was Smith’s successor as leader of the Mormons and led them into Utah where they founded Salt Lake City, was likewise a Freemason. In America Mormonism and Freemasonry grew out of the same soil. Indeed there are many parallels between Mormonism and Freemasonry, including degrees of elevation, sacred treasures hidden in the earth, an interest in ancient Israel and Egypt, symbolic clothing, secret means of recognition and a belief in the creative role of a supreme being.

  Also both organisations have made extensive use of such motifs as the beehive, the square and compass, the all-seeing eye, the two right hands clasped to one another, and the sun, the moon and the stars. In particular, Masonic legends of a lost sacred word, once engraved upon a triangular plate of pure gold, profoundly affected the Smith family, which became well known for its treasure-hunting activities; and it was on such plates of gold, unearthed by Joseph Smith in upstate New York, that he found what he said were the words of the Angel Moroni and which he translated and published as the Book of Mormon, the gospel of the new faith of which Smith himself was its prophet. The mission of the Mormons is to restore the true revelation which became corrupted after the death of Jesus. And according to the Mormons their rituals and symbolism have come to them by divine revelation and originate in Solomon’s Temple.

  * * *

  Skull and Bones

  For some a New World Order (Novus Ordo Mundi) means a constructive ordering of world affairs through institutions like the United Nations. For oth
ers it is a conspiracy conducted by a small and secretive but powerful group to eliminate or neutralise sovereign states, to restrict individual freedom, and to establish a world government answerable to no one but themselves. This latter idea has much in common with the beliefs of Charles de Gassicour and the Abbé Barruel, who saw the French Revolution as the culmination of an ancient historical plot by the Templars and Freemasons who were in league with everyone from the Assassins to the Jews.

  According to the conspiracy theorists, the infrastructure of this New World Order is already largely in place in the form of such organisations as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, NATO, the European Union–and indeed the United Nations. They point to the statement given by David Rockefeller to the United Nations Business Council in September 1994: ‘We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.’ But this remark is almost always quoted without context, with the suggestion that it refers to an event like 9/11, when in fact Rockefeller was referring to the need to take united action against global warming and over-population.

  The 11th of September 2001 is itself seen as a conspiracy, a not uncommon version being that the attacks were a joint operation between elements in the United States government and Mossad, Israel’s secret service. The Freemasons are also blamed, as in this quotation from a website run by a former United States Air Force officer and professor of aerospace systems:

  ‘What happened on September 11, 2001, was nothing less than an elaborate, carefully crafted and dynamically staged satanic ritual. I believe the tumbling down of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was a blood sacrifice…A satanically energized variation of the third degree ritual of Freemasonry was staged–the Master Mason degree–in which the candidate (playing the role of Hiram Abiff, the antichrist) lying in a coffin, is raised by the strong grip of the Lion’s Paw. In the ritual it is noted that the two pillars (towers), Jachin and Boaz, have fallen and are in need of restoration. What transpired on September 11th was a black magic ceremony intended to bring about the restoration of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and the raising of its twin pillars which had fallen…’

  For a small and secretive but powerful group promoting the New World Order, one does not have to go farther than the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. On High Street a windowless Graeco-Egyptian building, familiarly known as the Tomb, houses the Order of Skull and Bones. Though known as Bonesmen to the outside world, they call each other knights, and their symbol, the skull and crossbones, is the very sign that the Knights Templar are said to have adopted in exchange for their red cross. At any rate if you were Dan Brown that is something you might work in to your next novel.

  Skull and Bones was founded in 1832 in rivalry to the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity. But in fact they are very different organisations. Even in the 1830s Phi Beta Kappa already had chapters at seven universities (and now extends to nearly three hundred), while Skull and Bones has remained exclusive to Yale. Phi Beta Kappa recruits members in their freshman year and has half a million living members at any one time, while Skull and Bones never has more than eight hundred and does not accept members until their senior year, by when it can have some confidence that its members will rise to positions of exceptional eminence in the future.

  Originally, Skull and Bones is said to have been the American chapter of a German student organisation that called itself the Eulogian Club, after Eulogia, the goddess of eloquence. The story, however, might have been a cover. A few years earlier, in 1826, a Freemason called William Morgan was murdered in New York for revealing masonic secrets, and there was such a popular outrage and backlash that Freemasonry was all but destroyed in the United States. If the real intention had been to found a Freemason’s lodge, it would have been wise to disguise it as something else. Why the skull and bones was ever chosen as the name and symbol is unexplained. The ‘322’ on the order’s stationery is said to mark the date of death of the great orator Demosthenes, but ‘32’ might refer to the year of the order’s inception, with ‘2’ signifying that it was the second chapter after the German original.

  The invitation to join the Skull and Bones comes in a student’s junior year with a tap on the shoulder as the tower clock strikes eight and a Bonesman demands, ‘Skull and Bones, accept or reject?’ President William Howard Taft and various Chief Justices of the Supreme Court and other important figures in the highest ranks of American government have been members. But not a great deal is known about the workings of the order, for everyone is sworn to secrecy, and this is closely observed. President George W. Bush was asked about his time there but would only say, ‘In my senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society, so secret I can’t say anything more.’ And when Senator John Kerry, Bush’s rival in the 2004 presidential election, was asked what it meant that both he and Bush were Bonesmen, he replied, ‘Not much because it’s a secret.’ George W. Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, was also a Bonesman; he was president from 1988 to 1992, and had earlier been head of the CIA. While it is not true that the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA, was founded by Bonesmen, it is true that the Skull and Bones can boast of a disproportionately large number of its alumni, called Patriarchs, in the intelligence services and high places in government and business.

  Conspiracy theorists see the Skull and Bones as the proponent of a New World Order motivated by Hegelian philosophy and believing that the state is supreme and change is generated only by conflict, which has infiltrated all the elite control groups in the United States. One journalist who tried to get inside information warned, ‘They don’t like people tampering and prying. The power of Bones is incredible. They’ve got their hands on every lever of power in the country. It’s like trying to look into the Mafia.’ But George W. Bush dismisses such talk as ‘the kind of connect-the-random-dots charges that are virtually impossible to refute’.

  The Templars Forever

  The history of the Templars begins with their formation in Jerusalem in 1119 and ends with their destruction two centuries later in France. But in another sense it goes back three thousand years to the Ophel Hill and continues into the future. The secrecy of the Templars, their hybrid nature as monks with swords, the exotic worlds that they encompassed, their romance and sudden fall, and the mysteries left unanswered by the disappearance of their archives, have enlarged them in the popular imagination where they survive and flourish. Powerful associations with such places as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple Mount have extended the spiritual dimensions of the order and added layers of history, legend and myth. Romantics and Freemasons, charlatans and lunatics, radicals and reactionaries, Christians, Jews and Muslims, have all contributed to the story.

  Just as the search for holy relics in the Middle Ages turned up the most unlikely objects in the most convenient places, so each new pseudo-history or fanciful novel follows the money and adds new places, events and notions to the myth–so that Scotland and the French Revolution are already well established as playing a part, and America is being developed. An imminent leap from Rosslyn to Washington DC via Rhode Island, Salt Lake City and New Haven would not be surprising.

  In Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum some publisher’s editors are thinking up a new series of books to appeal to academics, cultists and conspiracy theorists, something ‘in these dark times to offer someone a faith, a glimpse into the beyond’, and make a little money. One suggests that they take a few dozen notions and feed them into a computer, ‘for example, the Templars fled to Scotland, or the Corpus Hermeticum arrived in Florence in 1460’, and add ‘a few connective phrases like “It’s obvious that” and “This proves that”’. And so they begin at random: ‘Joseph of Arimathea carries the Grail into France’ ‘According to Templar Tradition, Godefroy de Bouillon founded the Grand Priory of Zion in Jerusalem’ ‘Debussy was a Rosicrucian’ ‘Minni
e Mouse is Mickey’s fiancée’. No! They must not overdo it, an editor warns, but the first replies, ‘We must overdo it. If we admit that in the whole universe there is even a single fact that does not reveal a mystery, then we violate hermetic thought.’ ‘That’s true’, says another. ‘Minnie’s in. And, if you’ll allow me, I’ll add a fundamental axiom: The Templars have something to do with everything.’

  Part 6

  Locations

  Outremer

  The Templars in the East

  Outremer–French for ‘the land across the sea’–was the general name for the Crusader states which ran along the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean from Asia Minor to Egypt. These were the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch and the County of Edessa. Today the region encompasses Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and parts of Turkey. But the principal sites associated with the Templars that visitors can see today are in Israel and Syria, and most notably in the Old City of Jerusalem.

  Outremer would have fallen much sooner than it did had it not been for the Templars. They defended the Holy Land on the battlefield, and also in numerous castles and fortified cities, remains of which survive across the region. In addition to Jerusalem and Acre, the Templars were based at Tortosa on the Syrian coast, on the island of Arwad, and inland at Safita, which, along with the Hospitaller castle of Krak des Chevalier, guarded the strategically important Homs Gap. All of these places are worth visiting today.