Secrets of The Lost Symbol

by Daniel Burstein

  We don’t realize how much Freemasonry is all around us in our culture, hidden in plain sight, as Robert Langdon might say.

  The influence of Masons and Masonic thinking on classical culture is powerful, although not widely understood. Just as most of us didn’t learn that George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Paul Revere were all Freemasons (no matter how many high school classes we took on the American Revolution), we are also unaware that many great cultural figures we study were Masons: Mozart, Tolstoy, Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of the Sherlock Holmes series), poet Robert Burns, Goethe (author of Faust), the great Enlightenment-era philosopher Voltaire, and Mark Twain (although he appears to have had problems paying his dues), just to name a few. Mozart’s The Magic Flute is an eighteenth-century Masonic allegory of initiation and mystical journey, although almost no one knows that fact; Edgar Allan Poe’s famous “Cask of Amontillado,” which many students read in middle school, is a biting nineteenth-century anti-Masonic allegory—but they don’t tell you that in school.

  It isn’t only great creative minds of traditional literature and the arts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who have been attracted to this unusual fraternity. As “high culture” moved into pop culture in the twentieth century, many figures from the entertainment world turned out to be members of Masonic lodges. There are the musicians and singers—people like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin, and Gene Autry. There are the movie moguls—Jack Warner, Cecil B. DeMille, and Billy Wilder. There are film stars like Harpo Marx, Burl Ives, Harold Lloyd, Roy Rogers, Red Skelton, Peter Sellers, and Jackie Mason. True to the premise of equality and tolerance espoused by Freemasonry, Jewish comedians, African-American jazz musicians, and other diverse groups have been attracted to the idea and the social network of the Masonic lodge.

  Masonic themes and motifs have populated many films. The Man Who Would Be King (starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine) is based on a Masonic-themed story written by Rudyard Kipling, a passionate Freemason himself, and the first English-language winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. In the Kipling story, all the leading characters are Freemasons, and the plot includes the idea that ancient Masonic secrets had been handed down through generations of tribesmen in a remote part of Afghanistan since the days of Alexander the Great.

  Fanciful treatment of Masonic legends is the hallmark of the intriguing but not very serious National Treasure series. Many people will recall the opening monologue of the original 2004 National Treasure, which is as mysterious and compelling as it is pseudohistorical:

  Charles Carroll was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was also a member of a secret society known as the Masons, people who knew about a secret treasure that had been fought over for centuries by tyrants, pharaohs, emperors, warlords. And then suddenly it vanished. It didn’t reappear for more than a thousand years, when knights from the First Crusade discovered secret vaults beneath the Temple of Solomon. They brought the treasure back to Europe and took the name Knights Templar. Over the next century they smuggled it out of Europe and they formed a new brotherhood called the Freemasons . . . By the time of the American Revolution the treasure had been hidden again. By then the Masons included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere . . .

  Consider just a few other examples:

  • In the 1965 Beatles movie Help!, Ringo Starr is asked to identify a Masonic ring, which he does correctly.

  • “Heredom” appears to be an obscure Masonic code word known only to characters in The Lost Symbol. But Arnold Schwarzenegger references it in his appearance in the 1999 movie The End of Days.

  • The plot of the 1990 The Godfather: Part III film centers around a set of fictional incidents mirroring the recent history of the so-called P2 Masonic Lodge and the Vatican.

  • A Masonic Pyramid makes an appearance in the 1979 Peter Sellers movie Being There.

  For all the references to Robert Langdon’s famous Mickey Mouse watch, Dan Brown fails to mention in The Lost Symbol that Walt Disney is thought by many to have been at least associated with the Masons. This after Brown retold the tale of the “Priory of Sion” in The Da Vinci Code, alluding to the idea that Disney was one of the Priory’s “grand masters.”

  Conspiracy theorists who persist in alleging a Masonic world conspiracy often accuse Walt Disney of being a Mason and of using his films to promote subliminal Masonic thinking. Most responsible research, however, seems to indicate that Disney was not actually a Freemason. He was a member of DeMolay, the Masonic youth organization named for Jacques de Molay, the Knights Templar grand master who would not give in to the powerful king of France and was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1314. Six centuries later, other American DeMolay members have included Bill Clinton, Buddy Ebsen, and John Wayne.

  Walt Disney had such fond memories of his days as a youth member of DeMolay that he encouraged DeMolay to make Mickey Mouse an honorary member. During its early days, Disneyland apparently sponsored a Masonic club for its employees along with other recreational clubs like skiing and knitting. Additionally, a Disneyland private club restaurant was named Club 33, and while spokespeople insist there is no connection to the importance of the number 33 to Masons and the high-ranking 33° Mason title, it is an unexplained name for a club if it has no connection to Freemasonry.

  Masons, always champions of progress and new technology, embraced film as a medium early on. There were explicitly Masonic films like Bobby Bumps Starts a Lodge, which even addressed the issue of racial equality in America—very pioneering for 1916. Countless modern films have subtle Masonic references. Some of these titles range from Bad Boys II to Eyes Wide Shut, Mel Gibson’s Conspiracy Theory to What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?

  A not infrequent visual allusion in a film is to a Masonic hall or lodge in passing. Today, with many lodges struggling to stay afloat in the face of declining membership, they are often rented out for concerts, battles of the bands, and other local events. Many of us don’t even notice or think about Masonic halls, but most of us pass by them all the time in our hometowns. Where I grew up in Connecticut we drive by a Masonic hall every time we go downtown. As with many Masonic halls, this one is not used primarily for Masonic activity today, but it still bears the name and still shows the compass and the square on the facade of the building—just another reminder of how deeply seated Masonic images are in our modern world.

  Cartoons and comedies have also poked fun and satirized Freemasons and other fraternal orders for years. Some of it is good fun—simply showing how pervasive and ordinary these organizations were at one point in American life. In The Flintstones, Fred and Barney belong to the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes Lodge No. 26. In The Honeymooners, Ralph and Ed belong to the International Order of Friendly Sons of the Raccoons. Stealing an idea from ordo ab chao, the Raccoons had their own Latin motto: e pluribus raccoon. Even The Simpsons have included Masonic subplots, such as the episode in which Homer joins a secret fraternity called the Stonecutters, an obvious reference to the presumed stonemason origins of Freemasonry.

  Throughout The Lost Symbol Dan Brown makes reference to the Rosicrucians and their connections over the centuries to the Freemasons. To this day, historians are unsure if the Rosicrucians ever existed or were an elaborate intellectual hoax/allegory created by the brilliant Elizabethan-era polymath Francis Bacon. But once you have read The Lost Symbol, you will be in a better position to understand a rather bizarre scene in Beat the Devil, a 1953 film directed by John Huston (an influential Oscar-winning director and father of Anjelica Huston). Beat the Devil stars Humphrey Bogart. In the middle of the film, a man rushes in at a critical moment and delivers a speech to Bogart’s character about the Rosicrucians and the international conspiracy they are organizing, confiding: “I am in a position to know. Secret information. The Rosicrucians, the great white brotherhood, the High Secret Orders, which have no fait
h . . . Faith and power, secret power, men who guard the trust from the deepest insides of the whatchamacalit. Mystic rulers all one club, chained together by one purpose, one idea, mankind’s champions . . .”

  Many of us, especially my generation, will be learning about Freemasons for the first time in the course of reading The Lost Symbol. Yet the fact is that most of us have seen or heard Masonic references in films, television, and books and usually don’t even know it. For whatever else The Lost Symbol may be, it will be an eye-opener to many people about American history and about how the Masons have been involved for hundreds of years in the quest for knowledge, in preserving ancient wisdom, and in the encouragement of a more open, tolerant society. All of these themes have become part of the familiar fabric and archetypal nature of our popular culture and our world.

  Searching for Masons in the Corridors of Power[²]

  by Eamon Javers

  Chapter 1

  The reporter walked into his office expecting a normal day at work: cup of coffee, call some sources, the usual routine.

  But this wasn’t going to be an ordinary day at all.

  His editor had other ideas. Darker ideas.

  The editor wanted an article on [Robert Langdon’s] dramatic quest in and around Washington’s most famous landmarks to find a secret hidden long ago by the Masons. But the editor was intrigued by a real-world question: how many present-day members of Congress are Freemasons? And is any member of Congress also a Knight Templar—a famous subgroup of Masons that traces its lineage to the medieval crusaders?

  In a flash, the reporter realized he had spent years acquiring the skills needed to complete the quest to find the Freemasons on Capitol Hill—and finish it before the looming deadline.

  I am the only man in this cubicle who can write this story.

  My God!

  Chapter 2

  The reporter turns to the same exotic and arcane research tool Langdon uses in the book: Google. There, he finds a clue.

  A YouTube video shows a member of Congress accepting an award from his fellow Masons in 2008. It’s Joe Wilson . . . He says he is a member of the Sinclair Lodge of West Columbia, South Carolina. “For over two hundred and fifty years, Masons have been a part of the fabric and leadership of the United States,” Wilson says on the video. “The grand tradition of brotherhood is a reflection of the very framework this nation was founded upon.”

  No answers there, and Wilson’s office declined to elaborate.

  Next, the reporter dialed the number of Dick Fletcher, executive secretary of the Masonic Service Association, a sort of national clearinghouse for Masonic information. But Fletcher said Masons don’t keep records of government officials who are members—and wouldn’t release them if they did, for privacy reasons.

  Deadline approaches. There were forces at work that no one could comprehend.

  The reporter turned to an even more eminent figure, Senate historian Don Ritchie. But Ritchie said there’s no list of Masons in Congress. Politicians have long been drawn to the group, he says, because of its grass-roots political organizing power.

  The reporter heard a chime and looked up at his computer screen in astonishment. An electronic message had appeared there, as if by magic.

  These are words. And they’re written in English, an ancient language I happen to speak.

  It was an e-mail, from a hidden and well-placed source. And it contained a list of names of members of Congress. Hidden among them was the Knight Templar.

  But which one was it?

  Chapter 3

  The reporter raced to the one place he knew he could find answers: the U.S. Capitol. Dashing into the building, he found the first of the names on his list—House Minority Whip Eric Cantor.

  The Virginia Republican offered a few cryptic words as he ascended the grand House stairway just beneath an enormous painting of George Washington: “I joined the Masons about twenty years ago because my dad and uncle were members of a lodge down in Richmond,” Cantor said as he climbed the stairs. “But I haven’t participated in a long time. I’m just too busy.”

  The reporter quickly moved to a subterranean portal: the Senate subway. Soon enough, a figure emerges from the long tunnel. It’s Montana Democratic senator Jon Tester. He, too, is a Mason.

  “I really like the ceremony,” he says. “That’s what drew me to it.” He says his father-in-law invited him to join the Masons in the mid-1980s. “A lot of our Founding Fathers were Masons. Maybe because they liked to be so rebellious and nonconformist.”

  Maybe Tester’s fellow Mason Senator Chuck Grassley can offer enlightenment. The Iowa Republican says part of the appeal is the fraternity’s egalitarian worldview. “There are Masons in every country, and in countries like Iran, where they are probably underground. Hitler didn’t like Masons,” Grassley said.

  The reporter was beginning to panic. He still hadn’t found the Knight Templar.

  He vowed to press on.

  Chapter 4

  It was going to take an even more exalted personage to solve the mystery. The reporter dialed the phone number of Representative Howard Coble (Republican, North Carolina), a 33° Mason. “It’s a real first-class organization,” Coble says of Masonry. “If people conducted their lives along the way the Mason code is spelled out, there would be far fewer problems, far more solutions, and far less chaos,” Coble says.

  Ordo Ab Chao: Order out of chaos. He’s alluding to the Masonic credo. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  The reporter presses for an explanation. Coble demurs. “I can’t speak more openly than that,” he said. “I don’t want to get drummed out of the lodge.”

  He explains that his Masonic brothers have already been lenient with him—since he’s too busy to get to meetings very often, he recently forgot the password to the lodge in North Carolina. A fellow Mason had to vouch for him.

  “I’m proud to be a Mason,” Coble said. “But I’m not proud of my attendance record.”

  Chapter 5

  The reporter raced through the other congressional Masons on his list. Representative Denny Rehberg (Republican, Montana): recently injured in a boating accident, he doesn’t respond to the reporter’s summons. Representative Jeff Miller (Republican, Florida): unavailable. Senator Robert Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia): recently hospitalized.

  The reporter stood in the opulently carpeted Speaker’s lobby just off the House floor, peering through the glass doors into the chamber. There, he spotted the object of his pursuit.

  It was so obvious. How could he not have known?

  The Knight Templar was standing in the back of the House chamber, chatting amiably with his fellow Democrats.

  This was it, the moment the reporter had been working for.

  Representative Nick Rahall (Democrat, West Virginia) emerged, briefly, from the chamber. A genial sixty-year-old with bushy eyebrows, the diminutive Rahall didn’t look anything like a medieval crusader. In fact, his family roots are in Lebanon, not Europe.

  But Rahall is also a 33° Mason, who joined the secretive society about five years before he ran for Congress in 1976. “When I joined, there were a great deal of older individuals who helped me along the way and to whom I am deeply indebted to this day,” he said.

  Rahall said he achieved his thirty-third-degree status by two routes: through the Scottish Rite and through the York Rite, where he participated in the Commandery. That’s the portion of the Freemason tradition that makes Rahall a Knight Templar.

  And although he hadn’t read the Dan Brown book, Rahall says he understands why the Masons attract so many conspiracy theories. “It’s because, particularly in the early days, there were code words to get into the lodge, and everything was done by rituals,” Rahall said. “The Masons themselves helped perpetuate the myth, knowing it was just that—a myth.”

  The r
eporter screwed up his courage to ask one final question.

  So is there a global conspiracy?

  “No.”

  But you wouldn’t tell me if there was, would you?

  “That’s right,” Rahall said with a smile.

  Chuckling, the Knight Templar traveled back though the portal to the ancient floor of the House of Representatives.

  Chapter Three

  Secret Knowledge

  The Ancient Mysteries and The Lost Symbol

  by Glenn W. Erickson

  Glenn Erickson, professor of philosophy at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, in Brazil, has written extensively on the interstices of philosophy, mathematics, and the arts. In our prior books, Secrets of the Code and Secrets of Angels & Demons, he has contributed essays that look at these novels from the viewpoint of a philosopher. Given his specialized knowledge of the history of Tarot cards, the sacred geometry of the Neopythagoreans, and the cosmology of the Neoplatonists, we asked him to examine Dan Brown’s use of the “Ancient Mysteries” in TLS. What he found is nothing short of amazing—direct parallels to the Tarot, as well as specific numbers, names, and images from TLS that allude to the mystery texts of the Book of Revelation and related medieval and Renaissance works.

  The legend, as Langdon recalled, never exactly explained what was supposed to be inside the Masonic Pyramid—whether it was ancient texts, occult writings, scientific revelations, or something far more mysterious—but the legend did say that the precious information was ingeniously encoded . . . (The Lost Symbol, chapter 30)