Fall 2011 The Rising Point

Rising PointThe

Tales of The

Knights Templar

INTERNATIONAL MASONIC REVIEW PUBLISHED BY BONISTEEL MASONIC LIBRARY

Volume 24. Issue 3• • FALL 2011

BONI

STEE

LML.

ORG

Special Issue!

Fall 2011

10US $9.95

THE RISING POINT is the official publication of Bonisteel Masonic Library and is published four times per year. Masonic Bodies are welcome to reprint from this publication provided that the article is reprinted in full, the name of the author and the source of the article are indicated, and a copy of the publication containing the reprint is sent to the editor. Submissions to this publication and all Correspondence concerning this publication should come through the Editor Mitchell Ozog. The Editor reserves the right to edit all materials received.

Fair Use Notice:The Bonisteel Masonic Library web site and publication THE RISING POINT may at times contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site or the publication Rising Point for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on The Bonisteel Masonic Library web site and publication Rising Point is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml United States Code: Title 17, Section 107 http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/unframed/17/107.html Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include - (1) the purposeand character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

M A I L I N G A D D R E S STHE RISING POINT

Bonisteel Masonic Library2520 Arrowwood TrlAnn Arbor, MI 48105

Web site: www.bonisteelml.org

LAYOUT & DESIGNBro. Mitchell Ozog

Bro. Mitchell Ozog , 32º Editor in [email protected]

Bro. Karl Grube, Ph.D., 32º Managing [email protected]

Bro. Robert Blackburn 32º Book Review Editor

© Unknown

Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org�

WELCOME TO FALL 2011

Volume 24. Issue 3 - fall 2011

Contents

FEATURE ARTICLES

BONISTEEL MASONIC LIBRARY FUND RAISER

The Bonisteel Masonic Library of Ann Arbor & Detroit has established a goal of raising $5,000 for 2012 operations. Your contribution will assure the continuance of our award winning quarterly publication Rising Point and the yearly costs of online publication. Simple scroll down to Pay Pal on the Index page at Bonisteel Masonic Library website donate by using a credit card. www.bonisteelml.org

3 HISTORY Of THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

6 THE TEMPLAR GRAND MASTER

COVER CREDITS

14 ARE THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR Of THE PRESENT DAY

17 THE THREE GREAT LIGHTS

For those of you who are new to this publication, we hope you enjoy what you see and come back. Suggestions and opinions are welcome.

19 1857 - BUILDERS Of TEMPLAR MASONRY

A n d M o r e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

�3 A MASONS CABLE TOW

9 KNIGHT KADOSH

�4�6�8

BOOK REVIEW

MEDIEVAL KNIGHTHOOD LIVES IN INDIANA’S LEVANT PRECEPTORY

THE SPIRIT Of MASONRY

�1 TEMPLARISM: ITS DUTY AND ITS SPHERE

Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org 3

WELCOME TO FALL 2011

History of the Knights TemplarNon nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam

(Not to us Lord, not to us, but to Your Name give the glory)

The history of the Knights Templar incorporates about two centuries during the Middle Ages, from the Order’s founding in the early 12th century, to when it was disbanded in the early 14th century.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici), commonly known as the Knights Templar, the Order of the Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers) or simply as Templars, were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders. The organization existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages.

Officially endorsed by the Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity throughout Christendom, and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. N o n -combatant members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.

The Templars’ existence was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded. Rumors about the Templars’ secret initiation ceremony created mistrust, and King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, took advantage of the situation. In 1307, many of the Order’s members in France were arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. Under pressure from King Philip, Pope Clement V disbanded the Order in 1312. Portugal was the only European country where Templars were not persecuted and arrested (due to the King’s will). The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends.

The Knights Templar were the elite fighting force of their

day, highly trained, well-equipped and highly motivated; one of the tenets of their religious order was that they

were forbidden from retreating in battle, unless outnumbered three to one, and even then only by order of their commander, or if the Templar flag went down. Not all

Knights Templar were warriors. The mission of most of the members was one of support – to acquire resources which could be used to fund and equip the small percentage of members who

were fighting on the front lines. Because of this infrastructure, the warriors were well-trained and

very well armed. Even their horses were trained to fight in combat, fully armored. The combination of soldier and monk was

also a powerful one, as to the Templar knights, martyrdom in battle was one of the most glorious ways to die.

Their success attracted the concern of many other orders, with the two most powerful rivals being the

Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights. Various nobles also had concerns about the Templars as well, both for financial reasons, and nervousness about an independent army that was able to move freely through all borders.

At the time of their arrest, the Order of the Temple, Knights Templars had amassed great wealth, though not as much as the Hospitallers. When they were in the Holy Land and upon their return, they were exempt from all taxes and had many privileges. They loaned enormous amounts of money to the Kings of both England and France as well as many great nobles. For the explanation of Philip IV of France’s persecution of the Templars we need hardly look further than to financial considerations. “The wealth of the Order was more than sufficient to excite the lust of royal freebooters, and its power and privileges quite enough to arouse distrust in the mind of a less suspicious despot than Philip le Bel. He was already deeply in debt to them.”

Pope Boniface’s successor, Benedict XI, lifted the excommunication of Philip IV but refused to absolve de Nogaret, excommunicating him and all the other Italian

Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org4

kidnap co-conspirators on June 7, 1304. Benedict died just eight months later in Perugia, perhaps from poisoning by an agent of Nogaret. There followed a year of dispute among the French and Italian cardinals as to the next Pope, before deciding on the non-Italian Bertrand de Goth (Clement V), a childhood friend of

Philip, in June 1305. Clement withdrew the Papal Bulls of Boniface VIII which had conflicted with Philip IV’s plans, created nine more French cardinals, and, after a failed attempt to unite the Templars and the Hospitallers, agreed to Philip IV’s demands for an investigation of the Templars. Pope Clement also moved the papacy from the Italian Anagni to the more palatable (and controllable) French Avignon, initiating the period called the Avignon Papacy.

At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured in locations such as the tower at Chinon, into admitting heresy in the Order. Over 100 charges were issued against them, the majority of them identical charges that had been earlier issued against the inconvenient Pope Boniface VIII: accusations of denying Christ, spitting and urinating on the cross, and devil worship. The main interrogation of the Templars was under the control of the Inquisitors, a group of experienced interrogators and clergy who circulated around Europe at the beck and call of any European noble. The rules of interrogation said that no blood could be drawn, but this did nothing to stop the torture. One account told of a Templar who had fire applied to the soles of his feet, such that the bones fell out of the skin. Other Templars were suspended upside-down or placed in thumbscrews. Of the 138 Templars (many of them old men) questioned in Paris over the next few years, 105 of them “confessed” to denying Christ during the secret Templar initiations. 103 confessed to an “obscene kiss” being part of the ceremonies, and 123 said they spat on the cross. Throughout the trial there was never any physical evidence of wrongdoing, and no independent witnesses; the only “proof” was obtained through confessions induced by torture.The Templars reached out to the Pope for assistance, and Pope Clement

did write letters to King Philip questioning the arrests, but took no further action.

In 1312, after the Council of Vienne, and under extreme pressure from King Philip IV, Pope Clement V issued an edict officially dissolving the Order. Many kings and nobles who had been supporting the Knights up until that time, finally acquiesced and dissolved the orders in their fiefs in accordance with the Papal command. Most were not so brutal as the French. In England, many Knights were arrested and tried, but not found guilty.

Much of the Templar property outside of France was transferred by the Pope to the Knights Hospitaller, and many surviving Templars were also accepted into the Hospitallers. In the Iberian Peninsula, where the king of Aragon was against giving the heritage of the Templars to Hospitallers (as commanded by Clement V), the Order of Montesa took Templar assets.

In the end, the only three accused of heresy directly by the papal commission were Jacques

Jacques de Molay, in a nineteenth-century color lithograph by

Chevauchet

Two Templars burned at the stake, from a French 15th century manuscript

Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org �

de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and his two immediate subordinates; they were to renounce their heresy publicly, when de Molay regained his courage and proclaimed the order’s and his innocence along with Geoffrey de Charney. The two were arrested by French authorities as relapsed heretics and burned at the stake in 1314. Their ashes were then ground up and dumped into the Seine, so as to leave no relics behind.

In England the Crown was also deeply in debt to the Templars, and probably on that basis, the Templars were also persecuted in England, their lands forfeited and taken by others, (the last private owner being the favorite of Edward II, Hugh le Despenser). Many of Templars in England were killed; some fled to Scotland and other places. In France, Philip IV, who was also coincidentally in terrible financial debt to the Templars was perhaps the more aggressive persecutor. So widely was the injustice of Philip’s rage against the Templars perceived that the “Curse of the Templars” became legend: Reputedly uttered by the Grand Master Jacques de Molay upon the stake whence he burned, he adjured: “Within one year, God will summon both Clement and Philip to His Judgment for these actions.” The fact that both rulers died within a year, as predicted, only heightened the scandal surrounding the suppression of the Order. The source of this legend does not date from the time of the execution of Jacques de Molay.

Today, the Knights Templar is the name of a branch of Freemasonry.

The Knights Templar is an international philanthropic chivalric order affiliated with Freemasonry. Unlike the initial degrees conferred in a Masonic Lodge, which only require a belief in a Supreme Being regardless of religious affiliation, the Knights Templar is one of several additional Masonic Orders in which membership is open only to Freemasons who profess a belief in the Christian religion. The full title of this Order is The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta. The word “United” in this title indicates that more than one historical tradition and more than one actual Order are jointly controlled within this system. The individual Orders ‘united’ within this system are principally the Knights of the Temple (Knights Templar), the Knights of Malta, the Knights of St Paul, and only within the York Rite, the Knights of the Red Cross. The Order derives its name from the historical Knights Templar. One theory of the origins of Freemasonry claims direct descent from the historical Knights Templar through its final fourteenth-century members who took refuge in Scotland, or other

countries where the Templar suppression was not enforced. Although the theory may not be dismissed, it is usually deprecated on grounds of lack of evidence by both masonic authorities and historians

In September 2001, Barbara Frale discovered a copy of the Chinon Parchment dated 17–20 August 1308 in the Vatican Secret Archives, a document that indicated that Pope Clement V absolved the leaders of the Order in 1308. Frale published her findings in the Journal of Medieval History in 2004. In 2007, The Vatican published the Chinon Parchment as part of a limited edition of 799 copies of Processus Contra Templarios.[31] Another Chinon parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, well-known to historians, stated that absolution had been granted to all those Templars that had confessed to heresy “and restored them to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church”

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of _the_Knights_Templar

The Templar Seal showing two knights (perhaps Hugues de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer) on one horse. There are many interpretations of the symbolism of this seal.

Contemporary legend held that the symbol represented the initial poverty of the order; that they could afford only a single horse for every two men. Still, the Rule of the Order from the outset permitted three horses and no more for each knight, as well as no Templars sharing the same horse.

Several masters adopted this seal from the beginning of the order until at least 1298. It is known to have been in use since 1167. The Rule forbids two riders on the same beast.

6 Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org

18th March, 1314. An immense concourse of people stood around. The four noble prisoners were conducted from their dungeons, and led up on the stage. The cardinal of Alba read out their former confessions, and pronounced the sentence of perpetual imprisonment. He was then proceeding to expose the guilt of the order, when the Master interrupted him, and thus spoke, taking all the spectators to witness:--

“It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth to triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest of crimes; but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest, and truth obliges me to attest, that it is innocent. I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms. I abandon without regret.”

Molay was followed by Guy in his assertion of the innocence of the order; the other two remained silent. The commissioners were confounded, and stopped. The intelligence was conveyed to the king, who, instantly calling his council together, without any spiritual person being present, condemned the two knights to the flames.

A pile was erected on that point of the islet in the Seine where afterwards was erected the statue of Henry IV., and the following day Molay and his companion were brought forth and placed upon it. They still persisted in their assertion of the innocence of the order. The flames were first applied to their feet, then to their more vital parts. The fetid smell of their burning flesh infected the surrounding air, and added to their torments; yet still they persevered in their declarations. At length death terminated their misery. The spectators shed tears at the view of their constancy, and during the night their ashes were gathered up to be preserved as relics.It is mentioned as a tradition, by some historians, that Molay, ere he expired, summoned Clement to appear within forty days before the Supreme Judge, and Philip to the same tribunal within the space of a year. The pontiff actually did die of a cholic on the night of the 19th of the following month, and, the church in which his body was laid taking fire, the corpse was half consumed. The king, before the year had elapsed, died of a fall from his horse. Most probably it was these events which gave rise to the tradition, which testifies the general belief of the innocence of the Templars. It was also remarked that all the active persecutors of the order perished by premature or violent deaths.

It remains to discuss the two following points:--Did the religio-military order of the Knights Templars hold a secret doctrine subversive of religion and morality? Has the order been continued down to our own days?

We have seen what the evidence against the Templars was, and it is very plain that such evidence would not be admitted in any modern court of justice. It was either hearsay, or given by persons utterly unworthy of credit, or wrung from the accused by agony and torture. The articles themselves are absurd and contradictory. Are we to believe that the same men had adopted the pure deism of the Mahommedans, and were guilty of a species of idolatry * almost too gross for the

THe TeMplAr GrAnd MAsTer

JAcques de MolAy


lowest superstition? But when did this corruption commence among the Templars? Were those whom St. Bernard praised as models of Christian zeal and piety, and whom the whole Christian world admired and revered, engaged in a secret conspiracy against religion and government? Yes, boldly replies Hammer, the two humble and pious knights who founded the order were the pupils and secret allies of the Mahommedan Ismaelites. This was going too far for Wilike, and he thinks that the guilt of introducing the secret doctrine lies on the chaplains; for he could discern that the doctrines of gnosticism, which the Templars are supposed to have held, were beyond the comprehension of illiterate knights, who, though they could fight and pray, were but ill qualified to enter into the mazes of mystic metaphysics. According, therefore, to one party, the whole order was corrupt from top to bottom; according to another, the secrets were confined to a few, and, contrary to all analogy, the heads of the order were frequently in ignorance of them. Neither offer any thing like evidence in support of their assumption.The real guilt of the Templars was their wealth and their pride *: the last alienated the people from them, the former excited the cupidity of the king of France. Far be it from us to maintain that the morals of the Templars were purer than those of the other religious orders. With such ample means as they possessed of indulging all their appetites and passions, it would be contrary to all experience to suppose that they always restrained them, and we will even concede that some of their members were obnoxious to charges of deism, impiety, breaches of their religious vows, and gross licentiousness. We only deny that such were the rules of the order. Had they not been so devoted as they were to the Holy

See they would perhaps have come down to us as unsullied as the knights of St. John *; but they sided with Pope Boniface against Philip the Fair, and a subservient pontiff sacrificed to his own avarice and personal ambition the most devoted adherents of the court of Rome †.

We make little doubt that any one who coolly and candidly considers the preceding account of the manner in which the order was suppressed will readily concede that the guilt of its members was anything but proved. It behoves their modern impugners to furnish some stronger proofs than any they have as yet brought forward. The chief adversary of the Templars at the present day is a writer whose veracity and love of justice are beyond suspicion, and who has earned for himself enduring fame by his labours in the field of oriental literature, but in whose mind, as his most partial friends must allow, learning and imagination are apt to overbalance judgment and philosophy ‡. He has been replied to by Raynouard, Münter, and other able advocates of the knights.

We now come to the question of the continuance of the order to the present day. That it has in some sort been transmitted to our times is a matter of no doubt; for, as we have just seen, the king of Portugal formed the Order of Christ out of the Templars in his dominions. But our readers are no doubt aware that the freemasons assert a connexion with the Templars, and that there is a society calling themselves Templars, whose chief seat is at Paris, and whose branches extend into England and other countries. The account which they give of themselves is as follows:--

James de Molay, in the year 1314, in anticipation of his speedy martyrdom,, appointed Johannes Marcus Lormenius to be his successor in his dignity. This appointment was made by a regular well-authenticated charter, bearing the signatures of the various chiefs of the order, and it is still preserved at Paris, together with the statutes, archives, banners, &c., of the soldiery of the Temple. There has been an unbroken succession of grand-masters down to the present times, among whom are to be found some of the most illustrious names in France. Bertrand du Guesclin was grand-master for a number of years; the dignity was sustained by several of the Montmorencies; and during the last century the heads of the society were princes of the different branches of the house of Bourbon. Bernard Raymond Fabré Palaprat is its head at present, at least was so a few years ago *.

This is no doubt a very plausible circumstantial account; but, on applying the Ithuriel spear of criticism to it, various ugly shapes resembling falsehood start up. Thus Molay,

King Philip IV of France (1268–1314)


we are told, appointed his successor in 1314. He was put to death on the 18th March of that year, and the order had been abolished nearly a year before. Why then did he delay so long, and why was he become so apprehensive of martyrdom at that time, especially when, as is well known, there was then no intention of putting him to death? Again, where were the chiefs of the society at that time? How many of them were living? and how could they manage to assemble in the dungeon of Molay and execute a formal instrument! Moreover, was it not repugnant to the rules and customs of the Templars for a Master to appoint his successor? These are a few of the objections which we think may be justly made; and, on the whole, we feel strongly disposed to reject the whole story.

As to the freemasons, we incline to think that it was the accidental circumstance of the name of the Templars which

has led them to claim a descent from that order; and it is possible that, if the same fate had fallen on the knights of St. John, the claim had never been set up. We are very far from denying that at the time of the suppression of the order of the Temple there was a secret doctrine in existence, and that the overthrow of the papal power, with its idolatry, superstition, and impiety, was the object aimed at by those who held it, and that freemasonry may possibly be that doctrine under another name *. But we are perfectly convinced that no proof of any weight has been given of the Templars’ participation in that doctrine, and that all probability is on the other side. We regard them, in fine, whatever their sins may have been, as martyrs--martyrs to the cupidity, blood-thirstiness, and ambition of the king of France.

Sources: Secret Societies of the Middle Ages, by Thomas Keightley, [1837], at sacred-texts.com

Joe Foss, was a Medal of Honor winner as a Marine fighter pilot in World War II who was a two-term governor of South Dakota, commissioner of the upstart American Football League and head of the National Rifle Association. A cigar-chomping curly haired six-foot captain who looked like his friend John Wayne (Freemason), Mr. Foss inspired the nation as a wartime ace. Flying a Wildcat that was slower than the vaunted Japanese Zeros, he shot down 26 fighters and bombers in the battle for Guadalcanal from October 1942 to January 1943. With his 26th ‘’kill,’’

he became the first American pilot of World War II to equal Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker’s (Freemason) record in World War I. Captain Foss was brought home in the spring of 1943 to receive the Medal of Honor from President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Freemason) and to go on a national tour to sell war bonds, spur military recruiting and inspire workers in war plants. Thrilling an America still reeling from Pearl Harbor, Captain Foss was pictured in his dress uniform on the cover of Life on June 7, 1943, described as ‘’America’s No. 1 Ace.’’ Joseph Jacob Foss was born on April 17, 1915, on a farm near Sioux Falls, S.D. He died at the age of 87 on January 1, 2003. When he was 12, he visited a tiny airport near his home to see Charles A. Lindbergh (Freemason), who was taking his Spirit of St. Louis on a national tour after flying to Paris. The boy envisioned soaring through the skies himself one day. Four years later, he went up in a plane for the first time, a $1.50 sightseeing ride in a Ford Tri-Motor. After watching a Marine aerial team perform acrobatics in open-cockpit biplanes, he was convinced that the aviator’s life was for him. But a month before Joe’s 18th birthday, his father was electrocuted by a downed power line in a lightning storm. The teenager had to help his mother and his brother, Cliff, work the farm while the dust storms of the Depression piled sand knee high. Working at odd jobs, he managed to afford occasional flying lessons and, at 25, graduated from the University of South Dakota with a bachelor’s in business administration. Seeing a chance to fly at government expense, he joined the

Marines and won his wings in March 1941, nine months before the United States entered the war. In November 1959, the club owners forming the American Football League selected Mr. Foss as commissioner, hoping that his contacts in Washington could help them in an anticipated struggle with the long-established National Football League. Even though his football experience had been limited to benchwarming as a guard for the University of South Dakota, he accepted. Under Mr. Foss, the A.F.L., out of necessity, divided broadcast revenues evenly among the teams. One move he made for the league was signing a five-year $10.6 million television contract with ABC in 1960 that included his pioneering idea. As commissioner, Mr. Foss indulged his lifelong passion for hunting and fishing as host of ‘’The American Sportsman’’ on ABC. He was criticized by some A.F.L. club owners who said he spent too much time filming his outdoors shows and flying as a brigadier general in the Air National Guard. Mr. Foss, who advocated an association with the N.F.L. under a single commissioner while hoping to keep the leagues’ identities separate, resigned as A.F.L. commissioner on April 17, 1966. Less than two months later, the league announced plans to merge with the N.F.L. in 1970. Brother Joseph Jacob Foss was a member of Minnehaha Lodge #5, South Dakota.

FAMOUS FREEMASON:Bro. JOSEPh JACOB FOSS


WE often profit more by our enemies than by our friends. “We support ourselves only on that which resists,” and owe our success to opposition. The best friends of Masonry in America were the Anti-Masons of 1826, and at the same time they were its worst enemies. Men are but the automata of Providence, and it uses the demagogue, the fanatic, and the knave, a common trinity in Republics, as its tools and instruments to effect that of which they do not dream, and which they imagine themselves commissioned to prevent.

The Anti-Masons, traitors and perjurors some, and some mere political knaves, purified Masonry by persecution, and so proved to be its benefactors; for that which is persecuted, grows. To them its present popularity is due, the cheapening of its Degrees, the invasion of its Lodges, that are no longer Sanctuaries, by the multitude; its pomp and pageantry and overdone display.

An hundred years ago it had become known that the ו‏ ?Q?D?Sה‎ were the Templars under a veil, and therefore the Degree was pro-scribed, and, ceasing to be worked, became a mere brief and formal ceremony, under another name. Now, from the tomb in which after his murders he rotted, Clement the Fifth howls against the successors of his victims, in the Allocution of Pio Nono against the Free-Masons. The ghosts of the dead Templars haunt the Vatican and disturb the slumbers of the paralyzed Papacy, which, dreading the dead, shrieks out its excommunications and impotent anathemas against the living. It is a declaration of war, and was needed to arouse apathy and inertness to action.

An enemy of the Templars shall tell us the secret of this Papal hostility against an Order that has existed for centuries in despite of its anathemas, and has its Sanctuaries and Asyla even in Rome.

It will be easy, as we read, to separate the false from the true, the audacious conjectures from the simple facts.

“A power that ruled without antagonism and without concurrence, and consequently without control, proved fatal to the Sacerdotal Royalties; while the Republics, on the other hand, had perished by the conflict of liberties and franchises, which, in the absence of all duty hierarchically sanctioned and enforced, had soon become mere tyrannies, rivals one of the other. To find a stable

medium between these two abysses, the idea of the Christian Hierophants was to create a society devoted to abnegation by solemn vows, protected by severe regulations; which should be recruited by initiation, and which, sole depositary of the great religious and social secrets, should make Kings and Pontiffs, without exposing it to the corruptions of Power. In that was the secret of that kingdom of Jesus Christ, which, without being of this world, would govern all its grandeurs.

“This idea presided at the foundation of the great religious orders, so often at war with the secular authorities, ecclesiastical or civil. Its realization was also the dream of the dissident sects of Gnostics or Illuminati who pretended to connect their faith with the primitive tradition of the Christianity of Saint John. It at length became a menace for the Church and Society, when a rich and dissolute Order, initiated in the mysterious doctrines of the Kabalah, seemed disposed to turn against legitimate authority the conservative principle of Hierarchy, and threatened the entire world with an immense revolution.

“The Templars, whose history is so imperfectly known, were those terrible conspirators. In 1118, nine Knights Crusaders in the East, among whom were Geoffroi de Saint-Omer

KnIGHT KAdosH


and Hugues de Payens, consecrated themselves to religion, and took an oath between the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople, a See always secretly or openly hostile to that of Rome from the time of Photius. The avowed object of the Templars was to protect the Christians who came to visit the Holy Places: their secret object was the re-building of the Temple of Solomon on the model prophesied by Ezekiel.

“This re-building, formally predicted by the Judaïzing Mystics of the earlier ages, had become the secret dream of the Patriarchs of the Orient. The Temple of Solomon, re-built and consecrated to the Catholic worship would become, in effect, the Metropolis of the Universe; the East would prevail over the West, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople would possess themselves of the Papal power.

“The Templars, or Poor Fellow-Soldiery of the Holy House of the Temple intended to be re-built, took as their models, in the Bible, the Warrior-Masons of Zorobabel, who worked, holding the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. Therefore it was that the Sword and the Trowel were the insignia of the Templars, who subsequently, as will be seen, concealed themselves under the name of Brethren Masons. [This name, Frères Masons in the French, adopted by way of secret reference to the Builders of the Second Temple, was corrupted in English into Free-Masons, as Pythagore de Crotone was into Peter Gower of Groton in England. Khairu_m or Khu_r-u_m, (a name mis-rendered into Hiram) from an artificer in brass and other metals, became the Chief Builder of the Haikal Kadosh, the Holy House, of the Temple, the Ἱερος Δομος; and the words Bonai and Banaim yet appear in the Masonic Degrees, meaning Builder and Builders.]

“The trowel of the Templars is quadruple, and the triangular plates of it are arranged in the form of a cross, making the Kabalistic pantacle known by the name of the Cross of the East. The Knight of the East, and the Knight of the East and West, have in their titles secret allusions to the Templars of whom they were at first the successors.

“The secret thought of Hugues de Payens, in founding his Order, was not exactly to serve the ambition of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. There existed at that period in the East a Sect of Johannite Christians, who claimed to be the only true Initiates into the real mysteries of the religion of the Saviour. They pretended to know the real history of YESUS the ANOINTED, and, adopting in part the Jewish traditions and the tales of the Talmud, they held that the facts recounted in the Evangels are but allegories, the key of which Saint John gives, in saying that the world might be filled with the books that could be written upon the words

and deeds of Jesus Christ; words which, they thought, would be only a ridiculous exaggeration, if he were not speaking of an allegory and a legend, that might be varied and prolonged to infinity.

“The Johannites ascribed to Saint John the foundation of their Secret Church, and the Grand Pontiffs of the Sect assumed the title of Christos, Anointed, or Consecrated, and claimed to have succeeded one another from Saint John by an uninterrupted succession of pontifical powers. He who, at the period of the foundation of the Order of the Temple, claimed these imaginary prerogatives, was named THEOCLET; he knew HUGUES DE PAYENS, he initiated him into the Mysteries and hopes of his pretended church, he seduced him by the notions of Sovereign Priesthood and Supreme royalty, and finally designated him as his successor.

“Thus the Order of Knights of the Temple was at its very origin devoted to the cause of opposition to the tiara of Rome and the crowns of Kings, and the Apostolate of Kabalistic Gnosticism was vested in its chiefs. For Saint John himself was the Father of the Gnostics, and the current translation of his polemic against the heretical of his Sect and the pagans who denied that Christ was the Word, is throughout a misrepresentation, or misunderstanding at least, of the whole Spirit of that Evangel.

“The tendencies and tenets of the Order were enveloped in profound mystery, and it externally professed the most perfect orthodoxy. The Chiefs alone knew the aim of the Order: the Subalterns followed them without distrust.

“To acquire influence and wealth, then to intrigue, and at need to fight, to establish the Johannite or Gnostic and Kabalistic dogma, were the object and means proposed to the initiated Brethren. The Papacy and the rival monarchies, they said to them, are sold and bought in these days, become corrupt, and to-morrow, perhaps, will destroy each other. All that will become the heritage of the Temple: the World will soon come to us for its Sovereigns and Pontiffs. We shall constitute the equilibrium of the Universe, and be rulers over the Masters of the World.

“The Templars, like all other Secret Orders and Associations, had two doctrines, one concealed and reserved for the Masters, which was Johannism; the other public, which was the Roman Catholic. Thus they deceived the adversaries whom they sought to supplant. Hence Free-Masonry, vulgarly imagined to have begun with the Dionysian Architects or the German Stone-workers, adopted Saint John the Evangelist as one of its patrons, associating with him, in order not to


arouse the suspicions of Rome, Saint John the Baptist, and thus covertly proclaiming itself the child of the Kabalah and Essenism together.”

[For the Johannism of the Adepts was the Kabalah of the earlier Gnostics, degenerating afterward into those heretical forms which Gnosticism developed, so that even Manes had his followers among them. Many adopted his doctrines of the two Principles, the recollection of which is perpetuated by the handle of the dagger and the tesserated pavement or floor of the Lodge, stupidly called “the Indented Tessel,” and represented by great hanging tassels, when it really means a tesserated floor (from the Latin tessera) of white and black lozenges, with a necessarily denticulated or indented border or edging. And wherever, in the higher Degrees, the two colors white and black, are in juxtaposition, the two Principles of Zoroaster and Manes are alluded to. With others the doctrine became a mystic Pantheism, descended from that of the Brahmins, and even pushed to an idolatry of Nature and hatred of every revealed dogma.

[To all this the absurd reading of the established Church, taking literally the figurative, allegorical, and mythical language of a collection of Oriental books of different ages, directly and inevitably led. The same result long after followed the folly of regarding the Hebrew books as if they had been written by the unimaginative, hard, practical intellect of the England of James the First and the bigoted stolidity of Scottish Presbyterianism.]

“The better to succeed and win partisans, the Templars sympathized with regrets for dethroned creeds and encouraged the hopes of new worships, promising to all liberty of conscience and a new orthodoxy that should be the synthesis of all the persecuted creeds.”

[It is absurd to suppose that men of intellect adored a monstrous idol called Baphomet, or recognized Mahomet as an inspired prophet. Their symbolism, invented ages before, to conceal what it was dangerous to avow, was of course misunderstood by those who were not adepts, and to their enemies seemed to be pantheistic. The calf of gold, made by Aaron for the Israelites, was but one of the oxen under the laver of bronze, and the Karobim on the Propitiatory, misunderstood. The symbols of the wise always become the idols of the ignorant multitude. What the Chiefs of the Order really believed and taught, is indicated to the Adepts by the hints contained in the high Degrees of Free-Masonry, and by the symbols which only the Adepts understand.

[The Blue Degrees are but the outer court or portico of

the Temple. Part of the symbols are displayed there to the Initiate, but he is intentionally misled by false interpretations. It is not intended that he shall understand them; but it is intended that he shall imagine he understands them. Their true explication is reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry. The whole body of the Royal and Sacerdotal Art was hidden so carefully, centuries since, in the High Degrees, as that it is even yet impossible to solve many of the enigmas which they contain. It is well enough for the mass of those called Masons, to imagine that all is contained in the Blue Degrees; and whoso attempts to undeceive them will labor in vain, and without any true reward violate his obligations as an Adept. Masonry is the veritable Sphinx, buried to the head in the sands heaped round it by the ages.]

“The seeds of decay were sown in the Order of the Temple at its origin. Hypocrisy is a mortal disease. It had conceived a great work which it was incapable of executing, because it knew neither humility nor personal abnegation, because Rome was then invincible, and because the later Chiefs of the Order did not comprehend its mission. Moreover, the Templars were in general uneducated, and capable only of wielding the sword, with no qualifications for governing, and at need enchaining, that queen of the world called Opinion.” [The doctrines of the Chiefs would, if expounded to the masses, have seemed to them the babblings of folly. The symbols of the wise are the idols of the vulgar, or else as meaningless as the hieroglyphics of Egypt to the nomadic Arabs. There must always be a common-place interpretation for the mass of Initiates, of the symbols that are eloquent to the Adepts.]

“Hughes de Payens himself had not that keen and far-sighted intellect nor that grandeur of purpose which afterward distinguished the military founder of another soldiery that became formidable to kings. The Templars were unintelligent and therefore unsuccessful Jesuits.

“Their watchword was, to become wealthy, in order to buy the world. They became so, and in 1312 they possessed in Europe alone more than nine thousand seignories. Riches were the shoal on which they were wrecked. They became insolent, and unwisely showed their contempt for the religious and social institutions which they aimed to overthrow. Their ambition was fatal to them. Their projects were divined and prevented. [Rome, more intolerant of heresy than of vice and crime, came to fear the Order, and fear is always cruel. It has always deemed philosophical truth the most dangerous of heresies, and has never been at a loss for a false accusation, by means of which to crush free thought.] Pope Clement V. and King Philip le Bel gave the signal to Europe, and the

1� Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org

Continued from page 11

Templars, taken as it were in an immense net, were arrested, disarmed, and cast into prison. Never was a Coup d’Etat accomplished with a more formidable concert of action. The whole world was struck with stupor, and eagerly waited for the strange revelations of a process that was to echo through so many ages.

“It was impossible to unfold to the people the conspiracy of the Templars against the Thrones and the Tiara. It was impossible to expose to them the doctrines of the Chiefs of the Order. [This would have been to initiate the multitude into the secrets of the Masters, and to have uplifted the veil of Isis. Recourse was therefore had to the charge of magic, and denouncers and false witnesses were easily found. When the temporal and spiritual tyrannies unite to crush a victim they never want for serviceable instruments.] The Templars were gravely accused of spitting upon Christ and denying God at their receptions, of gross obscenities, conversations with female devils, and the worship of a monstrous idol.

“The end of the drama is well known, and how Jacques de Molai and his fellows perished in the flames. But before his execution, the Chief of the doomed Order organized and instituted what afterward came to be called the Occult, Hermetic, or Scottish Masonry. In the gloom of his prison, the Grand Master created four Metropolitan Lodges, at Naples for the East, at Edinburg for the West, at Stockholm for the North, and at Paris for the South.” [The initials of his name, JἹ BἹ MἹ found in the same order in the first three Degrees, are but one of the many internal and cogent proofs that such was the origin of modern Free-Masonry. The legend of Osiris was revived and adopted, to symbolize the destruction of the Order, and the resurrection of Khu_ru_m, slain in the body of the Temple, of KHU_RU_M ABAI, the Master, as the martyr of fidelity to obligation, of Truth and Conscience, prophesied the restoration to life of the buried association.]

“The Pope and the King soon after perished in a strange and sudden manner. Squin de Florian, the chief denouncer of the Order, died assassinated. In breaking the sword of the Templars, they made of it a poniard; and their proscribed trowels thence-forward built only tombs.”

[The Order disappeared at once. Its estates and wealth were confiscated, and it seemed to have ceased to exist. Nevertheless it lived, under other names and governed by unknown Chiefs, revealing itself only to those who, in passing through a series of Degrees, had proven themselves worthy to be entrusted with the dangerous Secret. The modern Orders that style themselves Templars have assumed

a name to which they have not the shadow of a title.]“The Successors of the Ancient Adepts Rose-Croix, abandoning by degrees the austere and hierarchial Science of their Ancestors in initiation, became a Mystic Sect, united with many of the Templars, the dogmas of the two intermingling, and believed themselves to be the sole depositaries of the secrets of the Gospel of St. John, seeing in its recitals an allegorical series of rites proper to complete the initiation.

“The Initiates, in fact, thought in the eighteenth century that their time had arrived, some to found a new Hierarchy, others to overturn all authority, and to press down all the summits of the Social Order under the level of Equality.”

The mystical meanings of the Rose as a Symbol are to be looked for in the Kabalistic Commentaries on the Canticles.

The Rose was for the Initiates the living and blooming symbol of the revelation of the harmonies of being. It was the emblem of beauty, life, love, and pleasure. Flamel, or the Book of the Jew Abraham, made it the hieroglyphical sign of the accomplishment of the great Work. Such is the key of the Roman de la Rose. The Conquest of the Rose was the problem propounded to Science by Initiation, while Religion was laboring to prepare and establish the universal triumph, exclusive and definitive, of the Cross.

To unite the Rose to the Cross, was the problem proposed by the High Initiation; and in fact the Occult philosophy being the Universal Synthesis, ought to explain all the phenomena of Being. Religion, considered solely as a physiological fact, is the revelation and satisfaction of a necessity of souls. Its existence is a scientific fact; to deny it, would be to deny humanity itself.

The Rose-Croix Adepts respected the dominant, hierarchical, and revealed religion. Consequently they could no more be the enemies of the Papacy than of legitimate Monarchy; and if they conspired against the Popes and Kings, it was because they considered them personally as apostates from duty and supreme favorers of anarchy.

What, in fact, is a despot, spiritual or temporal, but a crowned anarchist?

One of the magnificent pantacles that express the esoteric and unutterable part of Science, is a Rose of Light, in the centre of which a human form extends its arms in the form of a cross.

www.sacred-texts.com



Commentaries and studies have been multiplied upon the Divine Comedy, the work of DANTE, and yet no one, so far as we know, has pointed out its especial character. The work of the great Ghibellin is a declaration of war against the Papacy, by bold revelations of the Mysteries. The Epic of Dante is Johannite and Gnostic, an audacious application, like that of the Apocalypse, of the figures and numbers of the Kabalah to the Christian dogmas, and a secret negation of every thing absolute in these dogmas. His journey through the supernatural worlds is accomplished like the initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis and Thebes. He escapes from that gulf of Hell over the gate of which the sentence of despair was written, by reversing the positions of his head and feet, that is to say, by accepting the direct opposite of the Catholic dogma; and then he reascends to the light, by using the Devil himself as a monstrous ladder. Faust ascends to Heaven, by stepping on the head of the vanquished Mephistopheles. Hell is impassable for those only who know not how to turn back from it. We free ourselves from its bondage by audacity.

His Hell is but a negative Purgatory. His Heaven is composed of a series of Kabalistic circles, divided by a cross, like the Pantacle of Ezekiel. In the centre of this cross blooms a rose, and we see the symbol of the Adepts of the Rose-Croix for the first time publicly expounded and almost categorically explained.

For the first time, because Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, five years before the birth of Alighieri, had not completed his Roman de la Rose, which was continued by Chopinel, a half century afterward. One is astonished to discover that the Roman de la Rose and the Divina Commedia are two opposite forms of one and the same work, initiation into independence of spirit, a satire on all contemporary institutions, and the allegorical formula of the great Secrets of the Society of the Roses-Croix.

The important manifestations of Occultism coincide with the period of the fall of the Templars; since Jean de Meung or Chopinel, contemporary of the old age of Dante, flourished during the best years of his life at the Court of Philippe le Bel. The Roman de la Rose is the Epic of old France. It is a profound book, under the form of levity, a revelation as learned as that of Apuleius, of the Mysteries of Occultism. The Rose of Flamel, that of Jean de Meung, and that of Dante, grew on the same stem.

Swedenborg’s system was nothing else than the Kabalah, minus the principle of the Hierarchy. It is the Temple, without the keystone and the foundation.

Cagliostro was the Agent of the Templars, and therefore wrote to the Free-Masons of London that the time had come to begin the work of re-building the Temple of the Eternal. He had introduced into Masonry a new Rite called the Egyptian, and endeavored to resuscitate the mysterious worship of Isis. The three letters LἹ PἹ DἹ on his seal, were the initials of the words “Lilia pedibus destrue;” tread under foot the Lilies [of France], and a Masonic medal of the sixteenth or seventeenth century has upon it a sword cutting off the stalk of a lily, and the words “talem dabit ultio messem,” such harvest revenge will give.

A Lodge inaugurated under the auspices of Rousseau, the fanatic of Geneva, became the centre of the revolutionary movement in France, and a Prince of the blood-royal went thither to swear the destruction of the successors of Philippe le Bel on the tomb of Jacques de Molai. The registers of the Order of Templars attest that the Regent, the Duc d’Orleans, was Grand Master of that formidable Secret Society, and that his successors were the Duc de Maine, the Prince of Bourbon-Condé, and the Duc de Cossé-Brissac.

The Templars compromitted the King; they saved him from the rage of the People, to exasperate that rage and bring on the catastrophe prepared for centuries; it was a scaffold that the vengeance of the Templars demanded. The secret movers of the French Revolution had sworn to overturn the Throne and the Altar upon the Tomb of Jacques de Molai. When Louis XVI. was executed, half the work was done; and thenceforward the Army of the Temple was to direct all its efforts against the Pope.

Jacques de Molai and his companions were perhaps martyrs, but their avengers dishonored their memory. Royalty was regenerated on the scaffold of Louis XVI., the Church triumphed in the captivity of Pius VI., carried a prisoner to Valence, and dying of fatigue and sorrow, but the successors of the Ancient Knights of the Temple perished, overwhelmed in their fatal victory.Morals and Dogma, by Albert Pike, [1871], at

Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org 1�




Reprint from Book – Gems from the Quarry and Sparks from the Gavel. Detroit, Michigan 1893


commandery of

Knights Templar in Michigan

Photos by Mitchell Ozog


commandery of


�0 Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org

commandery of


Photos by Mitchell Ozog 2011

Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org �1

commandery of

Knights Templar in Michigan Seven centuries and a half have passed away since, in 1118 eight French n o b l e m e n , u n i t i n g t h e m s e l v e s into a society, became the Master and Brethren of the Temple. They first displayed the red cross upon the field in 1148; were almost

annihilated in storming Ascalon in 1153; their principles were confirmed by the Bull Omne Datum Optimum, in 1139 and they fought the great battle of Tiberias in 1187, in which year the Holy City of Jerusalem surrendered to the Infidels. Other crusades were preached, and the soldiery of the Temple fought in the Holy Land until the end of the thirteenth century, by the side, in succession, of Richard Lion-heart of England, and Philip Augustus of France; of Saint Louis and Edward Prince of Wales, at Damietta, Gaza, and Acre; and wherever a blow was to be struck for the Cross against the Crescent.

On the 13th of October, 1307, all the Templars in France were arrested, and on the 18th of March, 1314, the Grand Master was burned. Princes had been members of the Order, and its ambassadors had taken precedence of Christian kings. It had become too powerful by numbers, and wealth, and connections, and it sought to be more powerful still by its influence upon opinions. In the East, the home of Gnosticism, and where the doctrines of Saint John the Apostle were still supreme; in that Asia Minor of the seven churches, to which Paul, the new apostle, contested the claims of Peter to the pontificate of the Gentile church; in that Orient, of which

Patmos, the apocalyptic isle, was a part; the Templars had learned doctrines not acceptable to the Roman bishops, and it is probable that some of them had accepted those of Manes, and were liable to the pains and penalties denounced against heretics.

To the monarchs of Christendom, all of whom were at that day little more than the deans of the nobility, maintaining a constant struggle against the ambition of their vassals, insecure in their places of power, and without standing armies, the soldiery of the Temple had become a terror by their numbers, their immense possessions, and their unity of organization. For the Order dreamed of an Oriental empire, and sought to obtain, by negotiation, an eastern seaport. It was a standing army of proud, fiery, indomitable warriors, distributed over all Europe, and obedient to the single will of the Grand Master. The thrones and the altars combined against it, and it fell and disappeared in a day. Its pride, ambition, and luxuries, swelled the provocations that caused its ruin. During the centuries that followed, while it was merged in other orders, and wore the mask of Freemasonry, it was, as is usual, chastened and purified by adversity. The advances made by science, the revival of letters, the reopening of the treasures of the ancient Grecian and Oriental wisdom, gave it a deeper and a sounder philosophical doctrine, and a wiser and truer religious creed; and its hereditary desire for vengeance on the despotisms to which its ruin was due, symbolized by the mitre and the crown, led it eagerly to adopt the idea that governments are made for the people, and not the people for governments, upon its first announcement to the world.

If our Order should again become prosperous and powerful, let it avoid the shoals upon which it once suffered shipwreck. Let it become neither haughty, nor vainglorious, nor luxurious, nor useless. The principles which it adopted in adversity, let it adhere to in its better fortunes. Let the enlargement of the Order, and the increase of its members and its Commanderies, be the enlargement of its powers and the confirmation of its desires to benefit mankind, strengthen its hands against all unrighteous usurpation

Templarism: Its Duty and Its Sphere

By Sir Albert Pike

�� Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org


of power by kings, or pontiffs, or popular chiefs, military or civil, and encourage us to hope for the final triumph of liberty, equality, and fraternity, in the sense in which these are understood by the true Freemasonry.

Let us also remember, in striving to benefit our race, that the multitude is in every country instinctive rather than reflective, and can be attached to ideas only by means of forms, and surrenders its prejudices and changes its habits with difficulty. Popular assemblies are not swayed by reason, and legislative majorities are little controlled by any sense of justice. Upon an attempt to combat superstitions, it always seems to the people that religion itself is assailed. Socrates was accused of Atheism before the tribunals; and Jesus was denounced to the authorities as a blasphemer. Wherefore, those that undertake reforms will be wise, if, like Saint Gregory, one of the greatest among the Popes, they do not permit usages to be suppressed. “Purify the temples,” he wrote to his missionaries, “but do not destroy them; for so long as the nation shall see its ancient places of prayer standing, it will repair thither by habit, and you will, with the more ease, persuade it to the worship of the true God.”Society has not no right to consider itself enlightened while it regards the abuses of a system as its excellencies, and makes idols of its own prejudices, and looks with horror on attempts to obtain rational reforms as revolutionary projects; nor, while it continues to be ignorant that the criminal instincts are the most frightful of all the mental maladies, and does not comprehend that the disease should be cured, and not put to death, has it any right to consider itself Christian.

Keep these truths always in view in the warfare which you are incessantly to wage against tyrannies. For there are not only tyrannies of thrones and pontificates, but of the people, and parties, and opinion, and of the law. Close around you

everywhere you will find evils enough to combat, and it will be well for you if you do not become their ally.

The days have retired but a little way into the past when men were divided into but two classes – the oppressor and oppressed. Then thought was imprisoned; to breathe it was peril, if not death; and it died in the brain where it was born, or was only whispered in the solitude. The obligations of Blue Masonry are retained, that they may incessantly remind us of those wretched days. Now, thought is free as the wind, and the lightning flashes it across the oceans and around the continents. Nations are enfranchised by it, and the golden glories of truth begin to illumine the world. A new power has arisen among men, known as public opinion, with a new weapon – the press. Before it, even the kings recede, and yield to it, and obey its bulb and allocutions, or it shakes down their thrones into the dust.

We should be but cravens, therefore, if we did not persevere. Whatever the evils of to-day in the country in which we live, they are not invincible; for they are neither necessary and inevitable, nor in their nature immortal. Neither are we powerless in the struggle against them, and we are no true knights if we yield to discouragement:

“The smallest effort is not lost;Each wavelet on the ocean tossedAids in the ebb-tide or the flow;

Each rain-drop helpssome flower to blow,

Each struggle lessens human woe.”

Reprint from Book – Gems from the Quarry and Sparks from the Gavel. Detroit, Michigan 1893


The following article was written by Brother Shawn Carrick Montgomery Lodge #258 and Red Wing Lodge #8 and delivered in Lodge 2011 year. He is a fine writer and is now a member of the Grand Lodge Writers Guild.

A Masons cable TowAs Masons we cheerfully agree to abide by our obligations and promises that we took at the altar in each degree. The cable tow is an integral symbol that is part of each degrees impact on the Mason’s conscience. We learn about the cable tow in the first degree and it is reinforced in each additional degree a Brother will experience. An important question about this singular item is how the cable tow has been defined by different sources, depending on their interpretation of the degree.www.MasonicDictionary.com indicates that the cable tow “represents the candidates bond to his guide”. The Masonic Dictionary maintained by masonicworld.com indicates that the length of the cable tow is symbolically measured to be three miles in the early years to go to the relief of a brother in need but “in present time it is usually considered about forty miles.” These definitions are just words that an individual has made based on their personal beliefs and experiences.In the early years, 1700’s up to mid 1900’s, most members of a lodge would live in close proximity

to their Masonic Temple which would be consistent with a three mile cable tow. The lodge was an integral part of the local community and being able to attend Lodge Communications was essential to Masons. In the present time, members are not solely from a specific town for the lodge they belong to, but rather they can many times be from surrounding communities, driving considerable distances to attend the different functions. They have chosen to be involved with a specific Lodge for a personal reason or a specific Lodge is involved in an activity that is of interest and importance to the Mason. To better understand the length of a cable tow, we must understand the give and take a cable tow experiences and what the cable tow represents.

A cable tow consists of two separate ends connected together by a cord. One end of the cable tow is representing the individual Mason while the other end is representing the Fraternity or Lodge. When examining the cable tow it is impossible to tell where one end starts and the other end begins. It is this fluid change that occurs while examining the cable tow from one end to another that sets Masonry apart from any other fraternal organization. The cable tow reminds each Mason of his obligations and promises to the lodge while at the same time representing the Lodge and the Fraternity’s (Members of the Lodge) obligations to a Brother. How Masons fulfill their obligations differ based on their individual beliefs and interpretations.What act or acts fulfills a Mason’s obligations can vary greatly and may be as simple as a having a conversation with a brother or it could bemore important and impacting such as providing emotional and even financial support of a Brother who is in need of assistance, or to the family of a brother who is called by the Grand Architect of the Universe to that house not made with hands…the celestial Lodge above.It is important to remember that the length of a Mason’s cable tow is ultimately set by the individual Mason and cannot be truly judged by any other individual. When three miles may be the proper length of a cable tow for one Mason, another Mason’s cable tow may be hundreds or even thousands of miles in length. Each length is determined by the individual’s moral principles, beliefs and their particular individual circumstances. Ultimately, a Mason will pass judgment on himself based on the aid they have provided to others, but more especially a Brother Mason. A quote I like that I believe is fitting when looking at your cable tow is:“When looking at the reflection in the mirror, do you like what you see based on what you have done and what you have not done?”Masonry is a progressive science that helps to take good men and make them better, but it is not the lodge alone that will help to make them better. Each Mason must work toward the goal of making himself better. By remembering our obligations and having a cable tow that is of appropriate length for providing aid and relief, Masons, with the help of the Lodge, will succeed in becoming better men to their families and to their communities.

Published with permission of the author.

www.bonisteelml.org


Rev. Jonathon Baker was recently appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as Bishop of Ebbsfleet. Baker had been a 20 year member of Apollo University Lodge at Oxford, where he joined while being a student. However, what might have been a cause for celebration, Dr. Williams’ previous position having been hostile to promoting Masons within the Anglican clergy, took a decidedly different turn when members of the Church of England’s General Synod objected, leading to Bro. Baker’s resignation form the Fraternity. Such action is particularly deplorable has the European Union’s Civil Rights court has found that: a) Freemasonry is NOT a religion; b) it is NOT a malicious “secret society”; c) discrimination against Masons as Masons is a violation of human rights.Sadly, Freemasons have been all too well aware of anti-Masonry and its relentless campaign of misinformation and even violence against the Fraternity. Robert Cooper’s new book, The Red Triangle (which takes its name from the patch Masonic prisoners in German concentration camps were forced to wear), documents this history in sometimes painful and infuriating detail. Roger Cooper is the Curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland’s library and museum. He begins the book recounting a recent instance of ‘masonophobia’ which touched him, and the Grand Lodge of Scotland, directly. In 1996, a gunman opened fire at a school in

Scotland, killing 16 children and a teacher and wounding a further 14 children and 3 teachers. As the event was being reported, unfounded speculation arose that the gunman was a Mason, leading to a frenzy of anti-Masonry in the media and calls for government investigation of the Masons. Cooper, who focuses primarily on Scottish material, ties these attacks to a tradition of unfounded and malicious attacks against the Fraternity stretching back to the late 17th century.Cooper demonstrates that there has been a recurrent pattern in anti-Masonry’s attacks, seeking to call it a ‘religion,’ and thus subject it to clerical condemnation or as a ‘secret society’ with nefarious, self-

promoting motives and, in the case of the Protocols of Zion forgery and Nazi persecution, elements of anti-Semitism. Indeed, Cooper notes that the failure to acknowledge that Freemasons were the targets of Nazi persecution as Freemasons is indicative of the inherent bias and discrimination academia and the general public has had against the Fraternity. The connections between Nazism and anti-Semitism, of course, are well known and documented; but Freemasonry was Nazism first target:

“That Nazis made a distinction between Jews as a racial enemy of the German people and Freemasons as ideological

The Red TRiangle: a hisToRy of The PeRsecuTion of fReemasons

Robert L.D. Cooper,

The Red Triangle: A History of Anti-

Masonry (Lewis Masonic 2011, $ 29.95 USD)

Fall 2011

INTERNATIONAL MASONIC REVIEW PUBLIShED BY BONISTEEL MASONIC LIBRARY

Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org ��

INTERNATIONAL MAsONIc REVIEW PUBLIsHED BY BONIsTEEL MAsONIc LIBRARY

(political) enemies is extremely important… Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch (1883 - ?) was Eichmann’s first superior. He was a White Russian and anti-Semite and a self-proclaimed expert on Freemasonry, Jews, and Bolshevism. He was in charge of the largest department within the SD [Sicherheitsdienst (‘Security Service’)] which included the museum, library and an archive (including the card index on which Eichmann was assisting in compiling). The card index of German Freemasons eventually totaled 200,000 entries.Schwartz-Bostunitch perceived, the Masonic effect to be of paramount importance in the work of the SD. After working on the card index system, Eichmann was transferred to the museum where he catalogued Masonic artefacts. He also prepared a Masonophobic exhibition in order to educate members of the SS as to the seriousness of the threat posed by Freemasonry… Eichmann’s office was within the museum which was named the ‘St. John’s Room’ the significance of which will not escape Freemasons.”

As the Nazis solidified their power and spread beyond

Germany’s borders, Masonic lodges were forced to close, Masonic leaders were seized, and its property confiscated. Yet this sad chapter of the Nazi terror has been generally neglected or omitted from histories of the Holocaust.Cooper devotes much of The Red Triangle to identifying and deconstructing masonophobic articles and attacks in the Scottish press. Indeed, he notes that one of his intended purposes in writing this book is to document such material so that it will not be lost or forgotten. Frankly, it makes painful and infuriating reading. In light of Bro. Baker’s resignation, however, it is particularly timely. Grand lodges and Masons been increasingly open to public view; nevertheless, willful ignorance and bigotry remain a persistent problem and concern. It is sad that Bro. Baker chose to drop his membership in the Fraternity rather than use his new position as an opportunity to further public understanding of Freemasonry. Instead, detractors are already pointing to his resignation as ‘proof’ that Freemasonry is “inconsistent” with Christianity and thus suspicious in character. It is unlikely any amount of information and openness will satisfy those who want to hate and fear Freemasonry. But for those who still have open minds, The Red Triangle is an important contribution toward setting the record straight.

Robert L.D. Cooper, The Red Triangle: A History of Anti-Masonry (Lewis Masonic 2011, $ 29.95 USD)

Rising PointThe

Volume 23. Issue 2 • • SPRING/SUMMER 2011BONI

STEE

LML.

ORG

SPRING 2011

10US $9.95

Made In Michigan

What exactly is

“More Light” in Masonry?

By Robert Blackburn

From the

Parthenon to the Capitol

By Leo Operti

The purpose of this publication is to disseminate the writings of Freemasons and to provide contemporary information on Freemasonry.


www.bonisteelml.org


Cliff Porter,

The Secret Psychology of

Freemasonry: Alchemy, Gnosis, and the Science of the

Craft (Star Publishing LLC, Denver 2011, $ 17.82 USD)

Fall 2011


The recent upsurge in interest and American Masonic membership has been a delight for those who have weathered the leaner years. Such young men – well read in the Craft - are looking not only for a place to socialize, but share their thoughts and be spiritually and intellectually refreshed. Bolstered by Masons who have for sometime been agitating for ‘reform’ among our ranks, this is a heady time for American Freemasonry and, GAOTU willing, we will come out the other side stronger and with a new and stronger sense of purpose within our respective lodges.

Accompanying this burst of new Masonic energy has been a flood of popular literature, of greatly varying quality, about the Craft. Indeed, there are some brothers that have made cottage industries out of this activity, branding themselves along with their publications. Such writings, however, are a double-edged sword for the Fraternity. Oscar Wilde once quipped that, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” A certain level of publicity is always good. But when Masons take it upon themselves to write about the Craft with less than academic rigor, it undermines the reputation and credibility of the Order.

Bro. Porter’s Secret Psychology of Freemasonry is the product of an enthusiast. Porter is, by profession, a criminal detective and speaker on personal and interpersonal psychology and relationships. His work is perhaps best described as his own, personal musings on the interrelationship between alchemy, Gnosticism, and psychology with the Craft. Porter’s thesis is one, however, that all who have learned our work will acknowledge as true, but with an additional twist:

“…there is a secret and extraordinary meaning in the degrees of Masonry. They contain a secret system by which a man may come to know himself deeply and honestly. They contain a secret system by which we may apply this understanding of ourselves and others. They contain a secret system that identifies the tools of a perfect communication upon which the Perfect Ashlar is built. They contain the tools that grant the power of persuasion and detecting deception. Once a Brother knows the truth about himself, he can discover the falsehood in others. To know truth of a situation is power indeed. Porter then takes the reader through his personal gloss on the Mystery traditions, alchemy, psychological typology (dominant personality traits), ultimately applying it to the lessons communicated in the Fellowcraft degree.”

The secReT Psychology of fReemasonRy:

alchemy, gnosis, and The science of The cRafT


The Secret Psychology holds no real secrets. Porter’s psychological typology and application is not original and has been varyingly presented for decades. I first came across something similar years ago in Corrine Ware’s Discover your Spiritual Type: A Guide to Individual and Congregational Growth (1995). The only difference here is his adaption of a quadrant typology to the Craft. Nor is Porter the first to examine the psychological aspects of Craft Masonry and its initiation practice. W. Kirk MacNulty, whom Porter cites among his limited references, has published several important books and articles on this same topic including Freemasonry: A Journey through Ritual and Symbol (1991), Way of the Craftsman: Search for the Spiritual Essence of Craft Freemasonry (2002), and Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets, and Significance (2006). In fact, no serious inquiry on this subject should be undertaken without first consulting these works.

Like the front porch scotch and cigar sessions Porter recalls in his dedication, the Secret Psychology has more the flavor of a conversation, or workshop presentation, than a scholarly study. Porter’s practical application of his typology for successful interpersonal and inter-lodge relationships would appear to be new ground. Whether it has any real relationship to the Fellowcraft degree or our Masonic lessons, as Porter argues, will be up to the reader to decide.

About Bro. Cliff PorterHe was a founding member and current Master of Enlightenment Lodge 198. He works as the senior homicide investigator for a Sheriff’s Office and has gained national attention in the field of Interview and Interrogation and Subconscious Communications. He is also a devote student of the mystical tradition. You find here, in his book, The Secret Psychology of Masonry, an interwoven investigation and advanced practical application of a mystical teaching that gave birth to analytical psychology.

Official Site of the book: http://www.thefreemason.co/2011/06/secret-psychology-of-freemasonry.html

The purpose of this publication is to disseminate the writings of Freemasons and to provide contemporary information on

Freemasonry.

Bonisteel Masonic library wants your feedback!

The Bonisteel staff is interested in discovering how you feel about your experience with reading our e-magazine - The rising point. your willingness to share your impressions honestly will help us make adjustments that improve our future publications. please all future communication send to: [email protected]

Mitchell ozog, 32ºeditor-in-chief,

Medieval Knighthood lives In Indiana’s levant preceptory

by Sir Knight Christopher L. Hodapp, KCT


Blame it on Sir Walter Scott, who helped to usher in the Romantic period in the 1800s with his novel Ivanhoe. Or Masonically, go back to Chevalier Michael Ramsay for his oration in 1736 that claimed Freemasonry was brought from the Holy Land by medieval knights. But no matter who’s to blame, nothing seems to charge the imagination in boys or men like chainmaille, broadswords and steel helmets.

That was the conclusion of a group of Indiana Knights Templar at Raper Commandery No. 1 in Indianapolis in 2007. The C o m m a n d e r y was named after Reverend William Raper, an Ohio Methodist minister, and is among the most decorated c o m m a n d e r i e s in the country for its celebrated drill team. But as with Templary everywhere in the U.S., times have changed for Raper No. 1.

Un fo r t u n a t e ly, by the turn of the newest century, many young members entering Raper Commandery expressed fading interest in the paramilitary customs of marching in drill teams and rehearsing twelve-man openings. When new members who were not participating were questioned informally, there was an overriding melancholia in their explanations of why commandery had not excited their interest. When they thought of knights, they had images of chainmaille, broadswords and steel helmets. Nearly all mentioned the

lack of connection to the medieval order of warrior monks who had inspired the creation of the Masonic Templars in the first place. They had envisioned studying, or at least hearing about, the crusading orders of knighthood, even if only occasionally. Dull business meetings held no attraction, and guilt-ridden entreaties for joining the drill team cemented the sense for many that commandery was a place to avoid.

Thus, Levant Preceptory was born. The goal was to create a medieval period degree team for conferring the Order of the Temple, as well as a promotional public face for Indiana Templary. After discussing the concept with the Grand Commander of Indiana at that time, SK Andrew Jackson, along with the Grand Master of the Grand E n c a m p m e n t , dispensation was given so the group could perform the Order of the Temple in costume.

The decision was specifically made not to seek a charter as a new commandery, but to simply remain informally organized under Raper’s existing charter. If it had sought a charter as its own commandery, the little group would have been required to purchase regulation uniforms, hold business meetings, rehearse openings and stand regular inspection—the very things many non-participating members had fled from in the first place. And the group had no desire to weaken any existing commanderies by siphoning off members into

“Grandpa, are we knights?“Do you want to be?” —National Treasure

Levant Preceptory conferred the Order of the Temple at the Indiana Masonic Home in May 2009. Photo by Sir Knight Randy Ellington.

a brand new and otherwise unneeded one.

As an informal club, Levant has no separate officers, bylaws, dues, regulations or requirements. Knights are simply expected to provide their own medieval uniforms and equipment, and to know their assigned cast parts in the standard ritual of the Order of the Temple.

While Levant technically operates under Raper No. 1’s charter, the group has encouraged participation from Sir Knights from all over Indiana. This was key, as the concept was an unusual one that raised some objections across the state, at first. The goal was never to draw dedicated drill team members or active officers away from other commanderies. Levant was always designed, rather, to provide a very different and unique experience for its participants and for candidates on whom the group conferred the Order, as well as to attract Knights who were staying away from other Templar activities. Part of that design was the decision to perform the Order of the Temple no more than twice a year, in an effort to keep it a unique event.

Levant’s Armorer, SK Robert Coleman, has a background in medieval period reenactment and Renaissance fairs, and provided a wealth of knowledge for outfitting a troupe of knights on a budget. Broadswords (either sharp-edged or blunted), Norman-styled steel helmets, chainmaille hauberks, gauntlets and coifs, and other equipment was cobbled together from a wide variety of Internet sources, with a rapidly changing landscape of Ebay dealers who come and go.

White tunics made of heavy canvas duck material were hand-sewn by Robert’s wife Rebecca, custom fit for the height and girth of each Knight. Tunics are lined with black to absorb the oils and dirt from the maille, so as to not stain the white material. Older or less spry Knights prefer aluminum maille over the steel version, which can weigh considerably more—a real consideration when kneeling, or marching on a hot day in an un-air conditioned tent whole wearing up to 70 pounds of steel.

SK Dale Adams created a set of easily transportable medieval-styled camp chairs and a sturdy altar and triangular table for use in non-traditional locations outside of an indoor asylum or lodge room. SK Coleman provided a medieval tent for conferrals outside, and one such event was appropriately accompanied afterwards by a hog roast feast.

The greatest surprise to most participants is that equipment can be had to fully outfit a medieval knight for as little as $300,

not much more than the cost of a regulation chapeau these days. It is common for Knights who are unable to arrange their schedule for every event to share their equipment among new men entering the group. It is truly a cooperative effort. To date, Knights from nine Indiana commanderies have taken part in its ritual work.

Levant has attracted attention all around Indiana, and has performed in Illinois, with a trip planned to Detroit in 2011. In addition to conferring the Order of the Temple, SK James Dillman created a public ceremony suitable for non-Masons, in which the Knights dramatize the night before the arrest of the Order in France in 1307. At its first public presentation for a statewide gathering of DeMolay members and parents on the 700th anniversary of the arrests on October 13, 2007, the enthusiastic audience spent two hours afterwards asking questions, trying on the equipment, and bursting with excitement over seeing Templar Knights assembled as they had always imagined them.

Levant Preceptory Knights have appeared at community events, marched in parades, and are planning an outreach for Indiana Templary at Renaissance fairs. The mission is not to represent modern Masonic Knights Templar as a variation on the Society for Creative Anachronism, but to spread the word that Christian chivalry and knighthood still exists in a modern world, as an active part within the fraternity of Freemasonry.

In addition, the group has appeared in Templars Last Stand, a documentary produced for Canadian TV by Arcadia Entertainment in Nova Scotia, which will air later in 2011 in the U.S. on the National Geographic Channel.

The members of Levant Preceptory have no illusion that what they are doing is a magic bullet solution that will bring a stampede of excited new Knights back to meetings. What works in one commandery may not work in another. But their model is part of a growing desire to seek innovative ways to stir men’s blood and bring them back to the doors of our commanderies by tapping into the romance of our historic heritage. And it seems to be working.

Sir Knight Christopher L. Hodapp, KCT, is a member of Raper Commandery No. 1 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the author of The Templar Code For Dummies, and the editor of the Journal of the Masonic Society. He can be contacted at [email protected]



Published with permission of the author.


The crest and crowning of all good,Life’s final star, is Brotherhood;For it will bring again to EarthHer long-lost Poesy and Mirth;

Will send new light on every face,A kingly power upon the race.

And till it comes we men are slaves,And travel downward to the dust of graves.Come, clear the way, then, clear the way:

Blind creeds and kings have had their day.Break the dead branches from the path:

Our hope is in the aftermath--Our hope is in heroic men,

Star-led to build the world again.To this event the ages ran:

Make way for Brotherhood-make way for Man.

EDWIN MARKHAM, Poems OUTSIDE of the home and the house of God there is nothing in this world more beautiful than the Spirit of Masonry. Gentle, gracious, and wise, its mission is to form mankind into a great redemptive Brotherhood; a league of noble and free men enlisted in the radiant enterprise of working out in time the love and will of the Eternal. Who is sufficient to describe a spirit so benign? With what words may one ever hope to capture and detain that which belongs of right to the genius of poetry and song, by whose magic those elusive and impalpable realities find embodiment and voice?With picture, parable, and stately drama, Masonry appeals to lovers of beauty, bringing poetry and symbol to the aid of philosophy, and art to the service of character. Broad and tolerant in its teaching, it appeals to men of intellect, equally by the depth of its faith and its plea for liberty of thought--helping them to think things through to a more satisfying and hopeful vision of the meaning of life and the mystery of the world. But its profoundest appeal, more eloquent than all others, is to the deep heart of man, out of which are the issues of life and destiny. When all is said, it is as a man thinketh in his heart whether life be worth while or not, and whether he is a help or a curse to his race.Here lies the tragedy of our race:

Not that men are poor;All men know something of poverty.

Not that men are wicked;

Who can claim to be good?Not that men are ignorant;

Who can boast that he is wise?But that men are strangers!

Masonry is Friendship - friendship, first, with the great Companion, of whom our own hearts tell us, who is always nearer to us than we are to our-selves, and whose inspiration and help is the greatest fact of human experience. To be in harmony with His purposes, to be open to His suggestions, to be conscious of fellowship with Him - this is Masonry on its Godward side. Then, turning man-ward, friendship sums it all up. To be friends with all men, however they may differ from us in creed, colour, or condition; to fill every human relation with the spirit of friendship; is there anything more or better than this that the wisest and best of men can hope to do?

ISuch is the spirit of Masonry; such is its ideal, and if to realize it all at once is denied us, surely it means much to see it, love it, and labour to make it come true.Nor is this Spirit of Friendship a mere sentiment held by a sympathetic, and therefore unstable, fraternity, which would dissolve the concrete features of humanity into a vague blur of misty emotion. No; it has its roots in a profound philosophy which sees that the universe is friendly, and that men must learn to be friends if they would live as befits the world in which they live, as well as their own origin and destiny. For, since God is the life of all that was, is, and is to be; and since we are all born into the world by one high wisdom and one vast love, we are brothers to the last man of us, forever! For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, and even after death us do part, all men are held together by ties of spiritual kinship, sons of one eternal Friend. Upon this fact human fraternity rests, and it is the basis of the plea of Masonry, not only for freedom, but for friendship among men.Thus friendship, so far from being a mush of concessions, is in fact the constructive genius of the universe. Love is ever the Builder, and those who have done most to establish the City of God on earth have been the men who loved their fellow men. Once let this spirit prevail, and the wrangling sects will be lost in a great league of those who love in the service of those who suffer. No man will then revile the faith in which his neighbour finds help for today and hope for the morrow; pity will smite him mute, and love will teach him that God is found in many ways, by those who seek him with

THe spIrIT oF MAsonryBy Bro. Joseph Fort Newton - 1914



honest hearts. Once let this spirit rule in the realm of trade, and the law of the jungle will cease, and men will strive to build a social order in which all men may have opportunity “to live, and to live well,” as Aristotle defined the purpose of society. Here is the basis of that magical stability aimed at by the earliest artists when theysought to build for eternity, by imitating on earth the House of God.

II

Our human history, saturated with blood and blistered with tears, is the story of man making friends with man. Society has evolved from a feud into a friendship by the slow growth of love and the welding of man, first to his kin, and then to his kind. The first men who walked in the red dawn of time lived every man for himself, his heart a sanctuary of suspicions, every man feeling that every other man was his foe, and therefore his prey. So there were war, strife, and bloodshed. Slowly there came to the savage a gleam of the truth that it is better to help than to hurt, and he organized clans and tribes. But tribes were divided by rivers and mountains, and the men on one side of the river felt that the men on the other side were their enemies. Again there were war, pillage, and sorrow. Great empires arose and met in the shock of conflict, leaving trails of skeletons across the earth. Then came the great roads, reaching out with their stony clutch and bringing the ends of the earth together. Men met, mingled, passed and repassed, and learned that human nature is much the same everywhere, with hopes and fears in common. Still there were many things to divide and estrange men from each other, and the earth was full of bitterness. Not satisfied with natural barriers, men erected high walls of sect and caste, to exclude their fellows, and the men of one sect were sure that the men of all other sects were wrong--and doomed to be lost. Thus, when real mountains no longer separated man from man, mountains were made out of molehills--mountains of immemorial misunderstanding not yet moved into the sea!

Barriers of race, of creed, of caste, of habit, of training and interest separate men today, as if some malign genius were bent on keeping man from his fellows, begetting suspicion, uncharitableness, and hate. Still there are war, waste, and woe! Yet all the while men have been unfriendly, and, therefore, unjust and cruel, only because they are unacquainted. Amidst feud, faction, and folly, Masonry, the oldest and most widely spread order, toils in behalf of friendship, uniting men upon the only basis upon which they can ever meet with dignity. Each lodge is an oasis of equality and goodwill in a desert of strife, working to weld mankind into a great league of

sympathy and service, which, by the terms of our definition, it seeks to exhibit even now on a small scale. At its altar men meet as man to man, without vanity and without pretence, without fear and without reproach, as tourists crossing the Alps tie themselves together, so that if one slip all may hold him up. No tongue can tell the meaning of such a ministry, no pen can trace its influence in melting the hardness of the world into pity and gladness.

The Spirit of Masonry! He who would describe that spirit must be a poet, a musician, and a seer - a master of melodies, echoes, and long, far-sounding cadences. Now, as always, it toils to make man better, to refine his thought and purify his sympathy, to broaden his outlook, to lift his altitude, to establish in amplitude and resoluteness his life in all its relations. All its great history, its vast accumulations of tradition, its simple faith and its solemn rites, its freedom and its friendship are dedicated to a high moral ideal, seeking to tame the tiger in man, and bring his wild passions into obedience to the will of God. It has no other mission than to exalt and ennoble humanity, to bring light out of darkness, beauty out of angularity; to make every hard-won inheritance more secure, every sanctuary more sacred, every hope more radiant! The Spirit of Masonry! Ay, when that spirit has its way upon earth, as at last it surely will, society will be a vast communion of kindness and justice, business a system of human service, law a rule of beneficence; the home will be more holy, the laughter of childhood more joyous, and the temple of prayer mortised and tenoned in simple faith. Evil, injustice, bigotry, greed, and every vile and slimy thing that defiles and defames humanity will skulk into the dark, unable to bear the light of a juster, wiser, more merciful order. Industry will be upright, education prophetic, and religion not a shadow, but a Real Presence, when man has become acquainted with man and has learned to worship God by serving his fellows. When Masonry is victorious every tyranny will fall, every bastile crumble, and man will be not only unfettered in mind and hand, but free of heart to walk erect in the light and liberty of the truth.

Toward a great friendship, long foreseen by Masonic faith, the world is slowly moving, amid difficulties and delays, reactions and reconstructions. Though long deferred, of that day, which will surely arrive, when nations will be reverent in the use of freedom, just in the exercise of power, humane in the practice of wisdom; when no man will ride over the rights of his fellows; when no woman will be made forlorn, no little child wretched by bigotry or greed, Masonry has ever been a prophet. Nor will she ever be content until all the threads of human fellowship are woven into one mystic cord

3� Rising point fall 2011 - www.bonisteelml.org


of friendship, encircling the earth and holding the race in unity of spirit and the bonds of peace, as in the will of God it is one in the origin and end. Having outlived empires and philosophies, having seen generations appear and vanish, it will yet live to see the travail of its soul, and be satisfied-When the war-drum throbs no longer,And the battle flags are furled;In the parliament of man,The federation of the world.

III

Manifestly, since love is the law of life, if men are to be won from hate to love, if those who doubt and deny are to be wooed to faith, if the race is ever to be led and lifted into a life of service, it must he by the fine art of Friendship. Inasmuch as this is the purpose of Masonry, its mission determines the method not less than the spirit of its labour. Earnestly it endeavours to bring men--first the individual man, and then, so far as possible, those who are united with him--to love one another, while holding aloft, in picture and dream, that temple of character which is the noblest labour of life to build in the midst of the years, and which will outlast time and death. Thus it seeks to reach the lonely inner life of man where the real battles are fought, and where the issues of destiny are decided, now with shouts of victory, now with sobs of defeat. What a ministry to a young man who enters its temple in the morning of life, when the dew of heaven is upon his days and the birds are singing in his heart!

From the wise lore of the East Max Müller translated a parable which tells how the gods, having stolen from man his divinity, met in council to discuss where they should hide it. One suggested that it be carried to the other side of the earth and buried; but it was pointed out that man is a great wanderer, and that he might find the lost treasure on the other side of the earth. Another proposed that it be dropped into the depths of the sea; but the same fear was expressed--that man, in his insatiable curiosity, might dive deep enough to find it even there. Finally, after a space of silence, the oldest and wisest of the gods said: “Hide it in man himself, as that is the last place he will ever think to look for it!” And it was so agreed, all seeing at once the subtle and wise strategy. Man did wander over the earth, for ages, seeking in all places high and low, far and near, before he thought to look within himself for the divinity he sought. At last, slowly, dimly, he began to realize that what he thought was far off, hidden in “the pathos of distance,” is nearer than the breath he breathes, even in his own heart.

Here lies the great secret of Masonry--that it makes a man

aware of that divinity within him, wherefrom his whole life takes its beauty and meaning, and inspires him to follow and obey it. Once a man learns this deep secret, life is new, and the old world is a valley all dewy to the dawn with a lark-song over it. There never was a truer saying than that the religion of a man is the chief fact concerning him. By religion is meant not the creed to which a man will subscribe, or otherwise give his assent; not that necessarily; often not that at all—since we see men of all degrees of worth and worthlessness signing all kinds of creeds. No; the religion of a man is that which he practically believes, lays to heart, acts upon, and thereby knows concerning this mysterious universe and his duty and destiny in it. That is in all cases the primary thing in him, and creatively determines all the rest; that is his religion. It is, then, of vital importance what faith, what vision, what conception of life a man lays to heart, and acts upon.

At bottom, a man is what his thinking is, thoughts being the artists who give color to our days. Optimists and pessimists live in the same world, walk under the same sky, and observe the same facts. Sceptics and believers look up at the same great stars--the stars that shone in Eden and will flash again in Paradise. Clearly the difference between them is a difference not of fact, but of faith--of insight, outlook, and point of view--a difference of inner attitude and habit of thought with regard to the worth and use of life. By the same token, any influence which reaches and alters that inner habit and bias of mind, and changes it from doubt to faith, from fear to courage, from despair to sun-burst hope, has wrought the most benign ministry which a mortal may enjoy. Every man has a train of thought on which he rides when he is alone; andthe worth of his life to himself and others, as well as its happiness, depend upon the direction in which that train is going, the baggage it carries, and the country through which it travels. If, then, Masonry can put that inner train of thought on the right track, freight it with precious treasure, and start it on the way to the City of God, what other or higher ministry can it render to a man? And that is what it does for any man who will listen to it, love it, and lay its truth to heart.

High, fine, ineffably rich and beautiful are the faith and vision which Masonry gives to those who foregather at its altar, bringing to them in picture, parable, and symbol the lofty and pure truth wrought out through ages of experience, tested by time, and found to be valid for the conduct of life. By such teaching, if they have the heart to heed it, men become wise, learning how to be both brave and gentle, faithful and free; how to renounce superstition and yet


retain faith; how to keep a fine poise of reason between the falsehood of extremes; how to accept the joys of life with glee, and endure its ills with patient valor; how to look upon the folly of man and not forget his nobility--in short, how to live cleanly, kindly, calmly, open-eyed and unafraid in a sane world, sweet of heart and full of hope. Whoso lays this lucid and profound wisdom to heart, and lives by it, will have little to regret, and nothing to fear, when the evening shadows fall. Happy the young man who in the morning of his years makes it his guide, philosopher, and friend.

Such is the ideal of Masonry, and fidelity to all that is holy demands that we give ourselves to it, trusting the power of truth, the reality of love, and the sovereign worth of character. For only as we incarnate that ideal in actual life and activity does it become real, tangible, and effective. God works for man through man and seldom, if at all, in any other way. He asks for our voices to speak His truth, for our hands to do His work here below--sweet voices and clean hands to make liberty and love prevail over injustice and hate. Not all of us can be learned or famous, but each of us can be loyal and true of heart, undefiled by evil, undaunted by error, faithful and helpful to our fellow souls. Life is a capacity for the highest things. Let us make it a pursuit of the highest--an eager, incessant quest of truth; a noble utility, a lofty honour, a wise freedom, a genuine service - that through us the Spirit of Masonry may grow and be glorified.When is a man a Mason? When he can look out over the rivers, the hills, and the far horizon with a profound sense

of his own littleness in the vast scheme of things, and yet have faith, hope, and courage--which is the root of every virtue. When he knows that down in his heart every man is as noble, as vile, as divine, as diabolic, and as lonely as himself, and seeks to know, to forgive, and to love his fellow man. When he knows how to sympathize with men in their sorrows, yea, even in their sins - knowing that each man fights a hard fight against many odds. When he has learned how to make friends and to keep them, and above all how to keep friends with himself. When he loves flowers, can hunt the birds without a gun, and feels the thrill of an old forgotten joy when he hears the laugh of a little child. When he can be happy and high-minded amid the meaner drudgeries of life. When star-crowned trees, and the glint of sunlight on flowing waters, subdue him like the thought of one much loved and long dead. When no voice of distress reaches his ears in vain, and no hand seeks his aid without response. When he finds good in every faith that helps any man to lay hold of divine things and sees majestic meanings in life, whatever the name of that faith may be. When he can look into a wayside puddle and see something beyond mud, and into the face of the most forlorn fellow mortal and see something beyond sin. When he knows how to pray, how to love, how to hope. When he has kept faith with himself, with his fellow man, with his God; in his hand a sword for evil, in his heart a bit of a song - glad to live, but not afraid to die! Such a man has found the only real secret of Masonry, and the one which it is trying to give to all the world.



The Templar Code For Dummies is for those who have a genuine interest in the Templars, as well as the millions of people whose interest was sparked after reading or watching The Da Vinci Code and want to know more about the Knights Templar and other secret societies. The Templar Code is more than an intriguing cipher or a mysterious symbol – it is the Code by which the Knights Templar lived and died, the Code that bound them together in secrecy, and the Code that inspired them to nearly superhuman feats of courage and endurance.

ISBN: 978-0-470-1�76�-0

Wiley Publishing

Paperback, 384 pages

June �007

$19.99

This intriguing guide covers such topics as:

BulletThe Templars’ meteoric rise during the Crusades, and their death just �00 years later in the fires of the Inquisition -- how they rose so high and fell so far, and why there is so much interest in them today.

BulletThe surprising part the Templars have played in some of the most important historic events of the past seven centuries, including the French Revolution, the birth of groups such as the Freemasons among others, and even the American Civil War

BulletThe Templar connections to myths and legends that appear in The Da Vinci Code, including the quest for the Holy Grail, the mysterious Rosslyn Chapel, and the shadowy Priory of Sion

BulletThe Da Vinci Code’s version of Opus Dei and the Catholic church’s relationship with women--a hotly debated topic now-- with special emphasis on the Templar connection.

sources: http://web.mac.com/chodapp/Hodapps/Book s _%�6 _ Events/Entries/�008/11/�0_The _Templar_Code_For_Dummies.html

The Templar Code For Dummiesby Christopher L. Hodapp (“Freemasons For Dummies”, “Solomon’s

Builders”) and Alice Von Kannon

Fall 2011 The Rising Point

Documents

Transcript of Fall 2011 The Rising Point