What Dan Brown gets right and what he gets wrong about Freemasonry in “The Lost Symbol”: Part 3
There is no part 3!
I’ve abandoned the idea of writing a page by page commentary of The Lost Key’s masonic content as:
a) I no longer have the time.
b) Now I’m on the middle of the book the masonic content has thinned out.
c) I’m not being gripped by the book – it feels shallow and the “cliff-hanger at the end of every short chapter” style feels overly contrived.
d) As it deals with the Scottish Rite (or Brown’s version of it) and I’m not that familiar with the Scottish Rite as it exists in the USA I’m less qualified to comment than I’d like to be.
Restaurant review: Dragon’s Den Thai & Chinese, Monmouth.
The sort of situation that must present itself to millions on a Saturday night befell our household last night: too tired to cook, too tired to go and buy some food to cook. The obvious answer was a takeaway delivered to our home.
Monmouth has many restaurants, most of them in Indian/Bangladeshi. Indeed, I’ve wondered, every time a new Indian restaurant opens in the town why the owner believes there’s room for just one more Indian restaurant serving the same mid-range Indian food. When I asked one once, he told me, with a big grin, “because we are the best!”.
Anyway, Indian was not on the agenda because there was a new place in town selling Thai and Chinese food from the premises in St. Mary’s Street vacated by the Malt House. I had heard on the grapevine that the food at The Dragon’s Den was “bland” and not recommended. Niggling worries that offering two cuisines – a jack-of-two-trades approach that should give the obvious clue that they are master of none – were put to the back of my mind as I picked up the phone to make my order from the leaflet that promised “upmarket” Thai and Chinese cooking.
Achieving payment over the phone in advance seemed to present some difficulties as I was asked to give my order, then wait for a call back while a price was agreed with a taxi driver, at which point I could give my card number. The call duly came and I was told the food would leave the restaurant forty minutes later. That was fine.
The food arrived on time and we arranged the lavish spread that was Set Menu A at £16.95 per person. This worked out at much better value than selecting dishes I actually wanted individually, but at about £8.00 for each smallish takeaway container this would been unaffordable.
The grapevine was right.
The starter was a “Thai Platter”- “A selection of Thai starters”. This was a collection of greasy and unappetising deep-fried items: a spring roll, a wonton, prawn toast and a pureed chicken dumpling that had the texture and taste of a Chicken McNugget.
The main courses were disappointing too. The stir-fried pork, chicken curry and chicken with vegetables all lacked those essentials of Thai cooking: a contrast of flavours and texture that surprise the palate. There was not much evidence of Thai Basil leaves or garnish to give any visual appeal. OK, fair enough, it is difficult to make a plastic container visually appealing, but here they hadn’t even tried. There was just no finesse.
Now to be fair, getting a take-away means we weren’t able to sample the ambience and service offered by eating in the restaurant itself; and the food was by no means inedible.
Certainly serious money seems to have been spent on refurbishing the premises. It may be disloyal to a new business in Monmouth not to be nice about it, but it must stand on the quality of its product. On that basis, I’m afraid I can’t, at the moment recommend the Dragon’s Den’s food. Let’s hope the quality will improve as the business gets into its stride. Monmouth needs some good Thai cuisine to balance the surfeit of Indian and Chinese outlets. Monmouthshire is foodie territory and the punters expect better!
Freemasonry – the world needs a villain
The recent publication of “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown seems to have stirred an interest in freemasonry in the online world. A search on #freemasonry on Twitter reveals a mix of curiosity, ignorance and, sadly, bigotry. These are balanced by tweets by freemasons who enjoy what they do and are proud of the organisation they are part of.
Over on YouTube the irrational conspiracy theories go into top gear, with outlandish (and, crucially – unsupported) claims that freemasonry is, among other things:
- a religion
- a satanic cult
- part of the “New World Order” – whatever that is
- a secretive network of highly-placed politicians, bankers and businessmen bent on obtaining personal wealth and privilege.
- ruled by space lizards ( I kid you not).
There’s more, but I won’t bore you. What amazes me is that there is a market for this stuff, that people are happy to get information not from the organisation itself or from impartial academic sources, but from bigoted and intolerant rants that merely repeat myths, rehash hoaxes and misquote from alleged masonic authorities.
Over in the mainstream media freemasonry has been getting fairer coverage recently, but there is still the odd local newspaper that runs stories like “Is your local councillor a freemason?”, as though being biased against freemasons is fine. Replace the word “freemason” in that headline with “Jew” or “homosexual” and you’ll appreciate how antiquated and offensive some attitudes towards freemasonry are.
It’s as though society needs villains to heap its own insecurities onto. Once racism and homophobia were acceptable ways of doing that but they, along with other prejudices were outlawed or deemed socially unacceptable.
My point here is that that society needs to grow up a little and take an unbiased view of freemasonry, not allowing prejudice and that nasty urge to want a scapegoat for its own insecurities to get in the way of rational, evidence-based enquiry. After that, you may find freemasonry is not your thing. You may find it pointless, silly, even. Whatever, but you won’t pre-judge it and assume that rumours put about by people with very biased agendas amount to facts.
This plea to give us a fair hearing is no good though without one more thing though and that is understanding. It’s pretty well accepted that people can be suspicious of that which they don’t understand. Freemasonry, over the years, has not helped itself by being coy about what it does, so that void of public understanding is filled by rumour, myth and some pretty virulent prejudice. Nowadays, though we have open days and websites and will drone on about our new lifestyle if you let us.
So let me try and clear up what Freemasonry is, what it does and why. In doing so, I must stress that these opinions are my own and not those of any masonic body. It also reflects my experiences as a mason in the English constitution. This is worth saying because much of the anti-masonic material on the net is directed at American-style masonry, and in particular, one branch of it, the Scottish Rite.
So, what is freemasonry?
It’s an organisation that teaches men how to be better men. That word “better” is worth exploring. It encompasses moral, intellectual and spiritual self-improvement and does not include empowerment, or material enrichment. Charity is not, you might be surprised to hear, one of our goals. Rather, charity is an expression of the moral development cultivated by masonic teaching.
“Teaches men how to be better men” – that’s an old-fashioned concept isn’t it?
Yes it is, and because people are incredulous that that really is our goal, they assume we must be lying and that it is just a smokescreen for some other, entirely immoral enterprise.
I sometimes shake my head in dismay when I see the vitriolic bile aimed at freemasonry claiming that we are trying to corrupt the world, when actually we are trying to do precisely the opposite; quietly, privately, by working at an individual level to make better men.
“Secrecy”
It is because we operate at an individual level, teaching values, not dogma, to individual men that we function in private. Freemasonry uses a quaint teaching method – ritual – to add impact to the lessons learned. It’s a bit like role play in that soft-skills course your boss sent you on. If the content of those rituals is familiar to the man experiencing them , then that impact will be lessened. So we don’t reveal the content of the ceremony in advance. To that is to be added the principle that the lessons that a man learns in the masonic degrees are, in part, lessons about himself. They are personal. Someone in psychotherapy who has a sudden and profound insight into their motivations that helps them to grow psychologically is unlikely to want to cheapen that insight by shouting it from the rooftops. And those lessons – the real “secrets” of freemasonry can be like that.
In fact, the content of the rituals is available for anyone to buy. We aren’t required to keep our membership secret and our meeting places are not hidden. While on the subject of secrecy, it’s worth considering that every day there are meetings of clubs, societies and companies from which you and I are excluded. So the concept of meeting in private is hardly new or unacceptable and, now you know why freemasons do what they do, hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of why we do it in private.
Let’s address some other misconceptions:
Freemasonry is “satanic”, magical or “occult”
There is no content in freemasonry that is “satanic” or “magical”. Because some of the philosophical influences on freemasonry as it evolved were from what has become known as the “Hermetic/Kabbalistic Tradition”, freemasonry borrowed some of the principles and symbolism of this school. Unfortunately, freemasonry doesn’t have a monopoly on them and they have been used by unsavoury occultist figures. It didn’t help either that a self-confessed hoaxer, Leo Taxil, put out literature in early 20th century Paris, claiming that freemasons worshipped the devil. Amazingly, some not very discriminating anti-masons still perpetuate the Taxil hoax in the 21st century as being true. Their audience, clearly not well-skilled in critical thinking, laps it up.
If you were to tap the average mason on the shoulder and ask him about “Lucifer” he probably wouldn’t have a clue what you are talking about.
You swear oaths to support each other and keep secret evidence of crimes
Wrong. We swear to uphold principles that should be acceptable to everybody. In simple terms, we promise to behave morally and honourably. We don’t promise to obey the commands of any ruler, nor do we promise anything that most sane and well adjusted people would be unhappy about.
We promise to keep each others lawful secrets. In reality (not a place frequented by most conspiracy theorists) that is most likely to practically express itself in not revealing to someone else that our friend is having trouble with his personal waterworks and needs to see a urologist.
We are also informed on several occasions that we should not and cannot expect to gain financially or in any other worldly way from our membership. So power and influence are explicitly off the agenda.
It’s elitist, exclusive and you have to invited to join
Elitist – a very big part of the ethos of freemasonry is that men from all social backgrounds can put aside their differences and meet on the same level. This is reflected in the makeup of lodges, whose mix of social classes generally reflects the mix in the population at large.
Exclusive – guilty on that count, but only in the sense that we want exclude men of bad character. We want men of integrity, not the dodgy types that would sell your mother a useless car. Freemasonry’s culture is very inclusive and your accent, class, race or religion don’t matter. True, gender is relevant, but it is not true to say that freemasonry is excluded to women: there are two grand lodges in the UK that are for women only.
You don’t have to be invited: it’s actually the other way around. We like men that are interested to make the first move. We aren’t allowed to cajole people into joining, so we don’t “recruit” in that sense.
You swear bloody oaths
No we don’t. English freemasonry has for some years now included only a reference to the penalties for failure to uphold the standards expected by our obligations. Effectively, the candidate is told that these were once the penalties and is not told that they apply to him if he fails to keep his obligation. This may vary in other constitutions, but before you say “Aha! So some masons do swear bloody oaths!”, bear in mind that freemasonry is very traditional and loves to keep to the wording of the ceremonial that was used in the era in which it evolved – the 17th and 18th centuries. In those times it was common for someone swearing a legally-binding oath to express the wish that some bloody penalty would be conflicted on him him/her if he/she failed to keep to the terms of that oath. The implication is not and never was that another mason would apply that penalty!
You don’t allow Catholics to join
Not true at all. The Catholic church has declared that anyone joining freemasonry may not receive communion and is in a state of “grave sin”. We don’t exclude applicants because they are Catholics. What would be the point? We don’t even ask an applicant what his religion is as it’s none of our business. We simply ask if he believes in a supreme being.
You use secret handshakes and signs to obtain favours
I have never seen this happen and am confident that none of the masons I have met would ever do this: it goes completely against the whole point of freemasonry, which is cultivating morality, not corrupting it. Trying to do it would be painfully embarrassing as the recipient of such a handshake, were he a mason, would be appalled. It would probably, therefore be completely counter-productive and get you thrown out of your lodge. Such “modes of recognition” only function in the context of a masonic ceremony where they are used to indicate the degree that someone has achieved.
“A High-ranking mason”
The media loves this expression, particularly if the person in question is suspected of being up to no good. It betrays a misunderstanding about the difference between masonic rank and degree. Freemasonry has a leadership structure which goes, roughly, master of a lodge, provincial officer (of which there are many), Provincial Grand Master, Grand Lodge Officer (many at a national level), then Grand Master. An officer in the United Grand Lodge of England could reasonably be said to be a “high ranking mason”.
Outside “Craft” freemasonry there are other masonic systems whose degrees expand on the material taught in the Craft’s three degrees, but are not superior to them. One of these, the Rose Croix (or Scottish Rite) has thirty-three degrees. Admission to the last of these, the 33rd is an honour bestowed on those who have given much to the Scottish Rite usually over a lifetime. A 33rd degree Scottish Rite mason is not necessarily, therefore a “high-ranking mason”.
The Scottish Rite’s 33rd degree is the pinnacle of freemasonry
In the USA and some other countries, the Scottish Rite is recognised by Craft or Blue Lodge Freemasonry and it is not unusual to think of freemasonry there in terms of a hierarchical structure with the three craft degrees at the bottom and the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite at the top. Two points here: 1. There is no degree higher than the 3rd degree, Master Mason and 2. In other countries, like England, the Scottish Rite is not recognised by Grand Lodge, so that elaborate hierarchy of 33 degrees does not exist as a single system. Personally speaking, I prefer not to use the term “33rd degree mason”, preferring instead “33rd degree Scottish Rite mason”.
Freemasonry is a religion/cult
Religion? No. Despite what has been claimed, freemasonry puts forward no plan of salvation and has no religious dogma. Regular freemasonry does demand a belief in a supreme being but there is no distinct masonic god. Anyone who tells you so is a very desperate conspiracy theorist.
Cult? No. Personally I find cults abhorrent and have never found any of the classic traits of cults in freemasonry, like accumulation of money, creepy coercive culture, adulation of a charismatic leader, deprivation of free will/liberty. By contrast the culture of freemasonry is welcoming, democratic, tolerant and genuinely friendly without the ulterior motives I assume you might sense in a cult.
You conduct bizarre ceremonies
Out of context, ritual can seem odd. Look at the central rites of most of the worlds’ major religions and they can seem pretty odd, even disturbing, too, if viewed out of context. If you appreciate that the symbols we use all have a meaning within specific ceremonies, then they make more sense. Yes, the skull, for example, will appear as a symbol. This isn’t to lend a creepy atmosphere and scare the candidate: it’s to make him think of his own mortality, that we all die some day and that we should make the most of life now. Such symbols are designed to provoke the imagination and stimulate thought. You didn’t realise freemasonry was so philosophical? The philosophy in its ceremonies is what it’s all about. We are much more than an eccentric dining club!
“Freemasonry thinks all religions are equally valid”
Freemasonry doesn’t have opinions about the merits of one religion over another, but only asks if a man believes in a supreme being. Discussion of religious or political topics is forbidden in the lodge. This allows men from many monotheistic faiths to meet together in harmony to participate in self-improvement. Originally freemasonry was only for Christians but this restriction was removed in the nineteenth century, an act, in my opinion, of tolerance that was way ahead of its time. If only some of freemasonry’s detractors were as tolerant!
“The Lost Secret is about Freemasonry”
The Lost Secret by Dan Brown is about Scottish Rite freemasonry, one branch of freemasonry. The book and the media flurry around it, gives, in my opinion, the false impression that the Scottish Rite is freemasonry, whereas it is only joined by about a third of US masons. Still it’s great that Brown is generally pretty positive about freemasonry in general and I dare say that his novel represents the best PR for the Craft that it has ever had.
“Freemasonry has 360 degrees”
This a myth put about in recent years on the net that is so laughable I have to question the gullibility of people who take it seriously. I hate to appear to dignify it by responding to the claim, but:
Each masonic degree ceremony can last up to a couple of hours, maybe more in some cases. They are elaborate plays in which the candidate plays a central role. They require the learning of lines and choreography to ensure that everything happens at the right time. The degrees are put on by men who have jobs and families and who have to learn their parts in their own time, then rehearse them several times. Each degree will also have its own props and sometimes furnishings for the lodge room. For a lodge to conduct the three craft degrees a few times over a year is pretty time-consuming, therefore. You can hopefully see then the sheer implausibility of there being a further 327 degrees, presumably above the Scottish Rite’s 33rd. The logistics would be impossible.
That’s 654 hours times, let’s say 10 masons – 6540 man-hours. All to be conducted in utter secrecy. No mason has ever heard of these other 327 degrees by the way, so presumably the ritual books with the words for them don’t exist and the lines have to be memorised. Oh, and somewhere needs to be found for 327 sets of aprons and other paraphernalia associated with each degree. It takes about three months for everyone to learn their roles and rehearse for each degree ceremony, so if you did all 327 back to back, one every three months, it would take 81 years to conduct all of them!
If you have come across that particular claim, I hope you will feel confident enough now to laugh hysterically, as I did.
You dress up and wear false beards
I saw a History Channel documentary the other day about freemasonry in which an American lodge enacted the 3rd degree for the cameras. As the 3rd degree is a drama, the various characters were dressed up to suit their roles. This included the wearing of false beards.
I’m not familiar with American freemasonry and it would appear that some lodges there do put on costumes to heighten the impact of the degree ceremonies. It’s not something I have seen done in any English or Scottish lodges. If I was asked to wear a false beard I would probably decline on the grounds that it would tickle.
In the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite it is revealed that the true masters of freemasonry and the world are lizards from Sirius
All I can say to that is “keep taking the pills” . ROFL.
Finally, a plea:
If you are trying to find out about freemasonry, don’t rely on material with a biased agenda. This, unfortunately makes up the majority of the material on the Internet. Be fussy about your sources of information. Get in touch with a mason or a lodge and ask. You’ll be surprised at how warm the response will be. Or if you are the intellectual type, do some research be reading academic research into freemasonry by historians who aren’t masons, so you know that they won’t be biased.
Let me know if there are other myths you would like me to shoot down 
What Dan Brown gets right and what he gets wrong about Freemasonry in “The Lost Symbol”: Part 2
Spoiler alert.
I’m on to Chapter 6 now. Brown appears to be using this chapter to debunk misunderstandings about Freemasonry. He does this by having the turtle-neck obsessed academic Langdon reminisce about a lecture he once gave to a class of naive students.
One he addresses largely successfully is that freemasonry is “ like a super-secret society”, although he uses the old chestnut that it is in fact a “society with secrets”. That formulation, while having an element of truth doesn’t get the enquirer much further and still leaves room for people to sustain their prejudices about what those secrets might be.
He also makes a point about secrecy that I have been making for years, that the corporations that make the consumer products we use every day are similarly “societies with secrets”. In fact, arguably they are even more secretive than freemasonry: you try getting into a board meeting of a company!
Next up is the myth that freemasonry is a religion. This is despatched efficiently in a five line paragraph, leaving room to deal with the “Is freemasonry antireligious?” question. Without getting into a debate about syncretism, Brown suggests that “when different cultures are killing each other over whose definition is better, one could say the Masonic tradition of tolerance and open-mindedness is commendable”.
Langdon has to concede that although Freemasonry’s culture is non-discriminatory, it does not admit women. Trying to convince a student that it is not a “freaky cult”, he goes on to accurately offer freemasonry’s own definition of itself from its ritual: “ a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols”.
Finally, Brown’s hero cheekily tells the students that he belongs to a “freaky cult” whose central rite is conducted “on the pagan day of the sun god Ra” beneath “an ancient instrument of torture” and involves the consumption of “ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh”. The appalled students realise too late that he is referring to his church and that they have been guilty of not being open minded, because, as Langdon stresses “We all fear what we do not understand”.
Not much to quibble about here: perhaps the treatment is a bit brisk, a bit shallow. But then, this is a book people are reading on the beach: they don’t want to bothered with the detail.
Overall, this chapter is a concise apologia of freemasonry that hits , in quick-fire style, many of the common myths about the organisation that those outside it seem happy to accept all too uncritically.
Recipe: My favourite comfort food: Chicken Liver Risotto
This is a meal I make when I need comfort food. It’s not an authentic Italian-style risotto as it uses Basmati rice and the aim is not to produce the creamy nursery food dish that is the mark of a real risotto. So if that bothers you, call it “Rice and Chicken Livers”. If you use frozen ready chopped garlic and blitz the onion in the blender, it can be produced within 40 minutes on a weeknight while listening to The Archers on BBC Radio 4. Adjust proportions of rice to chicken livers as you like; just keep the ratio of rice to stock 1 to 1.
Serves Two.
Ingredients
400g fresh chicken livers (preferably free range), cleaned of any green-looking bits and chopped in half
1 large mug full of basmati rice (definitely not ordinary long grain rice)
1 fat garlic clove, chopped finely
1 onion, chopped finely
200 dry cure smoked bacon lardons
1 large mug full of hot chicken or duck stock
1 Bay leaf
Small handful each of finely chopped fresh sage and oregano/marjoram or whatever herbs you fancy (tarragon works well too)
Small handful of roughly chopped flat leaf parsley
Half glass of white wine or dry sherry
Freshly ground black pepper
1 glug of olive oil or a dollop of goose fat
A shake or two of Barbados hot pepper sauce or Tabasco.
Method
In a suitably-sized heavy-based pan that that has a tight fitting lid: Gently fry the bacon, onion and garlic in the olive oil/goose fat until beginning to turn golden. Throw in the livers, give them a stir, then put in the rice. Stir again so the rice is coated with oil, then add the bay leaf, herbs, pepper sauce/Tabasco, wine/sherry and a generous grind of black pepper. Stir, then add the stock. Stir again and reduce to the lowest heat you can, cover tightly with the lid, then wait until the rice has softened and absorbed all the stock. If it threatens to dry out, add a little more stock or wine. It should take no more than 15 minutes. Check seasoning, adding salt if necessary and stir in the parsley. Serve in a bowl to your grateful spouse first then scoff the rest yourself.
What Dan Brown gets right and what he gets wrong about Freemasonry in “The Lost Symbol”: Part 1
I’m not a big reader of fiction and I’m not a fan of Dan Brown’s books, though he seems like a nice enough chap. The lost Symbol uses Freemasonry as a major element in his latest blockbuster, so an author whose books would otherwise easily escape my interest , has, on this occasion, caught it.
Freemasonry, as we all know, has a big PR problem. We freemasons are generally a bunch of decent chaps trying to better ourselves for the benefit of our communities while enjoying the sense of camaraderie offered by a friendly fraternity that has a few hundred years of history.
Our detractors would have you believe that we are, variously, corrupters of local politics, occultists, satanists, unethical networkers, world-dominators and lizards from the Sirius star system. That’s a pretty big PR problem, don’t you agree?
So if a mega selling author writes a book that uses Freemasonry as a theme, I have an understandable interest in the potential for this book to change people’s opinions of Freemasonry for the better, as well checking that he presents us fairly and accurately.
What I’m going to do here then is provide a commentary, as I read The Lost Symbol, on the masonic elements of the plot, assessing them for fairness and accuracy. It will be based on my experience of freemasonry (15 years) in the English system and my admittedly limited understanding of American-style freemasonry.
I should stress that my comments are my own and do not represent the opinions of any lodge, Grand or otherwise, or of any other masonic organisation. I make this disclaimer because much mischief has been made by some anti-masons who misrepresent the personal opinions of some masons as being the official line of Freemasonry.
I also run the risk of forming opinions without knowing the implications of later plot elements. For example, a character who is a mason and ostensibly a good guy in the early stages of the book may turn out to be a bad guy in a twist later on. I might have noted – wrongly – that he was clearly an example of what fine, upstanding people we freemasons are! So please allow for that lack of foresight.
The commentary will be in one post per chapter form as far as possible, or if the plot only has occasional masonic references, over, say, three chapters, I’ll do a post that covers that section of the book. Page references are to the hardback first edition published in the UK.
Inevitably, this will contain spoilers, so read on at your own risk!
Quotation
Brown starts his work of fiction by quoting from The Secret Teachings of All Ages, by Manly P. Hall. Hall was a prolific writer on comparative religion and the western mystery tradition, who, long after he wrote The Secret Teachings, his magnum opus, was given the 33rd Degree in the Scottish Rite, a branch of freemasonry recognised by American grand lodges, but which is not formally part of English freemasonry. Hall is frequently – and wrongly – presented by anti-masons as a spokesperson for freemasonry.
Prologue
- The second paragraph has two errors, one minor, one a biggie.The first is the reference to an initiate. As it later turns out, the ceremony being depicted in the prologue appears to be the masonic third degree. The person for whom the ceremony is being conducted would therefore already have been initiated and would, in actual freemasonry, be referred to as the candidate. An initiate is someone who has just done the first degree, after which he becomes a candidate for the other two degrees.The second is clearly designed as a crowd pleaser: the un-named protagonist is holding a human skull, filled with red wine, from which he later drinks. This is an invention by the author: in actual freemasonry, candidates for the third degree don’t drink wine from a human skull.
- The architecture of the building in which the ceremony takes place is described as having, among other stylistic features, Egyptian embellishments. This seems to be playing to the popular misconception that ancient Egyptian symbolism (pyramids, Sphinxes etc) is used extensively in freemasonry. It isn’t. Uninformed conspiracy theorists too busy to be bothered with facts have decided that because Great Seal of the USA uses an “all seeing eye” over a pyramid and the “all-seeing eye” symbol was borrowed by freemasonry, that pyramids and Egyptian motifs are necessarily “masonic”. Yes, you will occasionally find a masonic building that uses Egyptian motifs just to make it look cool(!), but they really aren’t part of what most masons recognise as the traditional symbolism used in the degree ceremonies. Masonic teaching uses themes borrowed from Old Testament stories and the tools of middle-ages stonemasons. No mention of ancient Egyptians.The use of Egyptian architecture in Brown’s sinister chamber of initiation just perpetuates the “freemasonry loves Egyptian symbolism” myth.
- “An enormous altar hewn from a solid block of polished Belgian black marble”. Reality check required here: masonic lodge rooms don’t have big black altars, Belgian or otherwise. There will be a small wooden pedestal at which the candidate kneels, while he makes an obligation (not an oath). Brown clearly believes big black Belgian altars are much more exciting.
- “The Supreme Worshipful Master”. Brown has added “Supreme”. For real masons, the chairman of a lodge is addressed as only “Worshipful Master”. Worshipful in this context, by the way, is used in the old fashioned sense of honourable or respectable.
- “May this wine I now drink become a deadly poison to me….”. Well we already know that the third degree doesn’t involve someone drinking wine from a skull and similarly these words are an invention by the author.
Update
http://www.freemasonlostsymbol.com/ (published by The Masonic Society, The Masonic Service Association of North America, and the George Washington Masonic Memorial) suggests that what is being depicted in the prologue is a Scottish Rite 33rd degree ceremony, but it does appear to contain some terminology from a Craft (“blue “) lodge context. Perhaps Brown is mixing material from Craft (Blue) freemasonry, Scottish Rite and an inaccurate exposé? Presumably the context will be revealed later in the book. To quote from the site:
8. The opening pages of “The Lost Symbol” describe a 33rd degree Scottish Rite ritual ceremony. Do Masons really drink out of skulls?
The skull has appeared for centuries as a common symbol of mortality, not only in various degrees of Masonic ritual, but in many other fraternal and religious organizations. The specific ceremony described by Brown in the prologue of The Lost Symbol appears to be adapted from a sensationalized exposé, Scotch Rite Masonry Illustrated, published in 1887 by the Reverend John Blanchard. Blanchard’s description of the 33rd degree has been repeated by many anti-Masonic authors over the years, even though it is not accurate.
Although I am a member of the Scottish Rite, I haven’t received its 33rd degree (very few do!) so can’t comment on the accuracy of the description, if, indeed, Brown is trying to portray a Scottish Rite 33rd degree ceremony.
A functional and elegant makeover for the UGLE website
The United Grand Lodge of England’s website has had a pretty professional-looking redesign. It’s much more accessible to the non-mason and spells out, in a more articulate, eye-catching and , above all, contemporary way, what we are about.
Crop circle aliens are vandals
The silly-season, sorry, crop-circle season story of the man arrested in a crop circle for allegedly firing a shotgun to deter sightseers provoked the following thought:
There are those who marvel at the amazing complexity of some of the crop formations and find mathematical and symbolic meaning in them that, they say, is proof that they are not made by humans. Well, I’m in the “made by humans” camp but am willing to listen to those with sound, scientifically valid evidence who believe otherwise. However, what I’m not willing to do is marvel at how “advanced” these aliens are.
They are vandals that cause thousands of pounds worth of damage. If they really need to communicate profound insights into human destiny, surely it’s not beyond them to learn one of our major languages or send a radio broadcast? I mean, if I were trying to convey information to creatures on a remote planet, I wouldn’t thoughtlessly make cryptograms in their valuable crops, causing damage and costing the alien farmers money.
That would just be a display of selfish criminal damage akin to graffiti.
If extraterrestrials are making crop circles, they are certainly not gentlemen 
Halt says he saw “structured machines” at Rendlesham, “extraterrestrial in origin”
File this under in the “If true, it’s very important” category:
Col. Halt, famed in ufology for his taped commentary of strange sightings outside a nuclear weapon-packed US Air force base in 1980, has apparently stated in an interview cited in UFOWeek.com:
“I wish to make it perfectly clear that the UFOs I saw were structured machines moving under intelligent control and operating beyond the realm of anything I have ever seen before or since. I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin and that the security services of both the United States and England [sic] were and have been complicit in trying to subvert the significance of what occurred at Rendlesham by use of well practiced methods of disinformation.”
The significance of this remark, if confirmed that he did indeed make it, is that he scores very highly on the credibility scale as the former deputy base commander outside which strange phenomena were observed over Christmas 1980. Much has been written and much pored over in the pursuit of the facts in this case, considered by some to be second only to Roswell in importance. This statement is completely at odds with those researchers who claim that what was seen by several people over three nights was simply a misidentified lighthouse.
If it isn’t already, this should be one of ufology’s stop-the-press moments and if the mainstream media would get out of snigger mode it would be breaking news.
Is Disclosure Imminent?
The All News Web site is predicting disclosure of alien contact by a European country next week. The site’s author is also claiming that “first contact” with an alien civilisation will happen within weeks and that this is potentially connected with the loss of Flight 447.
Paranormal Spy is claiming that France is “poised to disclose presence of Extra Terrestrials on Earth”. They are getting this report from MINA, the Macedonian News Agency, which states “France is set to concede that it is aware of an alien presence on earth by no later than Friday.”
The trail goes cold there.
None of these sites are familiar to me and none cite sources for the information so until it is picked up by one of the major news providers like the BBC or CNN, this stuff is clearly to be taken with a generous pinch of salt. History is littered with fortean hoaxes.
