The Beviad–musings, mutterings and myths

I have been reading a novel lately, called “Knights of the Black and White” by Jack Whyte (the author of the series “A Dream of Eagles’ that deals with the possible origin of the Round Table in the work of Romans left in Britain after the Romans retreated from Britain in the 400s.)

This book is about the origin of the Knights Templar, and is the first of three covering the history of the Templars. Many of its ideas I am already famiiar with, since I have read a lot about the Templars.  One common idea I was already familiar with is that the Templars, around about 1200, discovered scrolls beneath the ruins of the ancient temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, while stationed there in their mission to be the policemen of the roads to Jerusalem for Christian pilgrims–scrolls and perhaps other treasure, including possibly the Ark of the Covenant and/or the Holy Grail. This changed a group of warrior-monks into a secret society, apparently, whose influence was enormous. 

In Whyte’s book there is an idea that is new to me: that the knights digging at the temple were already members of a secret society when they began to dig. He posits that they were part of a group called ‘The Friendly Families’, descendants of Essenes driven out of the Holy Land when the Romans drove the Jews out in 67AD. These Essene elders, apparently, had gone to Marseilles to settle in a Jewish community there, and eventually became Franks, retaining their secret knowledge. The knights digging at the temple of Solomon (or actually, the temple of Herod, built on the ruins of Solomon’s temple), were looking for a treasure which their Order has known would be found there, according to ancient legend. 

Having concluded that Whyte didn’t make up this idea, I have been trolling the Net for info on the Essene-Templar  connection. To my surprise, I have found lots of websites on this matter, including an article by someone named Jane Balfe (“Egypt, The Essenes, The Templars and the USA” by Jane Balfe), which sums up the ideas pretty succinctly and suggests why so many Americans might be interested in all this: 

“The ideal that was central to the ancient Egyptian civilization was the concept of Ma`at. The continuance of civilization and social progress rests upon the individual’s ability to “do unto others as you would be done to”. Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs had no great ethical content but in practical matters there was a recognition that justice was a fundamental good and part of the natural order of things.

“Originally the word Ma`at meant level, ordered and symmetrical. It later came to mean righteousness, truth and justice, the basis of the American constitution. Ma`at became a basis for the Egyptian legal system and soon came to stand for all “rightness”, from the equilibrium of the universe to honesty and fair dealing in daily life. The concept of Ma`at became the hallmark of a good King.

“It has long been speculated that the Jerusalem Essenes, the authors of The Dead Sea Scrolls, were descendants of the Ancient Egyptians, members of The Egyptian Mystery School founded by Akenhaten and carried some of the secret rituals which are found in Freemasonry. This community’s members were forced to leave Jerusalem after the reign of Akenhaten and moved to Qumran, near the Dead Sea, for around two hundred and fifty years until they dispersed following Roman domination. It is also believed by some that Jesus was a member, at some time, of the Essene community, since many of his ideas (and those of John the Baptist), such as baptism by water, were the same as theirs. 

“It is believed by some that some of these secret scrolls, written in coded form, were discovered by the Knights Templar and identify a secret tradition that members had to swear to never divulge .The positive virtues taught in the Essene Community were clearly laid out in the scrolls: truth, righteousness, kindness, justice, honesty and humility along with brotherly love. 

“The founder of the Knights Templar , Hugues de Payen, and his small group of nine knights discovered some of these scrolls in AD 1119 beneath the rubble of Herod’s Temple. The nine Knights who discovered the Nasorean scrolls had found treasure they could not share with the world at large. It took several decades for the order, established by Hugues de Payen, to become one of the most powerful forces in Christendom. The Knights Templar took the ancient Ma`at inspired secrets of the Essenes for their own initiation purposes. It is suspected that they may have also found gold, silver and other treasures buried by the Jewish group as the Romans swept forward.

“The Templars were a French- speaking order with most of their connections in that country and in the seventeenth century, Philip IV initiated a plan in conjunction with the Pope to destroy the Templars and seize their wealth. This culminated in the arrest of some fifteen thousand Templars who were tortured and executed and the destruction of their order. The majority of Templars who escaped this persecution migrated to Scotland, England and America. The Templars went underground, emerging as Freemasons, the original guild of stone masons, with many of their secret rituals intact. Today there are approximately five million members world wide.

“As members of the British aristocracy and royalty became Freemasons, the order became powerful and influential again and was a major moving force behind the American Revolution and the founding of the United States of America. Of the fifty-six signatories of the Declaration of Independence, only nine can definitely be identified as Freemasons, while ten others may possibly have been. Of the general officers in the Continental Army, there were so far as documentation can establish, thirty-three Freemasons out of seventy-four.

“The American Dollar which has the image of a pyramid with an eye set within it, represents God ( Amen-Re) having an ever present eye, casting his gaze over his people to judge every action they make in life, so that they will receive their just desserts in death and the symbol for the dollar is an S with a double vertical strike through, although this has now been replaced with a single vertical strike. The two vertical lines symbolized the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt which were united as a single kingdom around 5,200 years ago. This unification was believed to be central to the well being of the state.

“By their devotion to Masonic principles of justice, truth and equality for their new country, they were attempting to build a land driven by a rediscovered Ma`at. This makes America the modern heir to the greatness of ancient Egypt.”

Whether true or not, this idea is interesting, but leaves out an important step: how did the Essenes/Templars get connected to the stonemasons who were the origin of the Freemasons?  Elsewhere on the Web I have found loads of info on ‘pyramid power’—and the masons who apparently oversaw the building of the pyramids. Some people believe the knowledge behind this power was from aliens; others believe that it was from the lost continent of Atlantis, whose survivors brought with them their higher knowledge (possibly from outer space) at the sinking of that continent. Others posit a secret culture that studied the stars, and thereby discovered everything from astrology and astronomy to such events as eclipses, the progression of the stars, and so on,  using the mathematics of their science to align the pyramids to certain stars such as Sirius, the Dog Star (possibly because the aliens came from there). Some even say that the Sphinx is not shaped like a lion, but like a dog, because of ancient Egyptian interest in this star. 

This Sirius cult, it is believed, led to the building of the pyramids and the collecting of a great deal of building lore, which was passed on to a kind of masonic brotherhood until it was used, eventually, to build  mosques of the Arabs and, influenced by their shapes, the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. What still isn’t explained, however, is how the rules of building came to be connected to a code of ethics that could  eventually become that of the Essenes and Templars. 

I’m not saying that I believe any of this, of course, simply that I find it interesting.