The Second Messiah. Templars, The Turin Shroud and the Great Secret of Freemasonry Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas. Century. £16.99 (Hardback). 259pp.

How is it that a book disapproved of by most masonic scholars and clearly not adored by Great Queen Street has been and continues to be such a talking-point among masons? Many brethren either like this book or are at least fascinated and strangely moved by it. It has touched a chord in many people - something experts and professional scholars rarely achieve.
    I believe the main answer to the question lies in the reductionist definitions of the Craft currently offered for public consumption. It is said for example that Masonry is ‘a fraternal organisation with a charitable ethos’, or words to that effect. This reminds one of attempts in the 60s, 70s and 80s to make the riches of the Church palatable to a generation raised on tinned food and pop music. While nobody can deny the simpler pleasures of the Craft, many of us entered it out of a fascination for deeper meanings in life, as well as a suspicion that there was probably more to masonic history than met the eye. Unfortunately perhaps, this kind of yearning runs across the current of the main direction of masonic scholarship which has, from the later 19th century, attempted to demythologise the Craft and introduce scientific methodology into the treatment of masonic history. Respectability counts. In the scientific approach, such things as spiritual meaning and personal mythos belong squarely in the realm of the ‘subjective’. ‘Objective’ history cannot be asked to prove what people believe or would like to believe. In this process, some of the dearly held myths of old Masonry, such as the belief in an Ancient Egyptian origin of the Craft, have been consigned to the dust-bin because arguments put in their favour could not satisfy a positive scientific analysis. If the evidence is questionable, or based on subjective experience, then it is deemed unwise to soil the good name of ‘history’ with it. Masonry has thus become drained of much of its mythic meaning and spiritual inheritance; it has become rationalised. While it may be doubted whether the Craft has gained in respectability, it is true to say that in the process, many masons feel something has been lost or obscured. It is hardly surprising then that some brethren feel that they have been rather ‘let down’ by the masonic hierarchy. It can hardly be stated too plainly that the earliest known accounts of Craft ‘history’ contain what we would now call (or even dismiss as) myths. But myths are central to masonic psychology. The myth centres its activity on the imagination and the unconscious psyche. Myths give us access to truths about ourselves. Myths are not simply ‘bad history’ as 19th century scholarship insisted time and time again.
    The authors of this book tap into this yearning in a peculiar way. In fact they would like to show that behind the mythic stories of masonic origins, there lies objective history, suppressed for one reason or another, but particularly, they feel, to bolster up the reputation of the Grand Lodge founded in London in 1717. Their debate focuses on what they have learned of pre-1717 Masonry. The problem with this approach is that it risks being materialistic, turning symbols and myth into would-be solid substance. But many modern people like this approach. Is the Holy Grail an ‘experience’ or an ‘object’? Well, of course, people raised in a materialist culture would prefer that their experiences were based on demonstrable facts. If Jesus was resurrected, they want to see the evidence. We’re all ‘doubting Thomases’. Show us the wounds, let us see the Shroud, let us indulge our senses - then we will believe.
    Knight & Lomas’s second book casts its net very widely indeed : the origins of Christianity, the Knights Templar (who can fully explain the extraordinary fascination in the 1990s for this subject?), pre-1717 Freemasonry - and, to cap it all, the Shroud of Turin. It’s like a condensation of the whole ‘mind, body, spirit’ shelf at John Menzies. ‘Connect. Only connect’. Knight & Lomas connect everything up, at least to their own satisfaction. Their minds desire synthesis : this is the natural thrust of the imaginative consciousness, and in their advancement of it, they carry us with them. I put the book down after a two-sitting reading with the thought : ‘It might just be true’. The next day, the old critical faculties got to work on the material, and wizened doubt crossed my brow. I’ve done a fair amount of work on these subjects and no-one can know everything, but I wonder about the person who meets this material for the first time. Will the book stimulate interest or deflect it? I think, in the main, it will stimulate it. But in case you don’t know the story, I’ll give an account of it, as I remember it. Jesus was associated with a line of Jewish priests who had inherited some kind of esoteric knowledge from Egypt. After the crucifixion, his brother James continued the ‘tradition’. These men were probably ‘Essenes’ whose activities were overwhelmed by the destruction of the Herodian Temple in AD70. They emerged from the ruins after burying their scrolls and other items in the Temple Mount, then headed west, eventually intermarrying with significant families in France. Somebody told the authors that these became ‘Rex Deus’ families who continue to this day. These special people passed on the ‘tradition’ until the First Crusade, 1000 years later, gave them the opportunity to head back to Palestine, found the Knights Templar and dig up the family inheritance, thence removed to Kilwinning (Lodge No 0) and ultimately, Rosslyn Chapel, constructed with the ruins of Herod’s Temple in mind. The leaders of the Templars were Holy Priests, guardians of a pristine ancient pre-Christian secret. Their last GM, Jacques de Molay, died a martyr’s death after what the authors believe was a sort of crucifixion by the Inquisition. The evidence for this is on the Turin Shroud which we now know was made in the 14th century. De Molay became, the authors believe, a kind of messiah figure to people distressed by the Black Death and other calamities. This interest in de Molay survives, they reckon, in hints to be found in the rituals of the Ancient and Accepted Rite. They believe there was more of the same but the Duke of Sussex in England and Albert Pike in America removed the significant material. The fact that A&A Rites derive from the mid-18th century doesn’t prove that the origins of the rite were not older - far older. Besides, it all connects if you remove prejudice from your mind and believe in the Truth. Basically, Freemasonry is Templarism restated. The Papacy condemned the Templars; the Papacy condemns Freemasonry. Conclusion : brethren are not getting their full whack of Freemasonry; we’re being short-changed, but even United Grand Lodge no longer knows what it is we’re missing, only that we shouldn’t talk about it even if there was something else, which there isn’t anyway. Honestly.
    Churlish perhaps to have a go at all this but in this reviewer’s opinion, the story doesn’t add up, as it is told. The authors tend to treat secondary or tertiary historical commentary as ‘gifts’ or missing links. A phone-call acquires similar status to a text; a meeting by chance becomes, like the contents of some extreme scholarship, a ‘discovery’. A suspect book (from the scholar’s point of view) is a useful clue. In fact, ‘evidence’ becomes whatever best suits the case. A rough carving on the exterior of Rosslyn chapel reminds the authors of the Entered Apprentice Degree - therefore, that’s what it must be; a rope round someone’s neck is obviously a cable-tow, a knight-like figure is a Templar. Stones that remind some people of the Wailing Wall must be imitations of the third Temple. But above all, why wait 1000 years to go and dig up some goods on the Temple Mount? They had ships and shovels before.
    In fact, the authors are following a similar mythic track to that of our earliest ‘speculative’ forebears, such as Stukeley : that there existed an antediluvian body of spiritual and natural knowledge which was preserved in esoteric circles, from Egypt to Israel, and which can be located in occult mystery traditions. The archetypal resonances of such ideas give the book its compelling force. What is more archetypal than the idea of a hidden vault, associated with chivalry in which ancient wisdom has been secreted? Naturally, a mason will think of the Royal Arch; a Rosicrucian of Christian Rosenkreuz, ‘Knight of the Golden Stone’. But we have the secret texts, or certainly enough to establish a spiritual revolution. The philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus was thought to have been preserved on pillars to survive a Deluge. You can order them from a bookseller. They’re wonderful. Likewise one can read Jean Doresse on the Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, or better, the complete Nag Hammadi Library in English, edited by James M Robinson. If this isn’t enough for the budding seeker after spiritual wisdom, then I must suspect that it is not an entirely spiritual wisdom that is being sought, but a contract for another book.
    Tobias Churton