The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar (28 page)

Oak Island, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.

Inscription found in Westford, MA. The chalk-filled grooves reveal Gunn Clan heraldry. (Photo by Terry Sora)

Replica of an inscribed stone found at ninety feet that allegedly tells of a treasure buried forty feet below. The original stone, once a part of John Smith’s fireplace, has disappeared. (Photo by Terry Sora)

David’s energies were spent in planning a great temple as befitting the center of the Hebrew world, but it would be left to Solomon to carry out the plan. A Jebusite farmer owned the land surrounding the sacred site, which was a rock called Moriah. With the god Salem already deposed by the Canaanite god El, a more supreme being, the Hebrew people now accepted El as their own. El had once been a “bull god” that the sea peoples had adopted from contacts across the Mediterranean. At this point El simply became the Father God.
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The sacred premises of Salem—Moriah—was sold by the farmer to the Jews and it, too, underwent a name change. It became Zion.

Modern Freemasons make the claim that it was Solomon who was instrumental in starting the traditions of their craft.
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The temple was not the first major work of the ancients, and highly developed technicians were needed to create such large buildings. These technicians were usually found in specialized guilds. The Hebrew herding peoples had no tradition of constructing much more than tents; they had always been a nomadic people. They had to consult with those who had greater ability and experience in architecture. Solomon consulted the Canaanite king Hiram. In Masonic lore, much of which was invented in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when Masonry took a decidedly occult turn, Hiram is regarded as the master builder. In reality, Hiram had master technicians at his command.

Hiram instructed Solomon to send thirty thousand workers to learn from Phoenician craftsmen. Hiram took on the role of developer as well and funded the work that soon employed one hundred eighty thousand laborers. In turn, Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns. The temple grew to become a massive structure whose facade opened to face the rising sun in the east. This vestibule received the early light, just as structures from Ireland to Asia were so aligned to receive the first rays of the sun. History and religion conceal the importance of such structures largely because their functions are not understood completely.
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From Sumerian times onward, the learned men who were architects believed that the heavens could and should be replicated on Earth in the form of such monumental structures. From Sumeria to Stonehenge, monuments and complete cities were built and organized with such a master plan in mind, representing their highest amalgamation of religion and science. Later “modern” religion came to feel threatened by this science, which was once considered a function of another religion or, worse, “magic.” The desire of the master builders, the architects, to replicate heaven on Earth is manifest in the Masonic statement “As above, so below.”
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This undercurrent of science that was forced to remain secret to avoid the wrath of organized religion existed throughout the medieval age.

The Christian cathedral at Chartres is one of the most important monuments to pagan science and to God. It actually measures the date of the summer solstice by strategically placed flagstones that receive the sunlight on that date. One mystery of Chartres is that it was not dedicated to the Virgin Mary but to Mary Magdalene.
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Both had been given the ambiguous title “Notre Dame,” meaning “Our Lady.” But they had different meanings to their followers.

When the Christian religion was imposed on the Celtic people, the Church had to overcome the goddess worship that prevailed from India to Ireland. In place of the goddess, they tried to substitute the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of Jesus, but she was not the same as the pagan goddess. The pagan goddess had three aspects, that of maiden (virginity), mother (fertility), and crone (death). She was at once her own trinity, who brought both life and death.
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This goddess was remembered as Isis, among other names, and her symbol was the dove, as was the symbol of Mary Magdalene, the Cathari, and Saint John the Baptist. The “underground stream,” the secret celestial knowledge, was also preserved from ancient religion. Part of this secret knowledge was an understanding of the universe. The Masonic adage “As above, so below” exemplifies the job of the mason to create on Earth a representation of heaven.

This body of knowledge of the celestial world helped create a structure where the sun could penetrate the darkest recesses on a sacred day of the year. Such knowledge was used in structures from prehistoric New Grange and Stonehenge to Jerusalem and Chartres. The original
master builder, Hiram in Masonic lore, built the Temple of Solomon according to this celestial outline. On the north, west, and south, auxiliary temples were built around an area called the Ulam. Entering through the facade, one would first reach the nave, sixty feet in length. The main hall was called the Hekal. At the western extreme was the Debir. The Debir was the Holy of the Holies, a perfect thirty-foot cube. Only the privileged could enter, and the way was barred with chains of gold. The Ark of the Covenant holding the Ten Commandments was housed there.
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Solomon did not leave anything to chance. In his temple concessions were made to pagan gods and goddesses just in case his own god let him down. He believed in the Supreme God, El (or Jehovah), but at the same time there were other gods and goddesses to appease. The Tyrian sun god Melek (Moloch of the Bible), the goddess of Sidon named Astarte, and the moon goddess Sin (who became male and the source of the word “Sinai”) were all included. Solomon built another temple to Chamos, the idol of Moab, and two temples to the great mother goddesses.
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The temple itself was formed using the design of Canaanite temples. Two massive columns, thirty-four and a half feet high and eighteen feet in diameter, were built at the entrance. Some have said that these columns represent the sun and the moon. Others say they stand for the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. Solomon named the columns Boaz and Jachin.
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In the initiation ceremony of Freemasons, the new inductee is taught that these columns were hollow. The insides were left hollow to protect secret documents from fire and flood. The columns of the altar at Rennes-le-Chateau were also built to hold secret documents, which may have been held there against time and the ravages of invaders until Saunière undertook the renovation of the church.

The palace of Solomon was an engineering feat as well. Underground hydraulic works were employed because David’s conquest of the city taught him just what a high price could be paid for making well water accessible. The spring of Gihon was camouflaged, and the cistern was invented to increase the outside water supply and the fertility of the area.

Farming and trade brought great prosperity to Jerusalem. The riches of the city are described in 3 Kings 10: 18–21. It is said there that
nothing in the temple is not covered in gold. Solomon was receiving tribute from all over the world. “Two hundred shields of gold, six hundred sixty six talents of gold” were brought to him every year. His throne of ivory was covered in gold, as were other furniture and utensils. The Bible reports that the Queen of Sheba (in Ethiopia) offered both herself and the treasures of her kingdom to him. Solomon’s fleets traded as far east as India, where they met with junks from China, and as far west as Spain, where the mines of Tarshish yielded silver.
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While Jerusalem may have been the wealthiest city in the world during Solomon’s time, constant warfare later destroyed the original temple. What we know about the temple today comes from its description as recorded in the Bible. None of the original architecture remains standing.

The massive columns of the temple are described in the Bible but were lost to history. Were they truly hollow? We have no other source to confirm these claims. If they were hollow, did they contain the genealogies of the Hebrew kingship line? While we have more recent evidence in the facts that the columns of the Visigothic altar at Rennes-le-Chateau were used as a hiding place, this finding alone does not verify the lore of the Masons.

Evidence available from sources other than Masonic lore, however, tell of the connecting thread that stretches from Jerusalem to the south of France. It can be verified by the genealogies hidden in the hollow columns of the church at Rennes-le-Chateau, and it is corroborated in legends of the Languedoc region in France. The theme gains support, in part, in the body of Grail literature that became popular during medieval times. The message that seems to flow just under the surface of the Grail literature is that a king was wounded but survived or that a king left us only to return again. Was the king the Messiah the world had waited for, only to see his early death?

Jesus and the Holy Grail

The Holy Grail itself may be a literary device for the vessel that carried the blood, or the bloodline, of Jesus. One Grail romance depicts Joseph of Arimathea as the man who brought the Grail to safety.
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Was Mary Magdalene the vessel herself, bearing the child of the executed Messiah? The precise nature of the Holy Grail has been a favorite topic of researchers into Arthurian romances. Most accept the common idea that it was a cup. Some point to much older days, when the cauldron was considered magic. Celtic and Nordic lore is full of such examples. Others believe that the Grail was specifically the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, when he instructed the apostles in the sacrifice that he was making.
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The cup contained his blood. Could the Grail be an allegory for the sacred bloodline of Jesus? The central thesis of
Holy Blood, Holy Grail
is that the “Sangreal” is the Blood Royal of the family of Jesus. The Davidic kingship extended through the generations to Jesus and on through his wife, Mary Magdalene, to the descendants exiled in Roman Gaul. The family of Jesus was assimilated into Visigothic culture and in turn into the Merovingian dynasty, whose kings went out of their way to marry Visigothic princesses to continue their own line and merge their family with the family of the Davidic line.

In posting this thesis, the authors go onto say that the Jewishness of the Davidic line was concealed by Visigoths and Merovingians, and later in the dynasty of Charlemagne, because of Christian domination and persecution. This secret group, however, was always aware of its mission and is aware of it even today. To examine the evidence for this possibility, we must return to ancient France, the Gaul conquered by Julius Caesar. Most of the early history of France is centered at Reims. Caesar had made this city his local capital after conquering Celtic Gaul and the Remi tribe in 57
B.C.
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Reims was still important when Clovis was baptized in
A.D.
496, and this bolstered the city’s legitimacy as a sacred place where kings would be coronated. Reims also became the overland hub of eight major trading routes.