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Of Mystic Knights and Visionary Brothers
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16909 |
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BOOK WORLD
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4 / 1990 |
3,139 Words |
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Robert Royal
Robert Royal is a vice president at the Center for Ethics and
Public Policy. |
THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
Arcade Publishing, 1989
344 pp., $22.95
"I work for a publishing company. We deal with both lunatics and nonlunatics. After a while an editor picks out the lunatics right away. If somebody brings up the Templars, he's always a lunatic."
--- Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
Even in our age of furious intertextuality, it may seem odd to begin a review of a new book on the Templars and the Freemasons with an extract from a fictional work. But beside the light the above epigraph sheds on the kinds of writers who interest themselves in the subject, the use of already existing colorful stories for practical purposes is a hallowed tradition for both the Templars and Freemasons. The Templars managed to appropriate much of the force of the Grail legend, and the Freemasons constructed an imaginative past for themselves out of Templar and biblical materials. The historian who looks at these two orders today, therefore, must resist a double temptation toward mysticism, intrigue, and speculation.
These temptations are not merely of antiquarian interest. Though the authors of The Temple and the Lodge are at pains to show that Masonic secrecy has created more suspicion than Masonic principles warrant, mysterious incidents continue to dog that secretive society. Just a few years ago when the Vatican found itself embarrassed by some undesirable
... (1989 of 18942 Characters)
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