Unlocking the Masonic Code: The Secrets of the Solomon Key

Particularly zealous Freemasons can collect further honours by taking the additional degrees of the York Rite and Scottish Rite—the latter discipline allows them to pursue no fewer than thirty-two levels of Masonic education and enlightenment. However, these ‘appendant’ degrees are optional, and theoretically even a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason is in no way superior to a common-or-garden Master Mason.

The names of the three main degrees awarded to Freemasons, and the phraseology used within the ceremonies, take their cue from the language used by the working stonemasons of the Middle Ages. These hugely gifted craftsmen made use of geometry and supreme architectural skills to build the soaring Gothic cathedrals whose very existence supposedly proved the glory of God. Their structures were viewed as a divine perfection on Earth.

As we shall see later in this book, Freemason philosophy likens the soul of every Mason to such an edifice. It is the task of the Freemason to improve himself morally and spiritually, through rite, ritual and a fundamental understanding of the world around him, until he aspires to a state of human perfection. Yet this perfection is viewed as the work of a Supreme Being—which is why atheists are not allowed to become Masons.

Wild-eyed anti-Masonic jihadists (and Dan Brown) may speculate about Freemasonry as a demonic, sinister cabal, but most modern objections to the movement are more workaday and prosaic. Outsiders have long considered the Freemasons to be an old boys’ club whose members will invariably do each other favours outside of the lodge. This view has been supported by various scandals over the years, including a damaging late 1970s court case in which senior London High Court judges, police chiefs and pornographers were implicated. It may not be the Knights Templar, but such corruption does the fraternity’s public relations image few favours.

Masonry’s riposte to this charge is that such nepotism is forbidden by statute. Freemasons are barred under the movement’s laws, or ‘Charges’, from using their membership to promote their own interests, or from extending cronyism to fellow lodge members. Theoretically, such lapses are punishable by expulsion from the fraternity, although it is reasonable to suspect that the handful of cases that have been discovered over the years represent the tip of the iceberg.

Nor are Freemasons particularly secretive nowadays. Beyond the signs, grips and precise ceremonies, the organization is largely an open book. Anybody wishing to approach their local Grand Lodge to discuss becoming a Mason will find their number in the telephone directory. In America, where they have always done things rather differently, lodges have even run billboard campaigns to attempt to boost their membership.

So with global Freemasonry in decline and its social significance and power arguably at it lowest point in centuries, what makes Dan Brown think the Craft is a fitting setting for the latest convoluted and faintly preposterous adventures of Robert Langdon? To answer that question, let’s examine the two parallel histories of Freemasonry—the real one, and the fanciful version that has over the years fuelled the imaginative fantasies of so many conspiracy theorists and exploitative opportunists.

- 1 - THE REAL HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY (#ulink_ae12ea06-2c26-558b-8131-fddecfbbb03d)

The casual observer may be perplexed that Dan Brown finds the need to play historical hopscotch and concoct an alternative provenance for the Freemasons, as the colourful and vibrant history of the much-maligned movement is fascinating in its own right. Over the years the Masons have found themselves the enemies of kings, popes, dictators and democrats alike—there are few periods in history when the organization has not aroused fear and suspicion. Having survived the Inquisition and Nazi persecution, it’s safe to say that Freemasonry is unlikely to regard an assault by a pulp fiction novelist, albeit a highly successful one, as its darkest hour.

The practical roots of Freemasonry lie in the stonemasons’ guilds formed by working masons from the twelfth century on. However, its philosophical base is grounded far deeper—in the construction of King Solomon’s Temple on the sacred land of Mount Moriah, Jerusalem, in the tenth century BC by King David of Israel.

In Masonic lore, numerous rituals and ceremonies are based on King Solomon’s Temple, and specifically on a particularly grisly murder that is said to have been committed there. It is worth examining the history and the fanciful fables that are attached to this biblical-era temple, as they have echoes in almost every branch and aspect of Freemasonry as it exists today.

The Building of King Solomon’s Temple

Mount Moriah is one of the most controversial religious flashpoints on the face of the Earth. Three millennia on from King David’s day, the locale—now known as Temple Mount—is vigorously claimed by both Judaism and Islam, and remains one of the largest stumbling blocks to a negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestine. When then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the site, in September 2000, the hostile Arab response to his visit led to the uprising that became known as the al-Aqsa Intifada.

The site is cherished because the holy books of both faiths describe miraculous events happening there. The Bible identifies Mount Moriah as the place where God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. The Koran, for its part, claims that Mohammed climbed a golden ladder of light from this sacred rock to heaven, where Allah instructed him in the forms of worship and devotion to be followed by all Muslims.

Biblical legend has it that David conquered the people of Jebus in 1000 BC and established Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city. The King intended to build a vast temple on Mount Moriah, but was forbidden to do so by God because of the copious bloody wars he had waged while on Israel’s throne. David had also sent a loyal courtier, Uriah, to certain death in battle so that he could seduce his wife, Bathsheba. In 981 BC, she bore him a son—Solomon.

David remained fixated on building a temple on the mount, and before his death he collected vast resources to allow Solomon to perform the task—the Bible claims it to have been 100,000 talents (approx 3,000 tons) of gold and one million talents (300,000 tons) of silver. After his father’s demise, Solomon commenced the construction process. As 1 Kings 5:5 has it:

Behold, I purpose to build a house unto the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord spake unto David my father, saying, Thy son, whom I will set upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build a house unto my name.

Feeling Israel did not have enough architects and skilled workers to take on the building of the temple, Solomon asked for help from Hiram I, the Phoenician King of Tyre. Hiram obliged, sending leading members of the ancient collective of builders known as the Dionysian Artificers of Tyre (see page 79) as well as thousands of labourers and thousands of tons of Lebanese timber. He also dispatched a man who was to become central to the narrative of the Freemasons—Hiram Abiff, Tyre’s most gifted architect and mathematician.

Described in I Kings 7:14 as ‘a widow’s son…a worker in brass…filled with wisdom and understanding’, Hiram Abiff oversaw the entire temple project, alongside King Solomon himself and Hiram, King of Tyre. Work on the temple began in the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign, 956 BC, and lasted for seven years. The largely Phoenician workforce built the edifice in the prevailing Phoenician or Egyptian style, which meant that a small outer vestibule, flanked by two ornate bronze pillars named Jachin and Boaz, led into a larger middle chamber. This transition room was known as Hekal, or Holy Place.

The centrepiece of the temple was the Sanctum Sanctorum, or Holiest of Holies, a windowless chamber that it is said was lined throughout with gold and Lebanese cedar. This central room was intended to house the Ark of the Covenant—the stone tablets passed by God to Moses on the Mount—a jar of manna and the Rod of Aaron—the staff carried by Moses’ brother, which supposedly grew buds and bore fruit when Moses carried it into the Tabernacle (see Numbers 17:8). Only rabbis and holy men could enter these inner chambers of Solomon’s Temple—non-ordained Jews worshipped outside the building.

It is believed that King Solomon’s Temple was finished around 949-948 BC. Despite its striking design and glitteringly ornate interior, it was actually fairly small: 90 foot long by 30 foot wide and 45 foot tall. However, as this feat of ancient engineering was nearing completion, Masons believe that the genius architect overseeing the process, Hiram Abiff, was brutally slain.

The Hiramic Legend: The Murder of Hiram Abiff

It is—to say the least—a moot point whether a gifted early stonemason named Hiram Abiff was really killed at King Solomon’s Temple. The Christian scriptures that detail the building of the temple make no reference to this occurrence, and nor do Islamic texts covering this period. Despite this, the murder has become a centrepiece of Masonic faith, education and ritual.

Freemason literature claims that Hiram Abiff, as well as being the chief designer and architect of the temple, supervised the project’s prodigious workforce: beneath him, claims the Book of Kings, were 3,300 foremen and 150,000 masons and labourers. Solomon and the two Hirams are said to have divided these workers into three ranks, dependent on ability.

These levels were Entered Apprentice, Fellow of the Craft and Master Mason. The rates of pay increased as a worker improved his skills and was promoted, with a Master Mason being the most prestigious and best remunerated. Workers queuing to be paid by King Solomon’s clerks would identify their rank by giving the wages clerk the secret password and sign that identified each level of employment.

One of Hiram Abiff’s many duties was deciding which employees were ready to take on more onerous duties and be promoted to Fellow of the Craft or Master Mason. The chief architect set exacting standards and was notoriously hard to impress, and fifteen of his workers hatched a plot to confront Hiram Abiff and issue him with an ultimatum: either he promote them to the higher rank or they would beat, or even kill him.

Masonic legend has it that twelve of the conspirators got cold feet and dropped out. However, three of them—with the hugely unlikely, nursery rhyme-friendly names of Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum—lay in wait at the three separate entrances of the Sanctum Sanctorum, and confronted Hiram Abiff as he left his customary midday private prayers.

Hiram Abiff emerged from the east door and was met by Jubela, who put his demand to be elevated to Master Mason. When Hiram Abiff refused, an irate Jubela slashed open his boss’s throat with one of the tools of the Masonic trade—a 24-inch measuring gauge. Mortally wounded, Hiram Abiff staggered to the south door, where Jubelo attacked him with an architect’s square. With the last strength in his body, he crawled to the west entrance, where Jubelum killed him with a blow to the head with a maul, or gavel.

Panicking, the murderers hid the chief architect’s body in a quarry near to the Temple, returning hours later to bury him in a shallow grave—it was said to be six feet long, six feet wide and six feet deep—with a sprig of acacia on top. Having covered their tracks, they then fled Jerusalem and took refuge in a small Mediterranean town named Joppa.

The twelve conspirators who had backed out of the plan to confront Hiram Abiff went to see King Solomon the next day and confessed their conspiracy: in Masonic accounts of this incident, they wore white aprons as a sign that their own hands were free of blood. Solomon dispatched men in pursuit of Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum, who were soon apprehended in Joppa.

The punishment of the killers is one of the most lurid flights of fancy in Masonic literature. It is claimed that when they were captured, all three men were crying out in horror at the crime they had committed: Jubela confessed an urge to have his throat cut and his tongue ‘torn out by the root and buried in the sands of the sea at low water, a cable length from the shore’. Sharing his woe, Jubelo demanded that his heart be ‘torn from under my naked left breast, and given to the vultures of the air as a prey’.

Having struck the fatal blow, Jubelum was the most contrite: his express wish was to have ‘my body severed in two, one part carried to the south, and the other to the north, my bowels burnt to ashes and scattered before the four winds of the earth’. The three murderers had their gruesome wishes granted: exercising his fabled wisdom, King Solomon decreed that each of them should meet their sorry end exactly as they had predicted.

The Widow’s Son

Masonic lore holds that Hiram Abiff’s last words before he died were ‘Is there no help for the widow’s son?’. This phrase holds an extraordinary resonance in Freemasonry, and is used by Masons in distress to seek help from fellow members. Dan Brown indicated that The Solomon Key would concern itself with Masonry by hiding the phrase in bold text on the front cover flap of The Da Vinci Code, then alerting readers to its existence via his website.

After Hiram Abiff’s death, King Solomon and Hiram of Tyre oversaw the completion of the project, but fate was not kind to their creation. After it had stood for four centuries on Mount Moriah, the Temple was demolished by King Nebuchadnezzar when he seized Israel for the Babylonians. The Babylonian forces sacked Jerusalem and burned the Temple and the entire city to the ground. The Temple treasures were looted—except for the Ark of the Covenant, which had mysteriously vanished. (The quest for elements of this ‘Holy Grail’, of course, formed the fulcrum of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.)

After half a century of exile in Babylon, the Jews returned to Israel and rebuilt King Solomon’s Temple under Zerubbabel in 520 BC. This structure fared little better than the original, being torn down by the Romans in AD 70 when the Jews were again banished from Israel.

Today, two of the holiest of Muslim edifices, the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome on the Rock, dominate Mount Moriah. The remains of the foundations of King Solomon’s Temple are known as the Wailing Wall, and thousands of Jews make pilgrimages there every year. Yet Solomon’s Temple lives on, bizarrely, in the arcane rituals of a secretive fraternity that was to spring up in Great Britain more than two millennia after Hiram Abiff was purportedly killed—the Freemasons.

Medieval Masons

Two thousand years after King David supposedly asked God for permission to build a temple in Jerusalem, spectacular houses of worship were springing up right across western Europe. The Roman Catholic Church was at the peak of its dominance and empire-building, and a succession of popes ordered the building of a series of magnificent cathedrals to inspire awe and devotion in all who set eyes upon them—and, as a consequence, to cement the Church’s own seemingly impregnable control over society.

The end of the eleventh century thus marked the arrival of Gothic architecture, the style whose majesty and opulence was intended to reflect the splendour and glory of an omnipotent God. This ornate school of architecture was first glimpsed in England and northern France, but by the middle of the twelfth century had spread through Germany and the Low Countries and as far south as Italy and Spain.

The Gothic style emphasized huge, towering vertical stone edifices that held enormous painted glass windows with ribbed vaults and pointed arches—the classic look of the medieval cathedral. These houses of worship were frequently decorated with statues on the outside, while the elaborate windows re-enacted Biblical stories—visual aids that were highly useful given that the vast majority of the congregation in those days would have been completely illiterate.

The stunning architecture of these portentous structures mirrored exactly the theological messages spreading from Rome. God—and his representatives on earth, the Catholic Church—were all-powerful and almighty. The sky-scraping Gothic cathedrals were his power made concrete: the sole response demanded of the ordinary man was unquestioning supplication. The floor plan of these temples of worship invariably spelt out a cross.

It is perhaps unsurprising that these towering edifices seemed like living miracles to the uneducated serfs and labourers of medieval England. It was certainly difficult to comprehend how the slender columns that rose from the floor of the building could support the neck-craning ceilings and heavy ornamentation. The overwhelmed worshipper could be forgiven for assuming that only divine intervention held the whole structure in place.

The truth was a little more prosaic: Gothic cathedrals benefited from the design feature known as the flying buttress, a projecting structure that was built on the outside of the building to counter the gravitational thrust of the roof. These external supports removed the need for bulky stone pillars inside the church and facilitated the vast and resplendent stainedglass windows.

Just as these cloud-bursting wonders of medieval engineering seemed divinely inspired, so the men who designed and crafted them were regarded as miracle workers. The handful of Master Masons possessed of the skill in geometry, mathematics and physics to oversee such constructions were held in veneration by kings, church leaders and the hoi-polloi alike. Few posts outside of the royal court held greater social cachet, or were more widely coveted.

Initially Masons came under the theoretical control of the Masons’ Livery Company, a regulatory body established in 1220 that sought to establish maximum fees, working conditions and guarantees of Godly behaviour upon Master Masons. Understandably profoundly unimpressed at these attempts to fix a low ceiling on their large earning potential, Masons reacted

The origins of the term Freemason

There is no agreed absolute etymological derivation of the term Freemason but, rather, two competing theories. Medieval construction workers were divided into the labourers who cut the hard stones from the quarries (known as Rough Masons) and the skilled workmen who shaped the softer, more malleable rock known as free stone. These workers became known as Free Stone Masons, later shortened to Freemasons. A simpler explanation is that these Masons, freed from regular employment, were able to travel around the country looking for work, and thus were genuinely Free Masons.

by creating their own stonemasons’ trade guilds.

Part-educational college, part-fledgling trade union, these guilds were initially illegal and their members forced to convene in secret. Their dual goals were to train up future Master Masons in the skills of designing and erecting vast cathedrals, while at the same time zealously guarding the knowledge and tricks of the trade that enabled them to do so. To this end, members were given signs (passwords) and grips (handshakes) by which they could identify fellow Masons before sharing crucial information with them.