Would you like to know the truth about Rosslyn Chapel? Since the publication of the novel "The Da Vinci Code," huge numbers of non-Masons have been asking questions and theorizing about Freemasonry and its alleged connections with the Knights Templar and Rosslyn Chapel. This book is a product of the research undertaken to answer those questions. The results will surprise a lot of people.

The author asks:

Have the public been the victims of a massive hoax?

Is it true that Rosslyn Chapel has been changed to make it Masonic?

Are the Freemasons themselves the victims of an enormous conspiracy?

Has the meaning of the Kirkwall Scroll been hijacked for a particular purpose?

Who benefits from trying to cover it all up?

Robert L. D. Cooper is the Curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and Library in Edinburgh and is in a privileged position to know, from the inside, the truth about all the various theories regarding Rosslyn Chapel, Freemasonry, the Knights Templar and the Sinclair family. For the first time, a Freemason, pre-eminent in the field, speaks out. At last, Freemasons themselves are being asked about Freemasonry and this book provides the answers.

Published by: Lewis Masonic, United Kingdom
Paperback, 416 pages with color illustrations and many "in text" line drawings
$15.95
Discount prices available for orders of 10 and higher

My Dear Masonic Brethren: I am sorry to rouse you, but our long collective fantasy is over. Like a sharp rap of the Master's gavel, Robert L. D. Cooper's The Rosslyn Hoax? wakes the Lodge from its dreams. Within 315 dense pages and nine chapters, The Rosslyn Hoax? examines, dissects and disposes every theory, conjecture and hearsay heaped around the Medieval Knights Templar, Rosslyn Chapel and Freemasonry in the last 200 years. Researching as only a Scots historian can, writing as only a Scotsman can, and defending the craft as only a Scots Freemason can, Cooper skillfully combines cold facts with warm humor to create a new reality that is as enjoyable as the fantasies he dispels.

The Rosslyn Hoax? begins with an explanation of myth and its development. Cooper is careful to delineate between that which is believed and that which is documented. He is not interested in destroying legends or myths per say, rather he assures the reader that he is a "card caring" historian and is only concerned with what other self-proclaimed historians have written. He begins this process with a review of common mistakes, fallacies in logic and pit falls of poor scholarship and how they generate myths and legends. His most important point is that Scottish Freemasonry is substantially different from English, Irish or any other form of Masonry. It is through this difference alone that most theories about Rosslyn Chapel collapse.

With his framework established, Cooper recounts the known history of the medieval Knights Templar, Rosslyn Chapel and Scottish Freemasonry. He then examines the development of Templar and Rosslyn myths and when they intersect with Freemasonry. For example, James Anderson's 1723 Constitutions of the Free-masons contends the Craft to be far older than the crusades (was not King Solomon the first Grand Master?) and therefore it was Freemasons who created the Knights Templar. Cooper pinpoints the time and books when this theory was reversed in the 1790s and the reaction Scots Freemasons had to the "revelation" they descended from the Knights Templar. In 1800, the Grand Lodge of Scotland banned the Knights Templar orders and all other "higher degrees" in its Lodges. It determined that any specifically Christian degree was counter to Freemasonry's universality and the conferral of degrees, beyond the three ancient craft were a "foreign invasion."

Cooper focuses the remainder of the book on Rosslyn Chapel and its builder, the St. Clair family. Begun in the 1440s, Rosslyn Chapel has long been used as the link between the destruction of the Knights Templar in 1307 and the first Scots Masonic Lodges in the 1600s. Using primary source documents, records and the Scottish archives and quoting from the 1835 official Genealogie of the Saintclaires of Rosslyn, he allows the family to tell their own story of why they built the chapel:

"Therefore, to the end he [William St. Clair, Earl of Orkney, (c.1404 - c.1484)] might not seem altogether unthankful to God for the benefices he receaved from him. It came to his mind to build a house for God's service, of a most curious worke . . ."

Although the chapel is indeed curious, how odd is it that a devout Christian would build a family chapel?

Chapters 5 and 6, some 68 pages, closely examine every aspect of the chapel: its carvings, decorations and the many myths and anecdotes surrounding it. He begins with the bold statement: "There is no Masonic symbolism within Rosslyn Chapel!" He then compares the assumed relationship to the carvings with facts. Most pointedly are the stark differences of the legend of the Apprentice pillar and the Masonic Hiramic legend. In the Rosslyn story, the master kills an apprentice and in Freemasonry three fellowcrafts kill the master. Other curious carvings, such as those supposed to be subtropical aloe vera plants, are also considered. After reading one paragraph, I have to agree it is highly likely they are simple floral decorations. Conjecture, on the other hand, would have you believe 50 years before Columbus, someone sailed all the way to the North American subtropics and came back with a plant that is unfit for the Scottish climate. And someone else chose to carve the dead plant in a window frame. Other so-called Masonic and Templar symbolism are surprisingly obvious to those familiar with the Bible and Jewish and Christian symbols.

Moving from the Chapel Cooper next examines the famous Kirkwall Scroll. Popular writers say it is a 12th century Templar map, but like Rosslyn Chapel, it is amazing how much sense this curious item makes when compared to the Books of Genesis and Exodus. With a few Bible passages, Masonic facts and study of Masonic symbols, suddenly the scroll does not reveal the Holy Grail's location, but is only an important late 17th century Masonic tracing board.

In the last chapter, "Other Evidence," Cooper quickly dispatches such foolish ideas of a Templar fleet, templar churches, grave slabs and the Knights Templar and Robert the Bruce. My favorite is the historical re-write that a flying column of Knights Templar won the Battle of Bannockburn. If this is true, Cooper asks, why didn't the Templars save Bruce from previous defeats, why did the Grand Master of the Knights Templar in Britain fight with the English and was killed at an earlier battle, and lastly, why didn't the English report they were defeated by fearsome Templars rather than young men and peasants guarding the baggage train? Finally, The Rosslyn Hoax? contains what all scholarly books must have, endnotes after each chapter, a 15 page bibliography, an astounding 11 appendices and a proper index.

Robert Cooper has done his very best to shake his brothers out of the fantasy state they have lived in for many years. Indeed Rosslyn Hoax? Is arguably the most important Masonic book written in the last 20 years-if not longer. Sadly, the Knights Templar and Rosslyn Chapel have distracted the brethren from the many serious issues that plague the Craft. With The Rosslyn Hoax? we must now accept the true, ancient and honorable history of the Craft. Freemasonry was indeed created by common men determined not to be warriors or priests, but wanting only to be free. The question still remains, do Freemasons still wish to be free or live in a fantasy?

Paperback, 416 pages with color illustrations and many "in text" line drawings

$15.95

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