This massive structure, the House of the Temple, is seldom recommended to tourists as something to see, although it is only thirteen blocks due north from the White House, Waashington, DC. In order to completely understand the tradition associated with this building, it is worthwhile to briefly review the history of the Masonic movement, starting with its origins in Europe; and before doing this, it is also worth noting that on the other side of the White House, to the south, there is of course, an obelisk, the Washington Monument.

A. The Origins of Masonry in Europe

Looking back, one could consider the time of King Otto, and the establishment of, yes, the First Reich. After the First Reich had been in existence for awhile, the Knights Templar were formed. The Knights Templar always had a deep, sinister interest in the architecture, and especially the very detailed measurements of the Temple of Solomon, Mount Moriah, Jerusalem. So, to this day, the symbols of a right-angle ruler and a compass have been prominently used by Masonry. More recently, these symbols were also used in the flag of the now defunct German Democratic Republic, the former communist East Germany.

The Knights Templar were eventually largely disbanded, although a modern version was since established, usually within the York Rite. Still, according to the following older source:

From: An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences," etc. by Albert G. Mackey, M.D., Thirty-Third Degree, Volume I, published by the Masonic History Company, Chicago, New York, & London, 1925, Volume One, pp. 392-95:

"This Order, which at various times in the progress of its history received the names of Knights Hospitalers, Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of Rhodes, and lastly, Knights of Malta, was one of the most important of the religious and military orders of knighthood which sprang into existence during the Crusades which were instituted for the recovery of the Holy Land."

What happened was, the Knights fell into disfavor with a later Pope, and they eventually sought refuge on the island of Rhodes. At the time, Rhodes was under the Orthodox Church. However, a still later Pope had relented, and then the Knights seized Rhodes for the Church of Rome. Some time after this, they moved to Malta. Other Knights had also found refuge in other parts of Europe. In Portugal, they were simply renamed. In Scotland, Robert Bruce is said to have provided the Knights with refuge.

The Knights of Malta and the Knights Hospitalers are now known as the Order of Malta, not to be confused with the island republic of Malta. The Order of Malta was given extraterritorial buildings in Rome by Benito Mussolini, and they function almost as a miniature country, with their own flag, and sending ambassadors, to their embassies, in many leading countries. The Order of Malta is well established in England, Scotland, and France, not to mention Italy.

When Harry Truman was in the White House, he saw to it that the General Assembly, United Nations, New York provided observer status to the Order of Malta. Harry Truman was a 33rd Degree Mason, Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, the House of the Temple.

The Scottish Rite was sometimes thought of as a Continental Order because of its earlier origins in continental Europe, as opposed to Britain, the York Rite, and the Royal Arch. During the eighteenth century, there were Scots who fled from persecutions to France. Later, in 1801 a most important, formal Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite was established in Charleston, South Carolina. The details of this development are somewhat obscure, but somehow, a connection developed at that time between the Scottish Masons in France, and Charleston, South Carolina. Just like modern day Islam, these people were on the move. Of the eleven original council members of Charleston, nine were born outside the United States. The Southern Jurisdiction is now the more important, the Northern Jurisdiction covering far fewer states.

The Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, attracted prominent members and acquired prominence throughout Freemasonry all over the world. Later, the headquarters was moved to Washington, DC. The immense House of the Temple was built in 1910. The architect was John Russell Pope, who also designed the Jefferson Memorial. Thomas Jefferson was a Mason.

Today, some might sardonically note that Washington has many famous buildings, including the IMF Building, and the House of the Temple.

B. The Egyptian Connection - The Obelisks.

Visit: http://www.touregypt.net Click: More Recent Articles Using: Edit, Find (on This Page) Re (Ra)

" ... Re (Ra) never had a sanctuary with a cult statue. Instead, his image was the sun itself, so the sun temples were centered upon an Obelisk over which the sun rose, and before the Obelisk would be an altar for his worship. However, the most significant early solar temple was probably erected at Heliopolis ... "

In Greek, Heliopolis means The City of Light.

Meanwhile, we read in Jeremiah, Chapter 43, that the Lord arranged to have the Obelisks of Heliopolis destroyed. Still later in history, an Obelisk, probably from Heliopolis, was moved by Emperor Caligula to the Vatican Valley, now Saint Peter's Square, where it now stands, in front of St. Peter's Basilica, the Church of Rome. The Bible also warns us in several places against the sun god, Baal, and the moon goddess, Ashtoreth; but these pagan deities are notions which even haunt us in our daily lives at the present time. For example, for the names of the first two days of the week, we have Sunday and Monday.

Masonry may well have its origins from Egypt, and a reference to a very early Masonic document held by the British Museum can be found by visiting:

http://www.mastermason.com/lodge850/historyoffm/history.htm

"The first eighty-six lines tell a legend of the foundation of Masonry In Egypt by the mathematician, Euclid, and its introduction into England in the reign of King Athelstan, an Anglo-Saxon monarch who ascended the throne in A.D. 924. This is followed by an account of a great assembly of the Craft - other legends say this convention took place at York in the year 926 - under the patronage of Prince Edwin."

Thomas Paine, in his "Origins of Free Masonry", claimed:

"To come then at once to the point, Masonry (as I shall show from the customs, ceremonies, hieroglyphics, and chronology of Masonry) is derived and is the remains of the religion of the ancient Druids; who, like the Magi of Persia and the Priests of Heliopolis in Egypt, were Priests of the Sun. ... The worship of the Sun as the great visible agent of a great invisible first cause, 'Time without limits,' spread itself over a considerable part of Asia and Africa, from thence to Greece and Rome, through all ancient Gaul, and into Britain and Ireland."

C. The Italian Connection - The Carbonari.

Visit: http://www.mastermason.com Click: Residents Click: B Click: Baron Steuben 264 Click: Famous Masons

Find: (International Patriots) Giuseppe Garibaldi Giuseppe Mazzini

Visit: http://www.mastermason.com/carronRAC478/famous%20freemasons.htm Click: Famous freemasons

Find: Garibaldi, Giuseppe - Italian nationalist revolutionary and leader in the struggle for Italian unification and independence. Mazzini, Giuseppe - Italian revolutionary and political theorist.

Unlike Mr. Garibaldi, Mr. Mazzini is not only described as a revolutionary, he is also described as a political theorist. His political and, one might say, his religious theories also reached the United States; and in the United States, he was also known as Joseph Mazzini.

Upon visiting: http://history.hanover.edu

One then reaches a website for Hanover College, Indiana. Then click: Texts and Images Hanover Historical Texts Project The Duties of Man Then, one reaches:

An Essay On the Duties of Man by Joseph Mazzini New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1844, 1898.

Excerpts from: Chapter V - Duties Towards Your Country Chapter XII - Conclusion

"Your first duties - first as regards importance - are, as I have already told you, towards Humanity ... And so long as you are ready to die for Humanity, the life of your country will be immortal. ... In labouring for our own country on the right principle, we labour for Humanity. ... Your country is the sign of the Mission God has given you to fulfill towards Humanity. ... The true Country is the Idea to which it gives birth. ... Be your country your Temple: God at the summit; a people of equals at the base."

"I believe in the grand voice of God which the Ages transmit to us through the universal tradition of Humanity ... (a voice which) teaches me that the dreams of Communism, of the annihilation or absorption of the individual in the social whole, have never been more than fleeting incidents in the life of the human race, reappearing momentarily in every intellectual and moral crisis, but incapable of realization except upon a trifling scale, as in the Christian Monasteries and Convents."

So, we see that Mr. Mazzini certainly didn't believe in Communism, and he had only a trifling interest in Christianity. He stated that he believed, instead, in God and Country. But which God is it? And, which Country is it? Mr. Mazzini was a Mason, and, as Albert Pike has often been quoted from his "Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry", the lowest degrees, blue color, think they know what it is, but they really don't. Allowing for this, was Mr. Mazzini indeed thinking about a new type of Country, operated by a One-World government? And was his God a deity represented by a form of light, or, as in Latin, lux? Much more contemporarily, a 33rd Degree Mason, a Dr. Rex R. Hutchens, has rewritten Morals and Dogma into present day American English. The name of the book is "A Bridge to Light". There's that lux again.

Pursuing this point further, we see that Mr. Mazzini always liked to use the word Humanity, and he always used it with a capital "H" instead of a lower-case "h". One hundred years later, the Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations was written. The Preamble was probably written by Alger Hiss, and it contains the phrase, " ... to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person ... " Here, it's human rather than Humanity.

There is also another pattern here in that Garibaldi and Mazzini wanted to unite smaller states in the boot, and thereby create Italy; almost like the thirteen colonies coming together to form the United States, and the original fifty members coming together to form the United Nations.

Returning to the phrase of Alger Hiss, "human person"? Isn't this a redundancy? Or, with a capital "H", could the word "Human" be a codeword for "Light-inspired", and could the word "Humanity" be a codeword for "Light-inspiration"? All of the human beings infused with the inspiration of the Light.

Mazzini not only formed a later group, Young Italy, he even had thoughts of eventually establishing an even larger group to be known as Young Europe. He also thought of Young Italy as a sort of religion, otherwise not fully explained. Certainly, his idea of Country also seemed to be growing and growing.

Visit: http://www.wasatchlodge.org Search: Scot Click: 32nd Degree - Master of the Royal Secret

"The Royal Secret like the occult science of the ancients is concealed even in this Degree; but remember, 'Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted.' Magic, contrary to the belief of many, is but the absolute science of nature and its laws ... "

As it happens, the concepts of Magic and the Occult are usually associated with the spiritual entity known not only as Satan, but also as Lucifer.

Thus, could one have a faith and a religion based upon the science of nature, maybe something known to the ancient Egyptians, something known in Heliopolis, something known as the Light?

Both Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini were also members of the Carbonari, as they both sought to unite the various smaller states within Italy into a larger whole during the nineteenth century. With regard to whatever societies that existed at that time, membership was more or less interchangeable and fluid, similar to the militant Islamist groups of today. The Carbonari were a precursor to Mazzini's later Young Italy group, and especially the Risorgimento, which eventually united Italy.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, one can read, under the entry for Carbonari (the charcoal burners) as follows:

"The members made themselves known to one another by secret signs in shaking hands. ... (The society believed in) a purely natural conception of religion (a Light?). ... Initiation into the society was accompanied by special ceremonies which, in the reception into the grade of master, imitated the Passion of Christ in a manner actually blasphemous. ... Freemasons could enter the Carbonari as masters at once.

In more recent times, Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, has been said to have observed that the Third Secret of Fatima might be applicable to him after he was shot and wounded by a Turkish terrorist in 1981. However, others have said that this prophecy would more likely be applicable to Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, who died after drinking a mysterious glass of wine proffered to him by a Jean Cardinal Villot, said to be a progressive modernist from France, and previously associated with a Zurich Grand Lodge. One year later, in 1979, Cardinal Villot died.

Considering the recent Propagandi Due, or P-2, Masonic scandal and the near-takeover of the government of Italy, one has to hope that nothing like this could emanate from the House of the Temple.

D. Conclusion.

Allegations are sometimes made against the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Rome; and allegations are sometimes made against worldwide Freemasonry. However, sometimes such allegations can eventually be shown to be untrue, and sometimes they even represent an effort, for whatever the reaons may be, to spread around disinformation.

Sometimes, it does happen that disinformation of this type is widely distributed so that it can, in fact, eventually be shown to be false. Sometimes, however, parallel, similar events at the time in question may have indeed taken place that were seriously improper; but now, this can no longer be demonstrated.

For example, what if a few "Christian" websites indirectly represented a voice from Langley, such that the Gabriel Jogand-Pages (Leo Taxil) hoax, and the unproven Mazzini-Pikes affair (also a hoax?) are foolishly belabored ad infinitum so that the accused will eventually be exonerated? Sometimes, disinformation works so well.

Of course, what has always been happening is that almost all members of either the Roman Catholic Church or worldwide Freemasonry honestly and innocently don't know. They honestly and innocently don't know what happened to Pope John Paul I, the Church of Rome, The Vatican City. They honestly and innocently don't know about some of the goings-on in the bowels of the House of the Scottish Rite, the District of Columbia, the Southern Jurisdiction, The House of the Temple.

Finally, after the recent, frightening P2 scandal in Italy, we certainly have to hope that there isn't a similar scandal one of these days concerning the United States, the District of Columbia, the Southern Jurisdiction, The House of the Temple.