Are Freemasons the Descendents of the Knights Templar?

Freemasonry’s Origin

The story begins, as so many do, with the Catholic Church and its restless struggle against sin.

Masonic myth suggests that it all began with Huramabi, also called Hiram 2 Chron 2:13, the father of Hiram King of Tyre. Freemasonry calls the king’s father Hiram Abif. No evidence independent of Freemasonry supports its myth of a Hiram Abif who is killed and raised from death by the strong grip of the lion’s paw. By contrast, Rabbi Yeshua finds support in the major non-Christian historians Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius and others.

Scottish Rite Freemasonry’s 30th degree ritual asserts that the Masonic craft had its origins in the Knights Templar, a Catholic military order formed in Jerusalem in 1118 to support the Crusades. They were first quartered in the Temple Mount’s royal palace, hence their name, in effect, Knights of the Temple. The 30th degree refers to “… those Knights Templar of whom we are the true successors.”

When King Philip IV ascended the throne of France in 1307, he arrested all of the Knights Templar in France, some two thousand, and sent Pope Clement V a list of charges against the order. Among them was the charge that the Templars worshiped a human head.

The Shroud of Turin, then called the Edessa Cloth, is described in ancient texts as a tetradiplon, a Greek word meaning towel. The literal translation, however, means doubled-in-four. By folding the cloth to half-length, then quarter-length, then one-eighth length (doubled-in-four), only the face of Jesus is visible on a wide cloth as shown in a tenth century diptych of the Image of Edessa. At times, the cloth was very likely framed such that only the face was visible through a round hole in the middle of the frame. Dr. John Jackson used a raking light test and high magnification to reveal fold marks on the Shroud exactly where expected for such folding. A Templar painting of the head, discovered in England in 1951, bears a striking resemblance to the Shroud image.

Pope Clement V, after investigation, suppressed the order in 1312. The last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, whose name is associated today with a Masonic order for youth, was burned at the stake in 1314. Freemasonry’s historical hatred for the Catholic Church has its origins in Pope Clement V’s suppression of the Knights Templar and is sustained by Catholic opposition to Freemasonry’s interest in the occult.

Some evidence exists for a connection between the Knights Templar and Freemasonry. Templars were not persecuted in England as they were in France, but they were driven underground. Some of these covert Templars may have become Masons. There are also legends that the stone masons who had built the great Catholic cathedrals, particularly renowned for their skills, formed guilds or lodges so that when they arrived in a town their credentials would be recognized, using secret passwords and grips as journeyman cards. When the Protestant Reformation stopped new church construction some lodges disbanded while others admitted honorary “speculative” members to survive. The first such Masonic lodge is said to have come into existence in 1599 in Aitchison’s Haven, Scotland. These accounts live in mists and shadows. The historical record offers some evidence, but a paper trail showing continuity does not begin until 1717 when four craft lodges gathered at the Apple Tree Tavern near Covent Garden in London to set up a constitution for Free and Accepted Masons.

The basic lodge of Freemasonry is called the “blue lodge.” There are numerous “appendant bodies” such as the Scottish Rite or the York Rite, but the blue lodge alone confers the first three degrees including the third or Master Mason degree.

Most Masons remain blue lodge Masons all their lives and never enter an appendant body.

http://www.secondexodus.com/words/f-j/f/free-masonry/