We would not have our American Constitution if it were not for Friday the 13th, 1307. What makes that date so special? Let’s find out.
The story starts with Moses who led the Jews out of Egypt. He had what he preached recorded by scribes on parchment and preserved by the Levites, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, who were also charged with preserving the Ten Commandments they carried in the Arc of the Covenant that God made with mankind.
After the Jews arrived in Israel, King David declared that God should have a home here on Earth. He decreed that it should be built on Mt. Moriah where God first spoke to man. When He told Abraham that he was to sacrifice his first born, when a goat interceded Abraham thought he had proven this faith and God had interceded. The goat was sacrificed instead, and Ishmael or Jacob was spared. Which one depends upon whether you are Muslim, who accepted that Ishmael was the first born, but he was born to Abraham’s slave Hagar. Therefore, he was before Jacob, who was the first born to Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Jacob is more acceptable to Jews, and therefore Christians, as they believe in the sanctity of marriage. The conflict that creates between those faiths, is which is God’s chosen people? Since Mt. Moriah was the only place on Earth where God actually spoke to man, it was the only sacred place to build God’s home. David did not live long enough to build the Temple, so his son, King Solomon built the first Jewish Temple. The scrolls of Moses were preserved in the caves under the Temple.
When the Romans ordered all Jews out of Israel in 67 AD, they destroyed the Jewish Temple. The priests agreed to tell their eldest son, or the person they most trusted, about the scrolls that were now entombed in the caves of Mt. Moriah. That information was passed down from generation to generation and, in fact, is still being passed down today. One thousand years later those with that knowledge in France were called the Priori de Scion. In England they were call Rex Deus, meaning God is king. People with that knowledge were what caused the Crusades to occur. One was a King in Europe. Several were Bishops in the Catholic faith. Few others knew that their secret purpose was for regaining the sacred scrolls buried beneath the Temple Mount.
A major problem then being, that after the Jews were expelled from Israel the Muslims moved in. My version of what happed is perhaps unique. The Muslims had a tradition of saving their wealth for a sojourn to Mecca to honor Mohammed at least once in their lifetime. So, they were taking their wealth out of the country. The Muslim king of Israel needed his own tourists trap to attract tourist money. He read in the Koran that “Mohammed went to the corner of the universe and on his horse ascended into heaven”. He reasoned that Jerusalem is the corner of the Muslim universe. So, the king points to an indentation on the top of Mt. Moriah and said “there is the horse’s footprint”. (I have put my hand in that impression.) The Muslims then built the third most important shrine in all of the Muslim world on that spot. It is the Shrine with the gold dome you still see today over the top of Mt. Moriah in any picture of Jerusalem. Jews today pray to the western wall supporting the Temple mount where their first Temple once stood, while Muslims enjoy their Shrine to Mohammed now sitting on top of Mt. Moriah. Today you see all the conflict of the Middle East in the area of a square block.
After the crusaders captured Jerusalem, nine of the members of Priori de Scion went to Jerusalem for the sole purpose of recovering the ancient scrolls going back to the time of Moses. They did not want to alert the Muslims of the treasure they had under their Temple so they did not knock on their door requesting permission to dig under their Temple. Instead, they spent six years digging through solid rock from their quarters which are now the Muslim Mosque located just south of the golden domed shrine on the 46 acres of the temple mount located on top of the Mt. Moriah.
When they had completed their excavation, the person who had financed their endeavor, William Sinclair, a Lord in Scotland, showed up and went back to Scotland with many large crates loaded with something, but no one but the nine members of Priori de Scion knew what he was taking. When Sinclair returned, he brought with him 300 Knights from Scotland and they joined the nine members of Priori de Scion to form what we now know as the Knights Templar. Their proclaimed purpose was to protect the holy sites of Jerusalem for Christian tourist. The Pope declared that they were exempt from taxation by the Lords and kings of Europe. The Knights Templar became very wealthy. They built ships to transport those in Europe wanting to visit Israel. They created the very first banking system so that those traveling could deposit their wealth in a Templar vault in Europe in exchange for script that they could redeem for cash when they arrived in Jerusalem so that highway men on their journey could not rob them. They were fierce warrior knights protecting the Christian world.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were written from 150 BC until 67 AD in Qumran on the edge of the Dead Sea. (I have a picture of me standing in the room where the scrolls were written) These scrolls lay hidden in caves until they were discovered in 1947. So, history has not touched them. They tell a different story than our religious traditions today. They also had a copper scroll that was an inventory of all of the Jewish wealth and its locations in 43 sites. The inventory of what was under the Temple mount was very detailed. When archeologists went to look for the scrolls, all they found was Templar artifacts. I do think that Dan Brown was probably correct in the Da Vinci Code when he claims something special (the ancient scrolls) was placed beneath the Rosslyn Chapel on the Sinclair estate in the Roslyn community nine miles south of Edinburgh, Scotland. I also think it is logical to assume what with the recent public interest generated with the release of this information to the public that the scrolls may now rest under the inverted pyramid of the Louvre in Paris today. Point being, there is some history supporting this story that was only recently discovered.
On with what caused our Constitution. The Knights Templar, being the bankers of the western world in the fourteenth century, had loaned money to the Kings of Europe to fund subsequent crusades. Phillip IV “the Fair”, King of France, did not want to have to repay his debt to the Knights Templar. He had kicked the Jews out of France the year before and kept their wealth. He plotted his course to cancel his debt due the Knights Templar. He invited the Pope to France where, for unknown reasons, that Pope died. Phillip orchestrated having Clement V elected Pope. His coronation was not accepted by all Catholics so Clement moved his headquarters from the Vatican to Avion in southern France, where he and the next five Popes occupied that palace as their home for 86 years until they finally felt safe to move back to the Vatican in Rome.
Phillip next invited the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Moley, to visit France for his daughter’s wedding. De Molay showed up with 60 knights and mules loaded with wealth. Shortly after the wedding, Phillip ordered that all 15,000 Knights Templars who were then located in France arrested on the same morning, Friday the 13th of October, 1307. Many knights were put to the rack to confess their sins. Clement V did not take kindly to losing 15,000 of his warrior knights. He had agreed to lose the debt, but not the knights too. So, he challenged the King. Phillip responded by sending his army south to Avion and surrounded the Pope’s palace. Phillip told the Pope that the Templars were confessing to practicing a form of Christianity that differed from the Church. He demanded the Pope demand all the kings in Europe arrest the Knights Templar in their country as heretics. The Pope complied.
Edward II had only been the king in England for two months. He was busy bringing his gay boyfriend back from the exile his father had imposed. Edward did not want to arrest the Knights Templar, several of whom were members of his Court. So, he did nothing. That was until in December 1307, when the Pope threatened to excommunicate Edward if he did not comply. His act of bringing his boyfriend from exile itself had irritated his Lords. Edward’s being excommunicated would certainly not be acceptable to them. But Edward waited until January 24, 1308, to comply. When Edward sent his soldiers out to arrest the 10,000 Knights Templar in England, he only found two. Where did they all go?
They went underground above ground in plain view. From October until January they had formed the Masonic fraternity as their means of identifying each other for their mutual protection. This was at a time when London itself was only 25,000 people. A day’s journey was 25 miles, and people who were known had to vouch for a stranger to avoid them being arrested. Yet none of the Templars were found.
The Knights Templar elected their leadership from the bottom up. The membership of the Knights controlled their own destiny. Almost all political power throughout Europe came from God, with priests anointing their kings. Rather than the power to govern coming from the people. So, the means of selecting the leadership of the Knights from among the membership was unique. The Masonic fraternity grew. By 1717 the power of political control of England had become a balance of the House of Lords and Parliament of the people. Thus, the Masonic fraternity no longer had to be secret, and by then it had become the world’s largest fraternity. Today there are over 4 million Masons in the world. Half of them live in the United States.
When our founding fathers immigrated from Europe to America, most came to get out from under the strict control of religion. Even in England, which no longer was Catholic, they had only replaced the Pope with the King, when Henry VIII was excommunicated and created the Episcopal Church as the Church of England. But their control over the people was as strong and oppressive as all other religions. A majority of the Constitutional Convention members were Masons. They understood the difference in power coming from the people rather than from God as ordained by the priests. Thus, our American Constitution provides the public assurance of freedom from religion, based upon the concept of the separation of Church and State, and it gives the public control over their own lives, instead of being controlled by God by providing that our American leadership is elected by the people, and not appointed by God.
This all happened because Phillip IV the Fair of France arrested the Knights Templar in his country on Friday the 13th ,1307, causing the Knights Templar in England to form the Masonic fraternity to provide their individual protection from their king. However, instead of celebrating that date for creating the Masonic fraternity that showed us in America the way for the people to control our own destiny, our American public still fears the number 13 yet today, 700 years later. So much so that many airplanes do not have a 13th row of seating. Many buildings do not have a 13th floor. And some people will not even leave their homes on Friday 13th yet today, even though that event occurred long before Columbus first visited our shores.
We would not have our American Constitution today if it were not for Friday 13, 1307.
But how we reacted shows what superstition will do to us, doesn’t it? And to think, this all started with Moses.
Lyle L. Simpson, 33rd degree Mason