Inside The Freemason's HQ



It is supposed to be one of the most secretive places on Earth. A vast temple, its entrance guarded by tall stone sphinxes, it's interiors filled with strange symbols, secret rooms, sliding stone walls and the performance of rituals so old, even those involved no longer know where or how they originated. Or so they claim. It is the Freemasons HQ, and it's right in the heart of Washington DC, just down the road from the White House.

Secretive? Well, kind of. Actually, not really.

You can go on a guided tour of the building. In fact, according to The Smithsonian, 12,000 or more people will do just that this year alone.

An excellent story here on the history and interior of the House Of The Temple, and a good summary of Freemasonry history. At least, the history that they want you to know about :

Modeled on a Greek-style temple, the building contains no metal girders—just stone, as the ancients would have constructed it. The massive limestone facade is ringed with 33 Ionic columns. The number 33 proliferates in Masonic ritual, but the group's historians say they don't know what it symbolized originally.

The House of the Temple abounds in ancient, if not always interpretable, symbols, from the 17-ton sphinxes flanking the entrance to nine-point stars, two-headed eagles and images of the Greek god Hermes. A stained-glass window bears the ancient Egyptian "all-seeing eye," which, theorists of Freemason conspiracies like to note, also appears on the Great Seal of the United States, designed in 1782, and the dollar bill, which acquired the ocular icon in 1935, thanks to FDR, a Mason.

Egyptian hieroglyphics adorn a soaring atrium. The building's nine-foot-thick walls hold human remains. Bronze coiling snakes flank a large wooden throne, canopied in purple velvet, in a second-floor inner sanctum called the Temple Room, where men from around the world gather behind closed doors every two years.

A short list of notable Freemasons gleamed from the article :

...signers of the Declaration of Independence; George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and 13 other presidents; Senators Charles Schumer and Robert Dole; Chief Justice Earl Warren and other Supreme Court justices...

And :

Sam Ervin, John Glenn, Harry Truman, Arnold Palmer, John Wayne and Will Rogers.

You'll be hearing lost about the Freemasons later in the year, and the House of the Temple in particular.

The DaVinci Code author Dan Brown's new novel, supposedly titled The Solomon Key, is expected in to take in a tour of all the key Freemason and Illumanti architectual sites of the US capital as a hunt for treasure and secrets of the birth of America unfolds.

Freemasons, Skull & Bones And The Dan Brown Effect