The Templar Legacy and the Masonic Inheritance within Rosslyn Chapel

The mystery surrounding The Knights Templar and the controversies that have shrouded their spiritual heirs, the Freemasons, have tended to disguise the fact that their common knowledge and insight formed the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition. This tradition which, despite its hidden nature, was described by Professor Theodore Roszak of Berkley University "as probably the single, most profoundly imaginative and influential spiritual tradition of European culture", exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals, leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools, on philosophers, playwrites and poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake and W. B. Yeats, on artists and renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo and indirectly on all the generations of European Christendom for nearly one thousand years. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern science. Any close and dispassionate examination of the facts soon discloses that spiritual insight is necessary and highly relevant to everyday life--more particularly in today's turbulent and troubled world. Indeed, it may well prove to be the key to the very survival of Mankind as a whole. Therefore, this book is dedicated to those who, despite appalling persecution, kept this spiritual tradition alive so that we in the twentieth century may benefit from its accumulated fruits and hopefully enoble our lives by emulating their courageous example.