Review of Curse of Oak Island S02E07 "Trail of the Templars"
A large number of readers have asked me to check in with the History Channel's most popular current fringe series, Curse of Oak Island, after its episode on the Knights Templar, conveniently labeled S02E07 "The Trail of the Templars," which aired December 16. I have no particular interest in Oak Island, which in 200 years has never provided any evidence that it is the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, pirate booty, the lost works of Shakespeare, or the treasure of the Templars as fringe believers have claimed. However, I'm going to give this a go and see what this series has to say about the Knights Templar and their imaginary voyage to America.
The show opens with some boring business about pumping and digging, which I have elected to skip over. I moved ahead to the moment when the History Channel traveling circus comes together in Scotland, where Ancient Aliens pundit Kathleen McGowan (not going by her married name of Coppens on this show), who believes she is the descendant of Mary Magdalene, has brought along America Unearthed conspiracy theorist Alan Butler, whom regular readers will remember as the man who (a) believes the moon was built by time-traveling Freemasons and (b) whose writing partner threatened to sue me over a book review of their coauthored book nearly a decade ago. The narrator, who does double duty over on Ancient Aliens, informs us that Butler has done "extensive research on the Knights Templar," which somehow seems to involve not reading the primary sources.
McGowan and Butler believe that the Cathars gave the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail to the Knights Templar, who took them to Scotland. This seems a bit unbelievable since the Templars and the Cathars did not share similar doctrines, and, when push came to shove, the Templars resident in the Cathar areas of France eventually joined with Catholic forces in suppressing the Cathars. It was the Cathars, not the Templars, who venerated Mary Magdalene. The Templars were virulently misogynistic, giving no special place to the Magdalene and recording in the Templar Rule that the "company of women is a dangerous thing, for by it the old Devil has led many from the straight path to paradise" (clause 70, trans. J. Upton-Ward).
Butler, however, says that because Robert the Bruce and the Scottish were excommunicated for a 1306 murder that made him king, the Templars sought refuge in Scotland after the suppression of their order in 1307. The narrator says that they took 18 ships full of treasure from La Rochelle to Scotland. This is based entirely on a single sentence from the testimony of one Templar, extracted under torture, in 1308 at a papal inquiry at Portiers. I've presented this testimony from Jean de Châlons more than once, but it bears repeating since it is the only support for this elaborate claim:
Then he said that, learning beforehand about this trouble, the leaders of the Order fled, and he himself met Brother Gerard de Villiers leading fifty horses; and he heard it said that he set out to sea with eighteen galleys and that Brother Hugues de Châlons fled with the whole treasure of Brother Hugues de Pairaud. When asked how he was able to keep this fact secret for so long, he responded that no one would have dared reveal it for anything, if the Pope and the King had not opened the way, for if it were known in the Order that anyone had spoken, he would at once be killed. (Vatican Secret Archives, Registra Avenionensia 48, f450r; my trans.)
As I have mentioned in the past, the word translated above as "galley" is galea, a borrowing from the Byzantine Greek, meaning a single-decked oared warship; they were not oceangoing vessels but meant to hug the coasts. Do Butler and McGowan think that the Knights Templar sailed to Scotland with just 51 men in 18 ships—less than three men per ship? These ships had crews of anywhere from a hundred to up to 1,000 men apiece. Where did the crews come from to run these vessels, and why did they leave no record of their existence? Surely anywhere from 200 to 18,000 people vanishing overnight would be worthy of note. Note, too, that the treasure and the galleys are separate in the account, though later writers conflate them. But since neither McGowan nor Butler wants to deal with the only original source, they instead claim that the treasure of the Cathars arrived in Scotland on these Templar ships to be stowed in a nearby abbey.
After some boring material back at the island, McGowan tells the Oak Island crew that there is a "strong tradition" of the Ark of the Covenant in Kilwinning, Scotland, which is not true at all. It appears only in fringe history conspiracy theories, derived, as best I can tell, backward from the fact that in the eighteenth century the Freemasons, under the first Grand Master, Baron William St. Clair (Sinclair) of Roslin (Rosslyn), held their annual meetings at Kilwinning. Therefore, since the noble Sinclair family of Roslin are ascribed Templar secrets in Freemason conspiracy theories, conspirators have reasoned backward that centuries earlier the family must have retrieved the Ark from Kilwinning when they ensconced it at Rosslyn Chapel. Butler tells the Oak Islanders that, while there is no evidence, he sees Kilwinning as the only logical choice for a Templar port of call in Scotland, and he falsely asserts that Freemasonry derives directly from the Templars.
Following some more boring island digging, we visit Rosslyn Chapel, where the narrator falsely claims that its builder, the fifteenth-century William Sinclair, 1st earl of Caithness, came from a family with close Templar ties. This is not supported by any documentation, and the extant records show that Sinclair family members testified against the Templars during their heresy trials more than a century before.
At the chapel, the Oak Islanders go looking for "symbols" that they claim connect Rosslyn to the Mi'kmaq (Micmac) of Nova Scotia via Henry Sinclair, the medieval earl of Orkney whom conspiracy theorists falsely believe traveled to America because they accept the offhand 1784 comment of the dispossessed Scottish nobleman Johann Reinhold Forster that the name of a fictional character in a Renaissance era hoax is that of Sinclair: "This name of Sinclair appears to me to be expressed by the word Zichmni," Reinhold wrote. But the so-called "Zeno Narrative" in which Zichmni appears never mentions America, and it is at any rate a fairly obvious hoax whose parts Fred W. Lucas carefully traced back to earlier sources in 1898. Even taken at face value, the narrative states only that Zichmni traveled to Greenland and settled there.
Using the passive voice, the narrator tells us that "it has been reported that the Mi'kmaq saw Henry Sinclair as a god named Glooscap." This is true only in the technical sense that Frederick J. Pohl made that claim by misunderstanding an 1894 retelling of Mi'kmaq legends. Pohl misread the book as a book about Glooscap, and as I have demonstrated previously therefore concocted similarities between Glooscap and Sinclair that did not exist since the stories he used were often not about Glooscap.
The narrator then tells us that the Mi'kmaq and Henry Sinclair shared the same Templar-influenced battle flag, with a red cross on a white background and a red star and crescent moon. This flag does not exist in Europe and has no record whatsoever in any of the Henry Sinclair documents that exist. Henry's arms, so far as we can reconstruct them, involved a black cross, and there is no account of a flag. The Mi'kmaq flag is a modern design but is based on symbols that the Mi'kmaq themselves explain that they adopted from French Catholic priests in the 1600s. European accounts agree. The specific Catholic priest from whom the cross was adopted is actually known. His name was Jessé Fléché. The exact moment when the Mi'kmaq adopted a red cross as a Mi'kmaq symbol is recorded by Marc Lescarbot in The Conversion of the Savages written in 1610:
Chkoudun, a man of great influence, of whom I have made honorable mention in my History of New France, because I saw that he, more than all the others, loved the French, and that he admired our civilization more than their ignorance: to such an extent, that being present sometimes at the Christian admonitions, which were given every Sunday to our French people, he listened attentively, although he did not understand a word; and moreover wore the sign of the Cross upon his bosom, which he also had his servants wear; and he had in imitation of us, a great Cross erected in the public place of his village, called Oigoudi, at the port of the river saint John, ten leagues from Port Royal.
Source: Marc Lescarbot, Conversion of the Savages, in Reuben Gold Thwaites (ed.), Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, vol. 1: Acadia: 1610-1613 (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1896), 79.
A guide at Rosslyn Chapel asserts the truth of the Henry Sinclair myth and shows the men some stylized foliage carved above a window that she says is maize, even though it looks nothing like maize. A stylized three-petal flower is asserted to be a trillium, native to North America, though it could be any sort of flower, such as an iris.
After some more digging back on Oak Island, we hear a presentation from Alan Butler. "It's time to connect the dots," he says. Butler claims that flat paving stones found on Oak Island in 1795 are a threshing floor, but not the kind used for separating wheat from chaff. Instead, it was a spiritual threshing floor like that atop which Solomon built his Temple (2 Chronicles 3:1). Butler says that this is connected to the Freemasons' Royal Arch of Enoch. The narrator tells us that "ancient texts" connected to Enoch state that he built an underground vault to protect the world's ancient treasures. This doesn't appear in the Enochian literature, but it is connected with claims about Hermes and the pyramids from medieval lore, drawing on Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History 22.15.30, which writes of underground Egyptian chambers of wisdom. Later, medieval writers identified Hermes with Enoch and folded in the so-called Prophecy of Adam, which involved the creation of tablets or pillars of wisdom which were kept safe from the Flood. You can read about a dozen versions of that story on my all-new Watchers page, collecting as many accounts of the Fallen Angels and their tablets of wisdom as I can find. In Freemasonry's Matthew Cooke Manuscript (c. 1450), these wisdom tablets were not associated with Enoch but were instead composed by Jubal, who hid them before the Flood. Hermes and Pythagoras found them thereafter and restored science (folios 12-15).
Butler asserts that Masons believe that Enoch constructed eight chambers beneath the Temple Mount, the last of which contains tablets of wisdom. This was a new one on me, and it took a little while for me to figure out where it came from. I see that in the 1990s, Robert Cox, writing in The Pillars of Celestial Fire attributed the story that Enoch built underground chambers of wisdom to Flavius Josephus, but it does not appear in Josephus. Instead, such claims for Josephus—which fly around the internet and are in dozens of fringe books—seem to be a misreading of a passage in Manly P. Hall's crazy-quilt Secret Teachings of All Ages (1923), which summarizes Josephus on the pillars of wisdom built by Seth's children before stating the following:
The Patriarch Enoch—whose name means the Initiator—is evidently a personification of the sun, since he lived 365 years. He also constructed an underground temple consisting of nine vaults, one beneath the other, placing in the deepest vault a triangular tablet of gold bearing upon it the absolute and ineffable Name of Deity. According to some accounts, Enoch made two golden deltas. The larger he placed upon the white cubical altar in the lowest vault and the smaller he gave into the keeping of his son, Methuseleh, who did the actual construction work of the brick chambers according to the pattern revealed to his father by the Most High. In the form and arrangement of these vaults Enoch epitomized the nine spheres of the ancient Mysteries and the nine sacred strata of the earth through which the initiate must pass to reach the flaming Spirit dwelling in its central core.
According to Freemasonic symbolism, Enoch, fearing that all knowledge of the sacred Mysteries would be lost at the time of the Deluge, erected the two columns mentioned in the quotation. Upon the metal column in appropriate allegorical symbols he engraved the secret reaching and upon the marble column placed an inscription stating that a short distance away a priceless treasure would be discovered in a subterranean vault. After having thus faithfully completed his labors, Enoch was translated from the brow of Mount Moriah. In time the location of the secret vaults was lost, but after the lapse of ages there came another builder—an initiate after the order of Enoch—and he, while laying the foundations for another temple to the Great Architect of the Universe, discovered the long-lost vaults and the secrets contained within.
This is obviously where Alan Butler got his ideas. But where did Hall? Hall, in turn, takes the above almost verbatim from Charles T. McClenechan's The Book of the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1868):
Enoch, accepting his vision as an inspiration, journeyed in search of the mountain he had seen in his dream, until, weary of the search, he stopped in the land of Canaan, then already populous with the descendants of Adam, and there employed workmen; and with the help of his son Methuselah, he excavated nine apartments, one above the other, and each roofed with an arch, as he had seen in his dream, the lowest being hewn out of the solid rock. In the crown of each arch he left a narrow aperture, closed with a square stone, and over the upper one he built a modest temple, roofless and of huge unhewn stones, to the Grand Architect of the Universe.
Upon a triangular plate of gold, inlaid with many precious gems, he engraved the ineffable name of God, and sank the plate into one face of a cube of agate.
None knew of the deposit of the precious treasure; and, that it might remain undiscovered, and survive the Flood, which it was known to Enoch would soon overwhelm the world in one vast sea of mire, he covered the aperture, and the stone that closed it and the great ring of iron used to raise the stone, with the granite pavement of his primitive temple.
Then, fearing that all knowledge of the arts and sciences would be lost in the universal flood, he built two great columns upon a high hill—one of brass, to resist water, and one of granite, to resist fire. On the granite column was written in hieroglyphics a description of the subterranean apartments; on the one of brass, the rudiments of the arts and sciences.
The granite column was overturned and swept away, and worn to a shapeless mass by the Deluge, but that of brass stood firm, and was found by Noah.
McClenachan goes on to say that Enoch's tablet ended up in the Ark of the Covenant and thus in Solomon's Temple, which had nine underground vaults—different vaults from Enoch's, contrary to Butler's version, which is derived from Hall. In case you care, in the passage above the first pillar is of granite to identify it with Egyptian obelisks, while the second pillar is of brass because of the 1701 Masonic Alnwick Manuscript's reference to the two pillars of stone having two names, "Marble" and "Laturus," which later Masons took to be brass. The word comes from the Alnwick Manuscript rewriting the earlier 1450 Cooke Manuscript (on my Watchers page), which says that the pillars were made of two different materials, marble and "latres." The Cooke Manuscript's source, the Latin Polychronicon of c. 1330, quotes Josephus on the pillars of stone and brick but gives the pillar of brick as being made of "lateritia," an obscure variant of the Latin word for brick, later (genitive: lateris). The Freemasons seem to have wanted to identify Enoch's pillars with Hiram's two bronze pillars for the Temple of Solomon and chose to make it brass when the real meaning of lateritia faded away. This is doubly odd since by the time of McClenachan, anyone could have checked Josephus to see that this wasn't the case, but by then the myth was more important than the translation errors that created it.
Alan Butler quotes Hall (without citation) on the treasure being "a short distance away" and therefore tells the Oak Islanders that they are close to the treasure because he has chosen to conflate the threshing-floor with the marble column of wisdom. He relates the distance to his pretend measurement of 366 "megalithic yards," which is just about 1,000 British feet—the actual unit of measurement used, within tolerance, by British people. Kathleen McGowan then tells them that Oak Island is destined to be the New Jerusalem, which she claims will be built on "an island of swamp" according to ancient prophecy. She's making stuff up, right? Revelation 22 says only that a river of the water of life flows down the middle of the New Jerusalem. She must be referring to Isaiah 35:7, where in the future God will make the deserts erupt with water, with grass and rushes. Still not the same thing as the city appearing in a preexisting swamp.
It is, however, a good metaphor for the History Channel traveling circus's approach to truth, turning dry history into a fetid swamp of misinformation and misunderstanding rather than into a lush garden of vibrancy and life.
"the lost works of Shakespeare"
Don't you mean "the lost works of FRACNIS BACON!!!" ;)
Don't you mean the lost works of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford?
The Other J.
All modern forgeries from the 16th century MLA conspiracy to create an on-going need for English departments in perpetuity.
Y'all are aware that I was merely alluding to how the Oak Island Shakespeare theory says that proof of Bacon's authorship is buried there, right?
I think they were just wondering if you could go with making the last comment.
No, I'm just confused about how to read your post. Is there a 'them' missing or something? :)
"and sank the plate into one face of a cube of agate"
Brazilian or Lake Superior? This could be important, and we don't want any innocent mistakes.
Duke of URL
Only Me, you owe me a new keyboard - this one got deluged with coffee when you made me laugh so hard.
Sorry about the keyboard. You should be more careful drinking something while reading the comments. Timing is everything. :)
"Kathleen McGowan then tells them that Oak Island is destined to be the New Jerusalem, which she claims will be built on "an island of swamp" according to ancient prophecy. She's making stuff up, right?"
There are Bible passages (e.g., Isaiah 58:12) that speak of building cities in wastelands. There are also ones (e.g., in Jeremiah 31) that speak of islands or leaving the mainland, which were emphasized by the Puritans. These motifs were combined in the "ancient prohecies" of (who else?!) the British Israelites.
"Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it to the islands afar off; and say, he that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd doth his flock... And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and make them inhabit the waste places of the country." (Richard Brothers, 1794)
Interestingly, the British Israelite version is predated by a real historical even of the building of a very important city on swampland and islands - Russia's new capital of St. Petersburg. In Russian works commemorating its founding, St. Petersburg is explicitly called New Jerusalem and the associated verses from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Apoc, etc. are frequently quoted. In 18th century Europe, the founding of St. Petersburg and the rise of the Russian Empire was frequently assigned great spiritual significance and described in language infused with Biblical connotations, much like America was.
Moreover, by means of water in the New Jerusalem, the burning sand, the thirsty ground and the haunt of jackals will be changed into watery place such as 'a pool', 'springs of water' and 'a swamp' (Isaiah, 35:7)
Pilchan Lee, The New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation, page 33 (J.C.B. Mohr, Tubingen, 2001)
I was surprised that Scott Wolter didn't make a cameo appearance on this episode - just to add his keen expertise on the Templars.
According to A.E. Waite, in A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry, article on "Royal Arch of Enoch," the first known record of the legend of Enoch in a Masonic context was in the Council of Emperors of the East and West,which was founded in Paris about 1758. From there it passed on to other Masonic systems, including the modern Scottish Rite. Waite notes that, "The Royal Arch of Enoch is an important memorial of the Secret Tradition in Israel and its perpetuation through successive custodians. By the hypothesis of the symbolism it deals with the first experiment in placing the tradition on record, so that it should resist the destroying hands of fire and flood." In his book The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry (1937), Waite describes the original French version of the legend: "The secret of his True Name was reveled by God to Enoch, wh was transported for this purpose to a high mountain, where he beheld a radiant triangle inscribed therewith. But the stry is that he was forbidden ever to pronounce it. He was then taken to a subterranean place, into which he descended by nine arches, and in the ninth or undermost he beheld the same triangular plate. he constructed a Temple subsequently -- as we have seen in a previous study -- that is to say, composed of nine analogous arches one above the other, according to the revelation of his vision. Methuselah, his eldest son, had charge of the work, which was performed in the land of Canaan, afterwards the Land of Promise and Jerusalem. But Methuselah did not know the designs of his father. Enoch prepared a duplicate of the golden plate, inscribed and erected it on a pedestal of whit emarble, fixed beneath the lowermost arch. He had been warned also concerning the Deluge to come, and fearing that all knowledge might perish therein he built two Pillars on the highest mountain in that region, one being of bronze, to resist water, and one of brick, to withstand fire. We have seen that this story is told by Josephus, but the Masonic account offers variants of its own making. On the Pillar of brick Enoch inscribed hieroglyphics, recording that a precious treasure had been deposited beneath the subterranean arches of the Temple which he had built to the Lord; and on the bronze Pillar he engraved the chief liberal arts, especially that of Masonry. The Pillar of Brick was destroyed in the Deluge, but that of bronze survived and therefore also the arts." The story goes on that when Solomon's Temple was built, it was on the site of Enoch's vaults and that the golden plate with the name of God on it was found in the ninth arch, where Enoch had placed it.
Robert W. Sullivan IV, The Royal Arch of Enoch: The Impact of Masonic Ritual, Philosophy, and Symbolism, Rocket Science Productions, LLC, 2012
Not the Comte de Saint Germain
Another connection to add to your ever-expanding collection of Nephilim/Watchers/Giants/Pillars lore:
The tradition that Enoch buried the secret name of God in a vault goes back in Masonic tradition farther than 1884. The first appearance I know of is in Antiquities of Freemasonry by George Oliver, from 1823. That book recombined a lot of old Masonic lore and invented new traditions to tie things together, so I don't know if the Enoch story is original to Oliver or not. Obviously it's a descendant of the Cooke Manuscript and its Pillars-related antecedents.
Where did I learn that? Just in the past few days I've been listening to some episodes from a podcast aimed at what you might call the liberal dissident undercurrent of Mormonism. Normally that would be of no interest to me, as I've never come within a mile of being Mormon. But the interviewee in these episodes is a Mormon and Freemason who's been exhaustively researching the influence of Masonry on Mormonism. He makes a pretty compelling case that Joseph Smith's mind was soaked in Masonic tradition, particularly the claims made in Antiquities of Freemasonry, and that a lot of Smith's religious innovations were derived from Freemasonry. For anyone with a whole lot of time to kill, here are the episode URLs:
mormonexpression.com/2011/07/05/144a-momonism-and-masonry-the-background-part-1/
mormonexpression.com/2011/07/05/144b-momonism-and-masonry-the-background-part-2/
mormonexpression.com/2011/07/12/145a-momonism-and-masonry-into-the-restoration-part-1/
mormonexpression.com/2011/07/12/145b-momonism-and-masonry-into-the-restoration-part-2/
mormonexpression.com/2011/08/02/149-momonism-and-masonry-the-book-of-abraham-and-nauvoo/
mormonexpression.com/2011/08/23/152-momonism-and-masonry-part-4-joseph-smith-and-beyond/
This Mormon Mason, who uses the pseudonym George Miller, argues that the story of the Golden Plates, from which Smith claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon, was based on the story of Enoch's vault. That part is in episode 145b, starting around 16:30.
Well, I should have read Clay's comment before posting, but I'm still the first to bring up the Mormon connection. The Watchers story goes everywhere.
I thought Jason was interested in pre-modern sources...
Well, mainly, but his page does include two of the modern Masonic iterations of the story. Anyway, if "Miller" ever publishes his hoped-for tome on the Mormon–Mason connection, and Jason ever publishes his hoped-for tome on the evolution of the Watchers myth, maybe Jason can mention Miller's work in a footnote.
By the way, Masonic influence on Joseph Smith is widely discussed outside of LDS circles. Smith was himself a freemason, after all!
So while LDS dogma, following Smith himself, attributes his teachings to revelation, what I take it "George Miller" is saying isn't really news to secular scholars of Mormonism.
From what I understand, non-LDS scholars have discussed the connection, but not in as much depth as Miller. Most people don't have the necessary background in Masonic and Mormon studies, and Mormonism and Freemasonry have gradually abandoned many of the elements that tied them together in Smith's time. According to Miller, Masonry was not only part of Smith's belief system, it was central to his claim to be restoring the early Christian church. I don't know that anybody else has discussed that, or examined the close similarity between Antiquities of Freemasonry and many of Smith's side projects.
Also see Miller's comment about the Book of Enoch, fifth post from the bottom:
http://forum.newordermormon.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19024&sid=af9e93aa1bbacf31ccbf198317bc7614&start=20
It's been discussed extensively. I haven't read a lot of this literature because I don't care so much about the details of Masonic symbolism, but there are much better sources to consult than some anonymous guy on the web. (And yes, I am aware of the irony! :) )
If you're interested, a book I'd recommend is John L. Brooke's "The Refiner's Fire", which contains many references to serious scholarship on the topic.
I may read that one someday. I know it's probably the best-regarded book on Smith's esoteric connections.
I know Miller isn't the best source, but he was working on publishing papers (though if he finished them I can't track them down), and he was working with a collaborator, Michael G. Reed, who is not anonymous and has published his own books on Mormonism. I wish he would publish the whole damn thing someday, but it's the type of project that takes years.
The main point on which Miller disagrees with other scholars is that they think Smith was ambivalent about Masonry. Miller points out that Oliver described two varieties of Masonry running through history ("speculative" and "spurious"), one genuine and one inspired by Satan. That was Oliver's way of addressing the anti-Masonic accusation that Masonry was derived from pagan mystery cults—he claimed that those Masonic rites that adopted pagan symbolism, as many of them did, were actually evil perversions. Miller argues that Smith picked up Oliver's distinction, so much of what Smith wrote that sounds anti-Masonic was actually aimed at spurious Masonry.
Correcting myself yet again—apparently Brooke does discuss that, and Miller's only complaint about Brooke's book is that it doesn't examine the similarity between Smith's beliefs and Masonic lore of the time in enough detail (http://forum.newordermormon.org/viewtopic.php?p=193167).
Enough detail to draw the conclusions he wants? :)
Perhaps. But like I said, most of the arguments Miller made in the interviews felt pretty strongly supported. There were only a couple of places where it felt like he was stretching. And one of his advantages, compared to some other people who have analyzed the influences on Smith, is that in his hypothesis there are only a couple of books that Smith would have needed to read in order to absorb all these Masonic and occult ideas.
How is that an advantage? Given how common discussions of freemasonry were in all kinds of literature (including newspapers) of his time, and given that, as an initiated freemason he would have had exposure to the rituals directly, this is gratuitiously parsimonious.
Consult Brooke's work for specific examples.
(sigh) I didn't mean that Smith never read anything else. People trying to discern Smith's influences have posited a whole lot of books that he could have drawn upon when writing his supposed scriptures, so many that Mormon apologists have made snide jokes about Smith's supposedly huge library. No doubt the apologists exaggerate how unsophisticated Smith was, so as to make his "revelations" seem more miraculous, but it's true that there's only so much stuff you can carry around when you're running all over the Midwest.
Smith went through the rites, and he would have discussed this Masonic lore with his fellow Masons. (Miller points out the particular similarity between Smith's language and that of Hosea Ballou, a Mason and influential Universalist preacher whose regular circuit was right around the town where Smith was born.) But Miller's hypothesis only requires a couple of Masonic books that Smith would have drawn upon habitually.
I want to thank Not the Comte for the reference to Oliver, whose passage I've added to my Watchers page. It's really fascinating how the variations on the Watchers theme trickle down through the centuries. It really is the key to understanding so much of the crazy-quilt of fringe history and the secret connecting tissue that links together so many wacky ideas.
I hope you won't object to me repeating what I said to NtCdSG: If you consult Brooke's work you'll find many more details about the history of these ideas in Masonic and related esoteric traditions of the 18th-19th centuries, of which Oliver's book was at its time the culmination.
@ NtCdSG
Sorry, I don't get what you're saying (and I can't open most of the things you linked for some reason). Even if we can find significant specific parallels between Smith's writings and specific Masonic texts, there are many routes by which contents of the latter could have rached Smith (including word-of-mouth paraphrases).
One of characteristic traits of successful founders of spiritual movements seems to be their prodigious memory. Given that Smith had no trouble weaving bits and pieces of pretty much anything he'd been exposed to into his writings, I don't see why we would need to attribute the Masonic parallels to Smith studying certain specific Masonic books.
(Moreover, both Masonic and Mormon texts have common Biblical routes anyway, so such parallels, unless *highly* specific and persistent, are extremely easy to overemphasize.)
Sorry, by "routes" I mean "roots". Not sure how that happened. Derp.
Correct links for the most important episodes:
http://mormonexpression.com/2011/07/12/145a-mormonism-and-masonry-into-the-restoration-part-1/
http://mormonexpression.com/2011/07/12/145b-mormonism-and-masonry-into-the-restoration/
http://mormonexpression.com/2011/08/02/149-mormonism-and-masonry-the-book-of-abraham-and-nauvoo/
The parallels Miller draws between Smith's work and Antiquities of Freemasonry seem pretty specific to me, and they are definitely persistent. If Smith read the book, that would explain a wide variety of Smith's strange ideas, all in one go. And Oliver's work was popular among Masons in New York, so it's very possible that Smith read it.
"If Smith read the book, that would explain a wide variety of Smith's strange ideas, all in one go."
Not really. It would give us one of his sources. To explain Smith's own ideas we also need to how he used his sources and how he saw the sources themselves and the relationship between them. Knowing that he had (direct or indirect) access to the contents of a given text does not suffice. Indeed, dwelling on a single text at the expense of Smith's broader intellectual context is likely to be detrimental.
It's not as if Miller ignores Smith's intellectual context. He discusses it at length.
This is what Miller said that I was trying to paraphrase, and I'm sorry if I conveyed it badly. It seems very reasonable to me:
"I am a bit troubled by the ever growing 'library' of rare books Joseph Smith must have read to come up with his ideas. What I like about my own research, is that two books, one which we KNOW without a doubt Joseph Smith had access to, and other which my research STRONGLY suggest he had access to, explains a large chuck of Joseph Smith's theology. That being said, even non believing scholars who have studied Joseph, ultimately come to the conclusion that Joseph Smith is a VERY complicated person. My research largely bears out this conclusion."
I'm going to quit this discussion now, because it's gone too long already, and you seem to have a compulsion to get the last word in on everything.
"The parallels Miller draws between Smith's work and Antiquities of Freemasonry seem pretty specific to me, and they are definitely persistent... Oliver's work was popular among Masons in New York, so it's very possible that Smith read it."
This is is discussed by Brooke in his works and by many other authors. There is nothing new about this connection. I really do urge you to read Brooke before spending too much time on some random web strangers. (And from what I've seen of Michael G. Reed, he's rather unimpressive.)
"explains a large chuck of Joseph Smith's theology"
Such claims are bound to be highly subjective, unless we specify what we count as Joseph Smith's theology and which chunk of it his access to a given text is supposed to explain. Also, again, this is by no means a new idea and (just judging from this guy's online statements) one that's been better expressed and explored by others.
"I'm going to quit this discussion now, because it's gone too long already, and you seem to have a compulsion to get the last word in on everything."
Even if that was true (and it isn't), it's neither here nor there as far as the usefulness and truth of what I have to say (which you are free to judge for yourself, of course). But hey, at least you're not accusing me of cyber-bullying :P
I've followed this series from the begining and almost every episode has either been the journey among men with a common cause type thing, drill, digging etc. Along with filler by guests who show off whatever crazy idea they have. Earlier in the series the guests weren't taken very seriously it seemed and like it might not have been the idea of the brothers to bring them on and they were forced to listen. After many presentations they would kinda look at each other and almost roll their eyes and say something like "ok back to real business".
But there was a fundamental difference with this episode, and perhaps the one before. They have always told the guests "yeah we will keep an eye out for the ark of the covenant or whatever ", then take a deep breath with a little shake of the head and a slight smirk, but these last two episodes have been different on the scale of the SW treasure hunts being different than his other episodes. These last two episodes they have went all in with the conspiracy stuff. Which sucks because I would rather watch the dry uninspiring core drilling than listening to Butler for an hour.
lurkster
I was enjoying the show up until the deceptive way they portrayed the failed dye test they did as being the third time it was attempted. When it was actually the fourth time, the last one was done by an independent firm hired by a rich dude with no vested interest in the island whatsoever and their findings were the same - no dye showed up outside the shaft.
Yet the show presented the history of the past dye testing that was done as always producing positive results. This was further exploited by the one brother saying they had to figure what they did wrong... uh yeah, ok. How about acknowledging that you actually did it right and the findings were consistent with the last test but not what you wanted to see. :(
Seems like they said that 10x was metal tube down to 140 feet then concrete the rest of the way to 230? I can't remember. Next episode they are supposed to send a diver down there. Ii can't remember if they sent a camera down there or not. I would assume they have sent that gray camera they keep showing down there but I can't remember.
This series is one that I wish I would have taped the entire season and sit down and watch it in one sitting while fast forwarding almost all of it. Because week by week it moves at a snails pace.
"...a misreading of a passage in Manly P. Hall's crazy-quilt Secret Teachings of All Ages (1923...)"
I love that book. It's hilarious. I love how he constantly confuses Greek deities with their Roman counterparts.
Astute observer
Nice catch of the "megalithic" yard reference, however, it was interesting how narration and editing let it just come and go. For AA and AU the megalithic yard on Oak Island would've been milked for one entire episode.
Steve in SoDak
I tried watching this piece of garbage once or twice, they had some clown talking about the Ark of the Covenant and then they were in France doing some Templar crap and all I could think was "they're just trying to marry every fringe history/conspiracy theory program to bring in viewers of the lowest common denominator." So if you don't feel up to reviewing this anymore, I really won't mind. Sorry to be a "Debby Downer".
Jason, just to get all of this Templar nonsense out of the way, you should just create a section dedicated to them in debunking these myths. Either that or just get one large post out of the way, and reference back to it so that you can make these reviews go by faster for you.
"Alan Butler, who regular readers will remember as the man who (a) believes the moon was built by time-traveling Freemasons"
Jason, you CANNOT be serious!
I am: "They left Earth a companion planet, which would not only ensure that intelligent life would one day develop on the Earth, but which at the same time, in combination with the Earth, would leave the circle in the square ratio which could only mean that 'someone' had been here. In essence, they created the Moon."
See here for links: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/alan-butler-moon-built-by-time-traveling-humans-washington-monument-signals-mithras-worship
The Europeans that faked all of this stuff centuries ago must be laughing in their afterlife about all this speculative nonsense. Europe during the middle ages had no claim what so ever to anything in Isreal, including any possible ark, divine bloodline, cup or secret order.
When the Bablyonians invaded Isreal they took this stuff and it's gone. Then many centuries later, the European secret order finds them somehow and takes them to the west. Yeah right. As real as the medieval shroud of Turin, or bits of the True Cross.
If the Isrealites got the ark of the covenant out of the temple before the Meeds and Persians came, before Bablyon actually, it was lost on the way to Africa, not on the way to the new world, which they could not reach. (The continent was there but they could not reach it).
The holy bloodline is total bunk. Jesus' stepsons are not recorded beyond the end books of the new testament, which is the only way his bloodline could have happened. He didn't have any children.
The holy grail is a myth from the Europeans. The cup was not preserved at all in the Bible text. It would have been a simple cup and would have long been lost.
Oak Island is nothing but another flim flam show and not all that interesting.
Varika
Kal, Jesus having stepsons isn't recorded AT ALL, since there is no record whatever of him even having a wife, much less a wife with kids already in tow.
You're right about the grail, though. The grail was an invention of High Medieval bards and poets as a sort of metaphor for the hunt for spirituality and God and purity and all that stuff.
As for the Ark of the Covenant, there's no knowing whether it would have headed south toward Africa or not on an escape route--not that it would have headed for America (because they didn't even KNOW it was there!)--so it really needs to end with "and if they got it out of the Temple before the invasion, we have NO IDEA where they took it."
That's what I meant. He has stepbrothers but he did not have any sons and was not married to Mary Magdeline or anyone. He was the bridegroom and the church the bride, and not married.
The Meads likely didn't know what the ark was if they got it. A big golden covered wooden box like that would have been destroyed or sold long ago.
The Grail is totally a myth from much later.
Oak Island is little scarier than watching a spooky movie about the woods each week. If you're scared of the woods, it probably is interesting, I am not impressed.
terry the censor
> He has stepbrothers
Jesus had stepbrothers? Who was the mother of these brothers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORIICgi-0GI
Jesus with a coffee cup
He means half-brothers, four of them, sisters too. They were the biological children of Mary and Joseph.
John Dunham
Wow - is it just me or is spending an hour getting ready to do a dive that - well nobody is going to do - is a total waste of TV time??
Michael Reeld
EP wrote "I really do urge you to read Brooke before spending too much time on some random web strangers. (And from what I've seen of Michael G. Reed, he's rather unimpressive.)"
Yes. Brookes book is excellent and should be read by anyone exploring the subject.
George Miller is hardly anonymous. He has presented under his own name at the Mormon History Association conference (as I have). He has done the same on podcast interviews. Both he and I are also cited in Mike Homers new book (published by the University of Utah). I am curious as to what you have seen of my work, EP? Have you read/listened to my work on the endwoment on the "Christianization of Freemasony"? How about my work on "The Notion of Ancient Metal Records in Joseph Smith's Day"? My book "Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo", although it only briefly discusses freemasonry, the book has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from respected Mormon and non-Mormon scholars. My current research on "The In[ter]vention of Tradition: a Comparative study of the Lead Plates of Granada Spain and the Gold Plates of the New World" will discuss treasure seeking, and most likely also cover material on freemasonry.
I take that back about podcasts under Miller's real name. I may have misremembered.
DD link
It's a shame they've started to bring the traveling circus in. Like someone said above, they usually just rolled their eyes at these folks and then got back to digging and mucking around in the swamp. It's no doubt the producers behind that stuff. Haven't seen most of the second season, so can't comment on all of the episodes.
Lisangelo
Firstly, congratulations for sharing your articles.
Some may think to tackle foolishness spoke by this illusion monkers on TV could be a waste of time, but i think paramount.
I can't take such pile of nonsense being selled without a counterpart.
Congratulations also for your courage facing them.
I wonder if those special guests who appear in tv shows as 'specialists', such as Kathleen McGowan in Curse of Oak Island or David Childress in Search of Aliens, actually are paying for screen time.
William and Henry Sinclair did NOT testify AGAINST the Templars. Read the correct translation by Helen J. Nicholson in her book "Proceedings against the Templars in the British Isles."
https://www.amazon.com/Proceedings-against-Templars-British-Isles/dp/0754653943
The fact that Rosslyn Chapel and Castle are only about 7 miles from Balantradoch suggests the Sinclairs could easily have know some Knights Templar members.
William sneddon
The story of Kilwinning Abbey being the place where the covenant was stored is nonsense.
However there was a knight templar connection when the Abbey was founded by Richard de Morville and Robert de Morville , one of which was one of the Templar assasins of Thomas Beckett.