Lawrence Gardner, The Shadow of Solomon: The Lost Secrets of the Freemasons Revealed, Weiser Books, San Francisco, 2007.
Lawrence Gardner is a Freemason and former Master Mason of the United Grand Lodge of England. He begins The Shadow of Solomon with a description of the original Invisible College of the late 1600’s and how eager its members were to penetrate and grasp ancient knowledge that early Freemasonry would also strive to regain. Gardner writes that:
“Intellectuals of the era, such as Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Isaac Newton..knew that Masonic lore was connected with kabbalah wisdom philiosophy (an ancient tradition of enlightenment based on material and spiritual realms of consciousness)…They researched the technology of the ancient Babylonians, the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato, and the mystery traditions of old Egypt…Despite their own considerable scientific achievements, they also knew they lived only in the shadow of King Solomon, whom Newton called ‘the greatest philosopher in the world.’ …Referring to the great masters of old, Newton wrote that, ‘There are things which only they understand’.”
For Newton and his associates, being history’s “greatest philosopher” meant possessing a profound understanding of “sacred science.” According to Jewish tradition, Solomon was a practitioner, and master, of “divine technology.” He was said to have, defying gravity, somehow kept the Ark of the Covenant suspended in the air and wore, in Gardner’s words, “a magic ring with a gem that could cut through stone with silent precision.” Solomon’s Temple, Newton asserted, was the “perfect microcosm of existence” and his diagrammatic Description of the Temple of Solomon is still in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. According to Gardner, Newton made use of the dimensions and geometry of Solomon’s Jerusalem Temple when developing his theory of gravitation.
Solomon himself was perceived as the inheritor of an even much more ancient tradition. Newton studied the venerable “Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trimegistus” and made his own translation of the Corpus Hermeticum that dated from Roman Empire neo-Platonists but had its origins in pharonic Egypt. Gardner writes that Christopher Wren was just as enthusiastic as Newton about the “extraordinary mathematical magic they both saw at work in the geometry of Solomon’s Temple.” Dr. John Watkins, the initiator of the Invisible College, was an “unusually free-thinking churchman” as well as the Warden of Wadham College, Oxford” and a future bishop also absorbed in studying the wisdom of the ancient world.
The Invisible College began with secret meetings at night in an Oxford apothecary shop to discuss “prohibited subjects.” Ironically, Wilkins was also, at the same time, married to Oliver Cromwell’s sister. Members of Wilkins’ clandestine group included Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and William Petty. Isaac Newton would soon become closely connected with this circle as well. Among the questions delved into were the mysteries of alchemy. They were, according to Gardner, especially intrigued that the “Philosopher’s Stone”, the ultimate attainment of alchemical science, was associated with the defiance of gravity. Wilkins’ Mathematical Magic reflected his own alchemical interests.
By the 1660’s, Gardner writes:
“London was bustling again after 11 years of puritanical suppression. Charles II … allowed an abandoned gaiety to prevail, reopening the inns and theaters, while at the same time a new romantic spirit of learning and enquiry was born… a constant whirl of frock-coated bewigged gentlemen, embroiled in the fevered conversation of inns and coffee houses. The City of London presented a colorful stage…a world of doctors and merchants, financiers, fine ladies, and costermongers- all amid a bustle of carriages in narrow, rutted streets where flower girls cried, paupers begged, and the women of the night plied their trade.”
Masonic tradition said that the legendary Hiram Abiff, the builder of Solomon’s Temple, had been a member of an even more ancient society, the “Dionysian Artificers”, who had been masters of sacred geometry and hermetic philosophy. In Jerusalem they called themselves the “Children of Solomon” and used Solomon’s seal of two interlaced triangles as their symbol. According to Gardner and others, this elusive, semi-underground fraternity of the “Children of Solomon” had later also built Chartres Cathedral.
By 1127, the Knights Templar had completed their excavations beneath the ruins of Solomon’s Temple. When they returned to France with what they had recovered, St. Bernard wrote that:
“The work has been accomplished with our help and the Knights have been sent on a journey through France and Burgundy under the protection of the Count of Champagne, where all precautions can be taken against all interference by public or ecclesiastical authority.”
Later Bernard would translate a work on the geometry utilized by King Solomon’s masons that he then gifted to the Templars. A painting from 1844, still hanging in the Palace of Versailles and included by Gardner, shows the Templars with the recovered Ark of the Covenant in their Paris Chapter House in April 1147.
Chartres Cathedral had been largely destroyed by fire and construction of the new one began in 1194. Many believe the Templars and “Children of Solomon” may have created Chartres as the new sanctuary for the Ark. Of all the gothic cathedrals of the Ile de France, Chartres was, in addition, believed to rest on especially sacred ground. Telluric earth currents were said to course especially strongly there and, since Druid times, the site had been felt to possess a powerful spiritual presence. The holiness of the Chartres Cathedral butte itself is one reason that, unlike every other cathedral in France, no bodies have ever been interred inside or beneath it. The original altar at Chartres was, Gardner tells us, “built above a ‘Grotte des Druides’ which housed a dolmen” and was perceived as a ‘womb’ leading even father down into the earth.
Other treasures unearthed by the Templars from beneath Jerusalem, Gardner believes, may have later been hidden away in the strange and unique Rosslyn Chapel outside Edinburgh. Ornamented with striking neo-pagan imagery, it was begun in 1446 by Templars who had managed to survive in Scotland that had become, along with Portugal and Switzerland, a refuge for the Templars. In the lore of Freemasonry, Roselyn Chapel is sometimes referred to as the “Chapel of the Holy Grail.”
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A frequently recurring underlying theme in esoteric ancient traditions, Gardner reminds us, is gold. It is there so often, he notes, it becomes easy to overlook its importance and true role. Not only was gold a potential product of alchemy, but it was also closely linked to the even more extraordinary generation of the wondrous “philosopher’s stone.” An enigmatic “white powder” derived from gold and sometimes referred to as “white bread”, is referenced multiple times in ancient Egyptian texts. In carvings at the Temple of Karnak, cones of it are shown being presented to Pharaoh Tuthmoses III. The priesthood of Heliopolis during this time of approximately 1500 BC was, according to Gardner, called the “White Brotherhood” because of their belief in the important role of this powder.
These priests were also called the “Theraputae”, or healers, and would later possess strong ties with the Essene community on the Dead Sea. In both locations, the healing arts were a major focus of their activities. The philosopher’s stone itself, perhaps in the form of this white, or sometimes golden, powder, was described many times down through the centuries as the “ultimate elixir” that could prolong life and cure any illness. According to Michael Baigent, Jesus would later have connections with this same sect both in Egypt and Galilee.
The ancient Egyptians, Gardner writes, made other kinds of uses of gold as well. Pyramids and obelisks were capped at their apex by a “pyramidion” covered with “tcham”, recently discovered to have been a superconductive form of gold in a glass-like state. Energized light waves could, Gardner tells us, be detected and enhanced by “tcham” and then stored as electromagnetic energy. Freemasonry has long held that Moses, as an Egyptian prince, had been trained in these same secrets and even himself been an Egyptian priest at Heliopolis.
Gold, in the form we know it, may have been crucial to generating the philosopher’s stone itself. Gardner quotes Eirenaeus Philalethes, an alchemist himself and mentor of Royal Society members who wrote in 1667 that:
“It is called a stone by virtue of its fixed nature; it resists the action of fire as successfully as any stone. In species it is gold, more purer than the purest; it is fixed and incombustible like a stone, but its appearance is that of a very fine powder.”
The philosopher’s stone is not, however, always described as having the appearance of gold. The color red, or glowing ruby scarlet, is also often associated with the philosopher’s stone. Fulcanelli wrote that it is, “capable of shining in the darkness with a soft, red phosphorescent light.” In other accounts it is described as a viscous, milky-white, opalescent liquid. According to B J T Dobbs, when Isaac Newton wrote in his laboratory notebook of his finally achieving success in generating “the stone”, however, he described a tiny “tree” of golden leaves sprouting like a shoot from the potent “quintessence” he had so laboriously refined, a result that may have startled even Newton.
Such important figures of 17th century science as Newton and Boyle, Gardner adds, were aware that in times long past secrets of the nature of matter had been understood which had since been lost. The several destructions by fire of the once-unparalleled Great Library of Alexandria were viewed as especially tragic and serious losses. It was in an effort to re-access that since forgotten knowledge that members of the Invisible College, and later the Royal Society, spent much of their lives researching ancient cultures.
In Egypt, Gardner tells us, gold became the basis for the miraculous “white bread”, possessing the mysterious “power of projection”, that became known as ‘manna” as well as later the “philosopher’s stone.” In Exodus, Moses transforms the Golden Calf into an ingestible powder. Revelations also refers to manna:
“To him that overcometh I will give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”
In Corinthians, manna is said to be a spiritual food, while the Gospel of John cites it as the true bread of the Eucharist. Was it also, Gardner asks, the “daily bread” mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer set out in Mathew and derived from a hymn to the Egyptian god Amen.
Moses, most intriguingly of all, placed a bowl of manna inside the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant occupied a central place in the religious life of ancient Israel and in communication between God and humans. In physical form it was a four foot coffer made for Moses, following divine directions, entirely gold-lined inside and out and with a solid gold lid surmounted by a pair of cherubs, also of gold. It was so highly charged it could kill anyone who touched it without the correct precautions. Everyone except for the Levite priests who tended the Ark was ordered to stay at least 1,000 yards away. In battle, it could become a terrifying weapon. In the Bible, the power of the Ark was said to be in the Ark-light which emanated from between the golden cherubim, and sent out spears like bolts of lightning.
The construction of the Ark, Gardner tells us was, in fact, precisely like that of a modern electrical capacitor and would have been able to draw enough energy into storage from the atmosphere to produce many tens of thousands of volts. This high voltage electrical fire was, according to Gardner, used to transform gold into an exotic white powder linked to the legendary “philosopher’s stone. It not only had medical benefits but also the power to defy gravity with its weight changing structure. Gardner believes its use, by infusing the glass with “Spiritus Mundi”, the “cosmic breath of the universe”, was also one of the secrets of the brilliantly luminous windows of the gothic cathedrals and Sainte Chappelle.
Gardner believes that the “Royal Art” was actually the alchemical process which transposed “Transition group-1 metals into a single atomic state” described by modern physicists as “ORMEs –Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic Elements”. Rendered as a fine white powder and classified as “exotic matter”, this substance has unique anti-gravitational and superconductive attributes. When heated, according to Gardner, it can reach a state where it defies gravity entirely, weighing less than nothing. In addition, Gardner beieves, this white powder was capable of transposing its own weightlessness to its host, which could be a simple metal pan or multi-ton block of stone.
How were the massive 80 ton corner-stones of Solomon’s Temple lifted 100 feet above the ground? How were the equally enormous blocks of the Great Pyramid raised and put into place? The anti-gravitational attributes of this “Ormus” material, according to Gardner believes, may have played a crucial role. Gardner notes as well that the lid of the Ark, if made of solid gold, would have weighed, itself alone, over a ton. Without its own gravity-defying self-levitation, perhaps a result of the bowl of manna inside, there is no way it could have been born by four men on wooden poles, no matter how strong they were.
There are, in addition, other connections between this white powder substance and the mysteries of the Great Pyramid. When the King’s Chamber was first entered by Islamic explorers, the only item inside was an imposing but lidless granite coffer that contained no dead body or mummy but instead only a layer of a mysterious white powdery substance. Because gravity determines space-time, Gardner tells us intriguingly that, “elements which can defy gravity are capable of bending space-time.” In the Bible, Ormus was also called “highward fire-stone” as well as “shem-an na, which was abbreviated in the Old Testament to “manna”. Newton was especially fascinated by the alchemical treatise Manna and may have made use of it in his discovery of the Law of Gravity.
In terms of providing health benefits and other uses, Gardner writes that:
“The secret of its operation lies in a particular light-wave which exists at the nuclear center…a slow wave-form light which resonates precisely with the light frequency of human DNA and constitutes the very Light of Life itself…At a temperature of 1160 degrees C it moves through a stage of being a brilliantly clear gold glass which is superconductive.”
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