Publisher's Synopsis
About 60% of the content of this revised edition was first published in 2007 to mark the seven hundredth anniversary of the destruction of the Knights Templar in 1307, under the title Turning the Templar Key. I have revisited that material to create this new edition that is a fuller discussion of How, Where and Why Freemasonry started and returns to the issue of whether the Knights Templar had anything to do with the genesis of Freemasonry. The main questions which I posed myself when I wrote Turning the Templar Key were. 1. Did the original Knights Templar survive their apparent destruction and morph into Freemasonry? 2. Are the Masonic Knights Templar the legitimate successors of the original Order of Knights Templar founded in Jerusalem and disbanded in 1307? Whilst investigating these questions, and explaining and discussing them in Masonic lectures, I uncovered the real history of Freemasonry. I discovered how it came to have such a strange legacy of mythical histories, including the persistent and popular idea that Masons are really Knights Templar in disguise. The original book, which had to meet the anniversary of the destruction of the Templars did not leave enough space to tell the full story. Large sections of the purely Masonic material had to be cut out to meet the publication dead- lines and that is something I have always regretted. As I have since uncovered more detail I decided to revisit the book and write this revised and extended edition. This edition focuses purely on the role Templarism played in the development of Freemasonry. Whilst writing it I decided to remove a lot of material which was concerned with the ancient origins of major Masonic mythical themes and symbols (I do intend to revisit those chapters on Symbolism and write a revised and extended volume on the Ancient Origins of Symbolism). I have added more historical information about Freemasonry and if you are interested in where the Craft really came from, and how it developed, then this book will enlighten you.
