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Flanking the main entrance
is a pair of sphinx guarding the Temple. They are
comprised of a lion's body and a man's head, signifying
great strength and master intelligence and are symbolic
of mystery. Between the paws is a granite sphere,
polished and inscribed to represent the Terrestrial
Sphere (shown) and Celestial Sphere. (Chris Detrick/The
Salt Lake Tribune) |
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| Dan Brown clearly enjoys
playing with legends, history, symbols and secrets. And
readers' minds. In his best-selling novel, The Da Vinci
Code, Brown wove all these - real and imagined - into a
breathless mystery about Christianity, Mary Magdalene and the
Divine Feminine that has spawned an industry of de-coders
eager to separate fact from fiction.
Now that he has turned his attention to the mysteries of
Freemasonry, the centuries-old fraternal order, the new book
also might deal with Mormonism.
But
rather than announce the Da Vinci sequel in a news
release, Brown embedded tantalizing clues to its subject on
the book's jacket. Written in typeface that is slightly larger
and bolder than the rest (it requires a magnifying glass to
find them all) are the words: is there no help for the widows
son.
"O Lord, my God, is there no help
for the widow's son?" was used historically as a Masonic
distress call, but when journalist David Shugarts plugged it
into Google, the first hit was a 1974 speech given by an LDS
Institute of Religion teacher, Reed C. Durham, at the
University of Utah.
Joseph Smith, the
founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
reportedly began to utter the call as he fell from a second
story window after being fatally shot by a mob in a Carthage,
Ill., jail in 1844, Durham said.
In an
electrifying presidential address to the Mormon History
Association meeting in Nauvoo, Ill., he traced close parallels
between Smith's account of digging gold plates out of a New
York hillside and Masonic tales of Enoch and buried treasure.
Smith wore a "Jupiter talisman," or what his wife called "his
Masonic jewel," and LDS temple ceremonies bear a striking
resemblance to Masonic rituals, he said.
The
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The Winding Staircase,
like all Masonic symbols, is illustrative of discipline
and doctrine, and opens to us a wide field of moral and
speculative inquiry. (Chris Detrick/The Salt Lake
Tribune) |
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| speech was so controversial
that Durham's superiors in the LDS Educational System forced
him to issue a public apology.
The
speech was never published but was surreptitiously taped and
has floated around on the Internet for years.
It may have also caught Brown's
attention, Shugarts speculates, and may provide one plot twist
in Brown's next book, tentatively titled The Solomon
Key. Brown confirmed in a speech last year that the book's
mystery will be set in Washington, D.C., where many
architectural features were drawn from Masonry, and will
feature the same lead character,
Harvard-professor-turned-detective Robert Langdom.
Getting a jump on the novel's historical
context, Shugarts has written Secrets of the Widow's Son:
The Mysteries Surrounding the Sequel to The Da Vinci Code.
He provides a broad history of
Mormonism, including its brush with Masonry in the 19th
century. It also offers nuggets about Masonic history such as
these: At least eight signers of the Declaration of
Independence were Masons, as were 13 U.S. presidents including
George Washington. A Freemason released Paul Revere from
British custody on the night of his famous ride, after he
determined that Revere was a Mason. Mozart's "Magic Flute" and
Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King were
written as Masonic allegories.
The
Washington Monument and a similar monument on Bunker Hill in
Boston, were not just coincidentally shaped like an Egyptian
obelisks, but intentionally designed to honor Masonic
allusions to ancient Egyptian mystical wisdom.
Much of the symbolism is mathematical,
even geometrical, which could explain why the fraternity has
attracted rationalists such as Voltaire, Goethe, Benjamin
Franklin and Mark Twain.
"We've heard
from Masons
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One of the rooms in the
Temple. The Salt Lake Masonic Temple was completed in
1927 and was built in 1 year, 3 months, and 22 days. The
architect of the temple was Carl W. Scott and George W
Welch. (Chris Detrick/The Salt Lake Tribune) |
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| that they feel that [Brown
is] going to do them justice," says Dan Burstein, who wrote
the introduction to Shugarts' book. "He seems to be favorably
disposed to thinking of Masons as an important historical
underground movement, pushing the world towards democracy and
enlightenment."
Today there are nearly 2
million Masons in the United States, with 2,250 members in 29
Utah lodges.
"We have a lot of Mormons
who are Masons in this state, but we don't know exactly how
many," says Ridgley Gilmour, Grand Master of Utah Masonic
Lodge. "Anyone with a belief in God can petition to join but
we don't ask what religion they are."
Gilmour was adamant the Masonry is not a
"secret society," but a fraternal order with large-scale
charitable giving built on deeply held American values of
family, God and country.
"The only
secrets we have are little signs and passwords which we use
because it's an ancient custom, and, frankly, it's fun,''
Gilmour says.
It remains to be seen how
much Mormon history will feature in the novel, (Brown's wife
reportedly was raised in the LDS Church) but if the reaction
to Durham's 1974 speech is any indication, any link between
the two could be controversial in Utah.
For his part, Nicholas S. Literski, an
active Mormon and Mason living in Nauvoo, thinks Latter-day
Saints misunderstand the similarities. But they are
significant.
"Everybody wants to obsess
over supposed similarities in ritual," he says. "But that's
just one aspect. Everything about Joseph and his family was
tied into Masonic legends."
The Mormon connection: Smith's father,
Joseph Smith Sr. joined a Masonic lodge when the family moved
to Palmyra,
N.Y., in 1816. Later,
Smith's brother Hyrum also joined. From them, Smith heard the
story of a lost sacred word that was engraved upon a
triangular plate of pure gold. The word was the name of God.
It makes sense that he would go
searching for such treasure in the large American Indian
burial mounds near his home, says Literski, author of the
forthcoming book, Method Infinite: Freemasonry and the
Mormon Restoration.
And when Smith
reported finding an ancient record written on plates of gold,
he used "distinctively Masonic language to describe the
experience," Literski says.
The church,
which claimed to restore ancient truths of Christianity lost
through the ages, attracted many members of the Masonic
fraternity who traced their own roots back centuries and had
similar esoteric teachings.
By the
1840s, many Mormon leaders in Nauvoo, including Smith and
apostles Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, became Masons and
organized a lodge there under the auspices of the Grand Lodge
of Illinois. It wasn't long before nearly every male member of
the church in the area had joined. At the same time, Smith
introduced LDS temple rituals that included secret handshakes,
signs and symbols like the all-seeing eye, the compass and
square (tools of the mason's trade) and the sun, moon and
stars that echoed Masonry.
Soon,
though, other Masons felt that the Mormons were dominating the
fraternity. In 1842, the Nauvoo Lodge was suspended. Many
Mormons believed that Masons contributed to the murder of
their prophet.
Antagonisms built up
between the two groups. In Utah in 1860, Masonic lodges were
established but they prohibited Mormons from joining. At the
same time, Young forbade Mormons from joining and refused to
allow any Mason to hold priesthood leadership positions in the
church, Literski says.
It wasn't until
1984 that LDS President Spencer W. Kimball removed the
prohibition against Latter-day Saints becoming Freemasons.
Later that year, the Grand Lodge of Utah removed its own ban
on Mormon membership so that, in the ensuing years, many
Latter-day Saint men have returned to this part of their
heritage.
In the
novelist's mind: Shugarts says it was not his intention
to be a plot spoiler for Brown's sequel. He couldn't do that
if he wanted. But he did offer a primer on Masonry and
Mormonism for those who will want to explore, as they did with
Da Vinci, just how much of what Brown writes is really
history.
"I had to push out in every
direction possible," Shugarts said in a phone interview from
his Connecticut home. "I read five books about Mormon history
and thousands of Internet Web sites. I tried to be thorough
and fair."
Though he only dedicated four
or five pages to Mormons in a 200-page book, he's already
heard from unhappy Latter-day Saints who accuse him of
misreading or a biased approach to LDS history, a charge he
rejects.
"Prior to embarking on my
research, I had no particular opinion of Joseph Smith or the
details of the founding of the [LDS ]Church," he wrote to one
critic. "But I had met a few Mormons and they always impressed
me as fine people. After delving into the story of Joseph
Smith, I understood a lot more about LDS. I remain impressed
that Mormons are fine people."
It will
be interesting to see if Brown sees them that way as well.
Literski isn't worried.
"He'll weave a
good conspiracy," Literski says, "but no matter how inventive
Dan Brown gets in terms of the connection, he will fall short
of just how deep that story does go."
Even in Smith's day, there were Masons
who believed the legends were historical truth and saw
Freemasonry as a deeply spiritual, mystical quest. Other, more
sophisticated members, discounted the old stories, wanting to
refocus it along the lines of a charitable and benevolent
institution.
The Smiths were about as
far into mysticism as you can get, Literski says. "Joseph was
rebuilding Solomon's temple with all the legendary baggage
that came along with that."
Seeing the
relationship between the two groups forces Mormons like
Literski to revise his ideas about how God interacts with a
prophet.
"You cannot understand what is
going on in Joseph's mind unless you can know what he is
seeing, hearing, feeling and touching," he says. "That gives
me a stronger position of faith than would this idea that
revelation is ex nihilo. Joseph was not a puppet."
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Contact
Peggy Fletcher Stack at pstack@sltrib.com or
801-257-8725. Send comments on this article to
religioneditor@sltrib.com.
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