Manga version of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ a hit in Japan

Pages from Japan’s manga style “Mein Kampf”

Sales of a comic version of Adolf Hitler’s notorious political tract Mein Kampf have become a hit in Japan.

Telegraph | Sep 30, 2009

By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo

The manga book describes both Hitler’s autobiography and his infamous Nazi manifesto in the unlikely form of easy-to-read comic pictures and captions.

Since it was published in Japan last November, its popularity has soared, with sales of more than 45,000.

The book, which forms part of a series on world classics turned into manga, covers a range of aspects of Hitler’s life, from his childhood to the formation of his political party.

Its success in Japan has reportedly ignited a debate in Germany about whether the ban on the work imposed since 1945 should be overturned.

The current copyright of the book within Germany lies in the hands of the finance ministry of the state of Bavaria which will not reproduce it out of respect to the relatives of those who suffered during Hitler’s regime.

Japanese publishers East Press are no strangers to tapping into the trend of bringing political tracts into the 21st century: the current series also includes a popular manga version of Karl Marx’s seminal anti-capitalist tome Das Kapital.

Manga enjoys a soaring popularity in Japan, with its most high-profile fans including the former prime minister Taro Aso.

Along with Nazism and anti-capitalism, there are few topics that are regarded as sacred from being transformed into manga. Previous issues tackled range from delicate Japanese-Chinese relations to the spread of bird flu.

Abortion Addict Confesses 15 Procedures in 16 Years

Repeat Abortions Baffle Experts, as Author Irene Vilar Explores Her ‘Impossible Motherhood’

ABC | Sep 21, 2009

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES

Irene Vilar worries that her self-described “abortion addiction” will be misunderstood, twisted by the pro-life movement to deny women the right to choose.

Her book, “Impossible Motherhood,” which will be released by Other Press on Oct. 6, chronicles her own dark choices: 15 abortions in 16 years, much of it as a married woman.

As press on the book has begun to leak out, Vilar — a literary agent and editor — says she has already sensed “an inkling of hatred.”

Vilar has scheduled only closed-door interviews and will not do a book tour. At the urging of her husband, they have made sure all public property records do not reflect her name, so she cannot be targeted at their home.

“I am worried about my safety and the hate mail,” she told ABCNews.com in a telephone interview as her home-schooled children were at work on a painting project.

“No book like this has ever been written,” she told ABCNews.com. “I just imagine the ‘baby killer’ and I could be a poster child for that kind of fundamentalism. And there are my little kids in all of that.”

Today, at 40, the Latina author has two young children, but her troubled past continues to haunt her well into motherhood.

She grew up in the shadow of her notorious grandmother Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebron, who stormed the Capitol steps with a gun in 1954. Lebron served 25 years in jail for the crime until receiving a pardon from President Carter in 1979.

Her mother committed suicide by throwing herself from a moving car when Vilar was 8 and two of her brothers were heroin addicts.

Mass Sterilization in Puerto Rico

Vilar’s story is set against the backdrop of the American-led mass sterilization program in her native Puerto Rico from 1955 to 1969, a fitting symbol for her struggle with her own reproduction.

By 1974, 37 percent of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been permanently sterilized in that experiment.

“Women tend to repeat behaviors,” Vilar said of herself. Her mother’s forced hysterectomy without hormone treatment at the age of 33, led to depression and a Valium addition.

Vilar attended boarding school in New Hampshire and was just 15 when she left for Syracuse University, where she fell in love and later married her first husband, a tyrannical 50-year-old professor.

With a predilection for young women, he bragged that his relationships had never lasted more than five years and that having children killed sexual desire.

She says their emotionally dependent relationship was riddled with shame, self-mutilation and several suicide attempts.

Full Story

Catholic Freemason Lauds Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol

American Freemason Lauds Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol; Launches Website as Proof to Brown’s Claim

PRWeb | Sep 21, 2009

American Freemason and New York psychologist Dr. Patrick Swift launches website InterfaithReligiousTolerance.net as proof to one of Dan Brown’s claims regarding Freemasonry in the Lost Symbol. Swift is editor of the website, a member of George Washington Lodge #285 in New York City, and a practicing Catholic who previously studied to become a Jesuit priest.

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 21, 2009 — American Freemason and New York psychologist Dr. Patrick Swift launches website InterfaithReligiousTolerance.net as proof to one of Dan Brown’s claims regarding Freemasonry in the Lost Symbol. Swift is editor of the website, a member of George Washington Lodge #285 in New York City, and a practicing Catholic who previously studied to become a Jesuit priest.

In The Lost Symbol (http://www.thelostsymbol.com/), Dan Brown presents his main character Robert Langdon teaching that, “One of the prerequisites for becoming a Mason is that you must believe in a higher power. The difference between Masonic spirituality and organized religion is that the Masons do not impose a specific definition or name on a higher power.” Swift supports that statement as accurate, but says Brown takes artistic license as well. “He is absolutely correct to write that religious tolerance is one of the foundational principles of Freemasonry,” says Swift. “It’s what drew me to the Fraternity in the first place, and continues to inspire me today. I must say though that I’m no official voice for Freemasonry.”

“I have enormous respect for the Masons,” Brown told The Associated Press during a recent interview (Yahoo! News) (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090915/ap_en_ot/us_books_brown_masons). “In the most fundamental terms, with different cultures killing each other over whose version of God is correct, here is a worldwide organization that essentially says, `We don’t care what you call God, or what you think about God, only that you believe in a God and let’s all stand together as brothers and look in the same direction.”

A healthcare provider to 9/11 victims and author of One Mountain, Many Paths, Swift promotes religious tolerance with his website and offers it as proof that at least one of Brown’s basic claims about Freemasonry is accurate. According to the website, the mission of InterfaithReligiousTolerance.net is to promote communication and constructive dialogue between people of faith – regardless of any difference in spiritual orientation, faith, creed, or religious denomination (details) (http://www.interfaithreligioustolerance.net/About.html).

“I feel compelled to speak out in support of religious tolerance because intolerance and bigotry threaten to tear our country and our world apart,” says Swift.  “Religious tolerance is a basic American value within our government and our Constitution. Founding Fathers like George Washington, Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, and John Hancock understood the importance of this as Freemasons.”

Holding a firm belief that our likenesses vastly outnumber our differences, Swift compiled his award-winning book One Mountain, Many Paths (Double Eagle Press) in the wake of 9/11. Swift’s book contains uplifting quotes from the sacred texts of all the great religious traditions, organized into chapters such as “Love One Another” and “Love Your Enemy.” Swift is giving away free copies of his book online at InterfaithReligiousTolerance.net (http://www.interfaithreligioustolerance.net/).

A clinical psychologist at a major medical center in Manhattan with faculty appointments in neurology and rehabilitation medicine, Swift has cared for thousands of people from different faiths and offers diversity training to healthcare providers (details at PatrickSwift.com (http://www.patrickswift.com/). “One of my favorite stories involves a time when I worked with a Muslim physician from Pakistan to care for a Hindu patient from India, with me as a Catholic neuropsychologist from Texas. Religion doesn’t have to be a dividing force between us. It can actually bring us closer together.”

Click here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af6WKMh-t7o) to watch Dr. Swift speak at a performing arts center in Ohio. See him on the O’Reilly Factor here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw1djiEEARA).

About Double Eagle Press LLC:

Established in 2006, Double Eagle Press’ mission is to produce hardcover, trade paperback, and e-book editions that make a positive difference in the world. Their consumers are people who care about the world in which they live and strive for peace and tranquility in their own lives. National and international book distribution is available through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and The Bookmasters Group. Double Eagle Press publishes Interfaith Religious Tolerance.net and is solely responsible for its content.

Contact:

Dr. Patrick Swift

Double Eagle Press LLC

(862) 205-1924

###

Contact Information
Patrick Swift
InterfaithReligiousTolerance.net
http://www.interfaithreligioustolerance.net/
(862) 205-1924

The Kiwi attempt to crack Da Vinci Code

Michael Baigent is one of the world’s leading published experts on Freemasonry. Photo / AP

Baigent, a Freemason and editor of UK’s Freemasonry Today, is one of the world’s leading published experts on the esoteric subject. His 1989 history, The Temple and the Lodge, may not have been a bestseller but it broke new ground in exploring links between the Masons, the establishment of Washington DC, and the American War of Independence.

It claimed that commanders on both side were Masons, and they agreed that the English would “throw” certain battles because it was in no one’s interests to destroy the economic base of the American colonies in their entirety.

NZ Herald | Sep 20, 2009

By Jonathan Milne

Michael Baigent might feel a little as if he were in the middle of thriller, ever looking over his shoulder at the small, blond baby-faced man following behind him.

Worse, that thriller is written by the baby-faced man – and that man, Dan Brown, has made Baigent’s story his own.

Not in the sense of copyright breach, you understand. Brown was cleared of that in 2006 by one of England’s highest courts.

No, in the sense that Brown’s own take on Baigent’s book about Jesus of Nazareth’s bloodline turned into The Da Vinci Code – the biggest success story in adult publishing since – well, since the Bible. It has sold 81 million copies worldwide, and was made into a movie starring Tom Hanks.

This month, Random House in New Zealand ordered a print-run of 100,000 copies of Brown’s new novel, The Lost Symbol.

And the book chains are setting aside almost their entire Christmas contingency budgets to buy in more copies, should it – as they expect – go lunar.

The irony for Nelson-born Baigent, who unsuccessfully sued Brown for breach of intellectual property over the Code, is that the subject matter of the new book is Freemasonry.

And Baigent, a Freemason and editor of UK’s Freemasonry Today, is one of the world’s leading published experts on the esoteric subject. His 1989 history, The Temple and the Lodge, may not have been a bestseller but it broke new ground in exploring links between the Masons, the establishment of Washington DC, and the American War of Independence.

It claimed that commanders on both side were Masons, and they agreed that the English would “throw” certain battles because it was in no one’s interests to destroy the economic base of the American colonies in their entirety.

The Herald on Sunday was the only New Zealand paper to cover the Code trial at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, and it was to this paper that Auckland-educated Baigent spoke.

The £2.3 million ($6.3m) legal fees cost Baigent and his wife Jane all the royalties from his 2006 bestseller, The Jesus Papers – and their elegant five-storey terraced house in the cathedral town of Bath.

“The lawyers took it,” Baigent says this weekend. “They took everything. But that’s the way it goes: you win or you lose.”

Now they have a small place in the Home Counties.

Dan Brown, he says, knew The Temple and the Lodge well.

Indeed, this week’s book about Freemasonry was to have been published in 2006 as The Solomon Key – but for unspecified delays. Baigent says an early draft script based on the book went to Columbia Pictures three years ago, “exploring similar themes” to his book.

The reasons for the delay are unknown. But the published version this week steers well clear of the specific historical claims made by Baigent about the War of Independence.

Book reviewer Nicky Pellegrino writes today (Detours magazine) that Brown’s new book is “laced with every talisman, myth and symbol Brown could muster and dotted with his signature indigestible lumps of historical research”.

Baigent is to review the book for The Daily Beast in the US. Yesterday, he laughed off the book’s portrayal of a powerful and secretive Masonic Lodge. “I’ve never heard of wine being drunk from a human skull,” he says. “And if Freemasonry had been that powerful, I would never have lost the case.”

Dan Brown may have pulled off PR coup for a “kinder, gentler” Freemasonry

Masons: the reluctant text symbols

heraldscotland.com | Sep 20, 2009

by Ed McCracken

The Freemasons held their fraternal breath as midnight approached last Monday.

After centuries of dwelling in history’s shadows – being blamed for everything from assassinating JFK and establishing a New World Order to the Jack the Ripper murders and controlling the police force – the organisation waited anxiously for Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, to appear in bookstores at the stroke of 12, dragging the secret society into the glare of a 21st-century media feeding frenzy.

Brown’s most famous literary offering, The Da Vinci Code, threw harsh light on another secretive society – the Catholic Church’s Opus Dei – causing serious PR problems for the organisation in real life. Would Brown’s creation, symbologist Robert Langdon’s latest adventure, follow suit, portraying the Masons as history’s conspiratorial bogeymen?

But a most unexpected thing happened: despite his trademark tortured prose, inexplicable use of italics, starchy exposition and plot twists borrowed from a Latin American soap opera, Brown may have pulled off something of a PR coup for the Masons.

Now instead of preparing a defence of what they call “their gentle Craft”, they could well be stockpiling application forms as readers see the society in a kinder, gentler light, because in The Lost Symbol, the Masons are – wait for it – the good guys.

By contrast, The Da Vinci Code portrayed Opus Dei as shadowy religious fanatics charged with lethally suppressing the secret of Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s relationship. Despite being fiction, it had a very real effect on the organisation.

“The book turned a private existence for our members into a more public one,” said Andrew Soane, Opus Dei spokesman. “The Da Vinci Code meant that members had the occasion to speak about their membership and had to explain themselves to a lot of people.”

The week The Da Vinci Code was released in 2006, enquiries increased tenfold. Membership numbers have remained steady, despite the negative depiction in a book that sold 80 million copies. With The Lost Symbol expected to do similar business, “the Masons should be prepared for increased interest”, warned Soane.

In advance of the novel’s release, senior Masons in the US voiced concern that “we might have to spend the next 25 years responding to Dan Brown’s fiction”. A website was set up in advance to combat untruths. The tension was palpable.

Author Brad Meltzer, whose Book Of Fate, another Washington-based Masonic thriller, topped the New York Times best-seller list in 2006, explained why they were nervous.

“For better or worse, people read these novels and take truth from them,” he said. “We don’t get educated by newspapers any more. We get educated by comedians, pop culture and fiction. And we are talking about the biggest book of the year. The Masons are stars of it. Their symbol is on the front cover. Six million people are going to read it. Only a fool wouldn’t be nervous.”

Masonic apron hanging in the museum room of the Grand Lodge of Scotland

On Wednesday afternoon, however, the only thing jangling within the marble halls of the Grand Lodge of Scotland was the sound of a teaspoon against porcelain. The receptionist was making a cup of tea for the Grand Secretary, David Begg.

Brown’s Masonic revelation had been published the day before. Hardback copies were flying out the door of nearby Waterstone’s. But sitting in his large office within the lodge on Edinburgh’s George Street, the centre of the Scottish craft, Begg was a man at ease.

“We haven’t geared up for this at all,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me that Dan Brown wanted to write about the Masons. I’ll be interested to read it to make sure it isn’t too inaccurate.”

Begg’s calm may have to do with Brown’s benign view of his organisation. The plot, such as it is, involves Langdon attempting to rescue his kidnapped friend and senior Mason, Peter Solomon. His quest involves cracking Masonic codes set into the architecture of Washington DC, all the while evading the attentions of the CIA and a tattooed, castrated madman who believes the Masons hold the secret to becoming a god, the titular lost symbol. While in The Da Vinci Code Langdon raced to uncover Opus Dei’s secret, in The Lost Symbol he fights to protect the Masons. With a print run of six million, it has already become the biggest-selling adult hardback of all time.

Near the beginning Langdon says: “The entire Masonic philosophy is built on honesty and integrity. Masons are among the most trustworthy men you could ever hope to meet.” By the end of the novel, after being shot at, almost drowned and chased from monument to monument, his view is the same. They are “one of the most unfairly maligned and misunderstood organisations in the world”.

Brown’s view is not too far removed from his hero’s. “I have enormous respect for the Masons,” he said in a interview. “In the most fundamental terms, with different cultures killing each other over whose version of God is correct, here is a worldwide organisation that essentially says, ‘We don’t care what you call God, or what you think about God, only that you believe in a god and let’s all stand together as brothers and look in the same direction’.”

Begg is unsurprised by Brown’s generous treatment. “It wouldn’t surprise me that it is positive,” he said. “I’ve found a lot of misguided comments about freemasonry. I don’t find that overseas when I go there. I’d have to say it is more in Scotland and the UK that there is an inbuilt prejudice. But that is receding.”

The Freemasons possess a murky, misty history. Some trace their roots back to the builders of Solomon’s Temple, others claim Adam as the first Mason. But their modern origins are linked to the medieval stonemasons’ guilds who constructed cathedrals across Scotland and England.

The first recorded Freemasons as we know them, a brotherhood for all men not exclusively stonemasons, met at a lodge at Kilwinning in Ayrshire in 1599. The Grand Lodge of Scotland was formed in 1736 to unite the hundreds of lodges around the country. The first grand mason was William St Clair, whose family built the mysterious Roslyn Chapel. His portrait hangs in the grand lodge’s boardroom. The order’s creed of brotherly love, relief and truth still exists today, as well as some other medieval hang-ups: women are still barred from joining.

The Masons might not be subject to the negativity that plagued Opus Dei after its time in the Dan Brown spotlight, but The Lost Symbol still panders to another stereotype that dogs the organisation. Langdon’s ultimate discovery is that the Masons guard ancient secrets that can allow man to achieve god-like powers.

“The craft of Freemasonry has given me a deep respect for that which transcends human understanding,” says a senior Mason at one point. This could attract a new breed of excitable members, bewitched by the order’s alleged mysticism.

“It is a way of life, a philosophy. An approach to your fellow man and how to treat them,” said Begg. “But if they join in the anticipation that some cosmic secret will be revealed to them, they will be sorely disappointed.”

The codes and symbols that propel the novel appear to have a lot more substance than the book’s Masonic mysticism. Pyramids, double-headed phoenixes, all-seeing eyes, compasses and set squares lead Langdon deeper into his adventure.

The same imagery is dotted throughout the Grand Lodge of Scotland. A pyramid clock sits atop the mantelpiece in Begg’s office, near Robert Burns’s masonic apron. In the Lodge’s museum a painting hangs on the wall: a crescent moon and a sun with an eye in the centre float above a young Mason. A set square and compass hang from the chandelier in the main staircase.

“Symbols are still hugely important,” said AJ Morgan, a Masonic historian. “The order is immediately recognisable because of its universal logo of a set square and compass. Symbolism plays a large part in the lodge.”

But Begg said: “There are lots of signs and symbols involved, and they have allegorical meanings. I wouldn’t say they are hiding any secrets as such. They are symbolic within some of our ceremonies, but not in hiding any great secrets of the universe.”

At one point in the novel Langdon discusses the circumpunct, a circle within a circle, one of the oldest signs in the world. “It has many meanings,” he writes. “One of the most esoteric being the rose.”

He links the flower to the Rosicrucians, a Masonic degree within the Scottish Rite which “contributed to Masonic mystical philosophy … had an enigmatic history that greatly influenced science”. In the Grand Lodge, roses emboss the staircase and wallpaper of the Grand Mason’s office.

Other aspects of Freemasonry that the book plays upon, such as the use of knives in ceremonies and chambers of reflection (rooms containing various symbols), are not dismissed.

“It is all symbolic,” said Begg. “The chambers of reflection would be part of a side order. It’s not something we would have in the Grand Lodge.”

The novel turns to Scotland at various junctures. Peter Solomon is head of the Scottish Rite in America, whose headquarters, the House of the Temple, has symbolism that “rivalled that of Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel”.

George Washington, the first US president, and several drafters of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution were Masons.

Above the door of the Grand Lodge’s library, a painting hangs: Washington dressed in Masonic regalia laying the foundation stone for the US Capitol Building with a Masonic trowel.

Begg and his fellow Scottish Masons are very proud of their links around the world. Scottish lodges are in 43 countries including Zimbabwe, Lebanon and China.

The dark-wood-panelled museum in George Street houses artefacts from the international lodges. Daily tours are given to the public as part of Begg’s wish to “throw back the veil of secrecy”.

“Throughout history people have thought the order and its ceremonies were secretive,” he said. “But they are more private than secret.”

Now, prodded by Brown, the Masons may start to finally emerge from the shadows, symbols in hand.

Freemasons happy with Dan Brown’s latest book

Only mild concern with Dan Brown’s latest

Canwest News | Sep 16, 2009

By CHRIS LACKNER

Author Dan Brown may have made an enemy of the Vatican with his 2003 release of The Da Vinci Code, but his new book, The Lost Symbol, is being welcomed by Canadian Freemasons with only mild concern.

And unlike the furor unleashed from the Catholic Church with The Da Vinci Code’s assertions that Mary Magdalene bore a son to Jesus, some international Freemason leaders have openly endorsed Brown’s new book.

The only concern expressed by the Grand Lodge of Canada is that Brown’s latest tome may fuel the misconception that Freemasons act within a concealed alliance.

“There is still a lingering misapprehension that Freemasonry is a ’secret’ society, a notion fuelled by writers of popular fiction (Dan Brown) and screenplays (National Treasure),” Grand Master Raymond S. J. Daniels said in a statement posted online.

Brown’s novel, released yesterday, again features the fictional, mystery-solving Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, with the story taking place over a 12-hour period in Washington.

The history of Freemasonry, a fraternal organization, dates back to around the 16th century. While membership has dwindled since the 1960s, there are approximately

4 to 5 million members worldwide. Six Canadian prime ministers have been Freemasons, including John Diefenbaker and Sir John A. Macdonald.

Masons first appeared in Britain in the early 1400s as members of craft guilds. Their “secrets” included how to square a corner and how to build a cathedral. Claims of a connection to the Crusades and the Knights Templar, as suggested in The Da Vinci Code and the National Treasure movies, are fictitious, historians say. In the 1600s, non-stoneworking gentlemen began to join, and Masonry became fashionable.

Some Freemasons say the novel may help the organization.

But while the fictional storylines about conspiracy and the Catholic Church in The Da Vinci Code caused an uproar among some Catholics and drew censure from the Vatican, a senior representative of the Freemasons in Australia called The Lost Symbol the work of a “terrific novelist.”

Freemasons await Dan Brown novel `The Lost Symbol’

Brown goes out of his way in “The Lost Symbol” to present the lodge as essentially benign and misunderstood. Masons are praised for their religious tolerance and their elaborate rituals are seen as no more unusual than those of formal religions.

AP | Sep 15, 2009

by Hillel Italie

WASHINGTON – The lodge room of the Naval Masonic Hall is a colorful and somewhat inscrutable sight for the nonmember, with its blue walls, Egyptian symbols, checkered floor in the center and high ceiling painted with gold stars.

Countless secrets supposedly have been shared in this and thousands of similar rooms of the Masons around the world. Facts of life have been debated, honors bestowed, rituals enacted. You would need to belong to a lodge to learn what really goes on.

Or you could simply ask.

“The emphasis on secrecy is something that disturbs people,” says Joseph Crociata, a burly, deep-voiced man who is a trial attorney by profession but otherwise a Junior Grand Warden at the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the District of Columbia.

“But it’s not a problem getting Masons to talk about Masonry. Sometimes, it’s a problem getting them to stop.”

Despite all the books and Web sites dedicated to Freemasons, the Masonic Order has been defined by mystery, alluring enough to claim Mozart and George Washington as members, dark enough to be feared by the Vatican, Islamic officials, Nazis and Communists. In the United States, candidates in the 19th-century ran for office on anti-Mason platforms and John Quincy Adams declared that “Masonry ought forever to be abolished.”

And now arrives Dan Brown.

Six years after Brown intrigued millions of readers, and infuriated scholars and religious officials, with “The Da Vinci Code,” he has set his new novel, “The Lost Symbol,” in Washington and probed the fraternal order that well suits his passion for secrets, signs and puzzles.

Brown’s book, released Tuesday, has an announced first printing of 5 million copies and topped the best-seller lists of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble online. At Kramerbooks in Washington, about two dozen copies were purchased the morning it went on sale and the store expects to easily sell out its order of 150 books.

In “The Lost Symbol,” symbolist Robert Langdon is on a mission to find a Masonic pyramid containing a code that unlocks an ancient secret to “unfathomable power.” It’s a story of hidden history in the nation’s capital, with Masons the greatest puzzle of all.

Brown’s research for “The Da Vinci Code” was highly criticized by some Catholics for suggesting that Jesus and Mary Magdalene conceived a child and for portraying Opus Dei — the conservative religious order — as a murderous, power-hungry sect.

The Mason response could well be milder. Brown goes out of his way in “The Lost Symbol” to present the lodge as essentially benign and misunderstood. Masons are praised for their religious tolerance and their elaborate rituals are seen as no more unusual than those of formal religions. The plot centers in part on an “unfair” anti-Masonic video that “conspiracy theorists would feed on … like sharks,” Langdon says.

“I have enormous respect for the Masons,” Brown told The Associated Press during a recent interview. “In the most fundamental terms, with different cultures killing each other over whose version of God is correct, here is a worldwide organization that essentially says, `We don’t care what you call God, or what you think about God, only that you believe in a god and let’s all stand together as brothers and look in the same direction.’

“I think there will be an enormous number of people who will be interested in the Masons after this book (comes out),” Brown said.

Crociata and other Washington Masons expressed amusement, concern, resignation and excitement about Brown’s novel. Crociata anticipates a “page-turner,” like “The Da Vinci Code,” and assumes, for the sake of a “good read,” that Brown will make the Masons seem more interesting than they actually are.

Fellow Mason Kirk McNulty can’t wait to read the novel: “Dan Brown is a writer of fiction; he’s not writing an article for the Encyclopedia Britannica. Whatever he says is OK. But it would be better if he says something nice about Freemasonry.”

Mason Michael Seay says some members are “not pleased about all the hoopla,” but sees the attention as a chance to “get our story across.” Lodge member Darryl Carter says he expects some “artistic license” and senses from conversations with other Masons that they expect to benefit from the attention.

“We welcome Dan Brown doing his work because Masonry has not had the kind of popularity that it once did and that a work by somebody of Dan Brown’s caliber could really attract people to Masonry,” Carter says.

The Freemasons date back to the Middle Ages, to associations of workmen who built cathedrals in Britain, though some also believe in a connection to ancient times with the mines where King Solomon took material for his Temple. Freemasonry has endured, and transformed. The British began to accept members who were not stonemasons and by the 1700s, lodges were being called “speculative,” philosophical societies rather than worker guilds.

The Masons, Crociata and others emphasize, are not a political or religious organization. No theology beyond the belief in a divine being is required and no causes are advocated beyond millions of dollars in annual contributions to children’s hospitals, cancer wards and other charities.

“This is the world’s oldest fraternity and it has an old and distinguished history,” Crociata says. “There’s much beauty to be found in its ritual. On the other hand, it’s a fraternity, not a religion. It’s a place to get together with guys that you know, that you trust, that you are willing to trust. A place where you can speak from the heart, if you want.”

No official gathering is taking place at the hall on this recent afternoon, so it’s all right for a reporter to have a look around. The Naval Masonic room has features common to other lodges, such as the Mason emblem, a set square and compass and letter “G” (for both God and Geometry), and some decorative images, such as the Egyptian-styled eyes and snakes painted throughout.

Brown’s book moves quickly among such Washington landmarks as the Library of Congress and the Washington Monument and draws upon the Masons’ very public presence in Washington, dating back more than 200 years.

George Washington used a Masonic gavel and trowel in 1793 as he lay the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol. The same trowel would be included 55 years later when President James K. Polk, a Mason, presided over the laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument, and again in 1907 when President Theodore Roosevelt, also a Mason, laid a cornerstone for a Masonic temple.

According to “Freemasons for Dummies” author Christopher Hodapp (his book is so well regarded at the Naval lodge in Washington that it’s kept in a glass cabinet outside the meeting room), membership peaked in the United States just after World War II, when there were close to 5 million Masons.

The number dropped in the 1960s, when the Masons seemed hopelessly antiquated to a rebellious generation, and dropped again in the late 1980s as older members died. Hodapp, himself a Mason based in Indianapolis, says there are now around 1.5 million in the U.S. and 3 million worldwide.

“But it’s picking up again, in part because of people like Brown and (novelist) Brad Meltzer (‘Book of Lies,’ ‘Book of Fate’). Younger men are seeing popular references to it. We’re also seeing people from single-parent households who don’t have that kind of brotherhood feeling you get in the lodge,” Hodapp says.

Meetings at the Naval Masonic room are presided over by a Master who sits in a high-backed chair on the East side of the room, in honor of where the sun rises. On the South and West are chairs for the top aides, the senior warden and the junior warden. Only the North, “a place of Masonic darkness” (a belief related to the lighting of Solomon’s Temple) is not represented.

Every lodge has an altar on which is placed a holy book, or books. A Bible is usually there, but because only a belief in a higher being is required, a Quran or other religious text might be found, depending on the religious faith of the members present. The black and white squares of the checkered floor below the altar represent “good” and “evil,” terms the Masons resist defining too closely.

“As far as what is good and bad for any individual … the idea is to inspire thought on some of the important questions of life on the minds of our members so that they can go home and think about them and draw their own conclusions,” Crociata says.

Would-be members pass through three degrees of acceptance: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason. In “The Lost Symbol,” Brown describes an initiation ceremony that Hodapp says is essentially accurate. A man is blindfolded, has a dagger pressed against his chest and is instructed to vow that, “uninfluenced by mercenary or any other unworthy motive,” he will offer himself as “a candidate for the mysteries and privileges of this brotherhood.”

Brown is not a Mason, but said that working on the novel helped him imagine a time when religious prejudice would disappear and added that he found the Masonic philosophy a “beautiful blueprint for human spirituality.”

He was tempted to join, but, “If you join the Masons you take a vow of secrecy. I could not have written this book if I were a Mason,” he says.

And now?

“They’ve let me know the door is always open.”

Masons open up as Dan Brown plot lodges

The book sports a cover showing the Capitol building in Washington, DC, and a wax seal containing a double-headed phoenix, the numeral 33, and the words ordo ab chao, Latin for “order to chaos”, supporting rumours that freemasons are at the heart of the story.

The Australian | Sep 14, 2009

by Matthew Clayfield and Angus Hohenboken

THE books of Dan Brown may be considered by some to be mutton dressed up as literary lamb, but the American author isn’t likely to pay much attention when his latest conspiracy potboiler hits bookstores tomorrow.

Brown’s The Lost Symbol comes a full six years after The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies in 51 languages and three years after the Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Hanks.

Presales have already rocketed The Lost Symbol to the top of Amazon.com’s bestseller list, and bookstores around the world are readying themselves for lengthy queues. So Brown’s publisher, Doubleday, can safely assume they’ve got another winner. Indeed, the book’s release has taken on some familiar Harry Potter-style characteristics: copies of The Lost Symbol are being kept under lock and key, and plot details guarded.

Brown — known for his reclusiveness — is staying mum, at least for the next few days.

Only the sketchiest details of the book’s contents are known. The third in a series, it features the fictional professor of religious iconology and symbology, Robert Langdon, played by Hanks in The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.

The book sports a cover showing the Capitol building in Washington, DC, and a wax seal containing a double-headed phoenix, the numeral 33, and the words ordo ab chao, Latin for “order to chaos”, supporting rumours that freemasons are at the heart of the story.

Australian and US masonic groups — anticipating increased interest as a result of their starring role in the book — have launched a public relations offensive. The NSW and ACT branches last week opened the freemasons’ United Grand Lodge of NSW for a media tour.

The Australian masons are also about to publish a book of their own, It’s No Secret: Real Men Wear Aprons, which delves into the origins of the movement in this country. The book’s editor, Peter Lazar, a mason for more than 50 years, was last week prepared to reveal all aspects of the freemason world to The Australian, with the exception of the society’s secret handshakes and passwords.

“But there are no secrets any more; even the handshakes and words are in books and on the internet now.” He said far from being a cult, the freemasons was a society that sought to “help men live better lives”.

Brown’s book is expected to include theories surrounding the influence of the freemasons on the US bill of rights and constitution and the layout of Washington — believed to be designed to resemble the masonic straight square and compass symbol.

Lazar’s is likely to contain plenty for budding conspiracy theorists, too, acknowledging the masonic membership of the principal author of Australia’s constitution, Samuel Griffith, and Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton.

Washington about to be Dan Browned

The House of the Temple, a Masonic building located at 1733 16th Street, NW in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The entrance is flanked by two stone sphinxes, Wisdom (pictured) and Power, sculpted by Adolph Alexander Weinman in 1915. The House of the Temple was designed by noted architect John Russell Pope in the neoclassical style, and is a contributing property to the Sixteenth Street Historic District. Photo and text: Wikimedia Commons.

Mysteries All Over the Map

Dan Brown’s D.C.-Set Sequel Is About to Land. The Fury & Flurry Are Already Here.

Washington Post | Sep 10, 2009

By Monica Hesse and David Montgomery

Washingtonians, brace yourselves.

In just six days, residents will awaken to find themselves in a changed city. One invaded by Founding Fathers scandal, by fictitious Harvard symbologists, by very short chapters ending in cliffhangers and exclamation points! One to which the tourists will flock, brandishing conspiracy theories. We want the real story, they’ll say to helpless docents at the Smithsonian, perhaps, or the Scottish Rite Masonic temple. This is the real story, docents will reply. No, the reeeeal story. Wink wink.

Washington is about to be Dan Browned.

The inciting incident is the release of “The Lost Symbol,” the third installment of Brown’s mondo-selling adventure zeitgeist, sequel to “Angels & Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code.” In “Angels,” professor Robert Langdon races through Rome, saving the city from an explosion and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the core. In “Da Vinci,” he races through Paris and London, solving a mysterious death and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the core.

In “The Lost Symbol,” Langdon will be back again, this time racing through Washington. What exactly he’ll be doing here is unclear. In the five-plus years Brown has been researching and writing this novel, nary an important plot point has leaked.

This much is known: The initial print run of “The Lost Symbol” is 5 million copies, the largest in Random House history, the publisher claims. Clues found on the novel’s recently released cover, combined with decoded messages from the “Da Vinci” jacket and elsewhere (“Is there no help for the widow’s son?”), suggest that Freemason history will play a central role.

People. Are. Freaking. Out.

The “Today” show has begun a week-long Dan Brown blitz, featuring Matt Lauer traipsing around the Washington locations expected to appear in the novel. Over on Amazon.com, a corporate notice assured readers that the site is securing its “Lost Symbol” stockpile “under 24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry.” Facebookers and Twitterers have been feverishly working overtime to decipher the novel-related clues — such as “AOFACFSOA FSZWBEIC EIOA ZOHSFWQWOA OQQSDW” — frequently posted by Brown’s marketing team on his social networking pages.

Masons are preparing themselves.

“I’m expecting [tourism] to skyrocket,” says Heather Calloway, director of special programs for the Masonic House of the Temple on 16th Street NW, which receives about 10,000 visitors a year. She will double the staff of part-time tour guides, if necessary, to handle the crush.

“We might have to spend the next 25 years responding to Dan Brown’s fiction,” says Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria. “That’s what I dread.” (Think he’s overstating? Wait until you hear from his European counterparts, who are still drowning in their own Brown invasions.)

Then there’s the “Lost Symbol” companion industry: the piles of documentaries, Web sites and books created to analyze the meaning of a novel that has not yet come out.

“It’s all about, what’s Dan Brown going to assert?” says author Dan Burstein, who edited companion work “Secrets of the Widow’s Son” back in 2005 based on his early research. He has another book coming out in December called “Secrets of the Lost Symbol.”

“Could he go in the direction of human cloning?” Burstein wonders. “Could some Freemasons . . . could they have known something about the cloning? And now we hear that Dan Brown is interested in the Rosicrucians,” a secret society of mystics formed in medieval Europe. “So what does that mean? Some theories say the Rosicrucians had a piece of the cross. Maybe if you had bloodstains on some pieces of the cross, you could clone Christ.”

Burstein is one of many scholars who operate in a tiny and speculative field: What Would Dan Brown Do?

Why Should Anyone Care?

Brown might be one of the best-sellingest authors of recent times (81 million copies for “Da Vinci”), but almost everyone agrees that, literarily, he stinks. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum once described his writing as “not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad,” which might explain why in some circles people brag about not having read “The Da Vinci Code.”

Still, there is something exuberant about that preposterous prose. Brown’s books contain everything the human brain thrives on: breakneck pacing, bite-size didja-knows, looming conspiracies, Scooby-Doo plot twists. His books are literary crack, or, in PG terms, they are Harry Potter for grown-ups. His notorious reclusiveness only adds to his mystique; for every interview he declines and cryptic clue his team tweets, his persona increasingly resembles the enigmatic characters of his novels. Like Robert Langdon, the man wears tweed.

But his greatest achievement, arguably, is the outsize impact his fictitious novels have had on the cities in which they’re set.

When Dan Brown comes to town, things get a little bit nutty.

Just ask Colin Glynne-Percy, director of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, the rural Scottish church featured in “The Da Vinci Code,” which Langdon believed to be the location of the Holy Grail.

“Before the book came out, we had about 40,000 visitors a year,” Glynne-Percy says. “It went to 80,000. Then to 120,000. Then to 175,000. We had very small facilities. We had only two restrooms. We could survive on that for 40,000 but . . .” They’ve put in temporary bathrooms and added several new staff members.

Just ask Robin Griffith-Jones, master of the Temple Church in London, which makes the eensiest of cameos in “Da Vinci.” (Langdon pops in to search for clues on the stone effigies’ decorative orbs, then pops out.)

This minor role hasn’t stopped tourists from roaming the circular nave in search of the orbs examined by Langdon.

Small problem: “There is no question of any orb in this church,” Griffith-Jones says. “Knights didn’t have orbs. Only kings had orbs,” and it’s mostly knights depicted at the temple. Griffith-Jones began offering a weekly lecture to dispel the myths of “Da Vinci” and eventually wrote a book on the subject. Still the tourists come. “I feel like King Canute, with the rising ocean tide I cannot stem.”

In Italy, more of the same. One Roman tour guide describes how her tours of the Colosseum were so frequently interrupted by tourists more interested in “Angels & Demons” faux-history that she had to create a special tour for them.

Washingtonians, we are next.

Already, Old Town Trolley Tours is considering a Secret Symbols tour of Washington. Already, the Masonic Service Association in Silver Spring is readying a special truth-squad Web site to fact-check “The Lost Symbol.”

“We’re in the cross hairs,” says S. Brent Morris, managing editor of the Scottish Rite Journal. “It could be good; it could be bad. We’ve decided to take a deep breath, take a chill pill and see what happens.”

Back in Britain, Griffith-Jones is also keeping an eye on the release of “The Lost Symbol.”

“I’m very slightly worried that if the next book focuses on the Freemasons, then there will be mention of the Knights Templar,” he says.

Which would be a problem because . . .

“We were built by the Knights Templar. It will all start again.”

___________

The Lost Symbol: Dan Brown’s Pentagram City

Dan Brown’s new book features a hidden Washington—does the city’s design conceal strange secrets?

Dan Brown’s new book—set in Washington—is expected to feature another secret society with an elaborate history and illustrious membership: the Freemasons.

Washingtonian | Aug 26, 2009

By Sophie Gilbert

Conspiracy theorists are awaiting Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol. Building on his super-bestsellers The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, about conspiratorial elements of the Catholic Church, Brown’s latest—set in Washington—is expected to feature another secret society with an elaborate history and illustrious membership: the Freemasons.

As a May 2006 Washingtonian article explored, the Washington area has a deep, rich history with the Masons. (To read the article, go to washingtonian.com/masons.) As the new book’s release approaches, Brown fans have been looking for hints to the plot—and some have been released on The Lost Symbol’s Twitter feed. Here’s what might come up in the novel:

1. Washington traffic is bad for a reason.

You don’t need to burn shoe leather looking for Masonic symbols in the nation’s capital—all you need are Google Maps and a Sharpie marker. It’s no secret that George Washington was a Freemason, but what about Pierre L’Enfant, the architect of DC? The layout of the city’s streets and landmarks seems to suggest as much—triangles and pentagrams abound.

Occult theorists have speculated that the six points of Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Scott Circle, Washington Circle, Mount Vernon Square, and the White House form a pentagram (the five points of the outer star and one vertex of the pentagon inside it); the coordinates of the six places were recently posted as a clue on Twitter. Dupont, Scott, and Washington circles all have six major streets leading into them, encoding the satanic number 666 into the city’s structure.

That may sound sinister, but the pentagram is an ancient symbol occurring in the three major religions as well as a prominent Masonic feature. In the 2006 article, authors Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen also noted that the four points of the White House, the Capitol, and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials form a diamond when linked on a map—the shape of the Masonic logo.

2. That pyramid on the $1 bill isn’t just a picture.

Speculation mounted when the Lost Symbol Twitter feed posted a clue: “29.979093, 31.133891.” If you put those coordinates into Google Maps, they point to the Great Pyramid of Giza, prompting guesses that pyramids will play a role in the novel. The pyramid symbol dates back thousands of years, implying not only order and symmetry but also divine unity. The pyramid on the dollar bill (also referred to in The Da Vinci Code) is a Masonic symbol for the all-seeing eye of God, which dates back to Egyptian mythology but also appears in Christianity as the Eye of Providence.

Symbologists have noted that the dollar’s pyramid has 13 steps, while the Latin script underneath reads novus ordo seclorum, or “new order of the ages.” Conspiracy theorists have long believed that the term refers to an organization of globalists seeking to rule the world, and they’ve linked this belief to Freemasonry.

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