Transcription
This is William Henry in Phoenix. This is Dreamland. Tim Wallace Murphy is an author and lecturer with an international reputation. Together with Marilyn Hopkins, he is the driving force behind the creation of the European Templar Heritage Research Network and author of the best-selling Roslin and Rex Deus.
His latest book, Templars in America, reveals the true story of how two major European Templar families combined their forces to establish a vibrant new commonwealth in America approximately 100 years before Columbus. Their efforts to create a new commonwealth in America to escape the Inquisition and Catholic Church repression was a success. This is the true story of how Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, and Carlos Zenu of the Nation. Their story acts as a signpost to a 2,000-year-old process that culminates in the beliefs and traditions of the Templars in Freemasonry, shaping the thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the American Constitution.
Tim's book is available at the unknowncountry.com store. I suggest you get it now. And Tim, welcome to Dreamland. It's good to hear from you. Thanks for spending time with us. Tim, I understand we're talking to you today from France.
Yes, I'm in France doing research for another book. We're about to go. I'm down in Provence, about 30 kilometers north of central Bay, and we're following a lovely little town called Lord. Louisville. Very nice.
Excellent. Lots of attention on Lourdes lately with the Pope visiting.
No, not Lord. Lord. Oh, pardon me, sir. Sorry. Lord L-O-R-G-U-E-S. It's an old medieval town in the middle of Provence.
And what do you hope to find there, Tim?
Well, I'm liaising here. I'm meeting with some friends and colleagues who have run a Templar research network about 10 miles from here, and I hope to see find out what they've been discovering since I was last here.
Oh, very nice. Tim, here in America, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Masons seem to be on everyone's minds these days. The the book, The International Bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, and movies like Troy and National Treasure will assure that the Templars are a subject of interest for a good while. Are you surprised by this intense interest? And and to what would you attribute this explosion of interest in the Templars?
Well, I think we all owe Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, a very large vote of thanks. He's written a bloody good thriller. It's a page-turner, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading, and that has turned what was already a well-established area of interest into a tidal wave of insatiable curiosity. And every author in this field, I think, is benefiting from it. But the Templars were a fascinating order. They transformed the face of European society, laid down the basis of capitalism, and founded the European banking system, and all that in less than 200 years. Now, this was all part-time activities for them, because their main job was defending the Holy Land against the Saracens. So they were quite an accomplished and talented order. I think that explains why there's so much interest in it. A global conglomerate that had interest virtually throughout the throughout Europe in the Holy Land. In in the movie National Treasure, which opens in in America tomorrow, the Knights Templar discover a treasure within the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt, and they hide it in America to keep it from Britain. Any basis for this kind of speculation or any truth to this?
No, I think to a certain extent it's nonsense, but it's based on a much older legend, which says they discovered treasure not in Egypt, but under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. And the first nine years the order existed, despite their avowed intention of protecting the pilgrimage routes, they spent their time excavating tunnels through the rock under the Temple Mount. And those tunnels were re-excavated about 150 years ago, and Templar remains were found in them. And there's been intense speculation as to what they found. Nobody's really sure, but the order became incredibly wealthy, very, very rapidly, as did its sister order, these distortions. So legends of tributes finding of treasure. I think they also found documentation there, which would have been very similar to those discovered at Qumran in 1948, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Um, but nobody's absolutely certain, and that's probably the basis that was used for the plot of the movie.
Are you suggesting then, Tim, that it's possible that the Templars recovered earlier copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or maybe even the Nag Hammadi Library, buried beneath?
Well, it wouldn't have been the Nag Hammadi stuff. It would have been the Dead Sea Scrolls material. To think that there was only one case of that, I think is being a little naive. It was too valuable to be all put in one place. And among the Dead Sea Scrolls material was a scroll called the Copper Scroll, which was decoded in Manchester by John Allegro. And that listed sites where treasure had been hidden throughout the Holy Land. And when John Allegro went along to excavate some of those sites in the late 40s and early 50s, he found no treasure, but he did find Templar bits and pieces in several of them, which rather suggests that the Templars had found copies of the same documentation.
Very interesting. And now, of course, when John Allegro recovers the the Copper Scroll and begins to interpret the the Dead Sea Scrolls, he runs into all kinds of interference from mainstream biblical scholars. And perhaps not as a way to get back at these scholars, he publishes books like The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, in which he describes that the innermost secrets of the Essenes at Qumran had something to do with the psychedelic mushroom.
If you, I think that's pure speculation. But the fact is that John Allegro was about as popular as a rattlesnake in a shopping basket with his fellow scholars. But the church tried to monopolize the Dead Sea Scrolls and suppress the translations of them, and they succeeded for over 40 years. It was only in the 1990s that translations became readily available. And of course, it's just almost a great crime against humanity that we have to even wonder what other documents may have been discovered at that time that have even yet been withheld from the mainstream public.
What, which takes us back to this time period of the Essenes and Qumran and and this family that I know that you have a lot of experience researching and writing about, called the Rex Deus. This, of course, there are a group of families who descend from the Essenes. The Essene community started when the Maccabeans took over biblical Israel and appointed high priests to the temple who are not of the true family line. And the true hereditary priesthood retired to Qumran and started the Essenes. And of course, Jesus the Nazarene was one of them. And the descendants of those families, when they were scattered after the fall of Jerusalem, many of them went to Europe where they kept the secret traditions alive, and they were the families who ultimately founded the Knights Templar.
Yeah. Can you paint for us just a bit of a picture about the activities of the Essenes and what it was that they were attempting to assimilate and then ultimately what they would have passed down to these later Templar families throughout Europe?
Um, well, first of all, they were extremely gifted people, and they were dedicated to a spiritual path which had at its origins back in ancient Egypt. And the ancient Egyptian spiritual initiatory pathway had sustained the Egyptian empire for over 2,000 years, and the priesthood of that was hereditary. Now, amongst biblical scholars today, the argument is, was Rich Pharaoh, was Moses? The argument is not, was he an Egyptian or an Israelite, but which Egyptian Pharaoh was he?
So the people of Israel were ethnically and spiritually a direct continuation of the Egyptian tradition, including the hereditary priesthood. And these, of course, were the ancestors of the Essenes and the later Rex Deus families. So we're talking here about a Gnostic pathway of spirituality, which is still extant today.
And so, in your mind, then, who, which Pharaoh was Moses?
Well, my money is on Akhenaten. And a colleague of mine called Ahmed Osman, who's a Muslim, wrote a beautiful book called Moses, Pharaoh of Egypt, where he used his legal skills, he's a very highly skilled lawyer, as well as good archaeology and good history, to indicate that it was most probably Akhenaten. Now, the Egyptologist David Roll points the finger at a slightly earlier Pharaoh, but produces no proof. So my money is on Akhenaten, who disappeared from the record after being deposed in Egypt. And I think, frankly, he was paid to go away.
Ekinan was paid to go away?
Yeah. He reinstituted a form of monotheism in Egypt which caused economic chaos, and the priests who had been dispossessed by his teaching rose in rebellion against him. And they couldn't murder the Pharaoh, so they got rid of him. They paid him to bugger off somewhere else, which he did. And Canaan was an Egyptian colony at the time. Now, the interesting thing is, the biblical account claims that Moses was a people of Israel, but there is no documentary evidence and no archaeological evidence whatsoever that the people of Israel existed until nearly 200 years after the Exodus.
Yeah, that's an extraordinary fact right there that that most people today who are entrained in the Judeo-Christian tradition have no awareness that there, there isn't just, there simply isn't a, a temple scroll, there isn't a, a wall on the temple that even mentions the name of Moses or that the Israelites' story occurred as is presented in the Old Testament.
And so what we have here is a situation where fundamentally, isn't what would you say that Judeo-Christianity is essentially then based upon a, a major falsehood?
Ah, no, it isn't. It's big. The later, much later in history, when the people of Israel had become established, and they were invaded by the Babylonians, and their leading families and priests were sent into forced exile. They, it was at that time they started to write what we now call the books of the Old Testament. Now, this is some 800 years at least after the so-called Exodus. And they created a mythology to try and unite a people who were living in exile in circumstances of extreme spiritual deprivation. So they created a mythology and a history which was partially based on fact, but was heavily boulderized to disguise the true Egyptian origins.
Yeah, I've been to Egypt recently, and no matter where you go, you talk with an Egyptian guide, and they will say that Christianity is the Egyptian religion.
Christianity? Well, it derives originally from that, yes. But exactly. Don't forget that Christianity is not as Jesus taught it. It's been substantially altered by the man we call the first Christian heretic, the man you would know as Saint Paul. He was the first person to declare that Jesus was God and had died for our sins.
Yeah, I once talked with a renegade Catholic priest who told me that the figure that millions of Christians worship, Jesus, is actually Constantine. What are your thoughts on that possibility?
Well, Constantine again, he was a supreme politician and a wonderful general. And it is highly doubtful if he ever converted to Christianity. He adopted Christianity as a source to try and unify his empire because he thought Christians were nice, law-abiding people. And then, to his intense horror, he found they were squabbling. And the main argument of the quarrel was, was Jesus God or was he a man? And Constantine settled it. And he was actually not a Christian at that time. He was a follower of Sol Invictus, of Mithra, a branch of the matriarchal religion. So there's been an awful lot of mucking about with so-called Christianity.
Right. And, you know, for people who believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, all I can do is feel sorry for them.
Yeah, I think that would be the sentiment of this priest I was talking with as well. Can we go back just for a moment to the Essenes as great assimilators of ancient knowledge? And essentially, what I was understanding from what we were saying is that they were attempting to bring together genealogies that would trace them back to Akhenaten.
Uh, I think they already had those genealogies. Okay. Uh, because in the Rex Deus families in Europe, they still keep their genealogies very, very strictly, and they do not marry outside that group of families. They're rather like the Cohens of biblical Israel, who were only allowed to marry other Cohens.
So genealogy and descent is almost as important as the teaching. And now there's amazing research that's being done by the likes of Sir Lawrence Gardner, Robert Feather, and others, that are looking at the activities of Akhenaten, following the trail of the Copper Scroll, and it leads them, for example, to a, what they describe as an alchemist refinery or a furnace at a place called Sarabet el-Kadem in the Sinai.
Well, that is that is Lawrence Gardner's view. I am open-minded about that. I'd like to see some hard evidence.
That's what I was wondering. The general trust of his lineal descent is right on the button, so that's very sound. Okay. Yeah. And but in terms of looking to the Essenes as having had access, perhaps even to that refinery, or even to some of the alchemical secrets that are purported to have been housed there or retrieved from there, we're not able to say that that's necessarily so yet. Not at the moment. No. Okay. I would be somewhat skeptical until I saw some hard evidence. But again, when you go into the later Rex Deus tradition, you will find that many of the families were involved in alchemy. But I think the public and your listeners should be aware that alchemy was not about necessarily about the transmutation of the base metal of lead into gold. It was about spiritual transformation of the individual, so that the individual who followed the spiritual path would be transformed from base humanity into the pure gold of purified spirit. It was a pathway to God.
Yes, of course. And and I wonder if, if that's a possibility of a wordplay pun that has unfolded within the Templar symbol of the skull and bones? Could the?
Well, the Templar symbolism of the skull and bones is a bizarre one. It was their traditional method of burial. And I've seen quite a few Templar burial sites. There's one not 30 miles from where I'm sitting at the moment, where you can see the skulls, and each skull has a hole to find in the right temple. Now, this ties in with Masonic tradition about being struck on the right temple. So there's something going on here, but its precise definition is a little hard to figure out, except that it was a very strong tradition which has been carried down through the centuries.
Right. And it's, of course, an enormously powerful symbol that is susceptible to interpretation on numerous levels. But we still don't know for certain what the Templars had intended by that, other than it's connected with their burial tradition.
Yeah, it's very, very hard to know because all symbolism is can be experienced rather than interpreted at at least nine different levels, depending on the level of the initiation of the person who is viewing it. I've just written a book about symbolism which comes out next year, and it's a very, very wide and fascinating field. So you would have what the literal, the metaphorical, the allegory, yes, and then the allegorical, and then you've got the spiritual levels. And it depends on the level of insight of the viewer, how far they have gone down the spiritual path. Everybody will get something different from it, and they're all valid.
So how would you apply that, for example, to the famous Templar cross?
Well, which famous cross? There are at least 15 I can think of.
Oh, is that right? Okay. Yeah. For example, the one on the cover of your book, have you ever seen a copy of our book, Roslin, Guardian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail?
Yes, right. Well, there's a cross on the front of that. Now, that particular cross is called the Cross of Universal Knowledge, and it's Gnostic knowledge that you're talking about, the sacred knowledge passed down by the rites of initiation. And that's just one of 15.
Yeah. So it has been claimed that the the Templars' ultimate objective then was to restore that that Gnostic knowledge to the world.
Yes, it was.
And how would you describe that ultimate Gnostic monotheism or Gnostic?
Well, it's it's a form of monotheism which recognizes one true God, and that if applied would reunite all the major religions of the world. And it's one that preaches at its basic concept the old Essene idea of doing Torah, living in a state of brotherhood and justice with one's fellow man. Now, this type of thinking comes down through the Templars, who used their knowledge to the benefit of the communities within which they moved. It was passed on by the Templar families into Freemasonry, which has precisely the same objective and has thus spread far beyond the families, right across the world.
You know, of course, the one Rex Deus family that is most closely associated with these secrets is the Sinclairs.
Yes, yes. And of course, it was it was Henry Sinclair of Rosslyn, Earl of Orkney, who crossed the Atlantic 100 years before Columbus. Right. And it was his grandson, William Sinclair, who was instrumental in changing the guilds of operative stone masons into what eventually became Freemasonry as we know it today. So the Sinclairs are pivotal.
Tell us about how Henry Sinclair came to make this voyage and some of the background on this, because most people in America, as you suggest, will still believe to this day that the Egyptians were never here, the Phoenicians were never here, the Vikings were never here before Columbus. All American history essentially starts with Columbus. So provide us the real story about this this discovery of America, or the the voyage to America.
We're not talking about a discovery of America. I mean, America was discovered by the native, of course. But we are talking about a long, long tradition that extends over two and a half thousand years of transatlantic travel and trade. Oscar Wilde once famously said, "Many people discovered America before Columbus, dear boy, but most of them had the good sense to keep quiet about it." Now, he was being sarcastic, but in fact, he was telling a very great truth, because there was cross-Atlantic trade at the time of ancient Egypt and of Rome, and the archaeological and scientific evidence is there to prove it. For example, several generations of mummified pharaohs were subjected to post-mortems back in 1991, and the post-mortems were done by a German state pathologist called Svetlana Balabanova, and she found traces of cocaine usage in several generations of these mummies. Now, cocaine still only today comes from one place, so the Egyptians must have had a sustained trade. There are sites in America at the moment where there are cave paintings which are suspiciously Egyptian, and they are under undergoing ongoing investigation as I speak. I'm here right now looking at Chinese hieroglyphs. I'm looking at Templar crosses, what look like Templar crosses on cave walls here in near Sedona, and I can tell you firsthand that this stuff is real, and it actually exists for certain.
Oh, yes, it does. And the Mi'kmaq Indians of Nova Scotia communicated in writing, which was fairly rare for Native American people, but the form of writing they used is Egyptian hieroglyphs. Now, they weren't colonized. They were colonized originally by the French, but they didn't get the knowledge from them, because the French were long gone, long before the Rosetta Stone was deciphered and Europeans learned to read hieroglyphs. I was present in Orkney about six or seven years ago when he was shown a very ancient Masonic relic called the Kirkwall Scroll, which is covered in hieroglyphs, which the local Freemasons who own it couldn't explain. But we had a member of the Mi'kmaq with us, and he was able to explain the meanings to them. Now, how the hell do you explain how where they got that from?
Right. Now, I can't. That's one of the best stories in the book. It's like, here you are, kind of on one level, coming to an event that's designed to celebrate one thing, and it turns into, yeah, yeah. Okay. This is William Henry. This is Dreamland. We'll be right back. This is Whitley Streiber. Welcome to Dreamland. You're about to hear William Henry do one fascinating interview about the Knights Templar in the Americas. This is going to be very, very special. And next week, I'm happy to say that I'm going to be back. This time, I'm going to be talking to Loren Coleman. You remember him from Bigfoot days. Now he's changed his stripes. He's out hunting the media with a powerful new book called The Copycat Effect. Why haven't you read any reviews about it? Why haven't you heard anything about it? The reason is it goes after the media in the way they need to be gone after and have needed to for years, showing how stories in the media turn into murders, death, and mayhem in real life. It's very exciting, highly controversial. Plus, guess what? Unknowncountry.com Christmas store is back in business. Beautiful, uplifting, fascinating gifts for your friends and family, things you will not find elsewhere. Plus, 5% off on all Christmas store orders over $25, in addition to any regular discount that you may have. Don't miss the unknowncountry.com Christmas store. Now, let's go to William in Dreamland. Tim, the story of the Mi'kmaq and their Egyptian hieroglyphs turning up in their writing system is very fascinating. And I know that that was a story that fascinated Thomas Jefferson, who was a master of codes and ciphers, and in particular, attempted to match the language of the Mi'kmaq to ancient Egypt. And can we talk about what that would ultimately mean in terms of not only just the communication between ancient America and ancient Egypt, but in terms of the way that the picture of history should actually be presented?
Well, I think we have to look at the fact that there was transatlantic travel going on from the time of the Ice Age onwards. Only about a year ago, a professor from the Smithsonian Institute proved using DNA techniques that certain Native American people were descendants of a tribe who used to live in Southwest France at the time of the Ice Age. And he proposed the thesis that those people sailed across the Atlantic in skin boats, rather like, you know, Eskimo kayaks, until they reached North America. Then you have the trade links with Egypt. Then there are Roman shipwrecks scattered off the coast of Brazil, off Honduras, or off the coast of Maine. And some of the amphorae, the wine containers that these ships were carrying, have been brought to the surface and identified and dated, and they go back to, I think the most recent was 200 AD, and some of the earlier ones go back about 300 BC. So you had sustained trade all the time. There was also trade between Africa and Central and Southern America. There was a Roman head, a Roman terracotta head, discovered in an archaeological dig in Mexico in 1933, and it was found beneath a concrete floor that was dated to the 11th century. So they can't claim that later European colonists brought it there. And the evidence is overwhelming. The Vikings were there, not once, but many, many times, and left highly accurate accounts of their travels in the Viking sagas. And if you use the sailing directions in the Viking sagas today, they still work. And of course, they were ancestors of Henry Sinclair. So, you know, Sinclair wasn't a discoverer of America. He was one in a long line of people who had repeatedly crossed the Atlantic.
Tim Wallace Murphy's book, Templars in America, is available at the unknowncountry.com store. This finely researched book traces in detail the Templar legacy. It continues through the intricate foundation of Freemasonry, the founding of America as a nation, and the drafting of the United States Constitution. At every turn, the influence and direction of the Templars is felt and revealed. That they had established a beachhead in America long before Columbus and started a communication and trade line is well, well documented. Tim, one of the things that I found kind of sort of behind the scenes or in between the lines of your of of the book Templars in America was this idea that the Rex Deus family sought to create a new commonwealth, which we might describe as a new kingdom of heaven on earth. Could you describe it?
As good a description as you're likely to get. They were trying to establish somewhere where people could live in peace and harmony and live on spiritual values. And I think this is one of the reasons that Sinclair, the Sinclair-Zeno expedition got on so well with the Native American Mi'kmaq, because their spiritual values were incredibly close. And it appears to me that you're saying that the fulfillment of this ideal is to be found, although in modified form, in the U.S. Constitution.
Well, I'm not alone in that. I mean, for God's sake, despite all the fuss and games you've had over your recent election, the fact that it took place and the people have spoken as an act according to law is one of the beacons of hope for a very troubled world. I mean, the American Constitution is a role model for so many emerging nations today. People are striving to establish the sort of things that you take for granted. And I find it as a matter of pride that the the roots of the philosophies that lie behind that are European in origin and of a spirituality which has been hallowed by antiquity.
Yeah, I agree with you. In my opinion, few, including myself until recently, truly appreciate the magnitude of the Constitution and just how new to human history the rights of the citizen to life, liberty, and equality under the law truly are. Private property and the continued revelation of what we might call the sacred nature of the universe are in fact really basically new ideas. And so talk about that and the impact that you feel that this ultimately could have on human civilization if we can link ourselves in this way and we can begin to create a civilization based on the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. What, what will that ultimately do for our planet?
Well, ultimately, if it was practiced instead of merely talking being talked about, we could all live in harmony and possibly save the human race from extinction. You see, the idea of living in brotherhood on the principles of justice and treating the planet and everything in creation with respect lies at the very core of the spiritual program which the Essenes inherited from Egypt. It is nothing new. What is new is that it's only recently come to light after centuries of repression by Holy Mother Church. And so, right now, we seem to have more than ever an opportunity to make right something that a wrong that's been probably 15, 1600 years in the making.
Would you agree with that?
Yes, that is precisely it. But it isn't going to happen overnight. People of the Judeo-Christian tradition are firmly entrenched in their views, and they have a God-given right to be. But the fact is that they are living a life based on a belief in a system which is founded on distortion and untruth. And so, for example, there have been those such as Sir Francis Bacon and his New Atlantis who prophesied the emergence of a technically and spiritually advanced civilization. Is this the new Jerusalem? And do you suppose that the Templars shared this ideal?
Yes. Well, Bacon was part of the same spiritual continuum. I mean, most of the leading thinkers of that particular time were. Leonardo da Vinci was one of them. Many of the philosophers of the Renaissance, which came from the same stream, and they worked under the patronage of the Rex Deus families, such as the Medici and the Schwarzeneggers. That was the only way they could work, because if they didn't have fairly hefty protection, they'd have been closed down by the church. Look what happened to Galileo. Personally, I've been approached by at least two organizations that represent themselves as neo-Templars. And well, I would be very cautious. They're usually very well-intentioned. Their intentions are delightful, but once they start claiming continuity with the original order, I'm afraid my boggle factor starts doing alarm bells. The order was suppressed in 1314. Some members kept going for perhaps a decade afterwards, mainly in Scotland. And a variation of the order continued in Portugal for a couple of hundred years, called the Order of the Knights of Christ. But Templar tradition was kept alive by the Rex Deus families, and at first was very much kept alive in secret, because they didn't want to be burnt at the stake. So anybody claiming direct continuity with the original Templar order is, to say the least of it, suspect.
Yeah, I agree. And that's why I decided not to join either organization. But again, it it goes to this idea of this, I guess, a desire. I remember when I first read the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, I was in college in 1982, and it had the same effect on me that I'm seeing it happening on millions, perhaps, of other people who have read, for example, The Da Vinci Code. What is it, do you think, that that really gets us so excited about this material? Do you think it's because we feel like when we're researching the Templars, that we're recovering an ancient truth? Or do you think it's maybe a past life connection for some? What is it that you think that really?
What I think it's a mixture of things. First of all, most people today, in an increasingly secular world, find little or no comfort in the pronouncements of the various Christian churches. That's certainly the case in Europe, and I think it is becoming increasingly the case elsewhere. Now, they are looking for truth. There is a spiritual emptiness in their life. The consumer society, it doesn't matter how many motor cars you get or washing machines you own, life becomes somewhat barren. So people are looking for spiritual truth. And in recovering ancient spiritual truth, they suddenly realize that the simplicity of them is not only very appealing, but it's very practicable, and they can actually transform their lives. The amount of people who've contacted Marilyn and myself after the publication of Roslin, Guardian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail, and people who have crossed the Atlantic to recreate that particular pilgrimage we described in that book, and then found the grace to contact us and thank us and tell us how transformative it was, is an indication that people are looking for spiritual sustenance, and the old ways are usually the best.
Right. Tim Wallace Murphy's book, Templars in America, is available at the unknowncountry.com store. The book is like reading a mystery. Each action leads to another, revealing yet another twist and turn in this amazing revelation of a true account of Henry Sinclair's voyage to America. Tim, I wanted to ask you about the European Templar Heritage Research Network. Is this a private organization or is it open to the public? And what ultimately are your answers?
It started off as a public organization. It's now purely simply a network of scholars who exchange information. And we're doing, we cover seven different countries in Europe. And the amount of stuff would be, it's like picking up pieces of a jigsaw. The puzzle is becoming ever more complete, but we've still got a long way to go. And we tried opening it to the public, but it became unworkable.
In terms of researching the Templars in America, are there ways that listeners who are of a research mind can assist in bringing forward new information? Is there clues that you're looking to follow up on here in America that you haven't had a chance to follow up on?
Well, first of all, we did some pretty extensive research in America, and we have wonderful cooperation from committed people, both over there and over on this side of the Atlantic. And there are plenty of sites that people can visit and see for themselves. Don't take my word for it or Marilyn's. Go look, because the evidence for this particular series of voyages is carved in stone on both sides of the Atlantic. You have the fascinating stone tower at Newport, which is mistakenly called the Old Stone Mill in Touro Park. There's the rock carving at Westwood. There's the Westwood Boatstone, which shows an Orkney galley, which is preserved in the J.V. Fletcher Memorial Library in the same little city. And there is further evidence to be found in Nova Scotia, where Henry's Landing matches exactly the terms of the Zeno narrative as it was originally described. And of course, there are the oral histories of the Mi'kmaq people, which the Canadian government regards as historically binding documents. And then you come this side of the Atlantic and go to Rosslyn Chapel in, just near Edinburgh. And this chapel was completed in its present state by 1480, which is 12 years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. And yet there are seven different varieties of plants carved in it which are native only at that time to the North Americas. So the evidence is there, and there is more to be discovered. And if people would like to contact me via the publishers, Red Will Viser at Boston, I'd be only too delighted to hear of anything anybody turns up.
One of the things that I noted was a sentence in Templars in America in which you were, you just basically said that in Henry's voyage to America, we maybe didn't have Templars on board because they had been disbanded by the church long before. No Cistercian monks, no Holy Grail, and no horde of treasure.
That's right. And I put that in very deliberately because a lot of people have written about this voyage and they've muddied the waters by allowing their imagination to run riot. I like to stick to cold, hard facts. Fundamentally, I'm a historian with a distinct spiritual bent, but I like facts, please. Yeah, because I like to be able to prove what I say.
Yeah, there's a whole library of books that you can get talking about the perhaps a Templar connection to, for example, Oak Island, Nova Scotia, as a repository of Templar secrets.
Well, I've been to Oak Island, and I am fascinated by the real mystery of Oak Island, which is why so many hard-headed businessmen have sunk millions into it to discover nothing. Ultimately, something may be discovered, but I can promise you two things: it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Knights Templar, and it has even less to do with Earl Henry Sinclair.
Okay. So this is maybe then it's not the Templar vault as has been presented. And we're not going to find out there is something there which took great engineering skill to construct, and there may well be something of immense value there. Who knows yet? It needs to be investigated further. And I think it's far more recent. Let's, let's go back to Jerusalem, just for a moment. We seem to have a, a moment of, uh, change coming up here, a changing of the guard, most certainly in the Middle East leadership. And I'm wondering, is there anything else that you may suggest maybe hidden underneath the ground there, beneath the Temple of Solomon, that may emerge that could have a dramatic impact on, perhaps, a revelation or a piece of knowledge that may be yet to come forward that's been awaiting, sort of like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library?
Well, who knows? First of all, let's get our terminology right. We're talking about the Temple Mount, not the Temple of Solomon. The Temple of Solomon, there are wonderful, there are two wonderful descriptions of it in the Old Testament, but bear in mind that Israel is the most heavily excavated country in the world, and no Solomonic remains whatsoever have ever been discovered there. So bear that in mind, just for starters. The Second Temple, Zerubbabel's Temple, was certainly built on the Temple Mount, and it was later refurbished by Herod. And of course, the Temple Mount is now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. So excavation underneath that now is, to say the least, extremely limited. We'd start another Middle East war if somebody went in there to investigate. The last effective investigations under the Temple Mount were done by Lieutenant Warren of the Royal Engineers at the tail end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Now, he found fascinating tunnels, but he found little else of any value. But that doesn't mean to say there's nothing there. It demands further examination, because it's the obvious hiding place for a lot of stuff. But we don't know what the Templars found there back in the 12th century. And they certainly brought something back to Europe because they came back in a body in a hell of a hurry after nine years of excavation. But to this day, nobody can hand on heart say what it is they found.
I mean, there's a lot of speculation. The Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, secrets of sacred geometry, some form of architecture.
Sacred geometry, I think, certainly had a part to play, and that that came back. The Holy Grail, you're thinking in terms of a relic, aren't you?
No, I'm not. I'm, I've been there, done that. I'm looking through.
Yeah, well, the search for the Holy Grail is an allegorical description of the spiritual path to enlightenment. The most wonderful description of that was done by a fellow countryman of yours, that delightful man, God bless him, he's dead now, Joseph Campbell, of course. And he said, he quoted the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus said, "He who drinks from my mouth, I shall be he, and he shall be me." And Campbell said, "That is the whole point of the Grail." And of course, that is the whole point of initiatory teaching.
Right. Yeah. It's such an amazing time that we live in. And I, for one, am very hopeful that perhaps in my lifetime, we will know what the Templars had discovered during their excavation. Where would you, uh, like, might you point an interested investigator to follow up? Where's the hot trail on the Templar, uh, research trail right now?
Well, it's, it's in several parts. Scotland is one of the obvious places to look. Certain parts of France, down in the Languedoc. And this has absolutely nothing to do with Rennes-le-Château, I may assure you, but that was a major place for Templar holdings. Right here in Provence, where I'm sitting at the moment, I mean, I can hardly go, if I go in a 10-mile radius from where I'm sitting, I can think of 50 different Templar sites to visit. So there's an awful lot of work to be done. And I warn anybody who's listening, if they get involved in this, there should be a health warning. It's addictive.
Most certainly is. You step out of one world and into another world. The strange thing is, the other world makes this one much more simple to operate. So, talk about your, your next book, just for a moment, please. Tell me, you mentioned it's about sacred symbolism and how to interpret it.
Well, that's not the next one to come out. The next one to come out is a continuation of the Rex Deus story, which is being published by Red Will Viser in June or July of next year, and that's called Custodians of Truth.
Okay. In November, an English publisher is putting out Cracking the Symbolism Code.
Okay. Will Graham Simmons be involved with the continuation book?
Graham Simmons will never be involved with me ever again. He contributed absolutely nothing to Rex Deus. So I wrote every word of it, and Marilyn and I did the research.
Well, I'm very glad we were able to set that straight. And again, that's one of the things I've very much appreciated about your book. You, you have a very nice way of calling a spade a spade. For example, when you, you talk about Rosslyn Chapel, it's simply not a replica of Solomon's Temple. I mean, that is no.
It's not a key piece of information. Well, I know the guys who put that story about, they're very nice chaps, I like them very much. And their general theory that something of importance belonging to the Templars may be buried under Rosslyn Chapel is very plausible. I don't have a problem with that. But how can Rosslyn Chapel be married, be modeled on Solomon's Temple, when nobody knows what Solomon's Temple looked like? When Rosslyn Chapel, in its present state, is less than a quarter of what was planned, and we have the original foundations, they've been re-excavated. And when they claim that the east wall of the west wall of the chapel is a folly, well, I've had six structural engineers examine it and say it's an integral part of the building and is designed to be weight-bearing. You know, I like facts.
Absolutely. Tim, we have about a minute left. Is there anything that I didn't cover that you'd like to mention? Anything upcoming events, lectures, or anything you'd like to leave us with today?
Well, there's what I would like to leave you with is the enduring legacy that comes from the Sinclair-Zeno voyages to America. First of all, and perhaps on a personal level, most important, is the enduring friendship that has lasted over the centuries between the Mi'kmaq people and the Sinclairs of Scotland. And the most important thing for the general public, of course, is the Sinclair influence on Freemasonry, which gave us the American Constitution. Now, people claim that nobody ever heard of Earl Henry's voyage and it left no lasting imprint. I think they are dreadfully wrong. The imprint is there. We saw it in action just a short while ago, and I think the American people can be incredibly proud of it.
Thank you, Tim, very, very much for joining us. This is William Henry. This is Dreamland. Please visit the unknowncountry.com store, where you can get a copy of Tim Wallace Murphy's book, Templars in America, from the Crusades to the New World.