The Knights Templar in the New World by William F. Mann © 1991, 2004

[admin]

The Knights Templar in the New World  by   William F. Mann  © 1991, 2004  Destiny Books  ISBN  0-89281-185-4        295 pages includes black-and-white illustrations, notes, bibliography & Index                $16.95  (U.S.)    $26.95 (Canada)

How, you might ask, could a group which had been officially suppressed nearly two centuries before the official discovery of America (in 1307 A.D. – 185 years earlier, to be precise) have any connection with the New World?  This is a valid question.  The answer, or actually one possible answer is contained in this book.

If you are unfamiliar with the legend of the Holy Grail, this book may cause some confusion, since most people assume that “grail” equals “cup.”  There are other potential meanings of “grail” and this author explores some of them.

This book, more than others I have been reading on the subject of the Knights Templar, appears to rely more on intuition and assumption than on hard facts and solid research.  Apparently unrelated “facts” are drawn together on the basis of nothing more than the author’s belief that they are connected.  I am not sure that the apparent connections made in this book are accurate.  They may be.  That is for you to decide for yourself.

I am sure that there is a wide variety of hints, clues, and facts drawn together from a large number of sources.  I am also reasonably sure that the author is sincere in his beliefs and interpretations.  These two items alone make this an interesting book.

Mr. Mann makes connections between words based upon their apparent relationships (e.g., d’or (French, meaning “of gold”) and door; Hermetica (Greek for “by Hermes” and hermit) which are, in my opinion, stretching a point.  While the connections may be apparent to him, they don’t hold up based on linguistic comparisons.

 

How well the author succeeds in convincing the reader of the interconnections between such topics as the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, Masonry, Native American legends, sacred geometry, and various “clues” hidden in paintings by Da Vinci and others, is up to you, the individual reader, to determine.  Personally, I still have doubts (but I also have doubts about the theory of evolution, atomic structure, and the meaning of life).  The book is fun to red, and offers lots of ideas for further exploration.  While it is not an essential book in a collection of Templar-related material, it was an interesting book.

[Author]

Posts