The Templar Legacy and the Masonic Inheritance Within Rosslyn Chapel

by Tim Wallace-Murphy

The mystery surrounding The Knights Templar and the controversies that have shrouded their spiritual heirs, the Freemasons, have tended to disguise the fact that their common knowledge and insight formed the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition. This tradition which, despite its hidden nature, was described by Professor Theodore Roszak of Berkley University "as probably the single, most profoundly imaginative and influential spiritual tradition of European culture", exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals, leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools, on philosophers, playwrites and poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake and W. B. Yeats, on artists and renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo and indirectly on all the generations of European Christendom for nearly one thousand years. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern science. Any close and dispassionate examination of the facts soon discloses that spiritual insight is necessary and highly relevant to everyday life--more particularly in today's turbulent and troubled world. Indeed, it may well prove to be the key to the very survival of Mankind as a whole. Therefore, this book is dedicated to those who, despite appalling persecution, kept this spiritual tradition alive so that we in the twentieth century may benefit from its accumulated fruits and hopefully enoble our lives by emulating their courageous example.

63 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

The Irish born internationally known author and lecturer, Tim Wallace-Murphy, is the author of thirteen published books, has appeared in some eight or nine TV documentaries and has given lectures from Seattle and Long Beach on the West Coast of the USA, in Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy and in Prague.

Eleven of his works cover historical aspects of spirituality, including the Knights Templar, the Cathars, Rosslyn Chapel and the Western Esoteric Tradition as well as the Grail genre. The other two, including the most recent are more mainstream, namely 'What Islam did for Us' a study of how Islamic scholarship laid the foundations of so many fundamental and valued aspects of European culture and his latest work 'The Genesis of a Tragedy - A Brief History of the Palestinian People.' Tim was provoked to write this work as the Palestinian side of this conflict is rarely heard in either Western Europe or the United States and if this ongoing running sore in East West relations is ever to be solved, the pain on both sides needs to be understood.

He also acts as a tour guide in some of the most beautiful and inspiring sacred sites in Europe.