Archive for February, 2010
I’ll be speaking at the 45th Masonic Spring Workshop, held at the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis April 23 – 25.
This year’s theme is Enlightenment: The Soul of Freemasonry and I’m honoured to be on the same bill with keynote speaker, the distinguished Professor of History, UCLA, Dr. Margaret C Jacob.
My main presentation will be on the Saturday morning when I’ll be presenting my presentation, Living the Deception: Masonic Myths in the 21st Century.
After lunch, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on the future of Freemasonry called Nurturing the Soul of the Craft.
If you’ve never been to the Alberta Spring Workshop, it is an incredible three-day event in one of the most beautiful settings the Canadian Rockies have to offer.
A complete agenda of the workshop can be found at:
About The Deck
This expanded edition, Templar Tarot: the Journey, includes 101 cards that takes us further along the historical endeavors of the infamous Knights Templar. Unlike any other tarot deck, the Templar Tarot deck features two sets of Major Arcana cards taken from the original art of American artist Allen Chester. The significance of the art is interpreted by Stephen Dafoe, renowned Templar historian and Canadian author. Dafoe draws on his vast knowledge of the Templars and related traditions to see the mystical messages that Chester has captured in the art. As with the first edition of the Templar Tarot, this tarot deck will also be a limited edition. This is a perfect deck for those that use tarot as a meditation tool.
About The Book
Was William Morgan Murdered By Masons?
On September 11, 1826 William Morgan was arrested for petit larceny and taken from his home in Batavia, New York to answer the charge. He never saw his home or family again. What became of Morgan after he was freed from a Canandaigua jail cell in the middle of the night forms the basis of one of the great unsolved mysteries of American history, made all the more mysterious by the circumstances that preceded it. Several months before his arrest, Morgan had begun work on a book on the Freemasons, a group with which he had recently had a falling. The problem for Morgan and his book was that it sought to expose Masonic secrets, something the local members of the fraternity wished to prevent at all costs.
The Knights Templar were victimized at the beginning of the fourteenth century by the manipulations and false information of the King of France; an act that ultimately led to their dissolution in 1312. However, the Order has also been victimised since that time by being the central characters in a wide range of speculative theories about the Order and just what happened to them in the years that followed.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the notion that the Templars were the founding fathers of Freemasonry. Over the years, the Templars have been involved in a Masonic chicken and egg scenario; did the rise and development of Freemasonry give birth to the Masonic Knights Templar or did the demise of the original Knights Templar give birth to Freemasonry itself?
The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, popularly known as the Knights Templar, was the most famous and infamous of the crusading military orders. Formed between 1118 and 1120 AD, the Templars had the mandate of protecting the many Christian pilgrims who ventured to the Holy Land to see the sites sacred to their faith.
The Templars were an unusual Order, in that they lived both an active and contemplative life, making them effectively the first warrior-monks in the western world. As such, the Templars quickly expanded beyond their role as protectors of pilgrims and played a vital role in many battles of the Crusades. Although they suffered more defeats than they celebrated victories, the Templars are nonetheless remembered as Christendom’s most fearless military force.
Co-written with Alan Butler
Where did the mysterious white-mantled order of the Knights Templar come from?
Was it simply a reflection of early twelfth-century Christian thinking?
Authors Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe believe that the true genesis of the Knights Templar belongs far back in time, long before Christianity even developed.
The Templars were an offshoot of a little understood monastic brotherhood, the Cistercians, who themselves danced to the tune of an extremely powerful group of individuals living in Burgundy and Flanders from the time of the Romans onwards.
Butler and Dafoe give a detailed account of the rise of a specific group, identified as the “Troyes Fraternity,” that did not simply respond to the caprices of history�they made it.
Behind the Knights Templar lay a belief pattern almost as old as humanity and a heritage that was already ancient before recorded history began.
The story is both fascinating and compelling. It will leave the reader in no doubt as to the true intentions of the Knights Templar and of the shadowy, immensely influential organization that brought them into being.
Ordering Options
In The Warriors and the Bankers, the research and writing team of Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe bring their combined experiences to bear on the question asked for hundreds of years, What became of the Knights Templar?
Arrested in 1307, dissolved in 1312 and executed by 1314, the Templars have been the subject of many theories concerning their possible survival.
This book examines these theories against new evidence and information.
Additionally the authors put forth, for the first time, a completely NEW theory that has caught the ears, eyes and attention of many readers.
The ultimate conclusion is that the Templars did survive, virtually intact and that in a very direct sense, they may still be one of the most potent forces at work in the world at the start of the new Millennium.
The Warriors and the Bankers is eminently readable and is intended for both the serious student of Templarism or simply the interested observer.
Ordering Options
Barnes & Noble
Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Amazon UK
Powells
Posted in The Books | 
Tags: alan Butler, Knights Templar, Stephen Dafoe, warriors and the Bankers | 
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