Reviews and Media
"The Compasses and the Cross is something very different. In this meticulously detailed work, Stephen has taken on 250 years of cherished Masonic Templar mythmaking and slain a whole barnyard full of sacred cattle."
Christopher Hodapp
Author of Freemasons For Dummies
If you really believe that the Templars are the founding fathers of Freemasonry or if you trust Chevalier Ramsay and what he asserts in his Oration, this book is not for you.
If you believe that the Templars played a prominent role in the Battle of Bannockburn (the Robert Bruce legend), and that the Templar Knights fled from France to Scotland disguised as operative Masons (the Pierre d'Aumont legend) , this book will disappoint you.
However if you are an honest student of Masonic Knights Templar history and try to understand the 'truth beyond the veil' on how, why and when Templar Masonry was born and developed, then you will be greatly indebted and grateful to this excellent book and to its author Stephen Dafoe.
So much in Freemasonry is explained to its members as 'the way we've always done it', as Chris Hodapp says in his Foreword to this book. But clearly is not so.
I totally agree with Dafoe when he underlines that: 'we Freemasons are a funny lot. Never content with simply being part of an organisation that has survived and thrived for three centuries, we are constantly searching for evidence that the Masonic Craft must stem from some ancient source".
But we have made another mistake: instead of considering our ritual only as legends having a symbolic meaning, that is lessons to impart us moral values, we have firmly believed that what they told us was history. Once more is not so.
The book is divided in three main sections.
The first deals with the origin and rise of the Templars, the second section examines the myths on the origins of the Masonic Knights Templar Order and the third is devoted to the history of Templar Masonry in the United Kingdom, in the United States and in the Dominion.
There are also seven appendixes where the reader finds a Masonic Templar Chronology, the text of Ramsey's Oration and much more.
The book is well written, easy to read and well illustrated by drawings and pictures.
- Bruno Virgilio Gazzo
editor, PS Review of Freemasonry
