The Lost Symbol

Author Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, is launched tomorrow and according to the article below it "skewers" Freemasonry as his previous blockbuster The Da Vinci Code skewered the Catholic Church.

It mixes fact and fiction in just the right ratio, I would imagine, to cause maximum reaction from those in the Craft and those without.

The following is from UK's left-leaning newspaper the Guardian.

Washington DC is used to hordes of eager tourists, brandishing guidebooks and rushing around the sights, but it is bracing itself for a different influx this week – and a potentially hostile one.
From Tuesday, when Dan Brown unveils the long-awaited sequel to his blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code, fans are expected to descend on the US capital to gawk at the locations featured in it. They swarmed to places in Britain, France and Italy mentioned in Brown's previous works. The new book, The Lost Symbol, is set largely in Washington and will give the reader a picturesque tour of the seats of American power. But it is also expected to reveal a more mysterious side to the city by exposing the influence that freemasonry exerted not only on the design of Washington DC but on the founding fathers .
Brown skewered the Roman Catholic Church in The Da Vinci Code. He is now likely to do something similar with the freemasons. The plot of The Lost Symbol is under wraps until Tuesday. But after that readers can follow his protagonist, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, as he tears about the capital rattling the skeletons of the establishment.
The book will mix fact and fiction, of course. But it is true that some of the founding fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence, such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and at least a dozen presidents including Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford, were powerful masons.
"George Washington was the biggest mason of them all. He laid the cornerstone of the Capitol Building in a masonic ceremony wearing an apron. And President James Polk, also a mason, presided over the ritualistic laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. The city and leaders were influenced by the principles of freemasonry," said David Shugarts, whose book Secrets of the Widow's Son predicted Brown would target Washington and freemasonry. Many experts even believe that masonic symbols such as the square and compass, the five-pointed star and the triangle can be discerned in the very layout of the city's streets.
"Dan Brown is going to open the eyes of many to just how authoritative the masons were here," said Warren Getler, an author and consultant on freemasonry. He is already devising a visitor tour of "masonic Washington" to be launched after he has digested The Lost Symbol.
The theory goes that if you draw a line along the avenues connecting the White House with four key road intersections it traces a five-pointed star or pentagram. Similarly, a square and compass and triangle shapes can be traced along streets that centre on the Capitol.
Getler's tour will explain that and also visit the extraordinary Temple of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. It sits directly in line with the White House and is odds-on to feature in The Lost Symbol. The forbidding Temple is guarded by two male sphinxes and supported by 33 columns, a significant number in freemasonry. Despite appearing intimidating, the Temple runs tours. Freemasons in the US are usually more open than their British counterparts, and are not, unlike the British, perenially accused of influencing the judiciary, police, civil service or academia. The 1.5 million members of America's 2,000 lodges are, however, routinely accused of occultism and Satanism, which they vigorously deny.
For good or ill, Heather Calloway, director of special programmes at the Temple, says only that she expects visitor numbers to "skyrocket".
The precise origin of freemasonry in Britain is unclear but is believed to date back to medieval craft guilds, which formed into lodges in the early 18th century. Their traditions migrated to the US, where freemasonry flourished by promoting interfaith religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
Meanwhile the obscure but contentious Albert Pike will surely figure in The Lost Symbol. His eerie statue stands in Judiciary Square, accompanied by a weeping virgin holding a masonic banner with the number 33 inside a triangle. Pike wasn't just a powerful mason but a Confederate general, accused of leading the Ku Klux Klan and assassinating Abraham Lincoln. He is interred at the Temple of the Scottish Rite.
A stone's throw away, the Capitol stars on the cover of The Lost Symbol. Above the Capitol the cover depicts the looming seal of the Scottish Rite, superimposed on a zodiac. Masonic control over a Congress by leaders suspiciously influenced by astrology? Dan Brown fans have less than two days to wait.
Inside, the rotunda of the Capitol is painted with a mural of George Washington ascending to heaven. An empty crypt marked with a star lies beneath.
Just across the Potomac, the George Washington National Masonic Memorial towers over Alexandria, Virginia. Inside is a statue of Washington in his masonic apron and sash. "We have a rich, introspective, mystical tradition. I think it [The Lost Symbol] is going to bring an influx of interest and new members," said guide Michael Seay, 23. He added, on the subject of the city being laid out on a masonic grid: "It's rubbish," then politely declined to demonstrate the secret handshake.
The memorial's director of collections Mark Tabbert is more concerned. "I'm worried that Dan Brown is going to make millions and I'm going to be left with thousands of unthinking tourists only interested in intrigue," he sighed.
Many don't appreciate freemasonry's philanthropy and egalitarianism, Tabbert said. And he concluded glumly: "Dan Brown's made his pile, he has no need to roast the masons."
Most suspect he will not be deterred.