The Real Priory of Sion

Originally posted by Smudge
The Freemasons themselves seem to point to Scotland and the Scottish Rite Freemasonary as one of the earliest lodges if not the first, as the earliest known minutes are from Edinburgh I believe, in 1598. .Oldest Minutes

Actually, the oldest lodge is Lodge Mother Kilwinning No.0 It is even older than the Grand Lodge of Scotland. The history of the Mother Lodge dates back to the year 1140.

Just thought it would be interesting to share.

JC the link just goes to the Oldest Minutes link from my post, I thought that maybe I'd missed something, so I read it again and still can't find anything on Mother ......lodge.
Appreciate a decent link if you have one.
( would search but short of time this week )

reply to post by junior_smith


Is there a move within the Priory of Sion toward more openness? www.pr-inside.com...

reply to post by Esclarmonde


It could be because one of the other guys in the "Bloodline" movie is bringing out book on the PoS and I think this Haywood chap collaborated.

Originally posted by Masonic Light
There is not now, nor has there ever been, any �Priory of Sion� incorporated into Freemasonry. There was no such thing as a Priory of Sion before the 1950�s. They invented a fictional �history� for themselves, which is still perpetuated by hoaxsters.
For me info, see the link I gave above.

Fiat Lvx.

Yes, the Priory of Sion is indeed a well known and widely debunked hoax; however it is a hoax perpetuated to this day by the current editor of "Freemasonry Today," the conspiracy theorist and pseudo-historian Michael Baigent, who co-authored the best-selling "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" in 1982. I saw Baigent on a British TV documentary on the Priory of Sion a few years ago, and he still stands by his stated positions; thus although the "Priory of Sion" conspiracy hoax is often cited by anti-Masons, the main promoter of this hoax is one of the most prominent British Freemasons, Michael Baigent.

Having couple of Baigent's works on my bookshelf, I can assure you that promoting pseudo-historical "Masonic Conspiracy Theories" is not the exclusive arena of anti-Masons, but such fiction masquerading as history is also promoted by numerous Masonic authors, including the best selling pseudo-historians, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, whose works I also have. Masonic conspiracy theory publishing is apparently a booming business which the Masons themselves have been major contributors to

Lux

Of the three authors who co-wrote the pseudo-historical masterpiece The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Michael Baigent may be considered as being the main one who contributed the most towards the "Jesus-Bloodline" theory – his obsession with the Jewish Line of David was evident from what he contributed to the recently screened satellite documentary on the History Channel Investigating History: The Holy Grail (26 April 2004).

Michael Baigent's involvement in this subject matter seems to have begun during the late 1970s when he contributed research for the BBC 2 Chronicle documentary In The Shadow of the Templars broadcast on 27 November 1979. The Producer Roy Davies, who wanted a different ending to his documentary, categorically rejected his proposed "solution" to the activities of the Abbé Bérenger Saunière, which involved his theory of the "Jesus-Bloodline" and the survival of the Line of David in the region of Rennes-le-Château.
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The superimposition of Baigent's "Jesus-Bloodline" theory over the Priory Documents and linking it with the person of Pierre Plantard has been, needless to say, highly damaging. There are no references in the Priory Documents to the New Testament, and Pierre Plantard – the perpetrator of the Priory of Sion hoax – never claimed to be descended from Jesus Christ (he merely claimed to be descended from the Merovingian King Dagobert II, and desired to be the newly restored King of France). Because of the enormous worldwide success of Baigent's 1982 book it is uncritically accepted by a lot of people today that the "Jesus Bloodline" theory and the Priory of Sion are one and the same thing. Such beliefs can only exist in the minds of those who haven't actually read the Priory Documents themselves.

Pierre Plantard first distanced himself from the "Jesus-Bloodline" theory in 1983 on a French radio interview, quoted by Philippe de Chèrisey in his 1983 article 'Jesus Christ, his wife and the Merovingians' that appeared in Nostra Magazine – ‘Bizarre News’ N° 584, 1983. Then, later on during the late 1980s, Plantard modified and changed the mythological pedigree of his Priory of Sion, giving it a totally different history and repudiating the version found in the "Dossiers Secrets" that was accepted as "plausible history" by the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, and the following passage was written in Vaincre No. 3, September 1989, page 22 (a phantom publication edited by Thomas Plantard de Saint-Clair, Plantard's son):

"We are now able to officially state that the PRIORY OF SION has no direct or indirect connection with the ORDER OF THE TEMPLE, and that all this fantastic succession of Grand-Masters that authors such as Philippe TOSCAN, Mathieu PAOLI, Henry LINCOLN, Michael BAIGENT, Richard LEIGH, etc. have attributed to it derive merely from people’s imaginations and the realm of fantasy" (in an article entitled Some Archives Of The ‘Priory Of Sion’ Discovered In Barcelona… by "Ursanne").
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The popularity of Dan Brown's recent novel The Da Vinci Code has inspired several documentaries, one of which in particular featured Michael Baigent which put his theories to the critical test. Broadcast on 3 February 2005, Channel Four's The Real Da Vinci Code presenter Tony Robinson asked Michael Baigent the following question in relation to the claim that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and produced offspring:

Tony Robinson:
Do we have any evidence that there was a child?

Michael Baigent:
There's none whatsoever – that’s purely hypothesis on our part – but I think it's a plausible hypothesis - that the Holy Grail is the bloodline of David – and if Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married and she was pregnant with this child – "yes, she would have carried the Grail to France" – and I think this is the way that we need to look at this material – Is it true? I don't know – Is it plausible? Yes.

Tony Robinson:
So the inspiration for 'The Da Vinci Code' and a whole Canon of secret Grail Hunts is no more than a Big Guess...

Michael Baigent remains undaunted by such criticisms and sticks to his guns. His 1982 book has recently been translated in Norway on the strength of the success of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code – and he has recently toured Norway with an "illustrated evidence" of the Priory of Sion and promoting yet again, his "Jesus-Bloodline" theory and trying to prove that the Abbé Saunière knew about this and that it could have been his "secret" – basing the latter allegation on Station XIV of the Cross in Saunière's church that depicts a Full Moon whilst Jesus' body is being "smuggled away from the tomb".

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priory-of-sion.com...