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Swift and Solomon's Temple
From The Gulliver Code
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After the formation of the first Grand Lodge of England (GLE) in London in 1717, Swift published an anonymous pamphlet in Dublin which claimed to have been sent by the Grand Mistress of the Society of Female Free-Masons. In it he linked the original old Scottish lodge of Kilwinning with the Branch of the lodge of Solomon's Temple, later known as the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and the Brother Order of the Templars. In this pamplet, Swift lampooned a work called The Grand Mystery of Freemasons Discovered, published in 1724, whose writer was claiming to have exposed the secrets of Freemasonry.
During this period, Swift was a member of Dublin Lodge #16. The Grand Lodge of Ireland was founded in Dublin in 1725, just before the appearance of Gulliver's Travels in 1726.
Some writers feel that Swift's pamphlet is directly responsible for the popular mythology that linked the famous old Scottish lodge of Kilwinning with the Branch of the lodge of Solomon's Temple, later known as the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and the Brother Order of the Templars.
- "On 26th December 1736, after a Masonic meeting, a banquet was held in a Parisian restaurant in the rue du Paon. At the banquet after the ceremony, a Scotsman by the name of Andrew Michael Ramsay[1], spoke of the great aim of the Order, that of uniting all virtuous men of enlightened minds, who possessed a love of the fine arts, science and religion, so that the interests of the Fraternity shall become those of the whole human race. He likened the Craft to the mystery societies of the ancient world and claimed the mystic rites performed at these festivals, concealed traces of the unpolluted religion of Noah and the Patriarchs. He stated that the Order was revived during the crusades before being brought back to England by King Edward I, whereupon it made its way to Scotland. There, he claimed, "James, Lord Steward of Scotland, was Grand Master of a Lodge established at Kilwinning in the West of Scotland in 1286, shortly after the death of Alexander III, King of Scotland, and one year before John Balliol mounted the throne." "
- "It was largely from this much celebrated oration that the popular belief grew that Freemasonry had somehow descended from a religious military order of crusader knights, a myth that resulted in the creation of many new Masonic rites and one which still resonates today."
