Customer Reviews

The Shadow of Solomon: The Lost Secret of the Freemasons Revealed

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you have read any of my other reviews you'll know i've read quite a lot of Mr Gardner's work. This isnt one of his best. It is basically a history of freemasonary and how it came about.

There's nothing mystical about it, lots of facts and figures.. but thats about it. These dont really give much of an insight either! I got the impression that the Masons were just being painted as no-one special save for their skills in practical stuff such as building.

Having read other things about Masons, this is really not very interesting at all. It states there are only 3 degrees, which is the accepted answer rather than the actuality. (Allegedly!) In fact, rather than anything ground-breaking going on it has the feel that the exact opposite is being expressed with the aim to rid the world of any ideas of mysticism and hidden goings on!

I suppose if you want to read about dates and similar, and be told that all the aura surrounding Free Masons is just that... an aura which is of no real substance... then you'll enjoy this. Loking for more... I'd say look elsewhere.

Having only just come out earlier this year, it may have missed the renewed surge interest in Knights Templar and the Masons... but still a good read for those who want substance in their books..

For those brothers of the craft this book will be a timely reminder of what is established fact about our order and what we assume to know... in a time with Knight & Lomas' over-speculative thrilling tails of Hiram Key and exploring other Masonic Legends... The Shadow of Solomon is written WAY more neater and way more research than Hiram Key (though I thought Hiram Key was a fantastic book indeed and would still reccomend it), Shadow of Solomon is dense with facts, dates, names and places including dozens of colour prints of art relating to the foundation of the craft, and indeed a intriguing history of upper-europe society and politics of the 1700 and 1800s.

For those not into Holy Blood & Holy Grail or Hiram Key type books which seems to be this market, Shadow of Solomon is NO Da Vinci Code, it is well researched non-fiction book, the dense text is probably both it's good point downfall and a reader can get lost and exhausted just in the sheer use of dates and names in the first few chapters relating to the establishment of the Royal Society and other parent societies to what we now know as freemasonry.

I am mid way in the book now and enjoying immensely will add to this hopefully as it comes to a close

enjoy!

Poor scholarship made worse by poor writing.

Everything Laurence Gardner says is presented in more coherent form in other books, and his "Lost Secret" is a huge let down once you get to it. He meanders his way through every crackpot theory about the origins and secrets of Freemasonry, accepting some and supposedly disproving others, all the while taunting us with the idea that he has discovered some lost "secret". (At the end of the book you discover that, apparently, the Freemasons once knew how to transmute gold and other metals into some other element, but lost this knowledge during the Glorious Revolution of 1688! - and to fully understand what he is talking about, you would have to buy one of his other books).

Don't bother with this one.

This book is a bit of a challenge to get through. If you're a history buff, an actual Freemason, or a religous scholar, you're set - this thing is loaded full of dates and events which you'll be able to assimilate.

My greatest challenge with this book was coming to the subject cold. The author has a tendency to whip in and out of various historical events, presenting them in a nonchronological order and without much context. There were a number of subjects addressed that could either have been illuminating the author's theory or just adding seasoning; I couldn't tell you which, because I couldn't decipher their impact.

Unfortunately, the book does a very bad job of catering to the novice. There is no general glossary of Freemason positions, which leaves the reader stranded when trying to comprehend all of the information. The book seems to be targeted at people with an existing knowledge base. This isn't a bad thing, but I would have appreciated a definition of the intended audience on the book dust cover or introduction before purchasing it.

As another reviewer mentioned, this is not a Da Vinci Code-type book. It is a rather dry non-fiction history text, not an adventure story.

It is a nice cover, but that's about all I can say that's good I am afraid. I was expecting more, but it's just fact after so called fact and most of these are wrong and based on Gardner's world view. Not very good really and rushed out.

Let me start off this book review by quoting page 311, paragraph 3:
"The historical Illuminati were never in a position to wield any power over anyone. They influenced the thinking of a great many people, and possibly assisted the mind-set for the French Revolution, but they never once influenced any government except against themselves. The measure of their success can be notionally perceived in hindsight, but at the time they were a failed Order, and were totally non-existent by the late 1780's. As for their attachment to Freemasonry, it too was non-existent; Weishaupt founded the group specifically because he was unimpressed with German Freemasonry. It is impossible to presume that, in the context of all this, the Illuminati managed to contrive a powerful New World Order, and have since been running a conspiratorial global network for the past 200 years. The Illuminati simply do not exist, neither in the top echelons of Freemasonry, nor anywhere else."

And to think Gardner actually had the audacity to make such an equivocal statement, {{{or should I be polite and say "prevaricate."}}}
The bottom line is; Laurence Gardner is an unmitigated liar! The Illuminati really do exist. However, the truth is buried deep under his fraudulence, and if you're intelligent enough to be cognizant of that fact you'll enjoy this book.

"The Shadow of Solomon the Lost Secrets of Freemasonry" is worth the read insofar as exposing who, what, when, where, why, and how the "Old World Order" became "The New World Order" simply because knowledge is cognitional power and that's something the Illuminati has total derision towards.
So, with that said; your best bet is to read Seth Payson's book "Proof of the Illuminati" since Gardner conveniently omits certain details and vital information that exposes the globalist perpetrators. It is common knowledge that the Illuminati/Jacobin Society where waist high in orchestrating the French Revolution. So, for Gardner to say that they "were never in a position to wield any power over anyone" is simply doublespeak at its most paramount.
And what makes Gardner's claim so egregiously adumbrated is that he never divulges the fact that after Weishaupt's Illuminati were expelled from Freemasonry he was "deprived of his Professor's chair, and banished from Bavaria." Or so we thought according to Seth Payson.
Payson wrote that "He (Weishaupt) went first to Regenburg, and afterward entered into the service of [Ernest II] the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, whose name in the order (of the Illuminati) was Timoleon."

The reality is this, the Illuminati didn't disappear as Gardner suggests. They regrouped to form an alliance with the House of Saxe. Furthermore, the evidence shows that Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of the House of Saxe-Coburg in the month of February 1840, which means for a second time the Illuminati infiltrated the Masonic lodges in Germany and England.

If you recall English Freemasonry is also known as Hanoverian Freemasonry and Queen Victoria was the head of that Masonic block.
Please, take into account that the House of Saxe married into the Hanover Monarchy and they (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) brought the Illuminati with them. Gardner leaves all of this vital information out of his book.

I will say that most of what Gardner discusses in this book is confirmed information that is deemed vital, in other words I believe 90% of what he conveys is true it's the 10% that's conveniently circumvented that will throw you for a loop if you don't manage to catch on.

Overall, there's a plethora of history, such as the 1688 Whig Rebellion, and the reason for the Revolutionary War, which most individuals studying this material won't realize unless they read this book.

Our American Revolution was really about two warring factions of Freemasonry, which were the Antients who were known as the "Most Antient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons" and the Moderns a.k.a the Hanoverian Freemasons.

Gardner also does an excellent job examining the occult political science aspect of this enigmatic fraternal order, while unlocking the Hiram key, revealing Masonic secrets such as the Hiram Abiff fable, which according to Gardner is nothing but an allegory.
This anecdotal myth has no bases in truth whatsoever, but many low ranking Masons would have you believe otherwise because the Hiram fable is part of their third degree initiation practice.
And For more information on the Hiram story please read my review of Milton William Cooper's "Behold A Pale Horse."

Unfortunately, Gardner only exposes the first three degrees of Freemasonry. So, if your proclivities go way beyond that horizon then you'll have to continue your research elsewhere.

But insofar as I'm concerned I want to adhere to the sole Illuminati argument by making a couple of more points about Gardner's egregious lie that they didn't influence world event's.
A case in point:

Thomas Jefferson made this statement:

"As Weishaupt lived under the tyranny of a despot and priests, he knew that caution was necessary even in spreading information, and the principles of pure morality. This has given an air of mystery to his views,(which) was the foundation of his banishment [...] If Weishaupt had written here (in America), where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavors to render men wise and virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose."

(It was alleged that Jefferson might have been an Illuminati agent.)

Furthermore, George Washington said:

"I have heard much of the nefarious and dangerous plan and doctrines of the Illuminati. It was not my intention to doubt that the doctrines of the Illuminati and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than I am."

The Writings of George Washington...

So in conclusion if Washington and Jefferson knew without a shadow of a doubt that the Illuminati existed then suffice it to say we can be 100% sure they're still around based on the overwhelming evidence today, considering some of the same families (The Black Nobility) that were controlling this surreptitious cult 200 years ago are still in power today, running the banking systems, the governments, and the many corporations all over the world.

Make no mistake about it! Envisage all that is around you and you'll be the better for it.

Believe it or not this book is vital reading if you can get past Gardner's Masonic prevarications since he was a Mason for 20 years.

this book gives the outline of the history of something that tells us nothing but dull facts and has no insight into the mysteries of masonry at all..in fact this is a great example to me of someone.the author, who was a mason and understood nothing of its true essence...most masons do not know a damn thing about what masonry really is ! i only know what masonry really is by reading the only book out of dozens i have read about masonry that tells us the real story ..and the book is the meaning of masonry by wilmshurst..a mason who knows from whence he speaks--- he is not concerned w the outward ceremonies rituals that most masons practice but leave out the most important part....without which its just a club a social club philanthropic as they may be--evil as they may be said to be.....there are no mysteries really and certainly this book by gardner reveals none.except perhaps his mentioning levitation or some other such scientific propositions about how pyramids were built.....the masonry that masonry has as its true theme is not building with mortar or anything material of this world at all..all of these " things " are but symbols of spiritual realities known only to adepts who truly understand masonry and what the lodge means and every other word idea or symbol.....most people and most masons as wilmshurst points out in his far superior book..have no idea about any of truth of the craft and its real purpose....not because it is secret..but because it is esoteric in the sense that " many are called but few are chosen " . it is a ludicrous waste of time and very disappointing to me after having read wilmshurst's book to then read this.....i look forward to reading masonic texts...but will be surprised now if i ever read anything about it by someone other than wilmshurst..who can match what he has revealed for those who truly hunger for knowledge understanding revelation inspiration etc....less than one percent of this book had any interest to me...every word every page every sentence of the wilmshurts book had me mesmerized...as opposed to this travelogue of apparently well researched but irrelevant and mostly dull facts...missing completely what is relevant about this centuries old Craft ....this book is for the masses in my mind..motives spurious re publishing....wilmshurst's; a timeless book for true seekers of light only..

Collections strong in New Age topics in general and freemasonry history in particular will want to consider Laurence Gardner's THE SHADOW OF SOLOMON: it's a reader offering an insider's account of masonic history and the search the fraternity has conducted to locate its own lost secrets. The Masons have long been involved in world political events down to the founding of the U.S. and its constitution, which makes THE SHADOW OF SOLOMON of interest not only to new age holdings, but to any who would consider the process of American history.

As good a read on this topic as you'll find. Well researched with valid arguements based on historic fact. A must, for anyone interested in forming their own opinion in the origins and history of the craft. Highly recommended.