to see Michael Attenborough at his Bedford Square office in January 1983, when the book was safely placed with Granada. He said he was delighted the book would be published.
‘Are you?’ I asked. ‘Then why didn’t you publish it yourself?’
He spent some time in obvious discomfort explaining that it had not been a pleasant decision and was one he genuinely regretted having to make, but that he did not feel that the sales force would be completely behind the book and it was not a title which Hodder felt it could publish with enthusiasm.
Yet I knew that the sales force had expressed great interest in the book and were looking forward to handling it. I told him so.
I was with him for three quarters of an hour, and eventually he admitted something which he seemed nervous of confessing: he loved his father. John Attenborough, according to his son, is a devoted Freemason and a devoted Christian. In view of what I say in the book about the incompatibility of the two religions,* he and brother Philip realized they would cause their father very great pain by publishing The Brotherhood. Attenborough assured me that his father had not seen the script and he had not discussed the project with him.
If the incident does not demonstrate the direct power of Freemasonry over the Fourth Estate, it does offer a vivid example of the devotion that Freemasonry so often inspires in its initiates, a devotion that is nothing less than religious. So it was that the Attenboroughs made their decision to throw away £8,000 in advance royalties and thousands more in legal fees and in terms of time spent on the project by the editorial, design, subsidiary rights, promotion, sales and other departments rather than wound their father.
Stephen Knight
January 1983
Author’s Note
Scarcely a week has passed since the publication of the first edition of The Brotherhood without a call for an inquiry into Freemasonry emanating from some aspect of British society.
The Prime Minister, the Attorney General, Ministers and MPs of all political persuasions, Churchmen of most denominations, local authorities, trades unions, and many others - even Bernard Levin - have been drawn into the debate.
Apart from minor adjustments, this edition is largely as it was. But response has been so immense that the possibility of a sequel is not discounted.
Only one of the things which intrigues me is why Grand Lodge should ban Freemasons from owning, discussing or even reading the book.
Stephen Knight
*From the Latin pro (before) and fanum (the temple); i.e. one outside the temple, not initiated to the rites performed within.
*These individuals acted, I don’t doubt, without the knowledge of Grand Lodge, which always prefers to ignore the very existence of outside enquirers.
*Past or present holders of office in the United Grand Lodge are brethren of grand rank.
*1 use the word advisedly. See Chapter 25 - ‘The Devil in Disguise?’ - below.
Some Freemasons claim great antiquity for Freemasonry. This is reflected in the masonic calendar which is based on Archbishop Ussher’s seventeenth-century calculation that the Creation must have taken place in the year 4004 BC. For convenience, the odd four years are ignored and Anno Lucis (in the Year of Light, when Freemasonry is deemed to have begun) is four thousand years ahead of Anno Domini - so a masonic certificate of initiation bearing the date A.L. 5983 was issued in A.D. 1983. The implication is that Freemasonry is as old as Adam.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, masonic writers produced vast numbers of books seeking to show that their movement had a continuous history of many hundreds, even thousands, of years. Some claimed that the ancestors of the Brotherhood were the Druids or the Culdees; some claimed they were the pre-Christian Jewish monks, the Essenes. Others insisted that Freemasonry had its origins in the religion of ancient Egypt - an amalgam of the briefly held monotheism of Ikhnaton (c. 1375 B.C.) and the Isis-Osiris cult.
Modern masonic historians are far more cautious. It is now accepted that Freemasonry as practised today goes back little more than three centuries. What is true, though, is that the philosophic, religious and ritualistic concoction that makes up the speculative element in Freemasonry is drawn from many sources - some of them, like the Isis-Osiris myth, dating back to the dawn of history. Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, the Kabbala, Hinduism, Theosophy and traditional notions of the occult all play a part: but despite the exhaustive literature - one scholar estimates that some 50,000 items of Masonry had been published by the 1950s - it is impossible to determine what comes from where and when, if only because Freemasonry on its lower and more accessible levels is opposed to dogma. There is therefore no authoritative statement of what Masons believe or what the Brotherhood stands for in the first, second and third degrees, to which the vast majority of members restrict themselves. Even a 33 Mason who has persevered to attain all the enlightenment that Freemasonry claims to offer could not - even if he were freed from his oath of secrecy - provide more than a purely personal view of the masonic message and the meaning to be attached to masonic symbolism, since this remains essentially subjective.
The comparatively short documented history of Freemasonry as an institution is nevertheless quite extraordinary. It is the story of how a Roman Catholic trade guild for a few thousand building workers in Britain came to be taken over by the aristocracy, the gentry and members of mainly non-productive professions, and how it was turned into a non-Christian secret society enjoying association with offshoot fraternal societies with millions of adherents throughout most of the non-Communist world.
In many cultures and at many times humankind has been drawn to the esoteric - the conception that the great truths about life and how to control social and natural phenomena are secrets and can be known only to initiates, who pass on their privileged knowledge to the elect from generation to generation. As one highly placed Mason told me, ‘Truth, to the initiate, is not for everyone; pearls must not be thrown before swine.’ Equally, throughout history men have joined together in secret groups to further purely worldly ambitions. All such groups also involve initiation - the initiation ceremony involving fearful oaths of secrecy. For secrets to remain secret there must be certain and effective sanctions. Secret societies formed for essentially practical ends have commonly had religious and moral elements. The religious element creates awe and so adds to the effectiveness of the oath of secrecy. The moral element determines the fraternal way that the organization’s members treat each other, which might bear small resemblance to the way they treat outsiders.
Freemasonry is both a speculative, philosophic - even religious and mystical - system, and a fraternity of those organized to help each other in material matters. For some Masons it is entirely the former, for others entirely the latter, but for most it is a mixture of the two.
Masonic historians seem as uncertain as non-Masons about who first saw in the obsolescent mediaeval Christian masonic guild an organization that could be taken over and converted into a quasi-religious, quasi-secular secret society. What evidence there is indicates that this evolution began very slowly and almost by chance, and that it was only later that the potential of the masonic guild as a clandestine power base was perceived.