An astrolabe is a historical astronomical instrument used by classical astronomers, navigators, and astrologers. Its many uses include locating and predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars; determining local time given local latitude and vice-versa; surveying; and triangulation.

In the medieval Islamic world, they were used primarily for astronomical studies, as well as in other areas as diverse as astrology, navigation, surveying, timekeeping, Salah prayers, and Qibla. Astrologers of the European nations used astrolabes to construct horoscopes.

There is often confusion between the astrolabe and the mariner’s astrolabe. While the astrolabe could be useful for determining latitude on land, it was an awkward instrument for use on the heaving deck of a ship or in wind. The mariner’s astrolabe was developed to address these issues.

An early rudimentary astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the first or second centuries BC and is often attributed to Hipparchus. A marriage of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog calculator capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. Theon of Alexandria wrote a detailed treatise on the astrolabe, and Lewis (2001) argues that Ptolemy used an astrolabe to make the astronomical observations recorded in the Tetrabiblos.

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The word cryptex is a neologism coined by the author Dan Brown for his 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, denoting a portable vault used to hide secret messages. It is a combination of the words cryptology and codex; “an apt title for this device” since it uses “the science of cryptology to protect information written on the contained scroll or codex” (p. 199 of the novel). Brown implies that a scroll and a codex are the same thing; however a scroll is a book that is unrolled a page at a time; and a codex is a book that can be opened to any page at will, two very different things.

It is claimed in the novel that the original design came from the secret diaries of Leonardo da Vinci. In reality, though there is little doubt he possessed the mechanical skill to design such a device, there is no record of him actually doing so. But in reality Justin Nevins was designing, manufacturing and selling collectible cryptexes before Dan Brown invented the cryptex.

Following the model of “codex”, which pluralises as “codices”, “cryptex” might be thought to pluralise as “cryptices”. However, Brown uses the plural form “cryptexes” in his novel.

In the main part of Brown’s novel, the characters (while pursued by various sinister agencies) are trying to access the secret to the Holy Grail by figuring out the passwords that will open two different cryptexes, one hidden within the other to provide extra security. In the 2006 movie based on the novel, only one cryptex is vital to the plot (though another cryptex is briefly seen in a flashback scene with Sophie as a child). Its password is the Black Cryptex’s password.

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Esotericism or Esoterism is a term with two basic meanings. In the dictionary sense of the term, it signifies the holding of esoteric opinions, and derives from the Greek (esoterikos), a compound of  (eso): “within”, thus “pertaining to the more inward”, mystic. Its antonym is exoteric.

In the scholarly literature, the term designates a series of historically related religious currents including Gnosticism, Hermetism, magic, astrology, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, the Christian Theosophy of Jacob Bohme and his followers, Illuminism, Mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism, and the theosophical currents associated with Helena Blavatsky and her followers. There are competing views regarding the common traits uniting these currents, none of which involve “inwardness”, mystery or secrecy as a crucial trait.

Esoteric knowledge, in the dictionary (non-scholarly) sense, is thus that which is available only to a narrow circle of “enlightened”, “initiated”, or specially educated people. Esoteric items may be known as esoterica. In contrast, exoteric knowledge is knowledge that is well-known or public; or perceived as informally canonic in society at large.

In Western, English-speaking societies today, the term “esotericism” is not necessarily used in the sense of mystical knowledge or practice, but rather informally to mean any perception or knowledge that is difficult to understand or remember, such as theoretical physics, or that pertains to the minutiae of a particular discipline, such as “esoteric” baseball statistics.

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Jacques de Molay (est. 1244–5/1249–50 – 18 March 1314) was the 23rd and officially last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, leading the Order from approximately 1292 until the Order was dissolved by order of the Pope in 1312. He is probably the best known Templar, along with the Order’s founder and first Grand Master, Hugues de Payens (1070-1136).

His goal as Grand Master was to reform the Order, and adjust it to the situation in the Holy Land during the waning days of the Crusades.

With no crusader states remaining to protect, and with other problems surfacing, the right of the Order to exist had come into question. King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the organization, had De Molay and many other French Templars arrested in 1307 and tortured into making what is generally believed to have been mainly false confessions. When De Molay later retracted his confession, King Philip IV of France had him burned at the stake on the Île des juifs,next to the Ile de la cite an island in the Seine river in Paris, on 18 March 1314.

Jacques de Molay was born into, most likely, a family of minor nobility, as most of the Templar knights were, at Molay (Haute-Saone) in the county of Burgundy, at the time ruled by Otto III.

He was received into the Order at Beaune by Humbert de Pairaud, the Visitor of France and England in 1265. Independently of Guillaume de Beaujeu, who was elected grand master in 1273, Jacques de Molay went to the East (Outremer) around 1270. He spent all his career as a Templar in the East.

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Solomon’s Temple, also known as the First Temple, was, according to the Bible, the first temple of the ancient religion of the biblical Israelites in Jerusalem.

According to the Bible, it functioned as a religious focal point for worship and the sacrifices known as the korbanot in ancient Judaism.

Completed in the 10th century BCE, it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The reconstructed temple in Jerusalem, which stood between 516 BCE and 70 CE, was the Second Temple.

According to the biblical account, David’s first action as king of Israel was to conquer Jebus (Jerusalem) and declare it the capital of his kingdom. Even though the city was not the perfect choice from many points of view, a geopolitical constraint dictated this choice. Mount Moriah is an important place where Abraham bound Isaac and thus the Temple was to be built there. David conquered Jerusalem at the end of the 11th century BCE, then choose it as the center of his new government. He brought the Ark of the Covenant to the city. Jerusalem became the political and spiritual nexus of the ancient Hebrews. King David was instructed by God not to build the Temple, leaving the task to his son Solomon. The concentration of religious ritual at the Temple made Jerusalem a place of pilgrimage and an important commercial center.

The city served as the capital of the united kingdom of Israel, but became the capital of the less powerful of the two kingdoms (Judah) after the death of Solomon and the division of the country into two kingdoms. It regained its central status after the conquest and destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. In 586 BCE the city was invaded by the Babylonians. At the order of King Nebuchadnezzar II the city was torched, the Temple was razed, and the people were taken into exile. Jewish tradition holds this incident to be the first exile of the Jewish nation.

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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci , April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.

Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Leonardo’s drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on everything from the Euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

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Liberté chérie was a Masonic Lodge founded in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. Together with the lodge L’Obstinée it was one of only two lodges to be founded within a Nazi concentration camp.

On the 15 November, 1943 – seven Belgian Freemasons and resistance fighters – founded the Masonic Lodge Loge Liberté chérie (French: “Beloved Liberty”) inside Hut 6 of Emslandlager VII (Esterwegen). The name of the lodge was derived from La Marseillaise.

The original seven Freemasons of Loge Liberté chérie were:

• Paul Hanson
• Luc Somerhausen
• Jean De Schrijver
• Jean Sugg
• Henri Story
• Amédée Miclotte
• Franz Rochat

and they later Initiated, Passed and Raised Brother Fernand Erauw, another Belgian. Paul Hanson was elected Master. The Brethren met for Lodge Work in Hut 6 around a table, which was otherwise used for cartridge sorting. A Catholic Priest stood watch, so that the Brethren could hold their meetings; and protected their secrecy.

Hut 6 was used for foreign Nacht und Nebel, (German: “Night and Fog”), prisoners. The Emslandlagercamps were a group of camps whose history is represented by a permanent exhibition in the Documentation and Information Centre in Papenburg. Altogether 15 camps were established on the Netherlands border, with central administration in Papenburg.

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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Knights Templar, the medieval Christian military order accused of heresy and sexual misconduct, will soon be partly rehabilitated when the Vatican publishes trial documents it had closely guarded for 700 years.

A reproduction of the minutes of trials against the Templars, “‘Processus Contra Templarios — Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars’” is a massive work and much more than a book — with a 5,900 euros ($8,333) price tag.

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Pythagoras of Samos : “Pythagoras the Samian”, (born between 580 and 572 BC, died between 500 and 490 BC) was an Ionian Greek mathematician and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic and scientist; however some have questioned the scope of his contributions to mathematics and natural philosophy. Herodotus referred to him as “the most able philosopher among the Greeks”. His name led him to be associated with Pythian Apollo; Aristippus explained his name by saying, “He spoke (agor-) the truth no less than did the Pythian (Pyth-),” and Iamblichus tells the story that the Pythia prophesied that his pregnant mother would give birth to a man supremely beautiful, wise, and beneficial to humankind.

He is best known for the Pythagorean theorem, which bears his name. Known as “the father of numbers”, Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religious teaching in the late 6th century BC. Because legend and obfuscation cloud his work even more than with the other pre-Socratics, one can say little with confidence about his life and teachings. We do know that Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality and, through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles. According to Iamblichus of Chalcis, Pythagoras once said that “number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and daemons.”

He was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom, and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato. Unfortunately, very little is known about Pythagoras because none of his writings have survived. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues and successors.

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The Knights Templar round church was built on a magnificent scale to match the growing importance and wealth of the order in England. Linked to the church as a range of grand buildings, complete with great hall, to accommodate the Master and his knights, their chaplains and retainers, while kitchens, fishponds and stables met their other needs. Spacious grounds stretched down to the Thames, providing areas for training and recreation.

The original church was consecrated in 1185 by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius, who was in England to generate support for the crusaders in the Holy Land. While in England, he also consecrated the Hospitaller’s church of St. John, at their headquarters half a mile to the north, in Clerkenwell.

The London Temple was one of the three administrative centres of the Order, along with the Paris Temple and their headquarters in Jerusalem. Temple Church was the centre of the Templar’s London preceptory, which in turn was the headquarters of the Templar estates in Britain. All their wealth was held here, in a treasury so renowned for security that kings would confidently deposit their own riches there – - even their crown jewels. The original exchequer was probably sited in chambers beneath the church precinct, where a wall was found decorated with the black and white squares used as a visual key to the movement of finances.

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The Halliwell Manuscript, also known as the Regius Poem, is the first known Masonic text. It consists of 64 written pages in poetic form. The poem begins by evoking Euclid and his invention of geometry in ancient Egypt and then the spreading of the art of geometry in “divers lands.”

This is followed by fifteen points for the master concerning both moral behaviour (do not harbour thieves, do not take bribes, attend church regularly, etc.) and the operation of work on a building site (do not make your masons labour at night, teach apprentices properly, do not take on jobs that you cannot do etc.). There are then fifteen points for craftsmen which follow a similar pattern.

The general consensus on the age of the document dates its writing to between the late 1300s and the middle of the 15th century, and from internal evidence its author appears to have been a West of England clergyman.

The manuscript was recorded in various personal inventories as it changed hands until it came into possession of the Royal Library, which was donated to the British Museum in 1757 by King George II to form the nucleus of the present British Library.

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John Coustos, a jeweller and dealer in precious stones, was born in Berne, Switzerland, relocating to England as a child and becoming a naturalized citizen. His masonic career is noteworthy for two events. His initiation in 1730 is the first recorded instance of the presentation of a pair of white gloves to a new initiate, and his persecution by the Catholic Inquisition is the first, if not only, instance of an attack by that Holy Office on an English freemason.

 In 1743 Coustos moved to Lisbon where he was a founding member and Master of a lodge. He was shortly thereafter arrested and subsequently accused of the crime of freemasonry and in 1743 was imprisoned by the Inquisition of Lisbon, surviving the ordeal he documented what occurred.

 Refusing to divulge the secrets of his order, Coustos was taken to the torture chamber. Stripped of everything but his underpants, he was fixed on his back on the rack, his neck enclosed in an iron collar, and his feet attached to two rings. Two ropes the size of a man’s little finger were wound around each arm and leg and passed through holes made for the purpose in the rack.

The ropes were drawn tight by the executioners, cutting through the flesh to the bone, and causing blood to gush out from the wounds made. According to Coustos the ‘executioners bent their strength to the task four different times’ and at the fourth time their victim fainted through the loss of blood and pain.

After he was allowed to recuperate for six weeks, Coustos was again brought to the torture chamber. This time the procedure was somewhat different. He was made to stretch out his arms with the palms of his hands turned outwards. His wrists were tied, and then a machine gradually drew his hands together behind him until the backs of them touched. This was repeated twice more, and in the process his shoulders were dislocated and blood gushed from his mouth. He was taken back to his dungeon, and his bones were set by surgeons.

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