SATAN’S CALLING CARD
SEPTEMBER 11: A DATE TO REMEMBER.

[Preface: The author does not believe that an actual ‘Masonic’ conspiracy exists. What the author does, however, believe is that there is much to support the contention that radical Arab and Judeo-Christian fundamentalists may actually believe there is such a conspiracy.]

Your Place or Mine?

Historical events are fixed by the time and place they occurred. And this, as we all know, is expressed in a calendar date and the name of location. On face value, this appears obvious enough. After all, I was born on the 5th March 1948 in the city of Alexandria, as officially recorded on my birth certificate. No discussion, period. Ah, but what about much earlier historical events such as, say, the famous battle of Kadesh between the army of Ramses II and the Hittites, as depicted on the pylon walls of the Rameseum near the city of Luxor in Upper Egypt? In this case there are as many ‘dates’ ranging from c.1280 BC to c. 1298 BC depending which textbook you pick up. Even the exact location of this battle is a matter of some contention, and there are disagreement as to whether the battle was a ‘victory’ or a ‘defeat disguised as a victory’ for Ramses II. But there is worse. When it comes to such popular historical events such as, for example, the Biblical Exodus, well, forget it. Historians can’t even agree if it happened at all, let alone give us an exact date or the exact route taken by the Jews. The problem with historical events such as these is that they are ‘dated’ i.e. recorded, on different calendar systems or by the ‘reigns’ of such and such a kings and suchlike methods, presenting a nightmarish confusion for the chronologist. As for the location’s name, that, too, is given in different languages often leading to totally wrong conclusions. Think of the Arc of the Covenant or Noah’s Ark and you’ll get the picture. There is, too, the possibility that certain locations are, in a sense, chosen for symbolic reasons. Think of the terrorist attacks on the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which were almost certainly masterminded by Ossama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organisation. In the minds of the terrorists these bombings were, of course, attacks on the ‘United States’ and thus, in a sense, projected elsewhere to geographical locations either arbitrarily or for strategic convenience. But wait, this surely does not apply to the 11th September attacks on American soil? These attacks were clearly aimed at the United States. Well, yes…and no. Let’s look at this more closely.

Firstly the 11th September of the year 2001 AD (Anno Domini) is based on the Gregorian calendar. For the Islamic calendar this date fell on the 23rd Jumaada Al Thani of the year 1422 A.H. (Anno Hegirah); for the Ethiopian calendar it was the 1st Meskerem of the year 7501; in the Coptic (Christian Egyptian) calendar it was the 1st Thout of the year 1725, and according to the Jewish calendar it was the 23rd Elul of the year 5761. Confused? There’s more. The Ethiopian 1st Meskerem and the Coptic 1st Thout are the New Year’s Day for both these calendars. The Ethiopian and Coptic ‘New Year’, in fact, always fall on the 11th September of the Gregorian calendar (except on leap years, where an extra day is added). But check this out: in the year 1999 of the Gregorian calendar, the “11th September” marked not only the Coptic and Ethiopian ‘New Year’ but also the Jewish New Year (which fell on 1st Tishri 5760). This is because the Jewish ‘New Year’, which is a bit like the Christian Easter, is not fixed but changes because of the complex way it is determined such as the sighting of the new moon and also that it must not fall on certain days of the week. The Jewish ‘New Year’ can fall anywhere between the first week of September and the first week of October and, statistically, more than often somewhere in the middle like, for example near or on 11th September. The historical roots of all these ancient calendars are to be found mostly in ancient Egyptian going as far back as 3000 BC. The ancient Egyptian civic calendar, probably established in the forth millennium BC, was made up of 12 months of 30 days with each month having 3 ‘weeks’ of ten days called Decans. But to keep up with the (approximate) solar year of 365 days, the Egyptians also added 5 extra or epagomenal days, known as the Birth of the Neters (divine principles or ‘gods’), which included the celebrated mythological couple, Osiris and Isis. The ‘Beginning of the Year’ or New Year’s Day of the Egyptians was marked by the first dawn rising of Sirius, a star sacred to the goddess Isis, which originally occurred on the day of the summer solstice i.e. on the 21st June Gregorian. This special day was called 1st day of the 1st month of Thoth. But because of the ¼ day difference as well as a small variance between the sidereal year and the tropical year, this calendar slowly got out of synch from the true astronomical events such as the heliacal rising of Sirius and the summer solstice, such that by the early Christian times the 1st of Thoth had ‘drifted’ to the 11th September Gregorian, which is why the Egyptian-Coptic ‘New Year’ i.e. 1st of Thoot, starts on that date.

Fine so far.

But what all this has calendar stuff got to do with the 11th September attacks?

Peace Treaty
In September 1999 a long-awaited peace treaty, known as WYE II, was signed between the PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The signature, which had taken place on the 4th September 1999 at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sham El Sheikh, was, in fact to become officially effective seven days later i.e. on the 11 September 1999. The actual wording on the WYE II treaty reads "This Memorandum will enter into force one week from the date of its signature. Made and signed in Sharm El Sheikh, this Fourth day of September 1999." The WYEE II agreement was so named because it followed the so-called Wye I negotiations that begun on the 9th and 10th September 1993 by an secret exchange of private letters between PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. These letters revealed that the two bitter enemies had, in fact, been engaged for many months in secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway. In Rabin's letter it is confirmed that the PLO, which so far had been unofficially represented in the Palestinian Delegation established under the so-called Madrid formula, was to be recognised by Israel as the only representative of the Palestinian people. Rabin's official recognition, which is dated 10th September 1993, came in reply to a letter from Arafat dated 9th September 1993, in which the PLO also recognised the State of Israel and further pledged to delete certain articles in the old PLO Charter which had denied the existence of Israel. These negotiations ended in the so-called ‘Declaration of Principles’ signed on the 13th September 1993, and finally led to the WYE II peace treaty that came into effect on the 11th September 1999. To many radical Islamic fundamentalists and, to be fair, to many radical Jewish fundamentalists, the peace treaty was seen as a terrible betrayal of the worse possible kind and it probably was the main cause of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Not surprisingly, many regarded the date of “11th September” as the 'Day of Infamy' when their historical religious cause was finally sold out by Arafat and Barak. Ironically, this ‘Day of Infamy’ also happened to be in the year 1999, when the ‘New Year’ of the Jews and also the ‘New Year’ of the Egyptian Copts fell on the 11th September. The Jewish ‘New Year’ is generally known as Rosh Hashanah (which means ‘Beginning of the Year’), but itt is also called Yom Hadin (the Day of Judgement); Yom Hazikaron (the Day of Memorial) and is thought of as ‘The Day of Penitence’ when starts a period of ‘ten days of penitence’ leading to Yom Kippur ‘The Day of Atonement’. But the Jewish ‘New Year’ has a much deeper meaning to orthodox Jews. It is associated to the Messianic Age, and many Jews today actually believe that it will be on that ‘Feast of Trumpets’ that their long awaited Messiah will come and make his appearance on the ‘Temple’ at Jerusalem. This day, it is said, will be the ‘ultimate redemption’ of Israel. Curiously, in recent years fundamental Christians have also associated the 11th September with the Second Coming of Christ, probably to conform with the ‘Rosh Hashanah’ Judaic prophecies but also, apparently, because some believe the true ‘star of Bethlehem’ appeared to the Magi on the 11th September 3 BC in the east, when a bright light was seen at the conjunction of the ‘star of kings’, Regulus, and the ‘planet of kings’, Jupiter, and when the sun, Venus and Mercury were in Virgo.

Pentagon, Pillars and the Temple of Jerusalem

Eerily, the date of September 11 is also actually incorporated in the construction history of the US Pentagon, one of the terrorists’ most coveted targets in 2001. Any self-respecting employees of the US Pentagon will quickly tell you these days that the ‘ground breaking’ ceremony took place on 11th September 1941 during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. This ‘dual’ dating tag that is now forever locked in the annals of the US Pentagon is too much of a coincidence to be simply ignored. Could the terrorists have intended to draw attention to the year 1941 or, more specifically, to the year 1941 and something to do with President Roosevelt? But why? Let’s take a closer look. 1941 was, of course, the year that the US entered World War II. September 11, 2001 is an attempt to drawn the United States into a ‘World War III’. So far, there seems to be some ‘sense’ in making this link. But how does President Roosevelt himself fit in this ‘message’? What has Roosevelt got to do with the present PLO-Israeli conflict?

Roosevelt was sworn in on the 4th March 1933 as the 32nd President of the United States. Coincidence would have it that he was also a 32nd Degree Freemason of the Scottish Rite. His Vice-President was Harry Truman, who was a 33rd Degree Freemason. In 1945 Truman became America’s 33rd President. But so what? Surely these are just coincidences? Perhaps; but, perhaps they are not seen as ‘coincidences’ by Anti-Masons and religious fundamentalists in view of what these two great men were perceived to have created: the modern State of Israel.

In this respect, the “32nd and 33rd degrees’ bear a curious relevance to all this.

Let us see why.

A Question of Degrees
The Scottish Rite, which belongs to an elite branch of Freemasonry known as the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree, was founded in 1801 at the city of Charleston in South Carolina. Its origins are obscure, but it is generally agreed by Masonic historians that it started in the 1740s in the city of Bordeaux, France and brought to the American Colonies soon after. The idea was to link the normal or ‘craft’ Freemasonry with the elitist medieval order of the Knights Templar, a powerful political and financial organisation that originally was formed to protect the Holy Land --and especially Jerusalem-- from the Muslims. The Knights Templar, in fact, got their evocative name from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where had once stood Solomon’s Temple, and where these Christian knights had established their first camp during the Crusades. Jerusalem had been wrenched from the Muslims in the 11th century AD, and the new Christian ‘Kingdom of Jerusalem’ was placed under the protection the Christian knights, mostly Knights Templar, who had sworn a solemn oath to protect it. But in 1187 AD the Holy Land was lost again to the Muslims, when the army of Saladin crushed a Knights Templar’s army at the battle of Hattin on the 4th July. The Kingdom of Jerusalem eventually surrendered to Saladin on the 2nd October 1187, and from this time onwards, it remained in Muslim hands until modern times. Not surprising then, the rituals of Scottish rite Freemasonry are Judeo-Christian and those of the top degrees between the 30th and the 33rd are intensely ‘Templar’ inasmuch as they advocate the symbolic ‘rebuilding’ of the Temple of Solomon. Today, where once stood this much-fantasised Temple of Solomon, are to be seen the Mosque of Omar and the Mosque of Al Aqsa, two very sacred Muslim shrines and where the Prophet Mohamad is believed to have ascended to heaven. To put it mildly, the Temple Mound in Jerusalem is Islam’s most venerated place, some saying even more sacred than the Kaaba at Makka. By a terrible twist of fate it is also the most haloed place in Judeo-Christian tradition and, mostly, to neo-Templar secret societies such as the Scottish Rite. Central to the Scottish Rite rituals are the so-called Masonic ‘Tracing Boards’, which are usually a sort of sheet placed on the floor of the lodge on which can be seen various symbols representing the Temple of Solomon, the most prominent being two tall pillars, called Jachin and Boaz, leading to a five-pointed star or pentagonal altar known as the ‘Blazing Star’. The ‘Blazing Star’ symbolises ‘Light’ and was sometimes identified to ‘Lucifer’, which is very unfortunate, for it was not meant in this context to be seen in the malevolent sense that this name generally evokes today, but rather to the classical ‘Lucce-Ferre’ (Lucifer) which means ‘Bringer of Light’ or the ‘Morning Star’ of the Romans i.e. Venus, and which in the Bible is associated to Messianic events. But it can easily be seen how, to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Al Qaeda, such and elitist and secret society in America might be perceived as ‘Satanic’, hence the crude name of ‘Great Satan’ allocated by radical Arabs to the United States and it leaders. But to be fair, this ‘Satanic’ link, although of course wrong, is not altogether surprising to see. In 1881, for instance, a huge scam was mounted against the Scottish Rite Freemasons of Charleston by a French author called Leo Taxil, who ‘exposed’ the ‘Satanic’ rituals of this fraternity and named many senior politicians and clerics as being involved. The ‘Leo Taxil Hoax’, as it is know in Masonic circles, caused much bad press for the Masons, and brought a wave of anti-Masonic attacks from the general public and the Church. Now the 32 degree rituals of the Scottish Rite (the 33rd is a title an not a ritual) are said to be related to the 32 Paths of Wisdom of the Sephiroth or Tree of Life found in the Judeo-Christian Kabala. The Kabala is a mystical system of learning or initiation based on the idea that the Holy Scriptures, such as the Torah, the Talmud and the Old Testament, are somehow encoded in the ‘language of God’ the key of which (Kabala) was handed to Moses and passed on to the Jewish sages and Rabbis. Apparently the secrets of the Kabala are in the mystical understanding of the 22 letters of the Jewish alphabet. These letters, which are seen as ‘paths’ or ‘roads’, link up the 10 ‘emanations of God’ that make up the Sephiroth, and thus together they make up the 32 Paths. The same idea, interestingly enough, is also found in the modern esoteric Tarot Cards, which were invented in the 1770s by a Scottish Rite Freemason in Paris, Court de Gebelin. But here is a curious thing: the 31th, 32nd and 33rd degrees, which are the most crucial to the ‘rebuilding’ of the Temple of Solomon, also are found in the actual geographical latitudes or parallels that encompass the modern State of Israel. Modern Israel is, in fact, contained, as it were, between those latitudes. Indeed, the 32nd degree parallel passes just a little south of the city of Jerusalem. It has often been remarked that the ‘Mother Lodge’ of the Scottish rite Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree was fixed at the city of Charleston in South Carolina because, in fact, the 33rd degree parallel passes almost right through it. Coincidence? Perhaps. But there is more. On some certificates of the Scottish Rite 33rd degree, the actual geographical latitude given in degrees is shown alongside the name and location of the issuing lodge indicating, perhaps, some sort of mystical connection between the “Degree” rituals and the geographical latitude “degree” of the lodge. One can easily see, therefore, how radical Muslim fanatics might perceive the creation of the modern State of Israel which they believe was masterminded in secret deals between the Zionist Organisation and F.D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman in the 1940s.

The Source
Many ‘Founding Fathers’ of the United States were, in fact, Freemasons. A year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, Benjamin Franklin, the most famous of the signatories, was sent to Paris to obtain funds and military support for the American War of Independence against the British. Franklin, too, was a Freemason, and he immediately joined the famous and very influential Nine sisters Lodge in Paris. Also members of this lodge are said to have been the hero of the American War of Independence the marquis de Lafayette, the future US President Thomas Jefferson, and the future leaders of the French Revolution, George Danton and Jean-Paul Marat. Also at the Nine Sisters lodge were registered the inventor of the Tarot cards Court de Gebelin, the celebrated astronomer Gerome de Lalande, and the mathematician Gaspard Monge. Now this is most interesting: the last two were largely responsible for the creation of a new ‘Republican’ calendar based on 12 months of 30 days, with each months divided into three ‘decanis’ or ‘weeks’ of ten day, giving a total of 360 days. Five extra days, known as the ‘5 days of virtues’, were then added to make up 365 days of the solar year. This calendar was almost certainly framed on the ancient Egyptian prototype and may have been masterminded at the Nine Sisters lodge itself. It was also at this time that Court de Gebelin made the link between the ‘Blazing Star’ of the Freemasons with the five-pointed star, the symbol of Sirius, the ‘star of Isis’ and on which the original ancient Egyptian calendar was based. Eerily, Court de Gebelin identified this star to the Tarot card No. 17, known as ‘The Star’, which depicts a woman wearing a large star on her head. We shall see later how this symbol crops up in the 11th September attacks. Now Court de Gebelin, as all scholars at the time, knew that the original Egyptian calendar had been fixed on the first dawn rising of the star Sirius (the Egyptian ‘New Year’), which took place at the summer solstice, 21 June according to the Gregorian calendar. But when Gebelin’s made this connection with the Masonic and Tarotic ‘Star’, the Gregorian calendar had only recently been introduced to replace the old Julian calendar established by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. The conversion of the Julian dates into the Gregorian dates had, in fact, been imposed by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582 but, in fact, was not adopted in the American colonies until 1752, by coincidence the same year that George Washington was initiated in Freemasonry at Fredericksburg. According to the old Julian calendar the 21 June was no longer the summer solstice but, instead, fell on the 4th July of the new Gregorian calendar. It was then customary during those early transitory years of the two calendars to include both the Julian and the Gregorian date on official documents. Interestingly, Freemasons consider their own ‘New Year’ to begin at the summer solstice, which in the old Julian calendar would be the ‘4th July’. Was the Declaration of Independence signed on that date for ‘Masonic’ reasons? Who knows. The question is not whether this happened or not. The question is whether some Anti-Masons and fanatics think it happened.

Shangri La
It has been seriously suggested by the US Pentagon that one of the ‘aborted’ targets of the 11th September 2001 attacks may have been the famous presidential Camp David, in Maryland. ‘Camp David’ is, to say the least, a name very evocative of ‘Camp Temple Solomon’ of the original Knights Templar. David, in the Bible, was Solomon’s father and first ‘king of Israel’. In the New Testament Jesus is said to be of the ‘line of David’. But to the Arabs ‘Camp David’ has another, more political, connotation. It is, above all else, the place where the Egyptian President, Anwar Al Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister, Menahim Begin, signed the first peace treaty between Egypt and Israel on the 17th September 1978. The original name of ‘Camp David’ was, in fact, Shangri La, when it was first established by President F.D. Roosevelt in 1941-2. It was subsequently renamed ‘Camp David’ during the administration of President Eisenhower in 1953, apparently after his grandson, David Eisenhower. Camp David is the traditional place of retreat of US presidents since F.D. Roosevelt created the ‘camp, and where many have come to ‘see the whole world very clearly during times of conflict and strife.’ To Arab and especially Egyptian fanatics, however, ‘Camp David’ is remembered as the place where Sadat ‘betrayed’ the Muslim people --so much so, that this vilification eventually cost Sadat his life in October 1981. The circumstances of Sadat’s assassination on 6th October 1981, when a group of fanatical army officers opened fire on him and his quests during the ‘Victory’ over the Yom Kippur 1973 war, bears all the hallmark of the 11th September attack. Camp David then, was, quite obviously, a very high target-potential for those who masterminded the 11th September 2001 attacks.

All this may imply that there might have been an undetected ‘fifth’ target also ‘aborted’ on 11th September 2001. Let us see why.

The Woman with the Star
We have seen how the so-called 32 Paths or ‘degrees’ of enlightenment were associated with the ‘rebuilding’ of ‘Solomon’s Temple’ as well as with the idea of the Masonic ‘Blazing Star’ or pentagon. We have seen how this ‘star’ was also linked to the Egyptian five-pointed symbol of Sirius, especially in the Tarot card called the ‘Star’ and represented by a woman wearing a star on her head. Often the Sephiroth or Tree of Life, with it’s distinct 22 ‘paths’ and 10 ‘emanations’ is also shown next to the woman with the star. ‘The Star’ is card numbered 17 and is preceded by cards 16, known as ‘The Tower’, and then card 15 known as ‘The Devil’. ‘The Tower’ card, which is thus in the middle of this series, depicts a gruesome scene showing a very tall building whose top part has been struck by lightning and has caught fire, and with people falling off the building. Often next to this burning tower is shown the Sephiroth. Card 15, ‘The Devil’, shows the so-called ‘goat of Mendes’ (i.e. Satan) on whose forehead is placed a five-pointed star ‘Blazing Star’ or pentagon. In view of the striking imagery of these triad series of the Tarot cards when compared to the actual targets of 11th September 2001, it would be foolish to discount a possible link with the state of mind of the fanatical terrorists that hatched this abominable plan. For when we project these Tarot images on the actual geographical landscape of the 11th September attacks, we can easily correlate two of the target areas: the ‘Tower’ Card with the WTC in New York City, and the ‘Satan-Pentagon’ Card with the US Pentagon in Washington DC, the HQ of the ‘Great Satan’ in the mind of the terrorists. But assuming we are reading this gruesome ‘message’ correctly, then there should also be the ‘women with the star’ in this bizarre scheme. More precisely, this symbol should be seen somewhere on the ‘other side’ of the WTC towers. And so when we look for this symbol there, well there she is, the Statue of Liberty: a ‘women’ wearing a ‘star’ on her head. What, if any, could be the connection with our analysis so far? Firstly, the cornerstone ceremony for the Statue of Liberty was conducted in 1884 by the Masonic lodges of New York, including the Scottish Rite. So far so good. But if this is match perfectly with the gruesome imagery of the Tarot traid, then there should also be an association between the Statue of Liberty and the ‘Blazing Star’, the Tarot ‘Star’ and, consequently, the ‘star of Isis’ Sirius. Absurd? Surely there is no possibly connection here? Well, odd enough, there is. For the Statue of Liberty, when it was designed by the French sculptor Bartholdi in the 1860s and built by the French Engineer, Gustave Eiffel (both men were well-known Freemasons), was not originally a ‘Statue of Liberty’ at all, but originally intended for the opening of the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1867. Bartholdi, like many French Freemasons of his time, was deeply steeped in ‘Egyptian’ rituals and, consequently, it has often been suggested that he had at first imagined the statue’s prototype in Egypt to be a giant effigy of the goddess Isis but only later converted it to a ‘Statue of Liberty’ for New York harbour when the idea was rejected by the Egyptian Khedive due to lack of funds. Another factor to consider here is that during the French Revolution, many celebrations had taken place in honour of ‘Liberty’, with one notable celebration at the Place de la Bastille in 1793 where a huge statue of ‘Isis’ representing ‘Liberty and Reason’, was raised. So bearing all this mind, and in view of Barthlodi’s involvement with ‘Egyptian rituals’ and Masonic affiliation and thus his familiarity with association of the ‘Isis’ with ‘Liberty’, the star that was placed on the statue’s head could well-have been regarded as Sirius, that special star whose rising in ancient times in Egypt had marked the ‘Beginning’ of a Messianic age.


By a weird and fateful fluke, this ‘Beginning’ had now had now moved to the “11th September” of the Coptic-Egyptian calendar due to the ‘drift’ in the calendar. Worse; it had ‘drifted’ to the ‘Dau of Infamy’ of PLO-Israeli 1999 peace treaty which, again by fluke, had coincided with the Jewish and Coptic ‘New Years’. Bearing in mind that Anwar Al Sadat and Mehahim Begin at ‘Camp David’ were attempting to bring together the three major religion of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, then this new ‘Day of Infamy’ of 11th September 2001 takes on a particular sinister meaning. Forever.

Was this in the mind of the fanatics who planned this attack? Was there in their midlst people who could know all these links and symbolism?

Mystical ideas as these involving Kabala, Tarot and so on have been practiced by Muslim mystics for centuries. Indeed they probably invented them. As for Knights Templarism/Scottish Rite mystic, this is said to have also originated in the Middle East and passed into Europe by the Knights Templar through their close contacts with Muslim sages during the Crusades. To put it in another way, for any self-respecting Muslim sage, this ‘stuff’ is kids stuff. Indeed, we may only be gleaning at the outer layer of their veiled ‘message’.

But the question, then, is: to whom are they sending the ‘message’?

Who is talking to whom here?

Far fetched ‘theory’? Perhaps. But I do not think so. Certainly not as far-fetched as the 11th September attacks. Indeed, both bear the same hallmark of fanaticism.

But only ‘Time’ will tell.