Page 13 - Dragon Flood

Yet Another Portrait of Washington by Peale

The image of the hidden hand, like the all seeing eye, is intrinsically linked to Freemasonry.
It reveals that the person has allegiances that are secret, that they serve a master that is kept
hidden from the masses of the uninitiated. In the recently published book The Temple and
the Lodge written by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, the history of the Knight’s
Templar and the Freemasons are delved into. The book includes the following statements.

Of the fifty-six signatories of the Declaration of Independence, only nine can definitely be
identified as Freemasons, while ten others may possibly have been. Of the general officers
in the Continental Army, there were so far as documentation can establish, thirty-three
Freemasons out of seventy-four. Granted the known Freemasons were, as a rule, more
prominent, more instrumental in shaping the course of events than their unaffiliated
colleagues...

On 25 May 1787, the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia and commenced
its efforts to devise the machinery of government for the new nation. The first voice to
make itself heard in any significantly influential way was a characteristically
Freemasonic one, that of Edmund Randolph.. Randolph...a member of a Williamsburg
lodge, had become Washington's aide-de-camp. Subsequently he was to become
Attorney-General, then governor of Virginia and Grand Master of Virginia's Grand
Lodge. During Washington's presidency, he was to serve as the first Attorney-General of
the United States, then the first Secretary of State...

There were ultimately five dominant and guiding spirits behind the Constitution -
Washington, Franklin, Randolph, Jefferson and John Adams. Of these, the first three were
active Freemasons, but men who took their Freemasonry extremely seriously - men who
subscribed fervently to its ideals, whose entire orientation had been shaped and
conditioned by it. And Adam's position, though he himself is not known to have been a
Freemason was virtually identical to theirs. When he became president, moreover, he
appointed a prominent Freemason, John Marshall, as first Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court.
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