Talisman: Gnostics, Freemasons, Revolutionaries, and the 2000-year-old Conspiracy at Work in the World Today - Hardcover

This is an amazing work of historical investigation – the result of 15 years of research. What the authors have uncovered is a heretical tradition rooted in Hermeticism in Egypt which has, for the past thousand years, been a hidden opponent of the Christian Church.

At many of the key turning points in Western history, this tradition bursts out into the open in strange ways.

The first Renaissance Pope became fascinated by the rediscovered Hermetic texts and their haunting desire for a new utopian city and had paintings of pyramids installed on his bedroom celling. The Masonic members of England's Royal Society, who also rebuilt London after the Fire of London, planned to turn London into a symbolic capital of this secret tradition; Louise XI specifically set out to make himself out to be the Sun King and to refashion the design of parts of Paris to minic ancient Egyptian temples, the Founding Fathers, almost all freemasons, left indelible signs of this secret agenda in their architectural plans of Washington, D.C., and in the symbols of the new republic (e.g. the Masonic symbols on the dollar bill). Perhaps the most peculiar example of the role of this secret hermetic tradition in history was the crowning of Robespierre as an Egyptian diety on a pyramid during the French Revolution.

The story would seem absurb if it weren't so consistent and so clearly expressed in writing, painting, and above all in architecture. It is impossible to avoid the symbolic challenge of the Washington Memorial and the new glass pyramid in the Louvre (the culmination of centuries of surrepetitious architectural manipulation of the city plan of Paris).

Graham Hancock is a journalist (has worked for The Sunday Times) and the author of a number of books including FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.

Robert Bauval is the author of THE ORION MYSTERY. He has co-written books with Graham Hancock.