The Los Angeles Times has an extensive story on Bob Brewer and his search for the treasure of the ‘Knights of the Golden Circle’. Brewer, co-author of the book Shadow of the Sentinel with Warren Getler, was apparently hired as a consultant on the sequel to National Treasure (set for release in a fortnight) – something which may not be pleasing to Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code (I’ll discuss the reason below). That would double the pain for the best-selling author, as many think the first movie took the wind out of his sails in writing his DVC follow-up, with its almost identical themes involving the history of Freemasonry in the United States, and esoteric locations in Washington, D.C.
As I mention in my book The Guide to Dan Brown’s The Solomon Key (Amazon US and UK), Brown may well be (have been?) planning to use the Knights of the Golden Circle as a plot device in the sequel to TDVC. Here’s an excerpt from the section I wrote about it (and for further detail, you can read my full-length essay “Dan Brown and the Ku Klux Klan” online):
…There is some strange history linking Albert Pike with the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. When the anti-Catholic ‘Know-Nothings’ group…dissolved, one of its members formed a new organisation. The ‘Knights of the Golden Circle’ was formed by a ‘Know-Nothing’ from Virginia named George Bickley in 1856, although others have claimed that Albert Pike himself formed the group. Its aim was American (or more correctly, Southern) expansionism: a circle on the globe some 16 degrees in radius, and centered on Havana in Cuba, was earmarked as territory that should become part of America. This circle included Mexico, Central America and even some of South America. It is alleged that the infamous outlaw Jesse James was a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle.
A curious aspect of Bickley’s plan was his use of the number 32. He set up 32 local chapters of his new group, and the ‘golden circle’ itself was 32 degrees in diameter. The KGC army was also to be composed of two divisions of 16,000 soldiers each – 32,000 together. Is there a link here to General Pike? As we have already noted, the 32 normal degrees of Scottish Rite Masonry, devised by Albert Pike, are said to have their basis in the 32 paths of wisdom in the Kabbalah.
In their book Shadow of the Sentinel, Bob Brewer and Warren Getler describe how the KGC amassed a fortune through various means, and how they hid this teasure in secret caches when the group had to go underground. The knowledge of the whereabouts of the treasure was hidden in a series of complex ciphers, waiting to be reclaimed by initiates when the time was right. Certainly prime fodder for a Dan Brown plot, although whether he is familiar with this obscure piece of history is not known.
It is alleged that the KGC eventually morphed into the original Ku Klux Klan. There is circumstantial evidence to support this: they shared many of the same goals, were both based on Confederate idealism, and ‘Ku Klux’ is actually derived from the Greek work kyklos, meaning ‘circle’.
Considering the apparent ‘Dan Brown spoiling’ in both National Treasure movies, it does make me wonder if the KGC component of the sequel may be due to a scriptwriter picking up a copy of a certain someone’s book…
