Dan Brown: Well, for the same reason it was okay to believe that-- if you threw a virgin into the ocean, a storm wouldn't hit you. So if you imagine flipping a coin 100 times, you would expect, based on a normal probability distribution, that you'd get an equal number of heads and tails. Where you basically challenge the reader to take what you've just told them over the course of the previous 500 pages and decide what he or she wants to do with it. It was George Washington as a god. The room-- room really seems to-- to radiate. Video From Fall Real Estate Market Update With Local Leaders, Washingtonian Real Estate Virtual Happy Hour, PHOTOS: Wild Scenes of Jubilation as DC Reacts to Joe Biden Victory, Celebrations Have Broken Out All Over Washington After Joe Biden Is Elected President, Gun Ownership Seems to Be Rising in the DC Area, Where to Go if You Want to Publicly Celebrate an Election Call. That's what most Freemasons say, but not all. Yes, it is a combination of words and hand signals. George Washington and engineer Pierre L’Enfant were Freemasons, and consulted with non-Mason Andrew Ellicott, who finished designing the street plan of the city after L’Enfant was fired from the project. Delaware Man Relocating to Historic Ward 2 Home. While in the Da Vinci Code Catholics and Jesus are portrayed in a negative light, the newest book portrays Freemasonry in a more positive light. Our most popular stories of the week, sent every Saturday. And I hear about these experiments that are being done that categorically and scientifically prove that the human mind has power over matter. Freemasons even had the honor of being satirized on "The Simpsons.". The capstone matches that mystical number. The House of Temple is not shrouded in secrecy and, in fact, regularly hosts children’s concerts, public tours and the Burl Ives’ Collection–singer, actor and narrator of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, according to National Geographic. The Capitol Rotunda-- where the fictional Langdon makes a gruesome discovery has a real-life secret, stumps of iron in the floor that used to be part of a railing. Matt Lauer: and what you've set up in the book is the people who think about, "Boy, we can change the world in a positive way." Dan Brown: They were. Dan Brown: In some ways it just happened. It was like, "How can a man become a god?" I mean, any time you have powerful people who aren't telling you what They're doing-- you're going to assume the worst. And they read the stars. We had a separation of powers. It’s no secret that George Washington was a Freemason, but what about Pierre L’Enfant, the architect of DC? Arturo de Hoyos: Dan Brown's book is very exciting. "I think there will be an enormous number of people who will be interested in the Masons after this book (comes out)," Brown said. There was a statue of George Washington that sat in the Capitol. Mitch Horowitz: I often tell people that if you like bake sales join Freemasonry because that's what you're going to be doing. One of "The Lost Symbol's" greatest puzzles is also the last stop on Dan Brown's mystery tour. "The Lost Symbol" takes you on a high-speed journey to uncover secrets in Washington, D.C. Dan Brown helped us retrace the steps of his fictional hero, Robert Langdon. But he's also a thirty-third degree Freemason of the Scottish rite. Dan Brown: Right. And they might like that. The blueprint of the Capitol building is an astonishing document. Do 33rd degree Scottish Rite Masons drink out of a skull? It became a Christian country. The pyramid, central to the plot of The Lost Symbol, is not a Masonic symbol. Brown says his research led him to a conclusion that might shock some people. Dan Brown: I think my books contain a lot of meat but it tastes like dessert somehow. A third experiment involves machines called random event generators-- which Noetics researchers have placed on almost every continent. Mal'akh thinks the Masons' secret word will make him an all-powerful agent of evil, and he thinks that he can bring down the government with proof that some of its highest ranking officials are Freemasons. In fact, Benjamin Franklin, a well-known Mason, submitted an eyeless design to the committee to design the seal and was rejected. Arturo de Hoyos is the grand archivist and grand historian of the supreme council of the Scottish rite and himself a 33rd-degree Mason. It would be exciting if it were true, but such is not the case. This is the headquarters of the Scottish Rite Freemasons in Washington, D.C. Matt Lauer: It's inclusive. Then a master Mason-- dressed as the grim reaper - issues a warning. Tabbert, of the George Washington Masonic Memorial, said Masonic groups allowed men on both sides of the revolution to come together as brothers—not to promote a political view, which would be against Masonic tradition. Matt Lauer: One character is being elevated to the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite. s deism (all faiths beginning at one source). Dan Brown: Noetic science really is the reason this book took me so long to write. The villain of the lost symbol, Mal'akh, is a giant who has covered himself with tattoos he thinks will give him mystical powers: a double-headed phoenix, the pillars from the temple of Solomon, a snake consuming itself. But in many lodges across the country, the scene is a little different. It carries on his work, studying the wisdom of the ancients. One of the three sections that have been uncoded refers mysteriously to map coordinates about 150 feet south of the sculpture in Langley. Later in the Lost Symbol, Robert Langdon comes across an unfinished black stone pyramid, with a Masonic cipher on it. But there's no Masonic message in the city's street plan, Tabbert said. Matt Lauer: And when they found out that Dan Brown was going to be dealing with Freemasonry in this book, what was their reaction? The foundations of astrology really have a deep, mystical and spiritual underpinning that that the Masons were very in tune with. Matt Lauer: And you draw a pretty straight line from the ancient mysteries to the Freemasons and to another subject that we haven't quite discussed yet. Here’s what might come up in the novel: You don’t need to burn shoe leather looking for Masonic symbols in the nation’s capital—all you need are Google Maps and a Sharpie marker. "Individually, Masons had a role in building the White House, in building and designing Washington, D.C.," said Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. The last master Mason to serve as president was Gerald Ford. To separate Freemason fact from Lost Symbol-style myth, National Geographic News went inside the centuries-old order with two Masons and a historian of the ancient Christian order from which some claim the Masons sprang in the 17th or 18th century.