Rosslyn’s Pillars & CubesExamining the evidence concerning Rosslyn Chapel’s famous pillars

and its controversial “musical cubes”(An earlier version of this article ran in the April 2010 edition of Girnigoe: Scotland’s Clan Sinclair Magazine)

By Jeff Nisbet

During the last ten years or so, but especially since thepublication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, someof the more esoteric theories surrounding certain ele-

ments of the architectural enigma we know as Rosslyn Chapelhave taken a bit of stick, and I have been responsible for someof it. Let’s take a look at two of them -- first the chapel’sfamous pillars, and then its so-called “musical cubes.”

The text for John Slezer’s 1693 collection of copperengravings “of all the King’s Castles, Pallaces, towns, andother notable places in the kingdom belonging to private sub-jects,” the T h e a t rum Scotiae, was written by Robert Sibbald,Geographer Royal for Scotland.

In part, here is what Sibbald had to say about Rosslyn Chapel(emphasis mine): “This Chapel lies in Mid-Lothian, Four Milesfrom Edinburgh, and is one of the most curious Pieces ofWorkman-ship in Europe. The Foundation of this rare Buildingwas laid Anno 1440 by William St Clair, Prince of Orkney,Duke of Holdenburgh, &c. A Man as considerable for the pub-lick Works which he erected, as for the Lands which he pos-

sess’d, and the Honours which were conferred upon him byseveral of the greatest Princes of Europe. It is remarkable thatin all this Work there are not two Cuts of one sort. The mostcurious Part of the Building is the Vault of the Quire, and thatwhich is called the P r i n c e ’s Pillar so much talk’d of.”

What are we to make of the fact that the pillar we nowrefer to as the Apprentice or Prentice Pillar was, in the late1600s, known as the Prince’s Pillar, and had indeed beenknown as such long enough to be “much talk’d” about?

Eight decades later, in his 1774 An Account of the Chapelof Roslin, the Bishop of Caithness, Robert Forbes, supposesthat the Prince’s Pillar was so named because of the chapel’s“princely founder,” and then goes on to relate, for the firsttime anywhere, the by-then-well-known legend of the slainapprentice, killed in a jealous rage by Rosslyn’s mastermason for carving the pillar during the master’s absence -- atale only marginally reminiscent of the murder of HiramAbiff, grand architect of the Temple of Solomon, an act thatis central to freemasonic ritual. The legend, Forbes claims, is

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Rosslyn Chapel, 1828, by David Roberts

Left: Detail from Samuel Dukinfield Swarbreck’s 1837 East Aisle or Lady Chapel, Rosslyn Chapel. Right: Photo by Thomas Vernon Begbie, circa 1880.

“a tradition that has prevailed in the family of Roslin, fromfather to son.”

The legend has since enjoyed a long and robust life, but itsdodgy provenance has recently given rise to a number ofbooks that insist the chapel’s symbolism is strictly Christian,and cannot be considered in any way freemasonic. While Iam of the studied opinion that Rosslyn was built to preserveand pass forward certain occult knowledge, as those of youwho have read my work will know, there’s no doubt that thearchitectural fabric of the chapel has been tampered withover the last two centuries in an over-zealous attempt to fur-ther a Masonic agenda. As just one example, let’s considerthe pillar now known as the Master’s Pillar.

First, let’s compare the detail from Samuel DukinfieldSwarbreck’s 1837 lithograph of Rosslyn’s Lady Chapel,shown above-left. Then compare the pillar in the foregroundof that detail with the same pillar in Thomas Vernon Begbie’scirca 1880 photograph next to it, taken after architect andfreemason David Bryce’s 1860’s restoration of the chapelinterior. To all appearances it seems that Bryce’s work went

far beyond the remit of simple restoration.And yet, an entry in the Scottish Records Office seems to

indicate that Bryce actually discovered an ornate inner pillarthat at some point in time had already been partially restoredand concealed beneath a false exterior. That entry, dated 1861and referenced as GD 164/Box12/21, reads as follows:“David Bryce describes the pillar on the opposite side andcorresponding with the Apprentice Pillar: ‘It has at one timebeen ornamented not in a spiral form but with upright orna-ment which has been partly cut out and new stone introduced,and other stones where entire being plastered over. The intro-duced plain stone is white, the original is red.’” Whether ornot you are predisposed to believe that Bryce was lying inorder to establish that two ornate pillars had existed inRosslyn from the time of the chapel’s original construction,thereby lending credence to the idea that the Masonic pillarsof Boaz and Jachin had been intended by the builder, the evi-dence of your eyes should indicate that the drab and unre-stored pillar shown in Swarbreck’s 1837 lithograph is of anobviously angular construction, unlike all other chapel pillars.

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Left: Samuel Dukinfield Swarbreck’s 1837 The Interior of Rosslyn Chapel.Above: Screenshot from Tommy and Stuart Mitchells’ YouTube presentation,The RosslynStave Angel --Music Cipher.

One other theory about the naming of the Prentice Pillar,albeit a rather mundane one, bears mention. Contemporaneousto the building of the chapel there was, in the East Midlandstown of Chellaston, England, a renowned alabaster quarry andworkshop of the firm Prentys and Sutton. Perhaps master carv-er Thomas Prentys carved the Prentys Pillar.

While there may be no legitimate tie to freemasonryafforded by the legend of the slain apprentice -- a legend thatis not unique to Rosslyn Chapel -- my recent research hasshown that there may indeed by a symbolic tie, however ten-uous, between the building of the chapel and the building ofSolomon’s Temple.

In James Anderson’s 1723 Constitutions, which utilizessome of freemasonry’s oldest manuscripts, is the followingdescription of the building of Solomon’s Temple (emphasismine).

“ D a g o n ’s Temple, and the finest structures of Tyre andSidon, could not be compared with the Eternal God’s Te m p l eat Jerusalem. There were employed about it no less than 3,699Princes or Master- M a s o n s, to conduct the work according to

S o l o m o n ’s directions.”So, Sibbald’s naming of the Prince’s Pillar may have had

nothing to do with the founder’s “princely origins.” The pil-lar we now know of as the Prentice Pillar may, in fact, haveoriginally been the Master’s Pillar.

And now, on to Rosslyn’s “Musical Cubes.”Many of you will know that today’s varied patterns on the

213 cubes that hang down from the ceiling ribs of Rosslyn’sLady Chapel have been long thought to hold a musical code,and that the father-and-son team of Tommy and StuartMitchell, a few years ago, came up with a solution to thatcode that resulted in a commercially successful book and amusical composition titled The Rosslyn Motet.

Many of you will also know that I subsequently wrote anarticle on the Mitchells’ solution, now archived on my web-site at m y t h o m o r p h . c o m, taking issue with its veracity, andused as evidence the 1837 Swarbreck, showing the sorry stateof the cubes before their restoration in the 1860s by architectDavid Bryce.

In that article, the Mitchells’ “Stave Angel” is described as“holding a stave of music, and is pointing to notes on thestave that exactly correspond with the Chladni patternsshown on the first three cubes above the angel’s head and,astonishingly, that these three notes account for 70 percent ofthe entire cube sequence.” Chladni patterns are caused whena “sustained note is used to vibrate a sheet of metal coveredin powder, producing marks.” The marks produced by differ-ent notes can “include flowers, diamonds and hexagons --shapes all present on the Rosslyn cubes.”

My article did not convince the True Believers that theM i t c h e l l s ’ claims were suspect, perhaps because theSwarbreck drawing I used as evidence was not of a suffi-ciently high resolution. I have since acquired a large-formatand high-quality reproduction of his original drawing, andhave included a section of it on the following page for yourinspection.

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As you study it, note that the three all-important cubesabove the angel were actually missing in 1837. Note, too,that there are many other cubes missing in the area of thedrawing shown and, finally, note something that I did notmention in my original article as published -- that the cubesshown to exist in 1837 are all of the same design (showninset, above).

My conclusion: There was no message encoded in the pat-ternns of Rosslyn’s cubes, musical or otherwise, by the builderof the chapel

But, as I’ve said, the mystery of the cubes was not new.Three years before the Mitchells’ revelation, in response to a

2002 news report that certain parties in Scotland were attempt-ing to decipher a coded message in the cubes, Tim Wa l l a c e -M u r p h y, co-author (with Marilyn Hopkins) of R o s s l y n :G u a rdian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail, claimed there wasindeed a message hidden in their arrangement. The relevantpart of his claim reads as follows:

“When Marilyn and I went to Rosslyn in June of 1997 or1998 to take photographs for ‘Rosslyn Guardian of theSecrets of the Holy Grail,’ Marilyn was at a loose end as Ipointed my box-brownie at the various carvings we needed asillustrations. Her knowledge of medieval symbolism is almostas good as my own, but she has an added talent -- superb spir-itual insight. Within a short space of time she had discoveredthe key to the order in which the cubes are to be read.

“When the designs on the cubes are plotted in the revealed

order, repeating patterns emerge in the symbols which maywell, to any good cryptographer or cryptographic computerprogramme, reveal the hidden message within the carvings.

“We are prepared to share our insights with any interest-ed party of repute subject only to a binding and enforceablecontract containing two main conditions i.e. that any knowl-edge so revealed shall be placed in the public domain whereit rightly belongs and that Marilyn and I be given the right topublish the findings first.”

A few months later, when I had the temerity to suggest thatsome changes had been made to the original architecturalfabric of the chapel -- a suggestion that should now seem far-less preposterous to some of you than it did then -- Tim hadthis to say: “Having examined the carvings in Rosslyn indetail by means of scaffolding and an air hoist may I makethe following observations: 1) The present carving of theMadonna in the main body of the chapel is new. 2) The Headof the so-called ‘Murdered Apprentice’ once had a beard thathas been chiselled off. 3) The monk carrying the chalice inthe SW window has been subjected to some degree of vio-lence. 4) Apart from natural degeneration, which sadly insome cases is considerable, there is, other than those men-tioned above, as far as I am aware, no new carvings or sig-nificantly altered carvings within the main body of the orig-inal chapel since the barrel vaulted roof was installed.However I could be wrong, after all I have only spent abouttwelve years examining this fascinating place and there is

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High-resolution detail from Samuel DukinfieldSwarbreck’s 1837 The Interior of Rosslyn Chapel.Note that the cubes above the Mitchells’ “StaveAngel” are missing, and that the balance of thatparticular arch is also missing. Note, too, that allof the surviving cubes in that year were of thesame design (shown inset).

still much to learn.”I will not argue with Tim’s first three observations, but

proper research in no way supports his fourth. As for his finalsentence, I leave it to you to decide his reason for writing it.

Truth, given the benefit of hindsight and sufficient humil-ity, may still conquer all -- eventually -- or so I thought whenI first published this paper in the April 2010 edition ofGirnigoe: Scotland’s Clan Sinclair Magazine..

I have since learned that on 19 March 2011 (postponed from18 December 2010) The Rosslyn Motet will, once again, beplayed within the walls of the chapel. “The Rosslyn MotetConcert and Science Tour” will, it is announced, give attendees“the opportunity to hear a full (new score) version of theRosslyn Motet as yet unheard in its complete form,.” at just £35for the tour and concert, and just £22.50 for the concert only.

The musical/science tour, we are told, would be “hostedby Stuart Mitchell who will explain and demonstrate theincredible decoding process that eventually arrived at thepiece of music that was so carefully embedded into the archi-tecture of Rosslyn Chapel.”

But that’s not all. We are also told what lies ahead for theMitchells.

“Since the realisation of the music in 2005, Stuart andTommy Mitchell have discovered some incredible new infor-mation which will be published later this year in our newbook ‘The Rosslyn Key’ and focuses upon the Chapel’s rela-tionship with the planet Venus and the mythical mountain‘Mount Meru.’ This new research is in collaboration withmusicologist Richard Merrick (USA) and will also be dis-cussed during the tour to further enhance the natural architec-tural beauty that is Rosslyn Chapel and the place it holds inour hearts.”

Hmm ...Back in 2003, with the publication of Dan Brown’s The

Da Vinci Code, and in 2005, with the world-wide release tothe non-reading public of Ron “Opie” Howard’s movie of thesame name, it became apparent that there were, in fact, two

huge audiences with pockets to pick -- those who were eagerto believe in the “heresies” promoted therein, and those whowere not. Each side in the controversy showed a willingnessto buy, with good folding money, evermore literary and cin-ematic ammunition to lob at the other, and more is what theygot -- in spades.

Almost as quickly as the presses could roll, the Da Vi n c iCode also-rans appeared on the book shelves. Liberally fes-tooned with market-researched and browser-friendly buzz-words, there suddenly appeared books that “decoded”B r o w n ’s work, those that promised the “real history” behind it,“Dummies” editions and “Rough Guide” travel tomes thatwould take you to all the “secret” places where, for centuries,the timid had not dared to ask the really hard questions: DidJesus Christ die on the cross, or did he survive, marry MaryMagdalene and have children? One of those secret places wasRosslyn Chapel, and one of those books was Mark Oxbrowand Ian Robertson’s Rosslyn and the Grail.

A rguably the most successful debunking book to comedown the pike in quite some time, second only to RobertC o o p e r’s The Rosslyn Hoax, Oxbrow and Robertson’s R o s s l y nand the Grail has, paradoxically, been advertised on Stuart andTommy Mitchell’s Rosslyn Motet site for at least three years,perhaps because the four all appeared in Dan Burstein’s criti-cally acclaimed 2006 documentary, S e c rets of the Code, nar-rated by Susan Sarandon and spawning a best-selling series ofsimilarly controversial and eminently bankable products.

Rosslyn and the Grail co-author Ian Robertson will besharing the bill with the Mitchells on their big day, and willbe delivering a “History of Rosslyn Chapel.”

I ended my 2007 paper on The Rosslyn Motet by para-phrasing a quote by Mark Twain: “A lie can be half wayaround the world before the truth has got its boots on.”

I will end this paper with another Twain classic: “The his-tory of our race, and each individual's experience, are sewnthick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that alie well told is immortal.” END

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Mark Your Calendars: The new and improved Rosslyn Motet website (left) as it looked 105 days before the 19 March 2011 Rosslyn Motet 2011 Concertand Science Tour [postponed from 8 December 2010]. Right: The Rosslyn Motet CD on sale at Rosslyn Chapel’s online store.