Hiram Stone, former chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, had no way of knowing that by becoming the grand master of Free and Accepted Masons that he would be subjected to charges of murder in a criminal court of law and also face expulsion from the craft for un-Masonic conduct. The profane district attorney seemed bent on revenge for having been rejected by the Masons. The political influence of Masonry in the Deep South during the depression and the strong sense of loyalty combine with mystery, secrecy, and Masonic rules to weave a captivating story of intrigue. Even in the highest parts of the criminal justice system, the all-seeing eye and the mysteries of the craft have unseen influence.

A scandalous coverup that includes the President's wife (a woman with ambitions of her own) and the mysterious deaths of everyone who comes too close to the truth, makes The Grand Master a riveting tale of conspiracy and espionage. Senator Bobby Hart agrees to look into the rapidly covered up murder of the President by a pricey call girl and finds he has become a target in an international plot directed by one of the world's wealthiest, and most mysterious, men. Dodging gunmen in the back alleys of Paris, the Senator traces his way to the source of the operation, only to find out that the one he suspects to be pulling the strings has, in reality, a completely different plan...

Religion.

Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies is a peer-reviewed publication devoted to the study of Gnostic religious currents from the ancient world to the modern, where ‘Gnostic’ is broadly conceived as a reference to special direct knowledge of the divine, which either transcends or transgresses conventional religious knowledge. It aims to publish academic papers on: the emergence of the Gnostic, in its many different historical and local cultural contexts; the Gnostic strands that persisted in the middle ages; and modern interpretations of Gnosticism – with the goal of establishing cross-cultural and trans-historical conversations, together with more localized historical analyses. The corpus of Gnostic materials includes (but is not restricted to) testimonies from outsiders as well as insider literature such as the Nag Hammadi collection, the Hermetica, Neoplatonic texts, the Pistis Sophia, the books of Jeu, the Berlin and Tchacos codices, Manichaean documents, Mandaean scriptures, and contemporary Gnostic fiction/film and ‘revealed’ literature. The journal will publish the best of traditional historical and comparative scholarship while also featuring newer approaches that have received less attention in the established literature, such as cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, social memory, psychology, ethnography, sociology, and literary theory.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1859.