[IssuessBratte]

One head looks East, the other looks West.



THE DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE AND WHENCE IT CAME

THERE IS SCARCELY a symbol in any of the philosophical or chivalric degrees of the Scottish Rite so striking in design and import as that of the double-headed eagle.

The tau cross and serpent of the Twenty-fifth Degree, the sun of the Twenty-eighth Degree, and the cross of St. Andrew in the Twenty-ninth Degree are indeed fraught with deep meaning, both historic and esoteric, but none can claim a more romantic or significant history than that of the Thirtieth Degree, that of the Grand Elect Knight Kadosh, or Knight of the Black and White Eagle. As an emblem this eagle is the epitome of religious and symbolic history, and to trace the winding flight of the double-headed bird is to survey the whole course of civilization, from its grey dawn north of the Persian gulf to this modern World. Its flight from the plains of Sumeria marks the rise and fall of the great mother religions of the world, and it was well on its journey, by some fifteen hundred years, when Moses found a name for the God of Israel.

When our ancient brethren, the holy Crusaders, passed through Byzantium on their way to the tomb of the Saviour, the double-headed eagle which they saw embroidered in gold on heavy banners of silk, borne aloft by the Seljuk Turks, had been four thousand years on its way. To these same Crusaders this emblem was an honoured one, and though the enemy displayed it, yet they would fight to death for its possession and in triumph bear it, dripping with blood, to their encampments on the Levantine shore. It was from this Eastern Empire that the knights took this banner to adorn the courts of Charlemagne, and as a sacred relic hung it in the great cathedrals, whose architects and masons had so often been honoured by this Emperor of the West. http://www.masonicdictionary.com/doubleeagle.html