The classic symbol of death in western culture, a skull on two crossed thighbones appears on countless tombs and other carvings from the early Middle Ages onward, and became very common after the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century gave death imagery a prominent place in European culture. Like many elements of medieval symbolism, it survived into modern times, and was adopted by several secret societies including the Freemasons and Odd Fellows. As a symbol of death, it was also one of several flags used by pirates in the Atlantic during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Freemasonry; Odd Fellowship.
Misinterpreted as a purely Masonic symbol, the skull and crossbones has come to play a central role in recent claims that the Knights Templar discovered America. Supposedly a Templar fleet at La Rochelle in France escaped from the roundup of French Templars in 1307 and sailed to the New World, where the descendants of its sailors became the pirates of the Caribbean. The pirates’ use of the skull and crossbones, allegedly a Templar symbol also inherited by the Freemasons, is cited as proof of the claim. In fact the Templars had no fleet at La Rochelle; their fleets were in Mediterranean ports and consisted of keel-less lateenrigged craft, suitable for voyages to the Holy Land but unusable for Atlantic crossings.
The Templars themselves never used the skull and crossbones as a symbol, and the alleged link between the Templars and the Freemasons was an invention of eighteenth-century Jacobite Freemasons. One could as easily argue that since Odd Fellows use the skull and crossbones, the pirates of the Caribbean were sixteenth-century Odd Fellows bolstering their widows’ and orphans’ funds by plundering Spanish galleons. See America, discovery of; Jacobites; Knights Templar; Scottish degrees.
SOURCE:
The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies : the ultimate a-z of ancient mysteries, lost civilizations and forgotten wisdom written by John Michael Greer – © John Michael Greer 2006