1845 The Templar's chart or, Hieroglyphic monitor

The scarce second edition of the first illustrated guide to the organization, rituals, and symbolism of the Masonic Knights Templar for the General Grand Encampment of the United States, by the influential Masonic author and lecturer Jeremy Ladd Cross (1783-1860).

The work follows on the success of Cross's pioneering 1820 publication of Masonic emblems, THE TRUE MASONIC CHART, with a monitor for the specifically Christian knighthood orders associated with freemasonry in the U.S.

The first 23 pages are steel engraved plates showing Templar banners, rituals, symbols, etc.

The 48 pages of plates at the rear mainly show various Templar (and Masonic) symbols.

Quite scarce

Containing all the emblems and hieroglyphics explained in the valiant and magnanimous orders of Knights of the Red Cross, Knights Templars, and Knights of Malta, or Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Designed and duly arranged, agreeably to the mode of work and lecturing by Jeremy L. Cross, to which are added lessons, exhortations, prayers, charges, songs, etc.

Following ritual manuals, lessons, constitutions, and lists of officers for the orders is a large selection of songs, many with musical notation, and plates of symbols, ritual schematics, and Biblical and allegorical scenes, including Paul's shipwreck on Malta.

Decorated in blind and illustrated in gilt on upper board, spine lettered and embellished in gilt, rear board decorated in blind, black and white plates and illustrations.

The frontispiece, a depiction of Constantines' vision of the cross blazing in the heavens, is an early copper engraving of Simeon Smith Jocelyn (1799-1879) of New Haven. Jocelyn is evidently the illustrator of all the plates in the volume (taking the place of Amos Doolittle, who engraved the plates of the TRUE MASONIC CHART).

Around the time of the TEMPLAR CHART's publication, Jocelyn enrolled at Yale to train as a Congregationalist minister.

Successfully ordained, in the 1830's Jocelyn abandoned the engraving trade to dedicate himself to anti-slavery and African American educational causes