Decoding the Past: The Secrets of the laying Card (2009)

Decoding the Past (2006)

"But the soldier's story is not the only attempt to decode the secrets of the numbers and the pictures on the deck of cards. Many claims have been made about the hidden and symbolic imagery they may carry. Some believe the secret society known as the Freemasons is involved." [00:21:45]

Commenting on the narrator's claim that the Jack of Hearts is holding a masonicly significant sprig of acacia, Yasha Beresiner, 'Playing card Collector and Dealer', correctly notes that the sprig of acacia 'is not an exclusive masonic emblem.'

The narrator admits that a 'lack of records for the early designers of playing cards makes these myths and rumours hard to prove,' but has to add, '...or to disprove.' [00:23:40]

What is not noted is that this "rumour' was actually the invention of Manly P. Hall, recorded in The Secret Teachings of all Ages (1928), published many years before he became a Freemason.

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Decoding the Past (2005 - ) "Secrets of the Playing Card" Season 2, Episode 10(28). History Channel, 14 September 2006. Also see episode 17, "Mysteries of the Freemasons: America".

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