Double Eagle Story
- Editor of the California Scottish Rite
- Sep 18
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 21
By Brian Robin
The symbol is older than the Golden Fleece or the Roman Eagle, to borrow from the description of another Masonic item—the lambskin apron. It is a distinctive symbol of power, one dating back more than two millennia before the building of King Solomon’s Temple, and a distinctive symbol that has held its aura for 50 centuries over three continents.
You see it as a symbol of the 32nd degree of the Scottish Rite. You also see it front-and-center adorning the red cross of the 30th Degree—the Kadosh Degree. There, it stands as a symbol and reminder of the timeless story of Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and how he steadfastly stood against tyranny and despotism.
It is the double-headed eagle. And as history teaches us, the dual heads of an avian emblem that has literally stood the test of time, carry many meanings—symbolic or otherwise.
The double-headed eagle made its Freemasonry debut in 1758 Paris, where it was adopted by the “Council of Emperors of the East and West.” That body oversaw the advanced Freemasonry degrees and established the foundation for what would eventually become the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. They adopted the symbol because it represented duality in jurisdictions. One eagle faced the East, the other the West, as a way to guard the Council from threats coming from either direction.
In 1786, Frederick the Great of Prussia became the First Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the 33 Degree. With his personal emblem being the double-headed eagle, Frederick found it easy to bring his heraldry over to the Supreme Council of the 33 Degree. That formalized the double-headed eagle as the official emblem of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
But that represents merely the top feather of both eagles’ heads in terms of the symbol’s timeless employ as an emblem of power, authority and protection. Some historians date it to the Sumerians—one of the oldest civilizations in recorded history. The emblem was called the Double Headed Eagle of Lagash and is recognized as the oldest Royal Crest in the world.
Archaeologists discovered the symbol on two large terra-cotta cylinders unearthed from brick mounds in the City of Lagash, a major city in Sumerian culture. Adorned with the symbol amid several hundred lines of cuneiform characters, the cylinders date to approximately 3,000 BCE and were established to mark the building of a temple.
From there, historians trace the double-headed eagle’s prominence to Anatolia, present-day Turkey, where the Hittites—another ancient civilization born from the Fertile Crescent of what is now Iraq—stamped the emblem on royal seals and sculptures. The double-headed eagle was found on rock carvings in the Turkish town of Boguskoy that date to the 13th century BCE.
Those were the first two significant stops for the double-headed eagle on what was literally a flight through time—albeit one that took about a 3,000-year pit-stop. The next significant appearance came on 10th-century Byzantine Empire art. While it was later used as an official symbol of the Byzantine Empire during its last century of existence in the 15th century, the Byzantines would cede the official use of the symbol back to Turkey, where the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in the 13th and 14th centuries adopted it and placed it on the keystone of an arch built on a 13th-century citadel and on coins of that era.
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the double-headed eagle took flight as a royal emblem all over Europe: Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, Albania and Serbia all latched on to the symbol. In Imperial Russia, it became the primary element of the Russian Empire’s coat-of-arms from the reign of Ivan III (1462-1505) to the fall of Nicholas II during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, after which, it was abolished for being a symbol of the Tsars.
A version even turned up as a proposed seal for the United States. Designed by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, who designed it to honor German Americans, it featured the double-headed eagle, the all-seeing eye and the motto “E pluribus unum” (“Out of Many, One”) among other elements. It was the first proposed design submitted to the Continental Congress on Aug. 20, 1776 and while it was shelved for the current single-headed eagle seal, several of du Simitiere’s elements were included.
Look at the Scottish Rite’s current incarnation of the double-headed eagle and you won’t see “E pluribus unum.” Instead, you’ll see the motto “Spes mea in Deo est,” Latin for “My hope is in God.” There, it retains not only its ancient aura of strength, protection and guidance, but reflects the Scottish Rite’s belief in duality that resolves itself in unity. It is a reminder of body and spirit, good and evil and our dual nature of existence: temporal and eternal.
The double-headed eagle sees where you have been, looks ahead to where you are going and provides a forward-looking light of brotherhood and knowledge every Mason seeks in an effort to better themselves—both in this world and in the next.
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