It was announced recently that Dan Brown's new book, The Solomon Key, has been delayed, and will not be released until sometime in 2007.

Brown has dropped hints that his next book will be set in the U.S., and will involve Freemasons and Mormons.

An unnamed source close to Brown has indicated that the manuscript may be in for a major re-working, with some sections being rewritten to work recent real-life developments into the plotline. Not only are Freemasons and Mormons featured, but also fundamentalist Southern Baptists, a mysterious stranger who builds an unusual edifice in the rural south, an equally mysterious country boy from Kentucky with a bloodline stretching back to the Knights Templar. And, of course, the theme of the "Sacred Feminine" will run throughout.

Brown's fascination with codes and with secret societies led to speculation that the re-write may include a conspiracy within a conspiracy relating to last month's announcement that the secret code carved into Kryptos, the giant puzzle sculpture in the CIA compound in Virginia, was encrypted incorrectly.

Brown's recent plagiarism case may earn a nod in the new book The Solomon Key, as it is speculated he has again borrowed ideas, especially about Knights Templar, from the 1997 book The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, both of whom are Freemasons. It's also assumed that he will borrow heavily from 1995's Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock, on the subject of prehistoric civilizations in the Americas and Egypt. One rumor has Professor Robert Langdon referring to "the American Ben Gates." Benjamin Franklin Gates, of course, was the hero played by Nicolas Cage in the 2004 film National Treasure, about the search for a hidden Templar treasure safeguarded through the centuries by Freemasons. A sequel to the hit movie is expected to be released in 2007, the expected release date of Brown's The Solomon Key.

A leaked set of notes we've not yet seen supposedly mentions the Georgia Guidestones and contains website printouts discussing the background of the mysterious R.C. Christian, who paid for the erection and engraving of the Guidestones. The message of the stones is decidedly "new age-ish," and many fundamentalist Christian groups want to see the stones demolished, calling them unholy.

Part of the conflict in the new story, it has been rumored, is between a fundamentalist Christian cult derived from France called Martinists who have infiltrated Masonic lodges and the Scottish Rite in the southern part of the U.S., and a mysterious Freemason who claims a bloodline from Jacques de Molay, the martyred leader of the Knights Templar, who was killed by the Catholic Church's Holy Inquisition in 1314. After visiting the French village of Rennes-le-Chateau, home of the Priory of Sion, in search of his roots, the knight of the Templar bloodline returns to the U.S. to re-establish an early "red" style of French Freemasonry and vanquish the Blue Lodge poseurs.

The Masonic layout of the streets in Washington, D.C. are expected to play a part in the book. Notes found indicate an interest in Fort Marcy Park, where the body of Vince Foster, Clinton's Deputy White House Counsel, was found in 1993. Though his death was ruled a suicide, there are many who see a conspiracy to hide evidence of murder.

The "Sacred Geometry" of the Masonic layout of streets in Washington, D.C., will most likely lead Brown's Professor Langdon to discover that Fort Marcy Park lies along the same line as that made by the National Mall, which lies between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and that extending that line almost all the way across the United States would pass directly through the Mormon Tabernacle Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Oddly, the Mormon Tabernacle is closed to the public throughout 2006.) Even more eerie, a line drawn from the Washington Monument to Rock Creek Park, where the body of Chandra Levy, a attractive Jewish woman who was a federal Bureau of Prisons intern and the secret lover of a Congressman, was found in 2002, would, if extended, pass through the Scottish Rite Freemasonic Center in D.C., as well as through Freemason's Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Above Levy's name is handwritten the words "Shari Eli." Perhaps a character name? Chandra is Sanskrit for "light," that which Masons claim to seek.

One of the strangest pages may be this list of statues and monuments in the Washington, D.C. area, with perplexing phrases after them:

• D.C. Masonic Temple — Irish ale
• Jeff Memorial — A fenced in miser
• Albert Pike statue — Fresh cad onto a monk
• Persephone statue on Capitol — Hi, Israel
• Geo. Washington Masonic Memorial — Print a rug, Ben
• Washington Obelisk — Accords femmes

Notes: The last one may refer to the Washington Monument. "Accords femmes" translates from French into "women's agreements."

George Washington and Albert Pike were both Freemasons, as was Ben Franklin, who may be the "Ben" referenced in one of the phrases. "Ben" may also refer to the character Ben Gates in the film National Treasure.

The message of the Georgia Guidestones, written in English, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Spanish, and Swahili is:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

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