Rick Lynch of Greenville is a member of the Masons in Cranston, a member of an astronomy club in Smithfield, a member of the New England Antiquities Research Association, an archeological consultant for the Narragansett Native Americans, for the Rhode Island State Archaeologist, the Rhode Island Historical Society and several more organizations in New Mexico and the American Southwest.

“I was always interested in astronomy,” he said last Saturday, fresh from giving a PowerPoint presentation at the Grand Masonic Lodge in East Providence about an entirely different subject. “My father used to take me to the telescope in Smithfield when I was very young and I have been fascinated by it ever since.”

Lynch, who supports himself by working for a national photographic company, has surrounded himself with relics he has acquired while a member of various archeology digs around the Southwest and other sites from around the world. His basement is chockablock with books on any number of subjects. He has boundless curiosity and is a self-taught polymath of extraordinary dimensions for an amateur.

“A friend of mine once described me as a master of a little about an awful lot,” he explained. “I am endlessly fascinated by many things.”

So what is the mortar, so to speak, that holds all of Lynch’s enthusiasms together?

“Masonry,” he said. “Being a mason is being exposed to a lot of different things, including history and astronomy. There is a lot of astronomy connected with the masons and I have found that almost every culture I have looked into had some kind of structures that had something to do with the night sky.”

Lynch talked about the relatively limited recreations open to primitive societies and what they did to pass away the time without television or movies.

“With nothing else to look at, they studied the night sky,” he said. “Almost all of them attached a lot of importance to things like the summer and winter solstice and the moon.”

Lynch has found that American natives came to invent their creation myths around the moon independent of what the Egyptians and Europeans came up with, and they still believe in the power of the moon and sun.

“When we put men on the moon, it upset a number of native groups,” he said. “They were upset because the astronauts did not offer prayers to ‘Mother Moon.’”

Lynch is of no mind to dismiss the myths and the stories that surround them as mere fantasy. He says he once delivered a learned anthropological address explaining the persistence of one particular pre-Colombian figure that was always seen hunched over and endowed with an unusually long male member.

“Unlike what most people believe, the Native Americans did have horrible diseases long before westerners arrived,” Lynch asserted. “One of those diseases was tuberculosis. A particular strain that is called Pott’s disease that slowly destroyed the victim’s body until it worked its way down to the feet. One of the symptoms of advanced Pott’s disease is priapism.”

Lynch said the life expectancy of the typical pueblo society was 30 to 35 years and sickness and violence was responsible for much of the mortality. It doesn’t take much time to convince you that Lynch knows whatever he is talking about in archeology and astronomy. Esteemed astronomers such as Fred Whipple and Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, and astronaut Story Musgrave, whose mission in space was to repair the Hubble telescope, have visited Lynch and admired the observatory Lynch built in his backyard in his part-time and between jobs a few years back.

With that kind of respectability, you would think that Lynch would steer clear of what most people think are kooky beliefs about UFOs and the presence of the Knights Templar in New England before Columbus and even Leif Erickson. He also belongs to the Rhode Island Rhode Island MUFON (Mutual UFO Network).

“There is plenty of evidence that the Templars visited North America,” said Lynch. “The tower in Newport that people say was part of Benedict Arnold’s mill was built by Templars to make charcoal. There are stone carvings in Massachusetts that have Masonic symbols on them.”

The Knights Templar was an order of knights founded about 1118 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land during the Second Crusade and suppressed in 1312. They have strong ties to the freemasons and are an important part of their identity.

Lynch has a PowerPoint presentation to make his case for Templars in New England, and he delivered the presentation at the Grand Lodge in East Providence last month.

“I have to say it was a very impressive presentation,” said Gerry Plemmons, a past Grand Master who is heading up a recruitment drive for the Masons this spring. “He is an incredibly smart guy.”

Plemmons said last week that the Masons are looking for new members to join and help the Masonic organizations throughout the country who are doing some impressive philanthropic endeavors.

“A lot of people think we are just a group of people who have a lot of silly rituals, or worse,” said Plemmons. “But I remember being recognized as a Mason by a man in California who was practically in tears as he told me how his son was born with spina bifida, and how he didn’t have the money to care for him, and how the Shriners paid for his treatment for years and how his son is now 14 and playing sports. I almost cried myself.”

And, who knows? If you join, you might meet Rick Lynch and find out how the Templars came to America and other secret stories of the sky above and the earth below.