This article is extracted from the Introduction to the recently reprinted 1852 book The History of the Knights Templar, by Charles G. Addison and Introduction of David Hatcher Childress
The Founding of the Order
Founded in 1118ce and destroyed on Friday 13th 1307, the Knights Templar, or Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon to quote their full title (1), have contributed to modern society the most inauspicious date in the calendar, so that even those who know nothing of them are influenced indirectly by them through superstition.
The purpose of forming the Order was to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land from:
bandits
muggers
Saracens
Unlike most medieval knights, the Templars took vows of poverty ([supposedly] represented on their seal as two knights sharing one horse), chastity and obedience.
They were monks, but they were fearsome warriors as well, and their service won them a glorious reputation as pious Brothers dedicated to the Lord and benevolent to pilgrims.
It also won them gifts and donations from wealthy Europeans which other religious orders envied, and it ultimately won them the ultimate gift available to any religious order.
Pope Innocent II granted them total freedom from every authority but his own.
Excerpt from a mosaic in the Roman church Santa Maria in Trastevere, built by Innocent II
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View full-sizeDownload Pope Innocent II (Latin: Innocentius II; died 24 September 1143), born Gregorio Papareschi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 14 February 1130 to his death in 1143. His election as pope was controversial and the first eight years of his reign were marked by a struggle for recognition against the supporters of Anacletus II. He reached an understanding with King Lothair III of Germany who supported him against Anacletus and whom he crowned as Holy Roman emperor. Innocent went on to preside over the Second Lateran council.
They were answerable to no monarch, law, bishop or archbishop, and they could collect tithes but didn't have to pay any themselves - basically they were above every law and answerable only to the Pope.
It was this freedom which also allowed them their own chaplains, churches and cemeteries (2).
And it was this that contributed to their aura of secrecy and enabled them to do whatever they liked behind closed doors.
There are some curiosities about their foundation.
When they arrived in Jerusalem in 1119, which at that time was a Christian Kingdom after a successful Crusade, they asked King Baldwin if they could have their headquarters on the Temple Mount (the site of the original Temple of Solomon).
Baldwin II, also known as Baldwin of Bourcq or Bourg (French: Baudouin; c. 1075 – 21 August 1131), was Count of Edessa from 1100 to 1118, and King of Jerusalem from 1118 until his death. He accompanied his cousins Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin of Boulogne to the Holy Land during the First Crusade. He succeeded Baldwin of Boulogne as the second count of Edessa when he left the county for Jerusalem following his brother's death. He was captured at the Battle of Harran in 1104. He was held first by Sökmen of Mardin, then by Jikirmish of Mosul, and finally by Jawali Saqawa. During his captivity, Tancred, the Crusader ruler of the Principality of Antioch, and Tancred's cousin, Richard of Salerno, governed Edessa as Baldwin's regents.
The King consented and gave them part of the Al-Asqa Mosque adjacent to the Dome of the Rock, despite the fact that his palace was also there.
What is most unusual about this is that at this point there were only nine knights, and they remained only nine in number for the first nine years of their existence (3), and there is no evidence that they protected pilgrims during this period (4).
The most striking point about this to my mind is that while these nine French blokes were claiming to protect pilgrims and actually doing very little (apparently) for the first nine years of their order's existence, the Knights Hospitaller were actually doing this job and providing food and accommodation for these pilgrims to a high standard.
They never received the same freedoms from the Pope as the Templars, but eventually created their own freedom when they managed to acquire Malta for their own personal use (incidentally, this order was the source of what is now the St John's ambulance brigade).
It seems strange that this anomaly was not recorded at the time and that all the Templars' benefactors were so easily duped. (.... or were they?)
After the Templars were recognized by the Pope there was a rapid increase in the amount of donations they received.
This often included land, which was then turned to profit.
When new members were recruited into the order they turned all of their possessions over to the Temple, and because many knights were nobles many estates were acquired for the order throughout Europe.
Where they had territory, they often set up a preceptory where the Templars lived out their monastic rule, and they sometimes set up a larger church too (instead of the usual small chapel attached to a preceptory).
Temple Church in London is the most famous English Templar church, but they had a church at Garway in Herefordshire and also one in Hereford itself (5) to name the only two known Templar churches in Hereford and Worcester.
The outstanding feature of Templar and also Hospitaller churches is their round nave (the nave is the bit people normally sit in to listen to services).
This was done to imitate the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem which was a symbol of the Holy Land and where the Templars had their headquarters.
A round nave has interesting implications.
An ordinary rectangular nave focuses attention on the activities of the priest at the altar or pulpit.
If the Templars sat, or stood, in a circle the nature of the service would have "felt" more equal and possibly would have been more in keeping with "Brotherhood" than being lectured at by an elevated preacher.
If their activities were an occult as has been suggested, then a round nave would have been appropriate in other ways too.
Their property outside of the Holy Land was used for money-making, sending disabled or injured knights to rest, recruiting, training and doing the religious business that has proven so mysterious.
All of this was geared towards maintaining a military presence in the Holy Land which included building huge castles and doing battle with Saracens (and occasionally other Crusaders).
Donations were received at these places too and often the Templars acted as feudal Lords over large estates which needed to be managed as businesses.
It is worth noting that the first windmill ever recorded in England was on a Templar property; it is thought they brought the idea over from the Middle East (see Temple Balsall by Eileen Gooder).
The scale of their buildings in the Holy Land was equally massive.
Chastel Pelerin (Castle Pilgrim) had an outer wall 6 meters wide and 16 meters high, and two of its towers were more than 34 meters high.
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View full-sizeDownload Château Pèlerin (Old French: Chastel Pelerin; Latin: Castrum Perigrinorum, lit. 'Pilgrim Castle'), also known as Atlit and Magdiel, is a Crusader fortress and fortified town located about 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) north of the modern Israeli town of Atlit on the northern coast of Israel, about 13 kilometers (8.1 mi) south of Haifa.
Add to this that it was built on a spit of land in the sea and that it had its own harbor and an impressive picture emerges.
This castle was the Templars' most important base in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (6) and was the point from which the last Crusaders left on 14th August 1291 when they were ousted by Muslim forces. (7)
The Fall of the Templars
After the Holy Land was lost and it became clear that it would not be regained, the real power of the Templars became evident because it was not being focused abroad.
The owned almost as much land in France as the king did, which rather annoyed him.
In England, King John (buried in Worcester, where I live) pawned the crown jewels to them for six years because he was broke. (8)
Tomb effigy, Worcester Cathedral
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View full-sizeDownload John (24 December 1166 – 19 October 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The baronial revolt at the end of John's reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document considered an early step in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom.
This type of financial power, coupled with a highly disciplined and effective army of warrior-monks on an international level, caused some tinges of jealousy, greed and fear in certain European nobles.
Notably King Philip IV of France. (9)
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View full-sizeDownload Philip IV (April–June 1268 – 29 November 1314), called Philip the Fair (French: Philippe le Bel), was King of France from 1285 to 1314. By virtue of his marriage with Joan I of Navarre, he was also King of Navarre as Philip I from 1284 to 1305, as well as Count of Champagne. Although Philip was known to be handsome, hence the epithet le Bel, his rigid, autocratic, imposing, and inflexible personality gained him (from friend and foe alike) other nicknames, such as the Iron King (French: le Roi de fer). His fierce opponent Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, said of him: "He is neither man nor beast. He is a statue."
This king has the added feeling of humiliation after being rejected when he asked to join the order.
He eventually managed to engineer a candidate of his choosing to the position of Pope (Clement V) who then owed the king a favor.
Portrait by Henri Serrur
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View full-sizeDownload Pope Clement V (Latin: Clemens Quintus; c. 1264 – 20 April 1314), born Raymond Bertrand de Got (also occasionally spelled de Guoth and de Goth), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 5 June 1305 to his death, in April 1314. He is remembered for suppressing the order of the Knights Templar and allowing the execution of many of its members. A Frenchman by birth, Clement moved the Papacy from Rome to Avignon, ushering in the period known as the Avignon Papacy.
Philip plotted the mass arrest of the Templars and tried to get the Pope to add his weight to the proceedings - he was very reluctant, but Philip began a public character assassination campaign against him until he crumbled into submission and supported the dissolution of the Templars.
On Friday 13th, at dawn, all Templars in France were seized and arrested.
Envelopes containing orders were opened simultaneously by French Sheriffs which gave them the element of surprise in the endeavor. (10)
The property of the Templars was mostly turned over to the Hospitallers, but the great "Treasure of the Templars" managed to evade the dawn strike.
It is now known how their rumored secret source of wealth disappeared and, equally mysteriously, the entire naval fleet of the Templars (which was considerable) disappeared. (11)
The trial, though highly corrupt, revealed the truth behind some of the rumors of heresy in the order which Philip had used to legitimize this attack.
In France the Templars were promised leniency if they confessed to charges of:
heresy
sodomy
obscenity
and promised death if they refused.
The full trial did not begin there until April 1310,
"And by May 54 men had refused to withdraw their repudiation if initial confessions and were handed over to the secular authorities to be burned at the stake." (12)
Templars travelled far and wide over their territories and it is reasonable to assume that many French Templars were abroad at the time of the arrests.
Nowhere were they so harshly treated as in France.
In Scotland and particularly in Portugal there was no serious effort to suppress the order.
In Portugal they became the Knights of Christ and in Scotland they are thought to have fought at the Battle of Bannockburn and to have been the source of certain Masonic traditions. (13)
Anyway .... in October 1307 King Philip of France send a letter to Edward II in England (who had only been king for a couple of months and who was Philip's future son-in-law) asking him to arrest the Templars in the same way as he had done.
Edward II (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327), also known as Edward of Caernarfon or Caernarvon, was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. The fourth son of Edward I, Edward became the heir to the throne following the death of his older brother Alphonso. Beginning in 1300, Edward accompanied his father on campaigns in Scotland, and in 1306 he was knighted in a grand ceremony at Westminster Abbey. Edward succeeded to the throne the next year, following his father's death. In 1308, he married Isabella, daughter of the powerful King Philip IV of France, as part of a long-running effort to resolve the tensions between the English and French crowns.
Edward refused.
In fact, he sent several letters to other European monarchs asking them to ignore the charges against the Templars, saying that they were inspired by greed and jealousy.
Pope Clement V ended up having to tell Edward to begin proceedings against the order.
On 20th December Edward wrote a letter to all his Sheriffs, as the French king had dome, and on:
9th
10th
11th
January 1308, the English Templars were placed in safe custody. (14)
On their arrest an inventory of their property was done.
In England this showed that many once prosperous Templar manors and preceptories had fallen into serious disrepair.
In some instances, this could be attributed to the Templars doing a runner.
It was several months after the arrests in France that the English were arrested - plenty of time to arrange a "holiday".
In many cases, however, the property was dilapidated through old age and some people regard this as evidence of the order's weakness in its latter stages. (15)
The loss of the Holy Land and the realization that another Crusade was not likely would have depleted morale somewhat, and it is not exactly fuel to the fire of enthusiasm in a new recruit.
They weren't attracting as many new members, and they had nothing to work for because their military activities were over (other than their "Securicor" activities as pawnbrokers and bankers).
The final battles in the Holy Land left many disabled and injured knights as well as all those who died, so all of this is bound to have placed an enormous strain on the order and helps explain the state of decay on some of their properties.
The Charges and the Trials
On Tuesday, 21 October 1309 the trial began in England.
It was held in London with the Bishop of London, two Papal Inquisitors (probably Dominicans of the "inquisition" fame), the Pope's Chaplain and three public notaries. (16)
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View full-sizeDownload John J. Robinson (c. 1918 – 1996) was an American author, best known as the author of Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry. He is also credited as being the "founding visionary" of the Masonic Information Center run by the Masonic Service Association of North America. He was a member of the Medieval Academy of America, the Organization of American Historians, and the Royal Over-Seas League of London.
Internationally there were many different confessions, but here are the principal heresies quoted from John J. Robinson's book:
The confessions stated that in their initiations they had been required to bestow the Osculum Infame, or "kiss of shame", on the prior, on his mouth or on his navel or below his spine.
Some confessed that they had also worshipped an idol in the form of a cat, which was red, or grey, or black, or mottled.
Sometimes the idol worship required kissing the cat below the tail.
Sometimes the cat was greased with the fat from roasted babies.
The Templars were forced to eat food which contained the ashes of dead Templars, a form of witchcraft that passed on the courage of the fallen knights.
And preceptor Simon Streche said that he thought receptions everywhere were the same as in the "chief convent", meaning the Paris Temple where a head was found.
A knight named Robert de Hamilton, when asked about the use of idols attached to the girdles that the Templars wore over their vests, said that the use of the girdle was honorable and called it the Girdle of Nazareth, and said,
".... it was touched on a certain column" and that they all carry what girdle they wished. (19)
An interesting piece of evidence against them was a Franciscan who said that,
"... about 20 years ago the Grand Preceptor had some relics that he wanted to show the Brothers at Wetherby.
At dead of night there was shouting in the chapel, and the Franciscan got up and looked through the keyhole and saw a great light.
The next day he asked a Brother about the night's events and the Brother told him to go on his way and never speak of it for fear of his life." (20)
An interesting quote in Crusader Castles, by Hugh Kennedy, is a report by Imad-al-Din of what he thought of the Templar castle of La Feve after it had been conquered in 1187 by Saladin, the Saracen leader.
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View full-sizeDownload Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub[a] (c. 1137 – 4 March 1193), commonly known as Saladin, was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from a Kurdish family, he was the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An important figure of the Third Crusade, he spearheaded the Muslim military effort against the Crusader states in the Levant. At the height of his power, the Ayyubid realm spanned Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia.
"It was a place where they met and received people, a place where they guarded their horses, a place where the torrents of their men flowed, a meeting place of their brethren, the residence of their devil and the place of their crosses, where their masses assembled and their fire was kindled." (21)
What are we to make of these?
The reference to idols attached to girdles probably relates to a sacred cord which the Templars are supposed to have kept next to their flesh.
This may have been something adopted into the Templars from the [GNOSTIC] Cathars who lived in the Languedoc region of France. (22)
They were "heretics" according to the Pope and the Albigensian Crusade ordered by him and carried out largely by the Teutonic Knights slaughtered most of them.
What about Baphomet?
The worship of an idol in the shape of a head was one of the most persistent accusations leveled against them.
Intelligence gained by royal spies who had infiltrated the order prior to the raids also reported the name Baphomet. (23)
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View full-sizeDownload Michael Baigent (born Michael Barry Meehan, 27 February 1948 – 17 June 2013) was a New Zealand writer who published a number of popular works questioning traditional perceptions of history and the life of Jesus. He is known best as a co-author of the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
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View full-sizeDownload Richard Harris Leigh (16 August 1943 – 21 November 2007) was a novelist and short story writer born in New Jersey, United States to a British father and an American mother, who spent most of his life in the UK. Leigh earned a BA from Tufts University, a master's degree from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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View full-sizeDownload Henry Soskin (12 February 1930 – 23 February 2022), better known as Henry Lincoln, was a British author, television presenter, scriptwriter, and actor. He co-wrote three Doctor Who multi-part serials in the 1960s, and — starting in the 1970s — inspired three Chronicle BBC Two documentaries on the alleged mysteries surrounding the French village of Rennes-le-Château (on which he was writer and presenter) — and, from the 1980s, co-authored and authored a series of books of which The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was the most popular, becoming the inspiration for Dan Brown's 2003 best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. He was the last living person to have written for Doctor Who in the 1960s.
Early examiners of the issue often thought that Baphomet was a corruption of Muhammad.
The authors mentioned above point out that if Baphomet was merely God of Allah, why bother renaming him Baphomet?
The name could also be a corruption of abufihamet which means "Father of Understanding" of "Father of Wisdom". (24)
If this is the case, the Templars had adopted Sufism into their rituals.
Montague Summers suggested that the name was a combination of two Greek words (baphe and metis) and meant 'absorption into wisdom.'
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View full-sizeDownload Augustus Montague Summers (10 April 1880 – 10 August 1948) was an English author, clergyman, occultist, and teacher. He initially prepared for a career in the Church of England at Oxford and Lichfield, and was ordained as an Anglican deacon in 1908. He then converted to Roman Catholicism and began styling himself as a Catholic priest. He was, however, never affiliated with any Catholic diocese or religious order, and it is doubtful that he was ever actually ordained to the priesthood. He was employed as a teacher of English and Latin while independently pursuing scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century. The latter earned him election to the Royal Society of Literature in 1916. Noted for his eccentric personality and interests, Summers became a well known figure in London society as a result of the publication of his History of Witchcraft and Demonology in 1926. That work was followed by other studies on witchcraft, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe. Summers also produced a modern English translation, published in 1929, of the 15th-century witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum. He has been characterized as "arguably the most seminal twentieth century purveyor of pop culture occultism."
Hugh Schonfield had a different idea for the origin of the name Baphomet as published in Appendix A - The Essenes and the Templars from the book The Essene Odyssey by himself.
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View full-sizeDownload Hugh Joseph Schonfield (London, 17 May 1901 – 26 January 1988, London) was a British Bible scholar specialising in the New Testament and the early development of the Christian religion and church. He was born in London, and educated there at St Paul's School and King's College, doing additional studies in the University of Glasgow. He was one of the founders and president of the pacifist organisation Commonwealth of World Citizens "Mondcivitan Republic".
The Essenes, to avoid persecution and because they were a secret sect, employed the uses of ciphers and codes to hide the identities of important names.
One such cipher, known to bible scholars and translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the Atbash Cipher.
The Inquisition had thought that Baphomet was the bearded male head that the Templars prostrated themselves before and which spoke to them and gave them occult powers.
Even before the discovery of Baphomet's true name, the feminine side of this deity had begun to manifest.
Most modern depictions of Baphomet show him with:
a goat's head
breasts (two, four or even six)
wings (angelic or demonic)
a phallus (usually a very big one)
and hooved legs.
So, Baphomet had already emerged as androgynous, even before the discovery of his being the blending of Adam Kadmon (essentially a god, although Jews and derivative monotheists wouldn't see it that way) and the Goddess Sophia due to an Inquisition error.
Saint John the Baptist, a 1540 painting by Titian
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View full-sizeDownload John the Baptist (c. 1st century BC – c. AD 30) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early 1st century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist Christian traditions, Saint John by certain Catholic churches, and Prophet Yahya in Islam. He is sometimes alternatively referred to as John the Baptizer.
This portrait attributed to Francesco Melzi, c. 1515–1518, is the only certain contemporary depiction of Leonardo
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View full-sizeDownload Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
The reason the head of the shroud is not quite connected to the unreasonably long body is partly because Leonardo, as Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, wanted to allude to John the Baptist in the image. (26)
The Priory of Sion still exists today and is historically linked to the Templars. (27)
The Mandaean heresy connection seems to me to be the most likely explanation of the head worship of the Templars.
One of the orders that absorbed the Templars' lands was the Knights Hospitallers, or the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem.
I am mildly surprised that the order's obvious reverence for St John has not been fully researched in an esoteric light by the very capable authors noted above - especially considering that St John's right hand is one of the relics owned by the order, preserved in the private chapel of the Winter Palace at St Petersburg in Russia. (28)
An upward pointing right hand is a characteristic of some of Leonardo's paintings and it is noted in the Turin Shroud - In Whose Image ... as one of the clues which he left relating to the John the Baptist connection with the Priory of Sion (and hence Templars (29)), but the order's ownership of this relic is not mentioned in this otherwise mind-blowing book (I liked it).
Aleister Crowley, the infamous Great Beast, was very into the Templars.
Crowley in 1925
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View full-sizeDownload Aleister Crowley (/ˈælɪstər ˈkroʊli/ AL-ist-ər KROH-lee; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, philosopher, political theorist, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life.
He wrote a play about them, (30) he was very familiar with the Templar orders in Freemasonry (as self-styled "Inspector-General" of Masonic rites (31)) and he took the name Baphomet for his position as Grand Master of the Ordo Templi Orientis. (32)
He explored the meaning and numerology of the name and says it could mean "baptism of wisdom" (furthering the John the Baptist links) or that it is a corruption of a title meaning "Father Mithras".
He says that this latter interpretation shows why the Templars gave that name to their idol.
"Baphomet was Father Mithras, the cubical stone which was the corner of the Temple." (relating to the headquarters of the Templars on the site of the original Temple of Solomon). (33)
Other sources connect Baphomet with Cernunnos, the God of the witches, and say that the Templars preserved the deeper aspects of the old ways in their inner rites.
Eliphas Levi, who also showed an interest in the Templars, equated Baphomet with the Goat of the Sabbat (34) - incidentally, Crowley believed he was Levi in a former incarnation.
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View full-sizeDownload Éliphas Lévi Zahed, born Alphonse Louis Constant (8 February 1810 – 31 May 1875), was a French esotericist, poet, and writer. Initially pursuing an ecclesiastical career in the Catholic Church, he abandoned the priesthood in his mid-twenties and became a ceremonial magician. At the age of 40, he began professing knowledge of the occult. He wrote over 20 books on magic, Kabbalah, alchemical studies, and occultism.
Portrait of Wolfram from the Codex Manesse, c. 1300
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View full-sizeDownload Wolfram von Eschenbach (German: [ˈvɔlfʁam fɔn ˈɛʃn̩bax]; c. 1160/80 – c. 1220) was a German knight, poet and composer, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of medieval German literature. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.
He also describes the guardians of the Grail as Templars and Wolfram himself was a contemporary of the Templars (35) - could this mean that Crowley was right?
Some people say that (even though Wolfram called them Templars) the Knights in Parsifal are not necessarily Templars.
Primarily because the Templars' sign is a cross pattée, not a turtle dove (as in Parsifal) and because the Knights in Parsifal go forth to quest in a manner now concurrent with what history knows of the Templars.
Another point made is that if Wolfram had really wanted to portray the Templars, he undoubtedly could have made a better job of clarifying their identity. (36)
Naming them Templars in the story is clear enough, and a dove is sometimes associated with the Cathars (37) who the Templars certainly mixed with and maybe got their "treasure" from, and indeed it was no less than John the Baptist who saw a dove descending as the holy spirit. (38)
So, these "errors" make sense if Wolfram was trying to hint about a connection between:
the Templars
Cathars
John the Baptist
and the grail (or treasure) which has been successfully shown in The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail anyway.
That all this occurs in an Arthurian context, linking it up with older tales like that of Bran's head perhaps, suggests that Wolfram wanted to allude to that too.
The similarities between Baphomet and Bran's head/the grail is striking anyway, so to have Wolfram linking these up through the Templars prior to their trial is certainly an interesting coincidence if nothing else.
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View full-sizeDownload Brân the Blessed (Welsh: Bendigeidfran or Brân Fendigaidd, literally "Blessed Crow") is a giant and king of Britain in Welsh mythology. He appears in several of the Welsh Triads, but his most significant role is in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, Branwen ferch Llŷr. He is a son of Llŷr and Penarddun, and the brother of Brânwen, Manawydan, Nisien and Efnysien. The name "Brân" in Welsh is usually translated as crow or raven.
Hancock in 2010
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View full-sizeDownload Graham Bruce Hancock (born 2 August 1950) is a British writer who promotes pseudoscientific theories involving ancient civilizations and hypothetical lost lands. Hancock speculates that an advanced ice age civilization with spiritual technology was destroyed in a cataclysm, but that its survivors passed on their knowledge to hunter-gatherers, giving rise to the earliest known civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica.
If what the Templars were up to with Baphomet was anything near as weird as the Bran's head stuff, or even the Orphic traditions from Greece, the could our Franciscan friend's "great light"; and the silver head from the Paris Temple be evidence of this?
The Aftermath
Some final interesting points.
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View full-sizeDownload Jacques de Molay (French: [də mɔlɛ]; c. 1240–1250 – 11 or 18 March 1314[2]), also spelled "Molai", was the 23rd and last grand master of the Knights Templar, leading the order sometime before 20 April 1292 until it was dissolved by order of Pope Clement V in 1312. Though little is known of his actual life and deeds except for his last years as Grand Master, he is one of the best-known Templars.
When Jacques de Molay (the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar before the trial) and
Geoffroi de Charny(the order's treasurer) were burnt at the stake, Jacques is reported to have issued a final curse.
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View full-sizeDownload Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1306 – 19 September 1356) was the third son of Jean de Charny, the lord of Charny (then a major Burgundian fortress), and Marguerite de Joinville, daughter of Jean de Joinville, the biographer and close friend of France's King Louis IX. A renowned knight who fought on the French side during the early years of the Hundred Years' War, Charny wrote a semi-autobiographical poem, The Book of Geoffroi de Charny, and a set of questions on chivalric matters for the short-lived Company of the Star, France's counterpart to England's Order of the Garter. Although a prose treatise called the Book of Chivalry has also long been accredited to him, recent findings indicate this to have been more likely by his son of the same name, Geoffroi II de Charny, who died in 1398. Charny is also widely associated with the first known showings of the Shroud of Turin, though there are now doubts that he was responsible for these.
“He called his persecutors - Pope Clement and King Philip - to join him and account for themselves before the court of God within the year.
Within a month Pope Clement was dead, supposedly from a sudden onslaught of dysentery.
By the end of the year Philip was dead as well, from causes which remain obscure to this day.” (39)
As evidence that the Templars remained close to certain French hearts in more recent times (probably through Freemasonry) the scene of the execution of King Louis XVI in 1789 (French Revolution) needs a brief review.
Portrait, 1779
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View full-sizeDownload Louis XVI (Louis Auguste; French: [lwi sɛːz]; 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette was the wife of Louis XVI.
After the guillotine had fallen and the king's head lay in a basket, "... an unknown man is reported to have leaped onto the scaffold. He dipped his hand into the monarch's blood and flung it out over the surrounding throng and cried 'Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!'" (40)
So many different things have been affected by the Templars that squeezing like their travels to America (!) (41) and their quest for the lost Ark of the Covenant (42) simply was not possible in this comparatively tiny article.
