The secrets of the Templars
It is March 18, 1314, in Paris, when the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar Jacques de Molay and other dignitaries are burned at the stake on a small island in the Seine River. An incredible number of books have been written about the Templars. So many are the still unsolved mysteries surrounding this most powerful Order of monk-warriors. In what did their terrible secret consist? Does the fabled treasure of the Order exist? What is known today about these knights?
At least this last question can, perhaps, be answered by what is attested by the little-known "Rubant Document", which is based on a text dated April 11, 1308. This document states, among other things, that Philip the Fair when grabbed the Templar documents unknowingly took possession of "forgeried documents produced long before, in case an uncontrollable and unforeseeable attack on the Order occurred". So, if the Rubant document is true, as it seems to be, although unknown to most historians, little is still known about the Temple Militia, since only forgeries have been studied.
What terrible "secret" did Jacques de Molay defend so doggedly to the point of sacrificing his own life? He shouted to his inquisitors, on November 26, 1308:
<< I would love to tell you certain things, if only you were not the people you are, and if you were authorized to hear them >>
Was it perhaps the Grail, the symbol of knowledge, that was so jealously guarded by the Order? The Holy Grail, writes Introvigne:
"would not only be the noblest blood, destined to reign over the whole world, but - to those who know how to get in touch with the energy it releases through special rituals - it would even guarantee immortality"
(The Myth of the Grail in "History," No. 130, September 1998).
Robert Charroux in: "The Book of Betrayed Secrets" (Milan 1969) writes:
"The Templars were regarded as the repositories and continuers of a <<mystery>> of paramount importance and of which no layman - even the king of France - was to be informed"
From a statement made at the trial we learn a startling fact. On April 11, 1309, Master Radulphe de Praellis, a jurisconsult, was called as a witness, who stated, under oath, that a Knight Templar, named Gervais of the Commenda of Laon, had revealed to him that there was in the Order a terrible secret of such importance that:
<< he would rather lose his head than reveal it; a point so secret that if the King of France had seen it, he would have been put to death by the Templars guarding the chapter >>
Some historians are of the opinion that there was a very secret society at the top of the Order and those officially declared Grand Masters were not the real heads of the Order. After all, how else can one explain what Grand Master Jacques de Molay said during his interrogation, namely,
<< I am only a poor unlettered knight >>
? He was echoed by the preceptor of Aquitaine and Poitou, Geoffroy de Gonnoville, who declared,
<< I am illiterate and therefore incapable of defending the Order >>
Jean Marquès-Rivière wrote, that:
<< There existed within the Templars a group that pursued secret aims of power, supported by a rigorous esotericism >>
Robert Ambelain was of the same opinion and the German historian Wilke, goes even further and gives, to such a group, the name "Black Temple".
Was there a "Secret Order" at the top of the Templars? Some scholars are convinced of this and assert that it was the "Priory of Sion" (Prieuré de Sion), which would still be operating today and, among its occult designs, is to restore the Merovingian dynasty not only in France but throughout Europe. It should be pointed out that
the Merovingian lineage did not die out. On the contrary, it was perpetuated in a direct line from Dagobert II and his son, Sigisbert IV. By means of dynastic alliances and marriages, the lineage includes Godfrey of Bouillon, who conquered Jerusalem in 1099, and other noble families of the past and present: Blanchefort, Gisors, Saint-Clair (Sinclair in England), Montesquiou, Montpézat, Poher, Lusignan, Plantard and Habsburg-Lorraine
(M. Baigent, R. Leigh, H. Lincoln, The Holy Grail, Milan 1984). Still a conspiracy theory that would originate in the darkness of distant centuries.
In short, all this would also mean that The Order of the Temple would be created by the Priory of Sion. Now the question has to be asked whether there are any records of its existence and its relationship to the Templars. Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger inform us that the existence of the Priory is very well substantiated by important documents:
The original name and organization are mentioned in a charter of 1152 and also in a fourteenth-century copy of an earlier parchment dated 1178. The organization would have been founded under the name <<Order of Sion>>, while the title Priory of Sion would have been adopted in 1188. Some believe it was a group split from the ranks of the Knights Templar, but this is disputed. The separation of the Order of Zion in 1188 from the main body of the Templar Order is said to have occurred in a legendary episode known as the <<Cutting of the Elm>>
(R. Andrews and P. Schellenberger, In Search of the Tomb, Milan 1997).
The issue is very complex; it would also seem certain that secret cults were celebrated within the Order and that a Templar esotericism certainly existed. Regrettably, as Lavisse writes in his "History of France", the secrecy about their activities was absolute, in fact
All the affairs of the Temple were transacted in the strictest secrecy; the written rule existed only in a few copies; reading was reserved for dignitaries only; many Templars had never been acquainted with it.
Knight Templar Gaucerand de Montpezat, a distant ancestor of the royals of Denmark, asserted,
<< We have three articles that no one will ever know, except God, the devil and the Masters >>
It is also certain that Arab philosophers influenced the rough Temple soldiers. Certainly the Order received doctrinal and ritual elements of Eastern esotericism. It underwent the influence of esoteric Muslim brotherhoods along with the design of a unification of the world and a new social order.
It is not far-fetched, in this regard, to recall the ambitions of Frederick II of Hohenstauffen, the "Lord of the World", emperor of Germany, king of the Romans, king of Sicily, and king of Jerusalem, who, by the end of the 11th century was a legend.
Saba Malespini writes of him,
This Caesar who was the true ruler of the world and whose glory had spread throughout the universe, believing without any doubt that he would become like the gods by the study of mathematics, set out to scrutinize the depths of things and the mysteries of the heavens.
Was his project perhaps continued by the Templars?
Frederick II learned of something terrible that he concealed in an anagram, still undeciphered today. In his Castel del Monte in Apulia, built entirely according to the architecture of Solomon's Temple (here are the four key-measures: 60 - 30 - 20 - 12 cubits), on a female sculpture surrounded by knights he had these mysterious letters engraved: D8 I D CA D BLO C L P S H A2. In this enigmatic formula, reported by Robert Charroux, is hidden the secret of Frederick II and Castel del Monte.
Frederick II, in 1228, at Acre, although suffering from papal excommunication, had equally attended the Round Table of the best of world Chivalry: Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic, Saracen Fàlas, Turks, Batinyah (Assassins or Hassanites), Rabites of Spain, etc., all from the Pactio Secreta (Secret Pact). The filiation of Chivalry with secret initiatory Orders is at work. After all, the Templars were lost by their doctrine, esotericism and an unmentionable "secret" that led to their destruction. It is more than likely to assume that the Temple militia had shadowy connections with mysterious initiatory chains and practiced highly secret rituals.
Among their aims was to subject the world to a supreme authority.
It indeed seems,
Charroux continues,
that the Order's greatest dream, the supreme purpose of its activity, was to resurrect the concept of the Empire... that is, the Islamic East and the Christian West... A sort of federation of autonomous states placed under the direction of two leaders, one spiritual, the Pope; the other political, the Emperor, both elected and independent of each other. Over the pontiff and the emperor, a supreme, mysterious authority
Who was this mysterious supreme authority?
The Templars were deep in esotericism; it was through their influence that the Cathar sect of the Albigensians,
became essentially a Sufi movement, with a conception of man shaped in every way on the ideal model of the Pir and that is the <<great sage>> of the Sufi sects. Moreover, the magical power they attributed to the Holy Grail (the vessel used by Jesus for the Last Supper and in which his blood would be collected) perfectly equaled that attributed to the Khidr, namely, the green flaming mantle of Sufi paradise. Analogous again to the Sufi ones were the Cathar theories on the creation of a theocratic type of society...
(Carlo Palermo, The Fourth Level, Rome 1996).
Still occult and indecipherable secrets. Unsolved enigmas such as the one concerning the fabled treasure of the Templars. They had attained great wealth; it was whispered that they practiced the art of alchemy. In the last century an astonishing discovery gave greater credence to this hypothesis; two ancient small chests, illustrated with alchemical figures and symbols, were found where two important commanderies of the Order were based, in Burgundy, at Essarois, and in Tuscany, at Volterra.
The scholar von Hammer stated that the caskets were undoubtedly of Templar origin.
Another outstanding discovery was due to Theodor Mertzdorff, a distinguished German scholar who, in 1877, gave to the press a Templar document, found in Hamburg, which collected a set of rules. Here is what Article 19 says:
It is forbidden, in the commandments, in which all the brethren are not of the elect or consulates, to work certain matters by means of philosopher's science, and thus to transmute vile metals into gold or silver. This will be undertaken only in hidden places and in secret.
The story goes that the last Grand Master de Moley chose the French village of Arginy to have two knights hide the "treasure" of the Order. Arginy in the dark dungeons of its castle, which rests above a web of secret tunnels, which Daniel Réju describes:
<< isolated in the plain, between Aone and Beaujolais >>
must conceal something unimaginable. The "Tower of the Eight Beauties", also called the "Tower of Alchemy" for the mysterious magical signs and alchemical symbols drawn on those bricks, is the oldest building in the chateau and was the subject of long visits by scholars and esotericists, including, two outstanding figures, Eugéne Canseliet and Armand Barbault.
What these alchemists found or deciphered was not told. The fabled "treasure" of the Templars still remains an unsolved mystery or could André Douzet be right when he writes
Perhaps the French author Robert Charroux found the key when he deciphered this passage from Breyer's book: <<Think hard: great art is Knowledge>>
Knowledge of sublime and exceedingly dangerous mysteries if they are still sealed in a thick "secret". It is an inviolable secret that seems to echo the words of Ja'far Sadiq (ob. 148/765)
Our cause is a secret veiled in a secret, the secret of something that remains veiled, a secret that only another secret can teach: it is a secret about a secret that is fulfilled by a secret.
