James Cook and the Templar's treasure
On August 26, 1768, the ship Endeavor left England for the immense expanses of the ocean. The official purpose of the expedition was to go to the southern hemisphere to observe the passage of the planet Venus on the solar disk. In reality, the real goal of the journey was the search for an unknown land on which, centuries before, immense treasures would have been hidden.
When we read of the discovery of new continents and unknown lands in school textbooks, our imagination soars imagining fearless explorers who blindly face the boundless open sea with a lot of courage and a considerable amount of luck. Reality is sometimes much less poetic and the "official" story does not always correspond to the real one.
We have already claimed other times the existence of very ancient maps, which some want to be of extraterrestrial origin and others of Atlantean origin and which, in the possession of a few lucky initiates, have led to some extraordinary discoveries. This is the case of the famous map of Piri Re'is or of the maps owned by Christopher Columbus himself.
THE IMPOSSIBLE MAP OF HADJI AHMED
The scholars Rand and Rose Flemath, in their volume "The end of Atlantis" cite the map of the Arab Hadji Ahmed, which already in 1559 showed the north-western coast of North America which, according to the canonical story, was still unexplored at the time.
"How was it possible that such a map existed if, in 1559, the technology necessary to draw it was not yet available? - ask the two authors. Perhaps it was the Atlanteans who drew the original map which Ahmed used to report its contours ?"
The possibility that ancient geographical maps, made by a civilization that had mapped the planet in the mists of time, have survived the wear and tear of time cannot be excluded a priori.
Preserved in some lost library such as that of Alexandria, in sealed chambers that enthusiasts of mysterious archeology call "time chambers" (where the ancients stored part of their knowledge for future generations), these papers and maps would have been rediscovered and jealously guarded from initiatory companies.
It seems that the Knights Templar kept many of these maps of the impossible. And it seems that, as happened with Columbus, some of these maps ended up in the hands of another great explorer, James Cook.
Cook, an English navigator of the eighteenth century, was the first to explore New Zealand and to discover a myriad of islands in Oceania (the Marquesas, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia); he then crossed the Antarctic circle, dismantling a legend that placed a mythical southern continent there.
Put like this, it seems that Cook didn't do much; in reality it is necessary to know that in the eighteenth century, at the time of the great colonizations, the realms of the old continent that sponsored these enterprises were seriously concerned about the continuous loss of fleets and sailors into the ocean. Almost nothing was known of the American and oceanic lands; not only that, the crews were not able to orient themselves in the open sea and often ended up losing their way and perishing in shipwreck disasters. To understand the state of mind of the Royal Scientific Societies which pressed the sovereigns of Europe to discover new worlds, consider that in 1714 the British Parliament set up a "Commission for Longitude", which offered a reward of around three billion, at today's exchange rate.
THE ENIGMATIC MASTER COOK
Nonetheless, there were those who, despite apparently not having great tools or skills, managed to discover new lands, arriving where no one, at least officially, had ever arrived before.
James Cook was born at Marton in North Yorkshire on 27 October 1728. He was listed in the parish register as "the son of a labourer". Of his father, biographers generally limit themselves to saying that he "apparently was a Scotsman".
Despite not having great successes to his credit James Cook, at the age of forty-one, was commissioned to observe the passage of the planet Venus over the disk of the sun. The phenomenon was scheduled for June 3, 1769 and for the observation, which the Royal British Society of Astronomy held particularly dear, the sovereigns of England decided to finance an expedition to the New World. This is at least what the official story claims, passing over the scarce importance of the event (the sovereigns hardly spent exorbitant sums on scientific research; explorations usually had as their aim the conquest of new lands and markets and the search for wealth and raw materials). Another discordant note is that, at the time, the greatest London astronomer and geographer was a certain Alexander Dalrymple, a fervent supporter of the existence of the "unknown Antarctic land" in the southern continent. Dalrymple, who also had some sea experience, did not participate in the expedition to the New World, officially because he apparently did not want to accept "putting himself at the controls of an unknown navigator" such as Cook; yet, inexplicably, Dalrymple had to surrender all his writings and maps on the New World to the hated enemy. How this was possible the official history does not tell us, but it is known that James Cook, although not enjoying great fame, was recommended for the assignment by none other than the Secretary of the Admiralty, at the time the highest maritime official, head of the royal office which established which shipments to finance, with the money of the King of England.
How Cook, a character of humble origins, enjoyed such influential and unthinkable support is not known. The history books only say that the sovereigns of England sent him to America together with the scientist Charles Green, of the Royal Astronomical Society; the latter in place of Dalrymple. The tycoon Joseph Banks, future president of the Royal Society, also participated in the expedition. When all was ready, Cook proceeded to Plymouth, where the ship Endeavor had been fitted out for him; he assumed command and on 26 August 1768 left England on his first voyage of exploration.
This was a success; Cook explored New Zealand, the eastern coast of Australia and the islands under the jurisdiction of the Royal Society. The strange marriage between a labourer, a scientist and a banker was never clarified, although many contemporary scholars have often pointed out that all three were secret followers of the Templar creed.
LOOKING FOR THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Was James Cook a Templar Master? We have no proof. But certainly in eighteenth-century England, where Masonic and esoteric associations flourished, there were many who secretly joined sects that claimed the inheritance of initiatory groups from past centuries. Cook's belonging to a neo-templar group would explain the anguish with which the humble son of a laborer (a qualification considered highly unbecoming for the nobles and scientists of the time; the latter were in fact all aristocrats) tried at all costs to arrive in the New World. Yes, because according to some alchemical legends, several Templars who escaped persecution by the Pope and the King of France in 1300 would have landed in the New Continents, some in America and some even in Oceania. A legend of little importance, if it hadn't been believed that, when they fled, the "poor temple knights" had brought fabulous riches with them. They would have been part of the immense treasures (which the detractors said were the result of the robbery of the Crusades) that the knights had accumulated over the centuries, either through the donations of princes and powerful people, or through the booty obtained in the Holy Land, or through the discovery of the philosopher's stone, a magical compound that according to alchemists would have the power to transform base metal into gold.
Be that as it may, the Templar treasure must have ended up somewhere. This legend had tormented the explorers of the Old Continent for centuries, who since the time of the Spanish Conquistadores had sought gold and riches in every new land discovered (think of the myth of Eldorado). If Cook was a neo-templar Master, nothing strange that he was looking for a treasure that he believed belonged to him by right. And if we want to be less malicious, we can imagine that he was looking more "spiritually" for the Holy Grail or the philosopher's stone, to bring peace and salvation to humanity ...
SCOTTISH FREEMASONS BEHIND THE SCENES
As proof of the veracity of what is written above, we cite an interesting study by the Italian Carla Polpettini, author of the beautiful book "Study on the life and travels of James Cook" (Ivaldi Editore, Genoa).
The scholar, who has meticulously reconstructed the stages of the Englishman's life and travels, points out how these expeditions were shrouded in mystery and writes as follows:
"Cook possessed official travel instructions, which indicated the purpose of the exploration. These letters, in the public domain, concerned the study of the transit of the planet Venus, but these were only pretexts. The expedition was set up at the behest of the King of England, to allow members of the Royal Society to reach the place deemed suitable for observation of the planet's passage across the sun's disk, scheduled for June 3, 1769. The island of Tahiti, indicated in the orders as King George the Third's Isiand, was the place deemed suitable for the observation that Cook and the astronomer Charles Green should have accomplish. But there were also secret instructions, on the real purpose of the journey. There are those who think that they contained indications for discovering a new continent. They did not expressly mention was called New Holland, but the maps and charts supplied to Cook did".
Would the treasure of the Templars have therefore been found in this mysterious continent? If so, this information must have been disclosed to Cook - and therefore to the King of England - by the Master Masons of Scottish Freemasonry (and "coincidentally" Cook was Scottish). The neo-Templar Freemasons must have also provided the "impossible maps" that allowed Cook to arrive unscathed in those unknown lands.
This thesis is obviously contested by official historiography, which believes that Cook's impossible maps were derived from a study mapped by the explorer Tasman, who at the time had partially circumscribed the extent of the Australian continent from van Diemen's land to New Zeland. However, this thesis does not explain how Cook - as had already happened centuries earlier with Columbus - knew the right route to the unknown continent.
A previous attempt by the explorer Bougainville had failed miserably as the vessel ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef. Mysteriously and "miraculously" Cook had instead avoided the Barrier, the strong currents, the tidal waves and, in a second trip, the pack and the icebergs, arriving calmly at his destination. All thanks to lucky combinations? Certainly not thanks to the Tasman map, which did not indicate many of the lands discovered by the Scotsman at all.
Polpettini herself, while not espousing any "heretical" thesis, admits that
"Cook succeeded in a mission that had not been possible for all previous navigators; these had based themselves on maps containing inexact localizations, due to the difficulty of calculating the longitude "
JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN LAND
But how had Cook calculated it? We don't know. The English scholar Watson is one of the few who has the courage to say:
"a great mystery, now insoluble, surrounded the preparation of the first voyage of the Scottish navigators"
That Cook possessed some secret map is argued by several scholars. Polpettini confirms that Cook
"in addition to having on board a book by Dalrymple not yet published, possessed a Portuguese geographical map, the work of a navigator from Manila, who in 1762 had mapped several Australian coasts and the Torres Strait. In Dalrymple's book also exposed, with a wealth of fantastic details, the theory of the existence of an unknown land in the southern continent, of the existence of which the writer had such an unshakable faith, as to dare an approximate calculation of the population, estimated at fifty million inhabitants, and of wealth, which he considered somewhat superior to that of the English colonies in America".
On his first voyage, however, Cook did not discover any treasures. A second expedition led him to explore that stretch of sea where Dalrymple placed his mythical Eldorado; but he found nothing there. Finally, a third trip was organised, to which the American scientist Benjamin Franklin (inventor of the lightning rod and great supporter of America's independence from the Motherland) gave great publicity.
Franklin, who was notoriously a Freemason, sent a letter of encouragement to all the crews of Cook's ships, dated March 10, 1779, asking those brave men to discover "how much there was to discover." Further proof that esoteric circles secretly backed Cook. In those years, in fact, the American colonies had rebelled against England, and huge amounts of money were needed for the war against the Motherland. Franklin was probably hoping for the Templar treasure. In the event of a Cook discovery, he would bring the treasures of the "southern continent" to the insurgents of the New World. In reality, none of this happened. Not only did Cook not discover any enchanted continents, but in addition, on his last voyage, he was slain by a Hawaiian tribe.
