Knights Templar

The Temple of Solomon Baphomet

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Knights Templar

Sources: https://www.worldhistory.org/Knights_Templar/ 

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_moneymisterymagick02.htm 

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The Knights Templar were established c. 1119 and given papal recognition in 1129. It was a Catholic medieval military order whose members combined martial prowess with a monastic life to defend Christian holy sites and pilgrims in the Middle East and elsewhere. The Templars, with headquarters at Jerusalem and then Acre, were an important and elite element of Crusader armies.

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Eventually, the Knights Templar became a very powerful body and they came to control both castles and lands in the Levant and across Europe. Accused of heresy, corruption, and performing forbidden practices, the order was attacked by the French king Philip IV (r. 1285-1314) on Friday 13 October 1307 and then officially disbanded by Pope Clement V (r. 1305-1314) in 1312.

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Foundation & Early History

The order was formed c. 1119 when seven knights, led by a French knight and nobleman from Champagne, Hugh of Payns, swore to defend Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem and the Holy Land and so created a brotherhood who took monastic vows, which included vows of poverty, and lived together in a closed community with an established code of conduct.

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In 1120 Baldwin II, the king of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (r. 1118-1131), gave the knights his palace, the former Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount of Jerusalem, for use as their headquarters. The building was commonly referred to as 'The Temple of Solomon' and so the brotherhood quickly became known as 'the Order of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon' or simply the 'Templars'.

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Officially recognised as an order by Pope Honorius II (r. 1124-1130) at the Council of Troyes in January 1129 (the first such military order to be created), the Templars were initially considered a branch of the Cistercians. In 1145, knights of the order were granted permission to wear the white hooded-mantle Cistercian monks had made their own. The knights soon adopted their distinctive white cloak and they began to use the insignia of a red cross on a white background.

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There was no impediment to fighting as regards to religious doctrine, provided that the cause was a just one - the Crusades and defence of the Holy Land being just such a cause - and so the order received the official support of the Church. The first major battle involving Templar knights was in 1147 against the Muslims during the Second Crusade (1147-1149).

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The order grew thanks to donations from supporters who recognized their important role in the protection of the small Christian states in the Levant. Others, from the humblest to the rich, gave what they could to simply help ensure both a better afterlife and, because donors could be mentioned in prayer services, perhaps a better life in the here and now. Donations came in all forms, but money, land, horses, military equipment, and foodstuffs were the most common. Sometimes privileges were donated which helped the order save on its own expenses. The Templars invested their money, too, buying revenue-producing properties so that the order came to own farms, vineyards, mills, churches, townships or anything else they thought a good investment.

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Money may have poured in from all corners of Europe but there were high costs to be met, too. Maintaining knights, their squires, horses (knights often had four each), and armor and equipment were all drains on the Templars' finances. There were taxes to be paid to the state, donations to the Papacy, and sometimes tithes to the church, as well as payoffs to be made to local dignitaries, while performing masses and other services had their not insignificant costs, too.

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The Templars also had a charitable purpose and were supposed to help the poor. One-tenth of bread produced, for example, was distributed to the needy as alms. Finally, military disasters resulted in losses of both men and property in enormous quantities. The exact accounts of the Templars are not known, but it is more than likely that the order was never quite as rich as everyone thought they were.

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From the mid-12th century, the Templars widened their influence and fought in the crusade campaigns in Iberia (the 'Reconquest') for various rulers in Spain and Portugal. Also operating in the Baltic crusades against pagans, by the 13th century the Knights Templar owned estates from England to Bohemia and had become a truly international military order with tremendous resources at its disposal (men, arms, equipment, and a sizeable naval fleet). The Templars had established a model which would be copied by other military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights. There was one area, though, in which the Templars truly excelled: banking.

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Medieval Bankers

Regarded as a safe place by locals, Templar communities or convents became repositories for cash, jewels, and important documents. The order had their own cash reserves which were, from as early as 1130, put to good use in the form of interest-gaining loans. The Templars even permitted people to deposit money in one convent and, provided they could show a suitable letter, transfer and then withdraw equivalent money from a different convent.

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In another early banking service, people could hold what today would be called a current account with the Templars, paying in regular deposits and arranging for the Templars to pay out, on behalf of the account holder, fixed sums to whoever was nominated. By the 13th century, the Templars had become such proficient and trusted bankers that the kings of France and other nobles kept their treasuries with the order.

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Kings and nobles who embarked on crusades to the Holy Land, in order to pay their armies on the spot and meet supply needs, often forwarded large cash sums to the Templars which could be withdrawn later in the Levant. The Templars even lent money to rulers and thus became an important element in the increasingly sophisticated financial structure of late medieval Europe.

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Organisation & Recruitment

Recruits came from all over western Europe, although France was the largest single source. They were motivated by a sense of religious duty to defend Christians everywhere but especially the Holy Land and its sacred sites, as a penance for sins committed, as a means to guarantee entry into heaven, or more earthly reasons such as a search for adventure, personal gain, social promotion or simply a regular income and decent meals.

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Recruits had to be free men of legitimate birth, and if they wished to become medieval knights they had, from the 13th century, to be of knightly descent. Although rare, a married man could join provided his spouse agreed. Many recruits were expected to make a significant donation on entering the order, and as debts were a no-no, the financial status of a recruit was certainly a consideration.

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Baphomet

As the Templars expanded their banking empire, and as they came to control many other staple industries throughout Europe, they quickly became the continent’s most dominant economic influence. Never before has a single institution used money alone to amass so much worldly power. This power threatened not only the monarchs of Europe (most of whom were now financially indebted to the Templars), but even Pope Clement V, who was no longer was able to hold the Templars under the thrall of his signet ring.

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Soon the Templars would become a force that no one could stop, and they seemed to hold allegiance to no one else either - no earthly power, at least. Their enemies hypothesized that for the Templars to have become so wealthy and powerful in such a short span of time, they would have had to have made a pact with the Devil. With a little investigation, it was discovered that in fact they had.

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When the Templars were arrested en masse on Friday, October 13, 1307, on charges of idol worship and heresy, there were found throughout their preceptories various human skulls, and representations of human skulls or severed heads, which appeared to have been afforded certain ceremonial importance.

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The symbol of the skull and crossbones, apparently invented by the Knights Templar, was used everywhere throughout their possessions. Carvings depicting a grotesque goat-headed creature, with a semi-human body at once both male and female, were also found in the Templars’ ritual chambers. In confessions painfully extracted, many knights admitted that the skulls, the heads and the hybrid creature all represented their secret god, “Baphomet”, whom they worshipped because it “caused the land to germinate”, and also “made them rich.”

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Modern occultists, for whom Baphomet is now a potent symbol, see in this idol a representative of the “Universal Principle”, the “Azoth” or “Fifth Element” which to alchemists is the key to turning lead into gold. This is probably what it meant to the Templars too. But to their interrogators, the tortured knights were confessing Devil worship, and they were punished accordingly. The Order was disbanded, the Grand Master burnt at the stake, and the offending knights sent to do penance at various monasteries. The power of the Templars was crushed.

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Let us return now to the concept of the “Baphomet”, the idol which the Templars said, “caused the land to germinate”, and “made them rich.” These claims, coupled with the fact that the idol was often depicted as a goat with male and female sexual organs, might cause one to think that the Templars had somehow stumbled upon and absorbed the tenets of the cult of the she-goat Amalthea.

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This is the creature who purportedly nursed Zeus while he was a babe in exile on the island of Crete, hiding from his father Kronos, who wished to kill him. Having little thanks for the favors of Amalthea, Zeus had her slaughtered as soon as he was fully grown, and fashioned from her skin an impenetrable shield called the “Aegis.” The word “aegis” or “aigis” literally means “goat-skin.”

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Out of one of her horns, he created the “cornucopia” or “horn of plenty”:

a magical object that contained an inexhaustible supply of fruits and flowers.

So Amalthea was venerated by some cults in much the same way that the vegetation deity known as the “Green Man” was in Celtic culture:

as a representative of nature, of fecundity, plenteousness, and thus, by extension, wealth.

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Similarly, Baphomet was so literally associated with money by the Templars that they kept small statuettes of him in their money coffers. But the Baphomet is reported to have done more for the Templars besides just make them rich. He is also said to have made them “wise.” In fact, it has been shown that Baphomet’s name literally means “wisdom” in Aramaic, if run through the ancient Atbash cipher that was often used by the Templars.

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The result is “Sophia”, which was the name used for the goddess of wisdom, who was often revered in Gnostic cults in New Testament times. It was believed in these cults that one could unite spiritually with Sophia by performing certain rites and meditations, and thus one could obtain “gnosis”, or divine knowledge.

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Gnosticism was widely practiced in the Roman Empire during Christ’s time. One man widely believed to have been a Gnostic was John the Baptist, the prophet of the New Testament who announced the coming of Christ. John was, after his death, himself revered by a number of Gnostic cults. There were even, by medieval times, numerous underground “Christian” sects called “Johannites”, who believed that John was the true Messiah.

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Johannite cults even exist today in the form of semi-Islamic Gnostic sects found in Iraq. It has been charged that that Templars followed this doctrine, and indeed, he was their patron saint, as he is now for Freemasonry. More importantly, perhaps, he is known to have been beheaded at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and his head, or skull, has become a central Christian icon. This brings into focus the claim of occultist Aleister Crowley that the name “Baphomet”, by itself, without running it through any ciphers, means “Baptist of Wisdom.” This could easily have been a title for the prophet John.

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