Prologue
Following the thread of documents, we reach the conclusion that not all of the Templar Order was dissolved. Many warrior-monks entered the high ranks of other Orders, in Scotland and Spain, where they continued standing out for they courage and loyalty. Others, it is said, found hospitality in the Confraternities of Freemasons, where they continued erecting Churches and Cathedrals.
Since the knights templars were ordained monks, some could return in the shadow of monasticism. The re-joining of the Templars to the monastic Order obtained a Bull of acknowledgment from the pope who succeeded to Clement V, the one who wanted their dispersion.
According to the author of the essay, though, the transformation of the "Ordo Templi" (Order of the Temple) didn't stop; it led to the intimate mysticism that originated the Rosicrucian Confraternity.
The Templar Diaspora
The oath of Jacques de Molay to the Order of Templars, in Beaune in 1265.
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In the so-called Common Era, the Templar Order was the last western initiatory order to secretly join its culture with the one of the eastern Brothers. It happened in land of Palestine where, even with different goals and political reasons, its Militia worked together with the troops of the Crusades and the knights of St. John from the island of Rhodes. Bernardo da Chiaravalle (1090-1153) created the Templar Rule, restored the Cistercian Order and wrote the motto “Salve caput cruentatum”; he extended his protection and that of the Order he represented to the most illuminated Rabbis (Jewish priests) that lived under the yoke of the temporal and religious power of Europe in the Jewish Communities of Spain, France, Germany and Italy. He wanted them to help dissolve the mysteries hidden in the numerous documents collected in Jerusalem by “his” warrior-monks, and received through the secret alliances they had with high exponents of the chivalry of Islam. The historical documentation tells us of a building, made by “Wise Hakem”, where their meetings took place since the year 1100.
The High Templar Hierarchy never conceded its political and initiatory secrets outside its Commendam and Temples; in his three years of detention in the French dungeons, the last of his life, the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, had the time to build, covered by the minor brothers of the Order (monks and builders of the Temples that later represented the esoterical part of Freemasonry), four groups of Dignitaries and Officials of the Temple in Scotland, France, Germany and Italy. They eventually became the esoterical part of Freemasonry. It was the year 1313.
Following the last orders of the Grand Master, a group of seven templars initiated to the secrets of the Order, the knights Gaston de la Pierre Phoebus, Guidon de Montanor, Gentili da Foligno, Henrì de Monfort, Luis de Grimoard, Pierre Yorick de Rivault and Cesar Minvielle, together with another fifteen people, reached the island of Mull in Scotland, where other brothers were expecting them.
On that island on the 24th June 1313, the Knight Aumonte was elected by the assembly regent of the Grand Master. The templar Guy de Montanor, doctor in alchemy, 7th degree of the initiatory hierarchy and disciple of the Grand Master, founded the Templar Church in the secret of the brotherhood together with other initiates, in order to perpetuate the teaching they had been transmitted. Their emblem was a pelican surmounted by a cardinal's hat and underneath six acorns with the motto: "Dium sibi caeteris".
In October 1316 four templars initiated to the Secret of Secrets (the Royal Secret), Guy de Montanor, Gaston de la Pierre Phoebus, Pietro il Buono di Lombardia and Richard the English, together with other 24 brothers, all belonging to the Templar Church, went to France, that was under the sovereignty of king Philip V; they asked for a hearing with Jacques d'Euse (in English James of Bones) elected pope of Avignon with the name of John XXII. The meeting was conceded straight away and it took place on the 17th November of the same year.
The results of that meeting were the assurance of "complete protection" from the pope for those warrior-monks and the plan of a Rule for a new Order, whose members would be called Higher Friars of Rosy Cross. This chivalric group suffered great losses because of a turbulent and tragic journey to the brothers in England; meanwhile in France there was a man left as warrantor of the Rule of the Pope, an old templar Rector of the Hospital Order in Pont-Saint-Esprit.
The reason for that agreement was the development and transmission of the power of alchemic art, which the Templars demonstrated having. On the other hand, this very "power" plus the existence of a Templar Church separated and independent from the Mother Church were a great worry for the new pope. In fact he was constantly struggling to keep his supremacy and autonomy over the European countries, destroyed by the conflicts between the various monarchic and imperialistic factions. These were in fact always fighting each other and for them the financial power was more important than the value of arms, despite what minstrels and court's poets used to sing.
Still in Avignon, on the 5th January 1317, the Rule of the Order was awarded to the Higher Friars; the only condition was that the designated guide of the 33 members of the Holy College was the cardinal J. Lavie de Villemur (in English James of Way), the pope's nephew. Unfortunately he died of food poisoning on the 6th May of the same year. At his death, the Holy College of Higher Friars, which according to the Rule had to be made of 33 members (the age of Christ), designated in his place a high templar, the Provencal Knight Enguerard de Ners and with him the new board of management. The Order escaped the direct control of the pope by leaving Avignon and moved to the Commendam of Monfort sur Argens in 1333, in order to "organize" its destiny from there. They stayed there for a year; after a solemn mass in which they gave the Mystical Communion to all the participants, they left to start in invisibility what would be later called "the myth of Rosicrucians".
Since then no templar has ever publicly declared himself such, despite secretly continuing to instruct proselytes. Today, if a western Initiate was acknowledged and accepted as a Templar from the Confraternity, would gain access to the historical, but not the public, archives of the branches closest to Europe (not including the Far East, always interested in the events of western proselytes): the Sufis Communions of Cairo, Luxor and Damascus, and the religious Community of the Athos Mountain. In those places we find the answers to many questions about the templar truth that some people still ask themselves.
Those brothers have preserved what in Europe has been annulled or mystified by the temporal power, which enthusiastically followed the mystical heresy in the "modern" deviant or completely exoterical institutions, whilst hiding it. They are the so-called new-Templars, templists or Rosicrucians.
On the steps of the Rosicrucian Rule
Minorites Friars, Elected Friars and Consoled Friars
The meeting (and the agreement) occurred in 1317 with the Knights of the Temple, was ratified by Pope John XXII through the bull "Spondent pariter". This pope, with the little he was allowed to know, was able to write the undoubtedly alchemic treatise "the Art of Transmutation", published posthumously in 1557. We will omit all the collateral elements and secondary details; we will only remind that this pope, at his death, left underground in his Avignon residence the huge sum of 25,000,000 gold coins (an extraordinary sum for that time). The interest for this detail rises because this "case" produced in later times an infinite series of princes of the Church keen on the Alchemic Art. There are plenty of documented testimonies and I leave to the skeptical one the burden of demonstrating “himself” the opposite. We'll leave here that stream of promiscuity developed by the meeting with the Order of the Temple and we'll carry on with our journey.
We'll extract from the work Histoire de l'Ordre de Templiers et les croisades (Paris, Byblos Tome I), some articles from documents of the time of the Rule of Minorite Friars, a direct extension themselves of the Templar Order of the High Degrees as well. The original document of the Rule exists in two copies; the first is in the Vatican, the second in Hamburg. The document was preserved by Br. Mathieu de Tramlay until 1205, and then by Robert de Samfort, proxy of the Temple in England (year 1240) and by the Master Roncelin de Fos.
We'll analyze some rules of the minor adepts in order to understand their attitude and the hues of their feelings: the Elected Friars.
Art. 11 - Admission ritual of the Elected: swearing of preserving the secret of the order, since any indiscretion is punishable by death. The Receiving will then kiss the neophyte on the lips, in order to transmit the breath to the sacred plexus that gives the creating strength to the navel and the virile member, image of the manly creating principle. [This article was accused by the Inquisitors of being keen to omosexual practices. Actually, the reference to the symbolic transfer of the initiatory efflation that the Master sends to the inferior Centers (Chakras) of the initiating is unambiguous, obvious and unquestionable. (Editor's note)]
Art. 13 - The neophyte will trample on the Cross and will spit on it and then he will receive the white tunic with the sash. [This symbolizes the disdain towards the instruments of torture that devotionals loved and adored so much in their exoterical cults. (Editor's note)]
Art. 14 - The man who will think of being authorized to vituperate Jesus, Mary's son, because we insulted the wood of the Cross, will be excluded from the Capitols and his education will not be taken any further.
Art. 20 - The Elected are the holy assembly, the people of acquisition, in which don't exist any Jews, Saracen, free, slaves, men or women. To the man who is in the true Christ-God we'll announce a God that manifested himself to the world, a Christ only son of a God, which was with God in all eternity, who was never born, has never suffered, can't die, is omniscient, has loved and joined the soul of Mary's son and in this way he was in the world. A God that the world has never known because carnal men never understood what the Spirit is. You can definitely state that Mary and Joseph's son accomplished everything: his teaching, his miracles and his holy work, through the strength and power of this true Christ, which was emanated by God with all the eternity. He joined for a period the soul of Jesus but he never appeared in flesh and bones. Since Joseph and Mary's son has been saint, free from all sins and crucified, we worship him in God and pray to him. But we consider the wood of the Cross like the sign of the Beast mentioned in the Apocalypse.
The Consoled Friars
Art. 8 - There are Elected and Consoled in all the parts of the world. Wherever you will see big houses being built (the Temples) and the sign of gratitude being made ... (which I don't mention publicly), you will find many people educated by God and the Great Art. They inherited it from their fathers and masters, which are all Brothers ... (another omission)... Through the underground paths you will lead them to your Capitols and to those who are afraid you will assign the Consolamentum outside the Capitols, in front of three witnesses.
Art. 9 - You will fraternally receive the Friars of these groups and do the same for the Consoled (the Rosicrucians) of Spain and Cyprus; you will do the same for Saracens, Druzes and those who live in Lebanon. If the Spirit animates Saracens or Druzes you will admit them as Elected or Consoled.
Art.18 - The neophyte will be taken to the archives where he will be taught the mysteries of the divine science, of God, of Baby Jesus, of the true Bafomet, of the New Babilon, of the nature of things, of the eternal life and secret science, the Great Philosophy, Abraxas and the Talismans (theurgic objects). All these things will be hidden to the ecclesiastics (profane or not initiated) admitted to the Order.
Art. 39 - It is prohibited in the Houses in which not all the Friars are Elected or Consoled to work some materials through the philosophical science or to transmute base metals into gold or silver. This work will be undertaken only in the guarded and secret places.
We must now consider who were the "inspirers" of this initiatory movement in Europe. It was a movement connected to science and mysticism which continued its work in other fields and with different "exterior uniforms".
From such premises it is difficult to imagine how an ordinary templar or Rosicrucian myth could be the holder of the Secret of secrets or symbol of the initiatory Mysteries.
The "modern" templar or Rosicrucian myth is certainly not of an initiatory nature. It rather has a bourgeois structure of a devotional nature expressed by an average culture and no intellectual light at all (light of the soul); it is inspired by an event which will remain, as it is fair to be, a myth and a mystery for the non-initiates.
We'll have other chances to reawaken this subject and we'll see with more and more clarity the Rosicrucian reality despite its pale exoterical imitations.
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Appendix
The philosophical Cross symbol of the Rose & Cross, as this image on the left shows (engraving of the XIX century), contains the symbolic plan of the Temple of Ezekiel (the Circular Temple contained in the Square Chamber of the 4 Elements).
This Cross is often mistaken in Freemasonry for the Teutonic Cross reproduced on the right.
It is better to remind that between the two Crosses there isn't any relation, neither symbolic nor esoterical.
Carefully studying this plan and the disposition of the Symbols it contains means to realize the right philosophical location of the Doctrine of the Minor Mysteries in the Masonic Temple.  |
The Teutonic Cross
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