Secret Societies and Symbols

The original Christian warriors, the Knights Templar were considered the special forces of the Crusades. Armed with religion, swords, armour, and Europe’s wealth, the Templar’s mission was to protect Christian pilgrims throughout their journey to visit the Holy places in the Middle East.

200 years after the Order’s inception, King Philip IV of France reversed his opinion… arrested, gobbled up their land and monies of the Templars and charged them with heresy after horrible bouts of torture.

The charges included spitting, trampling, or urinating on the cross; while naked, being kissed obscenely by the receptor on the lips, navel, and base of the spine; heresy and worship of idols(Baphomet); institutionalized homosexuality, and also accusations of contempt of the Holy Mass and denial of the sacraments.

In the end, the Grand Master of the Templars and others were burned at the stake and were silently swept into history by Pope Clement V. But wait….700 years later,The Church is now prepared to set the record straight….the Templars aren’t heretics after all.

A new book, Processus contra Templarios, will be published by the Vatican’s Secret Archive on Oct 25, and promises to restore the reputation of the Templars, whose leaders were burned as heretics when the order was dissolved in 1314.

The new book is based on a scrap of parchment discovered in the Vatican’s secret archives in 2001 by Professor Barbara Frale. The long-lost document is a record of the trial of the Templars before Pope Clement, and ends with a papal absolution from all heresies.

The document, known as the Chinon parchment, reveals that the Templars had an initiation ceremony which involved “spitting on the cross”, “denying Jesus” and kissing the lower back, navel and mouth of the man proposing them.

The Templars explained to Pope Clement that the initiation mimicked the humiliation that knights could suffer if they fell into the hands of the Saracens, while the kissing ceremony was a sign of their total obedience.

The Pope concluded that the entrance ritual was not truly blasphemous, as alleged by King Philip when he had the knights arrested. However, he was forced to dissolve the Order to keep peace with France and prevent a schism in the church.

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     Masonic legend and some tradition is borrowed from the fanciful stories of the Knights Templar, an enigmatic and powerful military Order of fighting monks set up by Hugues de Payens in 1118. Their illustrious history has been the subject of numerous fascinating books and their effect upon the course of world history, religion and commerce is much greater than generally recognised. They were also responsible for the erection of many churches (eg Middle Temple on the Embankment in London ) and the assembly of numerous large estates and would themselves have employed a great many stone masons.
Although their effect upon Freemasonry is very uncertain, they had amassed considerable wealth and influence in London, Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom. Most serious historians dismiss a direct link to the Knights Templars for lack of evidence. However, is it possible that the Knights Templars might have shared some of their knowledge and rituals with their more senior stone masons with whom they employed who later incorporated them into their own traditions?

The Knights Templars ostensible purpose was the protection of pilgrims on their journey from the coastal port of Jaffra to Jerusalem. Initially however, there were too few of them to be an effective escort. In any event, for the first nine years of their existence, they were far too busy purposefully digging under the ruins of King Solomons Temple to be offering any support to Pilgrims. It seems clear that during their excavations they discovered something of immense spiritual or material value for they swiftly became very rich and powerful and enjoyed this position for nearly two hundred years until the fall of the Holy Lands. Evidence of Templar excavations was found by Lieutenant Warren, Royal Engineers in 1867. The Knights Templars were effectively extinguished on Friday 13th October 1307 by King Philippe of France who, broke at the time, stole their lands and possessions (a fate he inflicted upon French Jews two years earlier) and with collusion from the Pope, instructed the Inquisition to torture any Templars he managed to round up to gain evidence to legitimise his grand theft. Many of the fit and able Knights (and their entourage) and most of their wealth managed to escape. It is from their exodus from France and other parts of Europe that much of Masonic folklore stems.

Many Knights possibly settled in the comparative backwaters of Scotland, a land ruled by the excommunicated Robert The Bruce and therefore considered comparatively safe, being largely beyond the reach of the Pope and the Inquisition. No doubt they brought with them their treasures, relics, knowledge and ceremonies as depicted on the ground floor South West window stone carving at Roslin Chapel shown below. Some knights are believed to have travelled much further than the known lands of the times and even managed to find America. Certain corn carvings at Roslin Chapel appear to confirm this.

     Given a background of organised secrecy, could it have been possible that Stonemasons guilds became convenient, if not unwitting, conduits of social refuge through the ages? Templars, who required a degree of privacy from State or Church in their thoughts, discussions or travel arrangements would have found stonemasons guilds attractive. History however, contains virtually no written references linking KT and Freemasonry until the 18th C. Most serious historians believe that a link with the Knights Templars only came about through marketing skills displayed by Ramsay in his Oration in 1737 when he attributed (in error) the origins of Freemasonry to Crusaders and the Knights of St John. Ramsey, a talented self-publicist, would have known that such a pedigree was bound to impress the French audience whom he was addressing. Robert Brydon, in his book The Masons and the Rosy Cross, informs us that Alexander Duechar confused the issue still further by his attempts to revive Scottish Templarism and integrating it within the ambit of Freemasonry.

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