Friday, October 26, 2007

Vatican sells the Illuminati's 'Murdered Magicians' transcripts
The library of the occult gets fatter every day. Here in the belly of the New Age, the average bookstore carries "ancient secrets" and "hidden wisdom" by the metric ton. But literature ABOUT the occult, of the history of occult ideas and their influence on important people, is skimpy and often unreliable. It's hard to find an honest scholar among the mystagogues and Fundamentalists.

The Knights Templar, their trial and execution, and the subsequent myth that developed about them. The Knights Templar were a religious militant order which was founded during the middle ages to contribute to the Crusades. They took vows of "poverty, chastity, and obedience", and lived as monk-soldiers. However, these warrior-monks amassed a great deal of wealth, which likely prompted the jealousy of King Philip the Fair. They were charged with heresy and various other crimes (including bizarre sexual practices and the worship of an idol, Baphomet), and were subsequently tried and murdered. Whether or not the Templars were indeed the heretics they were presented to be, or whether they were framed by King Philip, is a question that history has come to inquire. Because of the bizarreness of the accusations (and later the confessions) made against (by) the Templars, their cause has been taken up by many writers of myth and history since their trial. Further, many secret societies and masonic organizations claim them as their antecedants. This book deals with the history of the Templars and this myth which they have given rise to.

THE MURDERED MAGICIANS starts off on familiar ground. We meet the historical Templars themselves, fresh from the Crusades, returning to France, getting rich in the Church market and drawing the wrath of the odious Philip the Fair. There is the famous midnight arrest and the subsequent "trial". There are the usual confessions of heresy and sodomy extracted under torture. Then there is the stake, where most accounts of the Templars end. In Dr. Partner's history of ideas, though, the stake was just the beginning.

Jacques de Molay and his cohorts did not rest easily in their graves. As the years passed, Templar stories and rumors became grander with each telling. Finally, these illiterate Crusaders from the lowest ranks of the aristocracy emerged as powerful sorcerers who used ancient magical secrets for their own mysterious ends. At least that's what everybody thought.

There had been charges of black magic from the start. In the "trial" itself, the Templars were accused of worshipping an idol called "Baphomet" -- a French corruption of "Muhammad" -- which they supposedly picked up from the Muslim conquerors of the Holy Land. (Of course, the idea that ANY Muslim would worship an image of Muhammad says more about the parochial mentality of the European Church than anything else.)

In the 1500's, the magical fame of the Templars spread from the pen of Henry Cornelius Agrippa, a sort of Renaissance Shirley McClaine whose works were highly popular and influential. In DE OCCULTA PHILOSOPHIA, Agrippa set about classifying the "good" and "bad" schools of magic. He placed the Templars in the latter category, along with the Gnostics and folk witches.

The Templar myth did not attain its full potency until the eighteenth century. If it seems odd that occult gossip would thrive in the Age of Enlightenment, it must be remembered that Reason was just one part of the Enlightenment hodge-podge. Alchemy and Cabala seemed just as important to the educated minds of the day. Also, the new liberal climate produced a lot of nostalgia for the good old days of noble status and "chivalry". Thus we see Elias Ashmole, chemist, bibliographer, and one of the founders of the Royal Society of London, writing sentimentally of the Templars.

At this stage, the Templar myth gets mixed up with Freemasonry. Masons of the period traced their heritage back to the Crusaders who, they supposed, were privy to the mystical knowledge of Egypt and Greece. It seems inevitable that they would bring in de Molay and company.

According to Dr. Partner, "The birthplace of Templarism was Germany, where the egalitarian and rationalist thrust of Freemasonry was resisted by an old-fashioned and rank-dominated society, and there was a demand for a version of the Masonic craft acceptable to conservative doctrine and Gothic taste."

Under the tutelage of such Masters as Samuel Rosa and George Frederick Johnson, "Provost-General of the Templar Order of the Scottish Lords", Templarism went far beyond the relatively simple edifice of traditional Masonry. "The invention of the Templar myths amounted to a patent to create new noble titles. ... Johnson and Rosa, as 'Heads' of their Orders, created elaborate hierarchies with hundreds of such knightly titles." And, incidentally, earned a tidy living in the process. By the last decades of the century, Europe was dotted with competing Templar lodges, each claiming to possess the True Secret.

The end came with both a bang and a whimper. For one thing, the Templarist Masons were afflicted by the stagnancy that is the hallmark of the occult: "The successively unveiled mysteries of the Order had yielded nothing but boring ritual; the alchemists had made no discoveries; the Templar lands would never be returned. No one expected to identify the long-concealed Unknown Superiors. The thirst for mystical illumination remained, but hope of quenching it at the Templar spring was over."

Furthermore, there was the spectacular scandal of the "Bavarian Illuminati", the pet conspiracy of that Jesuit-haunted secular humanist, Adam Weishaupt. Dr. Partner dispels any notions of co-fraternity between the Illuminati and the Templarists. True, Weishaupt had recruited some members from the crumbling Templar lodges, but otherwise the two groups had opposing styles and aims. "There was no direct continuity between the Strict Templar Observance and the Bavarian Illuminati at all. The aristocratic mumbo-jumbo of the Templar lodges pandered to the confused conservatism of the German nobles and had a great deal in common with the mumbo-jumbo of the Rosicrucians, to whose ideas the Illuminati were absolutely opposed."

Cracking The Knights Templar Code

CBS News, NY - 17 hours ago
(CBS) Hollywood’s long known there’s a great story in the medieval Knights Templar.

“There were only around for a couple of hundred years but they were very big in terms of helping pilgrims to get to the holy land, protecting them,” said Father Thomas Williams. “They were kind of like an order of bodyguards.”

But history books painted them as villains - with the Catholic Church casting them out, many of them tortured and burned, branded as heretics, CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports.
Who would buy $8400 Knights Templar book? It's a secret Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription)
How the Vatican destroyed the Knights Templar Independent
Knights Templar no heretics, Vatican confirms ABC Online
Voice of America - The Canadian Press
all 106 news articles »

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