Before posting Part 1 of my ongoing narrative about the Templars, I thought I would add a preface by quoting an extract from the transcripts, since what the C's say below is highly relevant when reading the article.
Session dated 26 July 1997:
Q: Speaking of these tall guys, William Wallace's life was sort of symbolic, in my mind, and he was supposed to have been over 6 and a half feet tall. During the time that all that mess was going on over in Scotland with Wallace and the Bruce, the Templars were being dissolved in France ...
A: Dissolved?!? We think not! They merely went "underground."
Q: Is that literally or figuratively?
A: Why not both?
Q: Well, there are Templar organizations that some Mason's claim to be in contact with.
A: And where do you suppose these are?
Q: Underground?
A: Bingo!
By their literal use of "underground" here, this might suggest that the C's are telling us that the Templars may be in league with the subterranean civilisation called the 'Nation of the Third Eye' or the Antareans (an STS group of humans from the Orion system). However, it could also mean that the Templars created an underground headquarters somewhere, in the same way that the Nazis did in parts of Germany (and what is Poland now) and perhaps in the Antarctic (New Berlin?). Whatever the case may be, the C's are clearly telling us that the Templars survived the purge against them. We know, for example, that the Templars have been linked with the modern Freemason network that seems to have emerged out of Medieval Scotland, particularly through the influence of the Sinclair family, one of whose ancestors rode with the Crusaders and was present at the capture of Jerusalem. However, I would like to concentrate in this article on the other country where the Templars appeared to have regrouped and rebranded themselves and that is Portugal - a country that could be said to have been invented by the Templars. Indeed, their influence in Portugal can be seen to have helped shape the modern world we live in today.
The Templars in Portugal - Part 1
Many who have read accounts of how the Templars, fleeing the French oppression of 1307, set their fleet towards Portugal where they joined the newly formed “
Order of Christ” are left with the impression that the “Order of Christ” had been established with the express objective of offering sanctuary to the Templars. In reality, the Knights Templar had already held a strong presence in the Iberian Peninsula for many years prior to 1307 and the arrest of their French brethren.
In 1128, just one year after the Order received its rule at the Council of Troyes,
Teresa of Portugal gave the newly formed knights the town of
Fonte Arcada. This gift was not entirely altruistic or as compensation for Portugal being unwilling to take up the Crusaders cross. For the Templars there was indeed a price to be paid which was to help win back territories previously occupied by the Moors. This the brethren did with the zeal and military skill that has become synonymous with the warrior monks.
From the period of 1143-1190, the Knights Templar presence in Portugal became stronger by the year. The castle of Langrovia was donated by Fernao Mendes and his wife the Infanta Sancha Henrique, who was the sister of
King Henrique, and with whom the Templars had worked in earlier times. Later in 1159, the order was granted
Castle Ceras, which was, at the time, little more than a ruin. The Portuguese Templar Master,
Gualdim Pais decided to construct a new fortress in the area, which he commenced one year later in 1160. This fortress was to be built in nearby
Tomar (see picture below). This piece of Templar architecture survives to this day and is not only a principal tourist attraction in Portugal but is considered to be both a mystical and spiritual place.
See:
The Convent of Christ in Tomar & the Knights Templar (roadtripsaroundtheworld.com)
The castle itself is known by the name, “
Convento de Cristo” [Convent of Christ] and remains an impressive epitaph to Templar abilities in architecture. Within its ancient fortifications lies an eight-sided chapel, which was a standard style of Templar architecture. This octagonal form of building which the Templars are believed to have developed from the Muslim’s “Dome of the Rock” in Jerusalem, served a threefold objective to the Templar masons. Firstly, its eight walls formed a superior edifice of structural stability. Secondly it called to mind the overall shape of the Templar Cross Pattȇe, which can be easily formed within the confines of the octagon.
Finally, the octagon, especially when combined within the circle, formed a sacred geometry associated with Gnostic beliefs, for which the Knights Templar were said to share an affinity. It is rumoured that within this octagonal chapel, called a “
Charola”, neophyte Templar knights were initiated on horseback. [
MJF: Once again we see the importance of the geometrical octagon in Templar constructions.]
When
Gualdim Pais constructed the Convent in 1160, according to folklore, he chose the location after drawing lots and receiving a sign to build a new Templar fortress on a hill between the river Fria and Saint Gregory's creek. Traditional local legends and chronicles preach that the choice was for mystical reasons and by divine inspiration, from practices like
geomancy* by the provincial Grand Master, based on exercises taken from luck and predestination. Reinforcing this magical view is the fact that the lot was part of a small chain of seven elevations (
lugar dos sete montes), which became known as the
city of seven hills, like the seven hills of Jerusalem, the seven hills of Rome or the seven columns of Constantinople.
*We have seen other examples of the Templar’s practice of geomancy in the layout of their castles and major churches in Spain in the form of a Templar cross and their construction of Cathedrals and major churches (all named after Notre Dame) in Northern France in accordance with the constellation of Virgo.
Another related mystical Templar holding is close to Tomar. This is the
Church of Santa Maria do Olival, considered by the Portuguese to be the Mother Church of all the churches in Africa, Asia and even the America’s. Its most striking aspect is the large window on its fr
ont facade adorned with a rosette containing the Templar Sigil. But Tomar would not be the end of the Templar expansion in Portugal. Nine years later the order was allowed to retain a full third of all lands captured south of the Tagus. During this period, it was confirmed that the Portuguese Templars owned the castles of Tomar, Cardiga and Foz do Zezere. In reality, the ownership of these locations would prove to be a moot point in 1314, when King Denis would claim them for himself.
N.B. The above is an extract from
The Warriors and Bankers” by
Alan Butler and
Stephen Dafoe.
The Church of Santa Maria do Olival
"Olival" means "olive grove" and thus the church has associations with the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem near to Temple Mount where the Templars were first based after their inception.
The Church of Santa Maria do Olival, Tomar, Estremadura, Portugal
The simple, Gothic-style church was used as a mausoleum for Templar knights and, later, by the Knights of the Order of Christ. The tomb of Regional Master
Gualdim Pais, who founded Tomar as a Templar province, is found within the church. Knights of the Order would come here to seek inspiration from the Masters of the past.
When you visit the original parts of the church built under Pais, one apparently should pay attention to the use of
the number 8. Thus, you walk into the church by first going down 8 steps, then there are 8 windows, 8 columns, etc. We know the number 8 was particularly important to the Templars with the Cross Pattée, the Eight Beatitudes, the eight-petalled flower (rose) and their churches often being built in an octagonal (eight-sided) shape.
The great importance of the church in medieval times is confirmed by a papal bull, which placed the church under the direct dependence of the Pope and the Holy See, outside the control of any diocese.
The Church of Santa Maria dos Olivais is also connected with
secret and mysterious Templar initiation rituals and the recent discovery of
secret underground passageways and tunnels seems to confirm this. The church is actually set below ground level and signifies the spiritual descent into the womb of the earth and rebirth as a Knight Templar (mirroring the rites of initiation of the ancient mystery schools and modern secret societies such as the Freemasons and the Skull and Cross Bones).
The simple interior of the Church of Santa Maria dos Olivais in Tomar, Portugal
The exterior of the church has a magnificent rose window (see picture above) and the pentagram symbol of the Templars, often seen in their churches in Portugal, which is said to represent the five wounds of Christ. However, I think it more likely that it represents the Seal of Solomon with all the esoteric and hidden scientific knowledge associated with that symbol.
After Tomar helped launch Portugal’s 15th-century maritime expansion, spearheaded by Henry the Navigator, the church became the inspiration for all Portuguese churches built overseas – leading some to declare it the “Vatican” of the Templars.
After the Pope officially dissolved the Templars’ order in 1312, the Templars’ immense wealth and assets were transferred to another ‘competing’ order, the Knights Hospitaller, but not in Portugal…
The Order of Christ
In Portugal, King Denis I, found himself in no hurry to follow the papal order and basically refused to burn the Templars at the stake, since they had been instrumental in the reconstruction of Portugal.
In 1319, he founded the Order of Christ and all the assets and wealth of the former Templars were transferred to this new order, with the blessing of the new pope. Thus, from 1319 onwards, the new Order of Christ was able to resume the Knights Templars’ former activities and the Templars’ philosophy was once again alive and kicking under a new brand name.
And amongst the assets of the new Order of Christ, was the castle in Tomar. Indeed, in 1357, the Order’s headquarter was transferred back to Tomar,
In 1420, Henry the Navigator was appointed as Grand Master of the Order and he led the Order into their great voyages of discovery … and new conquests. The Order of Christ would continue in the footsteps of the Templars for most of the 15th century. However, by 1529, the Order was reformed and transformed into a closed order, under the strict rules of Saint Benedict. Thereafter, there was a strict separation between knights and friars.
The Name of Portugal
There are some who believe that Portugal’s name means “
Port of the Gral” or Grail Port.
However, the English-language word “Portugal” is taken from the Portuguese-language word portuguez, which is in turn derived from the medieval Latin portugalensis.
The “gal” part of this name is derived from the word for “Gallaecia”, which was a Roman province in Iberia.
Quoting from Wikipedia:
The area now called ‘Galicia’ takes its name from the Gallaeci, the Celtic people living north of the Douro River during the last millennium BC. Galicia was incorporated into the Roman Empire at the end of the Cantabrian Wars in 19 BC, and was made a Roman province in the 3rd century AD. In 410, the Germanic Suebi established a kingdom with its capital in Brag, this kingdom was incorporated into that of the Visigoths in 585 AD. In 711 AD, the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate invaded the Iberian Peninsula conquering the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania by 718 AD and was subsequently incorporated into the Christian kingdom of Asturias in 740 AD. During the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Galicia was occasionally ruled by its own kings but most of the time it was leagued to the Kingdom of Leon and later to that of Castile, while maintaining its own legal and customary practices and culture.
The toponymy of the name has been studied since the 7th century by authors such as Isidore of Seville, who wrote that "Galicians are called so, because of their fair skin, as the Gauls", relating the name to the Greek word for milk. (See the etymology of the word galaxy.) In the 21st century, some scholars (J.J. Moralejo, Carlos Búa) have derived the name of the ancient Callaeci either from Proto-Indo-European *kl(H)-no- 'hill', through a local relational suffix -aik-, also attested in Celtiberian, so meaning 'the hill (people)'; or either from Proto-Celtic *kallī- 'forest', so meaning 'the forest (people)'. In any case, Galicia, being per se a derivation of the ethnic name Kallaikói, means 'the land of the Galicians'.
I would add here that the name “Kalli” could be linked with the Manx name “Kelly” or “Kelley”, as in
Edward Kelley, John Dee’s scryer or medium. The C’s commented on this matter in the
session dated 4 April 1998:
Q: Okay. Tracking the Triple Goddess back to the oldest references, we get to KaliMa. There are all kinds of derivations of this name, but the thing that strikes me is the relationship to the goddess Kell, or Kella, as well as to the word kell, Celts, and how this might be transformed into the word 'Cassiopaea.' Can you comment on this?
A: Do not the Celts like "kelly" green?!?
Kelly Green is in fact a shade of green. The C’s might also have been referring here to the link between the Celts and alfalfa, which is related to clover, the Shamrock in Ireland being an example of this. On St Patrick’s day (March 17th), Irish people traditionally wear the Shamrock, which is referred to as the ‘wearing of the green’.
Continuing with Wikipedia:-
"Another recent proposal comes from linguist Francesco Benozzo after identifying the root gall- / kall- in a number of Celtic words with the meaning "stone" or "rock", as follows: gall (oldIrish), gal (MiddleWelsh), gailleichan (Scottish Gaelic), kailhoù (Breton), galagh (Manx) and gall (Gaulish). Hence, Benozzo explains the ethnonym Callaeci as being "the stone people" or "the people of the stone" ("those who work with stones"), about the builders of the ancient megaliths and stone formations so common in Galicia.
Due to Galicia's history and culture with mythology, the land has been called "Terra Meiga" (i.e., land of the witches/witch(ing) land). This would also suggest a link with the Druids who cast spells or enchantments. It should also be borne in mind in the context of this article that Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa had claimed in the early sixteenth century that the medieval Templars had been wizards."
If the name of Portugal derives from the Gallaeci tribe who occupied Portugal and Northern Spain (including the Pyrenees), then we may have a new candidate for “Buried in Galle”. Here is what the C’s said about the matter in the session dated 23 August 2001:
Q: (L) What is the difference between Galle and Gaul?
A: Clue.
Q: (L) Do they both refer to France?
A: No.
Q: (L) Does Galle refer to Rhineland?
A: Close.
Q: (L) I discovered today that one of the Maltese islands, the one that is now called Gozo, was once called "Gaul." Is that getting closer? A: Close.
Well, Laura had previously referred to St Gallen in Switzerland and was told she was on the right track. However, we now have a new candidate in Galicia, whose original name was Gallaecia. Could this mean that the Grail was once hidden by the Templars in Portugal, possibly at Tomar? If so, why might this have been the case?
Portugal as a Templar State
We have met the theory before that the Templars had sought to create their own Templar ruled state. This was first attempted in the Holy Land in the Crusader state of Outremer. However, when the Templars were driven out of the Holy Land after the fall of Acre, they attempted to establish themselves as the main power in the Languedoc region of France (it should be noted here that this region includes the village of Rennes-le-Chateau near to the Pyrenees). However, after
King Phillip IV of France moved against the Templars in 1307 and the Pope eventually dissolved the Order in 1314, this project was no longer feasible. Did they have any other options open to them though? The answer is yes since they had deliberately built up a significant presence in Portugal from the earliest days of the order. They had first participated in the siege and fall of
Santarém to King Alfonso Henriques in 1147 and later that year in the capture of Lisbon. As a reward Portugal's new king began to give them lands and property. It can even be argued that the kingdom of Portugal would never have existed without the Templars. Was this presence in Portugal the result of some long-term strategic planning on the part of the Templars?
“The Knights Templar in Portugal may very well have continued the initiatory practice of ‘raising the dead’. During interrogation by the Inquisition, a Templar knight cryptically stated: “There exists in the Order a law so extraordinary on which such a secret should be kept, that any knight would prefer his head cut off rather than reveal it.”
This statement has caused a flurry of speculation as to what secret the Templars were privy to. Were they simply following a rediscovered secret doctrine of initiation or was there something else?
One well-studied route revolves around the protection of a holy bloodline, championed very convincingly by the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. During my own research to discover why the Templars created Portugal for their main centre of activity — a subject barely touched by Templar historians until I wrote First Templar Nation — it seemed to me that they wanted to be as far from Rome as possible — this secret required protection from papal interference, and the Portuguese were tolerant of such a policy because traditionally they followed a policy of paying lip service to papal authority.
If you recall, the Templars, to all intents and purposes, were an extension of the Cistercian Order and its Abbot Bernard de Clairvaux, a number of its key knights being Cistercian monks. A goodly number were also high-ranking members of the Order of Sion, particularly its prior, Pedro Arnaldo. One of the declared aims of the Order of Sion was the reinstatement of a holy bloodline upon the throne of Jerusalem, if not the throne of a European state. This bloodline descended from the House of Troy, through the line of David, and into the Merovingian dynasty of medieval Europe. The Order of Sion accomplished the first objective when it seated the Merovingian Godefroi de Bouillon upon the throne of Jerusalem following the conquest of the city.
Such a holy bloodline was considered a great treasure and given the brief longevity of kings of Jerusalem in this era, it is possible the Order of Sion planned to elect another Merovingian, this time in the relatively safe territory of Portugal — someone who could be groomed and protected by the Templars and their successors. Perhaps. There is a surviving document held in the Cistercian archives which outlines the rites of succession of Templar Masters in Portugal, in which the swearing of allegiance by every new Master unambiguously declares a vow “to protect the bloodline of David.” Such a blatant line item would hardly be featured unless there was a bloodline to protect.
But the other aspect of the Templar secret and the creation of Portugal lies in their association with the Grail, or Graal.
Although perceived as many things, ultimately the Graal describes the journey of a hero who undertakes a perilous journey into a mystical land and returns transfigured by the experience and the knowledge he’s exposed to, whereupon he has a spiritual awakening. So, to anyone who understands the Mysteries, the Grail is not an object* but the search for the highest spiritual potential within oneself. In the religious climate of medieval Europe nothing could be more dangerous. The Templars reversed the tide of ignorance perpetuated by the Church by offering anyone the chance to experience this living resurrection, to which end they built countless secret chambers, much like their predecessors from Egypt to ancient Japan, and this is perhaps the single-most reason why both rich and lay people donated all their worldly goods to help the order succeed.
*I must disagree with Silva here as the C’s have referred to the Matriarch Stone or Merkaba as something material and Wolfram von Eschenbach in his Parzival referred to the Lapis Exilis – the stone that fell from heaven or from Lucifer’s crown. However, his idea of a spiritual awakening may tie in with the C’s reference to the ‘White House’ (Casa Blanca) or the Kundalini experience as a means of a person shifting to 4th density. However, Silva himself confuses the matter elsewhere in his article by referring to the Templars’ most famous “artefact” – an obvious reference to the Holy Grail.
It must be stressed that the living resurrection has historically been performed in secret chambers and ancient sacred sites. Science now knows that such ancient temples are found at the intersection of the Earth’s electromagnetic pathways [MJF: Ley Lines]. This concentrated energy is known to stimulate areas of the brain that lead to altered states. Such a spiritual technology is a pre-requisite for inducing the voluntary near-death experience that sends the candidate on a shamanic, out-of-body journey. It was the key ingredient in living resurrection ceremonies. And virtually every site won by the Templars was an ancient sacred site, typically dedicated to Isis* or her regional doppelganger.
*Is this because Isis and her equivalent local Moon or Mother goddess is, in reality, a cypher for the Holy Grail or Mother Stone perhaps?
As a Templar knight, King Afonso Henriques would have been privy to the Templars’ spiritual teachings and the attainment of this inner transformation, the Graal, and it merited awarding the order one third of his land, to establish a kingdom within a kingdom. On the king’s charter lies the unusual cross symbol with the anagram PORTUG-R-AL. In Portuguese it reads ‘through you, the Graal.’ Afonso is alluding that the Graal is to be found in this territory, specifically the town of Tomar, particularly when one considers the name is also a metaphor. In Portuguese it means ‘to drink, to imbibe’, and in esoteric circles, an initiate of the Mysteries must ‘drink’ the knowledge if it is to be internalised. The successful candidate would complete the final initiation by undertaking a voluntary near-death experience, to be awoken by an adept in the morning and lifted from a figurative grave. At this moment they were declared ‘risen’. This initiation is still performed today by the Templars’ progeny, the Scottish Rite Freemasons.
The Templars left clues that the crypt under the enigmatic rotunda of Tomar was used for such a purpose. If you trace a line through the rotunda to the Templar church of John the Baptist, the line passes through two pillars with the pagan symbols of the dragon and the green man, symbols of rejuvenation, and ends 2000 miles away in the Church of Notre Dame du Mont Sion in Jerusalem. If you then take that church plus the other two prime Templar sites — the Holy Sepulchre and Solomon’s stables (where they resided) — this perfect triangle is bisected and the imaginary line ends in Egypt, specifically in the underground chamber called the Osirion, where the oldest resurrection ritual of Osiris was once celebrated.
We are presented here with the intriguing possibility that the Templars placed the Graal in Tomar. All these centuries, while we’ve focused on their exploits in Jerusalem and France (and to some degree in Britain), like the smokescreen myth of nine knights protecting a pilgrim trail, the stories have distracted our gaze away from the main accomplishments taking place in this remote country they created before the order itself was made official.
It is indeed an incredible coincidence that just as the Templars are erecting their mysterious rotunda in Tomar, the Graal writer Chretien de Troyes begins writing his famous opus. In the story, the Graal rests on a salver, a ceremonial silver tray. One has to wonder, then, why the Templars called this round building a “charola”. Because it literally translates as ‘a salver’ — a most unusual name for a religious building that stands at the crossroads of two electromagnetic lines, and never had an altar or a door.
The Templars, it seems, gave us the answer on a silver tray.”
There is a lot to digest in this article. The existence of a Templar “resurrection ritual” would certainly link the Templars with similar rituals embraced by today’s Freemasons and the likes of the Skull and Cross Bones Society as well as with the resurrection rituals of the mystery schools of the ancient and classical world (e.g., the Dionysian Mysteries and those of the Pythagoreans), which originally stem from the resurrection rites in Egypt connected to the god Osiris. I am aiming to do an article specifically on the initiation rites of the Egyptian adepts soon, which will hopefully reinforce this connection between the Freemasons and the ancient Egyptian order of the Osirians.
King Alfonso Henriques and the Templars
However, it is the idea of Portugal being deliberately created as a Templar state from its inception that intrigues me here. In the first part of his article Silva tells us that:
In 1159 the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, placed a mysterious seal on a charter that awarded the Knights Templar one third of his new, hard-won territory — an extraordinary move for a new monarch. On this strip of land the Templars would erect they most famous and lasting monuments: the Mother of All Churches dedicated to Mary Magdalene, and a rotunda with no door; visitors accessed the interior of the building via a secret chamber used for the investiture of new knights, or to administer the inner brotherhood’s most secret rite, the ‘raising of the dead’.
Is it possible the Templars inherited one-third of Portugal under unusual circumstances and there deposited their most famous artefact?
To understand how we got to this point we must first return to the moment when the Templars became an official order. In 1118 a new King of Jerusalem was chosen, Baudoin de Bourcq. Barely had Baudoin gotten used to his newly appointed seat when he received a visit from Hugues de Payen and Godefroi de Saint-Omer, as though the two proto-Templars were presenting their credentials. Whatever Hugues and Godefroi pitched the new king it sold him, and soon after, a small, close-knit group of knights moved into premises on Temple Mount to became officially known as the Knights Templar.
This is the official historical record. But new evidence shows that, seven years earlier, the Templars were already present and materially active in another land two thousand miles to the west, and through their intervention, this secret endeavour became their greatest accomplishment — the creation of Europe’s first independent nation-state [MJF: arguably England had already achieved that status, albeit under Norman rule].
It’s the close of the 11th century. There is no France, no Spain, and the German states are largely under the tutelage of the Holy Roman Empire. After riding west to help the Castilian king reclaim his lands from the Moors, a knight named Henri of Burgundy inherits the Atlantic port city of Porto Cale and its surrounding territory — the small county of Portucale — whereupon Henri changes his name, in Portuguese, to Count Dom Henrique. He had barely time to enjoy his new status when he was asked to set sail for Jerusalem, arriving just after its conquest by Crusaders. Little did Dom Henrique know that his decision to sail to Palestine would mark a pivotal moment in the history of his newly acquired land, for the people he’d meet in Jerusalem would one day shape the destiny of his tiny territory.
On his second voyage to Jerusalem in 1103, Dom Henrique’s arrival coincided with that of two proto-Templars: Hugues de Payns and Count Hugh de Champagne. Originating from the same Duchy, it is likely that both Hugues and Dom Henrique got to know each other over the next three years, especially as both men shared the vision of a temporal new kingdom accountable only to God.
Traveling with Dom Henrique was another man of French parentage, Pedro Arnaldo da Rocha, born in Santarem (in what is today Portugal), whose family, the la Roche, were supporters of the burgeoning Cistercian Order. In time, its abbot, Bernard de Clairvaux, would become the Templars’ main benefactor.
Young Pedro Arnaldo’s presence in Jerusalem was opportune, arriving as he did shortly after the first king of Jerusalem installed members of the secretive Order of Sion in the abbey on its namesake hill. To say he made a favourable impression is an understatement, because by 1116 Pedro Arnaldo resurfaces as a full member of the Order, his signature inscribed on an original document from the Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont de Sion, in which he is addressed in Latin as Prior Petrus Arnaldus.
MJF: This would seem to establish a close link between the Cistercian Order and the Order of Sion, despite the fact that the Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont de Sion was occupied by Augustinian cannons, not Cistercian monks (see my earlier article on The Augustinian Canons of Notre Dame de Sion and my recent post on “Orval”).
Such a position imbued Prior Arnaldo with immense political leverage. The abbey had established close ties with the knights and monks in the nearby church of the Holy Sepulcher, affording the prior direct access to two individuals living there — Hugues de Payns and Godefroi de Saint-Omer. That relationship was revealed on July 19, 1116, when a document signed by both Prior Arnaldus and Hugues de Payns declares “good relations are assured between the two Orders.”
In the relationship between the Order of the Temple, the House of Burgundy, the Ordre de Sion and the incipient Portuguese kingdom, Arnoldo da Rocha would prove to be the lynchpin. He was Portuguese by birth, his friendship with Count Dom Henrique granted him favour within the Portuguese court, and through his family’s status, connections with the nobles and ecclesiasts in and around the Portuguese city of Braga, many of whom were of Burgundian heritage. But Portuguese chroniclers give Prior Arnaldo even more credit. They cite him as a key founder of the Knights Templar in the county of Portugale, if not one of the original Templars in Jerusalem: “Arnaldo da Rocha, who was a Templar knight, was one of the first nine originators of this illustrious Order of the Temple in Jerusalem,” wrote the historian Alexandre Ferreira in 1735, quoting a 17th century source, Manuel de Faria e Sousa. And Sousa would have been in an excellent position to know, for he was himself a Templar knight.
Prior Arnaldo da Rocha as one of the original Templars is both provocative and explosive because it brings into sharp focus an unsettling proposition: were there really only nine original Templar knights? Or was this number merely a talisman, the kind of flourish employed by secret societies throughout that period? We may never know for certain; however, it is categorically stated in the Cistercian chronicles that the original Templars consisted of “Hugues and Godefroi and nine other knights,” raising the original core group of proto-Templars to eleven.
In 1114 Count Dom Henrique passed away in his adopted homeland. Back in Jerusalem, the Order of the Temple was still in its embryonic stage, yet sources claim the Templars by this time were already present in Portugale: “After D. Affonso VI married his daughter to Count Dom Henrique, they [the Templars] always came to his aid and did not stop doing so even after the death of his son.” An independent German source also states categorically that the proto-Templars forged a working relationship with Count Dom Henrique: “The acquisition of an important property, such as that of the castle of Souré, which was given to them [the Order of the Temple] by Count Henrique in 1111 proves that these knights had already rendered some services, and that he was convinced of their usefulness.”
Such a donation places the proto-Templars firmly in the county of Portugale a full seven years before their official date on Temple Mount. And it wasn’t the only documented property they were awarded in that period. Shortly before he passed away Dom Henrique signed another document providing them with a residence in the city of Braga, described as being ‘beside a Templar hospital’, which would be the hospital for the poor founded by the city’s Archbishop Payo Mendes, “annexed to the main houses he had earlier donated to the Templars in the hermitage.” These acts of goodwill from an archbishop seem unusual until one discovers Payo Mendes’ second, secret job was that of Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, the sister organisation to the Templars.
But Payo had a third job. He was mentor to the late Dom Henriques’ son, Afonso.
Hence, Silva seems to be providing us here with clear evidence of a well-planned conspiracy, which involved the Cistercians, the Templars, the Order of Sion (or the Priory of Sion), St. Bernard of Clairvaux and members of his family. Since St Bernard would seem to have played a pivotal role in all of this, I will digress from Silva's article for a while in order to look at the life and influence of St. Bernard, one of the great monastic saints of the Roman Catholic Church.
St Bernard of Clairvaux
As regards the somewhat mysterious role played by Bernard of Fontaine (later St Bernard of Clairvaux) in the foundation of the Templars, we should perhaps look at the bizarre events that occurred within his extended noble family at the time he joined the struggling Cistercian Order (which was then on the verge of collapse), which, under his charismatic guidance, would subsequently be transformed into a phenomenally powerful and successful order, spreading all over Western Europe.
It seems Bernard’s family were shocked when he announced his vocation, but their attitude was completely transformed for reasons that are far from clear. As Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins explained in their book Rosslyn - Guardians of the Secrets of the Holy Grail: “All opposition to his plans evaporated and, even stranger still, most of his male relatives and many of his friends chose to follow him into the new Cistercian Order; thirty-two of them becoming novices with him when he joined in 1112”. In my own experience, I have known several members of one family to pursue a religious vocation at the same time (e.g., four brothers who joined the same Redemptorist monastery) but 32 is unheard of.
As Wallace-Murphy and Hopkins point out: “No convincing explanation for this collective outburst of religious fervour has ever been offered by the Church. This massive influx of new vocations included that of Bernard’s elder brother, who was heir to the family estate, as well as his two younger brothers and his uncle, the Knight Gaudri of Touillon”, This more than doubled the size of the struggling order.
It should also be noted that St Bernard was related to the Count of Champagne who became a Knight templar but who also ran a kabbalistic school at his court at Troyes from 1070 onwards (see more on this below). This is the also same Troyes at which the Templars would receive their statutes (St. Bernard having composed their Rule) and formal recognition as a religious order at the Council of Troyes in 1128 and the poet Chretien de Troyes would compose the first medieval Grail story of Perceval. Indeed, i\t was the Count of Champagne who donated the land to the Cistercian Order for the Abbey of Clairvaux. When Bernard became the new Prior of the Abbey, he was joined by two brothers of Andre de Montbard, one of the founders of the Knight Templar.
On a personal level, Bernard was appointed to the position of abbot of the new Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux soon after joining the Order when he was only twenty-four years of age. This is almost unprecedented. He quickly rose to a position of incontestable leadership in the Church, becoming a personal advisor to the Pope and exerting great influence in purely temporal affairs. His deep commitment to initiatory teaching is made clear by the fact that he preached 120 sermons based on the Song of Songs by King Solomon. As we learned previously, this canticle is unique within the Hebrew Bible, since it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore wisdom like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes. Moreover, it seems strange to me that a senior prelate within the Church should spend so much time preaching on an Old Testament canticle, given that the emphasis of Catholic theology and teaching is normally placed on Christ’s teachings in the New Testament. I would suggest St. Bernard showed such an interest in the canticle because it is in essence an esoteric work linked with King Solomon, the great magician and builder of the Temple of Solomon – who we know was not really an Israelite King but an Egyptian Pharaoh, who no doubt possessed the secrets of alchemy as well as the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, as the Templars would also soon come to do. Indeed, the Song of Songs with its reference to the Quadriga of Aminadab may link us to the Ark of the Covenant being triumphantly driven in procession by King David in the newly conquered Jerusalem (it may also provide us with an intriguing link to the C’s Philosophers of Dancar – more on this in a subsequent post). Does this explain perhaps why St. Bernard had such a close involvement with the establishment of the Templars?
Was St Bernard therefore a secret gnostic and/or alchemist? One thing that suggests he was not was his attitude to the ancient Abbey church of St. Denis in Paris. The name derives from the Denis (the name being perhaps a variation of ‘Dionysus’ - the Greek wine god) who was the first Christian bishop of Paris and patron saint of France. In 250 AD he was arrested and decapitated along with two companions. Legend has it that he picked up his head and, under the guidance of an angel, he walked six kilometres to a place called Catulla, the site of the present abbey, where he fell to his feet and was buried. The abbey was founded in the seventh century by the Frankish King Dagobert II, the last scion of the Merovingian dynasty (the offspring of the sea monster Merovee), in honour of St. Denis and his legendary companions Rusticus and Eleutherius. Dagobert’s assassination in the forest close to Orval would set in motion the eventual demise of the Merovingian dynasty.
However, the Romanised names Rusticus and Eleutherius might be a clue here, given the Merovingian kings and war chiefs' reputation for involvement with magic (recall the finding in 1653 of the tomb of Childeric I with its golden honeybees, horse’s head, and crystal ball). Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit and vegetation. He can therefore be viewed as a rustic god connected to the countryside, which may be what really lies behind the name of Rusticus. Eleutherius is a name that may be derived from the name of the rites known as the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter (the goddess of agriculture and fertility) and Persephone her daughter (also known as Kore) based at Eleusis – a name that may be related originally to the goddess Eileithyia, a goddess of childbirth. Since the Mysteries involved visions and conjuring of an afterlife, some scholars believe that the power and longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries, a consistent set of rites, ceremonies and experiences that spanned two millennia, came from psychedelic drugs. However, the name Eleusis is also connected to Elysium, otherwise known as the Elysian Fields (or Elysian Plains), which is a conception of the afterlife that developed over time and was maintained by some Greek religious and philosophical sects and cults, whereby those who the gods deemed as the righteous and the heroic would remain at the Elysian Fields after death, to live a blessed and happy life, and indulge in whatever employment they had enjoyed in temporal life. Curiously, in the 16th century, an outlying garden of the Tuileries Palace in Paris, France was given the name the Champs-Élysées, the name translating into English as the Elysian Fields, which was later retained for the iconic avenue in today’s Paris. Hence, we may be seeing here a connection to pre-Christian pagan rites and practices linked with Paris (the City of Light).
By the time of the Templars in 1137, what had been the royal abbey of France where French kings were educated, crowned, and buried, was now dilapidated. Although many miracles were said to have occurred there, it seems strange to learn that St. Bernard, in no uncertain terms, condemned the abbey as a “synagogue of satan” and a “workshop of Vulcan”. The alternative researcher William Henry claims that Vool was the Sumerian god Ea who was identified as Vool or “Vul”, the alchemist Vulcan of the Romans and Tubal Cain, the metal worker or smith, of the Hebrews. Ea was portrayed usually as a merman, part human and part fish. He therefore believes that Ea was Merovee. The C’s had this to say about the fish like appearance of beings like Oannes, who on Babylonian and Assyrian reliefs is clearly portrayed as a fish man:
Q: Why were these beings depicted with these fish-like garments?
A: Reptoids have that genetic profile to varying degrees.
This would suggest that the Merovingians were the offspring of hybrid humans with a larger concentration of reptilian genetics than the norm. Henry views these Ophites as the ‘Serpent Born’ children of Ea, who were alternately portrayed as half-human and half-fish or half-human and half-serpent. However, “Ophites” is also the collective name for several Gnostic sects which regarded the serpent (Greek, ophis; Hebrew, "naḥash"; hence called also Naasseni) as the image of creative wisdom. It is curious that the name Naasseni or Naassenes seems reminiscent of the name “Assassins”, the Medieval Islamic terrorist group who at times would co-operate with the Templars against their common enemies in the 12th Century Middle East. Could this be where the roots of the Assassins really lay? If the Assassins were Naassenes or Ophites, this might make them the distant cousins (physical and spiritual) of those Templars who were descended from the Merovingian Franks.
The Children of Solomon
It should also be noted in this connection that St. Bernard extended his teachings by enhancing the spiritual tradition of the Compagnonnage, or Craftmasons, known as the Children of Solomon, who would build Chartres Cathedral and most of the other Gothic Notre Dame cathedrals such as those at Rheims and Amiens. The exact relationship between the Children of Solomon and the Templars is not clear. However, the Templars certainly gave a rule to this branch of the Compagnonnage with the agreement of St. Bernard in March 1145. It has been argued by several researchers (such as the English poet and mythologist Robert Graves) that these craft guilds of stone masons would eventually transform into the Freemasons of today and there is definitely something to this notion, particularly when you start to look at their symbolism. Interestingly, the mark or badge of the Children of Solomon was the ‘chrisme à l’epée – which was a Celtic cross enclosed within a circle (whose origins may be Atlantian). I hope to have far more to say about the Children of Solomon in a future article, since they played a large part in the rise of the Gothic in Western Europe but they also had a lineage that may be traceable back to the Sufi mystery schools of Spain and beyond to Babylon and Egypt. To quote one example here of this link with the Sufis, early Cistercian and Templar burial practice was to inter the corpse face down and coffinless as a final act of humility, a practice that replicated that of this Eastern brotherhood of initiates. This fact certainly seems to betray a transmission of ideas from East to West via the Templars through their involvement in Middle Eastern affairs.
Given what we have learned of the links between St, Bernard’s family, the Cistercians, the Knights Templar and the Priory (or Order) of Sion, I must ask - are we seeing the clear signs of a carefully planned conspiracy being put into action here? Could there even have been a more ancient group who overarched this conspiracy and directed it from behind the scenes? The answer may well be yes, but I will deal with this group in a later part of this article.
However, for now I would just say that the Templars seemed to have had a game plan of their own from their inception, which involved the establishment of a temporal power that was first focused on the Holy Land but subsequently on Portugal. We also see at this early stage a cordial relationship between the Templars and the Order of Sion that would eventually appear to break down in acrimony at Gisors in France with the infamous ‘Cutting of the Elm’ incident we have investigated before.
Continuing with Silva’s article:-
They were by no means the only knights stirred into action by Hugues de Payns. On the Celtic pagan day of Beltane, May 2, 1125, the Templar Grand Master co-signed a document in which he and Prior Arnaldo of the Order of Sion once more declared good relations between their respective brotherhoods, after which the prior also becomes suspiciously absent from Jerusalem. Writing of this notable event, the chronicler Lucas de Santa Catarina states how “the Grand Master dispatched several knights with powers to establish the Portuguese crown. Four of the Knights were Dom Guilherme, who supervised the others, Dom Hugo Martiniense, Dom Gualdino Paes, and Dom Pedro Arnaldo. They had the title and the power of Procurators of the Temple, which they exercised in due course, as many writers agree, while the Order sought to establish a home, and proceed as planned.” Joining them on the voyage to Portugale was a fifth Templar Procurator, Raimund Bernard.
No doubt Brother Gondemare and André de Montbard shared this explosive piece of news with Bernard de Clairvaux at his abbey. And yet to the Cistercian abbot this was hardly news, merely confirmation. Bernard had been contemplating the idea of establishing a temporal New Jerusalem, a model nation-state that would come to represent the epitome of true Christian ideals, because back in 1119 Bernard himself had dispatched a delegation of monks from Clairvaux to the Portuguese county — domain of his late uncle Count Dom Henrique — to found a monastery. One of those eight monks was Brother Roland, one of the founder Templar knights.
This notion of establishing a model nation-state was shared, of course, by others such Plato in his description of Atlantis, Sir Thomas More in Utopia and by Sir Francis Bacon (a Rosicrucian) in his New Atlantis. Was Bacon, therefore, merely continuing the dream of St Bernard and the Templars but this time in America?
Given these associations between the Cistercian monks and the core Templar brotherhood it can be argued that both the Templars and Cistercians were working toward the same end — not to mention the Ordre de Sion, for not only was their abbot now also a Templar Procurator, and Portuguese [MJF: Let us not forget his French family origins though] at that, but brothers Gondomare and Roland are also listed as members of that same order.
No sooner had the five Templar Procurators landed in Portugale in 1125 when they received the first of many property donations: a small town near Gondemare called Fonte Arcada. The document was witnessed and signed, “I, Guilherme, Procurator of the Temple in this territory, receive this document.” But this Guilherme Ricard was far more than that, for his name appears on a second grant — for half the estate of Villa-nova donated “to God, and the brotherhood of the Knights Templar” — this time in Latin as Magister Donus Ricardus. Guilherme Ricard was the first Master of the Knights Templar in Portugale.
All these events preceded the Templars’ official blessing by the Pope at the Council of Troyes in 1128. And barely two months after the famous event, Portugal’s independence was secured by prince Afonso Henriques, son of the late Count Dom Henrique. That the Templars were central to this event is shown in the declaration document which bears the first-known Templar logo.
But there’s more. Just as the first two kings of Jerusalem were “greatly obligated” to the Order of Sion for their positions, so Prince Afonso was said to be “greatly obligated to members of the Order [of the Knights Templar].” This relationship became all too clear in 1129 when the king-in-waiting reissued the charter for the castle of Souré, — the one his father had donated to the Templars before they were thought to exist. Afonso’s wording on the reconstituted charter to the Knights Templar unequivocally reveals why he was so “greatly obligated” to the order: “I make this donation, not by force or by persuasion, but for the love of God, and for the good of my soul, and of my parents, and by the cordial love that I have for you, and because within your Brotherhood and in all your works I am a Brother.”
The Templars had placed one of their own on the throne of Portugal, and more to the point, Afonso was also the nephew of their main benefactor and spiritual compass, St. Bernard de Clairvaux.
Continued in Part 2
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