Templars And Masons And Mormons! Oh, My!

[Hannah Rebekah]

The history of the Knights Templars is a very interesting subject...full of mystery and intrigue. The original eight Knights Templars, who were related or intermarried, stayed in the Holy Land long after the first Crusade was over around 1099AD. They were given the Al-Aqsa Mosque as their quarters which was located on the Temple Mound on the South East corner above the famous 'Solomon Stables.' These stables were described as being large enough to hold more than 2000 horses or 1500 camels.

One legend has it that Hugues de Payens, the first Grand-Master of the Templars, and Godfrey de Saint-Omer, one of the other original Knights were so poor that between the two of them they had only one horse, and this gave rise to the famous image on the seal of the Templars, of two men riding a single horse.

Still another legend tells how the Knights excavated under the Temple mound for years looking for treasure...which these same legends claim they eventually found and in the process became wealthy beyond measure. When the news of the first finds was relayed back to Europe, Count Fulk d'Anjou sped with all haste to Jerusalem where he took the oath of allegiance to the new Order becoming the ninth Knight. Count Fulk d'Anjou was not only the Count of Anjou and a Templar but also later became King of Jerusalem.

Among some of their fabulous finds it was reported there were 21 scrolls that were taken back to France and Godfrey de Saint-Omer took them to an elderly scholar, Lambert de St Omer to translate...."whom was instructed not to make any copies - when found out, he was killed â?¦" The translated copies now resides in the library of Ghent University and there are also many illustrations included, 115 colored drawings in the Lambert of St. Omer, Liber Floridus collection.

It is claimed that the treasure was hidden under the temple mound by the temple priests before it was destroyed in the year 70AD when Jerusalem was under siege. The copper scroll found among the Dead Sea Scroll verifies this, it was a treasure scroll revealing where the temple treasure was buried. Others have used this scroll to check out the locations of items listed on it but there was only evidence of others who had been there before and no treasure. It is claimed that these scrolls the Templars found had many interesting subjects contained on them, and a reasonable consensus is emerging that they contained ancient esoteric temple teachingsâ?¦."scriptural scrolls, treatises on sacred geometry, and details of certain knowledge, art and science - the hidden wisdom of the ancient initiates of the Judaic/Egyptian tradition. It is believed they tie into Freemasonry which came on the scenes later on in European history." The history of the Rex Deus families keeps surfacing throughout this history...before Christ and on down through European history and their part in much of this history.

I would like to hear if others have more information to add about these Temple scrolls?

[Bill Hamblin]

Here's the real St. Omer.

[Hannah Rebekah]

Here's the real St. Omer.

Giggle!!! He's a hawt.............

[Bill Hamblin]

As far as I am aware, there are no medieval texts supporting the claims of discovery of secret treasure or scrolls by the Templars. These ideas seem to have originated in Masonic circles in the mid-eighteenth century. There is no evidence for such claims earlier than that.

Primary Sources

Barber, M. and K. Bate (trs.), The Templars: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated, (Manchester UP, 2002)

Upton-Ward, J. (trs.) The Rule of the Templars (Boydell, 1992)

Scholarly Histories

Barber, Malcolm, The New Knighthood: a History of the Order of the Temple. (Cambridge, 1994)

Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars. (Cambridge, 1978)

Nicholson, Helen, The Knights Templar: A New History, (2001)

Nicholson, Helen, and Wayne Reynolds, Knight Templar, 1120-1312, (Osprey, 2004)

On Neo-Templar Mythologies

Hodapp, C. and A. Von Kannon, The Templar Code for Dummies, (Wiley, 2007)

Le Forestier, R. La Franc-maconnerie templiere et occultiste aux XVIIIe et XIXe siecle, 2nd ed. (Paris, 2003)

Mollier, P. "Neo-Templar (i.e. Post-18th century) Traditions" in W. Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, (Brill, 2005), 2:849-53

Partner, Peter. The Murdered Magicians: the Templars and Their Myth, (Oxford, 1982)

[kamenraider]

A letter from Dialogue:

Mormons and Templars

I am always astonished at the fascinating variety of articles in Dialogue. I just received my fall 1994 issue and immediately turned to the Michael Homer piece on the relationship of Freemasonry and Mormonism.

While no one can expect every writer on every topic to draw on every book or article on a particular subject under discussion, I was surprised to find but two brief citations of Cecil McGavin's groundbreaking Mormonism and Masonry in Homer's article, which sets out to cover the relationship between the two movements--the whole thrust of the McGavin book published almost sixty years ago. More surprising perhaps was Homer's failure to cite Michael Baignet's The Temple and the Lodge, of more recent publication.

Baignet, who has also published impressive work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, engaged in significant research in the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, the library of the British Museum in London, and extensive on-the-spot archeological digs in Scotland to persuasively establish the connection between the Knights Templars and early Freemasonry which Homer so casually dismisses (5). Of clear interest to Mormons, Baignet asserts that the Templars, during their hundred years in the Holy Land, were brought into intimate contact with the remnants of Primitive Christianity (as well as Islam), quickly observing the departure of the Roman church from the more simple teachings of James (who I think most LDS can readily accept, with Christian traditionalists, as having served as first bishop of Jerusalem-- just as owing to a shortage of priesthood, Heber J. Grant, an apostle, served simultaneously as president of the Tooele Stake and apostle Charles C. Rich as president of the Bear Lake Stake). He further asserts that Templar ritual and teachings, drawn from their Middle East experience, came to depart so substantially from Catholic practice that they brought down upon themselves the enmity of the church and St. Bartholomew's Night, with the virtual destruction of the Templar movement. Baignet persuasively traces the escape of forewarned Templar remnants to the Low Countries and Scotland (where he uncovered on remote Scottish islands extensive Templar graveyards known to locals, but knowledge of which had been carefully concealed for generation-- presumably to avoid persecution first by the Catholic church and later the puritanical Church of Scotland). He purports that Templars, in order to survive, were compelled to give up their vows of celibacy, intermarrying with tribal Scotswomen. In the process the Templar movement became transmuted into Freemasonry, preserving the essentials of temple ritual and Jamesian Christianity from Templar times in Palestine. Following much the same sources and logic of the Homer article, Baignet then shows how Freemasonry split into "craft" masonry and "speculative" masonry and went on to become one of the impressive chapters in the restructuring of British politics, as leading figures from every level of society became associated with the democratizing elements of the masonic movement. Baignet goes so far as to assert that virtually every scientific, political, and social leader of the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century in Great Britain, including Newton, Boyle, and a succession of royal princes were active masons; that it was from Masonry that the Royal Society took root; and that, indeed, it was the sympathy of masonic General Howe rather than scrambled marching orders from London which accounted for the success of the American Revolution.

If one is prepared to accept even a scintilla of the Baignet story, it becomes a fascinating chapter in how an element (if considerably corrupted) of priesthood ritual was preserved "continuing . . . in all generations" (D&C 84:17) to our time. This virtual "folk memory," once encountered by the Lord's anointed, was thereupon purified and restored to its primitive form, just as encountering the burial scrolls accompanying Michael Chandler's mummies set off the thinking that led to the Joseph Smith version of the Bible and the Book of Abraham.

I, for one, see no problem in accepting the relationship of Nauvoo masonry and Mormon temple ritual, any more than accepting the mental stimulation provided to the prophet by participation in Professor Seixas's Hebrew classes set off inquiries which resulted in "Nauvoo theology" and Mormon Mother God doctrine.

David B. Timmins

Bucharest, Romania

--Dialogue, Vol. 28, No. 4, p. iv-vi

A response from the next issue:

Not a Scholarly Work

I have read with great interest the letter on "Mormons and Templars" by Mr. David B. Timmins of Bucharest, Romania, which appeared in the winter 1995 issue.

Unlike Mr. Timmins, I am not surprised by Michael Homer's failure to cite The Temple and the Lodge in his fall 1994 Dialogue article on Freemasonry and Mormonism. The Temple and the Lodge (whose principal author is Michael Baigent not "Baignet") is an entertaining book but definitely not a scholarly work. The book is a collection of wild occult myths, and the alleged secret continuation of the Knights Templars into Freemasonry is not the wildest one. The connection between Knights Templars and Freemasonry was first argued in the eighteenth century in Germany and lead to the great number of "Templar" degrees still found in modern Freemasonry. No academic scholar of the Templars of the Middle Ages (not to mention academic scholars of Freemasonry) has taken the legend seriously. Documents confirming it and often quoted by occult authors as found during the French Revolution have long since been proven to be early-nineteenth-century forgeries. To quote just one example, Regine Pernoud--perhaps the leading expert on Knights Templars in France--recently wrote that the theory of a secret continuation of the Order of the Temple into Freemasonry is "totally insane" and tied to "uniformly foolish" claims and legends (Les Templiers [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988], 11).

Books like The Temple and the Lodge legitimately belong to a literature we all may find entertaining if we do not take it too seriously. Of course, Baigent's works on Dead Sea Scrolls belong to the same category and should not be confused with academic literature on the subject (for a debunking of popular and journalistic claims about the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Otto Betz and Rainer Riesner, Jesus, Kumran and the Vatican: Clarifications [New York: Crossroad, 1994]; both authors are professors at the University of Tubingen). Discussing Baigent's theories within the frame of a scholarly study would have been, in my opinion, highly inappropriate and detrimental to the highly respected scholarly standards of Dialogue.

Massimo Introvigne

Torino, Italy

--Dialogue, Vol.29, No.2, p. x-xi

I'd like to believe in a strong connection between early Christian ceremonies and Masonic ceremonies via the Templars, but I have yet to see really convincing evidence. Can someone out there convince me?

[Hannah Rebekah]

The Copper Scroll, which was unrolled and deciphered at Manchester University under the guidance of John Allegro, was a list of all the burial sites used to hide the various items both sacred and profane described as the treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem. Many of these sites have been re-excavated since the discovery of the Copper Scroll, and several of them have disclosed not Temple treasure but evidence of Templar excavation made in the twelfth century.

To anyone's knowledge does the Copper Scroll itemize what items were among the Temple treasure? Did it list any scrolls?

[Hannah Rebekah]

Among some of their fabulous finds it was reported there were 21 scrolls that were taken back to France and Godfrey de Saint-Omer took them to an elderly scholar, Lambert de St Omer to translate...."whom was instructed not to make any copies - when found out, he was killed â?¦" The translated copies now resides in the library of Ghent University and there are also many illustrations included, 115 colored drawings in the Lambert of St. Omer, Liber Floridus collection.

I noticed I need to correct one part of my original post concerning Lambert de Saint Omer who was a retired schoolmaster of the Chapter of Our Virgin in St Omer. He was known for compiling an encyclopedia of human knowledge. I'm not sure if the above mentioned translated copies of the Temple Scrolls the Templars found in their excavation are among St. Omer's writings that are part of the library of Ghent Unicersity. Does anyone know more about this? From some of the research I've been doing this is not clear but one thing that sticks out at me is the use of 'scared geometry' and all the Cathedrals that were built right around this time in history. And 'treatises on sacred geometry' was one of the items listed which was part of these Temple scrolls (see first post). Also, I remember hearing that Solomon had studied in Egypt before Solomon's Temple was built and 'scared geometry' was part of his study. Does anyone know anything about this? I will look for where I ran across this.

This was interesting as Bernard of Clairvaux name keeps coming up in the history at this time and in connection with the Templars.

In England, craftsmen who work in stone are known as stonemasons. In France they are known collectively as members of the Compannonage who, in the twelfth century, were broadly divided into three groups. These fulfilled separate functions under the umbrella of the same craft: the Children of Father Soubise were responsible for the construction of ecclesiastical buildings in the Romanesque style; the Children of Maitre Jacques were also known as Les Compagnons Passant and one of their primary functions was the art of bridge building. The craftmasons who built the Gothic cathedrals were known as the Children of Solomon, named after King Solomon who, according to the scriptures, commissioned the first temple in Jerusalem. This branch of the Compannonage were instructed in the art of sacred geometry by Cistercian monks and it was the Knights Templar who, acting with the agreement of Bernard of Clairvaux, gave a 'rule' to the Children of Solomon in March 1145, which laid down the conditions required for living and working. The preface to his rule contains words which have been intimately associated with the Knights Templar ever since:

We the Knights of Christ and of the Temple follow the destiny that prepares us to die for Christ. We have the wish to give this rule of living, of work and of honour to the constructors of churches so that Christianity can spread throughout the earth not so that our name should be remembered, Oh Lord, but that Your Name should live. [our emphasis]

A Brief History of the Knights Templar

Here are a few things said about Omer:

"Today, one of the most famous of all of Lambert of St Omer's works is his hasty copy of a drawing that depicts the heavenly Jerusalem. It shows that the two main pillars of the heavenly Jerusalem are both named 'Jacob', and apparently shows the founder to be John the Baptist."

"...The concept of a 'Heavenly Jerusalem' or a 'New Jerusalem' was discovered in scrolls recovered from five different caves in Qumran, all based on Ezekiel's visions in which the new city is described in detail with fifteen hundred towers, each a hundred feet tall."

- Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key

"And what if the Templars had shared these secrets with Saint Bernard in return for his enthusiastic backing of their order?"

- Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal

St. Bernard, the patron of the Templars, "played a formative role in the evolution and dissemination of the Gothic architectural formula in its early days (he had been at the height of his powers in 1134 when the soaring north tower of Chartres cathedral had been built, and he had constantly stressed the principles of sacred geometry that had been put into practice in that tower and throughout the whole wonderful building)."

"Gothic architecture...had been born at Chartres cathedral with the start of construction work on the north tower in 1134....In the years immediately prior to 1134 Bernard had cultivated a particularly close friendship with Geoffrey the Bishop of Chartres, inspiring his with an 'uncommon enthusiasm' for the Gothic formula and holding 'almost daily negotiations with the builders themselves'."

"When asked 'What is God?', Bernard replied 'He is length, width, height and depth.'

"The entire edifice had been carefully and explicitly designed as a key to the deeper religious mysteries. Thus, for example, the architects and masons had made use of gematria (an ancient Hebrew cipher that substitutes numbers for the letters of the alphabet) to 'spell out' obscure liturgical phrases in many of the key dimensions of the great building. Similarly the sculptors and glaziers - working usually to the instructions of the higher clergy - had carefully concealed complex messages about human nature, about the past, and about the prophetic meaning of the Scriptures in the thousands of different devices and designs that they had created." (For example a tableau in the north porch depicts the removal, to some unstated destination, of the Ark of the Covenant - which is shown placed upon an ox-cart. The damaged and eroded description, 'HIC AMICITUR ARCHA CEDERIS' which could be 'Here is hidden the Ark of the Covenant'.)"

- Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal

"In 1139, Pope Innocent II (whose candidacy, incidentally, had also been enthusiastically backed by Saint Bernard), granted the order a unique privilege - the right to build their own churches. This was a privilege that they subsequently exercised to the full: beautiful places of worship, often circular in plan like the Temple Church in London, became a hallmark of Templar activities."

- Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal

"In a single century from 1170 no fewer than eighty cathedrals and almost five hundred abbeys were built in France alone, involving more masonry than was ever cut in ancient Egypt! These buildings were built to a startling new scale never seen before."

- Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key

"The great effort of the Order was the transfer of funds and men to the east. They erected numerous building in the west - preceptories, churches, granges - for training and administration, but these were humble and utilitarian in nature, with a few exceptions. There was no standard form of Templar church: a very few, curricular or polygonal, recalled the shape either of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem (the 'Temple of God' of the Templar seal) or of the octagon of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem. But most Templar churches were orthodox apsidal structures."

- Peter Partner, The Murdered Magicians

Compiled by Richard Sands

Templar Chronicles

Does anyone know if there is 'scared geometry' connected to the LDS and Temple Building? And does this knowledge tie in with esoteric knowledge today?

[Hannah Rebekah]

As far as I am aware, there are no medieval texts supporting the claims of discovery of secret treasure or scrolls by the Templars. These ideas seem to have originated in Masonic circles in the mid-eighteenth century. There is no evidence for such claims earlier than that.

Primary Sources

Barber, M. and K. Bate (trs.), The Templars: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated, (Manchester UP, 2002)

Upton-Ward, J. (trs.) The Rule of the Templars (Boydell, 1992)

Scholarly Histories

Barber, Malcolm, The New Knighthood: a History of the Order of the Temple. (Cambridge, 1994)

Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars. (Cambridge, 1978)

Nicholson, Helen, The Knights Templar: A New History, (2001)

Nicholson, Helen, and Wayne Reynolds, Knight Templar, 1120-1312, (Osprey, 2004)

On Neo-Templar Mythologies

Hodapp, C. and A. Von Kannon, The Templar Code for Dummies, (Wiley, 2007)

Le Forestier, R. La Franc-maconnerie templiere et occultiste aux XVIIIe et XIXe siecle, 2nd ed. (Paris, 2003)

Mollier, P. "Neo-Templar (i.e. Post-18th century) Traditions" in W. Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, (Brill, 2005), 2:849-53

Partner, Peter. The Murdered Magicians: the Templars and Their Myth, (Oxford, 1982)

Bill Hamblin,

Thanks for all the sources...I'll have to check them out. I have ancestors who were part of the original Templars so this is a very interesting subject to me.

HR

[Hannah Rebekah]

A letter from Dialogue:

A response from the next issue:

I'd like to believe in a strong connection between early Christian ceremonies and Masonic ceremonies via the Templars, but I have yet to see really convincing evidence. Can someone out there convince me?

kamenraider,

Thanks for the reply and for the great quotes. I have been doing some Googling on some the things brought up in you quotes. I'm with you about wanting to believe but with convincing evidence that there is a connection with the early Christian ceremonies, Masonic ceremonies via the Templars. I'm also curious if there is a connection with Kabbalah and the Templars as well. I was doing a Google search and put in "Kabbalah and Freemasonry" and was quite surprised...but I've not followed that angle yet but looks interesting. Thanks again.

HR

[justinmartyrjr]

Hannah & I have also been exploring this topic on topix: http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/latter...DT5DD38H6Q53V3L

There's additional links there that different ones here might find interesting & can add their own insights too. Thanks.

[e=mc2]

Bill Hamblin,

Thanks for all the sources...I'll have to check them out. I have ancestors who were part of the original Templars so this is a very interesting subject to me.

HR

Be VERY careful of Herr Hamblin! He will give ya so many dadgum fascinating sources that it'll DESTROY yer pension, yer retirement savings, yer banking accounts, etc. Woo hoo! Fascinating topic Hannah!

[Hannah Rebekah]

Be VERY careful of Herr Hamblin! He will give ya so many dadgum fascinating sources that it'll DESTROY yer pension, yer retirement savings, yer banking accounts, etc. Woo hoo! Fascinating topic Hannah!

Wise words Sir Kerry...thank you for the fair warning!!

So with all of your crusades have you started reading 'Dynasty of the Holy Grail?' You said you just got the book...its great. When you do let me know when you get to the chapter on the Rex Deus families I have some questions for you. I need you to look up a reference for me.

[e=mc2]

Wise words Sir Kerry...thank you for the fair warning!!

So with all of your crusades have you started reading 'Dynasty of the Holy Grail?' You said you just got the book...its great. When you do let me know when you get to the chapter on the Rex Deus families I have some questions for you. I need you to look up a reference for me.

I haven't gotten into it more than the first couple chapters. I shall when I return from my vacation.