Knights Templar Code For Dummies

17th C. Remains Of Three Bodies Found In Rosslyn Chapel

2011-12-11T23:38:00.003-05:00

Three skeletons from the 1600s have been discovered beneath the center aisle of Scotland's Rosslyn Chapel, according to an article on the Scotsman.com website.

From Rosslyn bones ‘from up to three bodies’

Archaeologists now believe the skeletons were placed there when the chapel was abandoned during the Reformation, in the 17th century, by local people who wanted to bury their relatives on consecrated ground. They lay under the stone for more than three centuries until the slabs were lifted two years ago.

The archaeological team has now released the first pictures of the skeletons in their resting place. Tests are still under way to accurately date the findings.

Colin Glynne-Percy, director of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, said: “During excavation works to install a new heating system in the chapel, archaeologists found a number of bones just beneath the slabs. Below that, they came across a second skeleton that was fully intact.”

Lindsay Dunbar, from Loanhead-based AOC Archaeology Group, employed to monitor the present conservation project at Rosslyn, was one of those who discovered the bones while extending an old heating duct. “We believe that the first set of bones had been disturbed by workers putting in the original duct, some time around the beginning of the 20th century,” she said.

“The bones at the higher level have been removed and are being examined before being re-interred. A small sample has been taken from the second skeleton, which was recorded and left in situ.”

It is believed there were three burials, although experts can’t be sure because the bones have been scattered over a large area.

“Once we get a full human bone report then hopefully the specialist will be able to give us an exact number of individuals,” said Dunbar.

The renovation is part of a £9 million project to repair the roof, install a heating system, and restore the chapel's interior. Other discoveries since the project began include bone fragments in the chapel grounds, a stone buttress in the roof containing a hidden stone beehive used for producing honey and another roof slab with hearts carved into it.

Norwegian Mass Murderer Still Claims Templar Crusade

2011-09-09T18:45:00.001-04:00

Confessed Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is still sticking to his story that he is part of a previously unknown militant order of Knights Templar that was started in Britain. Police have found zero evidence that such a group even exists, and even his attorney is baffled.

From the AP:

The 32-year-old, arrested after a car bombing and shooting massacre that killed 77 people on July 22, claims he was the youngest member of the anti-Muslim militia at its supposed creation in London in 2002, defense lawyer Geir Lippestad told the Associated Press in an interview.

Breivik has told police that many of the other members are war-hardened former fighters from Serbia, the lawyer said.
"Both the police and I are using a lot of resources" to investigate those claims, he said.

Police say they believe Breivik acted alone when he set off the car bomb that killed eight people in Oslo's government district and then opened fire at a Labor Party youth camp on Utoya island, killing 69. However, his claim of a mysterious crusader network puzzles investigators because Breivik appears to have been truthful when explaining other aspects of the attacks.

Breivik has said he carried out the attacks alone. But police prosecutor Christian Hatlo said the main priority of the investigation remains to find out if Breivik had any accomplices and if there are other cells.

"It does not appear very likely, but it is too early to draw conclusions," Hatlo told AP on Friday.

Breivik, who surrendered to police after the massacre at Utoya, has confessed to the attacks but denies terrorism charges saying he is in a state of war. In a rambling manifesto distributed online, Breivik said the Knights Templar will overthrow European governments and expel Muslim immigrants in a civil war culminating in 2083.

Knights Templar Confusion in Mexico

2011-08-11T15:20:00.005-04:00

CNN reports on the Mexican drug cartel calling itself the "Knights Templar" and the heartburn it's causing for the Mexican organization of the Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani, aka Knights Templar International and its charitable works.

Templar Grafitti

2011-08-02T22:16:00.003-04:00

Author Jeffrey Glover explores symbolism carved by Templar prisoners in the dungeon of Donne castle in southwestern France in the March 2010 issue of Fortean Times.

From "Lost Graffiti of the Templars":

The assumption that first-hand evidence of the Templars’ mysteries was erased along with the structure of their organisation has been perpetuated by so many books that most researchers, scholars included, entirely ignore the fact that the Templars actually did leave behind some startling indications of their thoughts in the form of stone-carved graffiti in prisons where they were held following the suppression of 1307.

There are Templar graffiti in the dungeon at Warwick Castle in England and at Chinon Castle in France, but by far the strangest and most intriguing examples are to be found at the guardhouse at Domme, in south-western France – traces of the order that have been unaccountably overlooked in the thousands of pages written about the Templars. These wall carvings are as close to first-hand Templar writings are we are ever likely to get, [1] so when the opportunity arose to take a close look at them I seized my camera and sallied forth. Little did I suspect that what I was to find would leave me astonished and engulf most of my spare time in the following months as I became driven by the need to comprehend what the Templars had left behind on the walls of this terrible place.

Read the whole article here.

Indiana's Levant Preceptory in August Knight Templar Magazine

2011-07-25T17:34:00.000-04:00

My article about Levant Preceptory, Indiana's Masonic Knight Templar medieval period recreation group, appears in the August 2011 issue of the Knight Templar Magazine, which arrived at Hodapphaüs today. Many thanks to editor and Sir Knight John Palmer.

Read it online here.

Levant is planning a trip to confer the Order of the Temple at the Detroit Masonic Center tentatively on March 24th, 2012. The combination of Sir Knights clad in chainmaille, broadswords and helms, on the floor of Detroit Commandery No. 1's exquisite medieval asylum will be the perfect combination. Details coming soon—don't miss it!

Templar Ruins Discovered Beneath City of Acre

2011-07-03T21:41:00.000-04:00

A Templar tunnel under the city of Acre.

Passages built 700 years ago by the Knights Templar in the famous final Templar stronghold Acre, on Israel's Mediterranean coast, are about to be unveiled to public visitors. The city was captured by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 1104 during the First Crusade and it quickly became the principal seaport in the Holy Land.

After Jerusalem fell to Saladin, the Crusaders retreated to Acre, which became the new capitol of Outremer. The invading Mamluks destroyed the city in 1291, and the Templars and Hospitallers fled to Cyprus.

From "Archaeologists Uncover Ruins of Crusader City":

Off the track beaten by most Holy Land tourists lies one of the richest archaeological sites in a country full of them: the walled port of Acre, where the busy alleys of an Ottoman-era town cover a uniquely intact Crusader city now being rediscovered.

Preparing to open a new subterranean section to the public, workers cleaned stones this week in an arched passageway underground.

Etched in plaster on one wall was a coat of arms -- graffiti left by a medieval traveler. Nearby was a main street of cobblestones and a row of shops that once sold clay figurines and ampules for holy water, popular souvenirs for pilgrims.

All were last used by residents in 1291, the year a Muslim army from Egypt defeated Acre's Christian garrison and leveled its remains.

The existing city, built by the Ottoman Turks around 1750, effectively preserved this earlier town, which had been hidden for centuries under the rubble.

"It's like Pompeii of Roman times -- it's a complete city," said Eliezer Stern, the Israeli archaeologist in charge of Acre. He called the town "one of the most exciting sites in the world of archaeology."

The newly excavated area, part of a Crusader neighborhood, is set to open later this year.

[snip]

Acre has existed for at least 4,500 years, but reached the height of its importance with the Crusader conquest in 1104.
Under Christian rule, the city became an unruly trading hub home to combative orders of soldier-monks, European factions that distrusted each other and sometimes fought in the streets, competing merchants from cities like Genoa, Venice and Pisa, and small populations of Jews and Muslims, all sharing an enclosed area that at its height was barely the size of two football fields.

AP Photo by Ariel Shalit from Archaeologists Uncover Ruins of Crusader City

Knights Templar and the Oreo Cookie

2011-06-20T15:19:00.007-04:00

The Edible Geography website explores the secret symbolism of the iconic Oreo cookie. You can't have a conspiracy without Templars lurking nearby:

See The Unsung Heroes of Biscuit Embossing:

As it turns out, online Oreo-obsessives have spent as much time decoding the design as they have speculating on the identity of the designer. The circle topped with a two-bar cross in which the word “OREO” resides is a variant of the Nabisco logo, and is either “an early European symbol for quality” (according to Nabisco’s promotional materials) or a Cross of Lorraine, as carried by the Knights Templar into the Crusades. Continuing the Da Vinci Code-theme, the Oreo’s geometric pattern of a dot with four triangles radiating outward is either a schematic drawing of a four-leaf clover or — cue the cliffhanger music from Jaws — the cross pattée, also associated with the Knights Templar, as well as with the German military and today’s Freemasons.

No wonder the Oreo has become the most powerful cookie in the world, with more than 491 billion sold to date.

See, the black and white Oreo manifestly represents the beauceant, the battle flag of the Templars. So it's clearly a Templar cross in the center. Clearly.

And the "Or" in Oreo is the French word for gold. As in Templar treasure.

All hiding in plain sight.

H/T: Paul Maglinger

Photo: 'Oreo Manhole Cover' sculpture by Andrew Lewicki

Templars Will Cause New World War?

2011-06-06T16:45:00.003-04:00

Words absolutely fail me in the wake of this breathless "report" from the www.whatdoesitmean.com website.

See "World War Nears After Vatican-Knights Templar Talks Fail" by Sorcha Faal:

A shocking report prepared by the Russian General Staff to President Medvedev is warning today that World War III is “all but inevitable” after the Knights Templar spurned an initial payment offer of over €22.5 million against their €100 billion claim for the return of their seized assets filed in Spain against Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.

[snip]

Now the titanic battle currently underway in this century’s long war between the Knights Templar and the Vatican began in August, 2008 when this secretive, but very powerful, religious order filed a suit in Spain against Pope Benedict XVI for the return of the assets seized from them in 1307 by Pope Clement V that included more than 9,000 properties as well as countless pastures, mills and other commercial ventures and estimated to be worth today over €100 billion .

The main basis of the Knights Templar suit against Pope Benedict XVI was information contained in what is called the Chinon Parchment discovered in the Vatican archives proving that Pope Clement V secretly absolved the last Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the rest of the leadership of the Knights Templar from charges brought against them by the Medieval Inquisition. [The parchment is dated Chinon, 1308 August 17 - 20th; the Vatican keeps an authentic copy with reference number Archivum Arcis Armarium D 218, the original having the number D 217]

Spearheading the Knights Templar suit against Pope Benedict XVI was their UNESCO recognized branch located in Switzerland named the Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani, though this Russian General Staff reports the American “factions” of this order was the main cause behind this unprecedented attack on the Vatican.

In early September, 2008, this report continues, the Vatican filed a counter-claim against the Knights Templar’s suit in Spain seeking its dismissal, which was denied and set off the current global economic crisis after the Knights Templar began a ‘wholesale’ withdrawal of billions, if not trillions, of their hidden assets from both American and European banks causing many of them to collapse.

By June, 2009, the collapse of the global banking system was nearing catastrophic proportions that even the might of the United States could not forestall and leading the new US President, Barack Obama, to ‘order’ the Vatican to the negotiating table with the Knights Templar that he would personally oversee during his July, 2009 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.

Obama further ordered to the negotiating table between the Vatican and Knights Templar a “secured payment” against the religious orders claim against Pope Benedict XVI of $134 billion in US Treasury Bonds in a move he believed would quell the growing crisis.

Unfortunately for Obama, however, the $134 billion in US Treasury Bonds bound for the meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Knights Templar were seized on 15 June under orders from the Vatican by Italian police and prosecutors and the two Japanese Jesuit couriers carrying the 249 US Federal Reserve bonds, each worth $500 million, plus the ten Kennedy bonds with face values of $1 billion were arrested too...

Guess it's time to lay up some dehydrated food and start digging the bunker.

Oh wait.

As a Knight Templar myself, I guess I'll be in line for a cabinet post when the shooting war is over.

"Four Myths About the Crusades" by Paul F. Crawford

2011-04-07T14:29:00.005-04:00

An outstanding article by Paul F. Crawford, "Four Myths about the Crusades" appears in the Spring 2001 issue of the Intercollegiate Review.

The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.

Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and even a cursory chronological review makes that clear. In a.d. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example, was Nestorian. Certainly there were many Christian communities in Arabia.

By a.d. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula.6 Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.

What had happened? Most people actually know the answer, if pressed—though for some reason they do not usually connect the answer with the crusades. The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest...

Read the rest of the article here.

According to the California University of Pennsylvania website,

Dr. Paul F. Crawford is a specialist in the history of the crusades and of the military-religious orders (such as the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights). He has published a number of works on these subjects, including the first English-language translation of a 14th-century crusader chronicle known as The ‘Templar of Tyre'; several articles and book chapters; a number of encyclopedia entries on crusade-related subjects; and several popularly oriented essays. Along with Helen Nicholson (University of Wales) and Jochen Burgtorf (California State University-Fullerton), he has edited a collection of scholarly papers on the trial of the Templars, and he is currently working on general history of the Templars and Hospitallers.

He has assisted in the preparation of several television programs on the crusades and the military orders, and has appeared in three: "History's Mysteries: The Children's Crusade" (2000), "The Crusades: Crescent and the Cross" (2005) and "Lost Worlds: Knights Templar" (2006), all first aired on the History Channel.

H/T to Sir Knight Nathan Brindle

"Last Stand of the Templars" on NatGeo 4/4/2011

2011-03-30T19:04:00.004-04:00

The National Geographic Channel will air "Last Stand of the Templars" beginning this Monday, April 4th, at 10PM.

From the website:

The Templars were considered the pope's private army, protecting Jerusalem for more than 50 years. But their legacy came to a sudden end casting them from the heights of wealth and power to the dark corners of history. Now, on the ruins of a 12th century castle near the border between what are now Israel and Syria, a team of archaeologists peel away centuries of sediment, uncovering signs of a six-day siege that could have led to the Templars' demise.

The program was created by Arcadia Productions from Nova Scotia. The company has released a story about the show here.

Unfortunately, the original show as produced for Canadian TV was 2 hours long, and the NatGeo airing has been hacked down to an hour, or more likely, 47 minutes, with commercials. I have a feeling that the scenes of Levant Preceptory, Indiana's medieval Masonic Templar group, wound up being cut out. The crew came to Indianapolis and spent two days shooting us in Indiana Freemasons' Hall and the Indianapolis Scottish Rite Cathedral. Hopefully, the entire program will be made available to the public for purchase, since more than half of it will be unseen on NatGeo.

Here we are in all of our helmeted and mailled glory.

"Knights Templar" Enter Mexican Drug Wars?

2011-03-10T16:41:00.005-05:00

The western Mexican state of Michoacan has a new drug gang to deal with: a group calling itself the Knights Templar. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but irony can be woefully depressing in the hands of ignoramuses.

According to an Associated Press story today, a series of banners appeared across the state on Thursday announcing the group, less than a month after the La Familia drug cartel supposedly disbanded.

From the AP story:

The signs said the "Knights" will replace the cartel, which is considered Mexico's leading trafficker of methamphetamines, and fend off any other gangs looking to make inroads in Michoacan state.
"To the people of Michoacan, we inform you that starting today we will be carrying out here the altruistic activities previously realized by La Familia Michoacana," read one sign, hung on the fence of a school.

"We will be at the service of the people of Michoacan to attend to any situation that threatens the safety of Michoacanos," it continued. "Our commitment is to: keep order; avoid robberies, kidnappings, extortion; and protect the state from possible (interventions) by rival organizations. The Knights Templar."

There was no immediate comment from police, who quickly removed the banners hung from footbridges, in a public square, on a monument and elsewhere in cities including the state capital of Morelia, as well as in Zitacuaro and Apatzingan.

Such signs are commonly used by drug gangs to threaten rivals, to deny responsibility for crimes or to send messages to authorities.

It is the first public mention of a group by that name, and the authenticity of the banners could not immediately be confirmed. The name alludes to a Christian order of knights founded in 1118 in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade.

Somehow I suspect their "altruistic" motives will be anything but.

More than 35,000 people have died across Mexico in drug-related violence since December 2006.

"Ironclad" Opens Friday 3/4/11

2011-03-02T15:35:00.006-05:00

Medieval seige fans, take note. Ironclad opens this Friday, March 4th. The story takes place in England in 1215 following King John's signing of the Magna Carta, and his first attempt to renege on those pesky rights he agreed to. The film features James Purefoy as a Knight Templar recruited by Baron William de Albany (Brian Cox) to lead a rag-tag group to defend Rochester Castle against the appropriate screaming tantrums of Paul Giamatti's King John.

Ancient Jerusalem Temple Road Excavated

2011-02-02T00:06:00.003-05:00

A 1st century A.D. road for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem's Second Temple was discovered by archeologists in the 1830s, but after being uncovered, recovered, and fought over by Muslim, Israeli and Orthodox Christians, a long section of the road has been excavated...carefully.

From a story on Bloomberg.com, "Archaeologists Discover Ancient Pilgrim Road Through Jerusalem's Old City":

Israeli archaeologists discovered an ancient road used by pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem’s Old City 2,000 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a press release e-mailed today.

The road was found during excavations on a water channel from the Second Temple period, the statement said. The road went from the ancient City of David, today the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, into the Old City and passes by the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.

Neither the road nor the channel pass underneath the Temple Mount, known to Palestinians as Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, a compound that houses the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, the statement said. The area is also the site of the ancient Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans.

Archaeological digs in the area of Jerusalem’s Old City and Temple Mount have set off riots in the past. Palestinians seek the eastern sector as the capital of a state. Israel captured the area from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war in a move never recognized internationally.

From Haaretz.com "Archeologists find main J'lem street from Second Temple period":

According to the dig director, Prof. Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa, this was Jerusalem's main street, by which pilgrims ascended from the southern part of the ancient town, where the Pool of Siloam was located.

"There is practically no doubt that this was the focus of pilgrim traffic. We know this both from Jewish and Christian sources. The Pool of Siloam provided water for hundreds of people simultaneously and could be used for purification before ascending to the Temple Mount.

From the Pool of Siloam, the road continued for 600 meters to the Temple Mount. Although only two meters of the street's width have so far been excavated, it is believed to have stretched eight meters across.

The excavation is taking place in a limited area, because the land on one side belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church, and on the other to the Waqf, the Muslim religious trust. Neither of these bodies permits excavation on their property. Another excavation of the same road system was halted by order of the High Court of Justice in January 2008 following a petition by Palestinian residents of Silwan, who claimed the dig was undermining the foundations of their homes.

The road now uncovered opens a window onto the Second Temple period, one of the most opulent in the city's history. Jerusalem in those days, with a population of some 25,000, was considered a regional metropolis. Reich says that number doubled during the pilgrimage festivals.

Medieval Manuscripts: Legend of Jesus' Great-Grandmother

2010-12-20T20:34:00.002-05:00

Catherine Lawless, a history lecturer at Ireland's University of Limerick, has studied newly discovered manuscripts from 14th- and 15th-century Florence, Italy that tell a tale of Ismeria, reputed to be Jesus' great-grandmother. Lawless studied the St. Ismeria story in two manuscripts: the 14th century "MS Panciatichiano 40" of Florence's National Central Library and the 15th century "MS 1052" of the Riccardiana Library, also in Florence.The manuscripts assert that Ismeria was the mother of St. Anne, who later gave birth to Mary.

From her paper's abstract:

This article will examine an unusual legend contained in Florentine fifteenth-century manuscripts concerning St Ismeria, the ‘grandmother’ of the Virgin. Unlike more well-known versions of the Holy Kinship of Christ, where Ismeria is described as the sister of St Anne and grandmother of St John the Baptist, in this legend she is instead firmly described as St Anne’s mother and thus the grandmother of the Virgin and the great-grandmother of Christ. Most of the legend is concerned with Ismeria’s life of penitential piety as a wife and widow and has little in common with standard legends of the Virgin or of St Anne, but has strong resonances within the world of late medieval Florentine piety and the type of ‘new’ sanctity defined by Vauchez, where sanctity is earned by a life of penitence rather than with blood martyrdom. The contents of the codices which house the legends are typical of medieval vernacular writings and contain more traditional lives of the Virgin and accounts of the Holy Kinship. The way in which these legends lay side by side with such contradictory material suggests a fluidity in the way holy narratives were accepted.

From an article on AOL News by Theunis Bates:

There is no biblical-era evidence to support the manuscripts' assertion that Ismeria was the mother of St. Anne, who later gave birth to Mary. (Other medieval sources suggest Ismeria may have been Anne's sister). Instead, Lawless suspects that the story may have been created by a religious order as a "morality tale" intended to teach Florentine women how to be good wives, and later, widows.

The manuscripts, analyzed by Lawless in the latest issue of the Journal of Medieval History, tell how the lovely Ismeria -- "the daughter of Nabon of the people of Judaea, and of the tribe of King David" -- married St. Liseo, who is described as "a patriarch of the people of God."

As a sign of her piety, Ismeria asked Liseo to only call her to the matrimonial bed one night a month. (During the month of holy fasting, they'd avoid each other entirely). "They lived together for 12 years in great joy and in penitence," writes Lawless, "and then had a beautiful daughter whom they named Anne." Twelve years later, Liseo died and Ismeria willingly allowed her relatives to walk off with all of her riches.

Reduced to poverty, Ismeria sought sanctuary in a hospital, where she carried out two Jesus-esque miracles. First, she restored a deaf-mute man's hearing and speech, and then she filled a shell with enough fish to feed all of the clinic's patients. Satisfied with this act of spontaneous seafood generation, she returned to her room and prayed for God to release her from the "vainglory of this world." Angels promptly whisked her soul off to heaven. The story concludes with Mary, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the 12 apostles and others heading to the hospital and honoring her body.

2,000-year-old Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury Cut Down By Vandals

2010-12-09T15:22:00.006-05:00

Sticking up out of the English countryside like a big geological lump stands Glastonbury Tor, a high, oblong hill that can be seen for miles. At one time, it was an island, but the sea has receded, leaving this strange geographical sight. It has been identified over the centuries as the mythical Isle of Avalon of King Arthur’s time. What makes Glastonbury such a startling sight today is the ruined entryway of the abbey’s tower that sits at the top of the knoll.

The source of the belief that that Glastonbury could be the location of the Holy Grail is in the legend of Joseph of Arimathea. Christians in Britain have long told the legend that Joseph came to the island shortly after Christ’s ascension, and that he and his fellow travelers founded the monastery at Glastonbury. The tale goes that he was accompanied by the Bethany sisters Mary and Martha, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene and others followers. A variation of the tale is that Joseph even brought the teenaged Jesus to Britain even before he began his ministry. Of course, much of this legend may have had more to do with claiming that Christianity was alive in Britain long before the Roman Catholic Church was established, as part of the British feud between Catholics and Protestants, than it did with history.

Today, the Daily Mail reports that vandals have destroyed a site of pilgrimage at Glastonbury, one of the most important Christian sites in Britain—a tree that legendarily sprung from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, 2000 years ago:

The Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury, Somerset, is visited by thousands every year to pay homage and leave tokens of worship. Those visiting today were moved to tears on finding the tree cut to a stump.

The sacred tree is unique in that it blossoms twice a year - at Christmas and Easter - and sprigs taken from the thorn are sent to The Queen each year for the festive table.

[snip]

Christian legend dictates that Jesus's great uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, came to Britain after the crucifixion 2,000 years ago bearing the Holy Grail - the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper.

He visited Glastonbury and thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill, just below the Tor, planting a seed for the original thorn tree.
Roundheads felled the tree during the English Civil War, when forces led by Oliver Cromwell (pictured) waged a vicious battle against the Crown.

However, locals salvaged the roots of the original tree, hiding it in secret locations around Glastonbury.
It was then replanted on the hill in 1951. Other cuttings were also grown and placed around the town - including its famous Glastonbury Abbey.

Experts had verified that the tree - known as the Crategus Monogyna Bi Flora - originated from the Middle East.

A sprig of holy thorns was taken from the Thorn tree by Glastonbury's St Johns Church on Wednesday and sent to the Queen.
The 100-year-old tradition will see the thorns sit on Her Majesty's dinner table on Christmas Day.

In 1190 A.D., after a fire that consumed the abbey at Glastonbury, two massive oak coffins were discovered buried below the ruins, with the inscription Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia (“Here lies King Arthur in the island of Avalon”). Since that time, many have believed that the remains really were King Arthur and his wife Guinevere.

As you might expect, there is a Holy Grail associated with Glastonbury. Known as the Nanteos Cup, it is a bowl, said to have been made of olive wood. For many years it was in the care of the Nanteos family, but is now in a museum in the Welsh village of Aberystwyth. True believers have drunk healing water from the cup over the centuries, some going so far as to nibble bits of wood from its edge. As a result, little is left of it today.

The Welsh Commisioner of Monuments has said that the artifact is, in actuality, made of Witch Elm wood, and is actually a bowl from the 1400s. Others believe it to be the genuine grail brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea.

New Book by Stephen Dafoe: Illustrated History of the Knights Hospitaller

2010-11-27T16:24:00.004-05:00

Author Stephen Dafoe has followed up his two recent Knight Templar books—Nobly Born (2007) and The Compasses and the Cross (2008)— with an equally beautifully illustrated third volume, on the Knights Hospitaller.

From the Lewis Masonic website:

AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE KNIGHTS HOSPITALLER
by Stephen Dafoe
Lewis Masonic, 2010. £19.99
ISBN: 9780711034976

This richly illustrated book recounts the entire history of the Knights Hospitaller, from their beginnings nine centuries ago to the present day. Founded during the medieval crusades their full name is the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem -to run hospices. They grew in power and royal favour, conquering territories, including the island of Malta, with which they have long been associated, and Rhodes, building formidable castles such as Krak de Chevaliers in the Middle East. For a while they led the fight against the Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean but the increasing power of European nations meant that their territory and powers were gradually taken away in the ensuing centuries but they still survive today.

Templars Discover America!

2010-11-26T00:28:00.005-05:00

Last week while I was traveling in the northeast, I drove through Newport, Rhode Island and visited one of the legendary —with a strong emphasis on the word "legend"—sites of the supposed presence of the Knights Templar in America, the Newport Tower.

There is absolutely no evidence that the Knights Templar had known about the Americas in the 13th and 14th centuries, but that hasn’t stopped the speculation that they did. Various researchers have claimed that the Templars had based much of their wealth on Aztec gold and silver. Aztec tales abounded of a “great white god” from the East who had come to bring civilization to them. But there is no archeological evidence of any European presence in the region prior to the Spanish conquistadors. And that “great white god” stuff was ancient history to the Aztecs by then. That they meant Templars is highly unlikely.

Authors Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, and several others, have advanced the notion that, while the Order flourished, the Templars ventured across the North Atlantic, following a similar path as the Vikings, and traded with the Native American population of northeastern Canada. After the dissolution of the Order, the Templars moved to Scotland, so the legend goes, and the Saint-Clair (or Sinclair) family became their protectors. And this is where the tale of the Templars discovering America really kicks in.

Henry Saint-Clair and the Zeno Narrative
In 1396, it is alleged that the Earl of Orkney, Henry Saint-Clair, went into partnership with a Venetian merchant family known as the Zenos. Saint-Clair is said by some to have made two trips across the North Atlantic almost a full century before Columbus. Based on a document called the Zeno Narrative, it has been speculated that the Sinclairs and the Zenos hoped to establish colonies in the Americas, away from the influence and reach of the Catholic Church.

The Zeno narrative is based on letters between real brothers from Venice, Antonio, Carlo and Nicolo Zeno, and was published anonymously in 1558. In it, a voyage is described by Nicolo Zeno in 1385 from Venice to England and Flanders, in which he claimed to have been shipwrecked on a large island called “Frislanda.” It is a mythical place, complete with a mythical prince. Referred to in the narrative as Prince Zichmni, Nicolo claims to have undertaken voyages to what is presumably Greenland for him over the space of two decades. At the end of the tale, after encountering strange and exotic people and places, Prince Zichmni remains in Greenland, starting a settlement called Trin.

True believers say that Prince Zichmni is in reality the Earl of Orkney, Henry Saint-Clair, and that the giant island nation of Frislanda is actually the smallish Orkney Island off the coast of Scotland – curious, since Nicolo described an island larger than Ireland. The Zeno Narrative comes complete with a map, but while portions of it and the narrative sort of match up with Iceland, Scotland and other North Sea and North Atlantic geography, the glaring flaw is the mythical “Frislanda” doesn’t.

A series of authors have made convoluted attempts to explain how Zichmni and Saint-Clair are one and the same, beginning in the late 1700s. In the 1870s, a geographer named Richard Henry Major took up the Sinclair cause and the Zeno narrative, and it is his fiddling that is the principal source of the nonsense. There had never been any suggestion in any record of the family history that Henry was an explorer of any kind, nor that he had ventured far from Orkney or Scotland at any time in his life, but that never kept a good myth down. Major took huge leaps of imagination, not to mention outright fabrication, in his mistranslation and interpretation of the narrative, forcing it to fit the Henry Saint-Clair mold.

Saint-Clairs and Sinclairs around the world were ecstatic. Here was “proof” that the Saint-Clairs, descended from the Knights Templar, builders of Rosslyn Chapel, founders of Freemasonry in Scotland, had also been the “discoverers” of America, a hundred years before that upstart Columbus. New Zealand resident Roland Saint-Clair wrote a glowing “biography” of Henry, calling him an “Orcadian Argonaut.” Thomas Sinclair in Chicago started a “Society of Sancto-Claro” and made announcements about Henry’s fame as the “Discoverer of America” as a counterpoint to the Columbian Exposition that was celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus. Never mind that, even if Henry really had sailed across the North Atlantic and established a colony at Tinn, it was Greenland, not America. Pesky details, we know. So, others have added further conjecture to the tale, claiming Saint-Clair explored into Nova Scotia, and as far south as what is now Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

The Zeno Narrative has been debunked as a hoax by scores of researchers, and it has been shown to have actually been copied from Columbus’ own descriptions, and others, of Mexico and the Caribbean islands, with some artful name changes. And the accompanying map was apparently copied from a chart made in 1539. Finally, Nicolo Zeno has been conclusively placed in Italy during the period he was supposed to have been sailing and exploring. Court records show that he was less than heroic, being convicted of embezzlement in 1396 and imprisoned for five years.

Author Andrew Sinclair today continues to cling to the story, and has claimed that the mythical expedition was a secret mission of Templars, Gnostics and Freemasons to establish a religious and military empire in the New World, with Venetian cooperation. Most historians, geologists and archeologists place little credence in the theory. Well, okay. None, really. But there are some curious items that have been linked to the tale: the Westford Knight and the Newport Tower. And, of course, Rosslyn Chapel.

The Westford Knight
Located near the town square in Westford, Massachusetts is a slab of rock that is purported to have been carved with the image of a Knight Templar, holding a sword and a shield. Most who have examined the rock say it appears to have been a combination of natural erosion lines with a “punch-carving” of a sword hilt, while the shield has been painted on recently. True believers say it was placed along a popular path for tribal traffic in the late 1300s by Henry Saint-Clair’s expeditions. Archeologists say that’s nonsense. It was more than likely buried under a hillside at that time, and the sword carving was made in the 1800s by a pair of boys. The Templars themselves had not existed as an Order for almost 100 years at the time of Saint-Clair’s alleged expedition, so the question is obvious: why would anyone take the time to carve a 12th century image of a knight on a rock when there was no real connection to them to begin with?

The Newport Tower
A little bigger and a lot more enigmatic is a round, stone tower in Newport, Rhode Island. At first glance, it certainly looks like the ruins of a medieval European tower. And without a great leap of imagination, if you believe that post-trial Templars were stomping around the New England coast three centuries before it became New England, it might even look like a round Templar church.

Of course, it’s looked like other things to other researchers too, depending on their personal pet theory – everything from a Viking observatory, to a Portuguese or Irish signaling tower, to a 14th century Scottish church, which would place it right up Henry Saint-Clair’s bailiwick. Of course, like the Westford Knight, the Newport Tower is only “near” Saint-Clair’s mythical settlement in Greenland, in the same way that Miami is “near” Las Vegas, but who cares when trying to shore up a good myth? Naturally, the fable has been altered to suit the “evidence,” and claims have been made that Saint-Clair explored as far south as Nova Scotia, and, just so he could build this tower, Rhode Island.

Unfortunately, what it looks most like is exactly what local folklore has claimed for centuries: a windmill, patterned after an almost identical structure in Chesterton, England, and built in 1675 by Rhode Island’s first governor, Benedict Arnold (not the famous Revolutionary War turncoat of the same name). Arnold was originally from the area around Chesterton, and it has long been said that he patterned the Newport windmill after the one seen back home in his youth. Some researchers have discounted this theory, saying the Chesterton windmill hadn’t yet been constructed when Arnold was in the area, so controversy remains. But the tower is far too narrow to be anything even remotely resembling a church, even if there was once an outer wooden structure encircling it (of which there is no archeological evidence).

Carbon-14 dating made of mortar from the tower in 1992 placed the probable construction date between 1635 and 1698. But Scott Wolter in his book "The Hooked X" attempts to connect the tower to Templars, the Kensington Rune Stone in Minnesota, and more. Claims that findings from a 2008 excavation at the tower turned up shells with mortar on them dating to the 1400s have not been published for peer review, and there is speculation that the sea shells, and not the mortar, triggered the medieval period carbon date.

A-maize-ing Rosslyn Chapel “Evidence”
It is hard to pick up a book that talks about Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel without encountering an almost breathless description of an archway decorated in carvings that “proves” the Sinclairs came to America and returned with knowledge no one else could have had when the chapel was built in 1446. The “proof” is a decorative band of carvings that are usually described as “corn” or “maize” plants, and aloe vera – vegetation that existed at the time only in the Americas. There’s only one way that they could have gotten there: Henry Saint-Clair and his Templar explorers had to have gone to America and seen them!

In Greenland? Forgive us, logic returned for a second. But again, the question arises, if you believe the Zeno narrative, what was corn or aloe vera doing in Greenland for Henry Saint-Clair to find it there, since any backyard gardener can tell you Greenland is a lousy place for a cornfield? Of course, no one can say when those particular carvings were made, apart from the certainty that they wouldn’t have been put in until the building itself was completed. And there’s also the possibility that they are just carvings of wheat, lilies and strawberries, in which case all of this is just huffing and puffing.

The Ongoing Battle Over Jerusalem's Temple Mount

2010-11-25T23:18:00.004-05:00

On the list of history's top ten colossally stupid failures of international diplomacy has to be the 2000 Camp David Summit between Palestinian leaders and Israel, brokered by then US president Bill Clinton. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made the incredible concession to divide Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as long as Jews would still be allowed to continue visiting the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. PA leader Yasser Arafat had the ultimate victory over Israel in the palm of his hand. And he turned it down. Because, you see, the Palestinians' position is that Solomon's Temple, and the later Temple rebuilt by Herod, never existed. At least, they never existed on the Temple Mount.

The Crusaders who came to Jerusalem and found the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, both standing on the Temple Mount, assumed that what they were seeing was actually the King Solomon’s Palace and the Solomon’s Temple described in the Bible, and not more recent buildings constructed by the Muslims. Whether the Templars believed this or not, no one can say.
The place called Solomon’s Stables is actually below the upper level of the Mount itself, and is a large area made up of arched passageways that acted as sort of a supporting sub-basement for the area of the Temple above, probably constructed when King Herod rebuilt the Temple. The Mount itself is a wild combination of natural rock, monumental stonework and clever engineering, and the “stables” were part of an extensive attempt to make the top of the plateau level. During the period of the Crusades, they were actually used as stables, with room, it was said, for 2,000 horses, or 1,500 camels. Humps take up more space.

Today there is little visible evidence of the Templars’ presence on the Mount – and Muslims today deny that the Temple of Solomon was ever on the Mount to begin with. Such is the battle between politics and archeology. If they admit the Temple existed here before the arrival of Islam, then it would mean that Jews could claim “first dibs” on the Mount, yank down the mosques, rebuild the Temple and trigger Armageddon, as prophesized in Revelation 16. And, politically, whoever controls the top of the Mount has psychological and spiritual control over Jerusalem, regardless of what the U.N. may say. It’s sort of an ecclesiastical game of “king of the hill,” and they take it very seriously.

The Islamic authorities that have control of the Mount, called the Waqf, absolutely forbid any messing about in the foundation of the site, while engaging in a feverish building program themselves up top (Nuances aside, Waqf, in Arabic, literally means hold, confinement or prohibition). In 1996, Israeli archeologists opened a subterranean tunnel’s entrance, which erupted into riots by enraged Muslims. Eighty-five Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed, and more than 1,200 Palestinians and 87 Israelis were wounded. The Palestinian press frequently reports that the Israelis are attempting to weaken the structure of the Mount, in order to cause the collapse of the mosques and the Dome of the Rock, and therefore, start a new war.

As for Solomon’s Stables, they were converted into a mosque in 1996, capable of holding 7,000 people. Hamfisted excavation was carried out hastily by the Waqf, and many critics say that much archeological material was destroyed by the Arabs, further obscuring evidence of the original Temple. Others day that the Waqf has done a credible job, only removing material that was in the area after the Crusader period.

The latest salvo in this rewriting of history happened this past week, as the Palestinians once again alleged that the Mount is not the previous location of Solomon's Temple. Or Herod's Temple. Or that it was ever even Jewish. Really.

It's sort of the archeological version of "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

From a Reuters article, Israel angered by Palestinian report on Western Wall:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Palestinian leadership on Thursday to renounce an official Palestinian report asserting the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest sites, is not Jewish.

Al-Mutawakil Taha, deputy information minister in the Palestinian Authority, published a five-page study on Wednesday disputing Jews' reverence of the shrine as a retaining wall of the compound of Biblical Jewish Temples destroyed centuries ago.

The wall is adjacent to a politically sensitive holy complex in a part of Jerusalem that Israel captured in a 1967 war. The area, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, is home to al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

"Denial of the connection between the Jewish people and the Western Wall by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Information is baseless and scandalous," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by the prime minister's office.

"The Israeli government expects the leaders of the Palestinian Authority to renounce the document and condemn it, and to stop twisting historical facts," he said.

In the report, Taha wrote the Western wall is a "Muslim wall and an integral part of al-Aqsa mosque and Haram al-Sharif," a position echoing past statements by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Taha issued the document after Israel approved on Sunday a five-year renovation plan for the Western Wall area.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem, where the Western Wall is located, after the 1967 conflict and claimed all of Jerusalem as its capital in a move that has not won international recognition.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of the state they want to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

U.S.-brokered peace talks are supposed to address the issue of Jerusalem, but the negotiations were put on hold by the Palestinians shortly after they began in September when Netanyahu refused to extend a partial building freeze in West Bank settlements.

Netanyahu said the Palestinian position paper on the Western Wall "raises a very serious question" as to whether the Palestinian Authority truly intends to reach a peace agreement with Israel "based on co-existence and mutual recognition."

From Israel Today Magazine:

On Monday, the Palestinian Ministry of Information in Ramallah published a “study” claiming that the Western Wall is an integral part of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sharif (the Islamic term for the Temple Mount).

According to the study, what the Jews call the Western Wall of the Temple compound originally built King Solomon and expanded by King Herod is a wholly Islamic site with no connection to the Jews whatsoever.

“This wall was never part of the so-called Temple Mount, but Muslim tolerance allowed the Jews to stand in front of it and weep over its destruction,” wrote the study’s author, Al-Mutawakel Taha. “During the British mandate in Palestine, the number of Jews who visited the wall increased to a point where the Muslims felt threatened.”

Taha ignored the mountains of archeological and written evidence that affirm ancient Jewish life and temple worship in Jerusalem, and insisted that the Jews have utterly failed to prove their connection to the holy site.

The study concludes that “no Muslim or Arab or Palestinian had the right to give up one stone” of the Western Wall, signaling once again that peace between Israel and the current Palestinian leadership will be impossible without the Jews surrendering not only their land, but their faith and identity.

Raymond Khoury's Newest: The Templar Salvation

2010-10-31T18:27:00.003-04:00

The Last Templar author Raymond Khoury has just released (October 19th) the sequel, The Templar Salvation.

From the publisher's description:

In 1310, Templar knight Conrad of Tripoli stumbled on a trove of writings documenting the early days and divisions of Christianity. The Catholic Church has kept this material hidden since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, fearful that its release would undermine the church's authority and rock the foundations of Christian belief. In the present, Mansoor Zahed, an Iranian motivated by revenge for the CIA killing of his family in the 1950s, is bent on finding the trove and releasing it to undermine Western religion and stability. Meanwhile, FBI special agent Sean Reilly visits the Vatican on a quest to find a document that may help in his effort to rescue his love interest, Tess Chaykin, who's been kidnapped.

When Templars Were Down On Their Luck

2010-09-16T22:58:00.002-04:00

"Lucerne" by Stanko Abadzic

H/T to Frog Blog.

Rennes-le-Château, Corjan de Raaf, and the Masonic Magician

2010-09-14T05:32:00.002-04:00

If all you know about France's Rennes-le-Château, the Priory of Sion and Father Bérenger Saunière came out of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, spend some time on Dutch researcher Corjan de Raaf's huge and expanding website Rennes-le-Château Research and Resource.

Corjan de Raaf is also a musician, and he has just released a song and music video, titled "Masonic Magician."

Last year, Philippa Faulks and W:.B:. Robert Cooper published The Masonic Magician: The Life and Death of Count Cagliostro and His Egyptian Rite, the story of the fascinating life of occultist Giuseppe Balsamo, better known to history as Count Alessandro di Cagliostro. After an amazing life of adventures, crimes, intrigues, and inventive tall tales, he was arrested in 1789 by the Inquisition and sentenced to death for the crime of being a Freemason. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Pope Pius VI, and he died in the Fortress of San Leo in 1795.

De Raaf's song and video were inspired by the book. In fact, Philippa and her husband Martin Faulks of Lewis Masonic publishing both make cameo appearances in the video's photos.

Of Sheep and Medieval Books

2010-09-07T00:53:00.005-04:00

Alan Butler and my friend Stephen Dafoe collaborated on two books about the Knights Templar over the years: The Warriors and Bankers and The Knights Templar Revealed. Eventually they parted company, and Butler went on to pen several books that curiously seem to include mildly obsessive chapters about sheep. How they are raised, sheep population, and how they are barometers of civilization. As the sheep go, so goes Man, apparently.

Insert your favorite amorous shepherd joke here.

So, today I stumbled into Carl Pyrdum's blog, "Got Medieval?" and his article "Why are books so big?"

The answer, as Alan Butler already knows, is, of course, sheep.

H/T to Jonah Goldberg

London Templar Program on Tuesday

2010-09-06T22:32:00.002-04:00

This Thursday Sept. 9th, the South East London Folklore Society presents Robert Stephenson speaking on "The Knights Templar in London." His illustrated talk will discuss places in London that were either occupied, owned or had some connection with the Knights Templar and their dramatic downfall, including the sites of their imprisonment and interrogation.

Stephenson is the chairman and lecture organiser of RILKO - the Research Into Lost Knowledge Organisation.

The talk will take place at 8PM at The Old King's Head Pub, 45-49 Borough High Street, London SE1 1NA (near the London Bridge tube station and Guy's Hospital, on the South Bank).

Walking the Templar Trail to Jerusalem

2010-08-15T15:41:00.004-04:00

Two modern-day pilgrims are setting out to follow the trail from Wales to the Holy Land on foot. From the BBC article Cardiff 'troubabours' on 'Templar trail' to Jerusalem:

Two musicians aim to spend up to a year walking the 13th Century route to Jerusalem used by medieval pilgrims.

New Zealanders David Delia, 21, and Max Evenbly, 20, say they want to be modern-day troubadours on the 3,600-miles (5,800km) to Temple Mount.

They leave on Sunday, the 914th anniversary of the first crusade, but insist their mission is non-religious.

The Cardiff-based pair said: "After 65 years of European peace, it is time for this path to be walked again."

The first crusade had the aim of reclaiming Jerusalem and holy sites for the Christian church following an appeal in France by the Pope.

The friends aim to visit 13 countries on the "templar trail", the route to Jerusalem which the Knights Templar were charged with protecting.

Follow their trip at http://www.kiwiknights.com/

Friggatriskaidekaphobics: Happy Friday the 13th

2010-08-13T00:05:00.003-04:00

For all of you friggatriskaidekaphobics out there, Happy Friday the 13th.

Tellers of tall tales blame the fear on the Knights Templar, or maybe just on King Philip IV. The order was famously arrested all across France on Friday, October 13, 1307. The story of this genesis of the superstition was trotted out as factual in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Fears of the date Friday the 13th don't really appear anywhere in print much before 1907. In fact, the phobia may have been popularized by the 1907 novel Friday, the Thirteenth by Thomas W. Lawson, about a creepy stockbroker who engineers a panic on Wall Street on a Friday the 13th by playing on superstitious fears of the number 13.

For everything you ever wanted to know about Friday the 13th, read Nathaniel Lachenmeyer's book, Thirteen : the story of the world's most popular superstition.

UPDATE:
Several readers wrote to insist that the proper term for fear of Friday the 13th is paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia was a recent term created in the 1990s by Therapist Dr. Donald Dossey for fear of Friday the 13th. The older term is friggatriskaidekaphobia. Friday is Frigga's day. Frigga was an ancient Scandinavian fertility goddess, analagous to Venus, who was worshipped on the 6th day of the week (so I suppose people have gotten frisky on Fridays for a very long time). Frigga was pegged as a witch by early Christians, and so the 6th day of the week was referred to as the witches' sabbath.

Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. Friggatriskaidekaphobia combines frigga with triskaidekaphobia, and first appeared in 1911.

Mass murderers Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy all have 13 letters in them, in case you are the kind that worries about such things. And if you are the sort who is really concerned about it, stay away from Sacramento, California, as it contains a street corner at the convergence of 13th Street and 13th Avenue.

Rosslyn Chapel: The Shed Is Off!

2010-08-12T23:30:00.005-04:00

Scotsman.com is reporting that the steel shed roof and scaffolding that covered Scotland's Rosslyn Chapel for fourteen years have at last been removed, and the 15th century chapel can finally be seen in its full glory. The temporary covering was installed in 1996 when massive leaks in the chapel's 1950's era asphalt roof were discovered, causing extensive deterioration of its detailed carvings. The ceiling and walls were permeated with green algae, and an earlier, misguided attempt to stabilize the sculpted interior by covering the stonework with a thin wash of plaster resulted in trapping the moisture even further.

Now, thanks to the massive crowds brought to the chapel in the wake of Dan Brown's novel and the subsequent Hollywood film version of The Da Vinci Code, a new watertight roof has been installed, landscaping has been tidied up, and a new visitor's center constructed.

See Rosslyn Chapel's resurrection revealed.

Visitors had to clamber up a steel walkway to get a close look at the building, which will have newly landscaped grounds in the next few weeks to celebrate its restoration.

The grounds of the chapel may still resemble something of a building site as the building is still halfway through the £9 million programme, but the trust responsible for its upkeep heralded yesterday's removal of the last major scaffolding from the chapel as key milestone.

Colin Glyne-Percy, director of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, which started planning the refurbishment in the wake of a surge in visitors after the success of Dan Brown's 2004 novel and the subsequent Tom Hanks blockbuster movie, said: "It's a hugely exciting moment for us. No-one has had a proper view of the building for 14 years as the protecting covering had to be kept in place for so long to ensure the original roof was dried out, while we put a fundraising plan together.

"We went right back to the original stonework to ensure it was fully restored and the new watertight roof ensures that the roof is properly preserved underneath. We think the removal of the canopy structure and the scaffolding will generate more interest in the chapel.

"We had just 40,000 visitors a year before then, and although it reached a peak of 175,000 visitors we still had 136,000 through the doors last year, and we can still attract 1,100 visitors on a good day."

By next spring, when a new visitor centre next is due to be unveiled, the chapel's stained-glass windows and organ will be fully restored, and new heating and lighting equipment will have been installed. By the end of the following year, all the stonework in the building will have been repaired.

Buy from Amazon here.

Knights Templar chapel and tomb in Laon, France

2010-08-05T21:40:00.003-04:00

The village of Laon sits about 80 miles northeast of Paris, and is the location of a well-preserved chapel built by the Knights Templar. The local museum has a collection of Roman and medieval jewelry, and the chapel itself sits within the museum's gardens. The chapel was built around 1180, serving the local commandery. Following the dissolution of the Order, the property was transferred to the Knights of St John (the Hospitallers).

While there are several round or octagonal churches in France, only three of them were actually built by the Templars. Laon's octagonal design was used as a model for a similar Templar chapel in Metz. The third was in Paris (Villeneuve du Temple).

From The Knights Templar Chapel and Tombs in Laon by Francois Hagnere:

[I]n 1128, Bishop Barthélémy de Vir attended the Council of Troyes where, upon approval of Pope Honorius II, Bernard de Clairvaux participated in the elaboration and writing of the Knights Templar Rule. As soon as he came back, the prelate welcomed the Knights Templar and offered them a house on the Rue sainte-Geneviève that would soon become Rue des Templiers. His liberalities towards the knights bearing the white cape and the red cross pattée did not stop here and donations followed at Puiseux where only an underground gallery remains today, at Thouny where a ruined chapel still exists and at Cerny-en-Laonnois and Bertaignemont where not even a stone of the old Templar houses still stands.

As from 1134, by derogation of Pope Honorius II, the Order was entitled to erect a chapel on their own cemetary in Laon. This is the chapel we visit today. The octagonal rotunda is shouldered by buttresses, the windows still belong to the Romanesque Style and the basis of the roofing presents a denticulated carved decoration with modillions that recalls the Mozarabic Style. The choir is quite simple with the same décor and the apse has a half dome. The bell tower is at the junction of the octagon with porch. This square porch has an ogival vault and later received a floor with a tribune towards the inside of the chapel. This octagon with a cupola confirms Viollet-le-Duc’s theory on Templar architecture, like in Metz, and also this sanctuary seems to have been created after the same plan as the chapel of Sainte-Madeleine (destroyed in 1690) in the nearby Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Vincent. At this time in Laon, the monks alone were allowed to possess cemetaries with a chapel and this architectural arrangement might have inspired the Knights Templar. The chapel housed the sepultures of the most illustrious of them.

Three tombs are still visible. Two of them belonged to Hospitallers of the Order of Saint-John of Jerusalem. The most recent one (XVIth century) shows an erased inscribing, the other one is that of Jacques de Haute-Vesnes who died in 1335. The Knight Templar tomb is the one of chaplain Grégoire, dead on the day of Saint-Martin, in 1268.

Remains of St. John the Baptist May Have Been Found in Bulgaria

2010-08-05T16:01:00.004-04:00

An ancient alabaster reliquary containing bones purportedly belonging to St. John the Baptist have been found in a 5th century Bulgarian monastery on Sveti Ivan Island ("Sveti Ivan" is St. John in Bulgarian and other Slavic languages).

From an article in the Telegraph today:

The remains – small fragments of a skull, bones from a jaw and an arm, and a tooth – were discovered embedded in an altar in the ruins of the ancient monastery, on the island in the Black Sea.
A Greek inscription on the stone casque contains a reference to June 24 – the date on which John the Baptist is believed to have been born.

"We found the relics of St John the Baptist - exactly what the archaeologists had expected," said Bozhidar Dimitrov, Bulgaria's minister without portfolio and a former director of the country's National History Museum, who was present when the stone urn was opened.

"It has been confirmed that these are parts of his skeleton."

Exactly how the relics ended up on the island is a mystery, but Mr Dimitrov said they may have been donated by the Christian Church in Constantinople when Bulgaria was part of the Byzantine Empire.

But other experts cast doubt on the claim, saying carbon dating tests were needed before the bones could be identified as belonging to Christ's baptiser.

Many countries around the Mediterranean claim to have remains of St John, including Turkey, Montenegro, Greece, Italy and Egypt.

Most famously, the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul purportedly has bones of the Baptist. Undoubtedly the Sveti Ivan Island monks believed the bones were authentic, placing them within the altar of their monastery.

From a CNN report on the find:

Fabrizio Bisconti, superintendent of the Vatican Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, told CNN that the commission "will wait until a more thorough study has been conducted, including anthropological analysis, before it will express an opinion on the finding."

Bisconti also said there are thousands of alleged relics of John the Baptist scattered around the world. He said the pontifical commission has not been contacted by the Bulgarian archaeologists, and that it normally does not get involved in the sacred archaeology studies carried outside of Italy.

Christians believe John the Baptist heralded the arrival of Christ and baptized Jesus in the River Jordan. According to the Gospels, John was put to death by beheading on the orders of the local ruler, Herod Antipas. He is considered a particularly significant figure in the Orthodox Church.

The newly discovered reliquary is made of alabaster and dates from approximately the middle of the 5th century, [Excavation leader Kazimir] Popkonstantinov told reporters. The southern Black Sea coast was then part of the Byzantine Empire, ruled from Byzantium, now Istanbul in Turkey.

The bones will be installed today at Sozopol's Church of Saint George, which also contains a supposed piece of the true cross and relics of St. Andrew.

Researchers Identify What May Be King Arthur's Round Table

2010-07-11T23:53:00.002-04:00

A group of researchers exploring on the trail of legendary King Arthur and his kingdom of Camelot now believe it was built on the site of a recently discovered Roman amphitheatre in Chester, England. And they have a new explanation of the famed Round Table.

From the telegraph.uk, "Historians locate King Arthur's Round Table" by Martin Evans:

Legend has it that his Knights would gather before battle at a round table where they would receive instructions from their King.

But rather than it being a piece of furniture, historians believe it would have been a vast wood and stone structure which would have allowed more than 1,000 of his followers to gather.

Historians believe regional noblemen would have sat in the front row of a circular meeting place, with lower ranked subjects on stone benches grouped around the outside.

Historians believe regional noblemen would have sat in the front row of a circular meeting place, with lower ranked subjects on stone benches grouped around the outside.

They claim rather than Camelot being a purpose built castle, it would have been housed in a structure already built and left over by the Romans.

Camelot historian Chris Gidlow said: “The first accounts of the Round Table show that it was nothing like a dining table but was a venue for upwards of 1,000 people at a time.

“We know that one of Arthur’s two main battles was fought at a town referred to as the City of Legions. There were only two places with this title. One was St Albans but the location of the other has remained a mystery.”

The recent discovery of an amphitheatre with an execution stone and wooden memorial to Christian martyrs, has led researchers to conclude that the other location is Chester.

Mr Gidlow said: “In the 6th Century, a monk named Gildas, who wrote the earliest account of Arthur’s life, referred to both the City of Legions and to a martyr’s shrine within it. That is the clincher. The discovery of the shrine within the amphitheatre means that Chester was the site of Arthur’s court and his legendary Round Table.”

The First Templar video game due in early 2011

2010-06-23T03:18:00.003-04:00

Kalypso Media and Haemimont Games will release The First Templar, an action-adventure game for the Xbox 360 and Windows PC in the first quarter of 2011. The First Templar follows a French Knight Templar, and a noble lady who has been pronounced a heretic by the Church. Players uncover a massive conspiracy, explore the mysteries of the Templars, and discover the secret of the Holy Grail—while fighting the forces of the Saracens, King Philip IV of France, and the Inquisition. According to the publisher, twenty historically accurate 13th century locations have been recreated for the game.

Watch the preview.

2010-05-10T01:45:00.003-04:00

The Templar “Superfine Small Car”

2010-05-10T00:35:00.004-04:00

It’s a fair bet to say that when you think of the Knights Templar, you probably envision fearsome guys with swords and lances riding on powerful, snorting, majestic steeds, and not tooting around in four-cylinder, wooden-spoked, open roadsters. But in 1917, that’s just what appeared on the market in America.

Born in Lakewood, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland, the Templar Motors Company came into being. For reasons known only to its founders, they chose to name their upstart company after the Order, and adopted the Maltese Cross as their logo. World War I was raging in Europe, and the new car factory was almost immediately pressed into service manufacturing war munitions. Nevertheless, a few of the company’s first cars rolled off the assembly line, and they were unlike other cars on the road at that time.

From the start, the Templars used an innovative four-cylinder engine design that was more fuel-efficient than most cars of the day, and for the size of the engine, its 43 horsepower output was impressive (by comparison, the 1911 Model T Ford was rated at 22hp. A modern-day Ford Escort manages about 110hp, while a new Corvette cranks out almost 350hp). It’s overhead valve design inspired its name, the "Templar Vitalic Top-Valve Motor."

Templar Motors offered a two-passenger roadster and four- and five-passenger touring cars, priced between $1,985 and $2,255, ($33,000 to $38,000 in 2010), at almost four times the price that Henry Ford was hawking Model T’s. The Templars were truly luxury cars, sporting 27 coats of paint, wooden-spoked wheels, an electric horn, an onboard tire pump, a searchlight, a clock, a locking ignition switch, a windshield wiper, a dashboard light, a complete set of tools, and a unique “neverleak” convertible top. The car also had a special outside compartment that housed a compass and Kodak camera. The company’s advertising called it “The Superfine Small Car.”

In 1920, a Templar Sportette driven by Erwin “Cannonball” Baker (who went on to be the first commissioner of NASCAR) set a series of speed records, including driving from New York to Los Angeles in 4 days, 5 hours, and 43 minutes across mostly mud-soaked, barely passable dirt and gravel roads.

The Templar cars were successful and became the #15 car company out of more than 40 operating in the United States at the time. Between 1917 and 1924, 6,000 Templars were sold by more than 160 dealers. Unfortunately, their history would be similar to the Knights who were their namesake. After a brief period of notable success, they would end literally in flames. Financial mismanagement and a catastrophic fire at their Lakewood plant finally killed off the company by 1924.

Templar Motors is not the only company to use the symbolism of the Order. There are more than 1,900 businesses in the U.S. alone with “Templar” as part of their name. And the next time you are in the grocery, look for King Arthur Flour. Founded in 1790, it is the oldest flour company in America. Its label depicts a Templar knight, carrying a banner with a red cross.

From The Templar Code For Dummies by Christopher Hodapp and Alice VonKannon.

Photo from AutoWeekCollector.com. See also an AW article about this particular car, one of two owned by John L. Smith of Newburgh, Indiana. There are an estimated 30 Templar cars still in existence.

Visiting Cathar Castles

2010-05-08T03:21:00.003-04:00

Interesting article in Sunday's New York Times about traveling and exploring Cathar castles in France's Languedoc region.

See The Besieged and the Beautiful in Languedoc by Tony Perrottet.

Knights Templar Featured In "Solomon's Thieves" Comic

2010-04-30T13:28:00.004-04:00

"Prince of Persia" video game creator Jordan Mechner is interviewed today at Comic Book Resources, and he talks about one of his many new projects under development - a three-part comic book series based upon the Knights Templar, called "Solomon's Thieves."

"Solomon's Thieves" is set in the period of the Knights Templar in France in the 14th Century. I've been fascinated by the Templars for many years, and this was a story I came across while doing research for "Prince of Persia." You can't read about the Crusades without the Templars being mentioned. For many years, I thought this story was fascinating, but I didn't really see how to do it as a movie or a book. Then it really clicked was when I thought to do it in the spirit of Alexander Dumas, one of my favorite writers – something that would be, like "Prince of Persia," a fun swashbuckling adventure that would also be set against a real historical event. It's very rooted in history and I think also very relevant to the modern day. . .

[snip]

"Solomon's Thieves" is really told from the point of view of two knights who come back from the Templar Crusades to find that the world has changed. Like returning veterans of any unpopular war, they have trouble fitting into society. In this case, they arrive in Paris just in time for the entire order of Knights Templar – hundreds of knights in the rank and file up to the grand master himself – to be arrested in a single morning and hauled before the Inquisition on charges of blasphemy and heresy. This is an actual historical event – the overnight destruction of what had been one of the most powerful military religious organizations in Europe. And so the fun of the book is to see these great, sweeping historical events – the conflict between the church and the king and all of it – from the point of view of the small fry, the small fish who slipped between the cracks. They don't necessarily understand what's going on, but we deeply sympathize with their plight because these are guys who joined up to be heroes.

The Knights Templar were like the Japanese Samurai or the Jedi Knights of their time. They represented an ideal. They weren't just the best fighters – though the Templars considered it even odds when they were outnumbered ten to one – but they were the best, noblest knights. They were above material gain at a time when normal knights just fought for plunder. As boys, they dreamed of growing up to be Knights Templar. The red cross on white was a very potent symbol in the Medieval Age, so that's why their fall was so shocking, and the plight of these knights as ordinary enlisted men was something I felt modern audiences could connect with and empathize with.

"Solomon's Thieves" is due in stores May 11th.

Human Remains Found In Rosslyn Chapel

2010-03-01T23:51:00.004-05:00

STV in Scotland is reporting that human remains may have been found in Rosslyn Chapel.

An article by Graham Fraser reports that workmen found bones in the Chapel during conservation work:

The bones, which were found on February 19, have now been removed from the site to be examined by archaeologists to discover their age, type and if they are human or animal. They were discovered under a slab while a new heating system was being installed inside the chapel. There is no record of a burial site in this particular area of the chapel.

The local police are not treating the discovery as a crime, which implies the bones are very old. Rosslyn Chapel authorities have declined to comment. The crypt has been used for the burial of descendants of William St. Clair who built the chapel, and the Sinclair family, but the new discovery is not in an area historically used for interment of bodies.

The famous 15th century chapel is associated by various authors with early Scottish Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, and wide range of pseudo-historical claims, along with being the location of the climax of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. It is undergoing a US$20 million renovation and restoration project.

March and April Are Dummies Months

2010-03-01T23:35:00.000-05:00

Pardon a shameless bit of capitalistic promotion, but it's one that ultimately helps you. The good folks at Wiley Publishing have had a regular program every year at this time, and March has officially been "Dummies Month" . Buy a Dummies book or audio set and get a $5 rebate (up to two per family). But this year, the term has been extended until the end of April. That means two Dummies Months in a row!

Now that means you can buy one or two Dummies books with a purchase price of $6.99 or more, on any subject (not just ours) between March 1st - April 30th, 2010, and get $5 smackers each delivered to your majestic manse's mailbox direct from the publisher.

Now obviously we would like you to take this opportunity to plunk down your hard-earned pelf and procure our books: Freemasons For Dummies, The Templar Code For Dummies, and Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies. Think of it as an economic stimulus package. We do have a poodle to support, after all. But there are more than 1,300 Dummies titles out there, and we would certainly understand if you already own ours...

You can download a pdf of the rebate form here.

Templar Tarot Deck

2009-12-04T19:19:00.004-05:00

Author Stephen Dafoe and artist Allen Chester have published a new deck of Tarot cards, based on Knights Templar history and imagery. Templar Tarot: the Journey.

From his Dafoe's website:

Unlike any other tarot deck, the Templar Tarot deck features two sets of Major Arcana cards taken from the original art of American artist Allen Chester. The significance of the art is interpreted by Stephen Dafoe, renowned Templar historian and Canadian author. Dafoe draws on his vast knowledge of the Templars and related traditions to see the mystical messages that Chester has captured in the art. As with the first edition of the Templar Tarot, this tarot deck will also be a limited edition. This is a perfect deck for those that use tarot as a meditation tool.

Available from Dafoe's website or the publisher, Inspire By Design.

AP: Experts find rare Crusader-era murals in Syria

2009-10-15T13:15:00.005-04:00

Archeologists in Tartous, Syria have discovered rare Crusader murals depicting heaven and hell. The al-Marqab Citadel in Tartous, about 150 miles northeast of Damascus, is thought to be where England's Richard the Lionheart landed at the beginning of the Third Crusade before traveling to Jerusalem to do battle with Saladin.

Story from the Associated Press today:

Archaeologists have discovered two Crusader-era murals depicting heaven and hell in a medieval church on Syria's coast — a rare find that could reveal new information about the Christian knights who battled Muslims for control of the Holy Land hundreds of years ago.
Experts are now renovating the 12th century paintings, which were discovered last year by a joint Syrian-Hungarian team excavating an old Crusader fortress on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean in the eastern city of Tartous.
The murals, which measure about 8 feet (2.5 meters) high and 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide, were hanging on either side of the altar of a 12th century chapel inside the al-Marqab Citadel and had accumulated thick layers of dust and dirt, archaeologists said.
The panel depicting hell shows people being tortured inside a wheel covered with knives and others being hanged and burnt, said Marwan Hassan, head of the Department of Antiquities in Tartous. The one portraying heaven includes saints surrounded by light colors.
Hassan said the Crusader murals were important because they were the first ones found in the Middle Eastdepicting heaven and hell.

Read the rest here.

Other details in an article from the Global Arab Network.

October 13th Interview with Stephen Dafoe

2009-10-13T23:10:00.003-04:00

On the occasion of the 702nd anniversary of the October 13th arrest of the Templars in France, catch Brother and Sir Knight Stephen Dafoe's interview in the Innsmouth Free Press today.

And if you haven't read them, I highly recommend both his books, Nobly Born, about the medieval Order, and The Compasses and the Cross, about the Masonic Templars.

Poke around the Innsmouth Free Press site, as they have done a whole series of articles about the Knights Templar as part of an entire "Templar Week." And for more books about the Knights Templar, see here.

French Knight Templar Property For Sale

2009-09-25T02:16:00.008-04:00

Own your own Templar home. According to a press release by the Sextant French Property Network, this renovated medieval home was originally built by the Knights Templar.

It is set in a 28.8 acre land and comes with a pond, natural spring and various outbuildings including a barn and a bread oven. The property offers 450m2 of living space, comprising on the ground floor: entrance, 34m2 lounge with a fireplace, dining room with a fireplace, 18m2 kitchen with free standing units, 2 bedrooms, bathroom, wc, dressing room and a laundry room. On the first floor there is a 42m2 lounge, 23m2 bedroom, 28m2 bedroom, 2 bathrooms, 36m2 bedroom and a 15m2 room in the tower. The house also has a cellar and a boiler room. Electricity, mains water, broadband, septic tank, wood and oil heating connected.

This house is full of charm and character with original French ceiling (plafond a la francaise), exposed stones, fireplaces and beams. The property is accessed by a magnificent stone porch way leading into an interior courtyard. Located only a short drive from Bergerac.

See the listing here. A paltry $1.25 million (US) and it's yours.

Possible Knight Templar Relic

2009-08-04T03:42:00.004-04:00

Various sources are carrying this UPI story:

LEEDS, England, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A piece of painted wood found at a rummage sale is a priceless 1,300-year-old Knight's Templar relic, a British antiques dealer says.

Martin Roberts of Leeds, England, acquired the piece in a swap for a pine chest and six Victorian glass handles, the Daily Mail reported Monday.

He showed it to other dealers who concluded the 10-inch by 4-inch piece was most likely from a tabernacle used by the Knights Templar to carry religious items, the Mail reported.

"It's a door or a lid, and there may well be a museum out there exhibiting the other half of the box it came from," Roberts said, adding the piece is to be sold by the auction house Christie's in London in December. Roberts said he has no idea how much money the piece will bring.

In 2007, Roberts bought an antique for $83 that turned out to be an Egyptian artifact. He later sold it for $50,000, the Mail said.

The Knights Templar, among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders, existed for about two centuries in the Middle Ages.

According to another account in The Independent:

The former professional golf player astonished experts who insisted on wearing gloves to examine his latest find when he told them that he had driven around for two weeks with the tabernacle on the dashboard of his van.

“When I touched it, it sent shivers through me,” he said yesterday. It was initially checked out by a dealer in Doncaster who suggested the polychrome cartoon images could be of St George and the Dragon. But he now believes it is more likely to be a Roman stabbing a Turk – a reference to the Crusades as well as a priest carrying a cross. A second expert suggested that its origins could be traced back to the Orthodox Church between 700 and 1200.

The door was found at Masham, North Yorkshire, close to Middleham Castle, the former home of Richard III which dates back to the time of the Norman Conquest. One theory is that it may have fallen into the possession of one of the influential residents that inhabited the castle, known as the Windsor of the North.

New Book: Fraternal Regalia I - Knights Templar

2009-06-23T14:11:00.001-04:00

My very good friend, and the current Eminent Commander of Indianapolis' Raper Commandery No. 1, Carson Smith, eats, sleeps, and breathes the Masonic order of the Knights Templar. When John D. Hamilton's book, The American Fraternal Sword, came out earlier this year, depicting more than 600 swords in full color, he described it as "Templar porn."

Comes now a new book by Michael C. MacDonald that I'm afraid is going to keep Sir Knight Carson up all knight reading under the covers with a flashlight: Fraternal Regalia I: Knights Templar - A Collectors Guide to the Orders, Degrees, Activities, Uniforms, Swords, Regalia, and Collectible Souvenirs of the Commandery of the Knights Templar of York Rite Freemasonry. It covers Knights Templar regalia and collectibles from 1800 to 1930.

The book is not yet available on Amazon, but is for sale on Ebay. To quote from the listing,

Hardbound 8/12 x 11. 230 pages! Over 500 high quality B&W photos and illustrations! Many period cabinet photos illustrating the various uniforms, regalia and activities of the Commandery of the Knights Templar! 51 swords illustrated from period regalia catalogs! 19 swords illustrated in detailed pictorials! Black Uniform and White uniforms described in detail! Price Guide Included! This book describes - Masonic Lodge Structure - York Rite Structure - Order of the Red Cross - Order of the Knights of Malta - Order of the Knights Templar - Ritual regalia - KT Rank & Insignia - The White Uniform - The Black Uniform - Fatigue uniform - Hats - Sashes - Swords & Daggers - Conclave Medals - Officers Jewels - Parade & Drill Teams - Mounted Commanderies - Symbology - Triennial Conclaves - Souvenirs - Pilgrimages - Badges - Ribbons - Jewelry

The book is sponsored by the Internet Sword Collectors Association.

The price is $59.

Thanks to Mark Tabbert for the heads up.

Templars and Mysteries of the Mystic Lamb

2009-05-10T15:18:00.008-04:00

A fascinating article by Patrick Bernau on the Socyberty website about artwork in a Belgian cathedral by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, known as the Ghent Alterpiece, or The Mystic Lamb.
It seems that two panels of the composition (called a polyptych) were stolen in 1934 (known as "The Just Judges" and "St. John the Baptist"), and have never been found.
Bernau asks why would a Flemish cathedral painting from the 1400s feature a Knight Templar, a century after their dissolution?
And why did someone steal the panel?
And how did the Nazis get involved?

Bernau has written a book on the painting, Mysteries of the Mystic Lamb, so far only available in Dutch.

Read on...

Vatican Says Knights Templar Protected Turin Shroud

2009-04-05T17:41:00.005-04:00

Vatican researcher Barbara Frale, who rediscovered the Chinon Parchment that showed the Knights Templar were absolved of wrongdoing by Pope Clement V, is in the news again with a new discovery. Frale has found a document that makes the case that the Knights Templar found and protected the famed Turin Shroud, and that it was the source of allegations that the Templars venerated the head of a bearded man. This allegation was part of the accusations of heresy brought against the Order.

According to an article in the timesonline.uk today,

Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican Secret Archives, said the Shroud had disappeared in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and did not surface again until the middle of the fourteenth century. Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Dr Frale said its fate in those years had always puzzled historians.

However her study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access”. There he was shown “a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man” and instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.

Dr Frale said that among other alleged offences such as sodomy, the Knights Templar had been accused of worshipping idols, in particular a “bearded figure”. In reality however the object they had secretly venerated was the Shroud.

The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth that appears to have been used to wrap the body of a man who had been crucified, and ghostly images appear of a man with a bearded face. In spite of almost immediate pronouncements by the Catholic Church that it was a fake, the faithful believed that the image was of Jesus, and continue to do so today. Chemical analysis and carbon dating techniques used in 1988 provided results that the markings were paint and that the cloth dated from the 14th century, but those results were almost immediately called into question. The Shroud is, today, the property of the Vatican, which has always refused to declare it to be the authentic image of Christ.

The Knights Templars have been implicated in the Shroud’s history before this announcement by Barbara Frale. First, it was in the possession of the family of Geoffrey de Charney, Templar Preceptor of Normandy, who was burned at the stake along with Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1314. Geoffrey’s nephew, Geoffri de Charney, apparently had the Shroud, and upon his death, his widow, Jeanne de Vergy, first displayed it in public in 1357.

Author Ian Wilson has claimed in The Shroud of Turin: Burial Cloth of Jesus? that the Templars may have found the preserved head of Jesus, and that the Shroud was used to wrap it up in. In which case the Shroud really does authentically reveal the face of Christ.

Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight, on the other hand, claim that the Shroud, in fact, displays the face and features of none other than Jacques de Molay. They make the argument in their book The Second Messiah that the last Grand Master of the Templars was tortured before his execution, and the Shroud displays the blood of his wounds and the long hair and beard that fit his description. Further, using the carbon dating results from a 1988 test of fabric from the Shroud which place its origin between 1260 and 1380, the time frame fits the period of de Molay’s imprisonment and torture. They conclude that the Shroud was wrapped around de Molay after he bad been brutally worked over, but was still alive.

A completely different theory should interest fans of The Da Vinci Code. Clive Prince and Lynn Picknett’s book, Turin Shroud: In Whose Image? makes the claim that the image was actually a hoax created by none other than Leonardo Da Vinci himself, using a primitive photographic chemical process and a pinhole camera.

For more, see The Templar Code for Dummies.

Templar Tactical: Training For Battle

2009-03-27T19:23:00.003-04:00

Guernsey County, Ohio residents are up in arms over a new police and paramilitary training camp that will open this summer 80 miles east of Columbus. Templar Tactical is building a 200 acre facility for training police, military, and private defense companies. It will include multiple shooting ranges, a shooting house, an apartment building with a movable floor plan and breakable windows and doors, a helicopter landing pad, and more. It will not be open to the public.

According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, Templar Tactical's CEO Bill Janson got the idea for the company while working for a private defense contractor in Iraq.

“The name was selected because of the dual role of the Knights Templar during their time,” Janson said. “First off, they were fierce warriors, which speaks to our military market, and later they assumed the role of protectors, which is indicative of our law-enforcement officers.”

Fighting a war in the MIddle east also comes to mind...

Last Weekend of Dummies Month

2009-03-26T21:29:00.001-04:00

Excuse the intrusion of crass economics, but March is officially "Dummies Month," and there are just a couple of days left.

Buy one or two Dummies books on any subject (not just ours) before March 31st, 2009, and get $5 direct from the publisher. In addition, the Wiley folks will also send along another $5 mail-in rebate form for any Dummies book purchased in June, July or August 2009.

Obviously, we like you to take this opportunity to scoop up our books: Freemasons For Dummies, The Templar Code For Dummies, and Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies. But there are more than 1,300 Dummies titles out there, and they are all part of this offer.

You can download a pdf of the rebate form here.

Do it now before the government nationalizes the book business...

New Knights Templar Movie: Ironclad

2009-03-24T13:22:00.006-04:00

A new movie is in production about the Knights Templar. Ironclad is being directed by Jonathan English and is based on the very real story of England's Rochester Castle. From the Internet Movie Database listing:

It is the year 1215 and the rebel barons of England have forced their despised King John to put his royal seal to the Magna Carta, a noble, seminal document that upheld the rights of free-men. Yet within months of pledging himself to the great charter, the King reneged on his word and assembled a mercenary army on the south coast of England with the intention of bringing the barons and the country back under his tyrannical rule. Barring his way stood the mighty Rochester castle, a place that would become the symbol of the rebel's momentous struggle for justice and freedom.

The film is rumored to star Megan Fox, Paul Giamatti, Robert Carlyle, Bob Hoskins and Richard Attenborough. It is due in theaters in December 2009.

George Smart's Knight Templar Timeline Now Online

2009-03-18T19:52:00.004-04:00

George Smart, author of the indispensable book, The Knights Templar Chronology: Tracking History's Most Intriguing Monks, has posted a revised 2nd edition of his timeline of Templar history on his website at www.georgesmart.com/templar.

The book is available as well for those of us who demand a more tactile relationship with our research material.

695th Anniversary of the Death of Jacques de Molay

2009-03-18T04:48:00.012-04:00

March 18th is the 695th Anniversary of death of Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ, the Knights Templar.

He was born in the eastern French village of Molay in 1244 or 45. Almost nothing is known of his early life, but he joined the Templars at the age of 21 in 1265, and served 42 years as a warrior monk.

In 1291, the Holy Land fell back into the hands of the infidel, and would never fully return to Christian rule. The Templars and the Knights Hospitallers fell back to the coastal city of Acre, which was quickly lost. Both orders subsequently went to the island of Cyprus. The Templars remained here, while the Hospitallers later took the island of Rhodes. That too would be lost eventually, and the Hospitallers eventually settled in Malta, where they became known as the knights of Malta. In spite of the modern Masonic orders that unite these two orders of knights, they were bitter rivals for the wealth and favor of Europe and the Church.

Jacques de Molay was elected Grand Master in 1293 at the age of 47. Immediately he set off to England, France, Aragon and Italy to drum up support for a new crusade to the Holy Land, as well as to fend off a growing call for merging the two orders of knights. Politiucally, the Templars were regarded as the men who lost the Holy Land, and monarchies were becoming distrustful of them. France in particular was feeling overrun with returning, aging knights, who still were free from any kind of taxation or even civil laws, by virtue of Papal bulls that held the order above anyone but the Pope.

King Phillip IV of France and his personal henchman Guillaume de Nogaret had been in severe conflict with the then-reigning pope, Boniface VIII. The pope had declared that the king of France had no right to tax Church property, and the king had, obviously, disagreed. De Nogaret kidnapped an important French bishop, and the pope had come out swinging over it. He issued a papal bull proclaiming that kings must be subordinate to the Church, and that popes held ultimate authority over both spiritual and temporal matters on earth. To make sure they got the message, Boniface excommunicated Phillip and de Nogaret. Phillip answered his challenge by sending the brutal, devious and bad-tempered de Nogaret at the head of an army to meet up with Italian allies and capture the pope. Boniface was indeed kidnapped and held for three days. After literally being beaten to a pulp, he was released and died a month later. The French king had proved just who was subordinate to whom, and he didn’t mind a little papal blood on his hands. Pope Boniface’s successor, Pope Benedict XI, lasted only a year in office, poisoned, it was said, by de Nogaret.

But there had been diplomatic difficulties to suffer for killing two popes. Consequently, King Phillip decided it would be easier to just buy one. He began procuring cardinals, pulling strings behind the scenes until the number of French cardinals in the Vatican’s College of Cardinals was equal to the Italian ones. They then obligingly elected his handpicked candidate, Bertrand de Goth, making him Pope Clement V. The city of Rome was in turmoil, and the safety of the Vatican was in question. So, it didn’t take much to convince the new French pope that his life would be in serious danger by living there. Clement obliged by staying in France, having his ceremony of investiture in Lyons. He remained in France, eventually moving the Holy See to the city of Avignon (which was actually owned by the King of Sicily at the time) in 1309, right on Phillip’s back door step, where he built a new papal palace. Catholics often refer to it as the “Babylonian Captivity.” Nowadays it’s usually called the Avignon Papacy or the Great Schism.

Clement had everything Phillip wanted in a pope: he was puny, weak, new in the job, and owed everything to his French king. Now was the time for the boldest move of Phillip’s reign – the arrest of the Knights Templar.

Jacques de Molay left Cyprus to head straight for a meeting with the new Pope, and he had high hopes for success, especially since they were countrymen. He couldn’t at this point have known of the dark forces that were assembling against him behind the scenes. In June of 1307, de Molay rode into Paris at the head of a column of his knights, with a dozen horses laden with gold and silver, to begin the financing the new Crusade. For the next several months, Phillip treated the aging Grand Master with interest and diplomacy, and de Molay believed he and the Order were at a new turning point.

The circumstances of the arrests on October 13th, 1307, and seven years of trials of the Templars are well known to most of us, but we are most concerned with the last Grand Master tonight. By 1314, both the pope and public opinion had abandoned the Knights Templar. The four senior Templar officers in Phillip’s custody had been waiting in prison for seven grim years. All of them were old, the youngest being Geoffroi de Charney, who was almost 60. Jacques de Molay was in his 70s, and had spent four years in solitary confinement.

The four men were finally led onto a platform in front of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral to hear the charges and make their public confessions. The charges were read, and two of the men accepted their fate of perpetual imprisonment and were led away.

But Jacques de Molay, and his trusted follower Geoffroi de Charney, did not follow suit. Weakened with age and imprisonment, de Molay shouted in a voice that startled the assembly that he and the Templars were innocent of all the charges. They were returned to their cells at once, while Phillip called together his council and quickly pronounced sentence, using the insane logic of the Inquisition; if they had recanted their confessions, then they were considered “relapsed heretics,” and the penalty was the stake.

Late that afternoon, de Molay and de Charney were led to the place of execution, which was a tiny isolated island adjacent to the Isle de la Citè, called the Ile-des-Juifs, the “Island of the Jews.” The condemned men could see Notre Dame Cathedral in the east, but the site was not chosen for their view. Rather, it was chosen so that King Phillip could enjoy the entertainment without leaving his palace just across the River Seine.

Each man was stripped down to his shirt and tied to the stake. Jacques de Molay, with unbelievable courage, asked not only that he be turned to face the Cathedral, but that his hands be freed, so that he could die at prayer. His request was granted. The two men were roasted alive by the Inquisitional method that began slowly with hot coals, so that their agony could be prolonged as much as possible. It was dusk on March 19th, 1314.

When the Pont Neuf was built, the Île des Juifs was joined to the rest of the Île de la Cité, and today there are not one but two plaques near the bridge to commemorate this event. According to legend, Jacques de Molay did not go to his God in silence. Instead, he died defiantly shouting his innocence and that of the Templars, calling on King Phillip and Pope Clement to meet him before the throne of God in one year’s time, where they would all be judged together. Creepily enough, both men, relatively young, would be dead within the year. One month after the death of de Molay, Pope Clement V, age 54, died, it was said of cancer. Phillip the Fair, age 46, would die in a hunting accident probably brought on by a stroke. He died on November 29th.

A non-Masonic order of modern Knights Templar claim deMolay appointed a successor to himself secretly, and the order survived the centuries. Masonic Templars make no such claim, but the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem tells the tale that DeMolay’s skull and leg bones were pulled from the ashes and secretly buried with the document of succession, called the Larmenius Charter. Others claim that during the French revolution, as King Louis XVI’s head was chopped off by the guillotine, someone rushed up from the crowd and proclaimed, “Jacques De Molay, Thou art avenged!”

The gruesome death of Jacques de Molay is the last act of the Templar story. At least, the last act of the accepted, scholarly story of the Knights Templar that is told, in names and dates, between the covers of the history books. But in reality, his death is only the beginning. It’s the beginning of the myth of the Knights Templar, which is the maelstrom around which an endless stream of fact blended with speculation swirls, unabated.

(Adapted from The Templar Code For Dummies)

National Geographic's "Secrets of the Knights Templar"

2009-03-18T04:33:00.003-04:00

The National Geographic Channel will rerun its program about the Knights Templar in the week before Easter. Secrets of the Knights Templar will air Monday, April 6, 2009, at 9 PM ET/PT, as part of a pre-Easter lineup purporting to explore the "secrets" of Christianity.

Book: "The American Fraternal Sword"

2009-03-05T16:21:00.002-05:00

"Are we knights?"
"Do you want to be?"

Remember in National Treasure when young Benjamin Gates finds grandpa's Knight Templar sword in the attic? That scene gets repeated in real life every day in dozens of attics and basements. They can be from the Masonic Knights Templar, the Knights of Pythias, the Catholic Knights of Columbus, the Grand Army of the Republic, or a bumper crop of other fraternal groups who jumped on the drill team bandwagon after the Civil War ended. When the war ended, the military uniform and sword suppliers went looking for new business, and like Harold Hill selling band uniforms in The Music Man, they created a craze for marching and sword drilling in parades. Men returning home from the war sought the camaraderie and the trappings of military life (made far more enjoyable by not having people shooting at them anymore, and knowing they could go home at the end of the day). Thus, the fraternal sword came to be a treasured possession for literally hundreds of thousands of men across the US, from the 1860s up through today (albeit in much smaller numbers these days). Some were plain, some were ornate, but all were the symbol of a modern knighthood, and a tradition of honor and chivalry.

A new book has just been published that will make identifying that long hidden fraternal sword simpler. The American Fraternal Sword: An Illustrated Reference Guide by John D. Hamilton, Joseph Marino and James Kaplan. According to the website, it contains more than 900 color photos, showing almost 600 different swords, arranged by organization, with a directory of manufacturers, organizations and their insignia. Pricey ay $79.99, but absolutely invaluable for collectors, dealers, and your Templar commandery.

John D. Hamilton was the curator at the Scottish Rite's National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts for many years, and he is the author of "Material Culture of the American Freemasons."

Thanks to Mark Tabbert for the heads up on this.

March is Dummies Month

2009-02-26T19:20:00.000-05:00

Pardon a shameless bit of capitalistic promotion, but it's one that ultimately helps you. March is officially "Dummies Month," and the good folks at Wiley Publishing have a regular program every year at this time. Buy a Dummies book or audio set and get a $5 rebate (up to two per family).

That means you can buy one or two Dummies books on any subject (not just ours) between March 1st - 31st, 2009, and get $5 smackers each delivered to your majestic manse's mailbox direct from the publisher. In addition, the Wiley folks will also send along another $5 mail-in rebate form for any Dummies book purchased in June, July or August 2009.

Now obviously we would like you to take this opportunity to plunk down your hard-earned pelf and procure our books: Freemasons For Dummies, The Templar Code For Dummies, and Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies. Think of it as an economic stimulus package. We do have a poodle to support, after all. But there are more than 1,300 Dummies titles out there, and we would certainly understand if you already own ours...

You can download a pdf of the rebate form here.

Barbara Frale's "The Templars: The Secret History Revealed"

2009-01-18T17:01:00.007-05:00

Just tearing into the long-awaited English translation of Barbara Frale's 2004 book, The Templars: The Secret History Revealed (2009, Arcade Publishing). Frale, a staff historian with the Vatican Secret Archives, is credited with rediscovering in 2001 the Chinon Parchment, the record of the papal investigation into the charges against the medieval Order, and the subsequent pardon to them granted by Pope Clement V.

The brief foreword by Umberto Eco has the following priceless remarks: "No other subject has ever inspired more hacks from more countries throughout time than the Templars. . . The only way to determine if a book on the Templars is serious is to check if it ends in 1314..."

Only complaint so far is that it does not have a translation of the Chinon document itself.

Michael Spradlin's "The Youngest Templar"

2008-12-28T20:29:00.002-05:00

Check out Michael Spradlin's website for his new book, The Youngest Templar: Keeper of the Grail.

I endorse his book even if his website bio claims he has an irrational fear of Hoosiers (both Indiana and the Gene Hackman movie).

NBC's "The Last Templar" Website and Preview

2008-12-28T17:42:00.002-05:00

The website for NBC's miniseries, "The Last Templar," based on Raymond Khoury's novel, is up and running, with a new preview. Premieres January 25th.

The new and Improved Knight Templar Magazine

2008-12-28T04:13:00.000-05:00

Chapeaux off and huzzahs to the Knight Templar Magazine and its editor Sir Knight John Palmer. Over the last few months, with the strong encouragement of Most Eminant Grand Master Koon, the monthly magazine has shed its dated, black and white skin, cut back on grip-n-grin (GAG) photos, and been reborn. It now hits mailboxes in full color, with limited advertising, color photos, an increase in pages, and honest-to-goodness articles about Templarism (both medieval and modern), chivalry, Christian history, archeology, and symbolism. And SK Palmer has assembled a prestigious lineup for the mag's editorial board: Rex Hutchens, Stephen Dafoe, Aaron Shoemaker, Leroy Delionbach, Terry Plemons, and Sid Dorris.

In addition to going out to 130,000 Templars every month, it is also available online at www.issu.com.

Dafoe's Templar Comic "Outremer" No. 1 Now Available

2008-12-10T18:27:00.004-05:00

Back in the days when I was a much smaller Hodapp, I engaged in that time-honored practice of kiddom: reading under the covers with a flashlight when I was supposed to be doing something more useful, like sleeping. Even at that age, I reckoned, there’ll be plenty of time for sleep when you die. Mad Magazine, comics from Stan Lee or the DC guys would always land me in the preadolescent version of the slammer, but there was always one line of comics sure to save me from a late-night bawling out: Classics Illustrated. This line of comics did just what it sounds like. They took classic stories (The Three Musketeers, House of the Seven Gables, War of the Worlds, and more than a hundred others), splashed them in full color across kid-friendly pages, and kept me far more interested than any of that malarky about some self-appointed do-gooder in tights from Krypton.

Author Stephen Dafoe has written about the Knights Templar from almost every conceivable angle over the years—as straight history (Nobly Born), as speculation (The Warriors and the Bankers), and most recently, the origins and growth of the Masonic Knights Templar Order (The Compasses and the Cross). Now, he and artist Bob Prodor’s new comic book treatment of the medieval Knight Templar, Outremer, presents the Order in a way no one has done before, and it brings back my fond memories of those Classics Illustrated of my youth, for all of the same reasons. It tells the legendary story of the origin, rise and fall of the Templars in the Holy Land, and it does it with action-packed style. Issue One: Origins introduces Hughes de Payens and Geoffroi de St. Omer in the hills outside of Jerusalem, protecting pilgrims from attacks by Arab bandits. Through their eyes, the history of Jerusalem and the First Crusade to capture the Holy Land from the Infidel unfolds.

Outremer effectively illustrates the historic troubles of Jerusalem and the religious multi-culturalism that came and went over the centuries before the arrival of European pilgrims and knights. And it weaves the most famous “must-haves” of the Templar tales into the story, like the iconic image of two Templar knights sharing a horse, and the crowds whipped into a crusading frenzy, shouting Deus le volt! (“God Wills It!”). But best of all, it achieves that delicate balancing act of education and entertainment. Outremer is just plain fun to read. It puts forth the true story of the Crusades and the beginnings of the Order in a compact and exciting way, and is over much too quickly. Dafoe and Prodor have a real winner with Outremer. Four issues are planned in the series, and I’m already impatient for Issue 2, even if I know how the story turns out in the end.

I even got bawled out by the missus for reading by flashlight under the covers.

The first issue is available at www.templarcomics.com as a stand alone book, electronic download or in a limited edition collector's set that contains a few extra goodies.

Spanish Knights Templar Sue Pope

2008-08-04T16:21:00.001-04:00

The Telegraph.co.uk is reporting today that the Knights Templar in Spain have decided to sue the Vatican to get their stuff back:

The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ, whose members claim to be descended from the legendary crusaders, have filed a lawsuit against Benedict XVI calling for him to recognise the seizure of assets worth €100 billion (US$150 billion).

They claim that when the order was dissolved by his predecessor Pope Clement V in 1307, more than 9,000 properties as well as countless pastures, mills and other commercial ventures belonging to the knights were appropriated by the church.

But their motive is not to reclaim damages only to restore the "good name" of the Knights Templar.

"We are not trying to cause the economic collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, but to illustrate to the court the magnitude of the plot against our Order," said a statement issued by the self-proclaimed modern day knights.

And I am the real Anastasia.

Stephen Dafoe's Outremer

2008-07-26T14:49:00.000-04:00

Friend and Brother Stephen Dafoe is seemingly indefatigable. In the last year he has published Nobly Born: An Illustrated History of the Knights Templar, one of the best introductory works to the history and legends of the medieval Knights Templar, combined with beautiful illustrations and maps.

This year, he follows it up with The Compasses and the Cross, a unique book that traces the origins and development of the Masonic Knights Templar, and separates fact from Masonic myth-making. There is literally no other work like it, and Stephen has created a book of tremendous worth to the fraternity and to others who seek to study it.

With Comic-Con going on in San Diego this week, it's appropriate to announce Stephen's latest project. It combines his love of the Knights Templar with comic books. He and Edmonton artist Bob Prodor have joined forces to create Outremer: The Saga of the Knights Templar. According to his website, Outremer's pen and ink work is complete, and is in the final stages of coloring. he is predicting a fall 2008 release date for the first of four issues.

Mice Templar Animated Film

2008-07-25T01:04:00.004-04:00

Kidvid network Nickelodeon is producing a new cartoon movie, The Mice Templar, written by Mike Avon Oeming and Bryan Glass. According to a Hollywood Reporter story,

"Mice" is an epic about a young mouse named Karic and the prophecy that leads him to reunite the long-disbanded order of the Mice Templar, a group of mice knights.

Templar Treasure Hunters Dig In Bornholm Island Church

2008-07-23T22:20:00.003-04:00

As we discussed in The Templar Code For Dummies, Denmark's Bornholm Island is the hot new spot for Templar treasure seekers. And apparently, some would-be Holy Grail hunters decided o dig some exploratory holes in the largest round church on Bornholm Island. As reported in the Copenhagen Post:

Stories of hidden treasures and connections to the Knights Templar inspired unknown vandals early Tuesday morning to drill two holes into the floor of Østerlars Church on the island of Bornholm, reported TV2 News.

The structure is a well-visited 12th century 'round church', of which there are four on Bornholm. But the church is especially popular among fans of conspiracy stories surrounding the Holy Grail and a possible union between Jesus and Mary Magdalen - a tale most recently made famous by Dan Brown's 'The DaVinci Code'.

Danish author Erling Haagensen's books readily connect the island's round churches to the crusading knights. He claims that the churches' symmetrical placement is part of the ongoing mystery surrounding the knights, who he claims settled on the island.

Haagensen also wrote that there was a secret chamber under the floor of the church. Geo-radar studies have confirmed that the room does actually exist, and Haagensen has suggested drilling holes in the floor to send a micro camera down to view the room.

The would-be thieves attempted to take that message to heart Tuesday morning, but it is not known whether they managed to sneak a peak at the secret room's contents.

In a recent Danish children's film, 'The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar', it is suggested that a valuable treasure is hidden in the room - possibly the Holy Grail.

Universal to make new 'Knights Templar' movie

2008-05-07T17:55:00.002-04:00

From May 5th's Hollywood Reporter.

Universal has picked up the mantle of "The Knights Templar," acquiring a spec script by Adam Torchia and Justin Stanley, for filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov and Marc Platt to produce.

Platt will produce via his Universal-based Marc Platt Prods. while Bekmambetov, the Russian director of the "Night Watch" movies and Universal's upcoming comic-book actioner "Wanted," is producing with Jim Lemley, his partner at Bazelevs Prods.

The script, a period actioner, revolves around the Knights Templar, who fresh from the Crusades fend off an invading vampire army seeking to destroy the Holy Grail.

Vampires. And Templars. And the Holy Grail.

And vampires.

Erotic Templar Tales?!

2008-04-04T02:29:00.005-04:00

Well, now I've seen everything.

Erotic Tales of the Knights Templar in the Holy Land, labeled as gay left-handed "literature."

Maybe the Inquisition was right.

Khoury's "The Last Templar" To Be NBC Mini-Series

2008-03-16T09:09:00.003-04:00

TV Guide reports that NBC is making its first mini-series in many years: "The Last Templar," based on Raymond Khoury's bestselling novel. The miniseries centers on New York archaeologist Tess Chaykin (Mira Sorvino), who investigates the Knights Templar after a group of masked horsemen steal an artifact from the Metropolitan Museum. Victor Garber will play Monsignor De Angelis, a priest who helps with the investigation.

Shooting begins next month in Montreal and Morocco for an airdate later in the year.

Indiana Medieval Group To Confer Templar Orders April 12

2008-03-12T02:47:00.004-04:00

From the Indiana supplement to the March 2008 Knight Templar Magazine:

Fourteenth-century Europe comes to Indiana Orders in period costume at Indiana Masonic Home
by Ed Sebring

All Sir Knights are invited to see the Orders of Knights Templary conferred “in the fullest possible form” by members of Levant Preceptory dressed in the arms and armor of the 13th and 14th centuries.

The “Knight Templar Festival” will begin with the Illustrious Order of the Red Cross at 10 a.m. EST on Satur-day, April 12, in back by the barn at the Indiana Masonic Home in Franklin. Lunch will be served at noon at the shelter house with grills, followed by the Order of Malta and the Mediterranean Pass at 1 p.m. The Order of the Temple is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.

Finally, a “medieval feast” will be served at 6 p.m. Total cost for both meals is $25, a portion of which will go toward a project for Masonic Home residents. Reservations should be made through SK Mike Ritter, Deputy Battalion Commander, mdritter@comcast.net, or 4504 N. Ball Ave, Muncie, IN 47304

So why is the Grand Commandery of Indiana sponsoring such a conferral?

“Last year the York Rite did a one-day class in April and it was a success,” said Grand Commander Andrew R. Jackson. “I wanted something special for this year and we have the Levant folks up to speed and they wished to confer the Order of the Temple.

“I’ve served on the IMH Board for many years and my wife works there, and I thought it only fitting to bring Templary to our Home. I have the petition from the IMH Chaplain and have been promised one from the new IMH CEO, John Rose.

“Indiana Templary can grow with fine events such as this one. Keeping the interest of the times and changing ages of our current and new members should be at the forefront of our Grand Commandery leadership. The York Rite is on the move with the many programs and members working to increase our member-ship This event has good basic entertainment for all who will attend.”

The “Levant folks” are the members of Levant Preceptory, a group of Hoo-sier Sir Knights who haves invested hundreds of dollars of their own money to acquire Norman-style helmets, chain mail, swords and clothing as the crusading Knights Templar would have worn 700 years ago. The Levant is the crescent of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and “preceptory” is the name our Canadian brethren use for their local units instead of “commandery.” The reenactors adopted that name to indicate the time and place they are trying to re-enact, and to indicate they are an organized group but not a separate commandery.

Members of Levant Preceptory marched in costume during this past IMH pilgrimage. Their first performance was Oct. 13 in Shelbyville, a day that was precisely 700 years after the arrest of the crusading Knights Templar on trumped- up charges of heresy. In a darkened room, the Levantines spoke as our spiritual Knight Templar ancestors might have spoken, about their fears for their future and how they would react personally to the news of the arrests. But in previous interviews, officials of Levant Preceptory said it was their dearest wish to get to portray the Orders on candidates in period costume. Now they have that chance.

"We're very excited about finally having a firm date to confer the Order of the Temple for the first time as a group,” said SK James Dillman, director of work for Levant Preceptory. “I wouldn't describe what I'm feeling as pressure and we're certainly not scared; responsibility is probably a better word. We owe it to the candidates to properly convey the lessons of the Order of the Temple and I'm confident that we'll do just that. We're taking our work very seriously. Our experience in Shelbyville taught
us that people are very excited about seeing us in the period costumes, so that adds an element of fun for us as well.” At this point, Dillman expects 17 Sir Knights to appear in period costume to confer the Orders on April 12.

“We're going to have to make a few very minor adjustments because of the broadswords and the equipment we'll be wearing,” Dillman said. “We'll be rehearsing a couple of times in March and will do a full dress rehearsal on Friday night before the festival.”

The 'X' Zone Radio Show, Monday Night 3/17

2008-03-11T09:06:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, March 18th will be the anniversary of the burning of Jacques de Molay at the stake in Paris in 1314, and the end of the medieval Order.

Brother Stephen Dafoe ("Nobly Born") and I will be joining host Rob McConnell on the 'X' Zone Radio Show, Monday March 17th, between 10PM and 2AM, EST (not certain yet which segment - I'll update when I know), talking Templars.

The show is heard on the TalkStar Radio Network throughout the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. The 'X' Zone is also available via TalkStar Radio streaming audio at www.xzone-radio.com and then clicking on the red flashing "ON AIR."

Chinon Parchment Reproduction Going Like Hotcakes - Not!

2008-02-29T17:31:00.005-05:00

As reported in this space, the Vatican has printed a mere 799 reproductions of the Chinon Parchment, a document issued by Pope Clement V that absolved the captive Templar Knights at Chinon of heresy and wrongdoing. Collectors around the world, it was thought, would snap up these hot knock-offs like hotcakes. And they have indeed sold about as well as you'd expect $8,400 hotcakes would sell - there are still 300 of the Processus Contra Templarios available.

Sure, the leather binding and the reproduction of the Pope's was seals are cool and all, but I suspect most of us are waiting for the paperback edition.

How's your Italian? Here's the publisher's website.

Not Your Usual Templar Chapeau Use

2008-02-13T17:26:00.000-05:00

The new Sports Illustrated Swim Suit issue hit newsstands today. Indy driver Danica Patrick will undoubtedly get all of the big, noisy flacking from the press, but Masons can hold their heads up proudly as well - especially members of the Knights Templar. According to friend and brother Russ Spice in Detroit, who keeps his finger on the pulse of such things, on page 180, Brazilian model Daniella Sarahyba is wearing a topless swimsuit, posing coyly with a Knights Templar Chapeau.

Grand Commandery recruiting poster on its way...

History Channel Tonight: Underground Apocalypse

2008-01-31T18:42:00.000-05:00

Thursday Night 1/31/08, the History Channel will run Cities Of The Underworld: Underground Apocalypse.

For billions of people across the globe, Jerusalem is considered ground zero for Armageddon. And while most of the world's population considers it a holy land, it's also one of the bloodiest cities the world has ever known. From a hidden occult city built by the Knights Templar to the hiding place for the Dead Sea Scrolls, the evidence of the apocalypse is buried all over the holy city. Host Don Wildman has special access to a sacred stone said to keep the world from ultimate chaos, and finds evidence of John the Baptist's apocalyptic sermons... he's heading into a vast underground that ignited the violent visions of the end of the world.

Color me skeptical on the "occult city" of the Templars, but we'll see. It reruns Friday, February 1st at 2:00 AM, and Saturday, February 16th at 4:00 PM

Da Vinci Code Movie Props Auction at Lincoln Cathedral

2008-01-29T16:31:00.000-05:00

From the Press Association today:

Lincoln Cathedral said it plans to sell 43 wall hangings that were used to turn it into Westminster Abbey for the Hollywood film.
The cathedral said it is also selling five statues that it put on display with the 8ft hangings after filming finished.
Westminster Abbey controversially refused to allow stars Tom Hanks and Sir Ian McKellen the chance to act out the final scenes from the adaptation of Dan Brown's bestselling novel. At the time it claimed the book was "theologically unsound".
The proceeds from the latest sale will add to Lincoln Cathedral's coffers. It was reportedly paid £100,000 when it was used as a location for the film in August 2005.

Templars in Hellgate London

2008-01-07T01:51:00.000-05:00

A longtime (I'll say - since high school!) buddy called tonight and mentioned that he's lately been playing a PC game, Hellgate London, which has as part of its central story line a post-apocalyptic group of Templar warriors:

A post-apocalyptic London has been overrun by hordes of terrifying demons, leaving the city desolate and scorched by hellfire. Those who were unlucky enough to survive now gather in the only sanctuary left, the Underground, banding together in order to gain a foothold against the minions of darkness and ultimately save the bloodline of humanity.

It is no surprise that these sole survivors come from three of society’s most elite factions, each of whom are masters of a robust number of skills and weapons essential to demon-thrashing.

The Templar, a secret society preserving the rites of the original Knights Templar, mix futuristic technology with ancient artifacts to create powerful weapons and armor perfect for short-ranged and melee attacks.

Apparently, those "ancient artifacts" include lots of all-seeing eyes and Masonic squares and compasses.

And for the esoterics in the audience:

The Cabalists are students of the dark arts and edges of science which often leaves them standing right on the line between good and evil. Their mystifying spells make them suited for mid-range combat.

Da Vinci and the Holy Grail in Iceland!

2008-01-02T22:28:00.000-05:00

The Iceland Review Online is reporting that the Holy Grail might just be lurking in a subterranean dome under the ice of an Icelandic mountain pass.

Architect Thórarinn Thórarinsson and Italian "cryptographer" Italian cryptographer Giancarlo Gianazza believe the Holy Grail and other lost objects may be located in the Hrunamannahreppur district in southwest Iceland.

Gianazza believes to have found important clues to where the Holy Grail is hidden in poems by Dante and artwork by Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance painters. His research has led him to conclude that the treasure is located in a five-meter-large secret underground dome by Skipholtskrókar near the Kjölur mountain pass.

Their theory is that the Knights Templar (naturally) came to Iceland in 1217 to find a hiding place for the Grail and other great gobs of loot. Medieval Icelandic scribbler Snorri Sturluson supposedly helped the knights dig this elusive underground dome in Iceland’s rugged mountains.

The clinching evidence appears when you superimpose a small section of Da Vinci's The Last Supper over a map of the area, and voila! They sort of, kind of match up, maybe, if you click your heels together and make a wish three times.

Something tells me they are riding on the wings of a grant, or looking for investors. Just a guess.

Levant Preceptory in Templar Magazine

2007-12-19T03:53:00.000-05:00

Levant Preceptory, Indiana's only period recreation Masonic Knight's Templar group, is featured in the Indiana Supplement of the monthly Knights Templar Magazine for January.

Rosslyn Chapel Bans Photography

2007-12-19T01:35:00.001-05:00

Beginning January 2nd, visitors to Scotland's Rosslyn Chapel can just leave their cameras in the car. The Chapel authorities say they are doing this for "health and safety reasons." It seems that videographers are tripping and falling on the uneven floor slabs as they watch their viewfinders instead of their step.

And still cameras? Oh, the flash bulbs cause epileptic seizures.

But don't worry.

The gift shop has plenty of souvenirs to make up for the loss of that keepsake photo you won't be able to take.

Stephen Dafoe's Nobly Born

2007-12-11T15:48:00.000-05:00

I'm way behind on author review on the new manuscript; last week was a mess that kept us away from home three days longer than anticipated; and I'm neglecting much that needs to be done this week.

That said, the last thing I need to be doing is reading a book that is not research on the current project, since Friday is my drop-dead cutoff for revisions. Nevertheless, my new copy of Stephen Dafoe's Nobly Born: An Illustrated History of the Knights Templar arrived while we were gone, and I haven't been able to stay away from it. So, this is no formal review, but a last-minute bid to recommend it for your Christmas list. (I mean, provided that you have already ordered The Templar Code For Dummies first.)

Stephen (publisher of Templar History magazine) has managed to do something fresh in the Templar book universe, and beginners and those thoroughly versed in Templar lore alike will find much to like about this book. Dreamers and "speculators" take note: this is no "Templars found treasure, sailed to Scotland, saved Robert the Bruce, started Freemasonry and hid their loot at Oak Island" waste of time. What it IS is a concise (deceptively thin-looking), historical examination of what is truly known about the Knights Templar, going back to medieval sources. Their formation, rise, organization, battles, failures and fall — all here, presented with Stephen's skill as a reporter, combined with his flair for making complex concepts easy to understand, and frankly, fun to read. A cursory flip through Nobly Born rewards you with an abundance of illustrations, many of them newly created by Stephen, showing battles, preceptories, troop movements, uniforms, hierarchy and more. All packaged in a truly beautiful edition by Lewis Masonic.

The book also features original artwork from Templar author and artist Gordon Napier and Indiana Masonic artist Stephen McKim.

This is truly unlike any other Templar book on the market, and well worth its £19.99 ($33) cover price.

Richard Leigh RIP

2007-12-03T15:30:00.000-05:00

Holy Blood, Holy Grail co-author Richard Leigh died last week at 64 – obituaries said of a heart condition. Many who knew him believe it was ill health brought on by the aftermath of the disasterous lawsuit by him and his writing partner, Freemason Michael Baigent, against Dan Brown. Between the original suit and the appeal, their court costs came to more than £2.3 million (almost US $5 million).

Pridian's blog Codex Celtica does a good job in laying out Leigh's personality, his life and his most recent setbacks in Death of a Genteel Bohemian.

Templars and National Treasure Book of Secrets?

2007-11-24T04:51:00.000-05:00

I spotted a YouTube clip shot in a Border's book store in Washington DC of a scene from National Treasure: Book of Secrets, featuring the comedy relief sidekick character of Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) signing his new book, "The Templar Treasure." Apparently the gag is that no one is buying or asking for an autograph.

Jeebus. Is EVERYBODY writing Templar books these days?

Angels & Demons film delayed by strike

2007-11-18T05:16:00.000-05:00

Nikki Finke is reporting that the big screen version of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons will delay its shooting date, due to the strike of the Writer's Guild. The prequel to The Da Vinci Code, re-teaming director Ron Howard and Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon still has a projected worldwide release date of May 15, 2009.

Even though DVC's screen writer Akiva Goldsman received an industry record-setting $4 million (for an adaptation of an existing novel!), apparently Tom Hanks is an unhappy camper over the script as it now exists. It had been anticipated to start filming in Europe in March 2008, but that's now been bumped back. The writer's strike is in its third week.

Still no word from Dan Brown or his publisher about the long-awaited Solomon Key.

Chinon Parchment translation

2007-10-23T16:20:00.000-04:00

W:. Phillipe Garver, Master of Lodge Vitruvian No. 767 and Eminent Grand Commander of Raper Commandery No. 1 Knights Templar of Indianapolis just passed along a website link for an English translation of the Chinon Parchment, thereby saving you about $8,000 off of the Vatican edition.

Damian Thompson's Holy Smoke

2007-10-16T06:07:00.000-04:00

Damian Thompson's blog Holy Smoke on the the Telegraph.co.uk site has a good piece from Monday, Talking Nonsense About The Templars.

Speaking of Holy Smoke, apparently Polish Catholics have received a vision of Pope John Paul II from beyond the grave. The Vatican News Service is reporting that the vision appeared in a bonfire lit near the late pontiff's Polish birthplace, commemorating his death two years ago.

Update on Vatican Templar Book

2007-10-12T20:05:00.000-04:00

More news has been released about the new book being published about Pope Clement V's exoneration of the Knights Templar. According to the Associated Press, "Only 799 copies of the 300-page volume, "Processus Contra Templarios," — Latin for "Trial against the Templars" — are for sale, said Scrinium publishing house, which prints documents from the Vatican's secret archives. Each will cost $8,377."

Reuters describes the edition in more detail:

A reproduction of the minutes of trials against the Templars, "'Processus Contra Templarios -- Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars'" is a massive work and much more than a book -- with a 5,900 euros price tag.

"This is a milestone because it is the first time that these documents are being released by the Vatican, which gives a stamp of authority to the entire project," said Professor Barbara Frale, a medievalist at the Vatican's Secret Archives.

"Nothing before this offered scholars original documents of the trials of the Templars," she told Reuters in a telephone interview ahead of the official presentation of the work on October 25.

The epic comes in a soft leather case that includes a large-format book including scholarly commentary, reproductions of original parchments in Latin, and -- to tantalize Templar buffs -- replicas of the wax seals used by 14th-century inquisitors.

Reuters was given an advance preview of the work, of which only 799 numbered copies have been made.

One parchment measuring about half a meter wide by some two meters long is so detailed that it includes reproductions of stains and imperfections seen on the originals.

I hope their roll of the dice works on this special edition, or the Holy See will have a garage full of them for a long time. I'm afraid I'll have to wait for the paperback edition.

Knights Templar to Mark 700th Anniversary of Arrest, Torture, Executions

2007-10-12T19:25:00.000-04:00

(Shelbyville, IN) On October 13, 2007 it will have been 700 years ago that the medieval Knights Templer, the richest and most powerful order of knights in the world, were arrested all across France by King Phillip IV.

Now a group of Indiana Freemasons known as the Knights Templar will commemorate the event in a ceremony on Saturday, October 13, 2007 in Shelbyville, Indiana, dressed in medieval chain mail, helmets and tunics, and brandishing broadswords like their medieval counterparts.

Many claim the arrest of the Templars is why Friday the 13th is considered to be unlucky – a phobia called by the unwieldy name paraskavedekatriaphobia.

Originally formed in Jerusalem at the end of the first Crusade by just nine French knights, within 200 years the Templars rose to become the first international bankers and the most powerful and influential force in Europe and the Holy Land. But on that fateful Friday the 13th in October 1307, the Order was destroyed.

France’s King Phillip IV ordered the Knights to be arrested and tortured into admitting to lurid accusations of heresy, while a weak pope, Clement V, looked on helplessly.

Most historians agree today that Phillip was simply out to steal the Templars’ vast wealth, and invented the charges of heresy as an excuse. That view seems to be shared by the modern-day Vatican.

The Vatican took this anniversary week of the Templars’ arrests to announce they would soon publish a book based on a long lost document that shows Pope Clement V secretly exonerated the order of heresy in 1308.

Renewed awareness of the Knights Templar has come from their mention in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven, but the Freemasons have had their own group called the Knights Templar since the 1700’s, according to Christopher Hodapp, co-author of The Templar Code For Dummies. Hodapp, who is a member of Levant Preceptory, says that new interest in the Templars and the Masons is growing among younger men. “Fans that have grown up with tales of Lord of the Rings and Jedi Knights are looking for something comparable in real life that is legendary, and mythical. You don’t get much larger than life than the true story of the Templars.”

The greatest mystery of the Templars is the whereabouts of their legendary treasure. Phillip claimed he never found it, and wild speculation has existed for centuries as to its whereabouts. Some say escaping Templars sailed to Scotland and formed what became the Freemasons, burying their treasure underneath legendary Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh. Others believe it may be at the bottom of a deep pit on Oak Island, Nova Scotia. The movie National Treasure claimed it was in a vault hidden beneath a churchyard off Wall Street.

The modern Templars of Levant Preceptory won’t be talking about treasure on this October 13th. “Concepts of chivalry, like faith, hope and charity, never really go out of style,” says Hodapp, “and that’s what we’re really celebrating.”

The event will be at the Messick Masonic Temple, 519 S. Harrison, Shelbyville, IN at 7:00PM. It is open to the public.

Levant Preceptory is a medieval reenactment group within Raper Commandery No. 1 Knights Templar in Indianapolis, and a part of the family of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Indiana.

- For more information about Levant Preceptory, see their website at www.levantpreceptory.com
- For more about the Knights Templar of Indiana, see www.knightstemplarindiana.com
- For more about the Freemasons of Indiana, see www.indianafreemasons.com
- For more about The Templar Code For Dummies, see www.templarcodefordummies.com

Vatican To Publish Paper To Clear Templars

2007-10-06T17:09:00.000-04:00

The Vatican has announced it will soon publish a book revealing documents from the Vatican Office of Secret Archives that will show Pope Clement V's exoneration of the Order.

On October 25, the Vatican office of the Secret Archives will unveil the book Processus contra Templarios, containing "a previously unpublished and exclusive edition of the complete acts of the original hearing against the Knights Templar," the Vatican has announced. Containing reproductions of the original parchment documents, the book is "the most elaborate and important publication yet undertaken" by the Archives, the Vatican states. The book will be a special collector's edition, with only 799 copies produced.

The material will come from Barbara Frale's research and rediscovery of what is known as the Chinon Parchment, a document known about for centuries, but "mis-filed" in the archives in the 17th century. Frakes found the parchment six years ago, and while it has been summarized in print, it has never been fully published before. It describes an inquisition by Clement V and members of the Inquisition of members of the Templar Order imprisoned at Chinon Castle in France. Based on questions put to the knights, according to reports, the Pope found the knights innocent of wrongdoing (although from my reading of the summary, it is unclear whether he pardoned ALL of the Order, or just those who were questioned). Of course, none of this made any difference, since the Templars were imprisoned by King Phillip IV, and Clement was a timid puppet of the king. The knights were tortured and executed, and Clement's pronouncement of their innocence was kept a secret. His opinion of the case addressed their immortal souls, but did nothing to spring them from Chinon's keep.

See also the BBC story.

An image and explanation of the parchment is available on the Vatican website here, but alas, no translation or even Latin transcription is available yet. That's what will be in those 799 books...

It's Talk Like A Pirate Day

2007-09-19T11:17:00.001-04:00

Just bein' a reminder.
This be Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Shiver yer timbers.

Raper Commandery #1 Reception for Andy Jackson

2007-09-16T08:50:00.000-04:00

I had the extraordinary honor last night to help with Raper Commandery No. 1's reception for Indiana Grand Commander Andrew R. Jackson. Nearly 90 Sir Knights and Ladies were in attendance at the Atheneum. It was a wonderful turnout. Kudos go to Eminent Commander Phil Garver, Standard Bearer (and the evening's sommelier) Tim Brinkmeyer, Senior Warden Carson Smith and especially Junior Warden Jim Dillman (who had a previous engagement with some Canadian fish) for their planning and execution of the evening's festivities. And to our tireless Recorder Wayne Williams for keeping it all straight.

Patty Smith and the ladies of the Beauceant presented Andy's lady Mary with a dozen white roses, and the Commandery presented Andy with a Rosslyn "Bloodline" chalice, inscribed for the occasion, decorated with a Templar cross, and a stem inspired by Rosslyn's Apprentice Pillar.

In light of the honored medieval phrase, to "drink like a Templar," I shamelessly cribbed the Masonic tradition of toasting at the conclusion of the evening, and I spent a couple of days seeking some inspiration for toasts more Templar than Masonic. My favorite of all came from a long-lost source, Prince Valiant.

Sir Knights, be upstanding!
I wish to offer a toast to Chivalry.
May Common Sense ne'er quell our love for high hearted adventure, nor dull expediency prevent our doing brave, splendid, foolish deeds. May we ever serve romance as we ride errant to and fro about a sunlit world. If we be not always wise, God send that we at least be admirable.
With me, Sir Knights, to Chivalry!

BBC Radio 4 "On The Trail Of The Templars"

2007-09-03T18:15:00.000-04:00

As we approach October 13th and the 700th anniversary of the arrest of the Templars, there's an increase in media interest in the order. This weekend, there is an excellent BBC Radio 4 Program available on the web, On The Trail Of The Templars.

It requires a Real Player to listen.

There are several pieces to this hour-long program. The show itself is 27 minutes, and there are two extra interviews. The first is with Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith on the development of the Templar order, who gives an excellent explanation of where the Templar wealth REALLY came from (as opposed to digging for treasure). The second is with Rev. Robin Griffiths-Jones, Master of the Temple Church in London (who I've had the pleasure of meeting).

For those of you who have been to the London Temple Church in the past, it appears from photos on the feature page that there has been an unfortunate addition brought on by the Da Vinci Code mania - new steel rails have been erected to keep idiots from kicking the effigies in the floor. *sigh*

The show contains a nice section with Helen Nicholson who cuts through much silliness in no time flat. And there's a bit with a member of the Grand Priory of Knights Templar in England and Wales, which is part of the non-Masonic Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani (who apparently took a negative view of joining the Masonic Templars. God love the British. They just can't help taking swipes at Masons).

Masonic Week 2008 Moves To Alexandria

2007-09-02T23:14:00.001-04:00

After two years of conjecture, the official word has come. The Allied Masonic Degrees/Masonic Week held every February in Washington DC is at last leaving its long-standing home in the Hotel Washington. Here is the announcement by William Koon:

DC MASONIC WEEK ~ February 6-9, 2008
Hilton Alexandria Mark Center Hotel
It has 480 Rooms and has Shuttle Service to Reagan.
Parking is less than 1/3 what it was at the Hotel Washington.
The $135 rate for 2008 is the same as we paid this year.
Meals have been negotiated at the same level as we paid this year,
and will escalate only at the rate that food rises.
The Hotel is located on I-395 at Exit 4 and is about 3 miles
from the George Washington Masonic National Memorial.
Free shuttle service to the Metro Station at the foot of Shooters' Hill
for those who want to take the Subway into the District.
Hotel Rates will be $135, and are available by calling 1-800-HILTONS,
identifying the Hotel as the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center
and the Group Name is "AMD".
Suites are available at a reduced price for Groups needing them.
INFO FROM: BILL KOON Email: lords@wcoil.com

Levant Preceptory In The news

2007-08-31T09:43:00.000-04:00

Levant Preceptory appears in the September 2007 edition of the Knights Templar Magazine, thanks to an article by Grand Commander Andrew Jackson.

Indiana's first period recreation Knight Templar unit will present a special program for the 700th anniversary of the arrest of the Order in France. We will be at Baldwin Commandery No. 2 on Saturday, October 13th in Shelbyville, IN.

Sayeth the Knight..

2007-08-14T00:46:00.000-04:00

Here's a sentence you don't see every day.

My chainmaille hauberk arrived today. Forsooth.

A beautiful piece of work from Von Sussen Enterprises at a VERY reasonable price. And ample enough to fit over my pot roast.

Indianapolis INTAKE Article

2007-08-04T05:27:00.000-04:00

The Indianapolis paper has its own weekly giveaway called Intake, covering local arts, music, theater, food and the offbeat. I guess I qualify somewhere in there.

I led reporter Jim Walker and his friend on a tour around Indiana Freemasons' Hall for three hours about a week ago, and here is the result.

http://www.intakeweekly.com/articles/6/027719-3026-160.html

Note to fellow Templars, he seemed most enthused about the items in the KT Asylum. A shame he decided to resort to characterizing it as "creepy" once it got into print. *sigh*

Rosslyn/Templar Chalice

2007-07-31T00:50:00.000-04:00

I stumbled into a very nice chalice for Templars and Rosslyn admirers. Features a Templar cross and the Apprentice Pillar as the rather beefy and ornate stem. Sadly, the dollar to pound ratio these days, in a word, stinks. It is £40.84 ($82.60 at this very moment, but changing by the minute).

Available at the very eclectic Argoth website.

York Rite Video for the Indiana Grand Commandery

2007-07-17T05:14:00.000-04:00

Ah, the fun of YouTube.
This is a video I made in 2006 for the Indiana Grand Commandery.

The contemporary logo designs, by the way, are the work of Indiana Mason and artist Steven McKim.

Happy Friday the 13th - on 93.9 KSSZ-FM, Columbia, Missouri

2007-07-13T00:55:00.000-04:00

I'll be speaking this afternoon with radio host Derek Gilbert on The Eagle 93.9 KSSZ-FM in Columbia/Jefferson City, Missouri about the Knights Templar and Freemasonry, and all that stuff about Friday the 13th.

I'll be on after 6PM EST, or 5PM CST (local) time.

Download the podcast HERE.

Saturday 7/7/07 on WMEL-AM 920 - SPACE COAST!

2007-07-06T17:55:00.000-04:00

Florida friends on the Space Coast, I'll be on the Matthew Bronson Show on WMEL AM-920 in Melbourne, between 11:30AM and noon, talking about the new book.

The Rosslyn Hoax

2007-07-05T14:50:00.000-04:00

Robert L. D. Cooper's book The Rosslyn Hoax has just been made available in paperback, and is being sold directly through the George Washington Masonic National Memorial's gift shop. This is great news on a couple of fronts. It's so much cheaper than having the hardback version shipped from the UK. It has a spiffy color cover showing the chapel before it had its corrugated tin roof put up to dry the place out. Lewis Masonic spared no expense in stamping a raised pentagram on the cover, to excite the Wiccans and Anti-Masonic foes alike, along with Da Vinci Code enthusiasts. And, of course, buying it from the Memorial helps to support its ongoing operation.

One other benefit - Amazon is shipping in 4 to 6 weeks.

The Memorial will ship in 4 to 6 hours.

Seriously, I continue to tell everyone I can that Robert's book is perhaps the most important book yet published about Rosslyn Chapel. What makes it so important is that he actually has investigated the many claims made about the enigmatic little church over the centuries, especially the last few decades. I say it's an important book. I didn't say it will make everyone happy. And the reason why is because he slaughters an entire herd of sacred cattle with his investigations of the many claims of Templar involvement in Freemasonry's formation and the building of Rosslyn. Or to put it another way, if you believe Born In Blood, The Temple and the Lodge and Rosslyn: Guardians Of The Grail to be the truth, Robert Cooper is your blasphemer.

Cooper is the curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland's library and museum, which posses much original material that other authors have written about, but never actually gone to look at and study in person. Moreover, Cooper takes claims of Templar sites, burial markers and supposed influence and subjects them to the historical record or compares them to authentic Templar sites. Most important of all, he places the origins of the original claims made (often by 17th and 18th century Scottish Masons) into their proper historical and social context, exploring just why Scottish Freemasons might have desired an older, more glorious heritage for their fraternity than those uppity English Masons down in London who were claiming it as their own. Cooper makes an outstanding case for forgeries, Victorian alterations and a lot of wishful thinking.

Certainly there is a place for mythology in this world, and it would be a pretty barren life indeed if we didn't have our share of story tellers who, with a gleam in their eye and a wink to the knowing, began by speaking the words, "Once upon a time..." Freemasonry is no different. Just as long as we understand what is myth and what is history, and the difference between them.

As I said, if you believe the Knights Templars saved the day at Bannockburn, built Rosslyn Chapel, and then morphed into the Freemasons, you should undoubtedly already be collecting logs and kindling for Robert Cooper's hotfoot. But if you are a seeker of the truth behind this curious and beautiful place, start with The Rosslyn Hoax.

Hamas and the Temple Mount

2007-07-02T19:30:00.000-04:00

In case you think history is just some moldy study of long-ago people and places, news reports out of Jerusalem today describe a foiled Hamas plot to take over the former site of the Templars' headquarters, the Temple Mount. Hamas recently paid to enlarge Muslim prayer halls and a library, all located within the so-called Solomon's Stables, that were used by the Templars during their control of the Mount. Renovations, especially in the Stables area, have long been criticized over the hamfisted way that excavations were made, in an attempt to destroy evidence of any pre-Muslim control of the 3,000 year old site.

The Jordanian Wakf that is in charge of the topside of the Mount has long been cuffed around by radical Islamic groups to see that it knuckles under to the "religiously correct" line of thinking, as opposed to preserving and protecting the ancient site. Its director two years ago actually stated that he did not believe the Temple of Solomon or Herod's second version ever stood on the Mount – a public viewpoint guaranteed to assure he kept his job and his head, but patently absurd for a supposed historian and archaeological "expert."

Stephen Dafoe, Nobly Born and Video

2007-06-29T01:12:00.000-04:00

My friend and brother, Stephen Dafoe has recently discovered the fun of video, and he has been creating new pieces with greater frequency. His latest is a video review of several books, including Robert Cooper's The Rosslyn Hoax and Rosslyn Revealed by Alan Butler and John Ritchie. Other videos to be found at The LodgeRoom.com include a tour of Washington DC's House of the Temple, an examination of anti-Masonic misquotes of Albert Pike, and a presentation of the artwork of Indiana Mason Stephen McKim.

Some of his earlier videos are also available on the site, including his piece, The Restaurant At The End Of The Masonic Universe, as well as a multi-part version of Laudable Pursuit, read by friend and brother, Jeff Naylor, founding Master of Lodge Vitruvian No. 767, here in Indianapolis.

Stephen was kind enough to act as the Technical Editor for The Templar Code For Dummies, and I am indebted to him for much over the years. Unfortunately, Alice believes he is "a genius," and made the error of telling him so. I understand he regularly drags this remark out at home, to the extreme annoyance of his wife.

I am looking forward to his new book, a comprehensive telling of the templar story, Nobly Born, late this October.

Italian Clergy Claims "Da Vinci Code" Is Obscene

2007-06-19T01:51:00.000-04:00

Apparently, Opie has made a dirty movie.

As if there's a shortage of things in Italy to investigate, comes now to the bench a group of clergy in the seaside village of Civitavecchia clogging up the court dockets with a new complaint against The Da Vinci Code.

This time it's the movie, and the priests involved claim that it violates Article 528 of Italy's penal code, because it is "obscene" from a religious standpoint. The complaint names 10 people, including Dan Brown and director Ron Howard.

Why the case is being filed now, more than a year after the film opened all over the world, the state prosecutor said he was not sure. "I don't know, maybe they have just seen the film."

Hopefully the Italian courts have at least as firm a grip on the handlebars of jurisprudence when it comes to the clash of art and lawyers as Justice Potter Stewart did. If not, looks like Dan and Ron could be fined about 163 smackers and spend three months in a Neapolitan pokey.

Now I have no idea what "clergy" these guys are from, but if you go poking around the port of Civitavecchia, you'll come across the La Chiesa di Santa Maria dell'Orazione, the Church of St. Mary of the Oration, and home to the "Confraternity of Death."

And you thought Freemasons had peculiar rites and getups.

Templar Code For Dummies Officially Released

2007-06-16T01:31:00.000-04:00

I walked in the door Thursday night to discover the UPS man had a surprise for me. It seems that the Wiley folks got a jump on us and released The Templar Code For Dummies about two weeks early, and just in time for me to take to Lodge that night.

It's a huge thrill, even the third time around, to see the whole project put together at last. It takes just long enough from final review to publication that you go from panic and terror to almost forgetting the whole experience when, thump, there it is on the porch packed 20 to a case.

Welcome

2007-06-14T16:15:00.000-04:00

“You can tell a lunatic by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.”
—Umberto Eco

Welcome, friends, to the blogsite for our new book, The Templar Code For Dummies. The kind folks at Wiley Publishing have stepped up the publication date of the book and, to our great surprise, a great hulking box of the books appeared on the doorstep yesterday.

In October 2006, the two of us received some happy news; after a long process of outlining, cutting, pasting, re-outling, meetings, major changes and more meetings, our editor called to say that victory was ours. This somewhat unusual project had made it into Wiley's book list for 2007. Any author will tell you that this is always a thrill. But the next piece of news was a little unnerving. The official launch date for the project had been set for the following Friday, which happened to be Friday, October 13th.

For one brief moment, a chill of premonition slithered down our backs, like ice cubes at a frathouse party. After a few seconds of silence, we did what many people do when they have an uncomfortable moment of premonition; we both burst out laughing. It did help the shiver.

The chill we felt wasn’t because we’re particularly superstitious, at least, no more so than anyone else. Knock on wood. It was something far more disconcerting than mere superstition. Because for anyone who knows the lore of the Knights Templar, Friday, October 13th, 1307, was the date that the Order was rounded up all across France in one single day, by order of the French king, Phillip IV, to be indicted on various charges of heresy. In fact, this is sort of superstition in reverse, because the reason that Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day, so the legend goes, is because of what happened to the Templars on that fateful date, seven centuries ago. Whistling in the cemetary, we decided it was the perfect launch date for the book.
That particular Friday was the 699th anniversary. By the time this book is on the shelves, it will be precisely 700 years since the Knights Templar were arrested, and seven centuries haven’t dimmed the fascination people have with this mysterious, courageous and singular brotherhood of knights.

What is known for certain about the Knights Templar is a story with a larger-than life aura of myth, that finished in an abrupt and almost unbelievable tragedy. Founded in A.D. 1119 by nine crusading French knights, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (known as the Knights Templar) shot across the political landscape like a meteor, vaulting from obscure guardians of pilgrims in Jerusalem to the most powerful and influential force of their age. They were fierce warriors, devout monks, and international bankers. Within half a century of their birth, they were men who walked with kings and advised popes, brokered treaties, and built castles and preceptories on a massive scale. Then, even more inexplicable than their rise came their fall, a harrowing plunge into arrest, trial, flight and execution that shocked the medieval world, both East and West. The charges against them of heresy and sodomy were equally shocking, and are still debated by historians today.

In fact, theories about the Templars are hotter today than ever before. Historians, researchers, wishful thinkers and dreamers have claimed that the Templars lived on after their destruction, placing them in Portugal, Scotland, Switzerland, Nova Scotia, and Massachusetts. They are alleged to have sailed pirate ships, founded banking dynasties, and given birth to the Freemasons. Their explorations in the Holy Land have led to speculation that they found the Ark of the Covenant, the True Cross of Christ’s crucifixion, the head of John the Baptist, the Spear of Destiny, and the Holy Grail. They have alternately been described as pious guardians of the most sacred secrets of Christianity, and as heretical practitioners of occult and satanic rites. And more than one suicidal doomsday cult has claimed to be descended from the Templars, living in wait for the Intergalactic Grand Master’s mother ship to enter low-earth orbit and beam them aboard.

In 2003, Dan Brown published a modest sequel to a moderately successful mystery entitled Angles & Demons. Little did he know that he was handling fissionable material. The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 60 million copies in 44 languages, and is the eighth most popular book ever published. In it, Brown told the tale of the “true” nature of the legend of the Holy Grail. If you’re one of the seven or eight people left on earth who haven’t read it yet, allow us to spoil the ending for you. According to Brown, the Grail was not some humble cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, or even a golden, jewel-encrusted chalice. It was the bloodline of Jesus, a child born to Mary Magdalene from a union with Christ. The book tells of a mysterious organization that was created to keep the secret, and to protect the offspring of Christ and Mary down through the centuries. And that group, through a succession of plot twists, was — you guessed it — the Knights Templar.

Dan Brown undoubtedly set out to tell a good story, but he couldn’t possibly have known that he was writing what would become a worldwide phenomenon. How could he have known that his book would cause millions of people to reexamine their own beliefs and those of their neighbors, inspiring thousands to make pilgrimages to the sites of his book in France and the United Kingdom, in search of a sign or symbol that would reveal some hidden truth to them? He might not have intended it, but, whether by chance or fate, that’s exactly what happened. And curiously, in spite of what many alarmed religious leaders feared, the result has been a greater interest in the origins of Christianity, and a whole world of readers whose faith seems to have been strengthened by what they’ve found.

Brown, like so many others, looked at the Knights Templar and was intrigued by what he saw. The unanswered mysteries and outlandish legends surrounding them didn’t just spring out of nowhere, or even out of Mr. Brown’s fertile imagination. The Templars have been a pillar of Western mythology for centuries, and there’s no end in sight for the world’s obsession with the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.

We wrote this book to assemble the vast, outlandish, popular and confusing lore of the Knights Templar into one convenient volume. The first four parts of the book strictly tell the Templar story; their rise, their fall, and the forces at work in the world that gave them birth. For all of you who first encountered this stuff in The Da Vinci Code, you can go straight to Part V. The entire section is devoted to the questions raised by the novel, including the bloodline of Christ, the “sacred feminine,” and the mysterious relationship between those concepts and the Templars. It’s a unique approach, but it should give you a great overview of the Templars and their world, as well as a definite leg up at the office holiday party when somebody wants to talk your arm off about the Black Madonna Cult or the Council of Nicaea.

We’re both writers, both history fanatics, and both obsessed with the Knights Templar. While other people may loll about, wasting their vacations broiling on the beaches of Cancun or falling down the ski slopes of Aspen, history cranks like us spend our free time taking off every year for the backcountry of France and Britain, Portugal and Turkey, up at dawn every day to strap on a backpack and go sweat our way up another ruin. We know how to have a good time. Who wants to spend a vacation lolling on the beach with an unbrella drink in his hand?

We’re hoping that in this book, all that sweat paid off. Together we’ve stood in the prison cell of Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, reading the messages scratched onto the walls by the imprisoned knights. And together we’ve stood on the Ile de la Cité in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, where he was burned at the stake for the amusement of the crowd that was, to the vindictive king’s disappointment, sullen rather than boisterous. Generally people in the 14th century enjoyed a good burning or hanging or quartering, but no one was indulging in any satisfaction on that tragic day. The Templars had been the most formidable knights of Europe, brave warriors as well as monks sworn to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience. No one gave up more for the sake of his faith than a Knight Templar. Consequently, the Poor Knights, as they were sometimes called, had the respect of the entire Christian world, and even many in the enemy camp. When the brilliant soldier Saladin won back the Holy Land from the Crusaders, the prisoners he took who were to be beheaded at once, without question of ransom or the slave market, were the Templars. As far as Saladin was concerned, they were just too dangerous an enemy to be left alive. And never once did a Templar knight beg for his life. After the disastrous Battle of Hattin, they queued up in their hundreds to be slaughtered, each calmly waiting his turn.

Everyone knew the legends of their almost foolhardy courage, and everyone knew what the Templars had sacrificed in order to secure the Holy Land for the sake of Christian pilgrims, so that the souls of the men and women on this journey could be saved from Purgatory or damnation. In fact, one particular biblical quote from John 15:13 was something of an unofficial motto for the Templars; “Greater love hath no man that this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The general consensus of the somber crowd on that bleak execution day in 1314 has been the general consensus of most people ever since, that the Templars were getting a very raw deal, whether they had fallen victim to some Eastern heresy or not.

For us, ever since that prophetic launch date of October the 13th, we’ve had the feeling that the martyred de Molay could be looking over our shoulders, which made for two very nervous writers. More than anything else, we wanted to get it right.

We hope that we have.

We feel the book is unique, because it combines several elements into one, compact, simple volume. The book centers around the history as well as the legends of the Knights Templar, and we delve into the details of what is known and what is alleged to be known about the Templars. But we also believe that you can't understand the reason for the formation of the Order without first understanding the Crusades and the political, religious and military situation that existed at the time of their formation.

The Templar Code For Dummies was written for a lot of different people. If you know nothing about the Templars, the whole story is here: the Crusades from which they emerged; the Christian society back home in Europe and the strange combination of religions and cultures they were surrounded by in the Holy Land; their skyrocketing fame among the movers and shakers in Rome and the capitals of the world; their lavish wealth and their creation of the banking business; their mysterious reputation as the “Grail knights”; and their abrupt fall and destruction.

If you’ve already studied some about the knights, this book will put it all in perspective for you. It covers the facts and the legends, from the plausible to the downright preposterous.

If you never heard about the Knights until you read The Da Vinci Code, this is the book you need to make sense of Dan Brown’s connections between the Templars, the Priory of Sion, Rosslyn Chapel, the Holy Grail, and the "feminine divine." As good as The Da Vinci Code is, what Brown wrote wasn’t a new theory — it’s been around for a while — and he left a lot out of the whole picture. In this book, we explore what the connections really are and where they might have come from.

If you're a Christian - especially a Catholic - or an interested bystander, we clue you in on the Church’s position on the Templars, Constantine, Opus Dei, celibacy, Mary Magdalene, Black Madonnas, and killer albinos.In fact, the last section of the book is dedicated specifically to some of the most controversial religious elements in The Da Vinci Code, where they came from, and if there's any merit to them.

Finally, if you are a Freemason, this book is an essential. The fraternity of Freemasons has a modern Order of Knights Templar, and though they don’t profess a direct descent from the original 12th-century knights, an awful lot of claims have been made over the years about the Templar origins of the Masons. There’s more to the Templars than what the Masonic version says, and in this book we clear up the confusion.