APPENDIX U
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS
Introduction
This chapter analyzes probably one of the most disgusting and blasphemous sect of all time: the Knights Templars.
These true dogs of Satan, landless bastards, were responsible for disturbing blasphemies and infecting the Church with their abominations and initiations.
This shameful sect tests the limits of restraint when describing its rotten members.
Their practices included the infamous act of spitting on the cross and denying Jesus Christ, our Savior.
They worshipped the goat-headed Baphomet, a demon of knowledge often associated with Thoth and Hermes. Here, the syncretism of polytheistic blasphemy is at its apex.
The Templars did not invent anything; these cults have always existed, and their shameful acts are merely replications of Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, and Greek mystery religions.
The infamous baptism of fire (you don’t want to know what this is, but you will) was also among their practices. The movement began to conceal itself within monastic orders; purportedly, the Benedictine monks played a significant role in the formation of these impostors.
They were all deeply connected with royal houses and kings, while claiming to serve only the Pope. During their journey to the Holy Land, they allied themselves with groups such as “the Assassins” and the most spurious elements of Islam. By denying the divinity of Christ and claiming that only the universal ruler was worthy of worship, they aligned themselves perfectly with Muslim heretics who believed in the same fallacy.
The Cathars and the Templars were closely related, specifically through familial ties; certain families comprised the inner circles of both orders.
The Albigensian Crusade, which resulted in the genocide of the Cathars (descendants of the Merovingians), was the only crusade in which the Templars refused to participate.
Rumors persist that the Cathars possessed the Holy Grail until the siege of Montsegur, at which point it was concealed and subsequently entrusted to the Templars.
The campaign to rehabilitate their image continues. Freemasons and occultists in numerous secret societies revere them due to shared Gnostic heretical beliefs.
The title “Knight Templar” persists for initiates, and organizations dedicated to Jacques de Molay remain active, striving to restore the sect’s reputation.
Famous Knights Templar & the Royal Families They Were Connected To
1. Hugues de Payens — Capetian Dynasty (France)
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Co-founder and first Grand Master.
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Strongly supported by King Louis VI of France (Capetian line).
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France was the birthplace of most early Templars.
2. Godfrey de Saint-Omer — Capetian Dynasty (France)
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One of the original nine founders.
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Came from noble Flemish families closely tied to the French crown.
3. André de Montbard — Capetian Dynasty (France)
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Founding member and later the 5th Grand Master.
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Uncle of Bernard of Clairvaux, who held enormous influence with Capetian kings.
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His reforms and political work were rooted in French royal support.
4. Jacques de Molay — Capetian Dynasty (France)
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Last Grand Master.
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Lived under the pressure of King Philip IV of France (Capetian),
who ultimately orchestrated the Order’s destruction. -
His downfall is directly tied to Capetian royal politics.
5. Geoffroi de Charney — Capetian Dynasty (France)
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Preceptor of Normandy and high-ranking French Templar.
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Executed on order of King Philip IV along with Jacques de Molay.
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Deeply embedded in French–Templar relations.
6. Gérard de Ridefort — Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
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10th Grand Master.
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Initially served King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem.
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Known for his disastrous involvement in royal politics between Guy of Lusignan and Raymond III.
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Strongly tied to the ruling House of Lusignan in Jerusalem.
7. Robert de Craon — Capetian Dynasty (France)
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2nd Grand Master.
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Worked closely with French nobility and the Capetian kings.
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Expanded Templar privileges through papal and French royal support.
8. Bertrand de Blanchefort — Capetian Dynasty (France)
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6th Grand Master and major reformer.
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His noble background placed him within the French royal sphere.
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Focused on administrative and military reforms supported by Capetian aristocracy.
9. Odo de St. Amand — Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
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8th Grand Master.
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Served the ruling Jerusalem monarchy, especially under King Baldwin IV.
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Played a direct political role in the internal conflicts of the Crusader states.
The Knights Templar and the Foundations of the Modern Banking System
A sophisticated monetary system, combined with royal connections, enabled them to easily corrupt or manipulate anyone they needed. When that failed, they resorted to poisoning or executing their rivals.
Established as a military-religious order, the Knights Templar developed a sophisticated financial network, spanning Western Europe to the Levant, that laid institutional foundations resembling elements of the modern banking system.
Their secure system for long-distance financial transfers allowed pilgrims to deposit funds in Europe and withdraw equivalent sums in the Levant, minus fees, functioning as an early form of traveler’s check, mitigating risks associated with transporting money. This demonstrated an understanding of credit, authentication, and financial security.
Their network of commanderies operated as an international banking infrastructure, transcending political borders with autonomy granted by the papacy. These houses stored valuables, facilitated transfers, safeguarded deposits, and provided financial services to pilgrims, nobles, merchants, and monarchs.
The Order became a major creditor, providing substantial loans to kings and aristocrats, funding military campaigns and governmental expenses.
They devised lawful alternatives to usury by charging service fees. Rulers, such as the English Crown, entrusted the Templars with managing their treasuries, outsourcing fiscal administration, anticipating modern state banking.
Underlying these operations was an advanced record-keeping system. Detailed ledgers documented deposits, withdrawals, property incomes, rents, loans, and international transfers.
Administrative consistency across commanderies allowed for reliable accounting practices and financial coordination, resembling principles formalized in double-entry bookkeeping.
The Order pioneered security mechanisms, including coded financial documents, standardized receipts, secure vault architecture, and armored transport of funds. Their reputation for integrity, based on religious vows and papal protection, enhanced their standing as trustworthy custodians of wealth.
The Knights Templar created the first large-scale, transnational financial organization in medieval Europe. Their innovations in credit, deposit security, financial transfers, and administrative practice contributed to the institutional evolution of modern banking. Their economic influence contributed to their suppression in the early fourteenth century, particularly by indebted rulers, though their financial legacy endured.
Here begins Julius Evola’s examination of this order of snakes.
How the Holy Roman Empire’s elite invisibly connected to the “Universal Ruler” remains elusive.
Legends outside the Grail cycle hint at a mysterious Hohenstaufen mandate, sometimes embraced, sometimes misunderstood or lost.
Popular imagination revived the myth of the reawakening, triumphant emperor through them.
The Dry Tree’s blossoming at the Frederick-Prester John encounter symbolized hope for a restoration during Ghibelline zenith.
Up to Maximilian I, the “last knight,” symbolically linked to King Arthur and seemingly aspiring to pontifical roles, Holy Roman Emperors mirrored transcendent regality, a “regal religion according to Melchizedek” invoked to justify their superior right as divinely anointed, not merely lay.
This provoked apocalyptic imagery and Antichrist narratives from the Church.
Toward the late Middle Ages, the Church attempted to ascribe future victorious emperor traits to pro-Roman Curia French kings, associating Antichrist elements with Ghibelline Teutonic princes, leading some to see the Antichrist in Dante’s Greyhound.
The Church never fully dominated the Empire. Their conflict, often driven by temporal interests, led to their mutual decline and the Reformation, undermining both Church and Empire. Knighthood experienced repression.
The Templars transcended both secular warrior and ascetic ideals, resembling “spiritual chivalry of the Grail” with initiatory doctrines.
This led to their severe repression by the Pope and Philip the Fair, figures Dante symbolized as the Giant and the Prostitute.
The “real” motives for the Templars’ destruction are secondary. Their fate was predetermined by their very nature.
The Church showed hostility to other orders too, like the Knights of St. John and the Teutonic Knights, but the Templars were the primary target.
Their destruction marked a breaking point and the beginning of Western decline, ending the Ghibelline Middle Ages’ metaphysical tension.
The attack on the Templars was a crusade against the Grail. Wolfram equates Grail knights with Templars (Templeisen). Other romances depict Grail guardians as both ascetic and warrior-like, bearing a red cross on white, like the Templars.
These symbols, including a ship with the Templar emblem taking Percival away, connect the Grail to warrior monks on an island.
Templar chivalry viewed fighting and “holy war” as asceticism and liberation. While outwardly Christian, its inner circle transcended the religion, rejecting Christ’s worship and devotional limitations.
This chivalry favored a “Temple,” not a “Church,” as the supreme spiritual authority.
The Templar trials reveal this, despite distorted evidence. Idealizing the entire Order historically is a mistake, given its vast power and wealth, and some unworthy members, even among leaders.
This applies less to the majority of Templars in the order’s final years, and more to an inner hierarchy.
Confessions, even those extracted under torture, and spontaneous declarations show the Templars possessed a secret initiatory ritual.
Admission involved abjuring Christ’s worship, stepping on the crucifix and insulting it.
Initiates were told to believe in the Lord in heaven, not the Crucified One, and that Jesus was a false prophet, not a divine figure, justly executed for his sins.
This was a test of transcending exoteric devotion, not blasphemy. The rite occurred on Good Friday, a day often associated with the Grail mystery.
The Templars were also accused of despising sacraments, particularly penance and confession, rejecting papal authority, and only outwardly following Christian precepts.
This anti-Christolatric rite represented overcoming Christian exotericism and rejecting the Church’s claim to spiritual authority, revealing its ignorance of pragmatic limitations and latent traditional elements within its own doctrines and symbols.
The Templars faced accusations of clandestine relationships with Muslims, exhibiting a spiritual alignment closer to Islam than Christianity, a charge understandable in light of Islam’s rejection of Christ worship.
These “secret liaisons” suggest a less sectarian, more universal, esoteric perspective than that of militant Christianity.
The Crusades, with the Templars and Ghibelline chivalry centrally involved, forged a supra traditional connection between West and East.
Crusading knights found a mirror image in their adversaries: warriors with similar ethics, chivalry, “holy war” ideals, and initiatory currents.
The Templars mirrored the Arab Order of the Ishmaelites, who also considered themselves esoteric “guardians of the Holy Land,” possessing both official and secret hierarchies.
This dual natured order, both warrior and religious, faced a similar fate to the Templars, for similar reasons: its initiatory nature and its embrace of an esotericism that disregarded the literal meaning of sacred texts.
Ishmaelite esotericism echoed the Ghibelline imperial saga with its Islamic dogma of “resurrection” (kiyama), interpreted as a new manifestation of the Supreme Leader (Mahdi), who vanished during the period of “absence” (ghayba), thus circumventing death.
This disappearance obligated followers to pledge allegiance as if to Allah himself. This facilitated the development of a peer-to-peer understanding transcending partisanship and historical circumstance, mirroring the “Temple” symbol, a kind of supratraditional understanding.
The Templars’ “overcoming” attitude resurfaces here, as exclusivism and sectarianism are characteristics of exotericism, the external and profane aspects of tradition. Historically, this “secret understanding” did not translate into military betrayal, as the Templars proved to be among the most courageous and loyal soldiers during the Crusades. Rather, it entailed stripping the concept of “holy war” of its material and external dimensions – war against the “infidel” and death for the “true” faith – restoring it to its purest, metaphysical essence. Ultimately, what mattered was not a specific profession of faith, but the ability to transform war into an ascetic path towards immortality, a meaning shared by the Muslim understanding of “jihad”.
The Grail cycle features a blend of Arab, pagan, and Christian elements akin to “secret liaisons.” Wolfram attributes the Grail’s story to a “pagan” source via Kyot. Percival’s Christian father fought under Saracen princes. Joseph of Arimathea benefited from the Grail before baptism.
Both Christian and pagan knights fought for it. The pagan knight Firefiz almost surpassed his Christian brother in arms and joined Arthur’s knights before baptism.
Baruch is a non-Christian caliph. The dynasty of Prester John, linked to the Grail, includes pagans and Christians, possibly a majority of pagan princes.
Grail literature, barring some later Christianized texts, exhibits the same anti sectarian and supra traditional spirit as the “secret liaisons” accusation against the Templars, suggesting a recognition of shared tradition beyond Christian forms.
Templar initiation was highly secretive. One knight returned pale and despairing, unable to find happiness again, ultimately falling into depression and dying.
This parallels Grail tests that cause white hair and deep unhappiness in those who fail. Extreme terror and flight were triggered by the vision of an “idol” in various forms: a majestic golden figure, a virgin, an animal’s head (ram), a crowned older man, an androgynous or two-faced figure. These are likely dramatizations of initiatory consciousness where individual imagination plays a role. The idol, a “demon” allegorically bestowing wisdom and riches (virtues linked to the Grail), is often called Baphomet, possibly from the Greek “baptism of wisdom,” a higher gnosis, and the name of a ritual passed on to the idol.
The idol’s vision purportedly occurred during Mass, subordinating it as a mystery. This echoes Grail texts’ ceremonies: a Mass focused on the Grail, a mystery too perilous to explore lest one be struck or blinded.
Wolfram’s Percival, a “soul of steel,” attains wisdom. Others identify “wisdom” (Philosophine) as Percival’s mother, the Grail’s original bearer. Gnostic literature often symbolizes wisdom as a woman (Sophia), aligning with Baphomet as the Templar baptism’s “virgin” center, and the woman’s symbolic role in knightly adventures.
Bernard of Clairvaux, considered a Templar spiritual father, was called the Knight of the Virgin. Another account, Nordic or English, links the Templar mystery to a sacred stone used for aid during difficult times.
Medieval Hermeticism’s Rebis, the “double thing,” signifies the “stone,” connecting to Baphomet’s “androgyne” form. One who has rejoined and reabsorbed the “woman” during initiatory reintegration was often conceived as a lord of two natures, an androgyne.
The charge that Templars burned children begotten in sin before the idol likely distorts a “baptism of fire,” a heroic-solar initiation for neophytes considered spiritual “children” or newborns.
Greek mythology’s Demeter placing a baby in fire for immortality symbolizes this rebirth. This rebirth was symbolized by a belt, worn constantly, given to each knight, and placed upon the idol to imbue it with influence.
This belt, the ravia in classical Mysteries, marked initiates, similar to the Indo-Aryan Orient’s higher “twice born” castes’ cord, especially the brahmana. This cord symbolizes the immaterial chain, invisibly connecting initiates as carriers of a shared influence.
The “double fire” echoes the “double sword,” recalling the Eastern doctrine of Agni’s double birth and the classical world’s telluric and Uranian fires. The Templars’ “double torch,” a key symbol, connects to this idea alongside a chalice resembling the Grail. These two torches also appeared in Mithraic symbolism linked to warrior initiations.
Innocent III accused the Templars of cultivating “the doctrine of demons,” or supernatural sciences, leading to suspicions of black magic and necromancy.
Though alchemy was doubtful, Templar monuments and tombs bore astrological-alchemical signs like the pentagram and planetary symbols, elements found in the Grail cycle.
Wolfram von Eschenbach’s texts are rich with astrological references. Kyot needed to learn magical characters to decipher the Grail’s mysteries “read in the stars.” The Fisher King is sometimes depicted as a shapeshifting magician, and Merlin aids Sir Balin in weapon tests via magic. The Grail itself was purportedly brought to earth and guarded by fallen angels, equated with the demons of Innocent III’s accusations or those to whom Christianized Celtic texts linked the Tuatha de Danaan, possessors of divine sciences. The pentagram on a Templar tomb signifies supernatural sovereignty; in *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight*, the Grail hero receives it, while other texts show him consecrating the Sword of the Grail for enduring virtue.
Enemies of the Templars emphasized their misogyny and accused initiates of breaking chastity vows through homosexual practices. Purity and chastity, while not always present, appear in the Grail cycle as traits of the destined hero, potentially exceeding mere sexual morality.
Renunciation of earthly women, such as Amfortas’s doom by mating with Orgeluse instead of the Grail woman, represents desire’s overcoming. Simple knights were to be without a woman whereas Grail kings were given a woman; thus simple Templars may have practiced material chastity, while initiates embraced transcendent chastity.
Sexual magic, linked to Amfortas, could explain the charge of “unnatural intercourse” in the context of initiatory Templarism.
The Diu Crone echoes an affirming spirit, the hero fulfilling his mission and becoming the new ruler, invincible sword at his side. Yet, imperial sagas depict a negative outcome for the awakened king, unable to manage unleashed forces, his shield on the Dry Tree signifying abdication.
Manessier’s Percival takes revenge, renounces rule, and retreats with the Grail, sword, and lance to asceticism, mirroring the wounded Grail king’s brother’s attempt to remedy decay. After Percival’s death, the relics’ fate is unknown.
Similarly, in Perceval Ii Gallais, Percival and companions retreat to ascetic life, the Grail no longer manifesting. A Templar ship leads them away, disappearing with Percival and the Grail.
The Queste du Graal mirrors this: a heavenly hand takes the Grail and lance, Percival retreats to solitude and dies.
In the Titurel, the Grail travels to Prester John’s India. Montsalvatsche’s knights fail to reform sinful people; the Grail is taken to Prester John’s kingdom, near heaven, carried by a ship. Montsalvatsche itself is magically transported, its sacredness not left behind.
Percival becomes Prester John, the invisible Universal Ruler’s image. In Le Marte D’Arthur, Galahad, like the wounded Arthur withdrawing to Avalon, is sustained by the Grail during imprisonment, but after fully seeing it, asks to leave earth. Angels take his soul, a heavenly hand takes the vessel and lance, and “since then no one can be so bold as to say he saw the Sangreal.”
After the medieval climax, tradition goes underground. An era ends. Becoming leads away from “Immobile Lands” and the “Island,” plunging men and nations into the Kali Yuga.
