The Knights Templar and knights in general brought us the concept of chivalry whereby we treat our ladies with honor and meet the people we encounter with fair and equitable dealings. However, long gone are the days of honor where an agreed upon handshake rules fair proceedings, and we have now sank to the level of a litigious society where even our own family members may seem suspect, or so attorneys will have us believe. Where did all our trust and honor go? Some would say it was burned at the stake along with Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, by the corrupt King Phillip of France and the obliging Pope Clemente at the height of the notorious “Dark Ages” in 1314, when the Knights Templar were arrested and tried for trumped up charges of blasphemous crimes.

The Knights Templar were first brought together by the Church after the first crusades. They protected Christians on their pilgrimage to the “Holy Land” from attacks from murderous Muslims, a situation not very different from the turmoil we encounter in that region still today. 

During those crusades, the Knights Templar were present for the excavation of the temple beneath Jerusalem and may have been privy to a secret find that made the Templars one of the richest organizations of that time. In fact, the Knights Templar had such lucrative dealings and global financial status that they had one of the first rudimentary banking systems ever. And because of this notoriety and their far ranging business activities, the Templars are said to be one of the first multi-national corporations.

The church officially endorsed the Knights Templar in 1129 where they banded together under the dominion of the Grand Master, Hughes de Payens, and they quickly grew in eminence and stature across Europe. The title “Knights Templar” is a popular usage.Their proper title was, “ Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.”  Whatever secrets were unearthed at the temple in Jerusalem seemed to propel the knights unto exceeding wealth, coveted by the eventual King of France and consequently the source of their demise.  

From the reign of the Templars and other knightly orders, we have distilled the archetype of noble, chivalrous, benevolent behavior, which our culture is so badly in need of. Although the then “Powers that be” tried to destroy the prosperity and good will of the Templars by arresting them continent wide, the knights veiled their organization and went underground in Scotland and reemerged as a secret order; thus, freemasonry was born. However, before any cloak and dagger scenario evolved, many Templars were arrested and killed.

any of you may adhere to the conspiracy that freemasonry is a secret society using nefarious activities to dominate the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a high ranking Scottish Rite Freemason, I can honestly say there are no such illicit goals within our brotherhood. Those accusations seem better suited to an organization that openly defied the local populace and sought world dominance at all costs, namely  the orthodox Roman church. It was one of the two active agencies in trying to rid the world of the equitable benevolence that the Knights Templar and later Freemasons exhibited, claiming they worshipped a strange alien god, Baphomet. According to the orthodox authorities of the time, the Templars worshipped their alien god with perverse sex acts. Now it is understood that the word Baphomet is written code to veil its true meaning, Sophia, meaning wisdom. Therefore, all the Templars were guilty of was worshipping the Gnostic divine feminine Sophia, Mother-God.  

Many followers of metaphysical philosophy try to banish any father god, such as Yahweh, and they only give reverence to the Goddess. However, this perspective is just as unbalanced as orthodox thought and doesn’t give a proper view of the Godhead. We must approach all aspects of life with the perspective of the Divine family. The divine family is the unseen but loving father god, the visible universe, which is the divine mother, and the son and the daughter God, also husband and wife. This is the archetypal family pattern that the Knights Templar imbued in everything they did: it is the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrews.

This is the same current of thought that is to be found in many of the alchemists and cathedral builders. Having learned their secrets from Sufi mystics and the excavation of the temple, the secrets of alchemy were encoded in stone for the entire world to remember. The basis of the secret was that alchemy is much more than turning lead into gold; it is a process that takes something lower and makes it higher… that something is time itself, and according to the Great Cross of Hendaye, reality is to distill the philosopher stone at the end of time. In other words, according to the alchemists, time and reality is scheduled for a quantum leap in evolution and is to distill a Utopia at the end of time. Time is an alchemical process   moving from a lower state to a higher state. The Great Cross of Hendaye encodes in stone that this will occur at the next galactic alignment, 12-21-2012!!!

Jonathan McGregor Bethel is a writer and researcher of Esoteric Wisdom, The 2012 Paradigm Shift, Integration, The Power of the Mind, Technological Innovation, and Human Subtle Energy.   He is the Founder of Omega Point Institute.  All of his sites are linked at www.JonathanBethel.com and his email is Jonathan.McGregor.Bethel@gmail.com