Origins of the Knights Templar  

The Knights of Templar was formed in the 12th century in 1120 and its purpose was to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. 
The Poor-Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, more commonly referred to as the Knights Templar, came about in 1120 at the urging of French knight Hugues de Payens, who had approached both the King and Patriarch of Jerusalem to grant an official monastic Order for the protection of pilgrims visiting the Holy City of Jerusalem. At the time of their inception, the Templars only numbered nine in their ranks, all of whom had sworn specific vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience they offered their lives to safeguard the routes the pilgrims took they were now warrior monks. Soon the role of the Templars expanded to defend the Christian territories in the Holy land from Mulsim warlords. Just thirty years later, their numbers had swollen to the thousands and were prosperous enough to lend money and credit to both citizens and government figures alike. During the time of the Crusades, the Templars were often a key military component for the expansion of the Holy Roman Empire, being utilized as advanced shock troops in some of the most decisive battles of the conquest—including the battle of Montgisard, where some 500 knights helped defeat the legendary sultan Saladin’s troops, which numbered over 26,000 combatants. Both their reputation as fearless and feckless warrior monks as well as the uncouth lore surrounding them helped establish the reputation of the Knights Templar as one of the most elite and fearsome scourges to attack the Middle East. The city of Tortosa which is located in Syria became Head Quarters of the Templars.

By 1307, both the wealth, reputation, and arrogance of the Templars had fallen into negative favor, particularly with the newly elected Pope Clement V (who sought to merge the order with another Christian military council, the Order of the Hospitallers, granting him benefit and power over both) as well as King Philip IV of France (who was in debt to the Templars as a result of his war with England.) Rumors began to abound about the Templar’s “secret” teachings; they were reputed to regularly engage in homosexuality, both denying the divinity of Christ and both trampling and spitting and urinating on the cross as part of their initiation rites, and worshipping a strange “bearded” idol of a head (alternately, the head of a goat) they referred to as “Baphomet.”   These charges, along with others that constitute what was unquestionably heretical in 14th-century France, have never been proven. But they have also never been disproven. Homosexuality has been a common practice among soldiers who, traveling long distances for many years without wives, seek some form of gratification, and may have been more prevalent among warrior-monks sworn to uphold a vow of celibacy. Denying and insulting the divinity of Jesus may seem like an unusual practice among sworn defenders of Christendom; but what better way to instill fear and test a potential recruit’s bravado than attacking the general tenets of their sworn allegiance?

Numerous theories abound for the presence of Baphomet. These include a linguistic corruption of the prophet Muhammed, or Mahomet; a symbol of the “baptism of wisdom” (the direct translation of the Greek term “baphe-metis”); and a literal idol (it is interesting to note that in cabalistic theory, the lesser countenance of God—the “Zaur Anpin”—is revealed as a human head.) Regardless of these elaborations, one thing is certain. On Friday, October 13th of 1307 (the origin of the superstition of Friday the 13th), King Philip ordered the arrest of several hundred Knights Templar, including their grandmaster Jacques de Molay, and formally charged them with heresy, financial corruption, bribery, and secrecy. After brutal torture techniques such as burning their feet till bones were exposed and hanging them up while dropping heavy objects that were tied to their private parts. By March 1314 templars were found guilty and their assets were seized, members were tortured and burned alive at the stake (including de Molay) and the order was formally dissolved. The few Templars who survived the extermination went underground into a recluse, reemerging a few years later to forge alliances with other military Christian orders prevalent in Europe at the time, such as the Order of Teutonic Knights and the Knights of St. John. In 1319 King Denish of Portugal sent the pope a long list of items which included in the fine print that the city of Tomar one of the Templar’s former head Quarters be given to a new order called The Order of Christ. This request was granted and the Order of Christ seized control of the entire region. Which included 9 strongholds that surrounded the city of Tomar. With a newly fortified position and under a new name the Templars would have learned their most important lesson from their betrayal from France in 1307 TRUST NO ONE. The land where the Order of Christ set up the new headquarters is Portugal or Port U Gral which means Port of the Grail.    

The Templars always had powerful enemies with every deadly encounter they evolved and survived. Saladin and his Muslim army tried to destroy them in Jerusalem in 1187, the Templars came back building a massive military complex in Acre, and the most sophisticated banking empire the world had ever seen, the pope and the King of France tried to annihilate them in 1307, the few who remained slipped undercover and reemerged in Portugal using ancient secrets to guide their ships they built a superpower that spanned the globe.  
Then in 1529 the Pope finally cracked down on the Order of Christ, expelling members and forcing reforms that put a leash on their power, but the Templars had already evolved their ultimate survival tactic: SECRECY. 
Under the cloak of stealth silently infiltrating the ranks of society they could be untouchable, no one could attack them if they didn’t know who they were or how they operated. 
The Templars may have died, but their legacy—and some say their secret teachings—continue to this day. 

It is my conclusion based on the symbols that were found in Portugal when the Templars reemerged as the Order of Christ which is the pentagram the same symbols are found in the streets of Washington DC. 32 of the founding fathers were Masons so it is my belief that the Masons are just another reemergence of the Knights Templar as well as any secret society that has obtained a massive following.  

The Legacy of the Templars

The Templar mystique continues to this day, permeated through the teachings of esoteric orders and secret societies as well as seemingly innocuous entities. The international youth organization Order of de Molay (a Freemasonic offshoot), professing to teach young men to become better and more responsible community leaders and organizers, takes its name from the “martyred” Templar, Jacques de Molay. The Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus freely admits that their structure is modeled after the spirit of the Knights Templar. And the French Revolution—widely held to be masterminded by the Order of Illuminati found an unlikely ally in the Templars when, during the public execution of Louis XV, an unknown man lept onto the scaffolding to yell, “Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!” before the applauding crowd before disappearing back into mystery. A blood-drunk boast? Or a Templar descendant?

Freemasonry and the Knights Templar

Certain traditions hold that some surviving Templars—who were widespread in their travels and most certainly held alliances and links with numerous European countries—went on to the British Isles (in particular Scotland) where they perpetuated their teachings and practices in secret, eventually forming the nucleus of one of the most powerful and influential secret societies in the West: the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry.   The link between the Templars and Freemasonry became even more brazen in the 18th century when the High Knights Templar of Ireland Lodge accepted a charter from the Mother Lodge of Freemasonry in Ireland (itself said to be received from a reconstituted Templar order in Paris) establishing and recognizing their claims of Masonic jurisdiction, eventually incorporating their rites into what has been known as York Rite Masonry.   This rite is only available by invitation only, and ostensibly, only Freemasons who profess belief in Christianity (as opposed to standard Freemasonry which is available to anyone who professes belief in a higher power of any sort) are eligible. Yet the historical Knights Templar, who were also a nominally “Christian” organization, were alleged to hold beliefs diametrically opposite to conventional Christian doctrine, including the rejection of Jesus Christ (perhaps influenced by contact with the nearby heretical Cathar sect of Gnostics active in the 12th and 13th centuries in the region.) Could it be that their Masonic descendants also teach similar doctrines in their lodge meetings? Doctrines hidden, even from the eyes of the sincere but misguided new recruit?   

The Priory of Sion  

Exposed in the early 1980s by writers Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln in their best-selling Holy Blood Holy Grail, the Priory of Sion fulfills the ultimate archetype of a secret society: a hereditary, and generational group of French monied elite who claim a lineage directly back to the Knights Templar guarding a central and highly damaging secret. A secret so damning, it could bring down the foundations of Christianity itself. Namely, the Priory of Sion holds that Jesus did not die on the cross, but survived; and furthermore, established a bloodline with the otherwise vilified Mary Magdalen that formed both the Merovingian dynasty and through successive generations, the Templars themselves. They purport that this bloodline is the true “secret” behind the Templar persecution and that they are sworn to preserve this secret bloodline.   While very little historical or scholarly data has been published on the Priory of Sion (critics have accused the group of establishing a complex hoax,) there has been a slew of mysterious deaths and kidnappings related to allegedly prominent members and Grandmasters of the Priory that beg a closer examination. If it is an elaborate hoax, why would members go to such lengths to both conceal and perpetuate its myths? Perhaps not surprisingly, the Priory’s membership roster also includes a number of figures alleged to also be functioning within the structure of the dreaded Illuminati. Certainly, the wealth accumulated by the Priory is enough to make even the most casual observer view their activities with suspicion.

New Order of Templars  

Formed by defrocked Cistercian monk and homosexual Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels in Austria in 1905, the Ordo Novi Templi, or New Order of Templars was a bizarre concoction of Germanic neopaganism, quack science, virulent racism, creative Biblical interpretations and supposedly divine revelations dedicated to “further the racial self-confidence by doing pedigree and racial research, beauty contests and the founding of racist future sites in underdeveloped parts of the Earth.” To this end, Liebenfels regularly published a magazine entitled Ostara (named for the pre-Christian holy day of the vernal equinox), which found its strongest support among brooding pseudo-intellectuals of racist and anti-semitic circles; including a young and impressionable Adolf Hitler. In it, Liebenfels regularly upheld the superiority of the “Aryan” race, and made military and religious vows to safeguard the sanctity of the race by sterilizing and eradicating the presence of “lower” and “inferior” races.   What would seem like absurd jabberwocky of the most inane caliber by any sensible human was obviously taken quite seriously by the Third Reich. And it is safe to say that by “just following orders,” the Templar concepts of sacred duty and unswerving devotion to an ideal found a tragic and convoluted conclusion in the gas chambers of Dachau and Auschwitz. 

Ordo Templi Orientis 

A pseudo-Masonic occult society of self-styled “Warrior Monks” sworn to uphold the religion of Thelema (an outlandish mixture of pseudo-Egyptian divine revelation supposedly received by British occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904 via a channeled text entitled The Book of the Law, whose central tenet can be summed up by the statement “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” the Ordo Templi Orientis (literally “Order of the Temple of the East”) seems about as far away from the Christian ideology behind the historic Knights Templar as possible. Yet its manifesto (published in 1919) maintains that in its hands is “concentrated the wisdom and knowledge” not only of several esoteric schools of thought (some entirely fictional) but also, most significantly, of the Knights Templar (of whose last Grandmaster, Jacques de Molay, was elected as “saint” in their central religious rite, the Gnostic Mass. It is also worth noting that their website indicates a physical presence in the greater Boston area called the Knights Templar Oasis.) It is also worth noting here that the same manifesto includes the Order of the Illuminati and indeed, one of their degrees is referred to as “Illuminated.”   While in terms of social influence, the O.T.O. seems somewhat small (current worldwide numbers are estimated at a little more than 3,000 and most members tend to be categorized as disenchanted members of lower or middle-class families), reports of drug abuse and sexual misconduct have been plaguing the cult for well over 30 years. Numerous mysterious deaths have been noted in conjunction with the O.T.O., and allegations of rape and intimidation (sometimes by higher-ups within the ranks) have been launched by former members on numerous occasions over the years. 

Other Manifestations

Other recurrences of the Templar mysteries have included the Supreme Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (a Christian defense and charitable organization which traces its roots to the historical Knights Templar and was officially registered in France in 1919. Members have been implicated in numerous racist and anti-immigrant attacks); the Order of the Solar Temple (a secret society devoted to New Age philosophy, reincarnation, “Rosicrucian” practices, and UFO contact with ties to the French far Right, many of whose members famously committed mass suicide in Switzerland in 1994 and 1995); The New Esoteric Order of the Knights Templar (a New Age and neo-Gnostic cult with ties to a noted author within the genre whose works have praised incest and whose followers have been accused of bribery and embezzlement); and the Ancient Order of Black Templars (a South American sect that practices an offbeat blend of Voodoo and Santeria, Freemasonry and neo-Gnosticism, with links to the O.T.O. and a noted Chicago cult leader known for allegations of extreme sexual misconduct and prostitution.) Not to mention numerous groups with highly dubious claims of being the reconstituted Knights Templar, including one outfit whose membership included the Norwegian Anders Breivik, who murdered over 75 people—many of them teenagers and pre-teens—in Norway during a mass killing in 2009, citing extreme anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant motives as the rationale for his attack. His manifesto, some 1500 pages of rambling and vitriolic far Right acerbity, makes numerous references to the ideals of the Templars.

Members  

Since their official dissolution in 1312, the names of the original Knights Templar have been lost to history, with the exception of the more prominent members. However, members of Templar-derived ideologies and organizations are too wide to list here. Some who have been alleged to have been members have included French film maker and painter Jean Cocteau (Priory of Sion); actor John Wayne (Freemason, Order of de Molay); baseball player Babe Ruth (Knights of Columbus); composer Claude Debussy (Priory of Sion); cartoonist Mel Blanc (Order of de Molay); musicians Daryl Hall, John Frusciante and Mick Fleetwood (Ordo Templi Orientis); actor Roy Rogers (Freemason); far Right Belgian politician Jean Francois Thiriart (Order of the Solar Temple); actor Ernest Borgnine (Freemason); Chicago mayor Richard Daley (Knights of Columbus); journalist Ed Bradley (Freemason); musician Todd Rundgren (Ordo Templi Orientis); former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Freemason, Illuminati); author John Steinbeck (Order of de Molay); cartoonist and innovator Walt Disney (Freemason); former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush (Freemasons, Illuminati); painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci (Priory of Sion); filmmaker Kenneth Anger (Ordo Templi Orientis); actor Jerry Orbach (Order of de Molay, Freemason); General Douglas M. MacArthur (Freemason); author Victor Hugo (Priory of Sion); singer and actor Burl Ives (Order of de Molay); photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (Ordo Templi Orientis); actor Sylvester Stallone (Freemason); composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Freemason, Illuminati); American Revolutionary Paul Revere (Freemason); Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes (Freemason, Illuminati) and Church of Mormon founder Brigham Young (Freemason).