Knights Templar

Templars

Two Templars seated on a horse (emphasising poverty), with Beauséant, the "sacred banner" of the Templars (Matthew Paris, c. 1250)

Grand Master coat of arms of Hugues de Payens

On the site of today's Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, where the Basilica of St. Mary stood from 530 to 614, the first headquarters of the Knights Templar was located until 1187

Baldwin II gives the Temple of Solomon to Hugues de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer

The Catholic Military order of the Knights Templar or Templars, the Templar Order, was founded around 1119. It was officially dissolved by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne on 22 March 1312 by the bull Vox in excelso after the Templar Trials, which were instigated at the insistence of king Philip IV of France, called Philip the Fair (French: Philippe le Bel).

An overview of the history of the Order

The Order of Solomon's Temple, or more precisely the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), was founded in Jerusalem. It was the first religious order to unite the ideals of monasticism and nobility-based chivalry and was founded around 1119 in the aftermath of the First Crusade (1096-1099) most probably by Hugues de Payens, Godfrey de Saint-Omer and seven other French knights. The knights of the order were known as Templars, Knights Templar or Knights Templar. The name derives from the fact that King Baldwin II had given the Order a wing of his palace, built on the ruins of Solomon's Temple, as quarters. The Templars chose the beginning of Psalm 115:1 as their motto:

Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

"Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory".

In the Knights Templar, the priestly Abel current, to which John the Baptist also belonged, united with the world-shaping Cain-Hiram current, to which Christian Rosenkreutz also belonged. The Knights Templar felt closely connected to the Holy Grail and the Grail Knighthood. It was probably not by chance that Wolfram von Eschenbach referred to the Grail Knights in his "Parzival" as "Templeisen". In a transformed form, they thus also continued Manichaeism, which also formed the spiritual basis of the medieval heretic movements (Albigenses, Waldensians, Cathars) and later of Freemasonry (Lit.:GA 93, p. 68f). Dante Alighieri also seems to have been familiar with the secret teachings of the Templars[5]. Their impulses lived on in the Rosicrucians (Lit.:GA 93, p. 153). The initiation ceremony of the Templars, however, aimed even further at the Age of Aquarius, i.e. at the future Slavic cultural epoch in which Christianity will only reach its full flowering (Lit.:GA 92, p. 157).

The spiritual background of the Order of Knights Templar

The Templar Gnosis

The spiritual background of the Templars is often referred to as Templar gnosis, which is not a trans-worldly gnosis, but a strictly Christian gnosis, oriented towards the transformation of the Earth in the sense of the Christ.

„It was, I repeat, not heretical Gnosticism, nor the poorly veiled deism of the Latin Averroism of Paris and Padua, but devout Christianity, faithful to the Church in its own estimation; admittedly of ecclesiastical-political and socio-critical views, which had to shy away from the light of medieval publicity.“ (Lit.: John, p. 111f)

„At this time we see, among many things which, if you look at them, I would like to say, make the soul of man happy, how, among many things which come into being soon after the Crusades have achieved their first successes, the Order of the Knights Templar is founded in 1119. Five French knights under the leadership of Hugo de Payens joined forces and founded an order on the sacred site where the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place, which was to consecrate itself entirely to the service of the Mystery of Golgotha, and which had its first important religious house right next to the site, where the Temple of Solomon once stood, so that, in a certain sense, ancient sacred wisdom prepared for Christianity and Solomonic wisdom could work together at this site, with all the sentiments and all the feelings that arose in the highest degree from the holiest enthusiasm for the Mystery of Golgotha and its bearer. In addition to the usual monastic vows of the time, the duty of obedience to the spiritual superiors, the first Templars undertook to cooperate in the most intensive way to include in the sphere of European control the places where the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

They should think of nothing - as it was contained in the written and especially in the unwritten rules of the Order - but how they can be completely filled in their heart, in their soul, with the sacred Mystery of Golgotha, and how they can serve with every drop of their blood the inclusion of the sacred site in the sphere of authority of the European will. At every moment of their lives they should think, they should feel, that they belong entirely to this task, and that they will spare nothing in order to realise this task with all the strength that is at the disposal of each individual. Their blood should not belong to themselves, but solely to the task we have marked. And when faced with a threefold superiority - so they were ordered - they must not flee; each Templar must maintain his position, even if three infidels want to dispute it with him. And at every moment of their lives they had to think that the blood that ran in their veins did not belong to them but to their great spiritual task. What they were to acquire in wealth should not belong to any individual. Not the individual should have any property, but only the whole Order. From the individual, the one who defeated one of the enemies was to gain no other property than the hempen cord girded around the loins, the sign of their voluntarily undertaken work for what was then regarded as the salvation of the European spirit. A great, mighty task, not so much of reflection as of deep feeling, was set, a task which went towards strengthening the life of the soul as an individual, as a personal one, only so that this individual life of the soul might be completely absorbed in the ongoing stream of Christian development.“ (Lit.:GA 171, p. 118f)

The Knights Templar are sometimes described as the "purest order" in the world.

„In the sense of the founding of the Knights Templar, it was first what the Templars had done for Jerusalem, and then what could be done to Christianise the whole European culture. For gradually the Templars spread in influential societies over England, France, Spain and part of Italy, over Central Europe, everywhere the Templars spread. And in the case of individual Templars, the whole soul was filled with the feeling of the Mystery of Golgotha, with the feeling of all that is connected with the Christian impulse...

... something very great had happened in the circle of the Templars, without these Templars knowing the rules of Christian initiation through anything other than sacrificial service. First in the Crusades, then in the spiritual work in Europe, their souls were so inspired by the intense devotion to the Christian impulses and to the Mystery of Golgotha that the result was the experience of Christian initiation in many Templars, in a considerable number of Templars.“ (Lit.:GA 171, p. 123f)

The initiation of the Templars

Their devoted striving led many Templars to Christian initiation without regular training.

„This led to the development of a special mystical life, through which those who belonged to this so-called spiritual order were always able to work more for the world than other spiritual orders. For if mystical life is lived in such a way in connection with the life of the environment, then what is experienced mystically flows into the invisible, into the supersensible forces of man's environment, becomes objective, is then not merely inner in the soul of man, but continues to work in historical, in historical becoming. Through such mysticism, not only is something experienced by the soul of the individual human being, but something spiritual is born; objectively formed powers, which were not there before in the spiritual current that carries and holds humanity, are then born, they are there. When man does his daily work with his hands or with his other tools, he puts something external, something material into the world. With such mysticism as the Templars developed, the spiritual is placed into the spirituality of the earth. By this happening, however, humanity was really brought a stage further in its development.“ (Lit.:GA 171, p. 197)

But the Templars also had to experience all the challenges from the adversary powers that necessarily accompany every spiritual development:

„Now, for such an initiation, as was now the consequence with a number of the Knights Templar, there is always also the possibility of seeing not only the Blessed, the Divine, but also the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. All that works against the Divine, all that draws man down into the ahrimanic world and draws him up into the luciferic world, all this appears alongside the insight into the normal spiritual worlds to him who undergoes such an initiation. All the sufferings and all the temptations that come to the human being through the powers that oppose goodness, the initiate is confronted with these, and he already has moments in which before his spiritual gaze, before the soul's gaze, he is diminished, the good spiritual world fades before his spiritual gaze, and he sees himself as caught by that which wants to gain power over him, and sees himself in the hands of the ahrimanic-luciferic powers which want to seize him, which want to take possession of his will, thinking, feeling, sensation...

Thus many such Templars became acquainted with that diabolical urge that seizes human will and feeling to degrade the Mystery of Golgotha. And in the dream images that can afflict such an initiate, the reverse side of the veneration of the symbol of the crucifix appeared to some visionary - this was quite possible in the way this initiation had come about, especially since the luciferic forces were temptingly at their side. He saw in the vision how the human soul could become capable of dishonouring the symbol of the cross, of dishonouring the sacred act of consecrating the host; he saw those human forces which urge us to return to the old paganism, to worship what the pagans worshipped and to despise Christian progress. How the human soul can succumb to such temptations, these men knew, because they had to overcome it consciously.“ (Lit.:GA 171, p. 124ff)

The spiritual gaze of the Knights Templar was, as Rudolf Steiner emphasised, directed far into the future, even beyond our present consciousness-soul age into the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Aquarian Age, in which Christianity would only reach its full flowering. They wanted to work in this direction. Like Hiram Abif, the master builder of Solomon's temple, of whom the temple legend also reports, they belonged to the labouring Cain current and thus stood in a certain opposition to the priestly Abel current, with which, however, they were to unite.

„According to the legend, we have two currents at the entrance of the human race into the world: the children of Cain, whom one of the Elohim begot with Eve, the children of the world, in whom we find the great arts and external sciences. This is the one current that has been outlawed and is then to be sanctified by Christianity when the fifth principle has come into the world. The other current are the children of God who have brought man up to the grasp of the fifth principle. They are those whom Adam created. Then the sons of Cain were called to now enclose in a shell that which the sons of God, the children of Abel-Seth, had created.

In the ark of the covenant is hidden the holy name of Yahweh. But that which is to transform the world, that which is to create the covering for the Holy of Holies, that is to be restored by the sons of Cain. God created man's body, in it man's I is absorbed and first destroys this temple. Man can only save himself if he first builds the house that carries him over the waters of the passions, if he builds Noah's Ark. Man must build this house again. Thus on the outside builds what came into the world as the children of Cain, and what the children of God have brought builds on the inside.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 152f)

„The Knights Templar said at that time: Everything we have experienced so far is a preparation for what the Redeemer has willed. For they said: There is a future of Christianity, a new task. And we have the task of preparing the various sects of the Middle Ages and people in general for that future, where Christianity will arise in a new clarity, in what the Redeemer actually wanted. We have seen Christianity rise in the fourth sub-race, in the fifth it will develop further, but in the sixth it shall first celebrate the resurrected glory. That is what we have to prepare. We must so direct the souls of men that a real, true, pure Christianity may be expressed, in which the Name of the Most High has its abode.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 146)

The wisdom that the Templars strove to attain can only be achieved through the spiritualisation of the astral body into the spirit self (manas), which was seen in the image of the divine Virgin Sophia.

„If you follow the teachings of the Templars, there is something at the centre that was worshipped as something feminine. This feminine was called the divine Sophia, the divine wisdom. Manas is the fifth principle, the spiritual self of man, which should arise, to which a temple should be built. And just as the pentagon from the entrance to Solomon's temple characterises the five-membered man, so too does this feminine characterise the wisdom of the Middle Ages. With his "Beatrice", Dante wanted to portray nothing other than this wisdom. Only those who look at Dante's "Divine Comedy" from this point of view can understand it. Therefore you will find the same symbols in Dante's work that are expressed in the Templars, the Christian knighthoods, the Grail knights and so on.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 152)

In this striving, the Knights Templar, as Steiner reported, also connected with the mystery of the Holy Grail:

„The Knights Templar had brought the initiation wisdom of the Holy Grail from the Orient to the mountain of salvation, Mons salvationis, the place of initiation of Christianity. An initiation ceremony pointed directly to the future of the whole human race. It was said: A time will come when Christianity will experience a new phase. - From immemorial times, the progress of human spiritual culture was consciously designated according to the progress of the Sun. Before 800 B.C., the Sun passed through the constellation of Taurus for about 2200 years. Over in Asia, the bull was worshipped as the divine. Even before that, for the same reason, the twins were worshipped in Persia: good and evil, the duality. Around 800 BC, the Sun entered the sign of the Aries or Lamb. The legend of Jason and the golden fleece points to this. Christ calls himself the Lamb of God because he appeared in this sign. [Today the Sun is in the sign of Pisces.] The Templars point to the next constellation; the Sun will then enter the constellation of Aquarius. That is when Christianity will really rise, when paganism will be united with Christianity. This culture will raise a new John. That time will come when the Sun will be in the sign of Aquarius. John is called Aquarius; he will be the herald of a new age of Christianity. It is said that the Knights Templar referred to John the Baptist, not Christ. But the John of whom they speak is the Aquarius.“ (Lit.:GA 92, p. 156f)

In this context, the visions that the Knights Templar experienced through the confrontation with the adversary powers can also be illuminated from a completely different angle:

„That a "John-Aquarius" will come, who will first make the old John the truth and proclaim a Christ who will renew the Temple, when the great moment will have come when the Christ will speak to humanity anew, to understand this moment then, that was taught in the depths of the Mysteries of the Templars.

And the Templars went on to say: 'Now we are at a time when men are not yet ripe to understand the great teaching, nor have we yet to prepare them for John the Baptist, who baptises with water'. - The cross was placed in front of the one who wanted to become a Templar, and he was told: You should deny this cross now in order to understand it later, first become a Peter, first deny the teaching like Peter, the rock, who denied the Lord. This was taught as a pre-school to the future Templars.

[...]

After all this had been presented to the Templar, he was shown a symbolic figure of the Divine Being in the form of a venerable man with a great beard (Symbol of the Father). When men will have developed upwards and will have received their own guides in the Masters, when those will be there who can lead men, then there will stand before men as the word of the guiding Father, the Master, who will lead men to the comprehension of the Christ.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 149ff)

Literatur

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• Rudolf Steiner: Konferenzen mit den Lehrern der Freien Waldorfschule 1919 bis 1924, GA 300 a-c (1995)
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References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.