The Knights TemplarBy Dr. Dennis Cuddy
The film series "National Treasure" begins with a young Ben Gates' grandfather telling him about a secret treasure found by the Knights Templar about 1000 years ago. He said it was brought to America by freemasons who "left us clues (on the back of the dollar bill) like these, the unfinished pyramid, the all-seeing eye, symbols of the Knights Templar, guardians of the treasure. They're speaking to us through these" regarding the location of the treasure here.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
In the 11th century A.D., Hasan-i Sabbah became the founder and first grand master of the Assassins. According the a famous Ismaili story, he had gone to school with Omar Khayyam, who wrote:
 
"Dear Love, Couldst thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire.
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire!"
The last line of this later became the motto of the Fabian Socialists, as in their famous stained-glass window two of their leaders are seen about to shatter the world to bits upon an anvil.
 
In 1118, the Burgundian knight Hugues de Payens founded and became first grand master of the Order of the Temple (of Solomon), also referred to as the Knights Templar. They were modeled after the Assassins' attire in that the knights wore red crosses on a white background similar in color to Assassins' rafiqs, and they wore red caps and belts and white tunics.
 
Prior to the Templars, the Order of Sion had been founded in 1090 just south of Jerusalem by Godfroi de Bouillon, and in R. Rohricht's REGESTA REGNI HIEROSOLYMITANI (1893), there is a charter dated May 2, 1125 with the name of Prior Arnaldus at Sion linked to Hugues de Payens. After a later Templar grand master, Gerard de Ridefort, lost Jerusalem to the Saracens in 1187, the Order of Sion separated from the Templars.
 
This was the time of the Crusades, during which Richard the Lion-Hearted fled from the Holy Land disguised as a Templar. The Templars by the early 1300s had amassed great wealth, and English king after king was in constant debt to them. King Philip IV of France plotted to take their wealth by accusing them of plotting against the thrones of Europe as well as against the church, and he had their grand master, Jacques de Molay, and three others burned at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1313. De Molay denied he had been guilty of spitting on the cross and of denying Christ, but the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY says that the Templars had introduced Gnosticism into their rites, and had "institutionalized homosexuality in their Order."
 
We are generally told that with the execution of De Molay, the Templars organizationally ceased to exist as an entity. However, in the 1874 edition of C. G. Addison's KNIGHTS TEMPLARS (originally published in 1842), on page 541 there is a list of the grand masters of the Templars from De Molay (1313) to Sir William Sidney Smith (1838). The list comes from Albert Mackey's LEXICON OF FREEMASONY published in 1855.
 
There is some controversy over whether the list is legitimate, but it seems clear that De Molay, anticipating his own death, appointed John Mark Larmenius his successor as grand master. In Addison's book, it states: "The Charter by which the supreme authority has been transmitted (from De Molay to Larmenius) is judicial and conclusive evidence of the Order's continued existence. This Charter of transmission, with the signatures of the various Chiefs of the Temple, is preserved at Paris, with the ancient statutes of the Order, the rituals, the records, the seals, the standards, and other memorials of the early Templars....The Grand Master Bernard Raymond, in 1838, was succeeded in the regency of the Order by Admiral William Sidney Smith, who held sway till his death in 1840; and that at that date it numbered amongst the British subjects enrolled as its office-bearers the names of the Duke of Sussex, Grand Prior of England; the Duke of Leinster, Grand Prior Of Ireland; the Earl of Durham, Grand Prior of Scotland; the Chevalier Burnes (Grand Master of Scottish Freemasons in India), Grand Preceptor of Southern Asia; the Chevalier Tennyson D'Eyncourt, Grand Prior Of Italy; General George Wright, Grand Prior of India, etc. etc...."
 
We know that all of the Knights Templar were not captured or killed by King Philip IV in Fance at the time their leader, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake, because some of their graves have been found in Kilmartin, Scotland dating back to the early 14th century. Masonic leader Albert Pike has indicated that before De Molay died, he instituted what came to be known as the occult Hermetic or Scottish Masonry, the lodges of which were later established in Naples, Edinburgh, Stockholm and Paris. In this latter city, the lodge was the Grand Orient, perhaps one of the most occultic.
 
Sir William Sidney Smith was a former admiral of the British navy who had supposedly been given a Templar cross (left by Richard the L:ion-Hearted) by a Greek archbishop. Associated with Smith at this time was Chevalier (Charles) Tennyson D'Eyncourt mentioned above. He was the uncle of Alfred Lord Tennyson, who wrote in "Locksley Hall" (1842) about "the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." The latter Tennyson was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research, about which I have written previously. What is notable about the former Tennyson being Grand Prior of Italy, General Wright being Grand Prior of India, etc., etc. is that the work of these new Templars of the 19th century was global!
 
What may have happened was that from the beiginning of the 14th century to the middle of the 16th century, the Templars perhaps merged with the Hospitallers, as there are references to the "Order of the Knights of St. John and the Temple." In J. Maidment's TEMPLARIA (1828-1830), there is a charter granted by King James IV of Scotland dated 1488 which refers to "Fratribus Hospitalis Hierosolymitani, Militibus Templi Solomonis" and seems to indicate recognition of the continued existence of the Templars in some form.
 
On the cover of the 1987 edition of KNIGHT TEMPLAR is a picture of "Jonathan Swift, Satirist." Swift was probably the illegitimate son of Sir William Temple, whom I mentioned in my recent series on "The Power Elite's Historical Outline." Therefore, Swift was descended from the Templars because Sir William Temple's family was descended from a Knight Templar in Leicester, England in the 1100s. And one of Swift's friends was Alexander Pope, who wrote:
 
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
 
 
Relevant to this Pope epigram is the following from the 1874 edition of Addison's THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. It is from an account of the fall of Jerusalem to the Muslim leader Saladin during the Crusades in which the Templars were involved in October 1187, and reads as follows: "Barefoot processions of women, monks, and priests were continually made to the Holy Sepulcher to implore the Son of God to save his tomb and his inheritance from impious violation. The females, as a mark of humility and distress, cut off their hair and cast it to the winds. The ladies of Jerusalem made their daughters do penance by standing up to their necks in tubs of cold water placed upon Calvary. But it availed nought, for our Lord Jesus Christ, says the chronicler, would not listen to any prayer that they made. For the filth, the luxury, and the adultery which prevailed in the city did not suffer prayer or supplication to ascend before God." Could this be what awaits America and its people and for the same reasons?