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From Anarchy to degeneration- Imposing External Law. Cathari. Extract Two. Part Six: The Path Of The Masters
by Katherine Frisk, The Phaser.com:
In the last section we left off where Dr. John Johnson said:
“When, in 1453, Constantinople fell to the final rally of the armies of Islam, the old church of Santa Sophia was converted into a mosque and the last Greek Christian wept bitter tears as he fled from the city of Constantine.”
Unfortunately, as with Egypt, Dr. Johnson as much as I respect his research, has left out a major period in history, the first 1,000 years of Christianity to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which I will address in this section.
For almost 1,000 years, Christianity was centred around the Byzantine Empire and the church of the Hagia Sophia, built in 537 A.D. The (Santa Sophia) Hagia Sophia in its time was and to a certain extent still is considered to be an architectural marvel. Constantinople had become the “New Rome,” with a more Greek than Roman Latin influence. As already mentioned, the Orthodox Christian church is an Apostolic church were all priests like the Apostles are considered equals and the Bishop is considered the first, but first amongst equals. Unlike the Latin church there is no Pope, there is no Roman Emperor of the church. But, as can be seen in the New Testament Gospels themselves, the Greek translations also had mistranslations and interpolation of Greek thought. They were not written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus and the Essenes.
Eastern Europe, the Byzantine Empire, by comparison to western Europe was a thriving part of the world. It was a bridge from east to west and a major economic and political power house. Western Europe on the other hand degenerated into the dark ages along with the fall of the Roman Empire. Until… along came Hugues de Payens and his nine Knights Templar. They were also known as the Order of Solomon’s Temple and established themselves at the Temple Mount with the sole objective of finding the runes of the original building.
However, much like the archaeologists in the 20th century, they found no evidence of a Temple of Solomon , only the wall of the second temple built after the return of the Jews from Babylon.
The Templar Order grew from the original nine Knights to a vast organisation. There has been much speculation as to the source of their wealth, simplistically put down to their banking system. In order for someone on one side of Europe to transfer funds to another side of Europe they could deposit the amount with the Templars in that area and then the Templars would pay out the second party on the other end. A revolutionary concept in the Middle Ages and the origins of our current ATM machines in the 21st Century.
This does not explain the true wealth of the Templars. Rumours abounded about a Templar treasure. But what was it? Here I will speculate on a number of possibilities.
1. Spiritual knowledge.
The Templars came in contact with ancient Hebrew societies. They were much like the Torah Jews today, who deplore Zionism and are of the belief that Israel can only be restored when the Messiah returns. They believe that they are not entitled to their own country due to the breaking of the Covenant by installing a monarchy. (I Samuel 8) The Templars were also exposed to the Samaritan view, that the true temple was the heavens, with the sun by day and the moon, stars and constellations by night, with magnificent views from Mount Gerizim in a clear, cloudless sky.
They came into contact with ancient Christian communities that could trace their existence back to the 1st century A.D. One being the Armenian Church in Jerusalem originally believed to have been founded by James The Righteous, the brother of Jesus who was also murdered by the Sadducees.
There we have that word again, the importance of Righteousness that runs throughout Dr. Johnson’s work, a central theme in the Essene community, their teachers known as the Teachers of Righteousness, persecuted by the Sadducee temple priests in Jerusalem.
Lastly they came into contact with Islam, which at the time had the most advanced scholarship in the fields of mathematics, algebra and geometry.
The original nine Knights who came from a backward Medieval environment that was only just emerging from the Dark Ages, gained insight and knowledge from all three communities. The most visible manifestation of their endeavours was the establishment of the Free Masons, a group of men who unlike the rest of the people of Europe who were bound like salves to their feudal lords, were able to travel from one area to another without hindrance. These free men built the many Cathedrals that are found throughout Europe, incorporating symbols depicting the sun, moon, stars and constellations. Thus through the medium of architecture they built representations of the true temple, the heavens. In these Cathedrals they told the stories of the Essenes and the Teachers of Righteousness in the stain glass windows using Christian iconography. The design of these Cathedrals was based on the Islamic study of mathematics, algebra and geometry. The Cathedrals embodied a wealth of knowledge from ancient Israel, the Christian stories and Islam and can be read like a book. As a result, in order to become a free mason, the only oath the initiate was bound to was a belief in a “Supreme Being.” It did not matter if you were Hebrew, Christian or Muslim. The intention was the same. The glorification of the one true creator of heaven and earth. The Cathedrals were also designed acoustically, amplifying the chants of the clergy. Nothing was more beautiful than standing in the light of the sun filtering through the stain glass windows that reflected heaven on earth to the accompaniment of a choir singing to the glory of the “Supreme Being.”Again we have a duplication of the light and sound current that permeates the universe, as John called it, “The Word.” It is a sad anomaly that these great Cathedrals have been marred by macabre, demonic, devilish gargoyles on the exterior of the buildings, mocking and defacing the work done by these free men.
Someone recently remarked that Stephen Hawking, true to his scientific background, who has always been sceptical about the concept of “God,” is beginning to see that everything is so precise that it’s impossible for it to be happenstance. Everything down to a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a meter, is absolutely precise. He is beginning to change his mind is what’s happening to him. He is now beginning to entertain the idea that what people call “Divine”, is in fact done by some sort of “Architect.”
2. The Head as Treasure.
The Templars were later accused of devil worship, an accusation that was unfounded. In 2015 the Roman Catholic Church rescinded, after almost 800 years, a judgement that had damned this order and in the process destroyed them. They were finally, like Galileo, proclaimed innocent of the crimes they were accused of committing. It is human nature to project our own faults onto others and to accuse them of the crimes we ourselves have committed.
One of the accusations brought against them was that they worshiped a skull embossed in gold. This skull has gone by many names in the re-telling of the story. It was held up as evidence for their crimes of witchcraft and devil worship. But if we look to the Languedoc, where the original Knights came from and were supported by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, we might find the truth behind the nature of this skull.
There are a number of paintings from this era hanging in the Louvre today. Many have similar characteristics. A woman sitting at a table with a candle, a book and a skull. The woman represents Mary Magdalene, who according to the recently discovered Nag Hammadi texts, was the beloved of Jesus and an Apostle in her won right who wrote her own Gospel and ministered in early Christianity. In the Languedoc, the “Parfait,” the perfect ones of their priesthood comprised of both men and women, considered equals in their mission to spread Christianity. In the Latin Christian world, women were and still are deprived of any meaningful role in the priesthood and during the Inquisition, millions of Cathari women were burnt at the stake as witches. Mary Magdalene in turn has been portrayed as a whore. She is never mentioned by name in the accusation of whoredom in the Gospels, and her association with this profession is circumspect.
The candle represents the Holy Spirit as it descended like fire on the Apostles, which has been discussed before in the section on Zoroaster.
The book was a very early Languedoc translation of the Gospel of John, many of these books were later burnt during the Inquisition which raged over Europe. As we have seen in the section on Christianity, John’s Gospel is the only Gospel that speaks about the divine sound current that permeates the whole universe, “The word,” that was in the beginning. John’s Gospel is the only Gospel that quotes Jesus as saying, “The Jews say, but I tell you,” marking a clear difference between Essene thought and the Judaic thought of the Sadducees. John’s Gospel is the only Gospel in the last chapter that suggests that Jesus did many more things after the crucifixion that could not be written down in all the books of that time, suggesting that he survived the cross and continued to teach. The people of the Languedoc in turn did not hold much store in the crucifixion or the rituals that embellish this “human sacrifice” by drinking his blood or eating his flesh. They saw the bread and the wine as it was originally intended, a communion meal, held in the home on the Sabbath and blessed by the mother of the house, not as a symbol of slaughter and human sacrifice to appease the “Gods” and atone for sins, as Abraham had once attempted to do to his own son.
The skull. The obvious conclusion that one must come to is that this was the skull of John the Baptist. There is however, another possibility. That is was the skull of the Theraputea and Essene, Theudas who was arrested and beheaded at the same time James and John Zebadee were crucified. Their crime was that like Joshua ( Greek Jesus) they had commanded the river Jordan to part in order to lead the Essenes into the “New Kingdom,” a kingdom that was founded on the principles of Moses and Joshua, a Republic, where the highest authority was not a king or high temple priest, but a judiciary comprised of men and women, of the people, by the people and for the people.
This then was one of the “Treasures”that the Knights Templar took back to the Languedoc and as a result the Languedoc region which was fiercely independent, began adopting both the spiritual and political practices that they had re-discovered in the Middle East. The result was a thriving social, economic and political region with tolerance of Hebrews, Christians and Muslims and a major trade route between Marseilles and the east. For Rome, intent on spiritual, economic and political hegemony, this was anathema.
3. The Ark of the Covenant.
The Knights Templar soon discovered that there was no treasure on the Temple Mount neither were there any signs of Solomon’s Temple. They traveled west into Egypt and there along the Nile River discovered many temples, some exact replicas and some even more wondrous than Solomons.
They also discovered that the Ark, which is treated with such veneration in the Biblical texts, was in common usage in Egypt, as were the Ten Commandments which were based on the Egyptian texts, “The Coming Forth Of Day.” They realised that the Egyptians who had built these temples had since fled south subsequent to the many invasions of the country over the centuries.
In Ethiopia they discovered a unique group of people who were Orthodox Christians but who still maintained many Hebrew customs. One of which was the celebration of Simkat Torah, the celebration of the Ark, which once a year is carried through the streets of Addis Ababa. The scrolls in this Ark have since been stolen by a Jewish-American Zionist organisation Nacoej, in 2010 and taken to Israel.
The Templars then returned to Europe and it is believed that they took the Ark of the Covenant with them. I doubt this theory based on the simple fact that an Ark, as described in Biblical texts was a common object in Egypt used to store items of great value. I think the real treasure was not only the wealth of knowledge gained by these men but that in their travels they had accumulated a substantial amount of gold. Something that Rome not only lacked but desired.
The result was the Cathar Crusade, a wanton destruction of the Languedoc, its people, its spiritual beliefs, its economy and more important the ever-growing Republic and a Judiciary that was beginning to take form along with a society comprised of Hebrews, Christians and Muslims who communed and paid tribute to the “Supreme Being.” For a brief moment in time the doors of heaven opened only to be slammed shut before they could fully develop a new kingdom of anarchy.
Between 1167 and 1244 the Languedoc was laid to waste by hired mercenaries, raping and pillaging the villages, towns and castles and carrying out a policy of slash and burn all over the countryside. Montesegur finally fell and true to their total belief in life after death and transcending the body, the Parfait, both men and women, volunteered to die at the stake as early Christians had fearlessly done centuries before them in Rome. This afforded many others the opportunity to escape, and as the story is told, leave with the “treasure”and safeguard it.
I am of the opinion that the real treasure was no more and no less than what was written in the hearts of the survivors. A healthy sense of anarchy that is held by all free men, masons and others alike that do not worship at the feet of monarchy, high priest or temple. By 1314 the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacque De Molay, was roasted on an island on the River Seine in Paris. After 7 years neither the Vatican nor King Philip IV of France had managed to torture the whereabouts of the Templar treasure from Molay’s lips. Not surprisingly, as the treasure, like all real treasure, was stored in heaven, not on earth where moths or rust could find it. The Templar Order set sail from Marseilles and went to Scotland, then set their sights west to the New World. Their ancestors were the Founding Father’s of the United States of America who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
[For a full history of the Languedoc, refer to : Massacre at Montsegur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade by Zoé Oldenbourg]
During the same time that the Languedoc was being brought to it’s knees, Rome sent her mercenaries to Constantinople in 1204, known as the Fourth Crusade. So intent was the Vatican on reclaiming the Roman Empire and re-establishing it under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope as the new Emperor, that they raped, pillaged and plundered the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Christian Church in the east as they had done to the Languedoc in the west.
Here is a description of the carnage by Nicetas Chroniates :
3. . . How shall I begin to tell of the deeds wrought by these nefarious men ! Alas, the images, which ought to have been adored, were trodden under foot ! Alas, the relics of the holy martyrs were thrown into unclean places ! Then was seen what one shudders to hear, namely, the divine body and blood of Christ was spilled upon the ground or thrown about. They snatched the precious reliquaries, thrust into their bosoms the ornaments which these contained, and used the broken remnants for pans and drinking cups,-precursors of Antichrist, authors and heralds of his nefarious deeds which we momentarily expect. Manifestly, indeed, by that race then, just as formerly, Christ was robbed and insulted and His garments were divided by lot; only one thing was lacking, that His side, pierced by a spear, should pour rivers of divine blood on the ground.
Nor can the violation of the Great Church[ be listened to with equanimity. For the sacred altar, formed of all kinds of precious materials and admired by the whole world, was broken into bits and distributed among the soldiers, as was all the other sacred wealth of so great and infinite splendor.
When the sacred vases and utensils of unsurpassable art and grace and rare material, and the fine silver, wrought with gold, which encircled the screen of the tribunal and the ambo, of admirable workmanship, and the door and many other ornaments, were to be borne away as booty, mules and saddled horses were led to the very sanctuary of the temple. Some of these which were unable to keep their footing on the splendid and slippery pavement, were stabbed when they fell, so that the sacred pavement was polluted with blood and filth.
4. Nay more, a certain harlot, a sharer in their guilt, a minister of the furies, a servant of the demons, a worker of incantations and poisonings, insulting Christ, sat in the patriarch’s seat, singing an obscene song and dancing frequently. B’or, indeed, were these crimes committed and others left undone, on the ground that these were of lesser guilt, the others of greater. But with one consent all the most heinous sins and crimes were committed by all with equal zeal. Could those, who showed so great madness against God Himself, have spared the honorable matrons and maidens or the virgins consecrated to God? Nothing was more difficult and laborious than to soften by prayers, to render benevolent, these wrathful barbarians, vomiting forth bile at every unpleasing word, so that nothing failed to inflame their fury. Whoever attempted it was derided as insane and a man of intemperate language. Often they drew their daggers against any one who opposed them at all or hindered their demands.
No one was without a share in the grief. In the alleys, in the streets, in the temples, complaints, weeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity, the separation of those most closely united. Nobles wandered about ignominiously, those of venerable age in tears, the rich in poverty. Thus it was in the streets, on the corners, in the temple, in the dens, for no place remained unassailed or defended the suppliants. All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime. Oh, immortal God, how great the afflictions of the men, how great the distress !
[“The Fourth Crusade” Translations, pp. 15-16. Orginally found in Nicetas: Atexii Ducae Imperium, ch. iiiiv, in Recueil des historiens des Crusades, hist. grec., I, 397. Greek. [11] Hagia Sophia.]
For anyone looking for a time line on John’s Revelations you might consider the fourth paragraph above and compare it to Chapter 17 verse 5 & 6:
“And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS, AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the martyrs of Jesus.”
The Vatican held the Hagia Sofia to ransom under the Latin Empire of the west until 1261 when it was finally recaptured by the Byzantines. By the time Constantinople fell to the final rally of the armies of Islam in 1453, it had already been laid waste and the Byzantine Empire robbed of her wealth and glory. The Orthodox Church yet again moved to a place of safety, to yet another “New Rome,”it moved to Moscow. After a disastrous period during the Soviet Union in the 20th century where her churches were desecrated and her priests murdered, the Orthodox Christian Church yet again found sanctuary towards the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. The “New Rome” is now protected, regardless of the Harlots of Pussy Riot who conduct their own “Fourth Crusade” against it, as the Roman mercenaries did centuries before in 1244.
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Anarchists and The Golden Age- Extract One: The Path of The Masters
