ANST - FW: Musing on October 13th -- Friday the Thirteenth

Fri Oct 13 21:49:07 PDT 2000

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From: Ellsworth Weaver [mailto:astroweaver at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 23:03
To: 2thpix at surfari.net
Subject: Musing on October 13th -- Friday the Thirteenth

Dear Folk,

At sunset October 13, 1307, it was a Friday by the way, the forces of
the King of France quickly surrounded and arrested the members of an
Order of knights. Seven years later, after long periods of torture,
this king had the leaders of the Order burned at the stake. This
action
remains recalled in popular mythos as the bad luck on Friday the
thirteenth. It was bad luck for the Order of the Poor Knights of the
Temple of Solomon: the Knights Templar.

Although space does not permit me to go through the entire history of
the Templars, I do want to talk about their arrest and trial. Maybe I
should give you a cast list of the main players:

Guillaume de Nogaret, (see "Secret Things") Chancellor of the Kingdom
of France, had been nominated on this post on September 22, 1307. A
lawyer, he was soon called to the Court of Philip the Fair. In 1303
he
was one of the main participants in the struggle against the Pope
Boniface VIII. Among other actions he organized the assault of Agnani
on  September 7, 1303, when the Pope was slapped by Sciarra Colonna.
He
was thought to be closely linked to the Cathari (see "Unto the
Pure").
He organized the arrest of the Templars and wrote the accusations
against them: heresy, sacrilege, betrayal of the Church. Before that,
he had already snidely accused the Templars of the responsibility of
the lost of the Holy Land (see "A Short Stroll to Tiberias"). He had
even suggested to confiscate their wealth to finance a new
expedition.
You have to believe that Philip loved him.

Pope Boniface VIII was an upright dude and entered in conflict with
the
French King Philip the Fair. Some, especially the French, said that
Boniface wanted too much temporal power.  He died suddenly and
mysteriously on October 11, 1303 after being liberated from the
French
by a popular uprising. He was succeeded by Benoit XI who died soon
after on July 7, 1304 the day before he was supposed to excommunicate
Nogaret.  Popes die all the time. I am sure those bonbons really had
marzipan filling. They did smell suspiciously of almonds.

Clement V succeeded Benoit XI as Pope after a conclave of the
Cardinals
that lasted eleven months. This delay can be explained by the rivalry
between the Orsini and the Colonna families. In the end they elected
the French Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got (the Goth), on
June
5, 1305. With all the prior popes dying mysteriously in Rome, he
wisely
decided to move to France. What a coincidence! There was Philip the
Good-looking to take care of him. Clement V was crowned Pontiff
(bridge
builder) on November 14, 1305 in Lyon, France. He was the first of
the
Avignon popes. Not that he and Philip ate ice cream off the same
spoon
or anything but by the time of Clement’s death there were only six
Italian cardinals (princes of the Church) out of the twenty-four
slots.

Philip the Fair was one of those people who are so good looking that
other people think they are stuck up. You know what I mean? Okay, he
was stuck up. He was king and all but he was also realizing that war,
buying popes, commissioning hits, and other neat things about high
living cost money. He was obsessed with getting the d’argent.
Remember
he tried to annex Flanders? Read "I Got Spurs that
Jingle-Jangle-Jingle" about the Battle of the Spurs in Courtrai in
1302. The Flemish weavers beat his troops handily. Next he turned to
the Jews. He nationalized (that is politico-speak for "stole") all
their goods and kicked them out of France.. He modified the rate of
exchange of the French money to suit his needs. One year before he
arrested the Templars he went to the Temple to escape a popular riot
following another devaluation. He was at war with Boniface VIII for
many years.

Jacques de Molay (1243-1314) was the last Master of the Templars. He
was born in Molay, Jura, France. He entered the Order in 1265 and
fought in Syria. He was elected Grand Master in 1298. He was summoned
by the pope to France in 1306 or 1307 to discuss the melding of the
Templars and the Hospitallers. He was strongly opposed to any such
union, even if he were to head it (which he wasn’t).  He was arrested
with all the Templars in France on October 13, 1307 as ordered by
Philip the Fair. Eleven days of torture later, he admitted under
"strong interrogation" to have denied the divinity of Christ. He did
deny that any Templars he knew were having boy-boy love-ins. No
sodomy
for him.  He urged his Brothers Templar to confess. When Pope
Clement’s
boys came around to witness the apparent reconciliation of this poor
confessed heretic at a nice open-air court, Jacques stood up and said
that everything thing that he confessed was a lie to get out of being
tortured anymore. He also said that Philip did not have the right to
try the Master of a religious order; only the pope could do that.
Pope
Clement V developed a strange case of hearing difficulties and
refused
to hear his Grand Master. In November 1312 Pope Clement ordered that
the Templars be suppressed (disbanded). Jacques de Molay and other
leaders of the Order were condemned to perpetual imprisonment by a
commission of three cardinals on March 18 or 19, 1314. On hearing the
sentence he and Geoffrey de Charnay again retracted their confession.
He was burned on the stake in Paris the same day with Geoffrey de
Charnay.

Geoffrey de Charnay has been received in the Order by Amaury de la
Roche a friend and favorite of Saint Louis, king of France. Geoffroy
de
Charnay became Commander of Normandy. He was arrested as all the
other
Templars in France and submitted to heavy torture. Like Jacques de
Molay he was finally condemned to perpetual imprisonment. He denied
his
previous confessions and was burned on the stake with his Grand
Master
in Paris in March 1314.

How righteous were the charges against the Templars? I suppose we
will
never know. Some of the worries were that they had become awfully
rich
and the king needed the money. That is true. The Templars got their
initial money from an unknown source. Good speculation has that they
found where the Jews had hidden a great deal of treasure in some
caves
below the Temple of Jerusalem (see "Zealously Remembering Zion").
They
eventually became the equivalent of bankers in the Medieval world.
For
a slight fee, you could give the Templars some cash in Paris and they
would give you a chit you could redeem for cash in Jerusalem: a
Travelers’ Cheques sort of gig. They would also loan money to
interested parties. How they got around the prohibition from charging
excessive rates of interest has never been explained. Maybe it was at
a
low rate. Still, Philip was indebted to them.

The bit about heresy is interesting. In the midst of some of their
crusades they ran into some deep thinkers especially amongst the
Cathari, Moslems, and Jews. Besides the money in that treasure trove,
they may have found some scrolls of the early Judeo-Christian church
which was heavily Essene. The whereabouts of this treasure, including
the scrolls, may be in Scotland in some property held by the
Sinclairs.
Suggest you research this for yourselves. There are some very strong
reasons to believe that many of the phrases Paul of the NT took as
straightforward had a completely different meaning to the Essenes. I
will not presume to insult my Christian readers to say that they were
or this speculation is correct. No matter what one believes on this,
the Templars were much like the Cathari in that they were outside the
realm of plain-vanilla Christianity.  Those who are interested may
write to me for references and further study

The Templars were accused of worshipping an idol named "Baphomet."
Despite Elias Levi’s treatise, the name is too close to Mahomet and
probably goes back to the worry that the Templars had "gone native"
while in the Holy Land. They were also supposed to have an oracular
head which gave them advice. I know, it sounds like the Skull and
Bones
with the head of Emilio Zapata. Maybe it was.

About the charges of homosexuality, it may have been true. I doubt
that
we could ever know. We do know kings of every nation seem to have
indulged. It does appear in armies of men who shun women. I wasn’t
there.

Some interesting side-notes and speculations are in order:

Jacques de Molay was crucified onto a door frame as part of his
torture. He was taken down alive and a linen sheet was laid over him.
That linen sheet absorbed the sweat and blood of this bearded Master.
Later an image of that permanently stained the cloth. Some folks in
the
Catholic Church venerate this cloth today in Turin, Italy. They call
it
the Shroud of Turin. That is just crazy, right? Still fabric evidence
points to... oh, never mind.

Jacques de Molay, before dying in the fire, said that the Pope and
the
King of France would appear before their Lord the first within 40
days
and the King within six months to be judged with Jacques. Pope
Clement
V died one month after Jacques de Molay in the night of April 19,
1314
in the Roquemaure Castle in the Rhone Valley. King Philip the Fair
died
of "unknown causes" (apoplexy?) November 29, 1314. Philip was
forty-seven years old and had not a mark on him.

The Templars were said to have enormous wealth. Although the Church
and
King Philip managed to find some, much of it evaded their grasp.
Where
did it go? All of the Templars were not taken in other countries.
Edward II (see "Eddie and the Cruisers") doubted the truth of the
charges. Where did the Templars, themselves go? There were reported
Templars fighting on the side of Robert the Bruce Scotland in some
later battles against the English.

The Freemasons claim Templar heritage and yet they only trace their
history to 1717. Is this just a spiritual connection or something
else?
What does that Mark Mason degree really refer to?

The Templars also had a good size navy. Where did it go? Remember the
pictures in your history books of Columbus’ three ships with the red
forked crosses on their sails? Those crosses are known as the cross
partee’ and it was the emblem of the Templars. Must be some
coincidence.

What have we learned? Torture can make most folk confess to anything?
There are a lot of questions still about the Templars? Pope Clement V
and King Philip the Fair had a lot to answer for? War takes money?
How
about it takes a really brave guy to tell the truth? I think Jacques
de
Molay was one very brave guy. Although there’s lots more to talk
about,
this is getting long. Hope it will stimulate you to read a little.

So if you are out loaning money to kings, "discovering" a New World,
or
just founding a New World Order and you wish to secretly communicate
these missives to some of your brethren or cistern, please do but
leave
my name and sig. attached.

"Jacque de Molay, thou art again revenged!" (supposedly quoted under
the guillotine during the French Revolution)

Knowing nothing worth torturing me for,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats

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