MASONIC
TEMPLARY
MODERN GUARDIANS
OF THE AUTHENTIC GRAIL TRADITION
Ever since the early to mid 13th century, when German
knight Wolfram von Eschenbach identified them as such in his epic poem Parzival,
the legendary Knights Templar have been closely associated with the mythical
Knights of the Holy Grail. While no hard historical evidence has ever been produced
establishing a direct connection between these two chivalric orders, in the
paragraphs which follow will be demonstrated the notion that the influence of
Von Eschenbach’s association may have played heavily into the development of
the Templar knighting ceremony as it is practiced to this day by the Commandery
of the York Rite of Freemasonry. It is on this account that the author has come
to view Masonic Templary as something of a modern guardian of the authentic
Grail tradition. Given the sensitive nature of the subject matter at hand, it
has been necessary that the author take certain precautionary measures so as to
avoid any violation of his Obligation as a Knight Templar. Such being the case,
any apparent interruption in the continuity of the paper should be taken a direct
reflection of the difficulty in the author’s task
of conveying his platform under the stated necessary precautions.
That being said, let us take a moment to briefly
touch upon some of what it is that the Grail tradition actually entails. It
will also be helpful to examine a couple of the primary literary precursors
which some scholars believe may have contributed to the rich lore surrounding
the Grail tradition. The Holy Grail is most commonly depicted as being the cup
from which Jesus Christ drank during his ‘Last Supper’ prior to being crucified.[1]
According to legend, this cup was later used by Joseph of Arimathea, the secret
disciple of Christ who donated the tomb wherein Jesus was to be laid following
his crucifixion, to collect the mixture of blood and water which flowed from
the laceration in Jesus’ side made by the lance or spear of Roman soldier
Longinus. Being thus sanctified, the cup was then said to have been imbued with
miraculous virtues such as curative powers and the ability to make barren land
fertile, and it was for the purpose of preserving this sacred vessel that the Order
of the Knights of the Holy Grail was originally founded.
As a literary precursor to this tale, several
scholars have sought to identify the legend of the Holy Grail with the Welsh
legend of King Bran, the mythical king of Britain, and his magical cauldron --
the latter of which was said, similar to the qualities attributed to the Holy Grail,
to be able to mysteriously restore the dead to life. Magical characteristics
such as these were not limited to King Bran’s cauldron, but were also
attributed to Bran himself. According to The Mabinogion, an ancient book
of Welsh folklore, after realizing his impending fate, the king ordered that
his head be severed and returned to Britain where miraculously it continued to
speak and, in some cases, even prophecy. After some eighty years, the head
ceased speaking, at which time it was taken to a place called ‘White Hill’ and
buried facing the direction of France in order to protect the British from
French invasion. The legend even goes on to declare that it was none other than
King Arthur, the same who features prominently in the Grail tradition, who recovered the skull from its place of rest. In more
recent times, certain scholars have sought to align the Holy Grail with the
golden platter on which the severed head of St. John the Baptist was served to
the dancing Salome by the remorseful King Herod. The reader is asked to note that
in both cases the object identified as a forerunner of the Holy Grail is
directly associated with the motif of a severed head.
The Knights Templar were formed in the 12th
century for the noble purpose of escorting Christians on their pilgrimages
throughout the Holy Land during the Crusades. After inventing a system which is
widely recognized as the forerunner of modern banking, the Templars grew
exceedingly wealthy to the point that the powers that be, i.e., the crown
and the tiara, sought to relieve them of their riches, and in 1307 a statement
was issued by the debt-ridden King Philip IV of France declaring the Templars
to be heretics. A great many of them were subsequently arrested, interrogated,
tortured, and executed -- their wealth then claimed by the greedy Philip. While
no ‘holy cup’ was reported to have ever been discovered amongst the Templars’ treasures,
the most widespread of the confessions made by the knights during their
interrogation was the collective veneration of a mysterious severed head, reportedly
called Baphomet, which was used by them during their ceremonies of
initiation.
According to Von Hammer, the word Baphomet
is a combination of the two Greek words Baphe and Metis which,
when combined, translates to the baptism of wisdom -- but as we shall
see, the use of the word ‘baptism’ here may have less to do with the physical
act of submerging the body in, and raising it up out of water, and more to do
with the imbibing of a certain libation from a sacred ‘cup.’ Such is the case in
The Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of writings attributed to Hermes
Trismegistus, the famed author of the Tabula Smaragdina or Emerald
Tablet, wherein we read the following:
“Reason
indeed[...]among all men hath [Deity] distributed, but Mind not yet; not that
He grudgeth any, for grudging cometh not from Him, but hath its place below,
within the souls of men who have no Mind[...]He willed, my son, to have it set
up in the midst for souls, just as it were a prize[...]He filled a mighty Cup
with it, and sent it down, joining a Herald [to it], to whom He gave command to
make this proclamation to the hearts of men: Baptize thyself with this Cup's
baptism
what heart can do so, thou that hast faith thou canst ascend to him that hath
sent down the Cup, thou that dost know for what thou didst come into being!” (The
Cup or Monad, vv. 3 & 4).
Thus we see
that that the term ‘baptism’ can be a reference to the well-known ritual of bodily
submersion in water and, more obscurely, a sacred cup or libation. Baphomet therefore,
the severed head allegedly venerated by the Templars, may be at once a cryptic
reference both to a baptism of wisdom as well as a cup of mind. Interestingly,
Von Eschenbach specifically refers to the Knights of the Holy Grail as
“baptized men.”
As demonstrated above, the lore surrounding
the Grail tradition is intimately connected with legends involving severed heads.
These two seemingly separate themes, a sacred cup and a severed head,
would appear somewhat irreconcilable if it was not for the historical precedent
provided by the potentially shocking rituals once observed by the Goths of
Scandinavia who, according to the research of English Freemason Rev. George
Oliver, were prone to
drink alcoholic libations from the cap of a human skull, thus uniting neatly
the theme of the sacred cup or libation with that of the skull or severed head.
Paraphrasing from Oliver’s 1840 work The History of Initiation, Gen.
Albert Pike, 33° says
that the initiatory rituals of this Eastern Germanic tribe included
“[a] long probation, of fasting and mortification,
circular processions, [and] many fearful tests and trials…[The candidate] was
obligated upon a naked sword (as is still the custom in the Rit Moderne, and sealed
his obligation by drinking mead out of a human skull.”
Turning our
attention to the Far East, we find that the ritual motif of drinking from a
human skull plays a central role also in the ceremonial observances of the
reclusive Shiva worshipping Aghora of India, as well as the remote Vajrayana
Buddhists of Tibet, both of whom preserve the curious rite of imbibing
libations from a sacred kapala or skullcup. These kapalas
are often employed by the practitioners of Vajrayana Buddhism for the additional
purpose of making religious offerings to the deific Dharmapalas, who
themselves are frequently depicted as bearing these strange yet fascinating relics.
The word Dharmapala literally translated means Defender of the Faith,
which itself is a phrase that should be particularly meaningful to every
Masonic Templar.
Sir Knight Rev. Frederick Shade, in his The
Quest for the Holy Grail and the Modern Knights Templar[6], provides
an outline of several other similarities between what he calls the Templar
hallows and the lesser hallows of the Grail tradition. The lesser
hallows of the Grail tradition are described as being certain sacred relics
for which the Grail Knights are searching in addition to the Holy Grail. The similarities
between the so-called Templar hallows and the lesser hallows of
the Grail tradition include, among other things “[t]he dish of bread, which is
the food given to the pilgrim on his arrival” and “[t]he skull of mortality,
with which the novice undertakes a year of penance, and with which the
imprecations are made.” Sir Knight Shade goes on to say that
“[t]here are several other hallows and sacred
signs in the Templar tradition. Some of the lesser hallows of the Grail cycle
are suggested here, such as the Templar crucifix, with the nails prominently
displayed thereon. There is the knight’s sword, which is to be wielded in
defense of the faith and also his shield, all which are beautifully explained
in the quotation from St. Paul. They may not necessarily come directly from the
Grail legend, but they certainly evoke many aspects of that tradition and resonate
as hallows in their own right.”
Thus we see that Von
Eschenbach’s association of the Knights Templar with the mythical Knights of
the Holy Grail may very well have had more than a minor influence on the
development of the Templar knighting ceremony as it is currently practiced by
the Commandery of the York Rite of Freemasonry. Because of the probability of
said influence, it is the author’s opinion that Masonic Templary can rightly be
called a modern guardian of the authentic Grail tradition, furnished with all
that such entails. This is true even for the Candidate who sits silently
contemplating in the grim Chamber of Reflections at the commencement of the
Templar ceremony, where the human skull present there still has the potential
to exhibit that miraculous power of prophetic speech attributed to the severed
head of the mythical King Bran. Surrounded oftentimes with oracular messages
such as I was what you are and, more importantly, I am what
you will be
does not the skull in the Chamber of Reflections speak something of our fate to
us all? Is not the bitter cup of
death that from which every man must sooner or later partake?