First Templar Nation

by Freddy Silva

  Magnetomer image shows how telluric forces behave at the Rollright stone circle.

  There is one more thing. Temples, including the more recent Gothic cathedrals, are typically sited at locations that have been in continuous use for millennia, and they are unique in the sense that a second anomaly occurs at these hotspots. Every dawn the Earth is subjected to a rise in the solar wind, which intensifies the planet’s geomagnetic field; at night this field weakens, then picks up at dawn, and the cycle repeats ad infinitum. But there are places on the ground where the geomagnetic field interacts with the telluric currents.22 This action generates a hotspot known to science as a conductivity discontinuity, and even though ancient people did not own magnetometers they were able to source this energy long before scientists built machines that proved them right. Hence the name given to such sensitives: sourcerers.

  The Sioux call this energy skan, and when concentrated at sacred sites it is claimed to influence the mind and creativity, as well as elevate personal power in the form of spiritual attuning. In essence, the energy raises the body’s resonance. Constant contact with multiple power places builds up a kind of numinous state of mind, what Chinese Daoists describe as “awakening the Great Man within.”

  This has a profound effect on the human body, which is now widely accepted as composed of particles of energy, a walking electromagnetic edifice sensitive to minute fluctuations in the local geomagnetic field. With electromagnetism playing such a pivotal role in temples, its influence on the body is immediate. And since blood flowing through the veins and arteries carries a fair amount of iron, magnetism will work on it like a magnet reorganizes iron filings sprinkled on a sheet on paper. The same is true of the brain. Substantial amounts of magnetite are found in brain tissue and the cerebral cortex, and under the right conditions, magnetic stimulation of the brain induces dreamlike states, even in waking consciousness.23

  Lastly, and possibly most importantly, is the effect that telluric energies in temples may have on the pineal gland, a pine cone–shaped protuberance located near the center of the brain. Fluctuations in the geomagnetic field affect the production of chemicals made by the pineal, such as pinoline, which interacts with another neurochemical, seratonin, the end result being the creation of DMT, a hallucinogen. It is believed that this is the neurochemical trigger for the dream state—the hallucinogenic state of consciousness that allows information to be received. In an environment where geomagnetic field intensity is decreased, people are known to experience psychic and shamanic states.24

  This blending of modern science with ancient esoteric practices and beliefs helps explain why temples are built where they are and why the Templars and Cistercians followed the same formula by regularly erecting their sites in places that were either architecturally unsuitable or atop preexisting places of veneration.

  It is perfectly feasible that such information was part of the knowledge decoded by the Kabalists working in Troyes. This spiritual technology was a component of the Mysteries teachings, whose central pillar concerned shamanic and ecstatic practices that led to a personal experience of God, in a nonreligious sense, and the strategic placement of the temple plus its geometry facilitated the process.

  One of these hotspots is Jerusalem, one of the many so-called primordial mounds throughout the ancient world. In the time of the pharaoh Akhenaten it was known as Garesalem, which breaks down as gar (stone), esa (Isis), and salem or shalem (perfect). Thus, Jerusalem is “the stone that embodies the perfection of Isis”; it is a place of reconnection with the essence of the Divine Virgin.

  Interestingly, telluric currents tend to be attracted to water, and water is a prerequisite in establishing a sacred site, quite beyond the obvious need for human sustenance. The place where John the Baptist performed baptisms, Bethany, was marked by a sacred mound where four springs intersect, thereby reflecting Bethany’s other name, Bethabara (House of the Crossing).

  The same crossing is evidenced at Monsanto, where the two enigmatic arches inside its shaft mark the exact crossing point of two telluric currents.

  An identical situation exists under the rotunda of Tomar. The site marks the crossing of four underground water courses, while the diameter of the building itself defines the precise width of two crossing telluric currents. Several indicators marking the path of this earth energy still exist in adjacent cloisters and chambers. One is an effigy carved on a low wall that is used as a seat for meditating monks, resembling a hand pointing downward or, seen another way, an energy descending from the sky; two capitals depicting the Green Man in the underground hall of Mysteries (the alleged wine cellar) mark another edge of the current, as does its underground shaft and the seventeen-rayed boss strategically placed above it.

  And yet Tomar is not alone when it comes to the Templars sourcing this exotic energy. Geomagnetic anomalies around sacred places in Portugal have been observed since the seventeenth century, and in recent times Portugal’s National Geological Survey found three major concentrations of magnetism in the Iberian Peninsula: the area of megaliths around the city of Évora, the promontory of Sagres, and the mountain of Sintra.25 Coincidentally, all three were prime Templar locations.

  Relationship between telluric currents and the position of the rotunda of Tomar. Several surviving features mark the edges of these pathways, including the monk’s seat with its carved effigy.

  Évora, a center of the cult of Isis-Diana, became the home of the affiliated Templar Order of the Knights of São Bento de Avis, created in 1162 at the Council of Coimbra, when the Cistercian Rule came into effect in Portugal.26 Its first Grand Master was Pedro, brother of King Afonso Henriques.

  Sagres, already described in the time of the scholar Strabo as the Sacred Promontory and home to a group of dolmens,27 later become the focal point of the Templars’ maritime exploits under Henry the Navigator. What no one can explain to this day is what the Templars were doing with a curious three-hundred-foot-wide wheel made of radial lines of stones, the purpose of which is a complete mystery; beside it they erected a chapel dedicated to Notre Dame, designed with an octagonal roof and perfectly located at the intersection of two telluric currents.

  As for Sintra, this was the village donated by Afonso Henriques to Gualdino Paes in absentia. It was the only such donation of its kind, which makes this unique offering all the more intriguing.

  Sagres. The asymmetric radial structure left behind by the Templars.

  Castle of Sintra.

  46

  1147. SINTRA. A FUNNY THING HAPPENS ON THE WAY TO THE CASTLE . . .

  While the Crusaders were preparing to ransack the city of Lisbon, Afonso Henriques quietly marched his knights into the village of Sintra, fourteen miles to the west, taking back what had once marked the southernmost limit of his late father’s land until the Moors captured it once more.

  Afonso and his knights took the meandering path up the vertiginous hill toward the castle where the Moors were camped. Using the gigantic boulders and lush vegetation as cover, they overran the fortification with absolutely no resistance; in fact, its inhabitants were nowhere to be seen. Even the mosque was stripped of relics.

  Sintra was of immense strategic importance, and yet the Arabs left without a fight. How could an entire garrison just vaporize?

  Stories say they escaped via underground tunnels and galleries leading from the watchtower, some emerging by the sea to the west, others three miles east, where Moorish men were witnessed emerging from within the mountain: “Heading to the first tower was a granary that was five feet in diameter, through which it is said there was a hidden road that went to Rio Mouro [River of the Moors], and it is called that for on the right side was seen a doorway through which they say was the actual entry.”1

  Even Moorish chroniclers stated categorically that Xentra (as the Arabs called it) is a hollow mountain, with one of its hilltops connected by a honeycomb of underground galleries to another hill thirty-five miles away, so much so that even the sea is able to pene
trate these inland caverns.2 Although a good number of cavities are of natural volcanic origin, the rest were purposefully carved out with both defensive and ceremonial purposes in mind. According to a caretaker of the Moorish castle, the hill is one big subterranean city with miles of underground tunnels, one linking the castle with a Capuchin monastery three miles away.3 When the Templars arrived—or returned—they made good use of such features and added a few of their own. At Penha Verde, on the northern slope of Sintra, they built a round church upon a dilapidated lunar temple from circa 5000 BC and dedicated it to Mary of Sion. Beneath the foundations were discovered various underground galleries once used for the practice of chthonic mysteries. These galleries connected to other passageways extending for two miles before emerging by a river.4 Similar chambers exist nearby at the monastery of Penha Longa, “a cave that was once closed by crystallization, which was discovered by a monk in the Convent. . . . Descent into this cave is by a door (which once served to protect it) which is seven or eight feet high . . . there is a gap through which the sun, its rays penetrating with a wonderful effect, makes this a house of shining crystal.”5

  This bewitching sacredness of Sintra had a particular effect on one of the king of Portugal’s knights, Pêro Pais, who upon arrival was so overwhelmed that he retired from secular soldiery and moved to one of its peaks to continue life as a penitent. There he founded a chapel dedicated to Saturn (the god representing the rational evaluation of life, particularly negative forces) to better gain mastery of himself.*426

  Coincidentally, Saturn’s mythological father, Jupiter, built a Golden Age, not unlike what the Templars and the Cistercians were attempting to fashion in Portugal.

  Inside one of Sintra’s narrow passageways carved out of solid granite bedrock.

  Five years later (in 1152) Afonso issued a charter in which the village of Sintra and thirteen of its properties are donated,7 with exceptional privileges, “to Gualdino Paes, Templar Master General of Portugal, we give you the aforesaid houses, with their estates cultivated and uncultivated, so that you may have and possess all the days of your life.”8 A later document is more explicit about the details of the property.9 It identifies the houses as those 618defining the village square and its public right of way, and states that in addition to “a few good houses in the village” the Templars were awarded “two vineyards, a water mill, several homesteads on the coast . . . and an orchard in almosquer,” that is to say, in Arabic, a suburb, which was then a mere ten minutes walk from the center of the village.10

  The charter also provides for the town’s residents, putting everyone on equal footing, “both the highest class as the inferior,” be they Christian, Jew, or Moor, and the responsibility for upholding this equitable justice was entrusted to the Templars alone.

  At face value such a donation from the king to the Templars seems typical enough, and yet unconventional insofar as it is awarded to Gualdino while he is away in the Holy Land experiencing the sacred places, and the manner in which he is addressed as “Templar Master,” a full five years before he is officially awarded the title, appears as though the knight’s promotion upon his expected return was a foregone conclusion.

  Meanwhile, the “orchard in almosquer” provides a big clue in understanding the nature of this donation. A surviving document states that more than two hundred years later, in 1371, the Templars still owned rights to this “forest of Almosquer,”11 which by then comprised a wood called the Forest of Angels, and below it, a truly bewitching place called the Estate of the Tower. It is this piece of property that reveals much about the spiritual/esoteric motives the core brotherhood was pursuing in Portugal.

  47

  PRESENT ERA. SINTRA. IN THE FOREST OF ANGELS . . .

  Article 7. “Build in your houses meeting places that are large and hidden that can be accessed by underground tunnels so that the brothers can go to meetings without the risk of getting into trouble. . . . In the houses of unelected Brothers, it is prohibited to conduct certain materials pertaining to the philosophical sciences, or the transmutation of base metals into gold and silver. This shall only be undertaken in secret and hidden places.1

  Talk about a smoking gun! This instruction to the Brothers of the Temple comes from a document listing the two secret Rules of the Knights Templar—the Rule of the Elected Brothers and the Rule of the Brothers Consulate. It was originally found in the possession of Templar Master Roncelin de Fos2 and rediscovered by accident in the Vatican archives by a Danish bishop. It unequivocally proves that the Templars followed a tradition of using crypts for the strict use of initiation into the Mysteries, intensifying the words of the Templar Preceptor Gervais de Beauvais to the Inquisition of how “there exists in the Order a law so extraordinary on which such a secret should be kept, that any knight would prefer his head cut off rather than reveal it to anyone.”3

  A copy of these Rules was preserved by Brother Mathieu de Tramlay until 1205, then passed to Robert de Samfort, proxy of the Temple in England, in 1240, and finally to Master Roncelin de Fos. They were kept only by the inner brotherhood, forbidden “to be kept by the brothers, because the squires found them once and read them, and disclosed them to secular men, which could have been harmful to our Order.”4 The document describes how only true initiates of the Order knew of a secret that “remains hidden from the children of the New Babylon,” even the king of France, and that no prince or high priest of the time knew the truth: “If they had known it, they would not have worshiped the wooden cross and burned those who possessed the true spirit of the true Christ.” This truth alludes to a transformation of the soul and the establishment of a kingdom united and presided over only by God.5

  Article 18, in particular, reveals much about the content of the Mysteries the Templars found and how, like the Essenes, this knowledge was revealed only to a select few: “The neophyte will be taken to the archives where he will be taught the mysteries of the divine science, of God, of infant Jesus, of the true Bafomet, of the New Babylon, of the nature of things, of eternal life as well as the secret science, the Great Philosophy, Abraxas [the Source of everything] and the talismans—all things that must be carefully hidden from ecclesiastics admitted to the Order.”6

  One of the extensive articles illustrates the universal appeal of the brotherhood to ordinary people: “Know that God sees no differences between people, Christians, Saracens, Jews, Greeks, Romans, French, Bulgarians [referring to the Bogomils] because every man who prays to God is saved.”7 This utopian vision clearly undermined the religious authority of the Catholic Church and its stated doctrine that “outside the church there can be no salvation.” But to a medieval populace whose daily diet consisted of perpetual war, an economy based on plunder, and religious intolerance and corruption, the ethos expounded by the Templars must have seemed like honey cascading from heaven.

  Such utopian thinking would have been perfectly at home in Sintra. Throughout this bucolic hill there is no shortage of immersions and disappearances into empyrean worlds. Two local legends speak of Templar knights falling in love with enchanted Moorish princesses shortly before vanishing through secret doors into the bowels of the mountain; another describes the Cave of the Fairy,*43 “formed by a large granite rock balanced on two rocks. Legend has it that every night a fairy will mourn her fate there.”8 This Neolithic passage chamber stands near another place of immersion called Anta do Monge (Dolmen of the Monk); anta†5 means “to mark,” it describes how such man-made monolithic structures deliberately reference hot spots whose energy differs from the surrounding land.9 Its association with a monk comes from a local legend of a Capuchin brother who became lost in one of Sintra’s famous mists and took refuge inside the stone chamber only to suddenly find himself “in another world.”

  One reason why the memory of magic persists in Sintra is due to its consecration to lunar and chthonic cults since at least the Mesolithic era. Throughout this verdant mountain lie steps carved out of cyclopean granite boulders as though made for
giants. There are Neolithic dolmens, caves for initiates and reclusive monks, and serene old hermitages draped in fern and moss. Sintra is, to quote Byron, a “glorious Eden,” and he ought to know; the poet overstayed his vacation there by three years precisely because Sintra is as close to paradise as one will get while alive.

  In remote times the region was known as Promontorio Ofiússa (Promontory of the Serpent), its residents being the Ofiússa (People of the Serpent).10 The name has nothing to do with the physical worship of snakes and all to do with the honoring of the profusion of earth energies that were later proven to congregate in this area.11 The local Celts associated the mountain with Chyntia, the lunar goddess, from whom Sintra derives its name.12 Since the prefix sin is Babylonian for moon, it links Sintra with Sinai (Mountain of the Moon), where Moses once watched a pillar of light descend from heaven and offer a treasure of words carved on stone tablets. Hence, to be “a sinner” is to worship the moon along with its feminine connotations.

  Steps leading to the Cave of the Monk. Such places of veneration and introspection have attracted chthonic cults to Sintra since at least 5000 BC.