by Freddy Silva
One hundred and fifty years go by, when in 1446, Earl William St. Clair†8 founds an unusual chapel just three miles from Balantrodach, at Roslin, and it shares a number of similarities with the rotunda of Tomar:
Both never originally housed an altar.‡2
Both were built adjacent to castles.
Both sit on promentories above fabled rivers.
Both sit over a warren of tunnels, those at Roslin accessed only by the lowering of a person down a well, much like the one inside Tomar’s Chamber of Mysteries.
Both are rumored to be the final repositories of the Templar treasure. (Roslin’s ships having sailed up the Esk,16 while Tomar’s used the Nabão.)
The obvious similarities end there, for while the original interior of the rotunda was as plain as a Cistercian, the same cannot be said of Roslin chapel, which can only be described as a coded esoteric library of stone housing the beliefs and traditions of the Knights Templar and just about every faith in the world.17 However, Roslin was founded at the same time Henry the Navigator was adding an apse to the rotunda of Tomar, a project later completed by King Manuel I, who also added a nave. From this point the similarities continue:
Both buildings make prominent features of the Widowed Mother and the Green Man.
Both feature a similar style of architecture, which in itself is not unusual given they share the same period, except that Roslin’s outstanding feature is a curved column called the Apprentice Pillar, the “model of this beautiful pillar having been sent from Rome, or some foreign place.”18
It is possible this “foreign place” may have been Tomar, because the anomalous pillar so closely matches the unique Manueline style in which its nave is built.
And here is where the geometrical connection with Tomar and Mount Sion comes in. One of the details that struck me from Warren’s excavations beneath Temple Mount is an anomaly he found on the northeast point of the sanctuary: “. . . a perforated stone. The uprights of the wall are formed by megaliths up to 14 ft tall and of extreme age.” More recent marks on the stone show a cross of the type used by early Christians. The stone that closes the end of the passage has “a recess cut into it four inches deep. Within this recess are three cylindrical holes arranged in the form of a triangle.”19
No explanation exists for this unusual feature. So let us assume for a moment the anomalous triangle suggests a triangulation of points or places, because if we link Mount Sion, Roslin, and Tomar, interesting commonalities emerge: all three places are associated with ancient wisdom: Jerusalem speaks for itself; Roslin, or ros linn (a name chosen by Henry St. Clair), translates from Gaelic as “ancient knowledge passed down the generations”;20 and Tomar means “a place of imbibing,” in the land of Lusitania, “the place where the knowledge is stored.”
It was ancient practice to locate temples sharing similar purposes according to perfect triangles,21 the triangle being a two-dimensional representation of the tetrahedron, the fundamental geometry of matter. Thus, by linking sacred places across sometimes-vast distances in perfect triangular relationships, it was believed the sites were imbued with the power of nature’s most elemental geometric form.22
The link between the rotunda of Tomar and the basilica of Notre Dame du Mont de Sion can now be extended to Roslin Chapel, and as such, the three temples form a perfect isosceles triangle, with a margin of error of just 0.1 percent.*51
Suddenly the triangular symbol of Tanit, a presiding goddess of Lusitania and Palestine, takes on a whole new perspective.
Sion, Switzerland.
When a mound was excavated in Suffolk, England, it was found to contain the sixth-century ritual burial of a ship along with a trove of gold coins belonging to the Merovingian family dynasty, one coin in particular linking the items to Theodebert II, a Merovingian king. The coins were minted in Sion, Switzerland.23
The diocese of Sion is the oldest in Switzerland, when in 999 the last king of Burgundy, Rudolph III, granted the county of Valais to its bishop, and Sion became the capital. At that time, a Carolingian church stood on a prominent mount above the village. After its destruction by fire it was rebuilt as a fortified church in the twelfth century and became the basilica of Notre Dame de Valere; as for the hill, it was dedicated to Saint Catherine, patron saint of the Knights Templar.
If a bearing is taken from the basilica of Mount Sion in Jerusalem to its counterpart in Sion, Switzerland, the line bisects the Tomar-Roslin-Sion triangle and extends across the Atlantic, making its first landfall in Newfoundland, by the city St. John’s, named after, you guessed it, John the Baptist. It then continues past the towns of St. Catherine’s, and St. Mary’s.
Henry St. Clair was the grandfather of the founder of Roslin Chapel. Inside this curious building there are stone carvings of North American plants supposedly not seen by Europeans until Columbus’s arrival in that part of the world. Since the chapel was completed in 1486 and Columbus made his first voyage six years later, common sense dictates that Henry St. Clair or members of his court made a voyage across the Atlantic first. Although stories and letters circulated at the end of the fourteenth century outlining such an expedition, the evidence has been hard to substantiate.24 However, there exists an anomalous round tower in what is today Newport, Rhode Island, in a style of architecture common to medieval Europe. Further inland, in Westford, Massachusetts, someone carved an effigy on a large boulder of a knight. He wears the habit of a military order, a sword with a pommeled hilt commensurate with the style used in the fourteenth century, and a shield depicting a single-masted medieval vessel sailing west toward a star. The style is virtually identical to carvings on grave-posts in the Templar cemetery in Kilmartin, Scotland, which date to the same period. Lending weight to the argument that Templar knights may have crossed the Atlantic are testimonies from the only two Templars arrested in Scotland, who stated how their brothers at Balantrodoch “threw off their habits” and fled “across the sea.”25 If so, they would have lived and died there, and a number of old gravestones in Nova Scotia (Latin for New Scotland) do incorporate Templar devices such as the skull and crossbones, the symbol of the Templar’s maritime fleet, just as they do on Scottish graves.26
It is speculated that the Scottish Templars shared information of this voyage with their Portuguese brethren and that the knowledge found its way to Columbus via Portuguese navigators in Lisbon. Certainly, Columbus solicited the sponsorship of the Portuguese court for an expedition to the Indies—even his father-in-law was a knight of the Order of Christ—but still the Portuguese king acquiesced to his request, possibly because the Portuguese, particularly Henry the Navigator, kept their maritime ventures close to their chests.
There is good support for this. There exists a long seafaring tradition between Genoa and the Portuguese monarchy, dating to as early as 1099 when Dom Henrique twice sailed to Palestine with the Genoese.27 The relationship was still strong two centuries later when shipbuilders and thirty sea captains were recruited from Genoa to rebuild the Portuguese fleet. Then in the early fifteenth century, the Portuguese ambassador Damião de Goes sailed to Italy to study in Padua, where he befriended the Italian cartographer Giovanni Ramusio; Goes was also the Commander of the Order of Christ, and he shared with Ramusio various Templar maritime discoveries, which the Italian illustrated in Raccolta di Navigationi et Viaggi. One of the maps in this opus shows the coast of Labrador dotted with Portuguese fishing boats and what appears to be the drying of salt cod, while the Portuguese shield and coat of arms feature prominently on this North American territory, suggesting these lands were already—and unofficially—known to the Portuguese crown.28
Which brings us to the carving of that knight, the ship, and the star. In his History of the Jews, Josephus points out how the Essenes placed the origin of good souls in an idyllic land in the West. They mention this again in the Copper Scrolls and associate this land with a star of the Orient; the same concept is found in the esoteric traditions of the Celts, Jews, and Greeks. West is the pla
ce of the setting sun, so to figuratively follow the path of the setting sun is to enter into the Otherworld, the place of spirit. The Mandeans—successors to the Essenes and Nasoreans—added that this land is identified by a star called Merika.
Since the Templars found the scrolls written by their forebears, it stands to reason they would set sail for this land of paradise after a mass arrest essentially undermined their power as a group. Ensconced in their safe harbors in Scotland and Portugal, the members of the Order of the Temple made future plans to go west.
In Templar symbology, Merika is the western star toward which mounted knights ride and ships sail. This star, often depicted in the form of the five-pointed pentagram synonymous with Isis, is also the bright morning star Sirius, otherwise known as Sophis, the star of wisdom. The same symbol appears above the altar of the Templar’s mother church in Tomar, the first structure obsessively built by Gualdino Paes, in a town created by the Templars that became the focal point of their overseas explorations.
The attribution of the name America to the newfound land in the West has long been wrongly attributed to the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by a highly imaginative priest named Waldseemuller, who simply pieced together several unconnected facts and created an accidental myth.29 So by the time Columbus reached the “New World,” it was hardly so; Merika was already old news to the Templars.
Whether by design or coincidence, the imaginary line from Mount Sion, through Sion, Switzerland, and St. John’s, Newfoundland, continues into Chesapeake Bay, near the birthplace of a Freemason by the name of George Washington, who laid the foundation stone for the White House on October 13, essentially commemorating the anniversary of the death of Portuguese Templar Master Gualdino Paes and, 112 years later, the day the Order of Temple was almost extinguished, along with its purpose.
It seems that, even at the very end, another chapter begins in the eternal quest to build that heavenly Jerusalem.
“Then he saw the rich Graal enter through a door to serve the food; it promptly put the bread down in front of the knights.”
—CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES, PERCEVAL, THE STORY OF THE GRAIL
FOOTNOTES
*1. See Psalms 118:22: “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner”; in Acts 4:10–11: “By the name Jesus Christ of Nazareth . . . doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.” And in 1 Peter 2:3–86: “The Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious. Ye also, as lovely stones, are built up a spiritual house, a Holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices. . . . Behold I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.”
*2. These historical accounts were validated by archaeological digs that uncovered the Gate of the Essenes along with the large stone baths used by the sect in their rituals.
*3. This was the Cutting of the Elm in 1188, when the two Orders made a formal split following an unspecified betrayal by the then Templar Grand Master, Gerard de Richfort.
*4. The author Herculano posits that Count Dom Henrique died naturally in 1114, and that his official death of 1112 was popularized to coincide with his injuries in battle.
*5. In Portuguese, Nossa Senhora de Santa Maria
*6. A nation-state is defined as a political unit consisting of an autonomous state inhabited predominantly by a people sharing a common culture, history, and language. According to Jenkins and Sofos (Nation and Identity, 155), “Portugal lays claim to be the oldest nation-state in Europe, usually dated from as early as 1139.”
*7. Now the community of La Roche Vanneau.
*8. He was a knight of the Order of Christ, the name by which the Knights Templar would be known in Portugal after the fourteenth century.
*9. In Portuguese, Dom Guilherme Ricardo and Dom Hugo Martinense.
*10. The document, formerly in Tomar, is now in Torre do Tombo.
*11. The change to the charter took place in 1113. It is documented that the Hospitallers were very hostile to this.
*12. Godefroi de Bouillon was a scion of illustrious ancestry whose family claimed descent from King Charlemagne.
*13. He signed the original promise in the cathedral of Lamego.
*14. Godefroi de Bouillon was offered the throne within days of the council convening to discuss the matter on July 22, 1100. The decision was made between July 23 and 25.
*15. Some accounts give this as 1138, but if Payo crowned Afonso in Lamego in 1139 he could not possibly have been dead.
*16. The stone is posthumous and goes on to state, “May their souls rest in peace.”
*17. Jean l’Aumônier lived in 610 AD.
*18. Gualdino was allegedly indoctrinated into the Knights Templar on the battlefield.
*19. The Cistercian Rule came into affect at the Council of Coimbra in 1162, at which time the affiliated Templar Order of the Knights of São Bento de Avis was also created. Its center was in Évora. Its Grand Master was Pedro, brother of Afonso Henriques.
*20. This was the Qumran Scroll, deciphered at Manchester University in 1956.
*21. The idea that they held a vow of poverty comes from an error in translation.
*22. The Templars erected a cathedral in Ghent in the thirteenth century, dedicated to Notre Dame.
*23. She was also known as Saint Irene.
*24. The locals were referred to as Tamarães.
*25. It has been debated in Portuguese circles that the Templars first moved to the actual town of Ceras, a few miles to the north, but no evidence of a castle has been located there, so the current consensus is they actually moved directly to Thamar.
*26. Now Santa Maria do Olival. The dedication to Mary or Notre Dame was always to Magdalene, not the mother of Jesus.
*27. The original date of the stone is AD 1170. It was moved around 1208 from its original site in the castle of Almourol to Tomar and placed above the door of the sacristy.
*28. The new building plus the ritual baths and the Gate of the Essenes were validated during archaeological digs.
*29. It was also used as the pseudonym of the Templar Master in Spain.
*30. The compiler of this bloodline was Fredegar, a seventh-century Burgundian scribe.
*31. This concept of a figurative death is still enshrined in the Masonic third degree, whose roots are traced to the practices of the Egyptian temple and the pharaoh Sequerente Tao around 1560 BC.
*32. Verbatim from the lapidary on the wall of the rotunda.
*33. It was also the name of a town built by King Solomon.
*34. The Greeks renamed it Hermopolis, after the god Hermes, whom they identified with Djehuti.
*35. Article 13, Rule of the Elected Brothers: The neophyte will tread on the cross and spit upon it; he will receive the white tunic with belt.
*36. Pronounced in Moorish Spanish as bufihimat.
*37. It was in the later centuries that the cloister was literally used for the monks’ washing.
*38. Also called the Sages of Light.
*39. Or is French for “gold.”
*40. Curiously, during the restorations that took place later, in the 1940s, many of the stonemasons working on the project were threatened and harassed by the people in charge of the restoration.
*41. The spire appears to have been built by King Manuel I, a later Templar Master.
*42. It became the chapel of Saint Saturnino.
*43. The Cave of the Fairy is situated near the main gate of the Parque da Pena.
*44. One lunar temple stood by the beach at the very western tip of the mountain where it meets the Atlantic. By the time of André de Resende, the sixteenth-century father of Portuguese archaeology, all that remained were romantic ruins covered in vines. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder stated that the mountain used to extend a further sixty miles into the sea, corroborating esoteric traditions that
a citadel existed on its promontory but was destroyed around 9700 BC during a violent upheaval of the ocean. Certainly, Ptolemy states there having been an island there to which the Lusitanians moved when fleeing from the Roman occupation. While the island no longer exists, underwater maps show a large seamount in the area.
*45. Many of these properties survived the catastrophic earthquake of 1755 and were still standing in 1850 before gentrification removed them.
*46. There were three towers running through the property.
*47. The genomes of Ethiopian people hold echoes of the meeting between a legendary king and queen.
*48. The Hospitallers and the Templars were still cooperating in 1156, proved by a donation by Maria Paes (apparently the widow of Archbishop Payo Mendes) that states that upon her death her properties should be split, two-thirds to be given to her sons and the rest to be divided equally between the Knights of the Temple of Solomon and the Order of the Hospital; another donation that year by Soeyro Ordeniz agreed to the exact same terms.
*49. Charters show that King Louis VII (of the House of Capet, from which Afonso Henriques was descended) installed the Ordre de Sion in the priory of Saint-Samson at Orléans, which he donated to the Ordre in 1152. Ninety-five members of the Ordre sailed with him back from Jerusalem, sixty-two of whom were installed at Saint-Samson; seven joined the Knights Templar, and the remainder entered the small priory du Mont de Sion one mile away in Saint Jean le Blanc.
