He was correct. The Romans burned Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon’s Temple II in 70 AD. The Temple and its great Magdala Tower where Jesus taught was no more.
Six hundred years later the Prophet Mohammed was miraculously transported from his home in Arabia to this very spot in Jerusalem where he was lifted into the heavens on a ‘white horse’. Why did this ascension happen here instead of at Mecca?
We shall return to the mysteries of this awesome, and today highly protected, dot of real estate in the next chapter. As we will explore, in the tunnels beneath this site the Templars recovered knowledge legends say belonged to Jesus and Mary Magdalene and that catapulted them into global prominence.
15.
THE TEMPLARS AND THE SKULL OF GOD
The Bible tells us Solomon’s Temple was built to house the Ark of the Covenant, the golden box built by Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai per Yahweh’s instruction and maintained by the Levites. The golden box was supposed to have rested upon the stone pillar that Jacob set up at Bethel after entering the terrible Gate to God and the Gate to Heaven in his famed experience with the Ladder to God.
The manna was called the Shewbread or “Bread of the presence of God”, and was set out on a golden table in front of the Ark of the Covenant.
One eyewitness to the mound Moriah in Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s time was Josephus. In The Wars of the Jews he reported that Herod’s rebuilt Solomon’s Temple was built of white marble, covered with heavy plates of gold in front and rising high above its marble-cloistered courts-themselves a succession of terraces-the temple, compared by Josephus to a snow-covered mountain. He says this temple appeared to strangers, when they were coming to it at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow; for as to those parts of it that were not gilt, they were exceeding white. “When the sun came up it radiated so fiery a flash that people had to avert their eyes as if looking directly into the sun.”
Speculation has abounded for centuries as to the exact nature of the treasure recovered by the Templars from this site. The spotlight was shone on this secret when the Catholic Church turned against the Templars in the fall of 1307.
Of all the mysteries concerning the Knights Templar, the strangest of them all has to be the charges leveled against them by the Church and Pope Clement V on August 12, 1307. This list was compiled from two primary sources, partly from the king’s spies who had infiltrated the Templar Order, and partly from the confession of an alleged Templar defector, say Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
Armed with this list of heresies King Philip V of France acted against the Templars, issuing sealed and secret orders to his seneschals (a group as ruthless and efficient at mass murder as the Nazis SS). Philip planned it so that the orders would be opened everywhere simultaneously and executed at once. At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, all the Templars in France were arrested by the king’s men, their possessions were seized and their preceptories placed under the king’s authority.
In the ensuing days word began to creep through the grapevines of France of the gruesome torture of the Templars at the hands of Philip. Many were burned or imprisoned. Strange confessions were extracted and even more bizarre accusations were made. The Templars were accused of denying Christ, of repudiating, trampling, and spitting on the cross.
The most baffling of the charges against the Templars to some investigators is the accusations surrounding the ‘bearded head’ that the Templars worshipped known as ‘Baphomet’.
46.That the brothers themselves had idols in every province, viz. Heads; some of which had three faces, and sone one, and some a man’s skull.
47.That they adored that idol, or those idols, especially in their great chapters and assemblies.
48.That they worshipped it.
49.As their God.
50.As their Savior.
51.That some of them did so.
52.That the greater part did.
53.That they said that that head could save them.
54.That it could produce riches.
55.That it had given to the order all its wealth.
56.That it caused the earth to bring forth seed.
57.That it made the trees flourish.
58.That they bound or touched the head of the said idols with cords, wherewith they bound themselves about their shirts, or next to their skins.
59.That at their reception the aforesaid little cords, or others of the same length, were delivered to each of the brothers.
60.That they did this in worship of their idol.
61.That it was enjoined them to grid themselves with the said little cords, as before mentioned, and continually to wear them.
62. That the brethren of the order were generally received in that manner.
63.That they did these things out of devotion.
64.That they did them everywhere.
This list poses many questions. For instance, were the cords of the Templar the same three cords given to Job’s daughters? And what was the ‘idol’ of the Templars?
Further, what was the ‘head’ revered by the Templars? What kind of a head or skull can produce riches?
When the Templars were asked about this head, they either said it was a Christian martyr woman, or it was the model of the speaking head that the pope Sylvester II made.
Pope Sylvester II (d. 1003) was believed to have possessed a golden head called Meridiana, which spoke to him in oracles. It could answer any question posed to it with a yes or no answer, like a modern day computer. Meridiana was also reputed to have been a female demon who had appeared after he had been rejected by his earthly love, and with whose help he managed to ascend to the papal throne (another legend tells that he won the papacy playing dice with the devil).
A Spanish magician known as the Black Moor programmed the oracle head. The Black Moor is also said to be the author of King Solomon’s Key, an important occult text that had influenced Nostradamus and Doctor John Dee. Sylvester II died in 1003, in a bizarre murder plot just before ending the dark ages. The giant oracle head has not been found. References still exist in the Vatican library.
The Keys of Solomon, says Eliphas Lévi (d. 1875), a master of the Rosicrucian interpretation of the Kaballah, are religious and natural forces expressed by signs and symbols. I take stock in the words of Levi. He attended seminary at Saint-Sulpice, the occult center of the Catholic
Church in Paris, but was expelled for teaching doctrines contrary to those of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Ring of Solomon, another component of the Key (both are synthesized in the Seal of Solomon) is said to encode all the science and faith of the Magi in one symbol. Lévi says the Seal of Solomon, his Keys and his Ring are tokens of supreme royalty.
I find it highly intriguing, if not likely, that the ‘Black Moor’ who penned King Solomon’s Key is a pun name for the ‘Black Mare’, the Black (‘hidden’, ‘secret’, ‘occult’) Mary. The Black Mary is Mary Magdalene.
This makes sense.
Subjected to interrogation by the Inquisators a number of knights referred to something called ‘Baphomet’. In addition, a knight under interrogation mentioned another curious relic, a reliquary in the shape of a woman’s head… It was hinged on top, and contained what was described as a great head of gilded silver, most beautiful. Inside were two head-bones, wrapped in a cloth of white linen, with another red cloth around it. A label was attached, on which was written the legend ‘Caput LVIIIm” (Head 58M). The bones inside were of a small woman.
Enter Eliphas Lévi, who is perhaps best known for his work regarding the alleged deity of the Knights Templar, the Baphomet.
Lévi considered the Baphomet to be a depiction of the absolute in symbolic form. His treatment of the Baphomet Mythos is best seen in his illustration of the Baphomet shown below, which he used as a front piece to one of his many books. According to the author Michael Howard, author of The Occult Conspiracy, Lévi based the illustration on a Gargoyle that appears on a b
uilding owned by the Templars; the Commandry of Saint Bris le Vineux.
Lévi believed that if one rearranged the letters in Baphomet by reversing them you would get an abbreviated Latin phrase:
TEM OHP AB
He further believed that this would represent the Latin “Templi omnivm hominum pacis abbas” or in English “The Father Of The Temple Of Peace Of All Men”. This he felt to be a reference to King Solomon’s Temple (Solomon means ‘peace’), which Eliphas believed had the sole purpose of bringing peace to the world.
As Manly P. Hall observed, the name Solomon may be divided into three syllables (chords?), Sol-om-on, symbolizing light and glory collectively and respectively. The Temple of Solomon is, therefore, the “the House of Everlasting Light’. It was considered a house of initiation. The Templar skull that could perform miracles spit these secrets of Everlasting Light.
Of particular interest here is the alchemical symbol known as the caput mortem or ‘dead head’ of the alchemists and secret ‘skull’ or skill of the Johannite Templars , who upheld John the Baptist as the true messiah.
By following the puns and the historical evidence what the Templars actually possessed was a skill from an ancient school that was symbolized by a skull. What I believed they possessed was the secrets imparted by Mary Magdalene. If these three dots of the dead head correspond to the three cords Job gave to his daughters then we may hypothesize that the knowledge the Templars recovered concerned the means the transform our hearts, the Language of the Angels (or Birds), the Language of the Archons and knowledge of the heavens.
Some historians have suggested that the name ‘Baphomet’ was a word play on the name ‘Muhammed’, and claim that the Templars were actually Muslims. The authors of HBHG state that the Templars had a “sustained and sympathetic contact with Islamic and Jewish culture.” This is very important, as it enabled them to gain access to some of the methods and mysteries of Eastern mysticism.
The ideas that the Templars gleaned from Islamic culture were threatening to Roman Catholicism. Templar Masters, claim the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, often employed Arab secretaries, and many Templars, having learned Arabic in captivity, were fluent in the language.
In my opinion this does not resonate.
On the other hand, the name ‘Baphomet’ does ring of the Arabic ‘abufihamet’. As J.S.M. Ward observes in Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods, abufihamet means ‘Father of Understanding’ or ‘Father of Wisdom’. Interestingly, ‘father’ in Arabic is taken to mean ‘source’.
Ward continues saying, “If this is indeed the origin of Baphomet, it would therefore refer presumably to some supernatural, or divine principle. But what might have differentiated Baphomet from any other supernatural or divine principle remains unclear.”
Another researcher who surmised that Baphomet may be a code term for a body of wisdom was Dead Sea Scroll scholar Dr. Hugh Schonfield, author of numerous books on Essene mysteries. When he was near completion of his book The Essene Odyssey some striking information about the Knights Templar made a timely appearance. The book was Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Though Dr. Schonfield rejected the proposals of Mssrs. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln he did credit these authors with turning up information which conjuncted with his own research into the Essenes. In particular, he noted that the evidence of links with Essene lore suggested that the Templar reports of a bearded head that spoke them and invested them with occult powers might have a foundation in fact.
Dr. Schonfield decided to treat what he termed ‘the obviously artificial name’ Baphomet as an Atbash Cipher. In the Atbash Cipher, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is exchanged with the last. As Schonfield writes in The Essene Odyssey, “Setting down Baphomet in Hebrew characters…by Atbash converted immediately into (Sophia), the Greek word for Wisdom.”
The centuries old secret was revealed for the first time, claimed Schonfield.
In his excitement he continues, saying that the bearded male head referred to by the Templars is the head of the cosmic figure of the Adam Kadmon (Sky Man). In Hebrew, this head is denominated as Chokmah or Wisdom.
As Schonfield notes, the Greek Sophia represented as a woman rather than a man. He was not surprised to find in Templar hands, according to Inquisition records, a casket surmounted by “a great head of gilded silver, most beautiful, and constituting the image of a woman.”
Schonfield concludes that the Templars must have had access to Gnostic mythology, which in turn is traced to extremely ancient cosmologies. He notes that in the Bible there is an echo in Proverbs viii, where Wisdom (feminine), like the masculine Logos (Word) of the Gospel of John, was in the Beginning with God, and beside Him when he created the Earth. In the Gnostic systems Wisdom (Sophia) was captured by the Powers of the material world and forced to prostitute herself. It was to redeem her, and thus “restore all things,” says Schonfield, that the Archetypal Man appeared on Earth.
In the Gnostic doctrine proposed by Simon Magus Sophia (Wisdom) is equated with Ennoia (the First Thought) of God. According to a Gnostic hymn:
She passed from body to body,
Always suffering disgrace from it;
Last of all
She was manifest as a prostitute;
This is the lost sheep.
For he sake He came,
To free her from her bonds,
And to offer men salvation
Through their recognition of him.
Simon appears to be stating that the wisdom is transmittable, ‘it passed from body to body’. Even more intriguingly, he states that he found the ‘lost sheep’ in the prostitute in Tyre named Helen. G.R.S. Mead, writing in Simon Magus: Gnostic Magician tells us this Helen was of unsurpassing beauty and the Trojan War came to pass on account of her. Sophia took up residence in this Helen, and thus when all the Powers laid claim to her, there arose faction and war among those nations to who she was manifested.
It is of immense value to us to ponder Schonfield’s next remark. He states that the followers of Simon Magus worshipped Helen as the Goddess of Wisdom Athena (whose temple, the Parthenon, was rededicated to Mary)! This great goddess, in turn, was identified in Egypt as Isis. Plutarch states that Isis was sometimes called Sophia. She is also called As-Tarte or Is*, the goddess worshipped by Solomon and for whom his temple was built. Each of these goddesses, in turn is the Babylonian goddess *Inanna.
Schonfield concludes that there is no doubt that the beautiful woman’s head of the Templars represents Sophia in her female and Isis aspect, and she was linked with Mary Magdalene in the Christian interpretation.
16.
MARY MAGDALENE AND THE SKULL OF GOD
Jesus’ baptism, Mary Magdalene’s illumination, the lost secret of the Templars: all revolved around a mysterious talking head or skull or the contents it protected.
This treasure skull, I propose, is a skill, a body of knowledge once shared by Jesus and MM (as well as Job’s daughters).
A favorite painting of MM that combines many symbols of her secrets is Georges De La Tour’s The Penitent Magdalen. The Illuminator poses before the lighted taper presented to the illuminati. She has a skull in her lap.
Probably painted between 1638 and 1643, it’s one of four representations that La Tour did of the penitent Magdalene. Today it hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. La Tour was known for his incredible use of realism as well as his preoccupation with the use of light. If we view this painting from outside the box we can certainly see that La Tour may even have seen the light, so to speak. It’s loaded with symbols carrying mystical meaning that lead us deeper into the mysteries of Mary Magdalene.
The Penitent Magdalene. Georges La Tour.
Traditional readings of this painting, as for example the commentary provided in The Guidebook to the Metropolitan Museum, say La Tour’s The Penitent Magdalen is unique in depicting MM at the dramatic moment of her conversion. Her jewels lay on the table beside her, having just cast them aside, though she still wears the lux
urious clothes of her former life. In her lap, she holds a skull, a common feature of allegorical paintings of MM. It is usually interpreted as a symbol of mortality. In fact, the museum guidebook states as much saying, “The skull upon which her clasped hands rest may stand for peaceful acceptance of death.”
MM is portrayed in front of an elaborate silver mirror that symbolizes luxury. The flame of the candle provides a soft and almost mysterious air to the work. To the writer of the Guidebook the self-consuming candle reflected in the mirror suggests the frailty of human life.
Interpreting the taper or candle as symbolic of the frailty of human life is certainly poetic enough for some. On the other hand, skeptics might argue that sometimes a candle is just a candle. But hang fire. This is a religious painting. It can only be fully understood when its components are interpreted in religious terms. Putting a religious scope on these symbols reveals that there’s a lot more meaning intended here.
In religious symbolism, the candlestick is the symbol of spiritual illumination, of the Light, and of the seed of life and of salvation, says Cirlot in The Dictionary of Symbols. In Christian symbolism it is the divine light shining into the world and Christ as the light of the world. These suggest our Lord’s words, “I am the light of the world.” John 8:12
They also represent His two-fold nature - human and divine, when two candlesticks are used.
This interpretation changes things a bit, doesn’t it? We now see Mary Magdalene holding a symbol for a body of wisdom (the caput mortem or dead head of God ) and posing beside a symbol for the divine light of Christ.
Another layer of meaning is revealed in this symbolism when viewed through a Hebrew lens where the candle is a reference to the menorah, the seven-branched ‘candlestick of the Children of Israel’, which represents the divine presence.
Following the trail of symbolism of the candlestick as the menorah leads to quite a surprising and astounding conjunction of facts.
Mary Magdalene The Illuminator (v5.0) Page 13
