From: ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Templars not Masons <flame risk HIGH>
Date: 31 Aug 92 16:39:21 GMT
Reply-To: ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson)
Organization: LaserMaster Technologies, Minneapolis, MN


  As a service of our National Parks System, this post is
ranked HIGH on the potential flame scale.

  Burn at your own risk.

> >ba@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (B.A. Davis-Howe) writes:
> 
> >Umm, Masonry didn't exist back then, according to all the scholarship I've 
> >seen which is not obviously conspiracy theory.  Eddie, can you help us out
> >with a date for the origins of Masonry?
> 
> pciszek@nyx.cs.du.edu (Paul Ciszek) writes:
>
> The fact that the Masons have an "Order of deMolay" would seem to imply that
> they at least like to pretend that they have some connection to the
> Templars.

  I was working on a sword and scabbard that a friend bought at
an auction.  It was heavily corroded and had lots of dirt built
up on the scabbard, so it took about two days to get it worked
down where I could start decyphering the symbols on it.

  Nice scabbard.  Silver inlays, silverplate bands, inlaid
occult symbols down the length of it.

  First one was easy -- Gnostic tree of life.  Second one was
a little harder -- Masonic Mogan David.  Third one took lots of
polishing and cleaning to get readable -- Templars.

  Templars!  I screamed as I threw the scabbard the full length
of the workshop and set to washing my hands.  Templars! I fumed
as I burnt the rags I'd been using to clean the scabbard.
Templars!  I stated as I returned the sword and scabbard, 
unfinished, to my friend, who appologied profusely.

  He needn't have appologised.  It wasn't his fault.  He didn't
know any better than I did when I'd started working on it.

  Templars.

  Like finding out that a piece I was asked to clean up had
been used by the Inquisition.

  My father was a Mason for several years and got rather high
up in the local temple structure.  He says that there is still
a Templar branch of some sort in the heirarchy, and that he
had been offered the rank but refused it.

  I don't know if the Masonic Knights Templar go all the way
back to the "Poor Knights" of the crusades.  I hope not, but
it seems reasonable that they would have fit into the structure
of the Masons.

  When people ask me what my problem is with the Templars, I
point them to "Alexander Nevosky", a black-and-white subtitled
Russian movie about an attempted invasion of Rus by the German
Templars.  The scenes of the Templars descending on the Rus
homeland were roto-scoped and used by Bashi in the Lord of
the Rings movie as the undead hords of Mordor.  He didn't have
to change much.

  Not that an old black-and-white movie was the basis for my
feelings about the Templars.  It's not.  It just gave me something
to point to and say; "Look.  There.  That's what I think about
when someone starts talking to me about 'Soldiers for Christ'".

  Maybe being part Lithuanian and having lost relatives to the
revolution doesn't help.  Maybe that my grandmother's parents
were turned over to the purification troups by the church doesn't
help either.  Maybe that the church absorbed all of my great-
grandparent's lands and property doesn't add much good-will
in the back of my mind.

  Maybe the reason I spit so profusely on the Templars is that
the only reason the church survived there in the first place 
was that they burnt to the ground any city, town, or village that
got in its way, often including its inhabitants.

  Cut off forever was a graceful and splendid civilization.

  Cut off forever was my Lithuanian heritage, and all that
survives to today is vestiges of an ancient religion, couched
in a few folk traditions that my grandparents passed on.

  Monoculturalism is, IMNSHO, just poison.  Destroying anything
which is different than ourselves is BAD EVOLUTIONAL PLANNING.

  Philosophies included.

  Hmmm ... is my extreme distaste for the Templars showing?
Probably.  Frankly, I consider them one of the last vestiges
of the Inquisition.

  But, that's just my not at all humble opinion.  They have
the right to not like me and my kind, and I have the right
to not like them and their kind.  I can speak out against
them, and they can speak out against me.

  Smokey reminds us; only YOU can prevent net.fires.

  Blessed flaming be, Ciaran.

  $uslinit; include oblig.sig <<
  "...And here, Queen Aphrodite, pour heavenly nectar into gold
   cups, and fill them gracefully with sudden joy."  -- Sappho >>