BLACK MAGIC WHITE SOLDIER ( HOLY
GRAIL PART 1 )
According to Zuckerman, where the Sefer ha- Kabbalahstates
that Makhir and his descendants were “close” with Charlemagne and all his descendants, it
could be taken to mean they were
inter-related. However, Zuckerman’s claims have been aggressively challenged by
other scholars. According to Nathaniel Taylor:
The legend of
Charlemagne’s installation of the dynasty, and of associated grants of
privileges, follows a literary pattern which was extremely common in this area
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. To embellish and mythologize the past,
and particularly to invent connections to
Charlemagne, was a frequent subterfuge of the area’s monastic
communities, but it appears also to have been true of other social
groups—including the Jews. We cannot now
determine the validity of the Davidic origins of the Jewish dynasty of Narbonne—or even its continuity, or the names
of individual nesiim [Jewish leaders]— before the eleventh century. 32
Nevertheless, the claim was believed to have
been true, and seems to have formed the basis of the messianic expectations of
the leading families associated with the Crusades and the formation of the Grail legends, which are suffused with Kabbalistic symbolism. Charlemagne himself was descended from the
Mithraic bloodline, the intermarriage of the
House of Herod, the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the House of Commagene, and priest-kings of Emesa. This
bloodline had bifurcated into two important directions, diverging into an
imperial line that eventually produced Constantine, and a second which included
the Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus.
The two branches were finally reunited in St. Arnulf, Bishop of Metz
(c.582 – 640 AD), the great grandfather of
Charles Martel (c.688–741 AD), one of the most heroic figures in French history, and by
whose name the dynasty came to be known in history as that of the Carolingians.33 Charles Martel
was the grandfather of Charles the Great,
known as Charlemagne (742–814 AD).
There are numerous confusing genealogies
provided as to the descent of this
Makhir, or Natronai as he is sometimes referred to. Natronai possibly married one Rolinda of Aquitaine, whose son
was Makhir. Makhir married Alda, the
daughter of Charles Martel, and their
son was purportedly William of Gellone.
Some claims suggest William of Gellone’s
sister, Ida Redburga, married Egbert of Wessex of the Anglo-Saxon invaders who
displaced the Britons from England, and a direct descendant of Odin, according to
the chronicles. 34
Egbert had been forced into exile at Charlemagne’s court by a rival Saxon to the
throne and returned to England in 802 AD, where he eventually became
King of Wessex, and later first King of England. 35 Their son, Ethelwulf was the father of Alfred “the Great,”
who in turn became the father of Edward
the Elder.
Redburga was also possibly the great grandmother
of Sven I of Denmark (d. 1014). 36 When Sven was baptized, along
with the rest of the royal family, he was given the name of Otto, in honor
of Otto I the Great, who was crowned Holy
Roman Emperor in 962 AD. Otto was the son of
Henry I the Fowler, Holy Roman
Emperor, the founder of the Ottonian
dynasty. Otto I’s mother was Oda Billung, whose mother was the daughter of Charlemagne’s son Pippin, and Bertha of
Toulouse, the daughter of William of
Gellone.37 Hedwige, the sister of Otto I
the Great, married Hugh the Great, a direct descendant of William of Gellone. Their descendants would
become the dynasty of Capetians, from whom would descend all the kings of
France until the Second Republic established in 1848. The grandson of Otto I
the Great’s brother became Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor. Henry II married Cunigonde of Luxemburg, who was descended
from the grandson of Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, and Ermentrude d’Orleans,
the granddaughter of William of Gellone. 38 After their deaths, both Henry II
and his wife Cunigonde were eventually
canonized by the Catholic Church. Though they
died childless, the descendants of Otto I eventually produced the Hohenstaufen
dynasty, during whose reign from 1138 to 1254 castles and courts
replaced monasteries as centers of
culture, and were produced the Minnesangand narrative epic poems such as Tristan, Parzival , and
the Nibelungenlied.
Sven married Gunhilda, the daughter of Dubrawka and Mieszko I, founder of the Piast dynasty, the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. Dubrawka
was the daughter of Boleslav I of Bohemia who married, as has been
proposed, Adiva the daughter of Edward
the Elder.39 At the end of the eighth century AD, Bohemia, like the neighboring states of Great
Moravia and Hungary, fell to the invading
Magyars. As recounted in the Gesta Hungarorum(“The Deeds of the
Hungarians”), a record of early Hungarian history written by an unknown author
around 1200 AD, the Magyars were Scythians, originally descended from Magog
from whom they derived their name. At the end of the ninth century AD, the
Khanagate of the Khazars had appointed a man named Arpad to be the leader of
the kingdom of Hungary, formed by seven Magyar and three Khazar tribes under
his leadership.40 Arpad and his clan
began a push westward, eventually settling in what is today Hungary, where a
unified Magyar state was established by Arpad’s great-grandson Geza in 971 AD.
Boleslav I, known as “the Cruel,” became the
first king of an independent Bohemia,
after he led a Czech force in alliance with
Otto the Great, that was victorious over them in 955 AD. Boleslav I
features in the Schechter Letter, according
to which Hasdai ibn Shaprut, who was foreign minister to Abd alRahman, Sultan
of Cordova, made a first unsuccessful attempt to
resort to the Byzantine embassy to transmit his letter to the king of the
Khazars. But, the envoys of Boleslav I, who were then in Cordova, and among
whom were two Jews, Saul and Joseph, suggested a different plan. They offered
to send the letter to Jews living in
Hungary, who in their turn would transmit it to Russia, and from there through Bulgaria to its
destination, the Khazar capital of Itl. As the
envoys guaranteed the delivery of the message, Hasdai accepted the
proposal.
The dynasty of the Piasts intermarried extensively
with the Hungarian dynasty of the Arpads
and the Cometopuli of Bulgaria. Mieszko and Dubrawka’s daughter Adelaide married Geza Arpad. 41 Their
daughter Hercegno married Gavril
Radomir, the son of Samuel Tsar of Bulgaria.42 Samuel was one of four sons of Prince Comita Nikola, Count of Bulgaria.
The Bulgars during the seventh century
AD had come under domination of the Khazars, with whom they shared a language. The Khazars forced some
of the Bulgars to move to the upper
Volga River region where the independent state of Volga Bulgaria was founded, while other Bulgars
fled to modern-day Bulgaria.
Comita Nikola married Rhipsime, a princess of
the Bagratuni who became rulers of Armenia in the ninth century AD, and who
claimed Jewish descent. 43 Moses of
Chorene, who wrote a History of Armeniaat
the request of Isaac Bagratuni, the
middle of the fifth century AD, stated
that King Hracheye joined
Nebuchadnezzar in his first campaign against the Jews, and took part in the siege of Jerusalem. From among the captives he
selected the distinguished Jewish chief
Shambat, and brought him with his family to
Armenia, and it is from him that
the Bagratuni claim descent.
Through
Jewish influence, Comita Nikola’s sons were
all given Jewish names, which also included David,
Moses, and Aaron. These Bulgarian Csars became defenders of Bogomilism, a Gnostic heresy that developed in Bulgaria in
the tenth century AD from Paulicianism, which was associated with the Templar
cult of Catharism. In 970 AD, the Byzantine emperor John Tzimisces, himself of Armenian origin, transplanted as many as
200,000 Armenian Paulicians to Europe,
and settled them in the Balkans, which then became the center for the spread of
their doctrines. They were settled there as a bulwark against the invading
Bulgarians, but the Armenians instead converted them to their religion,
eventually evolving into what is known as Bogomilism.44
The
Gnostic doctrine of the Bogomils,
signifying in Slavonic “friends of God,”
maintained that God had two sons, the elder Satanael and the younger Jesus. Satanael, to whom belonged the right
of governing the celestial world, became
filled with pride and rebelled
against his Father and fell from
Heaven. Then, aided by the companions of his fall he created the visible world,
and man and the serpent which became his
minister. Later Christ came to earth in order
to show men the way to heaven, but he could not defeat the power of
Satanael. Nicetas Choniates, a Byzantine
historian of the twelfth century, thus described the
Bogomils as, “considering Satan powerful they worshipped him lest he
might do them harm.”45
Sven I of Denmark embarked on a full-scale
invasion of England, and was accepted as
King of that country, following the flight to Normandy of king Ethelred the
Unready, the son and successor of Edward the Elder, in late 1013 AD. Ethelred married Emma of Normandy, the
daughter of Richard Duke of Normandy.
The Dukes of Normandy were created in
911 AD when Rollo the Viking met Charles the Simple, the grandson of Charles the Bald, and agreed to the Treaty
of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, where it was stipulated that Rollo would convert to Christianity and become Charles’ vassal. In
return, King Charles granted Rollo land
between the Epte and the sea as well as Brittany.
Ethelred returned to England in only 1014 AD
after Sven died, but he himself also died only two years later. Ethelred the
Unready was then succeeded by his son Edmund II Ironside. However, Canute the
Great, the son of Sven, enjoyed greater support from the English nobility.Nevertheless,
Ethelred and Canute negotiated a peace in which they agreed that, upon either
of their deaths, territories belonging
to the deceased would be ceded to the other.
When Edmund II died, Canute became King of
England, Denmark and Norway. To associate his line with the overthrown English
dynasty, and to insure himself against attack from Normandy, where Ethelred’s
other son, Edward the Confessor, and Alfred Atheling remained in Exile, Canute married Ethelred’s widow Emma of Normandy. He
then designated their son Harthacanute
as heir to the throne. In opposition to his brother, Harold Harefoot proclaimed
himself King of England after the death of his father in 1037 AD, and had
Alfred Atheling blinded and killed when they attempted to return to England. Harold himself died in
1040 AD and Harthacanute, who was just
then preparing an invasion, succeeded him to the throne. Harthacanute then invited his half-brother Edward the
Confessor back from Normandy to become
his co-ruler and heir.
When Edward the Confessor then heard that
another half-brother, Edward the Exile, the son of Ethelred the Unready by another
woman, was still alive, he had him recalled to England and made him his heir.
When only a few months old, Canute the Great had sent Edmund’s son, Edward the “Exile” to be murdered in Denmark.
Instead, however, he was secretly brought to Kiev, which during the eighth and
ninth centuries was an outpost of the Khazar empire, but was then under the
control of the Rus, who had conquered much of Khazar territory. Edward the
Exile then made his way to Hungary, where he married Agatha of Bulgaria. Though her parentage is
not known for certain, various sources maintain that Agatha was daughter or
sister of “Emperor Henry,” while still others assert that she was the daughter
of the Hungarian king and queen, or the queen of Hungary herself, and possibly
the daughter of Gravril Randomir of Bulgaria, and therefore the granddaughter
of Mieszko I and Dubrawka.46
However, Edward the Exile died shortly after
his return, so Edward made his great
nephew Edgar Atheling his heir. But Edgar had no secure following among the
nobles. The resulting succession crisis opened the way for the successful
invasion by William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy. By 1060, after a long
struggle to establish his power, William the Conqueror had secured his hold of
Normandy and launched the Norman conquest of England in 1066, decisively
defeating the English at the Battle of
Hastings. After further military efforts William was crowned King of England on
Christmas Day 1066.
As the authors of the Holy Blood Holy
Grail have shown, in contrast to later Grail chroniclers who located
Arthur in Britain, Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170-c. 1220), author of
Parzival, maintained that his court of Camelot was in France, at Nantes in
Brittany. The Bretons had kept alive the legends of King Arthur,
brought with them when they fled Britain during the Saxon invasions five centuries earlier.
During the eleventh
century, Brittany was ruled by Duke
Alain IV, a Templar, who was
descended according to legend from Llyr the Celtic Sea god, the father of Bran
the Arch Druid, who married Anna, the daughter
of Joseph of Arimathea.47 One infl uencing factor in the
rise of Arthurian legend among the
Normans was that William the Conqueror
was also a descendant of the Bretons,
who had also supported him at the
Battle of Hastings, providing a
large proportion of the knights. William
the Conqueror was the grandson of
Richard II of Normandy and Judith of Brittany, daughter of Conan I of Brittany,
the great-great grandfather of Alain IV.
Edward Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire, provides the reasons for the renewed interest in the Arthurian legend:
During a
period of five hundred years the tradition of his exploits was preserved, and rudely
embellished, by the obscure bards of Wales and Armorica (otherwise known as Brittany),
who were odious to the Saxons, and unknown to the rest of Mankind. The pride
and curiosity of the Norman people prompted them to inquire into the ancient
history of Britain; they listened with fond credulity to the tale of Arthur,
and eagerly applauded the merit of a prince who had triumphed over the Saxons, their common enemies.48
According to Elizabeth Hirschman and Donald
Panther-Yates, other Jews also made their way to Scotland, around 1150,
at the invitation of Malcolm III and his son King David I. Among them was one
St. Clair, named William, who did not like the Conqueror and so with some other
discontented barons went to Scotland. It was this William St. Clair who
escorted the English king Edward “the Exile” from Hungary back to England,
after which his daughterMargaret of Wessex later married Malcolm III of
Scotland. Although Agatha of Bulgaria’s true lineage is not definitively known, some indication is provided by the
fact that Malcolm and Margaret broke with Scottish tradition, by no longer
naming their children by Gaelic names, but Jewish ones, such David, Alexander and Mary.
These families continued to inter-marry with
the Dukes of Normandy in addition to the House of Anjou of France, thus producing the Plantagenets of
England, to form the backbone of the family networks who sponsored the Princes’
Crusade. The House of Anjou, and then the
Plantagenets, like the Dukes of Normandy and the kings of France from the House of Capet, could also
trace their descent to William of
Gellone.
A traditional rivalry between Brittany and
Normandy continued to the end of the
eleventh century. The Breton-Norman war of 1064 –1065 was the result
of William the Conqueror’s support of rebels
in Brittany against Alan IV’s
grandfather, Conan II. To prevent further hostilities during his invasion of
England, William I married his daughter Constance to Alan IV in 1087. In 1093,
Alan IV married Ermengarde of the neighboring Angevin Counts of Anjou, as a political alliance with her
father Fulk IV, to counter Anglo Norman influence.
Malcolm III and Agatha’s son, who became King
David I of Scotland, married Maud,
Countess of Huntingdon, the great-niece of
William the Conqueror and the
granddaughter of Lambert II, the brother of
Godfrey of Bouillon, one
of the leaders of the
First Crusade and the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Godfroi’s younger
brother, Eustace III, married David’s
sister, Mary Scots. Their daughter married Stephen I King of England, the son of Adela of Normandy, the daughter
of William the Conqueror. Adela’s brother, Henry I King of England, married
David’s sister, Editha of Scotland. Their
daughter, Mathilda Empress of England, married Geoffrey V, Comte d’Anjou, whose son Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine. Before marrying
Duke Alain IV, Duke of Brittany,
Ermengarde of Anjou, the daughter of
Fulk IV, had previously been married to
Eleanor of Aquitaine’s
grandfather, William IX Duke of
Aquitaine. Ermengarde’s brother Fulk V
of Anjou planned to neutralize the threat of the rise of Normandy. By marrying his son Geoffrey Plantagenet to Matilda, daughter and heiress
of Henry I of England, Fulk V thereby
brought about the historical convergence
of the Angevins, House of Normandy and the House of Wessex. Their son Henry
Plantagenet succeeded to the English throne in 1154 and founded the Plantagenet dynasty. He married Eleanor
of Aquitaine, who
bore him five sons and three
daughters, one of whom was Richard the Lion-Hearted, who succeeded his father to the throne of
England.
These families’ connections with the Templars and a heretical Christian sect known
as the Cathars, who were related to
the Bogomils, laid the basis for
the emergence of the Grail legends. The Grail legends themselves derived from
the influence of witchcraft, that was a result of the spread of the Kabbalah. These tendencies gave rise of one of the most known
examples to have contributed to
prejudices against religion, the Inquisition, devised in twelfth century France to persecute heresy and later expanded
to other European countries, culminating
in the infamous Witch Trials and the
Spanish Inquisition. While the brutality
involved in the extermination of witchcraft may have been largely excessive, and perhaps often motivated
by ulterior political motives, modern
attitudes have been formed that have completely mischaracterized the nature of
what the Church was combating. Although occult philosophies like
Neoplatonism and Hermeticism,
and their related studies of astrology
and alchemy, could often disguise
themselves as scientific pursuits, they were nevertheless traditions that were
historically associated with the worship of
the powers of darkness. Like the
Gnosticism from which they derive, this cult that spread with the
growing influence of the
Kabbalah typically venerated Lucifer or
some equivalent as the true god, and the basis of these theologies ultimately involved the practice of
black magic.
Alchemy, which derived from Hermeticism, was
transmitted to Europe via the Muslims.
In the Islamic world, the influence of the Hermetic
teachings of the Sabians helped to shape the pursuit of
chemistry among the Muslim scientists,
which was studied mostly in connection with
alchemy. Even the name alchemy affirms the Arabic origin of chemistry,
being derived from the Arabic
term is al-kimiya. The greatest Arabic alchemist was ar-Razi, a Persian physician
who lived in Baghdad in the late ninth and early tenth century, who drew his
central concepts from the Sabians. The
most famous was Jabir ibn Hayyan, known to the West as Geber, from whom we
derive the word “gibberish.” Jabir’s works, which were translated into Latin in
the twelfth century AD, proved to be the foundation of Western alchemists and
justified their search for the “philosopher’s stone.” But during the ninth to
fourteenth centuries, alchemical theories faced criticism from a
variety of practical Muslim chemists,
including al Kindi, al-Biruni, Avicenna and
Ibn Khaldun, who wrote refutations
against the idea of transmuting metals.
The Arabs’ fascination with alchemy was
founded on a work called the Emerald
Tabletof Hermes Trismegistus, not known during the Hellenistic era. The Arabs identified
Hermes with a prophet mentioned in the
Quran, named Idris, equated with the
prophet Enoch of the Bible. Idris supposedly passed on his wisdom to his son Seth, identified as the Hermetic Agathodaimon, who passed
it on to Zoroaster, and from him to Pythagoras,
Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. The Emerald Tabletcomes
from a larger work called Book of the Secret of Creation, which exists in Latin
and Arabic manuscripts, and was
attributed to Apollonius of Tyana,
called Balinus by the Arabs.
Additionally,
Merkabah and other magical tendencies had reached Italian Jews from Baghdad as early as the ninth
century. Italian Jewish tradition clearly shows that the rabbis of Italy were well versed in the subject, and
tells of the miraculous activity of one of the
Merkabah mystics who performed “miracles” by invoking the Sacred Names
of God. The methods of the Kabbalists often tended to be more magical and
theurgic than mystical and therefore, as Gershom Scholem remarks, “this may have something to
do with the origin of the medieval stereotype of the Jew as magician and
sorcerer.” 49 Thus an entire religious
community was maligned by the nefarious practices of a minority among them. Throughout Europe, and from the earliest
times, the Jews were charged with practicing black magic. They were rumored to worship the
devil in the form of a cat or a toad in
their synagogues, where they invoked his help
in their malevolent designs. They were accused of practicing the ritual
murder of children, known as the “blood
libel,” and of using stolen church property for
purposes of desecration, etc.
Many of the same accusations were brought
against the witches of the Middle Ages.
Towards the end of the twelfth century,
Luciferianism —the overt worship of
Lucifer—had spread through Styria, the Tyrol, and Bohemia, even as far as Brandenburg. By the
beginning of the thirteenth century, it
had invaded western Germany and in the fourteenth century reached its zenith in that country as also in Italy and
France. In their ceremonies of devil
invocation, witches were reputed
to blaspheme the ceremonies of the religion they belonged to. The desecration
of the Holy Sacrament was known as the Black Mass, later termed a Sabbat,
apparently for the Jewish Sabbath. At these
nocturnal celebrations, a pact with the devil was to take place, where
the participants would defile the Christian
sacraments, spit on the cross, denounce Christ,
and swear allegiance to Satan.
These practices have their origin in the darker
aspects of the Kabbalah, which, as
Gershom Scholem has pointed out, as a
historical phenomenon, makes its appearance in the Languedoc region, which has been called
the “Judea of France.” 50 The presence of Jews in
Languedoc is testified from at least the beginning of the sixth century.
During the Middle Ages Jews were
grouped in many prosperous communities,
particularly in Narbonne, Montpellier,
and Toulouse, as well as in Béziers,
Carcassonne, and so on. The source of the
sudden reappearance of the ancient
Gnostic tradition in the twelfth century
AD among the Jewish communities of the
Languedoc was a work known as the
Sefer ha- Bahir, whose precise provenance is unknown. Scholars of the Kabbalah surmise that the Gnostic ideas it expressed represented a lost
tradition that may have survived among
the Sabians and Mandaeans. How these
ideas could have been communicated to
the West is unknown.
The other possibility is that the Bahirmay comprise the “treasure” the Templars were reputed to have discovered
during their stay in the Holy Land, following the conquest of Jerusalem by the Princes’ Crusade in
1099. Godfrey of Bouillon became
the first ruler of the Kingdom of
Jerusalem, although he refused the title
“King,” a title only accepted by his brother and successor Baldwin II.
Around 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II
of Jerusalem with the proposal of
creating a monastic order for the protection
of pilgrims. His order took the name of Poor Knights of the Temple, from
the site of the Temple of Solomon where they were first stationed. The knights not only assumed
the name of “ Templars,” but dedicated themselves to the Christian preservation of the Temple, though in truth
linking themselves esoterically to the Kabbalistic
project of the reconstruction of the Third Temple.
In 1128, Hugues de Payens journeyed to the
West to seek the approbation of the Church. At the Council of Troyes, at which he assisted and
at which St. Bernard of Clairveaux was the leading spirit, the Knights Templars adopted the Rule of St. Benedict, as recently
reformed by the Cistercians. The
Templars were bound by the vows
of poverty, chastity and obedience, dedicating themselves to the Mere de Dieu,
or the Mother of God, esoterically the
Shekhinah. They also adopted the
white habit of the Cistercians, adding to it a red cross “pattee,” well recognized as the typical
attire of the crusaders
In 1128, soon after the Council of Troyes, Hugh de Payens, the Templar s’
first Grand Master, met with King David I of Scotland, the son of Malcolm III
and Margaret of Wessex. King David later surrounded himself with Templars
and appointed them as “the Guardians of his morals by day and night.”
He granted Hugh and his knights the
lands of Balantrodoch, by the Firth of Forth,
but now renamed Temple, near the site of
Rosslyn.
The claim that the Templars may have discovered something was
potentially corroborated when, in 1867, Captain
Wilson, Lieutenant Warren and a team of Royal Engineers, discovered
crusader artifacts in tunnels dug beneath the site of the ancient Temple.More
recently, a team of Israeli archaeologists, following up on their discovery, reinvestigated the passage
and concluded that the Templars did in
fact excavate beneath the Temple. 51 It may be possible that the Templars discovered the ancient text known as
the Sefer ha- Bahir, or the “Book of
Brightness,” as the circumstances of the book’s appearance, a fragmentary and badly assembled text, are a mystery to scholars.
Kabbalists themselves considered the
book to be much older, attributing its oldest traditions to the teachers of the first century AD. As indicated by Scholem, although derived from earlier
traditions, the emergence of the Kabbalah in Southern France,
sometime between 1130 and 1180 (or immediately after Hughes de Payens’ visit to Europe),
represented a synthesis of the lost Gnostic
tradition belonging to the first centuries AD, that had been long forgotten in Judaism, and which was
rediscovered through the Bahir.
The
Bahir represents a form of early classical Gnosticism, which had long disappeared
from Judaism and had survived only in
non-Jewish sources. As Gershom Scholem
recognized: “The language and concepts are the same, and we look in vain for an
answer to the question how this terminology could have originated or been
recreated anew in the twelfth century, unless there was
some filiation to hidden
sources that were
somehow related to the
old Gnostic tradition.”52 How this
tradition survived is unknown to scholars,
though Scholem suggests a
possible route by way of the Mandaeans. He
maintains, “The earliest strata of the Sefer ha- Bahirwhich came from
the East, prove the existence of defi nitely
Gnostic views in a circle of believing
Jews in Babylonia or Syria, who connected the theory of the Merkabah with that of the “aeons.” 53 Whether the Mandaean doctrines influenced the
developmen of the Kabbalah, or vice-versa, is unknown. Drower
has suggested that the parallels
between Mandaean and Kabbalistic ideas reflect a common
Gnostic origin, a “subterranean stream
of ideas which emerges” in a variety of religious movements.54 Nathaniel Deutsch, in The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism and
Merkabah Mysticism, recognizes that “at
present, we must be satisfied with acknowledging the phenomenological
parallels between the Mandaean and Kabbalistic traditions, although we must also
seriously consider the possibility that both
Mandaean and Kabbalistic sources
drew on a common pool of earlier (Jewish?)
theosophic traditions.”55
The
Templars were also closely associated with Christian heretics known as the Cathars and the legends of the Holy
Grail. The Cathars were also
known as Albigenses, in reference to their Languedoc center at Albi, and had
their roots in the Paulician movement
in Armenia and the Bogomils of Bulgaria. The name of Bougres (Bulgarians) was also applied
to them, and they maintained ties with
the Bogomils of Bulgaria. Essentially,
the Cathars were a Gnostic
sect who believed that a “good god” created everything heavenly while
an “evil god,” the God of the Old
Testament, created the material world with the
Church acting as his representative. Though to most scholars the origins
of the Cathars remain unclear, the
likely provenance of their Gnostic ideas
was also the Kabbalah, as both movements emerged
simultaneously in the very same
district, the Languedoc in southern France. As
Scholem has pointed out, the Cathars agree with the Kabbalists on a number
of points but, “the question of a
possible link between the crystallization of the Kabbalah, as we find it in the
redaction of the Bahir, and the Cathar movement must also remain unresolved, at least for the moment. This
connection is not demonstrable, but the
possibility cannot be excluded.”56
Essentially, the Cathar movement was characteristic
of the creation of subversive heresies
within Christianity that resulted from
the penetration of Kabbalistic influences, the earliest case having
been the Gnostics. Several
thirteenth century Christian polemicists had reproached the Cathars for their relations with Jews, and as Johnson notes, “the Church was
by no means wide of the mark when it identified Jewish
influences in the Cathar movement…” 57
In Jewish Infl uences on Christian Reform Movements, Louis I. Newman concludes:
…that the powerful Jewish culture in Languedoc, which had acquired sufficient strength to assume an aggressive, propagandist
policy, created a milieu where from
movements of religious independence arose readily and spontaneously. Contact and association
between Christian princes and their Jewish officials and friends stimulated the state of mind which facilitated the banishment of orthodoxy,
the clearing away of the debris of
Catholic theology. Unwilling to receive Jewish thought, the princes and laity turned towards Catharism,
then being preached in their domains. 58
As a result of these tendencies, the Cathars, or Church of Love, produced the culture of Courtly Love—in French Amour Courtoise—whose influence contributed to the transformation
of Arthurian legend that appeared in French
literature at the end of the twelfth century. 59 Courts of love were
supposedly operating in the castles of the nobility of the Languedoc, with Church inquisitors hinting of practices of orgies. Courtly Love, representing a code that
prescribed the behavior of ladies and
their lovers, provided the theme of an extensive courtly medieval literature that began with
the troubadours, the traveling poet musicians
of courtly love, written in the langue d’Oc of the Languedoc.
Cathar themes are pervasive in their songs, with many of the troubadours
themselves being Cathars, or simply
reflecting the valuesof their patrons. The troubadours were inspired by the
erotic symbolism of the Kabbalah.
These influences were transmitted to the troubadours by way of the Sufi mystics of the
Islamic world. Wandering Sufis, traveled on foot from city to city, teaching songs and cryptic words, and sometimes not speaking at all. Sufi musical jesters and ariakeens (harlequins) dressed
in patchwork costumes, the khirqah (mantle)
of the Sufis, originally made from shreds
and patches, reminiscent of
Joseph’s coat of many colors. In the love poetry of the Sufis, originally inspired by the Song of
Solomon, in praise to the bride of God, sometimes God is addressed directly,
but often the deity is personified by a
woman. It was
the goddess worship of the Sufis, expressed in the form of
love poetry dedicated to ladies, and
deference towards women, which became known as the art of chivalry.
The predominant theme in troubadour poetry was unrequited love for
noble ladies, who were usually married.
This love took on a quasi-religious tone, their
love becoming veneration, elevating the lady to near-divine status. P.
Hitti, in the History of the Arabs, commented that “the troubadours… resembled
Arab singers not only in sentiment and character but also in the very forms of
their minstrelsy. Certain titles which these Provencal singers gave to their
songs are but translations from Arabic
titles.” 60
According to J. B. Trend, in The Legacy of
Islam, the poems of the troubadours “...are, in matter, form and style
closely connected with Arabic idealism
and Arabic poetry written in Spain.” 61 The
supposed treasures discovered by the Templars
are believed in occult circles to have
enabled them to build the cathedrals like those of Chartres and Notre Dame, which represented the transformation
of European architecture from the
Romanesque to the Gothic style. Many
books have been written about the
mysteries of the French Gothic
cathedrals and their sacred geometry used
in the architecture. The most well known is Le Mystère des
Cathédraleswritten in 1929 by Fulcanelli (1839-1953), a mysterious French
alchemist whose identity is still
debated. According to Fulcanelli, a
cathedral is an alchemical book
written in stone. But in Restoring the
Temple of Vision, historian Marsha Keith Schuchard produced the
first scholarly assessment of these
Masonic traditions, by tracing the
possible connections of ancient Jewish guilds of masons, as precursors to the development of European Freemasonry, of which, according to
occult tradition, the Templars formed an important intermediary
stage.
The
Templars managed a large economic infrastructure throughout the Christian world, innovating financial
techniques that were an early form of
banking, and building fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land. In
these projects, the Templars resorted to the expertise of
the Jews. This led to their increasingly intimate association with the
building guilds in which Jewish and Christian artisans worked together on many
projects. Wischnitzer suggests that Jewish craftsmen brought the very idea of
guilds from the Middle East, and that
Jewish guilds played an essential role in the transmission of crafts within the
Byzantine Empire. 62
Some have traced the origins of Gothic architecture to the Byzantines, while others, like Christopher Wren, the
seventeenth-century architect and
Freemason, traced it to the Muslims. According to Marsha Keith Schuchard, they are both partly right, as an important
medium for Byzantine and Muslim
influences on Gothic masonry were the Jewish guilds.63 As Schuchard relates,
throughout the Islamic world, there was much
interaction between Jewish and Muslim guilds, the earliest description
of which is found in the Epistlesof
the Brethren of Sincerity. Over the
centuries, Merkabah texts already began
to identify the man as the microcosm, and the
earthly Temple as the microcosm of the Throne. Much of the mythology
of Merkabah teachings centered on the
Second Temple, and formed an esoteric tradition
of architectural symbolism. Since the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70, religious Jews have expressed their desire to see the
building of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount. Prayer for this is a formal
part of the thrice daily Amidahprayer.
The desire for a Third Temple is sacred in
Judaism, particularly Orthodox
Judaism, and the prophets in the Tanakh called for its construction to be fulfilled prior to, or at the time of, the coming of the Messiah. Through
these influences, Merkabah was associated with actual building practices and
was evidently taught, Schuchard believes, in the building guilds. The
great significance of these traditions,
explains Schuchard, “lies in this
interpretation of meditation techniques in terms of masonic imagery.” She
further explains: “For the Jewish meditator, intense concentration on the numerical and linguistic permutations
involved in the “mechanics of creation” [Ma’aseh
Bereshith] is accompanied by rhythmic breathing, chanting, and possibly geometric yentas, so that the
interior psychic ‘building’ process leads
the initiate into a state of visionary trance.” 64
Muslim artisans drew upon the occult traditions
of the Jewish guilds, assimilating
Merkabah meditation techniques and Temple mysticism. Throughout the
tenth and eleventh centuries, in the Moslem-Jewish world, there was renewed interest in the study of geometry
for both scientific and magical purposes. Like the Jewish students of Merkabah, the
Sufis stressed the occult relations
of numbers, letters,
and geometric configurations in
building processes, both material and mystical. 65 From the ninth through to
the twelfth century, these esoteric traditions of both Jewish and Moslem mystical
fraternities gradually penetrated Christian Europe. The use of the Syrian
pointed arch, which became the prototype of
Gothic architecture, was brought to Europe by Jewish building guilds.66
Intricate geometrical configurations produced by guilds of Jewish artists in Egypt were carried to
Muslim Spain, where they appeared in
illustrated Hebrew Bibles. Lansberger notes their striking similarity to later
Christian Gothic designs, noting that the main motif is “a quadrangle framing a
circle and bordered by four semi-circles.” 67 For Jews and Arabs, these squares, circles,
rosettes, and knots had magical connotations, a tradition that was preserved
in Gothic masonic guilds. Jewish architectural
and masonic expertise was used in Normandy and northern Europe. In England,
from the eleventh to the twelfth century,
Jews employed Christian laborers in England and instructed them in the
new techniques brought from Palestine.68
The pupils of the early Kabbalists coming
from Spain to study in the Talmudic academies
of southern France were the principal
agents of the Kabbalah’s transplantation
to that country, where they were responsible for the production of a text that drew on the Bahir, the Sefer ha Zohar, or Book of Light, the most important medieval Kabbalistic text. The Zohar first appeared
in Spain in the thirteenth century, and was published by a Jewish writer named
Moses de Leon. But de Leon ascribed the
work to Shimon bar Yochai, a rabbi of the
second century at the time of the Roman persecution. According to
Jewish legend, Shimon bar Yochai hid in
a cave for thirteen years studying the Torah and was inspired by Elijah to write the Zohar.
Mystical tradition also purports that the Zohar was based on an earlier “Arabic Kabbalah” of the Brethren of Sincerity. Isaac the Blind, a pivotal figure among the
thirteenth century Kabbalists of the
Languedoc, studied not only Jewish, but also early Greek, and
Christian Gnostic writings, as well as
the Brethren of Sincerity. Some historians even suspected him to be the author
of the Sefer ha- Bahir. The Brethren of Sincerity and other Sufi mystics were
widely studied by later Jewish mystics, such as Abraham Ibn Ezra, Moses
Maimonides, Judah Halevi, Bahya Ibn
Pakuda, Ibn Gabirol. The philosopher who
most personified the interweaving
of Judaism and Islam was the eleventh century Spanish Jew,
Ibn Gabirol, who assimilated ideas from the Brethren of Sincerity to such an extent that it was his primary
source of inspiration after the Bible
. He also
followed the teachings of the tenth century Sufi mystic Mohammed Ibn Masarra,
who had introduced Sufism to Spain.69 Ibn Gabirol, along with Ibn Arabi, was considered one of the two great
followers of Ibn Masarra (883–931 AD), an
Andalusian Muslim ascetic and scholar
considered one of the first
Sufis as well as one of the first philosophers
of Moorish Spain. Ibn Arabi, who was heavily
influenced by the Epistles of the
Brethren of Sincerity, formulated
many of the ideas that became central to the
Zohar. For example, his theory of the mystical import of language, the
concept that man was a complete microcosm of the macrocosmic God, and specific interpretations of grammar and
prayer all became central to the
Kabbalah .70
According to Schuchard, “Jewish artisans in
the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Spain evidently discussed themes from
the Zoharin their guild meetings,” and, she explains, “While
the Zohar amplified
the sexual symbolism of the ancient traditions of Temple mysticism, it
also heightened The spiritual signifi cance of the masons
who built the Temple.” 71 When God created the world,
he needed an architect. But God forbade Adam and Eve from eating from the Tree of Knowledge because they would assume
divine powers. So the serpent urged Eve: “Eat of it and you shall create
worlds. It is because God knows this that He has commanded you not to eat of
it, for every artisan hates his fellow of the same craft.”72
According to the Zohar, Rabbi Simeon related that the
original Temple built itself magically: So
soon as the artisans set their hands to the work, it showed them how to proceed in a manner novel to them… It was
built of its own accord, though
seemingly by the hands of labourers; it showed the workers a design which
guided their hands and from which they did not turn their eyes until the whole
building of the house was completed… No cutting
tools were required, the whole work being accomplished by a miracle. 73 As
Marsha Keith Schuchard notes, the Zohar “reflected a period of sexual libertinism and theosophical experimentation
in the Jewish communities of Spain,
which were paralleled by Christian heretics [ Cathars and Waldensians] in southern
France and Italy.” 74
The following account in the Zoharprovides both the justification for ritual sex and its
significance in relation to the rebuilding of the Temple:
The male member is the completion of the
entire body [of God the King] and it is called Yeso d[Foundation], and this is
the feature that delights the female, and all the desire of the Male for the
Female which in this Yeso dpenetrates the Female at the place called Zion, for
there is the covered place of the Female, like unto the womb in a woman. This is
why the Lord of Hosts is called Yeso d. It is written: “For the Lord hath
chosen Zion, He hath desired it for his habitation”—When the Matronit is
separated from Him. And she unites with the King face to face on the Sabbath even, and both become one body… When the
Matronit unites with the King all the worlds are blessed and all are in a state
of great joy… and the Matronit becomes intoxicated with joy and blessed in the place that is called the
Holy of Holies here below… 75
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