BLACK MAGIC WHITE SOLDIER ( HOLY
GRAIL PART 2 )
In the
Zohar are extensive discussions of the ten Sephiroths, which emanate from
the Ein-Sof, the Ancient of Days. The Ten Sephiroth form the image of the Archetypal Man, known as Adam Kadmon, the form Ezekiel saw in his vision of the Chariot. Also identified with Metatron, the name given to Enoch when
he ascended into Heaven, he is often represented as a pillar or divine
phallus, symbolized in the Bahir as
the Tree of Life and the Dragon Teli, referring to the celestial pole and the
constellation Draco. He is said to govern the visible world, preserve the
harmony and guide the revolution of the spheres, and to be the leader of the
legions of angelic beings. He represents the Macrocosm, which God created in
His own image before creating the human man, the Microcosm. Therefore,
according to the dictum of the Kabbalah,
“as above, so below,” a sympathy exists between the Macrocosm and the
Microcosm, explaining how the various parts of the universe, such as the
planets, may have an affinity with human
existence. It is also the central doctrine of magic, the means the Kabbalist must use to correct the disorder of
the universe.
Repairing the separation created by Adam’s
sin, according to the Zohar, is the historical plight of the Jewish people as
whole. In the fulfillment of God’s plan, the
Jews will be returned to Zion, the Promised Land, and united with
the Messiah. The dispersion of the
Jewish people was assimilated to the
Gnostic doctrine of the soul as a divine spark in exile in the base and
corrupt material world. The nation of the
Jews was equated with the
Shekhinah, as the bride of God, exiled in this world, and separated from
her beloved to whom she longs to return. When all of the preexisting souls in
the world of the Sephiroth shall have
descended and completed the cycle of reincarnations, and have returned purified to the bosom of the infinite Source, then the Messiah will descend from the region of souls, and the great
Jubilee will take place. The Messiah is
to be a descendant of King David, and therefore known as the “Son of David,” linking
this Zionist prophecy to the
descendants of Makhir of Narbonne.
Although the claims cannot be corroborated,
what is important is that the evident link between the claimants of Davidic
descent in Narbonne and the expected Messiah of the Kabbalah, whether correct or not, was
perceived to be so. As late as 1143, Peter the Venerable of Cluny, in an
address to Louis VII of France,
condemned the Jews of Narbonne who claimed to have a king residing among
them. In 1144, Theobald, a Cambridge monk, spoke of “the chief Princes and
Narbonne where the royal seed resides.”
In 1165 –
66 Benjamin of Tudela, the famous Jewish traveler and chronicler, reports that
in Narbonne there are “sages, magnates and princes [Nesim] at the
head of whom is… a remnant of the House
of David as stated in his family tree.” 76 The “Royal Letters” of 1364 also record the existence of a rex Iudaeorum(King
of the Jews) at Narbonne.77 The place of residence of
the Makhir family at Narbonne was designated in official documents as Cortada Regis Judæorum. 78 The belief of
Davidic descent is corroborated by the
use of the Lion of Judah as a heraldic device on a seal of one Nasi(prince), Kalonymos ben Todros, in
the later thirteenth century. 79
The fact that the Grail sagas are concerned with a secret and
purportedly sacred lineage is indicated
in the anonymous Perlesvaus, dated to
the first decade of the thirteenth century, where we read: “Here is the story
of thy descent; here begins the Book of
the Sangreal.” And, though there is no solid corroboration of his purported Jewish ancestry, at least six
major epic poems about William of Gellone were composed before the era of the
crusades, including Willehalmby Wolfram
von Eschenbach. Therefore, there may be
some truth to the claim of the authors
of the sensationalistic Holy Blood
Holy Grail, that the Holy
Grail should not have been translated from san greal, but from sang
real, meaning “royal blood.”
The first
troubadour was Eleanor of Aquitaine’s
grandfather, William IX Duke of
Aquitaine. Eleanor herself became instrumental in turning her court, then
frequented by the most famous troubadours of the time, into a center of poetry
and a model of courtly life and manners. It was Eleanor’s daughter, Marie of Champagne, a decisive influence in the transmission of
the culture of Courtly Love across Europe, who encouraged the
composition of Chretien de Troyes. The language of Courtly Love was assimilated to the legends
of the Holy Grail beginning with
Chretien de Troyes, who fashioned a new type of narrative based on the Matter of Britain. Centering on the
legendary King Arthur, the
Matter of Britainderived from the Welsh monk Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
Historia regum Britanniae, written between 1118 and 1135. By drawing
on classical authors, the Bible, and Celtic tradition, Monmouth created the story of a British kingdom, to some extent
paralleling that of Israel. Monmouth relates the purported history of
Britain, from its first
settlement by Brutus, a descendant of
Aeneas a hero of the Trojan war, to the death of Cadwallader in the seventh century, covering Julius Caesar’s invasions of Britain, two kings,
Leir and Cymbeline, later immortalized
by William Shakespeare, and one of the earliest developed narratives of King Arthur.
Parzival, written between 1200 and 1210
by Wolfram von Eschenbach,
a knight of Bavarian origin, was the most celebrated romance of the
time. Wolfram believed Chretien’s version of the Grail story was wrong and less accurate than
his own. Wolfram claimed to have
obtained his information zfrom a certain Kyot de Provence, who would have been
Guiot de Provins, a troubadour. Wolfram
maintains that Kyot, in turn, supposedly received the Grail story from a Kabbalistic Jew named Flegetanis. According
to Wolfram, the Grail sustained the lives of a brotherhood of
knights called Templeisen, who were guardians of the Temple of the Grail, located on the Mount of Salvation (Munsalvaeshe), associated with the mountain stronghold
of Montsegur of the Cathars in the Languedoc.
According to
Wolfram, after learning Arabic to read Flegetanis’ document, Kyot
traveled throughout Europe to learn more about the Grail and the brotherhood that protected it. He finally came to
Anjou, where he found the history of Percival’s family and wrote the tale which
would later be retold by Wolfram. In
Parzival, Perceval is the father of
Lohengrin, the Knight Swan. One
day, in his castle Munsalvaesche, he hears a bell toll as a signal to come to the
aid of a damsel in distress. According to some sources, she was the duchess of
Bouillon, where Lohengrin hastened to
her rescue in a boat drawn by swans. Having
defeated her persecutor, he married the lady, however requiring of her that she
not question about his ancestry. At last, wrought with curiosity, she broke the
vow, at which point Lohengrin was forced
to leave. Though, he left her with a
child, according to various chanson de geste,that was either the father or
grandfather of Godfroi de Bouillon, who could also trace his descent to William of Gellone.80
These various families that were connected to
the Grail legends were also all closely
associated with the preservation of the occult traditions of the Kabbalah in
its various forms, and adopted for themselves heraldic symbols that were
emblems of Jewish heritage. The kings of England, like the Nesimof Narbonne, adopted the Lion of Judah, the Kings
of France the lily and the Plantagenets
the red rose. The second chapter of the
Song of Solomonbegins with, “I am
the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” The Zoharbegins with an exposition of this passage, equating the rose
with the “Jewish congregation.” Often
called the “Mystical Rose of Heaven,” the rose represents the Virgin Mary, who esoterically is understood to
symbolize the goddess or Venus, in other words, the Shekhinah. The rose was composed of five petals, recalling the five-pointed star or pentagram of Lucifer .
According to historian Margaret Murray
the Plantagenets were all witches.81 As popular legends surrounding the
Angevins suggested they were demonic in origin,
some historians were led to give them the epithet “The Devil’s Brood.” The chronicler Gerald of Wales (c. 1146-c.
1223) is the key contemporary source
for these stories, which often borrowed elements of the Melusine legend.
Melusine, or Melusina, is a feminine
spirit of European folklore, ussualy depicted
as a woman who
is a serpent or fish
from the waist down,
much like a mermaid. She is
popularly known from her depiction of the logo of Starbucks. By her magical
powers she was to have built in a single night the Château de Lusignan, the largest castle in France, from which originated the powerful
House of Lusignan. Melusine was married
to Guy de Lusignan, king of the crusader
state of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1192,
under condition that he should never attempt to intrude upon her privacy. But
when Guy betrayed his promised, she transformed herself into a dragon, departing with a loud yell and was never seen again.
Gerald of Wales related a similar story in his
De instructione principis of “a certain
countess of Anjou” who
rarely attended mass and one day
flew away, never to be seen again. According to Gerald, “King Richard
was often accustomed to refer to this event “saying that it was no matter of
wonder, if coming from such a race, sons should not cease to harass their
parents, and brothers to quarrel amongst each other; for he knew that they all
had come of the devil, and to the devil they would go.” A similar story was
related to Eleanor of Aquitaine in the thirteenth century romance, Richard
Coeur-de-lion. Gerald also presents a list of legends about the sins committed
by Geoffrey V and Henry II as further evidence of their corrupt origins, which,
he says, were not always discouraged by the Angevins. Henry II’s sons
reportedly defended their
frequent infighting by saying
“Do not deprive us
of our heritage; we cannot help acting like devils.” 82
The
Melusina legend and the claims of witchcraft among the Plantagenets and families of Anjou was symptomatic
of the spread of occult ideas which was also reflected in their association with the heretical Cathar movement. Historians use the term “Medieval Inquisition” to
describe the various inquisitions that started
around 1182, which responded to large popular movements throughout Europe considered heretical, in particular
the Cathars in southern France and the related movement of the Waldensians in
both southern France and northern Italy. The Church charged the Cathars with devil worship, human sacrifice, cannibalism, incest, homosexuality and
celebrating the Black Mass. In
1209, an army descended on the Languedoc, a campaign called the Albigensian
Crusade. The edict of annihilation referred not only to the
heretical Cathars themselves but to all who supported them, which
included most of the people of Languedoc. When an officer inquired of the Pope’s representative how he
might distinguish heretics from true believers, the infamous reply was, “Kill them
all. Let God sort them out.” Final defeat came upon the Cathars at their famous stronghold of
Montsegur in the foothills of the Pyrenees in 1244, when more than 200
Cathar priests were massacred.
The
Cathars had established communities in Northern Italy, the Alpine regions and Southern France. In southern France, Catharism and Waldensianism virtually
became the region’s official
religions, under the political control of Count Raymond VI of Toulouse,
himself a follower of the Cathar faith. Raymond VI was married to Joan Plantagenet, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II King of
England. Raymond VI was the great-grandson of Raymond IV, who led the First
Crusade. Raymond IV’s wife had been Elvira of Castile and Leon, the daughter of
Zaida of Denia, an Ismaili of the
Fatimids, who had married Alfonso VI “the Brave” of Leon. Elvira had first married Roger II of Sicily (c.1095-1154).
Under the marriage agreement, if Baldwin I and Adelaide had no children, the
heir to the kingdom of Jerusalem would be
Roger II, Adelaide’s son by her first husband Roger I Guiscard (Roger I of Sicily). Roger II of
Sicily, who was also a Templar, was to
become the “ Jolly Roger” of history, having flown the skull and crossbones on his ships.83
The origin of the Jolly Roger begins with the legend of
the Skull of Sidon as recounted by
Walter Mapp, in the twelfth century AD. According to Mapp, a Templar “Lord of Sidon” was in love with a “great
lady of Maraclea [Marash in Cilician
Armenia].” When the knight’s wife died suddenly, on the night of her
burial he crept to her grave, dug up her body and violated it. Then a voice
from beyond ordered him to return nine months
later, when he would find a son. He returned at the appointed time, opened the
grave again, and found
a skull and
crossbones. The same voice then apparently commanded him to “guard it well, for
it would be the giver of all good things,” and so he carried it away with him.
It became his protecting genius, and he was able to defeat his enemies by
merely showing them the magic head. In
due course, it passed to the possession of the
Templars.
The legend is related to Baldwin II, called a
cousin of the brothers Eustace III of Boulogne and Godfrey of Bouillon, and who later became
king of Jerusalem in 1143 and married Morphia of the Rubenid dynasty of Armenian Cilicia. The Rubenids were descended from the Bagratuni, a
Jewish dynasty who ruled Armenia in the
ninth century AD, and claimed Jewish descent. Baldwin and Morphia’s daughter
was Melusinde, which links her to
the Melusina legend.
Melusinde married Fulk V, Count of Anjou and the father of Geoffrey Plantagenet,
leading him to become King of Jerusalem
in 1131 on the death of Melisende’s father
Baldwin II. Fulk V had joined the crusade in 1120, and became a close
friend of the Templars. After his return
he began to subsidize the order, and maintained two knights in the Holy Land
for a year. The son of Fulk V and
Melusinde was Amalric I King of Jerusalem
who married Agnes de Courtenay. Their daughter Sybilla, Queen of Jerusalem, married Guy de Lusignan
(c. 1150 – 1194). Guy
de Lusignan’s term as king is
generally seen as disastrous. He was
defeated by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, and was imprisoned in Damascus
as Saladin reconquered almost the entire Crusader kingdom. Richard the
Lionheart then sold Guy the island of Cyprus, which he had conquered on his way to
Acre. Guy there by became the first
Latin lord of Cyprus. Amalric succeeded Guy in Cyprus, and also became King of Jerusalem in 1197. Sybille, the daughter of Isabella and Almaric, then
married Leo II, the son of Stephen I
of Armenia. Their union began a series
of reciprocal marriages as a result of which the succession of Lesser Armenia actually passes to the Lusignan, which lasted until 1375 AD, when
the Mamelukes of Egypt destroyed it.
The Lusignans were rulers of Jerusalem, or more accurately, Acre, from 1268
until the fall of the city in 1291. Also after 1291, the Lusignans continued to
claim the lost Jerusalem and
occasionally attempted to organize crusades to recapture territory on the
mainland. The stronghold of Acre from the time of its capture by
Richard to its final conquest
by the
Muslims formed for two hundred years the base of the
crusading empire in Palestine. There
were headquartered both the orders of the
Templars and of the Hospitallers.
In 1291, the Muslims attacked Acre, when
among the Templars, including their
Grand Master, only ten escaped of five hundred knights. Henr II of Lusignan, the patriarch, and the Grand Master of the Hospitallers, with the few survivors, escaped back to Cyprus.
However, on their return to Cyprus, the Templars conspired to place Henry II’s
brother Almaric, Prince of Tyre, on the throne. Henry II was sent in
confinement in Armenia. But it was at
this time, in 1306, under pressure from Phillip IV king of France, that the Pope summoned Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, from Cyprus to
answer the charges of heresy. In 1308, Almaric received letters from the Pope
directing him to arrest all the Templars
in Cyprus. Their property was handed over to the Hospitallers, and after the assassination of
Almaric, they supported Henri II’s return to the throne of Cyprus. Therefore,
the arrest of the Templars seems merely
to have been a pretext to transfer their property to the Hospitallers. The nobility of Europe had
been calling for a
unification of the orders of the Templars and the Hospitallers, but
Jacques de Molay was resisting the move.
Following the fall of Acre, Phillip IV of
France was calling for a renewed Crusade, but de Molay again refused participation.
The
Templars were arrested in 1307 by order of the King of France. Among the accusations against them
were those of practicing witchcraft, denying the tenets of the Christian faith,
spitting or urinating on the cross during secret rites of initiation,
worshipping the devil in the shape of a black cat, and committing acts of sodomy and bestiality. In an accusation
that connects them to the legend of
the Skull of Sidon, the Templars were also charged with worshipping a
skull or head called Baphometand
anointing it with blood or the fat of unbaptized babies. In fact, the story of
the Skull of Sidon was called upon
during the Templar trials. The
inquisitors, picking up on the Armenian
background of the woman in the story, connected the legend with the Armenian Church and its Paulician sects, as
the Paulicians and the Bogomils were recognized as the source of the
Gnosticism of the Cathars. Many Templars were executed or imprisoned and in 1314
the order’s last Grand Master, Jacques
de Molay, was burned at the stake.
As legend has it, when the Templars came under trial in 1301, their
leader de Molay arranged for many of
them to return to Scotland. As Marsha Schuchard has pointed out, there were
persistent claims that not only
Templars, but Jews as well were expelled to Scotland.
The first significant Jewish
communities had come to England with William
the Conqueror in 1066. Economically,
Jews came to play an important role in the country. Because, the Church
strictly forbade the lending
of money at profit, while Judaism
permits loans with interest between Jews
and non- Jews. As a consequence, some
Jews became very wealthy and acquired a reputation as extortionate
moneylenders, which made them extremely unpopular with both the church and the
general public. An image of the Jew as
an enemy of Christ started to become widespread and anti-Semitic myths such as
the Wandering Jewand ritual murder originated and spread throughout England, as
well as Scotland and Wales. In frequent cases of blood libel, Jews were said to hunt for children to murder
before Passover so they could use their blood to make matzo. An anti-Jewish
attitude on a number of occasions sparked riots where many Jews were murdered, most famously in 1190
when over a hundred Jews were massacred
in the city of York.
Finally, the
Jews were formally expelled from England by King Edward in 1290 AD when all the crowned heads of
Europe followed his example. France
expelled its Jewish population in 1306 AD, a year before the arrest of the
Templars. According to John Howell’s History of the Latter Times of
the Jews, published in 1653:
The first
Christian Prince that expelled the Jews out of his territories, was that heroic King, our Edward the First,
who was such a scourge also the Scots; and it is thought diverse families of
the banished Jews fled to Scotland, where
they have propagated since in great numbers; witness the aversion that nation
hath above all others to hogs-flesh.84
Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads
of any country in the world, where they represent thirteen percent of the
population, and red hair and the color red, as demonstrated by Andrew Colin
Gow, author of the Red Jews:
Anti-Semitism in an Apocalyptic Age: 1200-1600, had become distinctly associated
with the Jews. As he further noted, Jews were often portrayed by medieval illustrations
in Christian texts with red hair and in red clothes.
The
Templars in Scotland were also to have assisted Robert the Bruce at
the Battle of Bannockburn. Robert the
Bruce claimed the Scottish throne as a direct descendant of David I. Walter Stewart,
the sixth High Steward of Scotland, who played an important part in the Battle of Bannockburn, married Marjory,
daughter of Robert the Bruce. Thus was founded the House of Stuart, when their son Robert II of Scotland
eventually inherited the Scottish throne after his uncle David II of Scotland
died. Robert the Bruce also mentioned the origin of the Scots from among
the Scythians, in the famous “Scottish Declaration
of Independence” of 1320, signed by him and addressed to Pope John XXII:
We know, Most Holy Father and Lord, and from
the chronicles and books of the ancients gather, that among other illustrious
nations, ours, to wit the nation of the Scots, has been distinguished by many
honours; which, passing from the greater Scythia through the Mediterranean Sea and
Pillars of Hercules, and sojourned in Spain among the most savage tribes through a
long course of time, could nowhere be subjugated by any people, however
barbarous; and coming thence one thousand two hundred years after the outgoing
of the people of Israel, they, by many victories and infinite
toil, acquired for themselves the possessions in the West which they now hold… In their Kingdom one hundred and
thirteen kings of their own royal stock,
no stranger intervening, have reigned.
The
Templar force at the Battle of
Bannockburn was supposedly led by Sir William Sinclair. Before his death, when
Robert the Bruce had requested that his heart be taken to Jerusalem, and buried in the Templar Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the
heart was taken by Sir William Sinclair
and Sir James Douglas. The two never made it to the Holy Land, having been
killed in Spain in battle with the
Muslims. The Douglases were one of Scotland’s most powerful families and also
related to the Stewarts. According to the genetic studies of Hirschman and
Yates, genetic studies of the Douglas family exactly matched three Jewish males
with Ashkenazi surnames.85
William Sinclair’s grandson, also named William Sinclair,
in the fifteenth century became the third Earl of Orkney, first Earl of Caithness, and High Chancellor of Scotland and also
designed the most sacred site in
Freemasonry:
Rosslyn Chapel. A church in the village of
Roslin, Rosslyn Chapel is replete with
occult symbolism. There are hundreds of stone carvings in the walls and in the
ceiling of the Rosslyn Chapel, which
represent biblical scenes, Masonic symbols,
and examples of Templar iconography.
There are swords, compasses, trowels, squares and mauls with images of the
Solomon’s Temple. In addition to the Jewish and occult symbolism, there are
also some traces of Islam and pagan serpents, dragons, and woodland trees. The fertility
figure of the Green Man, a
European version of the dying-god Dionysus, al
Khidr to the Sufis, is to be
found everywhere on the pillars and arches, together with fruits, herbs, leaves, spices, flowers, vines and the plants of the garden paradise.
As recently popularized in Dan Brown’s bestselling The Da Vinci Code, da
Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supperwas the key clue to unraveling the
sacred mystery of red hair and its connection to Rosslyn Chapel, the Holy Grail and the Sinclairs. In the painting, to Jesus’ right is not John the Apostle but a
woman with red hair, often purported to be
Mary Magdalene. This speculation was already the topic of The Templar Revelationby Lynn Picknett and Clive
Prince published in 1997. Dan Brown suggests,
following up on the work of the Holy Blood
Holy Grail, that Mary Magdalene produced a secret line
of descent through her marriage to Jesus, which could be traced through their
red hair. Therefore, according to Brown, the significance of the
colorred is alluded to everywhere in occult symbolism. The Templar red cross is the “rose cross” of the
Rosicrucians. Brown follows the trail of this lineage to the Sinclairs
and Rosslyn Chapel, rumored to be
the burial site of the Holy Grail, being
the remains of Mary
Magdalene. Rosslyn, according to Brown,
takes its name from the Rose-Line, the
north-south meridian that runs through Glastonbury, which is the traditional marker of King Arthur’s Avalon. “Or,” says Brown, “as Grail
academics preferred to believe, from the ‘Line of Rose’—the ancestral lineage
of Mary Magdalene.”
RENAISSAINCE & REF0RMATION ( PART
1 )
The second of the important European Renaissances,
which took place in Florence, and spanned roughly from the fourteenth to the
seventeenth century, Was again a result of the discovery of occult
sciences learned from the Sabians. This challenge to Church orthodoxy, represented as the flourishing of art and philosophy, was
enabled through the sponsorship of the Medici banking family. The expansion of the great European banking powers
achieved formidable wealth through the
extraordinary money-generating powers of the fractional reserve system. Usury, or the charging of
interest on loans, has otherwise been forbidden
by all the world’s major religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduismand Buddhism. Even among the
pagan Greeks, Aristotle mentioned, for
example: “the most hated sort (of wealth getting) and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain
out of money itself and not from the
natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange but
not to increase at interest.” 1
European banking in the modern sense can be
traced to the Templars. With extensive
land holdings across Europe, their practice was to take in local currency for which
a demand note would be given that would be good at any of their castles across
Europe, allowing movement of money without the usual risk of robbery while
traveling. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Italian bankers invented legal
fictions to get around the ban on Christian
usury. The most famous example was the Medici bank, established in 1397. The
medieval ItaZlian markets were disrupted by wars and were limited by the
fractured nature of the Italian states,
so the next developments happened as banking practices spread throughout Europe during the renaissance period. Banking
offices were usually located near centers of trade, and in the late seventh
century, the largest centers for commerce were the ports of Amsterdam, London,
and Hamburg.
Though it was initially forbidden in Judaism,
some flexibility was added to the law
forbidding it, such that it was permitted to be charged to non-Jews. This led
to the practice being dominated by Jews throughout much of Western history, for
which they have repeatedly been maligned, most famously in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, who demands his
“pound of flesh.” Many Jewish moneylenders achieved influence as Hofjuden,
or Court Jews, who lent money and handled
the finances of some of the
Christian European noble houses,
primarily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Court Jews were skilled administrators and
businessmen who received privileges in return for their services. They were most
commonly found in Germany, Holland, and Austria, but also in Denmark, England,
Hungary, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Portugal, and Spain. In return for their services,
court Jews gained social privileges,
including nobility, and could live outside the Jewish ghettos. And because they
were under noble protection, they were exempted from rabbinical jurisdiction,
and therefore any limitations on their
pursuit of interest-based banking.
A similar process of dilution of the prohibition
against interest-banking took place
within Christianity . By the fourth
century AD, usury was officially prohibited
for Catholic clergy and by the
fifth century the law was extended to all laymen. Usury was not declared a
criminal offense until the eighth century, instituted by Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. Finally, Pope Clement V in the thirteenth century made the ban on usury absolute. The scholastic philosophers who were heavily infl uenced by
Aristotle upheld the historical prohibition
of usury.
In the middle of the thirteenth century,
groups of Italian Christians invented
legal fictions to get around
the ban on Christian usury, such as
offering money without interest but also requiring that the debt to be insured
against possible loss, injury or delays in repayment. Thus, banking in the
modern sense can be traced to medieval and early Renaissance
Italy, to the rich cities in the north such as Florence, Venice and
Genoa. The Bardi and Peruzzi families dominated banking in fourteenth century
Florence, establishing branches in many other parts of Europe. Perhaps the most
famous Italian bank was the Medici bank, established by Giovanni Medici in
1397.
The Italian
Renaissance is typicallyz presented
as a flourishing of creative activity and
characterized by a tradition of
Humanism. More accurately, the tendencies of the Renaissance had an occult basis, and humanism’s focus on the human being has its
origins in the anthropomorphic teachings
of the apotheosis of man into God. The interest in pagan themes that
characterized the Renaissance derived
from the influence of Neoplatonism , which saw the stories of classical
mythology as allegories for astrological phenomena. The recovery of Neoplatonic
material as well as the other works of antiquity resulted as part of a program
sponsored largely by the Medicis, the famous banking family that ruled
Florence. The Medici had gained increasing power when the weakness of the Holy
Roman Emperors in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries made it possible
in Italy for small city-states to
achieve full independence. The northern region came to be divided between a
number of competing cities, of which Venice, Milan and Florence were the most
powerful. In Florence, the foundation of the Medici family’s fortunes were laid
by Giovanni di Bicci, who founded the Medici bank in 1422 and was appointed
banker to the papacy.
The Medicis’ patronage of the arts
represented a direct assault on Christianity , aiming
to supplant it with the influence
of the occult, or more accurately, the
Kabbalah . Growing persecution in other parts of Europe had led many Kabbalists to find their way to Italy, which during the Renaissance became one of the most intense
areas of Kabbalistic study, second only
to Palestine. According to Gershom
Scholem, “the activities of these migrants strengthened the Kabbalah, which acquired many adherents
in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.” 2 Laying the basis for the
rediscovery of the occult tradition of
classical philosophy was, as Moshe Idel, one of the foremost scholars of the subject, has pointed out that
“ Kabbalah was conceived by both Jewish
and Christian Renaissance figures as an
ancient theology, similar to and, according
to the Jews, the source of such later
philosophical developments as Platonism, Aristotelianism, Pythagoreanism, and
atomism.”3
As had been the case for centuries among Jewish
mystics, their interest in Platonism presupposed Plato to have originally gained his insights
from the early Kabbalists. The key representative of the Italian Kabbalists of
the Renaissance was Leone Ebreo who, following medieval Jewish sources, saw
Plato as dependent on the revelation of Moses and even as a disciple of the
ancient Kabbalists.4
While Rabbi Yehudah Messer Leon, a committed
Aristotelian, criticized the Kabbalah ’s
similarity to Platonism, his son described
Plato as a divine master. Other Kabbalists such as Isaac Abravanel and
Rabbi Yohanan Alemanno believed Plato to have been a disciple of Jeremiah in
Egypt .5 On the similarity of the
teachings of the Greek philosophers and the
Kabbalah, Rabbi Abraham Yagel
commented:
This is obvious to anyone who has read what
is written on the philosophy and principles of Democritus, and especially
on Plato, the master of Aristotle, whose views are almost those of
the Sages of Israel, and who on some
issues almost seems to speak from the very mouth of the Kabbalists and in their
language, without any blemish on his lips. And why shall we not hold these
views, since they are ours, inherited from our ancestors by the Greeks, and down
to this day great sages hold the views of
Plato and great groups of students follow him, as is well known to
anyone who has served the sage of the Academy and entered their studies, which
are found in every land.6
In 1439, Cosimo de Medici began sending his
agents all over the world in quest of
ancient manuscripts, and in
1444 founded Europe’s first public library, the Library of San
Marco, and through his commission the corpus of Platonic, Neoplatonic, Pythagorean, Gnostic and Hermetic thought was translated
and became readily accessible. About 1460, a manuscript that contained a copy
of the Corpus Hermeticum was brought by a monk to Florence from Macedonia. So
prized was this find that, though the manuscripts of Plato were awaiting translation,
Cosimo ordered that they be put aside and to proceed with their translation
instead. These texts were translated by Italian philosopher Marisilio Ficino. Ficino’s mission was to revive the ancient
pagan mystery teachings of the “ Chaldeans, Egyptians and Platonists,”
characterized as representing the Prisca Theologia, or Ancient Wisdom.
The intellectual movement sponsored by the
Medici came to be known as Humanism,
which was based on the esoteric veneration of man as equal to God, which was
the basis of the anthropomorphic
doctrine of the occult. An important representative of Renaissance
Humanism was Pico della
Mirandola who succeeded to the
leadership of Ficino’s Academy.
According to Mirandola, Pythagoras had
acquired knowledge of sacred mysteries from the
Jews in Egypt , and having also
recognized the parallels between
Hermeticism and the Kabbalah , Mirandola attempted to combine the two
disciplines, being the first to interpret the Kabbalah in Christian terms, and fusing it
with Hermeticism.
In Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man,
which is taken as a characteristic example
of Renaissance humanism, he emphasizes the centrality of man
in the universe and his supreme value
and importance, and begins by quoting Hermes
Trismegistus, “what a great miracle is man.” In 1486, when Pico went to Rome to defend his Hermetically oriented ideas,
his theses were branded as heretical.
The ensuing public outcry necessitated an Apolog y, which was published in 1487, together with most of the
Oration. Pico was finally rescued from his troubles with the death of the
presiding pope and the intervention of Lorenzo de Medici.
Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo de Medici, also known as “ Lorenzo
the Magnificent” ( Lorenzo il Mag nifi
co) by contemporary Florentines, was responsible for an enormous amount of arts
patronage, encouraging the commission of
works from Florence’s leading artists. Including Leonardo da Vinci,
Botticelli, and Michelangelo,
their works often featured pagan themes that challenged the tolerance of the Church. Noted historian,
Jean Seznec, in The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place
in Renaissance Humanism and Art, has pointed out that these artists often looked to
the Picatrix, a work purportedly produced by the Sabians , and much influenced by the Epistlesof
the Brethren of Sincerity . 7 The Picatrix focused particularly on what it
called “talismans.” As explained in
the Picatrix, through the proper design
and construction of a talisman and
through proper performance of the rituals associated with it, the magician could control the astrological energy
emanating from the planets. In the form
of angelic entities or spirits, he could, for instance, command the powers of Mars in matters of war, or of Venus in matters of love. Thus, explains Seznec, the Hermetic magician learned “to
draw these celestial spirits down to earth and to induce them to enter into a material
object, the talisman.” 8
Therefore, for example, Botticelli’s three works, the Minerva and the
Centaur, the Birth of Ven u sand the
Primavera,being some of the most recognized Renaissance paintings, all dealt
with occult themes and represent the magical
practice of drawing
down planetary influences
into images. Likewise, Michelangelo too
was influenced by the anthropomorphism of
the Kabbalah , painting “God” creating
Adam in the Sistine Chapel, which is actually
a depiction of the “ Ancient of Days.” He is described in the Book of
Daniel as, “I beheld till the trones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair
of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the
fiery flame, and his wheels
as burning fire.” In the Kabbalah, there is mention of the Ancient
of Ancients and the Holy Ancient One interpreted as synonymous with the En Sof,
the unmanifested Godhead. There are several references to this particular name
of God in the Zohar, which goes into
great detail describing the White Head of God and ultimately the emanation of its personality or attributes.
In 1480 Leonard da Vinci was living with the Medici and
working in the Garden of the Piazza San
Marco in Florence, a Neoplatonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers that the Medici had
established. 10 In the late 1490s, he was commissioned to paint The Last
Supperfor the monastery of Santa Maria delle
Grazie. In the painting, da Vinci
portrays the twelve apostles in four groups of three, corresponding to the
signs of the zodiac, organized into four seasons. In the center is Jesus as the sun.
The
Medici also had an important influence on Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 -1527), an Italian diplomat and
philosopher based in Florence
during the Renaissance. As shown by his letter of
dedication, Machiavelli’s The Prince eventually
came to be dedicated to Lorenzo di Piero
de’ Medici, grandson of “ Lorenzo the Magnifcent.” As author of The
Prince, Machiavelli was the father of the
cynicism of “realpolitik.” He openly rejected the medieval and Aristotelian style
of analyzing politics by comparison with ideas about how things should be, in
favor of “realistic” analysis of how things “really are.” In other words, he denied
the perfectibility of the individual and society, suggesting instead that the
corruption of society was the natural order. To
Machiavelli, man is selfish and
brutal and must be constrained through an authoritarian leader who is not afraid
to use force and deceit to ensure the perpetuation of his rule and the “good”
of the community. There are no higher moral truths. The desired ends, whichever
they may be, as Machiavelli famously
noted, justify the means.
While the Medici struggled for decades from
the growing opposition to their paganizing program, they finally exacted their
revenge by installing one of their own in the
Vatican, the son of Lorenzo de
Medici, who became Pope Leo X in 1513 AD. But
Leo X, who had been educated by
Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, exhibited a profligacy that was characteristically un-Christian. As he was described by Crises in the
History of the Papacy:
Leo gathered
about him a company of gross men:
flatterers, purveyors of indecent jokes
and stories, and writers of obscene comedies which were often performed in
the Vatican with cardinals as actors.
His chief friend was Cardinal Bimmiena, whose comedies were more obscene than
any of ancient Athens or Rome and who was one of the most immoral men of his
time. Leo had to eat temperately for he was morbidly fat, but his banquets were
as costly as they were vulgar and the coarsest jesters and loosest courtesans
sat with him and the cardinals. Since these things are not disputed, the Church
does not deny the evidence of his vices.
In public affairs he was the most notoriously dishonourable Vicar of Christ
of the Renaissance period, but it is not
possible here to tell the extraordinary story of his alliances, wars and cynical
treacheries. His nepotism was as corrupt as that of any pope, and when some of
the cardinals conspired to kill him he had the
flesh of their servants ripped off with red-hot pincers to extract information.
11
Leo X’s
propensity for extravagant expenditure finally depleted the Vatican’s finances and he turned to selling indulgences to raise funds. An indulgence
is the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have
already been forgiven, and which Leo X
exchanged for those who donated alms to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
It was mainly due to these excesses, which
he saw as sale of salvation that led Martin Luther to post his Ninety-Nine Theses in 1517, which set off the Protestant
Reformation. Finally, in 1521
Luther was accused of heresy, but to his advantage, many German princes
were sympathetic to his cause, and during his lifetime the movement spread
through about half of Germany and also spawned numerous sects, the most
prominent of which was led by Calvin.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar