Temple and Contemplation brings together for the first ... - ImagoMundi

THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
the Essenes "from whom they were directly descended". It was their
brotherhood which had restored the primitive Order after the destruction
of the second Temple by Titus in 70 A.D. When Hugh de Payens and his
eight comrades-at-arms were established on the site which had been that
of the Temple, the canons, realizing that they had the same end in view,
joined with them and initiated them into the esoteric sciences. In this way
the primitive Order was restored under the name of the Order of Templars.
When Jerusalem was reconquered by the "Saracens", the headquarters
were transferred to Cyprus. The historic Templar Order here resembles
an episode in secular Templarism; but this major episode connects the
Jewish and the Christian periods of the Traditio Templi199 of the hierohistory
of the Temple from the time of Solomon.
B. Another version, which was current mainly in what went by the
name of the "chapter of Clermont" in eighteenth-century France, is more
specifically linked to alchemical symbolism and royal Art. After the Babylonian
captivity, Esdras "was responsible for embedding a quadrangular
stone in the foundations of the second Temple, a stone in which three
hollows had been made. Each hollow contained a dish, and these three
dishes (salt, sulphur, mercury) were the key to the great work". 200 What
then occurs constitutes one of the motifs that are at the source of the
modern resurgence of the Templar tradition known as the "Scottish rite".
In effect, between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, four Brothers
who were originally from Scotland came to Jerusalem, succeeded in prising
out the quadrangular stone, and took it back to Scotland. 201 In recognition of
this service, the King of Scotland, David II, appointed them to be "Knights
of St. Andrew". The heirs of the four Scottish masters were the Templars,
three of whom, after the suppression of their Order (see below, § 7),
confided their secret to the "Knights of God and his Temple". 202 The
Historia Ordinis here postulates a periodicity of history, analogous to the
periodicity found in the Judaeo-Christian community and in Ismailism,
199 This schema corresponds to the "Discours" of the knight Andre Michel de Ramsay,
the friend of Fenelon.
200 Le Forestier, op. cit., p. 86.
201 The rock on which the dome is built thus becomes the symbol par excellence of the
alchemical work. It is worth considering here the relationship of the Black Stone
with the Ka'bah, and the role it plays in alchemical symbolism. Cf. my study 'The
Configuration of the Temple of the Ka'bah', published above, ch. IV, Potestas
Clavium.
202 Le Forestier, op. cit., p. 87.
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
which regulates the successive manifestations of the Verus Propheta. The
starting-point—Adam—and the septenary rhythm are the same in both
cases, but the name and content of the seven periods are different. They
are as follows: i. The period of Adam. 2. The period of Noah (the Order of
Noachians). 3. The period of Nimrod. 4. The period encompassing the
first and second Temples. 5. The period of the Templars, put in possession
of the esoteric science by the teaching of the four Scottish masters. 6. The
period of persecutions and of the destruction of the Order. 7. The period of
the resurgence of the Order of the Temple in the eighteenth century. 203
Here again, we observe that the Templars had been formed as such
because they had been entrusted with an exalted transcendental science,
transmitted from sage to sage since the earliest times.
C. The theme of a secret and superior authority, hidden behind the
Order which is manifested in history, leads on to the idea of the knightpriests.
This idea dominates the tradition of the Clerici Templi, systematically
expounded in the eighteenth century by the Lutheran pastor Johann
August Starck, who had worked on a massive collection of documents.
Here we re-encounter the equivalent of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre
(version A), but this time they are called the "canons of the Temple of the
Lord" (Canonici Templi Domini). They served in the church that was built
on the ruins of the Temple of Solomon, and it was their prior, Amaldus,
who had received the knights in the quarter conceded to them by the King
of Jerusalem. The link between the knights of the Temple and the canons
of the Temple was effective from then on. The latter had inherited the
esoteric sciences of the Essenes through the intermediary of seven hermits,
descendants, across the vicissitudes of successive transmissions, of the
primitive Essene community. 204 These hermits were the first people met
by Hugh de Payens and his comrades. They preserved the tradition of a
prophecy announcing that eternal Wisdom, Sophia aeterna, would manifest
herself once more "in the ancient sanctuary of Jerusalem, when the
203 Ibid., pp. 88-90.
204 The role played by the seven hermits is reminiscent of the role of the seven abdal in
Islamic esotericism. These hierological data which emerge from "subtle history"
refer us, such as they are, to the problem of the survival of the primitive Judaeo-
Christian community of Jerusalem, the Church of James. What we now know,
thanks to the Essene Community of Qumran, has given us a better understanding of
what lay behind the claims to such a lineage. We would do well to ponder in this
Sense on the great work by Hans Joachim Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des
Judenchrislentums (Tubingen, 1949).
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