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

THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
in this way to the drama of the destruction of the Temple which, following
a Cabbalistic master of our own time (see above, section II), we were
made to envisage at the beginning of this inquiry, as the drama of our
entry into this world. The rebuilding of the Temple is the work of a human
lifetime; or, more precisely, one can only leave the world of exile by
undergoing a second birth, signified by the rebuilding of the Temple. The
transference of the Temple to India is the return of the soul to its country
of origin.
Finally, this "return to the Orient" gives us the clue to the secret of the
Grail knighthood. The "India" to which the knights withdraw in the wake
of Titurel and Parsifal is not one which we can hope to find on the map.
Traditionally, the word designates a distant Orient where the realm of the
invisible Paradise begins. It would be futile and absurd to identify the
Prester John of the Grail cycle with a ruler of this world, with, for
example, a Mongolian or Ethiopian ruler, as happened in previous centuries.
At the end of Wolfram's epic, Prester John is Parsifal's nephew; at the end
of Albrecht's epic, the name and the honour are conferred on Parsifal
himself. 256 Prester John is the ideal priest-king of the Johannine kingdom.
The return of the Templars of the Grail to his kingdom is their return to
invisibility, to a strict incognito.
One cannot therefore speak of the Temple of the Grail without opening
one's inner vision and hearing to the musical dramas of Richard Wagner.
Indeed, in the "recital of the Grail", Lohengrin voices the norm of strict
esotericism to which every knight of the Grail is subject: "And its power is
sacred as long as it remains unknown to all." The final scene of their
"return to the Orient" suggests to us how best to envisage the relationship
between the Templars of the Grail—in "Parsifal" and the "New Titurel"
—and the knights of the historic Order of the Temple. The historic Order
was the visible manifestation of a still more exalted knighthood that was
unknown to men, the temporary trustee of a mission which, from century
to century, these superior and unknown knights assign to those who are
worthy. This is how J.B. Willermoz, in the eighteenth century, himself
understood the significance of the historic Order of the Temple in relation
to a permanent Templarism that was superior to it—a relationship through
which alone the historic Order could claim descent from the Order of
256 Cf. En Islam iranien, op. cit., vol. IV, index s.v. Pretre-Jean.
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
Essenes. There is a striking correspondence between what is implied by
this vision of things, and the occultation of the Grail knighthood.
The triumph of the Imago Templi lies in its thus emerging safe and sound
from all failings, all betrayals, all enslavement to the norms of this world.
Counter-history is ultimately more true than history. Once in occultation,
the Templars of the Grail can assume other names. One such name is the
"Sons of the Valley" in the great dramatic poem by Zacharias Werner.
via. The Imago Templi and the "Sons of the Valley"
1. The critique of the Temple. In Zacharias Werner's great drama, the Imago
Templi is linked to the theme of the Temple's perpetuation, but it differs in
two essential respects from the Templar tradition that we have already
discussed (see above, section VI). 1. The tragedy of the historic Order of
the Temple gives place not to a glorification pure and simple of the Imago
Templi, historically represented by the Order, but to a critique of, and
lamentation over, the descendence into which the Temple has fallen, and
which motivates and governs the expectation of the new Temple. 2. As a
result, Templar filiation is not seen as following directly on the historic
Order of the Temple, as if it were simply a question of reviving this Order.
Templar filiation is conceived as being the work of a higher Order, which
is concealed behind the historic Order of the Temple, as well as behind all
the known manifestations of Templarism. This hidden community is
called by the author the "Sons of the Valley". The Templar heritage is
ensured by their decisions; it is not engendered historically by the events
of profane history. The new Temple is not the fruit of historical evolution.
As regards the first point, we are confronted with a critique of the
Temple at a moment parallel to that found in Ezekiel and in the Community
of Qumran. The historic Order of the Temple is guilty of betraying
the orders of the "Valley", a betrayal which is like a repetition of the sin of
Israel that violated and desecrated the Temple. Thus the tragedy corresponds
to the first part of the Book of Ezekiel (see above, section III), which
speaks of the judgement of God on the Temple and the resulting exile of
the Shekhinah. But the destruction of the desecrated Temple is a necessary
prelude to the coming of the new Temple, which assumes the dimensions
of a cosmic restoration. The vision of the return from exile and the
rebuilding of the Temple correspond in Zacharias Werner to the alchemical
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