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

THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
ethic and an eschatology. And this is so whether it is a case of practical
alchemy or speculative alchemy: the notion of mediating and mediation is the
very foundation of the Ars magna. The philosopher's stone is to be found
only through the coincidentia oppositorum, and this coincidentia can occur only
through a mediatory term and on a mediating level (the level, as the
Islamic theosophers say, "where bodies are spiritualized and where spirits
take on body"). Mercury both engenders and resorbs contraries, and it is
also one of the names for the Stone of the Sages. This stone has the power
to destroy gross matter and to convert the body of man into a subtle body
of a luminous essence, like the bodies of the Righteous in Paradise, or the
body of the androgynous Adam before his Fall. The active Imagination is
the organ of meditation that assimilates the Opus alchemicum, by which
base metal is refined. In virtue of this assimilation, the Imagination is the
mediator which brings about the refinement of whoever "spiritualizes
himself until he reaches the final stage of mystical union". 269 Such is the
secret of the apotheosis of Jacques de Molay and of the Imago novi Templi.
3. Towards the new Temple. In speaking of the Grand Master Jacques de
Molay, Robert of Heredom called him "that great, poor, misunderstood
heart". Despite his modesty and renunciation, which led him to submit to
the fateful decision, taken by the Chapter, to return to France—a return
whose consequences he foresaw—Jacques de Molay had to undergo the
moral and physical sufferings of an unjust trial, as well as endure the
distress of eight years in prison, in order to attain supreme purification. 270
The interiorizing of the alchemical work leads, certainly, to a superior
form of gnosis, to a knowledge of the unitive way. What characterizes this
knowledge, however, is that it is not merely theoretical: it is the actual
experience of the unitive way and of the mystical union. The three stages
of the alchemical operation, whose secret is also the secret of the "Valley",
have their spiritual correspondences: nigredo, the dark night of the soul;
albedo, illumination, the birth of the filius philosophorum; and rubedo, the red
of divine love, the hierogamy of the soul with her God. Jacques de Molay
traversed and experienced these three stages of the mystical way. The
final term of the Great Work is represented by Zacharias Werner as the
269 Ibid., p. 142.
270 At the Chateau of Chinon today, one can still make a pilgrimage to the Tour du
Coudray where the Knights Templar were imprisoned.
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
Grand Master of the Templars being received into the bosom of the
Valley. The transmutation of his inner being is complete; here below, he
knows ecstasy, the union with God which is the prelude to the definitive
union, consummated by death as a martyr. His transmutation is simultaneously
the transmutation of the entire Templar Order. His death is
redemptory, the philosopher's stone which transforms the base lead of the
old Temple into the gold of the new. 271
While Jacques de Molay embraces death in ecstasy, Robert of Heredom
throws himself into the world of action which leads to the coming of the
new Temple. In an extraordinary scene, the initiator, Adam de Valincourt,
instructs him in the significance of earthly death. Defunct bodies liberate
the "seeds of resurrection". When living beings disappear, they leave
behind them a subtle body (Paracelsus' corpus spiritual, the jism mithali or
imaginal body of the Islamic theosophers). When the rose is subjected to
the action of fire, burned to ashes and then diluted after fermentation, a
bluish colour appears, followed by the astral form of the rose. This
experiment is the same as that conducted by the great Christian Cabbalist
F. C. Oetinger, using a sprig of balm—an experiment he found so overwhelming
that he returns to it over and over again. "May the son of the
Valley be annihilated—And may there spring from the worm-eaten Temple
—A tree of life flowering in the eternal sacred wood of the Lamb." 272
Towards the end of the poem, Robert of Heredom is thus initiated by the
Sons of the Valley and created Grand Master of the new Temple, which
will be born again from the ashes of the old. He is the guardian of the
secret Palladium until the time when men are sufficiently mature to acknowledge
him, and worthy enough to receive the Light which the Valley
revealed to Jacques de Molay on the eve of his martyrdom. 273
Robert's name in chivalry refers us to the mystical mountain of Heredom
in the north of Scotland, of which mention has already been made (see
above, section VI, 7). The entire Scottish tradition is thus evoked, the part
played by Scotland in the renaissance of the Order of the Temple after its
destruction. The person of the young knight likewise comes to be integrated
to the geste of the knights who, in the company of Pierre d'Aumont, were
accorded in Scotland the protection of King Robert the Bruce and,
271 L. Guinet, op. cit., pp. 154-155.
272 Translation by L. Guinet, ibid., p. 156.
373 Cf. Waite, Emblematic, p. 184, note 2.
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