Who Were The Knights Templar?

Founded as an order of warrior monks protecting Christian pilgrims on their journey to the Holy Land, he Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon -- or Knights Templar -- were only around for a few centuries, but cast a long shadow in the world of conspiracy. Did they really start the concept of banking? Why did they disappear? Were any of the strange rumors about the grail, devil worship, or magic true? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they dive into the secret history of the Templars.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul mission controlled decands. Most importantly, you are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Weird question came up a little bit a few weeks ago.
We were looking at episodes we wanted to cover, and

(00:48):
it hit us. We have never talked about the templars
for guys who love so much weird fiction and conspiracy.
It's kind of strange we never got to this one.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
We did do an episode on the book Holy Grail,
Holy Blood, which I think is a very popular, like
kind of in conspiracy circles, you know, book about the
origins of the Nights Time. But I believe we interview
the daughter, but I do believe that might well have
covered it, and that was a little bit of a
different type of episode. But this topic is such red

(01:22):
meat for you know, for people that are interested in
this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, and we've covered the Order of Malta or the
Knights of Malta or they have so many.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Names, they have great passports.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, still in we covered that in video, so if
you want to check that out, head over to the
YouTube channel.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, and today the poor fellow Soldiers of Christ and
of the Temple of Solomon, that's her whole name. They're
often kind of thought of as legends, you guys. That
reminded me of my favorite Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones
and The Last Crusade, where there's that cool spoiler, there's
that cool chase scene at the very end, Indiana makes

(02:02):
sudden friends with this guy who was trying to kill
him or like three minutes. Yeah, yeah, and he's got it.
He shows like a cool tattoo and he says, ask yourself,
why do you seek the Cup of Christ? Is it
for his glory or for yours? And that's a that's
a direct reference to the Knights Templar. That's an English

(02:27):
adaptation of their motto. Yeah, and they're not around that well,
they're officially not around now, but they're the subject of
numerous conspiracies in the modern day. Here are the facts,
maybe we start with what we know for sure, because
the history is really surprising.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, it's super it's super cool to look into the
history because often you're going to find the history as
written by not necessarily the Knight's Templar, but maybe the
descendants of other orders that came from the Knights Templar
or that were gifted lands and other materials from the
Knights Templar. When you see third party history, it does

(03:11):
seem to verge a little bit or maybe there's more
context right when it's not being written by the order themselves. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, but it is a.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Weird thing because the Knights Templar officially, as we're going
to learn, went away, So it is I don't know,
it's just very strange. But let's just talk about how
they were formed, why they were formed. They're a military order,
like a protecting order specifically for pilgrims who are generally
from you know areas in England or you know surrounding

(03:46):
areas like that. They were headed towards Jerusalem.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah, they're warrior monks essentially when they first start off.
They are a religious based military orders, so they're kind
of like a paramilitary they're kind of like a private
group of mercenaries who happened to agree with the state
powers and state religion of the day, and they formed

(04:10):
during the Crusades, a series of religious wars starting between
like ten ninety five and ten ninety nine, so very
late into the eleventh century. And like you said, Matt,
these folks were part of a larger phenomenon in Western
Europe wherein the Christian forces said they were going to

(04:33):
stop the spread of Islam and the expansion of Muslim powers.
You can see all sorts of heavily romanticized depictions of
these crusades and all sorts of social media. I recently
rewatched the beginning of robin Hood Prince of Thieves. You guys,
remember that one those first ten minutes slap you know

(04:54):
what Iri wants, the beginning of Last Night Mennetites, Yes, Sir,
in honor of Richard Lewis r I P. But they
take very parallel paths. Both deals discuss the Crusades, just
one a little more ridiculously than the other. But yeah, no,
that movie Robinhood Prince of Thieves was a big one
for me growing up as well.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
But the actual Crusades, as you.

Speaker 5 (05:17):
Said, goody sorry, not good YEA.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Heavily romanticized but dang, just so much death.

Speaker 4 (05:25):
The very delation of a holy war, right, I mean
waging a holy war to eradicate a faith that contradicts
your own.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Individual and collective acts of in my opinion, pure evil,
of just wanton destruction and violence in the name of
good and God.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
It's what we call total war. You know, like civilians
were considered combatants because of their religions. Unbelievable, unbelievable, but
you have to be right, right, humans human I mean
the Crusaders, though, it was kind of like our earlier
conversation about calling something the Department of Defense when it

(06:08):
proactively does bad things. So the Crusaders said, oh, we're
a protective force. We're reclaiming land for our spiritual beliefs.
But they, despite the fact that they said they were
against Muslim expansion, they actively also expanded sought to expand

(06:29):
the rule of Christianity in other non related areas.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Kind of makes Batman's nickname hit a little different, doesn't it.
The Dark Knight, the Caped Crusader, Oh, the capes Crusader. Oh,
I just never really thought about the context of that.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Word before.

Speaker 4 (06:47):
I guess it has gone on to maybe mean more
like someone who's trying to right wrongs or whatever. But
it was sure very specifically branded around these exact specific crusades.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah, and a lot of that is sort of the
feedback loop of romanticizing history, which is written by the victors,
you know. So to your point, Matt, about people writing
with the benefit of retrospect, especially when they're as we'll see,
when they're writing about people who are not around, you know,
like if you don't want someone to be able to

(07:20):
share their side of the story or defend themselves, then
you just don't have them in the conversation. And that's
kind of what happens with the templars because it's an
easier Ah, we'll get into it, but yeah, morals and
ethics aside, the idea of the crusade sounds like a
lot of work.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
It does. I think we have to continue to stress here.
One of the primary goals in these crusades is to
recapture places, like specific locations that includes you know, let's
say a castle or a religious site, or a place
that's known to have artifacts of historical or religious significance.

(07:58):
Taking taking those places back or defending those places.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Nice. Yeah, great point and good set up too, because
the we're talking about the levant right, the Holy Land
sites in that area, or sites that would be of
strategic interest between Europe or between Rome and Jerusalem. So Bethlehem,
Temple Mount, all the hits, all the good ones, and

(08:26):
a lot of the people who served in the Crusades
or participated in them from the Western side. They were
working for blood and treasure, and they were also working
through what they saw as a spiritual impetus. It was
your get out of Hell free card. So just like

(08:46):
you know, if you have some bad stuff in your
past and you join the French Foreign Legion, which I
promise I'll stop referencing at some point, please, don't you know?

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Can I just say that you get out of Hell
free card is my favorite Monopoly play.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a very intense version of monopoly from
the original Landlord's Game. But the idea was, no matter
what kind of horrible stuff you did back home, if
you were fighting with righteous cause, then all would be forgiven.
And that was kind of the pitch that the Powers
that Be made to nobles, tonights, to peasants, to pilgrims.

(09:24):
Pope Urban the Second had launched the first crusade in
what we say like ten nine five ten nine nine
around there, And as you can tell, there were multiple
crusades or multiple waves of this phenomenon because the fighting
went back and forth.

Speaker 4 (09:42):
You know, I mean, the whole get out of hell
free card aspect of it is just such a sickening
paradox because it essentially empowered folks to feel righteous in
their rapings and pillagings and you know, stealing outright of
other people's properties and livelihoods.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, guys, before we get into this, I have a
misunderstanding here. I was looking a lot at some of
the other orders. One that you're mentioning here been the
Hospitallers or Hospitallers. I don't know exactly how to say it.
It's the group that was around for a long time
ended up becoming what we know is the Knights of
Malta or the Order of Malta. They've they've got a

(10:27):
crazy name too, the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint
John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
How many of other things can he be of? But
that lament.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
In order to gain like the upper levels and some
of the like the knighthood essentially those or in that
organization and the organizations that came before it, you had
to be of noble descent and you had to prove nobility,
which is a really interesting thing to me when we're
talking about these crusades, right, it's trying to get as
much support as you can, get as many fighting men

(11:02):
at the time as you can, but you're also being
led by people of the upper crust of society who
are actual knights.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
Kind of like World War One?

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Is it? How is it? Tell me about that because
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
So officer class, at least for the British in World
War One was often going to be people who were
born from the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum because,
similar to the Crusades, it was seen as an ideological
spiritual conflict and also democracy famously not really a thing.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, put the important people on the ridge overlooking the battlefield.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Right right.

Speaker 4 (11:42):
And I guess my question too has been was this
was there a traditional warfare.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Aspect to this? Like absolutely there was, Okay, so there
was like.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
A battlefield and like a front line, So It wasn't
literally just people swinging swords at peasants.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
There were folks.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
Defending their faith again the incoming crusaders.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
There were folks defending There were tons of what we
will call war crimes, because you know, every war is
a grab for resources, right, and you can paint it
however you wish. You can believe in different ideologies partastic, right, Yeah,
they were. They were definitely hitting what we will call

(12:23):
peasant villages or coming in and saying, you know, whatever
evil we do is in the service of this greater good.
We've got our get out of Hell free card, you know,
so even if we die in the pursuit, it's okay.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
I get all that.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
I guess my question is who were they fighting against?
Who Maybe we're actually somewhat up to the task.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
Uh, then those would be those would be military forces
of on the side of Islam, got it. Yeah, that's
a picture different, like caliphates and empires or warlords. But
then also, you know, an they thought wasn't Christian? And
I love that we're pointing out the different religious orders

(13:06):
because the templars weren't the only ones, The hospitallers weren't
the only ones. There were multiple orders of Nights, still
doing that same hierarchical nobility kind of thing, and they
each had their own area of focus or like their
spin on the belief system or their expertise. And in

(13:26):
the beginning, the Templars were a pretty small group. The
Crusades have already been happening. When these guys come into
play in like eleven nineteen Common era, we're talking such
a small group, like such a small rap crew size.
It's like eight or nine dudes. They're all French Knights,
and they say, we are going to be a defensive force.

(13:50):
We're going to protect all these pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem because,
as we'll see, travel was the icy at the time.
And they were.

Speaker 4 (14:02):
Almost like an escort like kind of right, like a
very evil Triple A for.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Me, guys keep behind the curtain waiting on Triple A.
Not currently. So they also had very interesting real estate.
They were given quarters near the Temple Mount of Jerusalem,
and that's where their name comes from, the Knights Templar,
or their street name, because their other name is just
too long to keep saying. And they had these vowels.

(14:32):
They had a thing like a manifesto called the Templar
Rule capital R, and the Templar Rule would become darkly
hilarious and ironic over time because it included things like
vows of chastity and vows of poverty, and then really
specific rules for how they had to fight wars, and

(14:52):
their entire lives were very closely regimented, like even unto
how they could dress or when in what they could eat,
like were two guys had to share one bowl they
got meat every other day.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
It's really similar to Cistercian living. It's spelled cis t
e er cia n so like monastic guidance and rules,
and it's specifically in that poverty and where basically all
your ant chastity, but all you're doing is work and
it's not at the time. It's not like you're getting
paid a bunch of money for that work, right, you

(15:28):
were just doing that work because you were called to
do that work and it is your duty.

Speaker 4 (15:32):
Essentially, these guys were almost like heavily armed monks, right,
like I mean super devout and evangelical I guess for
lack of a better term, where they really took this stuff,
every aspect of it to the letter, very very seriously.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, they all took it very seriously, we believe, especially
or at least in the beginning. And about ten percent
at its height, about ten percent of the total population
of the Templars were actual warrior monks. Again and and
that's that sounds like a very small number, but we

(16:09):
have to remember, like in modern militaries even today, the
bulk of the people working there are infrastructure. You know
what I mean. You can't have Uh it's difficult, I
should say, to have one hundred percent of your people
be that forward line, you know, because it takes a
lot to build that line in the first place.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Can I just say my favorite Diblo three character I
ever made was a monk, and I was like a
warrior monk, and I just loved that concept. Yeah that's cool,
someone that doesn't do anything but meditates and then kicks
butt with theirs like the wind.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Gosh, yes, I love it too. I've always wanted to
play a monk in some role playing games, but they're often,
at least in the D and D universe, they're super underpowered,
which is sad. They should be the they should be Bruce
lle right, they should be the most powerful.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
I forget the name of the class. But in elden Ring,
which I admittedly never finished, I was the kind of
cleric I guess with the that had like a almost
like a blind swordsman kind of vibe, like had like
the thing. And I really love that vibe too, because
that implies like I don't need no eyes.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
I got the eyes of God working on my side.
You know that's the the incantation class, right, I believe
that's right.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, yeah, so high des class that had these clause
It was so awesome.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Oh man, I need to revisit.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
I did that dumb thing where I got to a
place where I just wasn't powered up enough to compete,
and it frustrated me so much that I just gave up.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
But boy am I kicking.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
But at Skyrim now, guys, a ten year old game
that compared to elden Ring is like a walk in
the park.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
But it's it's a ten year game. You can play
for ten years, dude. It's unbelievably modern feeling.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
The only thing that sets that you know, makes it
feel older is sometimes the character facial movements.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
That's it. The the what's the word. Environments are unbelievably immersive.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
I'm in winter Hold now, I just joined the college anyway, Sorry,
we're nerds.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
No safe travels man. Also, I'm now altern on skyroom
just to walk around exactly with similar mission. But the so,
these guys, the Templars, they have this amazing real estate.
They're pretty hardcore about their beliefs and they they are
very very popular with the Christian powers that be, the

(18:42):
power structure of the time, and a lot of it,
weirdly enough, goes down to a very good promotional campaign.
All right, propaganda. I'm making it sound nicer than it is.
A co founder of the group is a guy named
pardon the French here. Bernard des clare and Claveau is

(19:02):
a French monk. He later chieves sainthood. He's canonizes, he
becomes the patron saint of to your point, Matt, Sistercians, Cistercians.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
I saw his Cistercians, but makes yeah crustaceans.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, I got to kick it with more monks. Uh.
So he's also the patron state of beekeepers and candle
makers several specific locations, and of course the Knight's Templar.
This dude is so good at marketing. He is very
successful at making templar membership the thing to do for

(19:43):
the noble class.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Ah, okay, okay, so you you want it. You're a
noble and you want to be a knight. You gotta
do this, man.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah, it's the hot move, right.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
And so hospitallers and templars for minu they have kind
of a Pepsi coke rivalry with membership. They kind of
have like a Princeton Yale thing going on. But because
this guy is so successful at this, and partially due
to social pressures at the time, the way inheritance works
in these landholding families. Because of all these factors, templar

(20:20):
membership explodes. It grows very quickly. Over the next two
hundred years, which is a long time, they become an
international private fighting force and much much more than that, dude.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, a private, private fighting force that has loads of money. Yes, yeah,
well okay, So if you look at Cistercian living like
right now in twenty twenty four, there are still a
lot of monks, this is one way to describe them,
who live in monasteries, and those monasteries make money, not
the monks themselves, but the monasteries make money by doing

(20:56):
things like growing fruit and wheat to make let's say,
a fruitcake or something that they sell which is common,
or back in the day brewing beer which would then
be sold.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
So, like the monastery itself, the organization ends up making
a lot of money, but usually that doesn't transfer to
on an individual level because of the vows they are taken,
because of the way it's set up.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
You know, it pays for upkeep and such and goes
back into the organization, I guess to a degree and
probably enriches higher ups, you know, up the chain.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
But it's different with the templars.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Yeah, yeah, in the beginning, they're supposed to be individually impoverished, right,
like so many other ascetic movements. And you can go
to if you are lucky enough to live near a
nunnery or a monastery, go check it out. Yeah, get
you to it. Yeah. We've got a great one near
near Atlanta out in Conyers called Our Lady of the

(21:57):
Holy Spirit, and they do not have a loitering law.
They have classed it up. They have a nice little
bonzeye garden, they've got a gift shop in a museum.
It's a great day trip.

Speaker 5 (22:08):
But those we still haven't done it, Ben, Can we
go together?

Speaker 3 (22:11):
Can we play this year? Maybe the three of us
could go together. I would love that.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
It's a lovely trip. Yeah, I would do that anytime.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun, and they've got anyway.
I don't want to rant too much about or rave
too much about them. But the modern monks you see
are very much not the templars, very much not. These
guys would actually tangle at their height. There were twenty
thousand people, of which, as we said, ten percent were

(22:39):
what you would call forward line like warrior monks. And
for a while, for a couple of centuries, it was
pretty swell to be a templar like you were, mister Popular. They,
like you said, Matt, they become incredibly wealthy. They get
super into real estate because they get a lot of
spoilers of war and you'd spoilers of war, which spoils

(23:05):
of war, but also spoilers resources. Yeah, holy grail, melted faces. Jeez.
So they so as they are becoming more and more successful,
their former allies, the the nobility in particular, start to
find the nobility and the Catholic Church they find the

(23:26):
templars increasingly concerning.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, Yeah, when you have that much power and maybe
as another very powerful organization you're making moves or having
to make decisions that aren't popular with this other popular
group that is really powerful. That could be that could
be bad.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, and think about it.

Speaker 4 (23:46):
I mean this is at a time and history or sure,
of course the Catholic Church has been around for a while,
but I mean the playing field is a lot more
level that. You know, with the templar, they're getting so
much power of wealth that they have the potential to
even like maybe overthrow the papal See or whatever the
Holy See.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Possible secessionism, right, they could move to becoming a state's power.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Well, but this is also game of throne stuff, right, Yeah,
because you're you're talking about different kings who are trying
to put their hands in religious issues that are coming
up to control, like everything from where the like pope
lives in controls, Like there's a lot going on in
history around this time when it comes to the rulers,

(24:32):
like the kings.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Who gets to be the pope? You know? Yeah, and
so you're right, let's introduce our buddy heavy p aka
King Philip the fourth of France. He's very angry with
the Templars. As public opinions starts to sour, rumors begin
to spread, you know, like, how did these guys get
so successful? How do you become a templar? What are

(24:56):
they really doing in there? What's he building in there?
And King Philip totally agrees with these rumors, because behind
the curtain, behind the throne, he is up to his
neck in debt with the Templars. He owes this group money,
so when he sees public opinions start to shift in

(25:16):
the wind, he leverages it as an attempt to get
out of debt the fastest way possible by killing the
people that you owe money to.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Well, yeah, but but I think his end goal right
is to take them out or at least remove that
organization to which he owes all that money. But he
does it in this political intrigue way. Guys, with this dude,
one of the popes, Pope Clement the Fifth, it's a
real little finger kind of move right to the way

(25:50):
it plays out, And there's so much detail we're not
gonna be able to get into all of it today,
but we would highly recommend that you check out Pope
Clement the Fifths, all the papal bulls he put out
and the meetings that he had, because the Templars had
a really strong presence in France, like basically looming over

(26:10):
the King's shoulder there going you still owes a lot
of money, and so he got the Pope to make
moves against the organization.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, yeah, because they again they are talking the talk
right of following the Catholic Church. Therefore, the Pope should
be the highest authority on the planet. And if the
Pope says jumped, they have to jump. But the Pope
is human and is also therefore vulnerable to political pressures
or geopolitical pressures, and so heavy p says, we're going

(26:44):
to weaponize these rumors, and he goes to Pope Clement
in thirteen oh seven and he says, you need to
find all the Templars in France, and you need to
arrest them, get them to confess to these rumors, and
then kill them. And the Pope, by the way later

(27:04):
sort of exonerates these guys, but he moves with the
wind of King Philip's power. And so it's like a
scene in Breaking Bad with all those prison executions happening
in two minutes on the morning of Friday, October thirteenth,
thirteen oh seven, authorities raid the Paris headquarters of the Templars,

(27:26):
arrest everyone they find if they don't kill them there,
and then they go to every known member's home at
the same time and do the same thing. This is
not enough for heavy p We know this because a
few days or a few years later, in thirteen twelve,
like you said, Matt, the escalation through the pope continues.

(27:49):
He says, you, as the Pope, have to officially disband
this order. And so thirteen twelve is commonly considered the
official end of the Knight's Templar.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Oh yeah, King Philip, the fourth crafty dude.

Speaker 4 (28:04):
On paper though, right, But then the conspiracy thrives that
they went underground or that they.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Okay, yeah, some survived, right, and the practices and knowledge
that was associated with being a templar, right, that kind
of secret of stuff near the top. The idea is
that that got preserved and passed down in some way
and probably absorbed into another organization or organizations.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah. And then with that also is the idea that
perhaps some of the mysterious artifacts and relics they found
had power, and that those continued so the idea is
that Templars went underground, they went off the grid. But
we got to think about that for a moment, because
imagine you're just the average person living there. Right. Maybe

(28:55):
you have done well enough in life and you were
fortunate enough to make a pilgrimage to a holy site
in the Middle East or the Levante, and then you
you were fortunate enough to come back, and you probably
had involvement with the Templars if you did those things.
And so from your perspective, one of the most popular
powerful forces on Earth, as you know it, suddenly becomes

(29:20):
public enemy number one and then disappears. As a result,
it's no surprise there would be so many bizarre stories
and theories about them. Tonight's question, how many, if any
of those stories are true.

Speaker 4 (29:33):
Well, we're gonna get right into that after a quick
word from our sponsors.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Templar pedic mattress.

Speaker 4 (29:47):
That's fun.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
That's fun, ben, I don't dislike that at all.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Good does not allow fornication of any sort or marriage.
Sex cannot have it on this bed.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
But there's a there is a guaranteed human head in
every mattress.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Oh lord, wow, guys, Before we get into this, I
just want to give a couple of things for people
to search up. And I want to ask you guys
about the papal bulls.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
The bulay, I think is how that would be the
plural of that. I didn't know much about this, but
I think we've mentioned it before in another episode.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
But yeah, because I think I just remarked on what
a bizarre sounding thing it is, and it's just it's
a declaration, right, a proclamation.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
A decree, right, a public decree by the pope, which
is a kind of yeah, but it was always written
in like scroll format and.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
These formal language, I'm sure, oh yeah, but the the
what is it?

Speaker 2 (30:51):
What were they called? It was the pieces of clay
that you would attach or lad that you would attach
to like seal up one of these official writings. Some
of the history that is so fascinating and I just
didn't know any of it before looking into this episode.
Look up vox in excelso, which is one of these
papal bulls, which is the one that was basically like saying, hey, templars,

(31:14):
you're done it. I'm playing Hogwarts Legacy right now, guys,
which is another video game. Sorry, but it sounds like
a spell that you had cast vox in excelso petronas surrectum.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
Like Cardi B's real name.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
Wait, it's a one, it's a lot, I'll give it
to you.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Cardi B's real name is Bell Callus Marlettas Cephis, which
sounds like a Harry Potter spell.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
It is.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
Here's where it gets crazy. There are there's so many theories,
conspiratorial theories about the Knights Templar and what happened to them, right,
And it's it's kind of like if you have friends
and are both fans of a band with a very
deep catalog, you end up choosing your own favorite theories

(32:05):
or albums, right well.

Speaker 4 (32:07):
Especially if you guys feel like, let's say it's like
a David Bowie or something where there are very distinct
eras and vibes that like, you know, oh, I'm a
big eighties Bowie fan, or some people are more into
like the email records or whatever. Not to say they
would necessarily disagree over one being better than the other,
but a deep catalog sometimes implies blind spots for certain people,

(32:28):
and that's certainly the case with these conspiracy theories.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Yeah, let's explore some of the biggest ones. As we said,
we're not going to get to everything, folks, because it
is pretty dense. We would love to hear your own
takes on this. It's kind of like the buffet version
of conspiracy folklore. So just stroll around with us tonight,
add what you like to your plate. I think maybe
the first thing we talked about the finance. The finance

(32:54):
conspiracies very interesting because at least one is true.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, these guys, we're fine financial innovators. Think right now,
if you have if you use a bank, right, let's
say you're in the city where you live, and then
you have to take a flight to a different city.
Let's say somewhere in Minnesota. You land in Minnesota, your
bank probably has a branch in you know, in Minnesota

(33:19):
nearer to where you landed, and you could go get
money out from that bank, that same bank from you know,
in a completely different place where you deposited your money
or your company put that money into your bank in
some other state. Right, that's a given easy. That wasn't
always the case, right, if you had a bank somewhere,
that money was in that bank that particular place, if

(33:43):
you could go get it. Think of it's almost like
a security deposit. It's more like that you can go
in and get your money if you need to, but
your bank's going to protect it. These guys, the Templars
figured out early on that some people might need to
get money in a different place.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, which led to their success to set that up.
Let's note this. Here's the real, the genuine, provable conspiracy.
It is that King Philip conspired to wipe these guys out.
That is true. That is an actual conspiracy. You might
ask yourself, how does a king of all people get
in debt with a private group, a private military like

(34:22):
the Templars. It's because, you know, ten percent fighters and
the rest of them are sort of finance bros. Dude.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
This totally reminds me of Game of Throwne stuff. There
was the Iron Bank, the Golden Compass or no, that's
a different thing, the Golden Company, and they were basically
a giant, militarized group of cell swords that are completely
in the pocket of the Iron Bank. That's obviously something
George R. Martin was very familiar with this type of history.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Yeah. So, like, like we're saying, you could go to
their headquarters in England, the Temple Church in London would
deposit funds there and they would issue in exchange a
certificate sort of a cod a certificate a deposit, and
then you could go on your pilgrimage. If you survived,

(35:12):
when you got to Jerusalem, you would exchange that piece
of paper for the appropriate amount of money or the
value of whatever you deposited way back in England. And
this was a huge game changer because pilgrimage is very,
very popular. After the First Crusade, there's some Christian control

(35:33):
of Jerusalem, but it's incredibly dangerous. It's like a two
month journey if everything works out.

Speaker 4 (35:41):
Am I being conspiratorial and within the conspiracy to think
that there's some inherent grift involved in this?

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Like is this fair?

Speaker 4 (35:50):
Like were people actually getting their money if they.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Get where okay minus a percentage, Okay, there lies the grit,
But that's just the grift of banking, like your banking fees.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Now yeah, yeah, and you can you know, use all
of that money that's in the bank to make loans
and all kinds of stuff, which is again feels contrary
to you know, the Bible, but whatever.

Speaker 4 (36:11):
Whatever, all that stuff about the money changers and Jesus
knocking over the the you know, the tables and the whatever.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Like.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
It does feel like this is very contradictory to what
the teachings of Christ would encourage.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
And again in the beginning, these templar members are saying, yes,
we get a percentage. However, this is not usury because
it's not going to us, it's going to the greater
goods though.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
Right, I mean, like you said, this was set aside,
a set apart from the way monasteries worked. The structure
of it was much more self serving, wouldn't you say.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
I think it's fair to say it evolved into that
over time, right, But in the beginning they were definitely monastic,
like you would you would have basic the Crusade's version
of paying your household utilities and then all the other
stuff doesn't go to you. It goes to build another

(37:10):
house or to further your aim. And this is a
really great and necessary thing for religious pilgrims, Christian pilgrims
going to the Holy Land, because those like the two
months perfect journey time from Italy to Jerusalem, it almost

(37:33):
never happened because as you traveled you would run into
things like sickness, war and the constant threat of robbery,
all problems which became more severe and more likely the
further you got from home. People got jacked all the time.
They got robbed all the time because they had to
carry a bunch of valuable stuff with them so that

(37:55):
they didn't starve on the way. You know, you have
to sleep somewhere, have to eat something, you have to
bribe a lot of officials. And these pilgrims they're not
badass monks, you know, they're regular people. So they usually
don't have weapons. They might not have security, kind of

(38:16):
like herd animals. The best safety they have is numbers,
so they try to move in a big unit and
then that just makes the predators evolve.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah, and there's lots of opportunists at the time. And
also it's been a war torn area that you've got
to make your way through to get to Jerusalem, no
matter where you're aheading from. So you know, good luck,
I guess, very very dangerous.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
Go with God. Literally, indeed, it's a war zone. They
are walking through a war zone pretty often. I want
to go to Big Think a great piece by Tim Brinkoff.
He's got a quote that I think sums up just
how genius the idea of this remote banking was so

(39:03):
the part of the Templars. Yeah, absolutely, he says.

Speaker 4 (39:08):
For most European pilgrims, getting robbed was simply a risk
they had to take if they wanted to reach the
place where Jesus Christ was believed to have been crucified
and resurrected. British travelers, however, had a way to minimize
that risk. In London, there was an organization known as
the Temple Church where pilgrims could deposit a portion of
their savings. In return, they were given a letter of

(39:28):
credit that they could use to withdraw their savings once
they reached Jerusalem. So this was literally in response to
the rampant muggings, for lack of a better term, that
was taken. So this gave people the ability to not
have to carry all of their earthly wealth along with
them and then it would be waiting for them on
the other end, because there was such high demand from

(39:50):
making this trip and it was so perilous. So, you know,
the more I think about it, it's a pretty cool
service being offered, I would say, you know, and it's
also a system that is incentivized to be reliable.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
So it's because otherwise it's a heck of a trust fall,
isn't it to say, here, I'm going to give you
the equivalent of several years worth of everything I've worked for,
And I just hope the little letter you wrote me
matters when I get to this place I've never visited before,
a foreign country. This did make the pilgrimage way safer.

(40:29):
I mean, sure people still got robbed all the time
and murdered and maimed and assaulted, but there's not really
a better defense from a mugging than to not have
anything to mug well, yeah, what I mean.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
And you also have the templars who are stationed along
the routes there who can actually physically defend you.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
It's like a little part of the service, little perk.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah. And you know, they probably didn't call it this
because marketing wasn't what it is today, but they definitely
had like premium travelers, you know, like pilgrimage plus. Ooh,
that's what they would call it. Pilgrimage plus. Where you
know you're the child of a noble family or you

(41:17):
yourself are an aristocrat of some sort. They want to
shepherd you through safely, and then later they want to
come back to you and say like, hey, yeah, happy
with your service, because we would love to not pay taxes.
This is again all for God, right, we would love
a donation since we saved your kid right in Jerusalem.

(41:39):
And more often than not, the monarchs assented, they said yes,
and they.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Had a really good thing going until as history has
shown us, the area Jerusalem exchanged hands again, as it
would several other times after this. But it was in
what twelve forty four.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
Right, yeah, yeah, twelve forty four. Some I love that
you said self swords earlier. Some mercenary armies from modern
day in northern Iraq, they come in and they take
over Jerusalem. And this is a bloody battle. Like we said,
it had already been fortified by the occupying powers, so

(42:19):
they paid in blood to overtake the city.

Speaker 4 (42:22):
So at this point, the Holy Land is no longer
under European control, and European pilgrims as a result, stopped
making those popular pilgrimages. Without those there was no reason
for that system anymore, the one where they placed their
savings with the Temple.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Church, and that caused the holdings.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
Of this let's just call it what it is, you know,
Holy Bank, I guess to begin to dwindle. So this
began to be the start of kind of some cracks
forming in the strength and the armor of the old
knights Templar.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Those those Corasmian mercenaries were the original disruptors.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
Guys. There we go. Yeah, they also I wonder you know,
it's funny. I think mercenaries probably did do surge pricing.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
Oh, marks at a premium, Like what's the demand?

Speaker 3 (43:20):
They just set rate. That doesn't make sense. This is
what sets us apart a flat fee per city or civilization.
No searge priced.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
If I've learned anything from the quests where you have
to protect somebody along a route. I hate escort quest
I know they're awful, but they do change the price.
Your reward changes depending on the route and the length
of time and the number of people you're protecting.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
I'm just saying, and the health points at the end.
Hot take those guys.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
I just don't see anything inherently wrong with quote unquote
dynamic pricing if it's done within reason and it's tied
to supply chain issues like we were talking, or demand.
Of course, you should be able to charge a little
more if your services are more in demand, you know,
because you're operating at like a premium and.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
It's almost like literally a service you're offering to even
be available at that time. Anyway, No, you're right, I
mean for pilgrimage plus, I've decided to call it, they have,
like the templars, have to be predictable, they have to
be reliable, they have to do what they said that
were going to do. And so long as pilgrims keep

(44:33):
pilgrimming business is good. To be very soulless about it,
we're talking about inelastic demand. Right, People are still going
to go on pilgrimages. In fact, sometimes the worst stuff
gets in Europe, though more likely people are to travel
because they want to get right with God.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Well, so you got to get that emerald status of
pilgrimage plus, you know what I mean. Emerald status is
that better than diamond status.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
It's rail status is better than diamond status. Yes, there
are so without these pilgrimages, they're still making money, just
not as near as much, and they still get a
lot of sweetheart benefits from different governments and state powers.

(45:21):
They still have a lot of people who owe them money.
But one guy who owes the money sees an opportunity,
and all heavy P swoops in suppresses silences the order,
and because they are suppressed, that means it was easy
for people to make all sorts of weird claims about them.
These claims grew more extravagant and bizarre over time. There

(45:45):
was a lot of vilification, appropriation like oh I am
actually my thing is the descendant of the Templars. And
it teaches us something really common again in human dynamics.
If you are afraid that someone will not fall for
your propaganda, you're afraid that someone will not stand for,

(46:08):
you know, character assassination, then just literally assassinate them or
silo them, remove them from the conversation. You can say
whatever you want and it doesn't matter whether it's true.
And that's what happened with the Templars. That happens all
the time, honestly.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, all the time. And just as a reminder, heavy
P is King Philip the fourth of y.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Yes, yeah, so that's a good note. So we see
this suppression, like there's a great article in the Conversation
by author Patrick Masters and he says, because the Templars
were suppressed, there was no one to safeguard their legacy,
and then all these other groups came in and said, yeah,

(46:51):
well we're actually the Templars now, you know, look at me,
I'm the captain. Now of the Templars.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Were Templars. But we do some of their practices, hold
some of their beliefs, and there's a lot of them.
And one of the I guess one of the next
things we're gonna talk about is some of the weirder
maybe religious beliefs and practices of the Templars because and
again it's often because of this association with Freemasonry and

(47:23):
Masonic orders of the time.

Speaker 3 (47:25):
Right, Yeah, and a lot of these orders claiming even
today to be descendants of the Templars. They're not necessarily sinister,
you know, they're not like bad guys or whatever.

Speaker 4 (47:38):
But I mean the Shriners, like you know, basically put
all of their efforts into building children's hospitals and stuff
that has happened. To drive the tiny little weird cars
and wear funny hats. They do a lot of good.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Well, I would say, I would say, without exception, all
of the other orders that you know, in some way
absorbed part of the Templar legacy. They are all at
least front facing service organizations, all of them right, right, exactly,
even the Order of Malta, like it's it's about a hospital, man,

(48:10):
It's about providing services and good to the world through our.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Our faith, really, yeah, through the power of faith. Right,
And this idea of faith and religion plays a big
role because now society, civilization at the time, is confronted
with a murder mystery, Right, what happened to this powerful thing?
How is it here one day and then the next.

(48:37):
The juicier the story, the better, and that leads us
to the moment we've all been waiting for our second
ad break. We've returned onward to the occult. So this

(48:57):
is the stuff you see about templars and fai, right,
this is all the juicy like Indiana Jones, Dan Brown
Catholic conspiracy stuff. There are accusations of occult rituals and
trafficking with infernal powers. They're saying the people who are
on the front face supposed to be godly are actually

(49:17):
quite the opposite. There's an enemy within. The call is
coming from inside the house. And this just kicks off
when they arrest everybody. Because when they arrest all those folks.
They get confessions appearing to confirm all this evil, magic,
dark sided stuff. You know what you did, you cross piers.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
You guys. This comes from the stuff that Philip the
fourth got Pope Clement the fifth to do. And it's
that vox and excelsio excelso whatever it is. By the way,
my character's name is Duke Wellington in Hardwart's legacy. But
can I read just a little bit of this because
this is what they were accused of. And then this is,

(50:00):
I think, where all of these rumors come from. This
is a reading from vox in excelso a papole decree
issued by Pope Clement the Fifth on the twenty second
of March thirteen twelve. Quote in view of the suspicion, infamy,
loud insinuations and other things which have been brought against
the Order, talking about the templars, and also the secret

(50:21):
and clandestine reception of the brother of this order, in
view moreover of the serious scandal which has arisen from
these things just going on on a here we go
danger to faith and souls, with the many horrible things
which have been done by the very many of the
brothers of this Order, and it talks about the sin

(50:42):
of wicked apostasy, the crime of detestable idolatry, and the
execrable outrage of the Sodomites. That that's when he says,
it's not without bitterness and sadness of heart that we
abolish the order of the Temple. So it's just like
the Pope is saying, these are accused of these horrible things,

(51:02):
and this is what they did.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Apostasy is Apostasy is also it's denying the existence of God,
and it is still a crime in some countries. Also,
like you said, the accusations of having same sex relationships,
they got very specific into acts of heresy, spitting, urinating

(51:25):
on the cross. So that's uh, but that's it's just contradicting.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
It feels like the.

Speaker 4 (51:31):
Kind of stuff that could be, you know, coerced in
during an act of torture.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
One hundred percent. It's also you can tell it's a
hit piece because it's contradictory. These folks say there is
no God, but then they also believe there is a
God enough to defame that thought's existence. Yes, you know,
it's a very very good point, dude.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
It's a bully move and we talked sping a bully
moves when they got arrested right and pulled from their
houses all at the same time in that one big move. Uh,
it's it's not like they went to jail and they're like, hey,
confess to your sense. Well, they got.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Tortured, like capital t torture. Oh yeah, like this is
a little more dark jails, gnarly torture, more fingernails, no
more teeth, lead out slowly, kind of gut wound, rack stretching.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah, are you ready to confess yet? Of all these
things we accuse you.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Of cross and branding, you know, probably equivalent waterboarding.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
Yeah, guys, we talk about these sort of extreme torture
techniques and how they lead to unreliable results, But have
you ever really put yourself in that situation?

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Wouldn't you not only say whatever they wanted you to.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
Say, but maybe even believe it a little bit, Like
when your mind and body are just being twisted to
that degree. I think I could honestly say it and
make myself even believe that I had done it.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
There are four lights star Trek reference.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
But yeah, you're you're right. Psychologically it's a minefield. That's
why Confessions under duress are so tricky if you are.
It's similar to like cult indoctrination, because we've talked about
in the past. If you're just kept somewhere for hours
and hours and hours even today, and you're just repeatedly

(53:16):
gas lit and told the same things, then yeah, you
may end up believing it. And they don't have to
put their hands on you at all. These guys are
doing both.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, exactly well, and at the hands of
a freaking king that owed the group a ton of money,
so he wins either way, if you confess or not,
because if you don't confess, you get tortured to death.
If you do confess, you get sentenced to You know,
you're the rest of your life in prison or death, the.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
Most dangerous offer. You are going to die. It's up
to you how it goes. You can make it quick
if you tell us why you worship a deity called
Bapha met shh.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, okay, I think everybody who's listening to this knows
Baha met. The most familiar one you've probably seen, has
the goat head right and often is doing the as
above so below motion with the hands and fingers isn't
that also a.

Speaker 4 (54:09):
Reference to some of the poses that are done in
like imagery like of Christ and religious you know figures,
or they'll be doing the fingers up like the sort
of peace sign, but this one is like one of
them is inverted.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
Isn't that right? Are you accusing Christian symbolism of not
being entirely original? Well, yeah, you're right, though, I agree,
you're absolutely right, Noel. This there's a book from nineteen
eighty seven whi's pretty great called The Knights Templar in
their Myth and the author Peter Partner, which gave me

(54:43):
a hard time. Still yeah, yeah, nominative determinism anybody, he said, yeah,
pen name name. He says that in the some of
the trials of the Templars, both as individuals and as
a group, the main charge, like the big problem, was
that they were not worshiping God. They were worshiping a

(55:07):
different thing. This is where the idolatry comes in. They
were worshiping an idol in the form of a head,
and it was called Baphomet and batha Met. Is interesting
because the Templars never talk about this before the trial.
There's not one piece of writing documentation internal or external
wherein they ever mentioned this thing. So the argument then

(55:29):
is that they never mention it because it is such
a secret, because they are seeing worships washed.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Okay, but hold on it. There is an intrigue here,
well at least I don't know. Look tell me if
you guys are intrigued by this. But physical places like
Bagras Castle, a place in Turkey. It's literally a castle
up on a hill where you can look all the
way over into Syria and a strategic position like that,

(55:58):
you can see the Mediterranean, see you can see any
armies that are coming your way right in this castle
that was controlled by a bunch of different groups over time,
but the Templars controlled it for a while. There are
all of these hidden tunnels and passageways and secret places
within that, within that castle that they controlled that it's

(56:21):
been I guess it's an accusation. It's a mystery as
to some of the writings and carvings and stuff that
were found in there, some of the things that were
considered secret. A lot of it you can't point to
and say, hey, there's definitely this whatever. You can't say
there's a baphomet in there in the you know, third
corridor from the bottom or whatever. But there is weird

(56:44):
stuff with some of the places they controlled that do
seem to hint at some different worship than what would
be described.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
That's interesting.

Speaker 4 (56:52):
But our secret rooms and passages sort of a staple
of the Masons and of these types of orders.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
They're good for a siege, right, regardless of your belief.
It's nice to have a place to squirrel away or
a secondary exit that no one knows about, and that's
part of it. But also in some of these locations,
to be clear, it's like they moved into a house
where someone else had lived. So the question is did
the worship stay as well? Right did they introduce this?

(57:22):
Were they just around it? This leads to what I
think too, and I think we're on the same page,
is the most fascinating possibility about the occult conspiracy stuff.
So first we have to say the confessions that were
derived under torture do not seem uniform. Some folks were saying,

(57:42):
I don't know what you're talking about. Some folks were like,
oh my gosh, leave me my other foot. I'll agree
to whatever, and they're like, tell us about the idol.
And in each case they told a different story about
the idol, about its appearance. It was a cat ahead
with three faces, a regular, a regular old severed head.
And then it gets even weirder to your point, Matt,

(58:05):
because the templars probably did have a couple spare severed
heads laying around. That is true, it's just like, how
did they treat the severed heads.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
I do also see potential motivation for turning away from
traditional Christian beliefs in that they were railroaded by the
church in such a hardcore way.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
But again, it's weird because all of that kind of
happened relatively at the same time, right, and they were
being persecuted for their previously held beliefs, like that's why
they got railroaded, at least allegedly according to the Pope
and the King of France. So it is weird. It
is weird thing about that. But let's get back to

(58:50):
the heads bend, because this is I didn't know this,
but severed heads, like it was an okay thing to
keep them around.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Yeah, yeah, you just had to treat them reliquaries. Yeah,
like this this saint is very important to us, so
we're keeping the head as a object of adoration, right,
and still very it's it's still in the milieu of Christianity.
It is normalized. They had kind of yeah, or just

(59:22):
boil it out until it's until no soft matter remains
and it's a skull, and then put some like silver
precious metals around it, you know, pop a couple of
jewels in the eyes. Just make it, you know, Jude,
it up cool, nothing better, nothing weird. They they probably
had the head of or the claims where they had

(59:42):
the head of a saint, Saint Euthemia. They also quite
possibly had the head of their other co founder, the
first Grand Master of the Templars. Huge depals. It sounds
like huge dependence to us. Uh, but they did. Okay,
So here's what's interesting to me. This is a little

(01:00:03):
bit like Heart of Darkness Colonel Curtsey stuff. But did
they we know, proximity breeds familiarity in all things. Is
it possible that some of these guys spent so long
in these other parts of the world that they naturally,
through cultural osmosis, began to pick up traditional beliefs. That's

(01:00:26):
not a one on one or that's not a one
two switch, that's not a yes no thing, that's a
gradual increment, right, because you you know, you're increasingly not
practicing your vow of poverty nor of chastity. You're getting
a little closer with the local population.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
It isn't there some kind of weird translation thing here?
That was all I read. I've read that bappha Met
could have actually stood for like worship of Mohammed or
turned into you know, converted maybe to Islam, and they
were they had changed sides basically in the big religious.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
War, the calls coming from in the house.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Did you find anything about that, because that's what it
seems like it could be. But again, I don't know,
And it's.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Tough because it's under torture, right, But I agree with you,
it does feel like a possible thing. There's a book
from eighteen sixty five by Thomas Wright called The Worship
of Generitive Powers, and I think with a with a
quote from this, a quotation from this, we'll see that
comparison of bathha Met as sort of a code for

(01:01:41):
worshiping Islam or practicing I should say Islam. And it's
it's interesting. I think we can unpack it. Who's got
a who's got a good like old timey voice for
this let's.

Speaker 5 (01:01:54):
Seem Desseren de mont Pissent, a nice of province, said
that their superior showed him an idol made in the
form of before Met. Another named Raymond Rubai described it
as a wooden head on which the figure of before
Met was painted, and adds that he worshiped it by

(01:02:17):
kissing its feet and exclaiming Yallah, which was he says
verbum sacra snorum, a word taken from the Saracens. A
templar of Florence declared that in the secret chapters of
the order, one brother said to the other, showing the idol,
adore this head. This head is your God and your Mahammet.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
Not bathoetlham, but spelled like a combo meal of like
Batha Met and Mohammad.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Kind of it's very interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
And Yallah doesn't that so familiar?

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
That's what I'm saying. And it's also like we also
know that Mahomet was an old French word that was
a stand in for the prophet Mohammed of Islam. So
now there's a political as well as a religious bent.
The reasoning is, these monsters are supposed to support Christianity,

(01:03:15):
but they've been perverting our trust. They're worshiping the enemy
the whole time, and a lot of times, to be
completely honest, literacy about other religions was not a thing.
So the average person in Western Europe is aware that
Islam is a thing by this point, but they don't

(01:03:36):
know what it entails, right, They haven't read the Koran,
they don't know about Ramadan or anything like that, so
any they just know they consider these folks to be
a largely hostile force. And with that preconception, kind of
anything bad you say about them sounds really believable, which
again happens today all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Right, But guys, uh, worship ahead as your god.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
This is your god? Now going blue? I see zikes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Oh, but you know it is it is. I don't know,
maybe it's it's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
I'm sure it's all very above board. But uh but yeah,
so they're they're accused of, you know, like you said,
switching sides, the idea that their long occupation of these
strategic sites in the Holy Land had led to them
corrupting their own beliefs. And this happens as The weird

(01:04:39):
thing is their beliefs had become corrupted. They were making
a lot of money. The vows of chastity were increasingly irrelevant, right,
They weren't living the letter of the templar rule. So
it's not too far of a jump in the court
of public or papal opinion to say what else, what
else did they violate? And so we still know there's

(01:05:01):
a lot of mystery around those practices. But I gotta say,
confession under torture, Like we have all pointed out at
some point in this episode, confession under torture, does it
yield results? Yeah, if you're looking for the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Yeah, Oh man, you're right. Is it okay to switch
to this next part? Is I think my favorite maybe
set of theories, and it's something we've talked about before.
It goes back to gnosticism spelled with a G.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Yeah, shout out Yelda Bath and Sophia huh dude.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Maybe just let's lay down some groundwork here. There's some
interesting concepts within schools of narcissism about God that are
don't really vibe with maybe the teachings of the Catholic
Church and what the templars are supposed to be following.
But it does make me think about my own eternal
spiritual stuff going on when reading Old Testament versus recently,

(01:06:05):
just looking at the God of the Old Testament as
this jealous, dangerous, scary thing that the Gnostics may be
kind of agreed with that view a little.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
Yeah, yeah, the spoiler for gnosticism, folks. The idea is
that there are two different kind of planes of existence,
and the one that you are hearing this podcast in
is the crap one. It's the material world, and just

(01:06:39):
like Madata, you're forced to live in this material world.

Speaker 4 (01:06:43):
Oh there's also a line from a police song called
this is We are spirits in the material world, Our
spirits and the material I guess that's a I think
that must be a reference to that thing is a
pretty philosophically minded fellow.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
Well, that's a concept that goes throughout a bunch of Sorry, Ben,
it's it's good stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
So if so.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
But this this concept, it goes throughout a bunch of
different religions, right, Yeah, all that we experience is one thing.
But really your goal and the stuff you should be
focused on is in that other realm, the spiritual realm
that you get to access once you die. It's where
you were when you're before you were born. Very common thing.
But just with the Gnostics that it's it's that a

(01:07:28):
lot of the teachings about these creatures, there are gods
that are the all powerful ones are actually evil forces,
the ones that are trying to make you focus, I
don't know, in some way on what you're doing here.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
Yeah, you're The idea is you're not just stranded in
the less cool reality, the material world. You're in a
hostage situation, and everybody is being held back in gnosticism,
particularly in this kind of the general vibe of gnosta
is that the thing you think is god of this

(01:08:03):
material world is a prison Wharton more likely is a
false god. His name's Yaldebath, and he's an absolute pill.
And you have to, through gnosticism, learn how to get
around this dude and lead a better life and then
ultimately graduate to you know, the better universe. The Catholics

(01:08:26):
don't like this.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
No, and the Templars got accused of having association with
or being secret Gnostics.

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
Right, yeah, that somewhere, delving too deep into the desert,
they had discovered unclean things, and those unclean things had
turned them. And you know it's weird because later you
see you see this accusation play out in a much
more credible way with the Cathers. The Cather's heretical Gnostic

(01:08:57):
movement also brutally supprese and persecuted by the Church. So
it's like it may sound, you know, in an increasingly
secular civilization, it may sound like these are silly reasons
to torture and kill people.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
But yeah, guys, it makes me think about old school
invisible college stuff you know that we love in fiction,
and that stuff that actually goes back to theoretical secret writings,
and it just makes you think about all of the
human beings that have existed throughout the rule of these

(01:09:35):
military almost state level hegemonic powers that were also religions,
and the just human beings that are exploring the world
and thoughts and having individual thoughts that would be considered
heresy and then writing them somewhere and keeping them secret
because they can't ever, no one can know that you
even had these thoughts, right, right, And especially if you

(01:09:56):
find other people that are kind of into your idea,
you got to that stuff secret or else your head
is literally going to roll. And it does just make
me wonder about again, not necessarily even truths, right or
actual religious movements or spiritual again truths, but like just
thoughts about the world and what it could be and

(01:10:18):
how it could function outside of those rigid structures that
these religions have. I'm fascinated by that stuff, and I
know you guys are too. I think we should go
even deeper into that realm at some point.

Speaker 3 (01:10:29):
Yeah, let's do it. Because check out our episodes or
various things we did on the Illuminati. A lot of
the actual Illuminati, a lot of their conversations were about
science and spiritualism, like they were hiding because they had
to because power structures kill intelligent, innovative people. Yikes, I

(01:10:52):
mean that's true. You know, like there's to your point, Matt.
Somebody might write a treatise on gravity, right, or the
passage of the heavens, and they're not making any crazy
heretical claims, like directly confronting the current view of God.
They're just saying, here's my how stuff works article, and
I have to hide it because a church will come

(01:11:14):
after me because they feel like what I am saying
about physics is contradicting the spiritual view of the universe.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
Heck, we joke about you know, folks, coming after us,
or having you know, the interns listening into our calls
from the NSA or what have you. But at the
end of the day, there's nobody shutting down any of
the things that we're saying, and we pretty much are
able to have open discourse about and not necessarily tribute,

(01:11:43):
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
From.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
For the most part.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Dude, Ben, do you think there's a secret vault of
how stuff works articles somewhere that you can access if
you had the right url.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
We're talking about how stuff works after dark?

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Yeah, yeah, that's a different thing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):
I thought that's a different thing. It's different thing, but
related things get hot heavy. Yeah, we were all very
into cinemax for a second. Sting, sting, sting, amass An Edger,
What do you think gooning is together in a group?
Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
Though?

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
That's what Robert Evans told me.

Speaker 4 (01:12:22):
And he group we were we were recording a show,
and he went out of his way to explain it
to me.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
But very nice guy.

Speaker 4 (01:12:32):
It necessarily has to be in a group. I think
it's just another form of like tantric. It's it's supposed
to result in a hypnotics trance like state. I thought
it was in a group too, But then I don't know,
it's one of these things that I guess evolves gooning
is a form of legal kidnapping.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
That's differ. And also we're looking at weird websites, so
again goodbye to our search history. But yeah, folks, you'll
have to ask Robert and maybe maybe you know, maybe
the meaning is your own to give. I think that's right. Hey,
it's a living language, you know, yeah, right in urch

(01:13:09):
ate it. But this maybe gets us too, because we're
closer to the modern day. Before you get to that question,
I kind of have to ask, Like, I agree, there's
much more to get into. But if like I think
our mutually favorite conspiracy theories are true, if the Templars
really did discover magic, really did traffic with infernal powers,

(01:13:32):
and if they or if they found some genuine supernatural
artifact the Holy Grail, head of a deity, arc of
the Covenant, et cetera, if that magic worked, then why
didn't it save them? You know what I mean? Like,
if you have found the spiritual equivalent of a nuclear bomb,
why didn't it detonate? That makes me think it's a

(01:13:55):
little more of a heavy p king Philip hit piece
but maybe we end today with the you know, the
idea that we set up earlier, did the Templars go away?
You know, like is there like the Freemasons are often
very closely associated with the Templars.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
Yeah, there's one person we can ask you guys, who's that?
He goes by Friar John T. Dunlop Dunlap's. He's the
grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. I
think we can ask him. He's been the Sovereign grand
Master since twenty twenty three May twenty twenty three.

Speaker 3 (01:14:36):
Oh okay, he still got that new car smell. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, but you know, you know, he knows he
knows something definitely, you know what that is. We'll have
to figure out how to ask him the right way,
you know, so much as in how we phrase the question.
But yeah, he would probably know. I wonder if you
would agree with historian Frank Sinello. In two thousand and three,

(01:15:00):
Sinello writes a book called The Knights Templars, God's willriors
the Devil's Bankers, and he says he says that it
goes back to marketing and promo and propaganda because he's
like look, if you travel back in time, there's a
guy named Andrew Ramsey. He is a high level French Freemason,

(01:15:23):
and he originally says, hey, Freemasons are descended from the Crusades.
They're descended from the Order of the Knights, Hospitaller. And
then he realizes, oh, that order is still around. They
can come back and tell me or tell the public
that I'm making this up. So he quickly changes his

(01:15:45):
story and he says, did I say Hospitaller immense the templars,
you know, because.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
Nobody can check nobody can check that out.

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
And I think that's informing a lot of these, you know,
bit more fan full claims. But again because of the mystery,
because they were not all individually murdered, we don't know
what happened. And I think that's why, like the Da
Vinci Code and all these other assassins Creed, I think
that's why templars are a regular recurring thing in fiction.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
Oh yeah, the freemason lore. Stuff that goes back to
descending deep into the earth to pull out stone and
discovering things within the earth that still stirs something within
me gets me all tingly and excited.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
Her medic influences two Bulcane and all that jazz.

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
Oh man, it just gets I really love it. And
I'd liked the idea that somehow the Templars were connected
to that, but this, it's a really good point.

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
I do think it's cool too, you know, shout out
to Fox Mulder, right, the truth is out there. We
want to believe and if you can inform us, if
you can, you know, give us this scoop, just like
you would with a casual stranger who ask you a
question that we would love to hear your take. We
also want to point out that there is an official

(01:17:11):
kind of descendant of the Templars that everybody agrees is
descended from them. It's the Order of Knights in Portugal,
the Order of the Knights of Jesus Christ, created in
thirteen nineteen because the Templars played a big role in
creating the Kingdom of Portugal, and the Pope approved this.
The Pope was like, yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Yeah, And that was in thirteen nineteen, which is not
long after the Templars got.

Speaker 4 (01:17:39):
Right and Michael hag Or Hague basically referred to this
as the Templar and under another.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
Name, but loyal to the King of Portugal. That's right,
all right, little twist, but.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Again there's just words. Again it goes back to the
Order of Malta for me, just the way lands we
have been gifted to some of these orders, and they
all feel like political moves because so many of this group,
including the Templars before. I don't know anything about the
Order of the Knights of Jesus Christ, but the Order
of Malta, this is these are people who have to

(01:18:14):
prove their lineage back to the nobility in order to
even join often, which just feels like this weird interconnected
power thing it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:23):
Is, I mean very much so uh the you know,
it would be while it may not be correct to
assume that conspiracy theories about secret cabals are all automatically true,
it would likewise be naive to assume that those very
connected people don't speak with each other, you know what

(01:18:44):
I mean, Like, you recognize what your neighbors look like,
and in the world of power, those folks are neighbors.
They see each other.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
Dude, dude. It just it's taken me back to the
project for a New American century and feeling like there's
some kind of weird crusade things going on in the
Middle East again in the two thousands.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):
Oh like, when was it Bush who used the phrase
crusade and then realized he had to walk that one
back real quick?

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Oh yeah to seven years later. Just let's do it again.

Speaker 4 (01:19:14):
I have no doubt that there are certain members of
certain extreme religious communities that would like nothing better.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
Yeah, terrorists too, like anders Brevic I think his name was.
He saw himself as a new Templar, as a new crusader.
But again, a lot of these a lot of folks
who are who have some sort of historical association or
maybe ancestry, A lot of these folks who are in
organizations that claim to have descended from the templars. They're

(01:19:43):
not bad, they're like a good story like almost anybody else.
But there is a conspiracy of play, and it's a
conspiracy about money. That's why they got wiped out.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
Dude, that's in power.

Speaker 3 (01:19:57):
Yeah, first to get the money, then you get the power,
then King Philip comes for you. I think that's how
the Little Kins song goes, right, Yeah, that's it. They
got ill popd So with that, I think we've set
up some episodes we want to explore in the future.
We also want to hear from you guys. How cool

(01:20:19):
would it be if a templar wrote to us, like
an actual templar, oh from their secret underground bump bunker temple,
send a picture of the head. Please do the deityfication.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
We really do want to hear from anybody out there
who is a member of an organization that within that
organization it finds ties to templars or to orders. Right, Yeah,
it doesn't matter if you believe it or whatever. Just
does the order find its roots there somehow?

Speaker 3 (01:20:52):
Is it part of their lore?

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, we would love to hear that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:56):
Also, want to go ahead and thank the people who
took us up on sending your pet pictures. Get to
go through some of those later today. And you know,
if you've got a topic in your head, something just burning,
that you want your fellow conspiracy realists to learn about,
then let us know that too, or just send us puns.
We're open. You know, we're easier to talk to than

(01:21:18):
the Templars of old. We try to be easy to
find on lot.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
Boy do we ever.

Speaker 4 (01:21:23):
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Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
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