Hail Master of the Temple!  No longer a “study hall”,you now work in the Temple Preceptory itself.  A place where you willlabor as a Templar in our modern world. This work is not easy, few have themoral stamina to make it this far.  It is a struggle to make it pastthe “fad” of being a Templar, past the political incorrectness of takingsides against what SMONKT sees as a resurgence of our old historical enemy(fanatical Islam, greedy for land and souls).

This is not to say you will cease studying. Study and worship, contemplationand mystical union are all parts of Templarism. Spiritual practice (thinkof your new password) is what brings us closer to the Divine and more a partof His & Her Plan, but also what gives us the strength, the gut, to fightthis fight so many politically correct critics find distasteful, unpleasant,”violent”. We are people of the sword, but we know the Word, too. The Word(written by the pen!) is indeed mightier than the sword, and our noble causerises above them all.

Besides the challenge of working the great work, the upright work of theDivine Plan on earth, there is also the problem of living the holy life inan increasingly twisted and often perverted culture.  The world hasgone to the gutter, people wear work clothes, grunge clothes, lounge clothes(jeans) to church.  Every movie has foul words spouting from the mouthsof the heros.  And the heros aren’t so nobleminded as in the tales andmyths our spiritual selves crave. What a mess our culture has become. Welove technology and the incredible instant access to knowledge we now have(gotta love google!), those things we are grateful for.  But we areworried about the lust-mongering lust-seeking side of our fellow human beings– and their businesses. It’s as though everyone is saying, shove me intoshallow water, before I get too deep.  Nobody wants to be deep anymore,only shallow. Go into any public online chatroom, even those purportedlyfor spiritual topics, and you will see the shallow prattle that dominatesour fellow wo/man. In sum, there are two great obstacles facing Templarstoday.  1.  political correctness which denies this is a holy war,a fight to the death, a clash of civilizations between right and wrong, goodand evil, freedom and oppression; and 2.  the perverted lust-drivenculture, products, and fellowship we are surrounded by, bombarded with, saturatedwith.

Study, spiritual practice, worship and contemplation are the mighty weaponsof a Master of the Temple. They will keep you on track, keep you from losingyour mind.  (And your soul won’t get lost either!).  This hallowedhall, the Preceptory, is always a work in progress, evolving with the needsof Templars working and living in a modern setting.  Therefore thingsmay change on this page, be added to, edited, etc.


Things toStudy:

Complete all the Lessons and courses in the Presvyter/ Presvytera Studyhall Study the Order of Jerusalem Knights

Get in line with the Wisdom of the Ages — the ancient Awareness / Consciousness teachings at the very deepest core of all religions. The best, not to mention easy to read, contemporary book out there for grasping the Awareness teachings is Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Just about everything we teach at this Seminary and Mystery School, even “magic” is based on the concepts in Tolle’s work, so I can’t recommend it enough. If you decide to receive Holy Orders from us, real priestly ordination (almost exactly as all historical Templars were once ordained), Tolle is required reading.

Study Kabbalah
…as we pursue the light, the “Zohar”. Kabbalah is something Templars probably learned and embraced. Kabbalah is a way of doing spiritual practice on a daily basis and is one of the early influences of the Western version of the Wisdom of the Ages aka the ancient Awareness / Consciousness teachings.

Some use Buddhism or Vedanta to shape their daily practice with wisdom of our cousins from the Far East. History and scriptures strongly indicate there was an exchange of ideas between early Christianity, especially Gnosticism, and Buddhism. I personally like Kabbalah because it has Christian trappings and is connected to our sacred Temple Mount. And I like Eckhart Tolle’s Zen-style Christianity where East meets West and Northern Europe meets South.

Use Kabbalah and the Wisdom of the Ages
There are things we can do, practical things, to actually use these teachings we study… (imagine that!)

The Psalms

aka “Songs”. Some of the oldest writings in the world, full of esoteric symbols, bedside reading for Templars in the middle ages and now

Check out Jennifer Emick’s Sacred Geometry Archive Likeness of our Master, Shroud Faces Biblical Archaelogy. Remember the original Templars were very interested in this fascinating study! Keep up to date with new discoveries and make sure you are knowledgeable of the most significant ones of the past hundred years The Armory Room: Symbolism of Templar Weaponry & Accoutrement, SMONKT symbols Study the Secret Purpose of the Templars


Things to Do inService:
Work with Catechumens, OMM Postulants and 1st Degree Members, Grade papers,answer email questions

Other forms of service in your community

Charitable works.

Our Order donates a portion of all Templar dues to holy land victims ofterrorism, especially child victims.


Things to do inPractice:

Daily Practice of Observance

Your password for this degree is Praxis.  Praxis means spiritual practice. You will want to hone your daily praxis to a fine art.  Here aresome Templar spiritual observances.

FaceJerusalem morning noon and night or at the bare minimum at night before youhop into bed. Bedtime and upon awakening are easy because you are home. Butyou must now make a commitment to stop what you’re doing thru the day alsoat noon and sunset. Hear the “call to prayer”. The muslims stole this conceptfrom our early Christian churches that would ring bells and call folks toface Jerusalem. Mohammed actually told his people originally to face Jerusalemand pray! But then they changed it to Mecca, seat of their own ancient deity(a form of the Goddess whom they slaughtered the priestesses of then warpedinto a vile version of El-lla (Arabic says it Allah). They are not worshippingAllah (which is just another name for our Creator God, the God of Abraham)but an egregore they have created with their selfish mindset, their embraceof darkness, living in the oppressive dark ages which suppresses women asdemons and all manner of other dangerous beliefs that keeps the religionof Islam down in the dark, out of the light of the real god whose name(Allah/El-ah) they use.

Daily practice includes facing Jerusalem and at least nodding. Try also torattle off your Father-Mother prayers. Might be time to review that fromyour first degree Templar study hall.I also end by reciting or remembering the quote, “All that is necessary forthe triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke (1729-1797).This reminds me that evil is actively at work, its practitioners are doingdaily practice while some of us are sitting on our duffs enjoying a lifeof relative ease punctuated by television, computer games, etc. I don’t havetime for television unless it is enriching to me spiritual and mentally.Watching teleivision or a movie for mere entertainment is not something Ido more than once a month, if that, and it is thus a treat.  Computergames and card games are also in the treat realm. Otherwise it’s time towork, to engage in spiritual practice. So the quickie version is to faceJerusalem and nod, closing your eyes for a moment and visualizing the Temple.The regular version is to recite the father-mother prayer — the Temple istheir dwelling place, their “bedchamber” of the sacred marriage of the Creators.

The esoteric practitioners of all the world’s great religious traditionsare actually very similar and can get along!   We esoteric Christianstherefore get along more easily with a kabbalist (esoteric Jew), more easilywith a Sufi (esoteric muslim), more easily with a tantric buddist (esotericbuddhist) or Vedantan (esoteric hindu) than we can get along with afundamentalist Christian!  Even tho we have the word Christian in ourname, we are esoteric Christians, not mainstreamers and the latterget very upset with us, as you probably already have experienced. What isit that we all have in common, these esoteric traditions?   A personaldirect link up to the Divine, to our Deity or Absolute.   We are notpassively sitting in church, synagogue or mosque hearing about God from acleric, but are directly literally connecting to God/Godess ourselves. Thisdirect connection or uplink to God’s mind, being and essence is usually calledmysticism. Mystical contact is what we have in common with the otheresoteric traditions and we all practice the presence of God/Godess. Practicingthe presence sets us apart.

Quick Exercise:  Do a google search and see if you can find a good articleexplaining how to Practice the Presence of God/ess. (feel free to send itto me, Prioress Katia, and I will add the link here).


Original Templar Lifestyle

“An emphasis on silence, even to the extent of using signs in the refectory,came from the same source, while the simplicity of Cistercian altar furnishingswas paralleled by the plainest weapons and saddlery possible, with no traceof gold or silver….Religious services alternated with military exercises.there were two main meals, both eaten in silence with sacred reading froma French translation of the Bible, special emphasis being placed on the Booksof Joshua and the Maccabees. All found inspiration in the ferocious exploitsof Judas, his brothers and their war-bands, in reconquering the Holy Landfrom cruel infidels. Brethren ate in pairs to see that the other did notweaken himself by fasting. Wine was served with every meal and meat threetimes a week; their mortification was the rigors of war. Each knight wasallowed three horses but with the symbolic exception of the lion, hawkingand hunting were forbidden. He had to crop his hair and grow a beard….HisMaster was not merely a commanding officer, but an abbot. For the first timein Christian history soldiers would live as monks.”
          – Desmond Seward, The Monks of War

The shield of the Templars was exactly that of Sir Galahad, the ChristianizedGrail Hero – a pure white background emblazoned with a large red cross. “TheTemplars’ emblem was a horse carrying two knights, a symbol of poverty andbrotherhood. Bernard clearly viewed his rough-hewed band more favorably thanhe did rich secular knights, noting that Templars were seen ‘rarely washed,their beards bushy, sweaty and dusty, stained by their harness and the heat’.The Knights Templars wore white mantels emblazoned with a red cross and rodeto battle behind a white and black banner called the Beauseant, after thepiebald horsed favored by the order’s founders. The same word became theirbattle cry.”
          – Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects

“Instant obedience to his superiors was required of every Templar, and sincethe order was responsible to no one but the pope, it essentially createdits own system of punishments, up to the death penalty, fordisobedience….Templars were allowed no privacy, and if a Templar receiveda letter it had to be read out loud in the presence of a master or chaplain.”

“On the battlefield the Templars were not permitted to retreat unless theodds against them were at least three to one, and even then they had no rightto retreat unless ordered to do so….Men who joined the Templar order fullyexpected to die in battle, and most of them did.”
          – John J. Robinson, Born in Blood

“A Cistercian thinks of cutting down a tree as prayer, given the rightconditions, and the Templar had a similar attitude towards a Moslem. In StBernard’s words ‘killing for Christ’ was ‘malecide not homicide’, theextermination of injustice rather than the unjust, and therefor desirable;indeed ‘to kill a pagan is to win glory for it gives glory to Christ’….Deathin battle meant consecration as a martyr, a road traveled by 20,000 Templars,knights and sergeants in two hundred years of war.”

“Bernard’s genius had transformed a Germanic warrior cult into a religiousvocation just as pagan gods had been metamorphosed into saints and fertilityrites into Christian festivals. Christ had ousted Woden.”

– Desmond Seward, The Monks of War


Make your own Microcosm of the Temple
Preceptory activities. Set up a true Templar altar in your home. This will face Jerusalem, have a holy place (altar area) and a holy of holies (ark). You can construct a miniature of the Temple. You are a Templar and the First Temple (solomon’s) is vital to your faith as a symbol of so many things. Technically you consider your house the Temple and your altar the holy place with a holy of holies (ark) on it. An ark means a closed in box. You can order one — Jews use them in their synagogues to this day — or construct one. One of our Templars made a low budget ark out of a small wooden box wrapped in gold foil wrapping paper. Certain stores sell decorated wooden carved boxes. I have an all brass ark that looks like a golden treasure chest. Very western, not very middle eastern!

I have a mini temple in my house to remind me of the temple’s symbolism and sacred geometry as well as a cathedral (Chartres) from the middle ages to do the same thing — remind me of sacred geometry and the symbolism of the spiritual journey and connection to the Divine we are all engaged in aiming for.

Temple Model Study Kit for sale around $30
Temple Model Study Kit


Things toPonder:

How are YOU a modern Templar?

What is the purpose of humanity, as in why are we here?

Is reincarnation real? Or is it genetic memory?

Do God & Goddess have future plans for humans?

Do dreams and life’s little freaky coincidences and occurrences mean anything?

Consider starting a blog to contain your thoughts and contemplations.  SeePrioress Katia’s blog here. Ifyou do start a blog, please let her and your fellow Inner Templars know sothat we can all link up, network!


Holy Ones toWorship

Gods & Goddesses of Templarism

H – Holy Sophia-Maria aka Harmonia, “Helen” of ancient Hellas (Greece) andgave her name to the Hellenistic culture, presiding culture of Yeshua’s time. As such she was yet again his mother, his mother culture.  Alsoknown as the Dove, Asherah, mother of the Morning Star.  Both legendand gnostic religion say she is always among us, chose to remain with us,only able to be with her Spouse on Friday nights and Saturdays when he comesto visit her here on earth.  Some say she inhabits the bodies of women,either one woman at a time, always taking on a new body when an old one dies,or inhabits several women at once, a sort of multi-presence in the flesh. Gaia or Mother Nature is said to be always in 13 women called the 13Earth Mothers.  Gaia the Earth Mother is probably the same God-ess asSophia-Maria.  Once upon a time she incarnated as Mary, life-giver,throne for, and mother of God.

H – Magdalene, commissioned and sent by Sophia-Maria and God-the-Creatorto be co-Teacher, helper and partner with Yeshua, sent to represent the sacredfeminine, embodied.  Anointress, she endorsed him, marked him as theson of God-ess, son of the Dove (Asherah).  Also known as the Towerof the Flock, the representative of the people themselves and the Land thatsustains them, as her husband is the King of that sacred Land and must workto keep it fertile, thus nurturing and sustaining the people.  Magdalenemay also practice multi-presence, inhabiting many different women at anygiven time, working, speaking and inspiring thru them.

V – Yeshua-Logos, Iesus, Kristos.  On Mount Athos, Zeus just metamorphedinto Ieseus.

Y – God the Creator, El, Adonai, All-Maker

HOLY SPIRIT –
Where does the Holy Spirit fit in?  Templarism believes that each ofthe beings above has a holy spirit, an un-incarnated soul that can travelinvisibly wherever s/he wants to go, just as we travel to the Temple Mounteach night we “go to work.”  Jesus told the people, I will send my spiritto comfort you, to keep you company.  He then went up to heaven to takehis Father & Mother the keys to the Kingdom, then snuck back down toearth and went off to be alone with Magdalene and some inner students (gnosticgospels say he taught them for either 7 or 11 years after the resurrection). You’ve heard of the Spirit of Wisdom, and the Spirit of God — thoseare the invisible non-incarnated Holy Spirits of God the Mother and God theFather.  Magdalene would have a Holy Daughter Spirit, too, a disincarnatepersonality that is very active in our day and age, making herself knownto so many, waking up thousands, working thru her messengers (like Dan Brown?!and others).

Get to know the real post-resurrection Jesus and Magdalene, and get to knowtheir teachings while you’re at it, by reading the books of Jean-Yves Leloup,if you haven’t already.  Take the course based on his Gospel of MM.

The unpardonable sin is to “sin against the Holy Spirit”.  Some saythis means to sin against the Sacred Feminine, because the Holy Spirit wasRuach, a feminine being in the OT times.  However, Ruach is only listedonce in the OT, and the more likely explanation for the Holy Spirit beingthought to be the Goddess is because believers needed someplace to feel thefeminine, someplace in their two-men-and-a-bird pantheon to put the goddess. They had Mary and the bird, the holy spirit, which was really Asherah’s “spiritual” manifestation as a dove that day at Jesus’ baptism (Asherah’ssymbol is the dove and her son was the bright and morning star, so when thevoice came right after the appearance of the dove and said this is mybeloved son in whom I am well pleased, the connotation was obvious — thisguy is the Son of Asherah & Son of God we’ve all been waiting for.  TheAsherah part was taken out of the story but the ancient people knew immediatelywhat the symbolism of the dove’s presence meant.  The holy spirit (thatis un-incarnated heavenly aspect) of Goddess had endorsed Jesus, the Galilean.

The holy spirit has male and female aspects, and during the time of goddesssuppression, a time that is really only now ending, alternative and esotericChristians have said the holy spirit was feminine, the female member of theTrinity because of a strong need for a woman in our three person pantheon. What was little understood is that each deity has a spirit, just aseach of us has one.  Theirs are called holy spirits, ours are just plainol’ human spirits.

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