Templar America: Red And White Across The Blue

"The brethren, the Masters of the Temple,
Who were well-stocked and ample,
With gold and silver and riches,
Where are they? How have they done?
They had such power once that none
Dared take from them, none was so bold;
Forever they bought and never sold."
-- 14th-century English rhyme

In the past, while digging around in the Roanoke mystifaction, I've mentioned the founding strangeness of America. It's worth reiterating; there's plenty of wild and woolly weirdness from which to build a properly bizarre national myth here. Not just the Masonic masterwork of the Founders, or even the Rosicrucian imperialism of John Dee and Sir Walter Raleigh, need underpin our conspiratorial chronicles. Out of some surprisingly deep (if correspondingly murky) sinkholes we can draw that pure alchemical gold of the proper lunatic: America's Templar connection. It doesn't begin with Columbus; in its most deranged form it doesn't begin after Atlantis sinks. But we'll start where the Templars start to end, the day before Friday the Thirteenth.

"On the evening before the raid, Thursday October 12th 1307, I myself saw three carts loaded with straw, which left the Paris Temple shortly before nightfall, also Gèrard de Villiers and Hugo de Châlons, at the head of 50 horse[men]. There were chests hidden on the carts, which contained the entire treasure of the Visitator Hugo de Pairaud. They took the road for the coast, where they were to be taken . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.

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Article publication date: January 21, 2000

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