Tracy Twyman | The Knights Templar, Baphomet, & The Alchemy of Finance

00:05 Puppet masters almost surely have up this clearly, maybe something ebby And until you've thoroughly tested every last close justin Think you know the less you really do That's true Dr. Seuss Without THC Cause we're their lion to us Just don't know without THC The higher side chat show Our one company

00:43 Here we go, Hireside Chatters. I hope you're sitting down drinking a little drink smoking a little smoke and altering to keep from faltering with the ever persistent buzzing of conventional reality right in my ear! From sunny San Diego, I'm Greg Carlwood and we're all vaguely familiar with the Knights Templar but i think their true rights and motivations are still a bit of a mystery and their quick rise to being one of the largest economic powers of their day sure makes one curious We do know opinions on them range from being the elite noble soldiers of Christ to demon-worshipping a cult to snee deep in bestiality and pedophilia, and many rumors have suggested that the Knights Templar upheld a secret doctrine behind the veil of their holy public image.

01:23 Well, we've heard of the proverbial deal with the devil and we're no stranger to the idea of initiatory orders using magic to acquire wealth and power. But where does this all come from? What are the beliefs and worshipped entities that are linked to this behavior? Are we looking at just another dense mythology or a true source of dark power? How far can we trace it? Kabbalistic mystery schools, hermetic wisdom, gnostic teachings... It can get confusing but here to give us a roadmap to realization once again is Tracy Twyman Tracy's been writing about the esoteric side of history and current events for over 20 years, dealing with topics like secret societies, ancient myths, demonology, ceremonial magic, divination, alchemy mind control, mystic royal bloodlines in the hidden history of money. Just to name a few last time she was on THC we talked mainly about her book Clock Shavings which details her personal journey into direct contact with the entity known as Baphomet and he's definitely coming up again today as we talk about our newest book

02:18 Baphomet the Temple Mystery Unveiled. Tracy Twyman, welcome back to THC! Thank you so much Greg I'm really glad to be on this program again it was the most responded-to podcast that i did last year when i did all those interviews for Clock Shavings so I'm really happy to be on again Wow, right on. I love to hear that the people are responding You know, I really loved that show and I actually really enjoyed this latest book of yours It's almost 600 pages unpacking all the myths and rumors and various scholars opinions on a whole host of topics surrounding Bapu Amit, the Knights Templar and the tracing of these dark magical practices all while trying to get to the truth of the matter. But it's definitely helped clarify some of this stuff for me and I guess to get the ball rolling here let's lay a good base introduce the people to the Knights Templars as you understand them what do you think they need to know?

03:09 Well, the only thing you really need to know that they were a crusading order that was founded by or chartered by the Catholic Church founded by several noblemen from Europe and a friend of theirs St Bernard of Clairvaux. Their purpose allegedly in the beginning was to protect pilgrims on the route to the Holy Land. And they were given this property, to use as their headquarters that was actually on the Temple Mount there in Jerusalem So that's how they got their name, which was words translating to the poor knights of the Temple of Solomon. And what ended up happening with this group... They were widely respected at the time. They existed from about I would say the late 11th century to um the early 14th century

04:04 And most of that time they were very widely respected as a military fighting force for one. And they also branched out into other areas, business basically especially after the crusading career sort of died down and they began to return to Europe and take properties there and we're running businesses out of their properties These properties these areas they were giving me a these areas called perceptor ease they were allowed to basically run their own sovereign space there basically they were they were considered to be only beholden to the pope so other princes and.

04:45 kings, emperors who had temporal power in the places where they were at. They didn't actually have any power over the Templars themselves. They were sort of their own sovereign entity and so they were able to use that leverage basically that advantage that they had I think in business. So it's widely reported that they basically started the first checking system and the first international banking system And this really connects to this idea of them protecting the pilgrims on the route to the Holy Land because one of the problems with pilgrimages was that people would be susceptible to theft and vandals and people attacking them along the route. So what made that a little bit safer is if people didn't have to carry so much gold and silver bullion with them,

05:37 Instead they were able to make a deposit at these banks that were run at templar perceptors and. They would be given this shit that's what was called it was a check essentially it wasn't written with coded numbers or symbols on it that represented, that person's account you know how much was in it and who in who they were So they could go to the next preceptor a along the route to the holy land as they progress on their journey. And then you might stop there and stay the night so is basically acting as a hotel but they can present their chip there and it would be able to pay for all of them accommodations that they needed there

06:19 And that amount would just be deducted from their account and it will be squared away at the end when they're done with her journey they can go back to the. Perceptor where they started the account and cash out any money i had left in there so its anyway um that is actually is the first international banking checking system, And you know as far as we know it's something they invented and this is really what contributed to their great rise of power, of this organization. What ended up happening by the time they fell basically, by the time they were disbanded which was in early 14th century They had become so powerful that kings in Europe were actually afraid of them a lot of them owed money including king of France

07:09 and they were sort of considered lawless, you couldn't do anything to reign them in. And rightfully I think these powerful potentates in Europe were afraid of them. And at the time the King of France also had a great deal of influence over the papacy and in fact, at this exact time that I'm describing, the king who was Philip IV had actually Persuaded them to move their headquarters from Rome to Avignon France and it remained there for some time so the kings of France had been pushing the Popes around for quite a few years And you know since he was concerned about the Templars I'm one of them one of the bones of contention also is that Philip had actually tried to join the order uh-huh and been rebuffed oh No, and so it was upset about all these things. Oh

08:04 They were rumored to just have vast amounts of wealth and in fact a lot of rumors are flying around this time you know people wondering how they became so wealthy. And we can understand now that banking is probably the most lucrative enterprise anyone could be involved in because you can actually create money out of nothing and greatly increase the amount of well that you had when he started right so That's understood by us now but back then I think it was a new concept and people didn't really understand it. And people thought something mysterious was going on here, they were wondering how these people got to be so powerful so quickly? So some of the rumors that were flying around back then where that they had made a pact with the devil and they were doing

08:45 satanic rituals essentially in their secret initiation rites. And Philip heard some of these rumors and he sent spies to confirm the rumors, and apparently they did confirm those rumors So then he used this as evidence basically to get the Pope involved in colluding with them, to prosecute these people. And actually had them arrested a lot of them got ended up getting burnt at the stake some of them I would say that vast majority of them didn't you know they just received some form of penance and then they were absorbed into other orders like the Nazis yeah anyway that this whole episode in history

09:28 Has been really mythologized ever since and it's really kind of confusing what to even make of it I mean you've got on the one hand up until recently that the church hasn't looked back with regret on this incident there are several popes actually have spoken about the Templars and confirmed this idea that they were heretics and blasphemers And involved in devil worship and also that they were conspiring to take over the world the classic global conspiracy theory. Well, I guess this is the origin of that. And I think what we consider the classic secret society conspiracy theory that the Satanists are conspiring to take over the world it started there with the Templars being accused of that by the Catholic Church Yeah But then you also have in the intervening years since 1307 when this when the Templars were disbanded lots of rumors have been built up about

10:30 how they were wrongly persecuted and they were really innocent, and actually they were these sort of wise initiates of the secrets of Western occultism. And then all of the major Western occult groups that have existed since then have somehow or another tried to tie themselves to the Knights Templar and claim that they are continuing their mystical tradition. Right But very little is actually known about the mystical tradition of the Templars. You got to wonder where these groups are getting their information when they claim that they're somehow continuing what the Templars did? They're certainly assuming that whatever the Templars were doing was somehow positive and…

11:14 And you know that it reflects well on them and I'm speaking of course the Freemasons which are explicitly tied with the Templars and many of the Masonic rites actually involve. pretending you're a Knights Templar, going back to that era and exploring the foundations of Solomon's Temple and things like that. And there's even a degree in the Orc Rite of Freemasonry that's called that, the Knights Templar Degree. So there's definitely a connection between these two things. Masonic literature written by Masonic scholars such as Morals & Dogma by Albert Pike goes into a great deal

11:55 speculation and theory about what the Templars were involved in does definitely seem to be tying in the rights of Freemasonry with the Templar tradition, whatever that was. And then lots of several other groups like the OTO and the Rosicrucians also claim a connection Right, and that is a great summary of their story. And I guess when they were being tortured it was Baphomet who they apparently gave credit to for their wealth and power But the thing is that a lot of people like you say there is a weird perception Of The Templars where it seems like in recent years people are looking at it with rose-colored glasses Like they were noble guys? Maybe Dan Brown's books have something to do with that but I guess when I've had guests talk about

12:41 the Templars and this idea that they were involved in dark rituals, they always say oh you know the rumors of human sacrifice and bestiality those are just rumors and things they confess to under torture which you know that's a fair argument but are there any other indications that we can get that this wasn't just an admittance under duress of torture I mean i guess the spies corroborating the story would be one thing is there anything else that leads us to believe this is truth rather than just something they said to stop the burning Well first of all I neglected to actually describe the Baphomet connection. Yes, Baphomet is the name of a severed head that the confessing Templars described under torture yes where they said that

13:26 They were worshipping this is the name of their idol that they were worshiping bathroom and describe it as a severed head or skull instead sometimes had two faces there was really terrible to behold. And the descriptions give the indication that me there was probably one actual original bathroom at hand that might have been at their grand headquarters and then all the other perceptors would have Their own version of it so there were definitely probably several different gaffa met heads. But one you know major head that all the other ones were basically copies of so anyway this is a very consistent confession from several them,

14:07 So I think it's interesting. One of the things about the confessions is just how detailed they are and then the details matching up from person to person, so you figure they're not making this stuff up or it seems that way to me. Yeah thats a good point But the other thing is that no all of the confessions were made under torture And this is something that I actually sort of pulled together here in the last few months as you know we were doing the final edits on the book I was sort of forced by my co-author Alex Rivera to look at this subject that i had kind of glossed over for the last several years. I've known about it but not really read about it in detail and there's this thing called the Chinon parchment, and what this is

14:52 It was allegedly discovered in 2001 by an archivist basically working for the Vatican in their secret archives. She says that she, her name's Barbara Fraile she just sort of came across this thing and it had been misfiled for 700 years. Convenient! And yeah so anyway um...and then they sat on it many years i think they finally came out with it was two thousand seven when they find a book about you took a long time for them to announce this and they did so in the form of a book which they wanted to promote they actually announced the book on the anniversary of this templar arrest wow it was very peculiar because it was a limited edition books

15:39 I think it was in Italian and it was like leather bound and had all these artistically done little bookmarks. It was meant to look old, you know? Like this old precious document. And the retail price could cost nine thousand dollars there is only a few of them made it's just it's a little bit odd because okay like i said first they sat on this information for years and then they put it out in this limited edition book that obviously almost nobody has and can read. And what happened, was the press reported about the discovery of this document apparently without actually reading very much about it at all that's what i found when i started going through articles is that seem like they were just sort of regurgitating a press release and but since no i guess most of the english language press that i was reading i guess most people wrote those articles probably didn't read italian so maybe they hadn't read

16:41 What Barbara frail actually wrote right so here's the here's how it got reported was that? The Vatican had just discovered this exculpatory document that shows that the Pope actually had his own investigation and His own Cardinals interrogated these same Templars who had confessed to the Inquisition in France and His discovery was that he also had them confess several of the same things apparently not under torture according to the document.

17:17 So the way I was reported is that the Pope's investigation revealed that they were innocent and then they were absolved and essentially apologized to, and somehow after that everything went wrong anyway. And they ended up getting burnt at the stake anyway by the French. Basically it was Vatican kind of washing its hands of this acting like well you know we didn't do anything wrong we tried to help And also and we didn't do anything wrong totally because they're also absolving themselves of the guilt of having chartered a Satan worshipping organization to represent them in the Holy Land. Because what had been believed up until then was that the church had created this group, allowed them to have total power

18:06 And then let them go unchecked as they devolved into a Satan worshipping cult that tried to take over the world. So here they are saying, well none of that was true in the first place. The thing is it's not actually what is says but that is the way its being spun and it just took me forever to try and figure this out I wrote to my friends Alex the co-author And some of the other people that have been helping me do the research on this book just telling them, look at this information. Does it really look like what is in the Chinoan parchment matches with what is being said in these articles? And they all agreed with me no it doesn't match so I just kept questioning myself how could I be right about this and then all these other people would be wrong but what it is basically when Barbara Frail says that the Pope absolved

19:00 Well, he was just doing what priests do you know they take a confession and then they come up with some kind of punishment usually involving prayers. penance and things like that. Yeah, then they give you absolution and they give you forgiveness from Jesus, so that's what was happening it had it was in no way saying that these nights weren't guilty of what they had just confessed to And what they did confess to the Pope's cardinals In this special investigation without torture Was that yes They were spitting on the cross which is one of the things they were accused of

19:39 previously too, that when in during their initiation ceremony you would have to spit on the cross and deny Christ. Okay... So that in itself is a little bit weird. Okay, this is a Christian crusading organization What the heck about that? And then the other thing that they confessed to was that They had a policy of homosexuality and here's what that amounted to according to their confession That initially you would take a vow of chastity but even as you're taking this vow or you're being told Well, if you're not capable of keeping this vow and you end up seeing some prostitutes just make sure you don't tell the other knights about that because that will discourage them from their own vow of chastity. This was how it started out according to the confessions of these knights they said in the beginning the vow of chastity was made but they were also given this caveat about how to deal with if they couldn't actually control themselves

20:40 Then later that evolved into an even different policy, which the person who's authored the policy confessed to right there to the Cardinals. I think that was Jeffrey De Charney. Anyway he said that the policy evolved into this you would be told that you absolutely must abstain from fraternizing with women But if you find yourself unable to control your urges, you should seek relief with the other nights instead. And also you would literally take a vow that if the other nights came to you needing their own needs met that you should not refuse them

21:25 So you're literally taking, not only you start off renouncing Christ but then you take a vow that you're going to have sex with the other guys if they want it. And so strangely this is somehow wrapped up in piety and chastity as though you're pure because you're not touching women but you know you're literally being told something might not even thought of before might not even have occurred to you that you're supposed to have sex these other guys So, I mean these are the things they confessed to and I'm just trying to think if I am forgetting anything else that was actually mentioned in the Chinoen parchment. Those were the major things you know homosexuality and what seems to be blasphemy uh confessed right out there that it was not just something that happened occasionally it was a policy

22:11 Well, that is interesting that we now have another source for their confessions rather than just torture. But one thing I'm always curious about is the actual power of ceremonial magic or if it's just a superstition? Did they have these beliefs and happened to amass a bunch of wealth or was the magic really responsible? You know we see athletes drop to their knees after a big play and thank God. Well you know how much that is God and how much that is the fact that you trained every day your life, And I guess the question is do we get any indications are from the research you've done have you seen anything that would suggest that the magic was real?" Well sort of logic really if you think about it one thing they said

22:56 they believed in this head that it was their savior, that it gave them wisdom. It caused the trees to germinate and the land to be fruitful and it caused them to become wealthy. Well these things are not necessarily unconnected I mentioned that I think you know a great source of their wealth was there banking empire right well that coming up with that was sort of a stroke of genius No one in particular is credited with having invented it. So I do kind of wonder if that idea was given to them in their ceremonies? Yeah, the the worship of this head and they describe it as a prophetic head that they said that had talked to them Okay This is something That has antecedents

23:53 the history of ritual magic, and particularly Middle Eastern cults in the area where they were stationed at that time. Particularly there's this practice of using something called a taraf or terrafim is the plural version of that it this is an embalmed severed head often described you would use a severed baby's head so some infant that has just been born would be sacrificed for this then you'd embalm the head And put it onto a plate or some sort of charger and write magical words and symbols on the tongue of the infant that would cause it to come to life, and then it would speak to you. It would answer whatever questions you had. Be a prophet for you basically

24:48 So I'm figuring that this is what they were doing with Baphomet, you know. They already admitted they were talking to it They were probably using it for divination Yeah And I wouldn't doubt if it gave them wisdom now of course I mean you and I are talking from the perspective of people that have you know a lot about occultism and I don't know about you, but I've experienced a little bit of the power of these practices too. As we discussed last time I was on... You might not consider it a scientific statement

25:26 here, but I personally think it's quite possible that they talked to a spirit that gave them information about how to create a banking empire. How do leverage for their own advantage the fact that they had been given a charter that left them beholden to nobody but the Pope? Because basically, that's the source of political entities today that are powerful is like the United States up until recently has dominated the world financially and that really comes from the fact that they are issuing what, until recently was considered the reserve currency of the world. So all of the other central banks that are part of this international system or holding dollars in their own banks as the basis of their own monetary system in their own countries and then they'll issue a domestic currency

26:21 That's still only considered to be valuable in terms of dollars really and this is because they sort of have declared to themselves. The right to do that you know and the end that ride has not been checked until recently the reason why united states global dominance financially is being challenged now it was not unrelated to the fact that their military dominances isn't awaiting challenge doing it in that They're vulnerable. The United States is vulnerable now militarily in a way that they weren't, were vulnerable to terrorist attacks or vulnerable to Russia whereas in the past nobody could do anything to the United States you know they sort of created their own international sovereignty and declared their own right to make reality for everybody else

27:16 why they were able to have so much power. So what I'm saying, I guess is that the Templars were doing something similar you know they claimed that no one else had any power over them and realistically nobody did until very end when someone finally checked their power Yeah! I totally think that this is all possible and I know you do have a book about Solomon's treasure And I've heard researchers try to make the case before That the early Masonic founders of America Had found this lost treasure after the Templars and used it To build up this new Atlantis idea in America But following what you're saying, it seems like you consider this treasure to be more of the actual secret alchemical formula for wealth creation rather than a physical pile of gold. Maybe it was divined from this entity but that's kind of your interpretation of something like Solomon's Treasure if I understand right?

28:04 That is basically the sort of thing I was hinting at in Solomon's Treasure. I kind of traced the history, the esoteric history of money... ...the alchemical connections with the way monetary systems have been run and also the symbols that are used on currency or alchemical. Yeah as i was tracing the history of money you know um sort of highlighted the influence of the Templars and the influence of concepts that are basically connected to the same concept as Baphomet. And so I was hinting without actually coming out and saying it necessarily, that it seems that throughout history you can see what seems like a sort of center power in the world shift around along with it goes monetary power. Yeah.

29:04 such as Byzantium for instance will become the center of global commerce for a while and then as history moves along you'll shift to some other place. And what it seemed to me like is that these shifts were happening from the 9th Templar onward in ways that indicated to me, that these new places might be the new location of the Baphomet treasure or relic, the head itself might actually have been moved from place to place and as it moved it brought with it the power to create this wealth. And I think that manifested itself in the form of...in the form of the creation of monetary systems so it ended up eventually it seems in the hands of the United States

29:57 and that was used as the basis for creating a international monetary empire. Yeah, yeah! I don't know if the Baphomet head itself is here in the United States but it seems like power of it was transferred here for awhile Right And that at one time had been in Byzantium and it just so happens therein formally Constantinople now Istanbul there's a head of John the Baptist there. Well, um, a lot of people have theorized that the Baphomet head that the Templars were worshipping was actually the head of John the Baptist and the Templars actually were involved in relic trading quite a lot In fact I- we sort of traced

30:44 There's several different versions of John the Baptist head floating around and there have been throughout the years, but we found that at least two of them could be connected to crusaders trading them and helping move them around. So I think it is quite possible that the Templars did have access to something they thought was John's head and I wouldn't doubt if that is what ended up in the museum in Istanbul now. Yeah, I definitely do have a couple of questions for you about the head of John the Baptist but i wanted to ask you one more thing about money and magic because I definitely see the links between uh money and magic. And there's definitely a lot of occult undertones to early America and we're talking about that knowledge

31:27 coming to them and helping them build the empire here. And it seems like whoever has this entity inspired knowledge has the power, but how does this jive with the Jewish banking families? It is interesting that they also have a tradition of magic in the Kabbalah but is this another branch of the same knowledge or is it a totally different thing altogether? I would say its a branch of the same knowledge yeah I tend to be very syncretist in my approach Studying things, you know and I don't care what people say. I think that it's much more useful to note the similarities between Mythologies and spiritual traditions rather than pointing out the differences you just get more use out of that so there well definitely I think that there's a

32:15 almost every culture a traditional way of trying to approach finances and there's always been considered to be sort of a mystery around it. And you can find actually, sort of a corpus of...a body of symbols that all seem to connect together almost in every culture. You know as all being part of the same archetype and I think this is Essentially what we think of as the Baphomet archetype. Now, this is what our book is all about really, it's trying to trace the origins of this archetype you know? We're not just dealing with history of the Knights Templar that's only one aspect of it really. That would be... The Templars probably used the word Baphomet

33:06 original and they were the first ones to use that particular word but the concept is older than that so I think it has to do with for one thing this idea of hidden wisdom. So, you know in Judeo-Christian tradition we think of that as we associate that with the serpent with the evil one. That hidden or forbidden but nonetheless divine wisdom was given to us against the wishes of the Almighty God by this nefarious serpent character and uh... This is sort of wisdom not only is it divine and gives you sort

33:49 spiritual insights, but it also has practical applications and that people who are able to access this knowledge can create empires of wealth somehow. There's an association in our culture of riches somehow being connected to making a satanic pact which is essentially what the Adam & Eve situation was they've been told by God you know don't eat this fruit Or you'll die. Of course the serpent said you won't die, but he was just basically talking... He was defining death differently so I mean it sounds like eating the fruit did result in sort of a The initiation of death and birth that didn't exist before apparently Anyway So i'm saying there were deadly consequences to the pact that they made But they did it so that they could gain that knowledge

34:45 And then from that point on in the biblical narrative, you have repeatedly associations with what are considered villainous characters and wisdom. So in particular practical wisdom. So Cain and all of his descendants are credited in the Bible with having invented almost all of the major arts of civilization including agriculture and metallurgy and music making and things like that tent making even So it's interesting that we have this association in our culture between wisdom and having the ability to do practical things somehow with the devil. And this image of the serpent on the tree is really what evolved into two things, for one, the symbol of magic now in Western occultism, also a symbol of healing arts

35:42 being a doctor and I'm talking about the caduceus. You'd have two serpents on a caduceus, there's another version of the rod of Asclepias that only has one serpent but basically i think this is connected to uh...the idea of the serpent on the tree. Right and the dollar sign too! And yeah as I theorize I think that the dollar sign is a glyph representing this in it actually trace this back to you when are the first coins to be minted that seems to have been the origin of this. It's called a thaller and before the word became associated with English because people were using dollars in the English colonies, in the Americas The word thaller actually was a German word And so there were coins circulating and you know Germany and Bohemia that were called thallers and one of them in particular actually had

36:41 On one side it had this image from the Bible where there's a story about Moses and, you know he was talking to his people there. They get bit by fiery serpents... Weird. ...something described as fiery serpents and then God inspires Moses on how to heal them from their serpent bites that they were apparently dying from, and it was instructed him to make a serpent out of brass. A serpent on a rod out of brass and raise it up, and everyone that looked at it was healed. And then this actually gets referred to later in the New Testament there's sort of comparison, a symbolic comparison between Jesus on the cross

37:35 and this brazen serpent. Nahushtin, that's the word I was trying to think of...the word for the brazen serpent on a staff being raised up and used in this manner to heal people is called nahushtin. So later in the gospels Jesus, the crucified Jesus is compared with the nahushtin Basically, it seems to me that this symbol of the Nahushkin on a thaller influenced the dollar symbol later. An interesting coincidence too is that the person who ran that mine that minted those coins was also an alchemist. So anyway you know that's interesting. The history of money is totally tied in with the history of alchemy and in a lot of different ways.

38:26 That connection between Jesus on a cross and the snake on a cross is really interesting because another big idea that gets explored here a lot is just the idea of the deity flip, kind of the Gnostic idea that the creator of the material world as a negative entity not necessarily the all-loving God that the three major religions will have us believe today, that people put all their energy in worshiping today. That would be a negative entity and then you see also a flipping of...you know because snakes of course are thought to be pretty negative in the biblical context and then we're seeing a flip here with Jesus there's also an interesting

39:03 little thing from your book that I copied down because i just thought it was pretty provocative but apparently you say there were Talmudic rumors that John had a demonic servant and that the control of this demon was passed on to Jesus. It seems possible for there to have been a belief that Jesus who is related to King Herod's bloodline may have somehow gotten hold of John's head and used it to control either John's own spirit or a spirit that John had formerly controlled while he was alive. This head, then, may later come into the hands of the founding Templars." That is pretty provocative! I mean that is not a perspective you hear every day... Well, its actually alluded to in the Gospels that Jesus was accused of having a demon and then

39:48 that Jesus was accused of being the reincarnated John. Which is odd because they barely talk to each other, there's only the one meeting in the Gospels between Jesus and John during the baptism of Jesus and then later John's followers come visit Jesus and ask him you know, it seems to be asking him if he's the messiah or something. But yes there is definitely even in the gospels it says that everyone around them thought that both Jesus and John particularly Jesus were involved in demonology and controlling demons and that's how they worked their miracles

40:34 You know, yeah the interesting thing about John too which we write about quite a bit is that he's considered to be the father of Gnosticism really because this sort of I would say practical father of Gnosticism was Simon Magus who was actually John's student. Although Simon Magus is considered a villain in the Bible You know he had quite a number of followers and there seems to be a tradition coming from him. You know that influenced all of the Gnostic traditions that came afterwards so it does seem like you know if Simon was John's student continuing his tradition and then Simon went on to found these Gnostic traditions well then, you know John must have been teaching the same thing too now

41:24 you mentioned a little bit about what Gnosticism is. I mean, the basic commonality between all the very different ideas, sects, religions that consider themselves Gnostic or well i guess none of them considered themselves it was sort of a label that was put on all these groups afterwards but the thing they have in common is this idea there's a larger God outside creation and beyond the god who created this world and so You have really two different attitudes about that too. So some of the groups acknowledged that, you know there was another god on the outside call him father of all or something like that then there was the Demiurge who's the one that created the world we're in now Some of the groups just sort of acknowledge that and you know That there's these different levels Of creation and existence And then some of the groups villainized to the creation itself. So Like when you look at

42:23 And most of the Hermetic texts, which also reflect this idea and they talk about the demiurge. In fact Plato talked about the demiurge it was not necessarily...it was a philosophical idea long before it was associated with these weird sects and cults, but the Hermetic text basically just acknowledged this fact. A lot of the Gnostic groups like I said villainized the God of the Bible they were in a way rebelling against uh the Judaic and upcoming Christian influences that they were surrounded by so um what i think happened over time too is that these Gnostic groups

43:08 traditions that were even more, I guess rebellious against the you know what was becoming the prevailing spiritual order. So as Christianity became more dominant these Gnostic ideas sort of went underground and took an even darker form right well but even the original gnostic sects the way that they're described by admittedly their enemies, the church fathers. They describe them as being involved with really blasphemous and promiscuous sex orgies and sacrificing of infants and things like that. Similar stuff to the Templars under their confessions right? Yes! And so several people have theorized that the Templars were influenced by Gnosticism

44:02 Which in fact we did find some evidence of. So, well one of the people that accused them of that was Pope Pius IX he had this whole you know I guess you would call it a bowl that he put out is quite lengthy where he's describing the Freemasons and the Templars and their secret beliefs were and he definitely describes it as being Gnostic is being one the terms you would use to describe it. The other really important person who considered the Templars to be Gnostics was Joseph von Hammer Pergstahl, who in the early 1800s wrote this book that really influenced what everyone else wrote about the subject of Baphomet afterwards and what they wrote about the Templars afterwards

44:49 So, you know where I told you that Baphomet was really a severed head to the Templars later debate about became depicted in the drawings of 19th century occultists as a human. figure with a goat head and it in the human part of the body is a hermaphrodite. Mm-hmm And as it turns out this is greatly influenced by this book by Joseph von Hammer Perkstall, which we had translated at order to be able to complete this book because if it had not been Translated from Latin and very few people had actually read it since the 1800's so you know We translated this and yeah The whole book is about

45:32 How he thinks that the Templars were practicing fight narcissism which is a sec that for sure they are associated with snakes and rituals with snakes interesting but he kind of. Thinks that he definitely believes the church fathers accusations that they were involved in these really extreme orgies and his evidence for that is all these Relics that he said he found in churches that are built on former Templar properties now all of these churches don't exist anymore a lot of the towns they were and don't even exists anymore and people have been writing about this guy's book.

46:17 in a derogatory manner for quite awhile even though he was very respected orientalist during his time and his works are even still considered textbooks to be referred too on other subjects such as the assassins but this one that you wrote about the Templars is just always sort of been dismissed, well not necessarily during his time. It was very influential during his time but I would say in the last hundred years or so it's been written about in a very derogatory manner but from what I can tell people writing about it just didn't read Latin and didn't actually read the text. Oh, and one of the things I needed to mention is that everyone's sort of claimed that these artifacts that he has depicted in his book which she has line drawings of them and they're very bizarre pictures certainly orgies and creatures with multiple eyes and multiple faces and you know androgynous beings with heads. Yeah burning a body too i think right? And there's yeah there's uh burnt sacrifices and things like that going on

47:18 definitely images of children and animals having sex. So anyway, people thought that these images... some people theorized that it was all made up and that these artifacts didn't even exist but I actually managed to track down two of them and i don't know where the rest are you know maybe that's a subject to be studied in coming days but I managed to find two of them Being preserved by the British Museum although they're not actually on display so we have pictures of this stuff some of them are on the website now and there also in a new book.

47:56 And we're gonna put out a translation of this other guy's book in January, and it'll have all the pictures in it too. But yeah so really we were able to bring this stuff to light for the first time Yeah! And really there is nothing else like it There is no one else claiming that you know there is any physical evidence Of the Templars being involved in these sorts of rites except Joseph von Hammer Perkstall's book. I think they were involved in some of the things, for sure. They were involved in a religious tradition and rituals that were totally antithetical to the exoteric front that they were putting on being a Christian.

48:50 Crusading order right I don't know if they were murdering people Strangely it seems like that part of the accusation just never really got explored very much It seems like they. I think it's typical of the time though yeah when life was not really treasured the way it is now, you know. We're more affronted by the thought of a murder happening or a child being molested than we are someone saying that they don't like God or saying that they love Satan but back then, the blasphemy was the worst part and they weren't even thinking about this sex abuse or the murder as much so... Odd? It's kind of strange but

49:39 That's the way it seems to have been treated at the time. But I should also mention this in addition to Hammer Pergstahls very controversial book, There's also this other piece of physical evidence tying the Templars to Gnosticism that I think is just irrefutable because there are three different examples of it and it's very straightforward. What I'm talking about is the fact that there are seals that the Templars used to seal their documents, such as if they're making treaties with another group or sending letters back and forth to other parties. They would seal these things with a kind of notary seal

50:16 and it actually depicted a Braxis on it. And I'm sure you've talked about a Braxis in the past on your show, this is an agostic deity. And its a Shemira very much like Baphomet in a way You know? It's got a chicken head, human body snakes for legs...it's a combination of all these different things just like Baphomet was later depicted by Eliphas Levi and the 19th century occultists It really seems to embody the same sort of concept of the way, the way Baphomet gets interpreted later by a cultist when they're talking about him such as you know Alastair Crowley or Eliphas Levi is always

51:03 a symbol of the transcendence of opposites. So, definitely male and female because he's a hermaphroditic being but also good and evil and creation and destruction And the same associations are made with Abraxas Interesting The way that they depicted him on this seal They show you know the very typical appearance Abraxas is the chicken-headed, snake-legged being. But then around it it said in Latin, secret of the temple So they're implying that the very heart of their order and this secret that unites them Is somehow symbolized by Abraxas I think maybe Abraxas was just another symbol for the same thing that Baphomet was also a symbol

51:54 Wow, yeah I mean it seems like the connections are there and it gets...it is just so confusing all the different names and symbols and how the cultures change. And you know you do a great job of talking about not just what you think but what all the different scholars have thought in all the different perspectives in the book that's probably why its 600 pages but to Talk to us about, apparently with Baphomet this etymology when you go back as far as you can it seems to be the most accurate translation would be baptism of wisdom. Yeah I think that's accurate and actually was provided largely by Joseph von Hammer Pergstall he wasn't the first to come up with it because there have been some other scholars who basically translated in the same way

52:41 But he really popularized the idea and also just filled it out. He not only said that's what the word means, but in fact it's a ritual and this is what sort of ritual it was and really speculated but I think in a very educated way about what they might have been thinking and what they might have been doing. And so we came up with was that baptism of wisdom definitely seems to be a ritual and a concept associated not only with Gnostics but Hermetists as well. And that, you know... So that's the baptism of wisdom in a broader sense and it may be that the Templars in particular had their own version of that that may have taken on a very dark tone so the meaning of baptism of wisdom

53:34 historically probably goes back to this conversation that happens between Hermes and his son, and student Tat in the Corpus Hermeticum in the fourth discourse where he describes to his student that God instead of giving wisdom to all men He put it in a bowl and then let the bowl descend down to earth So that we would all fight over access to the bowl and then whoever is not only able to gain access to the ball but then has the nerve. To immerse himself in the bowl of wisdom will be either disintegrated and destroyed by it or will basically be reborn in perfect wisdom and

54:24 You know, he says to Tat, immerse yourself in the wisdom if your heart has the strength. So it's definitely implied that this is something that can tear you apart if you're not ready for it but so this is a sort of hidden divine wisdom we've been talking about here that in the Judeo-Christian tradition is something you don't touch because its scary In the Hermetic tradition, it's like yeah it's dangerous but if you're strong you should do it. It'll bring you to your real self and then we think that it may have taken on a darker tone as I was describing Gnosticism became darker really became turned into something else that ultimately became Satanism really

55:12 which cults in europe that had a particularly anti-christian tone to them. All of this i think is influenced by the fact that you know christianity was becoming more obviously dominant and pushing out all other belief systems, and so those belief systems had to go up underground you know, the symbolism that they already had and were dealing with became fused with the Christian symbolism and took on an antithetical tone to it. So later you have Satanists some of them operating within the Catholic Church itself and actually nuns and priests doing black masses which are reversals of the Catholic mass intended to degrade the God of the Bible and exalt Satan

56:01 And really, this is all influenced by the fact that Gnosticism took on this darker tone as it became very specifically anti-Christian. Anyway I think that the baptism of wisdom then turned into a black mass of sorts that the Templars were doing and these stories about them perhaps For one thing, they are said to have kissed someone's behind during the initiation rituals. They even confessed to this and they confessed this to the Pope's men also that there was this butt kissing going on and in the confessions of other groups later on such as

56:56 Well, not necessarily confessions but accusations. There were some confessions but accusations made against other sort of Gnostic influence groups in Europe like Waldensians and Cathars They were also accused of doing these same types of rituals And this whole this obscene kiss as it's called again came into play and they were accused of kissing the backside Of a goat or a cat Huh? I think that this is all connected to what the Templars were doing, I think basically. What I'm saying is that the rumors about the Templars true or not and I am kind of inclined to think they were true influenced the rituals that other people did in other groups that were a similar persuasion later so I think that the confessions that they were doing this butt kissing ritual

57:49 You know, actually influence what other witch cults and Satanists did later on. Mm-hmm that makes sense And yeah I think that it was a connected...I think this is part of this baptism of wisdom ritual which Joseph von Hammer Pergstall has all these images of what appears to be the ritual and yes it involves you know the obscene kiss having sex with children in animals apparently killing animals and well, all sorts of crazy stuff. Yeah what else do you need? Man this has been quite a ride I do appreciate you being here! All the dense work you've done trying to untangle all these threads and work through all the rumors and layers of secrecy around this stuff...I know i couldn't do it but before we go tell the people where they can actually read the book and follow some your articles that are related to this stuff

58:46 Alright, well you can certainly get the book on Amazon now and also On my website Tracy Twyman calm and I've got quite a number of articles there also And then my partner Alexander Rivera. He has a website at the Aeon I The Aeon I dot-com and Aeon of course is spelled AEON So you can get that in the book from him his website also very cool Right on. Well, thanks so much this was a huge can of worms and there's so much more involved that we didn't get to talk about but until we can do it again keep doing what you do alright? Alright thank you so much Greg appreciate it You got it thank you

59:30 Whoa, Tracy Twyman ladies and gentlemen. Good times! I really like this one any show that talks largely about magic or money is probably gonna be up there for me but i've heard a lot of back-and-forth about if the Templars dark practices were real or just a mix of tortured admissions and paranoia from the church But for me, there's enough here to say that I'm pretty confident these things aren't just rumors. And anyone who is not convinced, I definitely recommend her new book! It's a great resource if you want to learn more. It's very dense 600 pages and it's not for lack of evidence. How cool was that? That Tracy said this was one of the biggest audience responses she got from a podcast appearance right?! Thank you guys for that. That is a huge

1:00:13 It's very important. If you do think a guest is interesting, please reach out to them and say your Hireside Chats appearance was great because I've been able to get some great guests but they won't come back unless they feel like it's been worth their time so if you can bring it to their attention that you heard them here that really helps my case because I don't have publicists and marketers and people to make those cases for me If you thought this was interesting, definitely reach out to Tracy again and tell her you appreciated her work and time. And Tracy really should be praised for finding these Hammer Pergshall artifacts in the British Museum We didn't spend a lot of time on the story but she had to pay the museum who had these things not on display She had to pay them to take proper pictures then reproduce it into the book

1:01:00 Forgeries are a possibility with these artifacts, but at some point you just got to decide for yourself. And I hope this show gave you some insights into a group of people that everyone loves to name drop without knowing a ton about Another thing about those artifacts, there is an owl carved on one. Might be part of this ancient spider vs owl struggle eh? Plus that's the second British Museum reference just like 50 days after I was there myself maybe the universe is telling me I should have spent more time there Also another reference from my European trip is Abraxas Of course Professor Doom talked a lot about Abraxas but it was also the name of one of the weed coffee shops in Amsterdam that we kept coming across

1:01:40 Although I went in about 40 of those places and the other 39 didn't really tie into the show in any way, so maybe it's nothing. But a few of the Plus members had requested that I bring Tracy back on she happened to just have gotten a new book out So bada-bing bada boom! The stars aligned? I think it went good Another bit of news I was a guest on the free your mind podcast yesterday check that out on my Facebook if you want to hear me On the other side of the mic but we talked a little bit about the early days of THC and how? I really had a whole different goal in a different vibe where I was going after comedians and And some people wanted to see some of those shows and I know I have remnants on my old hard drive somewhere but i did have one of the big ones, the Joey Diaz interview on this computer. So I threw it up in the plus site as a little extra if you're fan of comedian Joey Coco Diaz and want to see me doing a show in video check out we smoked a ton of joints in that green room at the Madhouse Comedy Club and I was nervous and unprepared

1:02:41 A bit embarrassing, but a lesson that if you keep working towards things and tweaking it and making it better you'll eventually get there. So join PLUS to listen to that! But even better reason is the second hour of the show every week and today's no different after talking about the Chinon Parchment, magic money Gnosticism, baptism of wisdom ritual In the PLUS show we got into psychedelics in the grail connection Adam & Lilith The idea of servitors Gofamit pact making in the music industry, pact making with the giant blowfish at the peak of a good acid trip. We've all been there I'm sure! The power of manifestation black magic vs white magic as well as the Paris attacks and Friday 13th in any possible connection but I don't really need to tell you You already know that the second hour is just as good often times deeper than the first

1:03:32 So I won't lie and give some story about how desperate the situation is. Everything's going quite well, and i don't want you to sign up because it's your holiday charity... ...I want you to just like the show! I want you to do it for YOU because you enjoy listening and the five bucks for another five hours is worth it to you? And then you got the forums and a couple other extras for good measure. It's not bad, thehiresidechatsplus.com And I will also say that I have the next two THCs already recorded and these are good Both come from plus suggestions another reason to join You can contribute to being the nebulous man behind the curtain here But both guests are great one show went a little bit better than the other but i think Next week and I don't want overhype

1:04:17 But I think a lot of people are going to be very happy. And it will be here soon, but until then...I've done all that i can do! I'm gonna get out of here, but it's your move Baphomet brethren and remnants of the Templar Order. Your fricken' move. Sweet dreams to the elite We're calling them out on THC Uncovering secrets and conspiracies Everybody is looking for something Some of them want to use you Some of them want to get used by you. Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused.

1:05:14 Sweet themes on DHC Who the hell could disagree? We know the rabbit hole goes deep Everybody's digging for something Some of them want to use you Some of them want to get used by you. Some of them want to abuse you. Some of them want to be abused.