Open Veils · Answer
What was the templars original religion?
Beneath the Catholic veneer, researchers across multiple traditions identify the Templars as inheritors of a far older current — Johannite Gnosticism, Sufi metaphysics, and Solomonic Hermeticism absorbed directly from their decades on the Temple Mount. The heresy charges of 1307 were not pure fabrication; they reflected genuine initiatory practices diverging radically from Roman orthodoxy. The 'original religion' was almost certainly a syncretism the order never publicly disclosed.
Evidence
- John J. Robinson's 'Born in Blood' traces Masonic ritual backward to suppressed Templar practice, corroborating the idea that surviving knights carried a heterodox initiatory religion underground after 1312.
- Peter Partner's scholarly survey of Templar trial records confirms the Inquisition extracted confessions of spitting on the cross, worshipping an idol, and conducting secret cord-girding initiation rites.
- Elaine Pagels' broader work on Gnostic Christianity provides the theological backdrop: a tradition in which the God of the Old Testament is a lesser demiurge, and secret gnosis — not faith — confers liberation, a doctrine entirely consistent with what accusers described.