Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
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Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul mission controlled decands. Most importantly, you are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Weird question came up a little bit a few weeks ago.
Speaker 3: We were looking at episodes we wanted to cover, and
Speaker 3: it hit us. We have never talked about the templars
Speaker 3: for guys who love so much weird fiction and conspiracy.
Speaker 3: It's kind of strange we never got to this one.
Speaker 4: We did do an episode on the book Holy Grail,
Speaker 4: Holy Blood, which I think is a very popular, like
Speaker 4: kind of in conspiracy circles, you know, book about the
Speaker 4: origins of the Nights Time. But I believe we interview
Speaker 4: the daughter, but I do believe that might well have
Speaker 4: covered it, and that was a little bit of a
Speaker 4: different type of episode. But this topic is such red
Speaker 4: meat for you know, for people that are interested in
Speaker 4: this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, and we've covered the Order of Malta or the
Speaker 2: Knights of Malta or they have so many.
Speaker 3: Names, they have great passports.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still in we covered that in video, so if
Speaker 2: you want to check that out, head over to the
Speaker 2: YouTube channel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and today the poor fellow Soldiers of Christ and
Speaker 3: of the Temple of Solomon, that's her whole name. They're
Speaker 3: often kind of thought of as legends, you guys. That
Speaker 3: reminded me of my favorite Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones
Speaker 3: and The Last Crusade, where there's that cool spoiler, there's
Speaker 3: that cool chase scene at the very end, Indiana makes
Speaker 3: sudden friends with this guy who was trying to kill
Speaker 3: him or like three minutes. Yeah, yeah, and he's got it.
Speaker 3: He shows like a cool tattoo and he says, ask yourself,
Speaker 3: why do you seek the Cup of Christ? Is it
Speaker 3: for his glory or for yours? And that's a that's
Speaker 3: a direct reference to the Knights Templar. That's an English
Speaker 3: adaptation of their motto. Yeah, and they're not around that well,
Speaker 3: they're officially not around now, but they're the subject of
Speaker 3: numerous conspiracies in the modern day. Here are the facts,
Speaker 3: maybe we start with what we know for sure, because
Speaker 3: the history is really surprising.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's super it's super cool to look into the
Speaker 2: history because often you're going to find the history as
Speaker 2: written by not necessarily the Knight's Templar, but maybe the
Speaker 2: descendants of other orders that came from the Knights Templar
Speaker 2: or that were gifted lands and other materials from the
Speaker 2: Knights Templar. When you see third party history, it does
Speaker 2: seem to verge a little bit or maybe there's more
Speaker 2: context right when it's not being written by the order themselves. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is a.
Speaker 2: Weird thing because the Knights Templar officially, as we're going
Speaker 2: to learn, went away, So it is I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's just very strange. But let's just talk about how
Speaker 2: they were formed, why they were formed. They're a military order,
Speaker 2: like a protecting order specifically for pilgrims who are generally
Speaker 2: from you know areas in England or you know surrounding
Speaker 2: areas like that. They were headed towards Jerusalem.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, they're warrior monks essentially when they first start off.
Speaker 3: They are a religious based military orders, so they're kind
Speaker 3: of like a paramilitary they're kind of like a private
Speaker 3: group of mercenaries who happened to agree with the state
Speaker 3: powers and state religion of the day, and they formed
Speaker 3: during the Crusades, a series of religious wars starting between
Speaker 3: like ten ninety five and ten ninety nine, so very
Speaker 3: late into the eleventh century. And like you said, Matt,
Speaker 3: these folks were part of a larger phenomenon in Western
Speaker 3: Europe wherein the Christian forces said they were going to
Speaker 3: stop the spread of Islam and the expansion of Muslim powers.
Speaker 3: You can see all sorts of heavily romanticized depictions of
Speaker 3: these crusades and all sorts of social media. I recently
Speaker 3: rewatched the beginning of robin Hood Prince of Thieves. You guys,
Speaker 3: remember that one those first ten minutes slap you know
Speaker 3: what Iri wants, the beginning of Last Night Mennetites, Yes, Sir,
Speaker 3: in honor of Richard Lewis r I P. But they
Speaker 3: take very parallel paths. Both deals discuss the Crusades, just
Speaker 3: one a little more ridiculously than the other. But yeah, no,
Speaker 3: that movie Robinhood Prince of Thieves was a big one
Speaker 3: for me growing up as well.
Speaker 2: But the actual Crusades, as you.
Speaker 5: Said, goody sorry, not good YEA.
Speaker 2: Heavily romanticized but dang, just so much death.
Speaker 4: The very delation of a holy war, right, I mean
Speaker 4: waging a holy war to eradicate a faith that contradicts
Speaker 4: your own.
Speaker 2: Individual and collective acts of in my opinion, pure evil,
Speaker 2: of just wanton destruction and violence in the name of
Speaker 2: good and God.
Speaker 3: It's what we call total war. You know, like civilians
Speaker 3: were considered combatants because of their religions. Unbelievable, unbelievable, but
Speaker 3: you have to be right, right, humans human I mean
Speaker 3: the Crusaders, though, it was kind of like our earlier
Speaker 3: conversation about calling something the Department of Defense when it
Speaker 3: proactively does bad things. So the Crusaders said, oh, we're
Speaker 3: a protective force. We're reclaiming land for our spiritual beliefs.
Speaker 3: But they, despite the fact that they said they were
Speaker 3: against Muslim expansion, they actively also expanded sought to expand
Speaker 3: the rule of Christianity in other non related areas.
Speaker 4: Kind of makes Batman's nickname hit a little different, doesn't it.
Speaker 4: The Dark Knight, the Caped Crusader, Oh, the capes Crusader. Oh,
Speaker 4: I just never really thought about the context of that.
Speaker 3: Word before.
Speaker 4: I guess it has gone on to maybe mean more
Speaker 4: like someone who's trying to right wrongs or whatever. But
Speaker 4: it was sure very specifically branded around these exact specific crusades.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of that is sort of the
Speaker 3: feedback loop of romanticizing history, which is written by the victors,
Speaker 3: you know. So to your point, Matt, about people writing
Speaker 3: with the benefit of retrospect, especially when they're as we'll see,
Speaker 3: when they're writing about people who are not around, you know,
Speaker 3: like if you don't want someone to be able to
Speaker 3: share their side of the story or defend themselves, then
Speaker 3: you just don't have them in the conversation. And that's
Speaker 3: kind of what happens with the templars because it's an
Speaker 3: easier Ah, we'll get into it, but yeah, morals and
Speaker 3: ethics aside, the idea of the crusade sounds like a
Speaker 3: lot of work.
Speaker 2: It does. I think we have to continue to stress here.
Speaker 2: One of the primary goals in these crusades is to
Speaker 2: recapture places, like specific locations that includes you know, let's
Speaker 2: say a castle or a religious site, or a place
Speaker 2: that's known to have artifacts of historical or religious significance.
Speaker 2: Taking taking those places back or defending those places.
Speaker 3: Nice. Yeah, great point and good set up too, because
Speaker 3: the we're talking about the levant right, the Holy Land
Speaker 3: sites in that area, or sites that would be of
Speaker 3: strategic interest between Europe or between Rome and Jerusalem. So Bethlehem,
Speaker 3: Temple Mount, all the hits, all the good ones, and
Speaker 3: a lot of the people who served in the Crusades
Speaker 3: or participated in them from the Western side. They were
Speaker 3: working for blood and treasure, and they were also working
Speaker 3: through what they saw as a spiritual impetus. It was
Speaker 3: your get out of Hell free card. So just like
Speaker 3: you know, if you have some bad stuff in your
Speaker 3: past and you join the French Foreign Legion, which I
Speaker 3: promise I'll stop referencing at some point, please, don't you know?
Speaker 4: Can I just say that you get out of Hell
Speaker 4: free card is my favorite Monopoly play.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's a very intense version of monopoly from
Speaker 3: the original Landlord's Game. But the idea was, no matter
Speaker 3: what kind of horrible stuff you did back home, if
Speaker 3: you were fighting with righteous cause, then all would be forgiven.
Speaker 3: And that was kind of the pitch that the Powers
Speaker 3: that Be made to nobles, tonights, to peasants, to pilgrims.
Speaker 3: Pope Urban the Second had launched the first crusade in
Speaker 3: what we say like ten nine five ten nine nine
Speaker 3: around there, And as you can tell, there were multiple
Speaker 3: crusades or multiple waves of this phenomenon because the fighting
Speaker 3: went back and forth.
Speaker 4: You know, I mean, the whole get out of hell
Speaker 4: free card aspect of it is just such a sickening
Speaker 4: paradox because it essentially empowered folks to feel righteous in
Speaker 4: their rapings and pillagings and you know, stealing outright of
Speaker 4: other people's properties and livelihoods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys, before we get into this, I have a
Speaker 2: misunderstanding here. I was looking a lot at some of
Speaker 2: the other orders. One that you're mentioning here been the
Speaker 2: Hospitallers or Hospitallers. I don't know exactly how to say it.
Speaker 2: It's the group that was around for a long time
Speaker 2: ended up becoming what we know is the Knights of
Speaker 2: Malta or the Order of Malta. They've they've got a
Speaker 2: crazy name too, the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint
Speaker 2: John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta.
Speaker 3: How many of other things can he be of? But
Speaker 3: that lament.
Speaker 2: In order to gain like the upper levels and some
Speaker 2: of the like the knighthood essentially those or in that
Speaker 2: organization and the organizations that came before it, you had
Speaker 2: to be of noble descent and you had to prove nobility,
Speaker 2: which is a really interesting thing to me when we're
Speaker 2: talking about these crusades, right, it's trying to get as
Speaker 2: much support as you can, get as many fighting men
Speaker 2: at the time as you can, but you're also being
Speaker 2: led by people of the upper crust of society who
Speaker 2: are actual knights.
Speaker 3: Kind of like World War One?
Speaker 2: Is it? How is it? Tell me about that because
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So officer class, at least for the British in World
Speaker 3: War One was often going to be people who were
Speaker 3: born from the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum because,
Speaker 3: similar to the Crusades, it was seen as an ideological
Speaker 3: spiritual conflict and also democracy famously not really a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, put the important people on the ridge overlooking the battlefield.
Speaker 3: Right right.
Speaker 4: And I guess my question too has been was this
Speaker 4: was there a traditional warfare.
Speaker 3: Aspect to this? Like absolutely there was, Okay, so there
Speaker 3: was like.
Speaker 4: A battlefield and like a front line, So It wasn't
Speaker 4: literally just people swinging swords at peasants.
Speaker 3: There were folks.
Speaker 4: Defending their faith again the incoming crusaders.
Speaker 3: There were folks defending There were tons of what we
Speaker 3: will call war crimes, because you know, every war is
Speaker 3: a grab for resources, right, and you can paint it
Speaker 3: however you wish. You can believe in different ideologies partastic, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they were. They were definitely hitting what we will call
Speaker 3: peasant villages or coming in and saying, you know, whatever
Speaker 3: evil we do is in the service of this greater good.
Speaker 3: We've got our get out of Hell free card, you know,
Speaker 3: so even if we die in the pursuit, it's okay.
Speaker 2: I get all that.
Speaker 4: I guess my question is who were they fighting against?
Speaker 4: Who Maybe we're actually somewhat up to the task.
Speaker 3: Uh, then those would be those would be military forces
Speaker 3: of on the side of Islam, got it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a picture different, like caliphates and empires or warlords. But
Speaker 3: then also, you know, an they thought wasn't Christian? And
Speaker 3: I love that we're pointing out the different religious orders
Speaker 3: because the templars weren't the only ones, The hospitallers weren't
Speaker 3: the only ones. There were multiple orders of Nights, still
Speaker 3: doing that same hierarchical nobility kind of thing, and they
Speaker 3: each had their own area of focus or like their
Speaker 3: spin on the belief system or their expertise. And in
Speaker 3: the beginning, the Templars were a pretty small group. The
Speaker 3: Crusades have already been happening. When these guys come into
Speaker 3: play in like eleven nineteen Common era, we're talking such
Speaker 3: a small group, like such a small rap crew size.
Speaker 3: It's like eight or nine dudes. They're all French Knights,
Speaker 3: and they say, we are going to be a defensive force.
Speaker 3: We're going to protect all these pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem because,
Speaker 3: as we'll see, travel was the icy at the time.
Speaker 3: And they were.
Speaker 4: Almost like an escort like kind of right, like a
Speaker 4: very evil Triple A for.
Speaker 3: Me, guys keep behind the curtain waiting on Triple A.
Speaker 3: Not currently. So they also had very interesting real estate.
Speaker 3: They were given quarters near the Temple Mount of Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: and that's where their name comes from, the Knights Templar,
Speaker 3: or their street name, because their other name is just
Speaker 3: too long to keep saying. And they had these vowels.
Speaker 3: They had a thing like a manifesto called the Templar
Speaker 3: Rule capital R, and the Templar Rule would become darkly
Speaker 3: hilarious and ironic over time because it included things like
Speaker 3: vows of chastity and vows of poverty, and then really
Speaker 3: specific rules for how they had to fight wars, and
Speaker 3: their entire lives were very closely regimented, like even unto
Speaker 3: how they could dress or when in what they could eat,
Speaker 3: like were two guys had to share one bowl they
Speaker 3: got meat every other day.
Speaker 2: It's really similar to Cistercian living. It's spelled cis t
Speaker 2: e er cia n so like monastic guidance and rules,
Speaker 2: and it's specifically in that poverty and where basically all
Speaker 2: your ant chastity, but all you're doing is work and
Speaker 2: it's not at the time. It's not like you're getting
Speaker 2: paid a bunch of money for that work, right, you
Speaker 2: were just doing that work because you were called to
Speaker 2: do that work and it is your duty.
Speaker 4: Essentially, these guys were almost like heavily armed monks, right,
Speaker 4: like I mean super devout and evangelical I guess for
Speaker 4: lack of a better term, where they really took this stuff,
Speaker 4: every aspect of it to the letter, very very seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they all took it very seriously, we believe, especially
Speaker 3: or at least in the beginning. And about ten percent
Speaker 3: at its height, about ten percent of the total population
Speaker 3: of the Templars were actual warrior monks. Again and and
Speaker 3: that's that sounds like a very small number, but we
Speaker 3: have to remember, like in modern militaries even today, the
Speaker 3: bulk of the people working there are infrastructure. You know
Speaker 3: what I mean. You can't have Uh it's difficult, I
Speaker 3: should say, to have one hundred percent of your people
Speaker 3: be that forward line, you know, because it takes a
Speaker 3: lot to build that line in the first place.
Speaker 2: Can I just say my favorite Diblo three character I
Speaker 2: ever made was a monk, and I was like a
Speaker 2: warrior monk, and I just loved that concept. Yeah that's cool,
Speaker 2: someone that doesn't do anything but meditates and then kicks
Speaker 2: butt with theirs like the wind.
Speaker 3: Gosh, yes, I love it too. I've always wanted to
Speaker 3: play a monk in some role playing games, but they're often,
Speaker 3: at least in the D and D universe, they're super underpowered,
Speaker 3: which is sad. They should be the they should be Bruce
Speaker 3: lle right, they should be the most powerful.
Speaker 4: I forget the name of the class. But in elden Ring,
Speaker 4: which I admittedly never finished, I was the kind of
Speaker 4: cleric I guess with the that had like a almost
Speaker 4: like a blind swordsman kind of vibe, like had like
Speaker 4: the thing. And I really love that vibe too, because
Speaker 4: that implies like I don't need no eyes.
Speaker 3: I got the eyes of God working on my side.
Speaker 3: You know that's the the incantation class, right, I believe
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so high des class that had these clause
Speaker 2: It was so awesome.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I need to revisit.
Speaker 4: I did that dumb thing where I got to a
Speaker 4: place where I just wasn't powered up enough to compete,
Speaker 4: and it frustrated me so much that I just gave up.
Speaker 2: But boy am I kicking.
Speaker 4: But at Skyrim now, guys, a ten year old game
Speaker 4: that compared to elden Ring is like a walk in
Speaker 4: the park.
Speaker 3: But it's it's a ten year game. You can play
Speaker 3: for ten years, dude. It's unbelievably modern feeling.
Speaker 4: The only thing that sets that you know, makes it
Speaker 4: feel older is sometimes the character facial movements.
Speaker 3: That's it. The the what's the word. Environments are unbelievably immersive.
Speaker 4: I'm in winter Hold now, I just joined the college anyway, Sorry,
Speaker 4: we're nerds.
Speaker 3: No safe travels man. Also, I'm now altern on skyroom
Speaker 3: just to walk around exactly with similar mission. But the so,
Speaker 3: these guys, the Templars, they have this amazing real estate.
Speaker 3: They're pretty hardcore about their beliefs and they they are
Speaker 3: very very popular with the Christian powers that be, the
Speaker 3: power structure of the time, and a lot of it,
Speaker 3: weirdly enough, goes down to a very good promotional campaign.
Speaker 3: All right, propaganda. I'm making it sound nicer than it is.
Speaker 3: A co founder of the group is a guy named
Speaker 3: pardon the French here. Bernard des clare and Claveau is
Speaker 3: a French monk. He later chieves sainthood. He's canonizes, he
Speaker 3: becomes the patron saint of to your point, Matt, Sistercians, Cistercians.
Speaker 2: I saw his Cistercians, but makes yeah crustaceans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got to kick it with more monks. Uh.
Speaker 3: So he's also the patron state of beekeepers and candle
Speaker 3: makers several specific locations, and of course the Knight's Templar.
Speaker 3: This dude is so good at marketing. He is very
Speaker 3: successful at making templar membership the thing to do for
Speaker 3: the noble class.
Speaker 2: Ah, okay, okay, so you you want it. You're a
Speaker 2: noble and you want to be a knight. You gotta
Speaker 2: do this, man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the hot move, right.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so hospitallers and templars for minu they have kind
Speaker 3: of a Pepsi coke rivalry with membership. They kind of
Speaker 3: have like a Princeton Yale thing going on. But because
Speaker 3: this guy is so successful at this, and partially due
Speaker 3: to social pressures at the time, the way inheritance works
Speaker 3: in these landholding families. Because of all these factors, templar
Speaker 3: membership explodes. It grows very quickly. Over the next two
Speaker 3: hundred years, which is a long time, they become an
Speaker 3: international private fighting force and much much more than that, dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a private, private fighting force that has loads of money. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: well okay, So if you look at Cistercian living like
Speaker 2: right now in twenty twenty four, there are still a
Speaker 2: lot of monks, this is one way to describe them,
Speaker 2: who live in monasteries, and those monasteries make money, not
Speaker 2: the monks themselves, but the monasteries make money by doing
Speaker 2: things like growing fruit and wheat to make let's say,
Speaker 2: a fruitcake or something that they sell which is common,
Speaker 2: or back in the day brewing beer which would then
Speaker 2: be sold.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, like the monastery itself, the organization ends up making
Speaker 2: a lot of money, but usually that doesn't transfer to
Speaker 2: on an individual level because of the vows they are taken,
Speaker 2: because of the way it's set up.
Speaker 4: You know, it pays for upkeep and such and goes
Speaker 4: back into the organization, I guess to a degree and
Speaker 4: probably enriches higher ups, you know, up the chain.
Speaker 2: But it's different with the templars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, in the beginning, they're supposed to be individually impoverished, right,
Speaker 3: like so many other ascetic movements. And you can go
Speaker 3: to if you are lucky enough to live near a
Speaker 3: nunnery or a monastery, go check it out. Yeah, get
Speaker 3: you to it. Yeah. We've got a great one near
Speaker 3: near Atlanta out in Conyers called Our Lady of the
Speaker 3: Holy Spirit, and they do not have a loitering law.
Speaker 3: They have classed it up. They have a nice little
Speaker 3: bonzeye garden, they've got a gift shop in a museum.
Speaker 3: It's a great day trip.
Speaker 5: But those we still haven't done it, Ben, Can we
Speaker 5: go together?
Speaker 3: Can we play this year? Maybe the three of us
Speaker 3: could go together. I would love that.
Speaker 2: It's a lovely trip. Yeah, I would do that anytime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot of fun, and they've got anyway.
Speaker 3: I don't want to rant too much about or rave
Speaker 3: too much about them. But the modern monks you see
Speaker 3: are very much not the templars, very much not. These
Speaker 3: guys would actually tangle at their height. There were twenty
Speaker 3: thousand people, of which, as we said, ten percent were
Speaker 3: what you would call forward line like warrior monks. And
Speaker 3: for a while, for a couple of centuries, it was
Speaker 3: pretty swell to be a templar like you were, mister Popular. They,
Speaker 3: like you said, Matt, they become incredibly wealthy. They get
Speaker 3: super into real estate because they get a lot of
Speaker 3: spoilers of war and you'd spoilers of war, which spoils
Speaker 3: of war, but also spoilers resources. Yeah, holy grail, melted faces. Jeez.
Speaker 3: So they so as they are becoming more and more successful,
Speaker 3: their former allies, the the nobility in particular, start to
Speaker 3: find the nobility and the Catholic Church they find the
Speaker 3: templars increasingly concerning.
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, when you have that much power and maybe
Speaker 2: as another very powerful organization you're making moves or having
Speaker 2: to make decisions that aren't popular with this other popular
Speaker 2: group that is really powerful. That could be that could
Speaker 2: be bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and think about it.
Speaker 4: I mean this is at a time and history or sure,
Speaker 4: of course the Catholic Church has been around for a while,
Speaker 4: but I mean the playing field is a lot more
Speaker 4: level that. You know, with the templar, they're getting so
Speaker 4: much power of wealth that they have the potential to
Speaker 4: even like maybe overthrow the papal See or whatever the
Speaker 4: Holy See.
Speaker 3: Possible secessionism, right, they could move to becoming a state's power.
Speaker 2: Well, but this is also game of throne stuff, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because you're you're talking about different kings who are trying
Speaker 2: to put their hands in religious issues that are coming
Speaker 2: up to control, like everything from where the like pope
Speaker 2: lives in controls, Like there's a lot going on in
Speaker 2: history around this time when it comes to the rulers,
Speaker 2: like the kings.
Speaker 3: Who gets to be the pope? You know? Yeah, and
Speaker 3: so you're right, let's introduce our buddy heavy p aka
Speaker 3: King Philip the fourth of France. He's very angry with
Speaker 3: the Templars. As public opinions starts to sour, rumors begin
Speaker 3: to spread, you know, like, how did these guys get
Speaker 3: so successful? How do you become a templar? What are
Speaker 3: they really doing in there? What's he building in there?
Speaker 3: And King Philip totally agrees with these rumors, because behind
Speaker 3: the curtain, behind the throne, he is up to his
Speaker 3: neck in debt with the Templars. He owes this group money,
Speaker 3: so when he sees public opinions start to shift in
Speaker 3: the wind, he leverages it as an attempt to get
Speaker 3: out of debt the fastest way possible by killing the
Speaker 3: people that you owe money to.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but but I think his end goal right
Speaker 2: is to take them out or at least remove that
Speaker 2: organization to which he owes all that money. But he
Speaker 2: does it in this political intrigue way. Guys, with this dude,
Speaker 2: one of the popes, Pope Clement the Fifth, it's a
Speaker 2: real little finger kind of move right to the way
Speaker 2: it plays out, And there's so much detail we're not
Speaker 2: gonna be able to get into all of it today,
Speaker 2: but we would highly recommend that you check out Pope
Speaker 2: Clement the Fifths, all the papal bulls he put out
Speaker 2: and the meetings that he had, because the Templars had
Speaker 2: a really strong presence in France, like basically looming over
Speaker 2: the King's shoulder there going you still owes a lot
Speaker 2: of money, and so he got the Pope to make
Speaker 2: moves against the organization.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because they again they are talking the talk
Speaker 3: right of following the Catholic Church. Therefore, the Pope should
Speaker 3: be the highest authority on the planet. And if the
Speaker 3: Pope says jumped, they have to jump. But the Pope
Speaker 3: is human and is also therefore vulnerable to political pressures
Speaker 3: or geopolitical pressures, and so heavy p says, we're going
Speaker 3: to weaponize these rumors, and he goes to Pope Clement
Speaker 3: in thirteen oh seven and he says, you need to
Speaker 3: find all the Templars in France, and you need to
Speaker 3: arrest them, get them to confess to these rumors, and
Speaker 3: then kill them. And the Pope, by the way later
Speaker 3: sort of exonerates these guys, but he moves with the
Speaker 3: wind of King Philip's power. And so it's like a
Speaker 3: scene in Breaking Bad with all those prison executions happening
Speaker 3: in two minutes on the morning of Friday, October thirteenth,
Speaker 3: thirteen oh seven, authorities raid the Paris headquarters of the Templars,
Speaker 3: arrest everyone they find if they don't kill them there,
Speaker 3: and then they go to every known member's home at
Speaker 3: the same time and do the same thing. This is
Speaker 3: not enough for heavy p We know this because a
Speaker 3: few days or a few years later, in thirteen twelve,
Speaker 3: like you said, Matt, the escalation through the pope continues.
Speaker 3: He says, you, as the Pope, have to officially disband
Speaker 3: this order. And so thirteen twelve is commonly considered the
Speaker 3: official end of the Knight's Templar.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, King Philip, the fourth crafty dude.
Speaker 4: On paper though, right, But then the conspiracy thrives that
Speaker 4: they went underground or that they.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, some survived, right, and the practices and knowledge
Speaker 2: that was associated with being a templar, right, that kind
Speaker 2: of secret of stuff near the top. The idea is
Speaker 2: that that got preserved and passed down in some way
Speaker 2: and probably absorbed into another organization or organizations.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then with that also is the idea that
Speaker 3: perhaps some of the mysterious artifacts and relics they found
Speaker 3: had power, and that those continued so the idea is
Speaker 3: that Templars went underground, they went off the grid. But
Speaker 3: we got to think about that for a moment, because
Speaker 3: imagine you're just the average person living there. Right. Maybe
Speaker 3: you have done well enough in life and you were
Speaker 3: fortunate enough to make a pilgrimage to a holy site
Speaker 3: in the Middle East or the Levante, and then you
Speaker 3: you were fortunate enough to come back, and you probably
Speaker 3: had involvement with the Templars if you did those things.
Speaker 3: And so from your perspective, one of the most popular
Speaker 3: powerful forces on Earth, as you know it, suddenly becomes
Speaker 3: public enemy number one and then disappears. As a result,
Speaker 3: it's no surprise there would be so many bizarre stories
Speaker 3: and theories about them. Tonight's question, how many, if any
Speaker 3: of those stories are true.
Speaker 4: Well, we're gonna get right into that after a quick
Speaker 4: word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Templar pedic mattress.
Speaker 4: That's fun.
Speaker 3: That's fun, ben, I don't dislike that at all.
Speaker 2: Good does not allow fornication of any sort or marriage.
Speaker 2: Sex cannot have it on this bed.
Speaker 3: But there's a there is a guaranteed human head in
Speaker 3: every mattress.
Speaker 2: Oh lord, wow, guys, Before we get into this, I
Speaker 2: just want to give a couple of things for people
Speaker 2: to search up. And I want to ask you guys
Speaker 2: about the papal bulls.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The bulay, I think is how that would be the
Speaker 2: plural of that. I didn't know much about this, but
Speaker 2: I think we've mentioned it before in another episode.
Speaker 4: But yeah, because I think I just remarked on what
Speaker 4: a bizarre sounding thing it is, and it's just it's
Speaker 4: a declaration, right, a proclamation.
Speaker 2: A decree, right, a public decree by the pope, which
Speaker 2: is a kind of yeah, but it was always written
Speaker 2: in like scroll format and.
Speaker 3: These formal language, I'm sure, oh yeah, but the the
Speaker 3: what is it?
Speaker 2: What were they called? It was the pieces of clay
Speaker 2: that you would attach or lad that you would attach
Speaker 2: to like seal up one of these official writings. Some
Speaker 2: of the history that is so fascinating and I just
Speaker 2: didn't know any of it before looking into this episode.
Speaker 2: Look up vox in excelso, which is one of these
Speaker 2: papal bulls, which is the one that was basically like saying, hey, templars,
Speaker 2: you're done it. I'm playing Hogwarts Legacy right now, guys,
Speaker 2: which is another video game. Sorry, but it sounds like
Speaker 2: a spell that you had cast vox in excelso petronas surrectum.
Speaker 3: Like Cardi B's real name.
Speaker 2: Wait, it's a one, it's a lot, I'll give it
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 3: Cardi B's real name is Bell Callus Marlettas Cephis, which
Speaker 3: sounds like a Harry Potter spell.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. There are there's so many theories,
Speaker 3: conspiratorial theories about the Knights Templar and what happened to them, right,
Speaker 3: And it's it's kind of like if you have friends
Speaker 3: and are both fans of a band with a very
Speaker 3: deep catalog, you end up choosing your own favorite theories
Speaker 3: or albums, right well.
Speaker 4: Especially if you guys feel like, let's say it's like
Speaker 4: a David Bowie or something where there are very distinct
Speaker 4: eras and vibes that like, you know, oh, I'm a
Speaker 4: big eighties Bowie fan, or some people are more into
Speaker 4: like the email records or whatever. Not to say they
Speaker 4: would necessarily disagree over one being better than the other,
Speaker 4: but a deep catalog sometimes implies blind spots for certain people,
Speaker 4: and that's certainly the case with these conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's explore some of the biggest ones. As we said,
Speaker 3: we're not going to get to everything, folks, because it
Speaker 3: is pretty dense. We would love to hear your own
Speaker 3: takes on this. It's kind of like the buffet version
Speaker 3: of conspiracy folklore. So just stroll around with us tonight,
Speaker 3: add what you like to your plate. I think maybe
Speaker 3: the first thing we talked about the finance. The finance
Speaker 3: conspiracies very interesting because at least one is true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these guys, we're fine financial innovators. Think right now,
Speaker 2: if you have if you use a bank, right, let's
Speaker 2: say you're in the city where you live, and then
Speaker 2: you have to take a flight to a different city.
Speaker 2: Let's say somewhere in Minnesota. You land in Minnesota, your
Speaker 2: bank probably has a branch in you know, in Minnesota
Speaker 2: nearer to where you landed, and you could go get
Speaker 2: money out from that bank, that same bank from you know,
Speaker 2: in a completely different place where you deposited your money
Speaker 2: or your company put that money into your bank in
Speaker 2: some other state. Right, that's a given easy. That wasn't
Speaker 2: always the case, right, if you had a bank somewhere,
Speaker 2: that money was in that bank that particular place, if
Speaker 2: you could go get it. Think of it's almost like
Speaker 2: a security deposit. It's more like that you can go
Speaker 2: in and get your money if you need to, but
Speaker 2: your bank's going to protect it. These guys, the Templars
Speaker 2: figured out early on that some people might need to
Speaker 2: get money in a different place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which led to their success to set that up.
Speaker 3: Let's note this. Here's the real, the genuine, provable conspiracy.
Speaker 3: It is that King Philip conspired to wipe these guys out.
Speaker 3: That is true. That is an actual conspiracy. You might
Speaker 3: ask yourself, how does a king of all people get
Speaker 3: in debt with a private group, a private military like
Speaker 3: the Templars. It's because, you know, ten percent fighters and
Speaker 3: the rest of them are sort of finance bros. Dude.
Speaker 4: This totally reminds me of Game of Throwne stuff. There
Speaker 4: was the Iron Bank, the Golden Compass or no, that's
Speaker 4: a different thing, the Golden Company, and they were basically
Speaker 4: a giant, militarized group of cell swords that are completely
Speaker 4: in the pocket of the Iron Bank. That's obviously something
Speaker 4: George R. Martin was very familiar with this type of history.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, like, like we're saying, you could go to
Speaker 3: their headquarters in England, the Temple Church in London would
Speaker 3: deposit funds there and they would issue in exchange a
Speaker 3: certificate sort of a cod a certificate a deposit, and
Speaker 3: then you could go on your pilgrimage. If you survived,
Speaker 3: when you got to Jerusalem, you would exchange that piece
Speaker 3: of paper for the appropriate amount of money or the
Speaker 3: value of whatever you deposited way back in England. And
Speaker 3: this was a huge game changer because pilgrimage is very,
Speaker 3: very popular. After the First Crusade, there's some Christian control
Speaker 3: of Jerusalem, but it's incredibly dangerous. It's like a two
Speaker 3: month journey if everything works out.
Speaker 4: Am I being conspiratorial and within the conspiracy to think
Speaker 4: that there's some inherent grift involved in this?
Speaker 3: Like is this fair?
Speaker 4: Like were people actually getting their money if they.
Speaker 3: Get where okay minus a percentage, Okay, there lies the grit,
Speaker 3: But that's just the grift of banking, like your banking fees.
Speaker 2: Now yeah, yeah, and you can you know, use all
Speaker 2: of that money that's in the bank to make loans
Speaker 2: and all kinds of stuff, which is again feels contrary
Speaker 2: to you know, the Bible, but whatever.
Speaker 4: Whatever, all that stuff about the money changers and Jesus
Speaker 4: knocking over the the you know, the tables and the whatever.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 4: It does feel like this is very contradictory to what
Speaker 4: the teachings of Christ would encourage.
Speaker 3: And again in the beginning, these templar members are saying, yes,
Speaker 3: we get a percentage. However, this is not usury because
Speaker 3: it's not going to us, it's going to the greater
Speaker 3: goods though.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, like you said, this was set aside,
Speaker 4: a set apart from the way monasteries worked. The structure
Speaker 4: of it was much more self serving, wouldn't you say.
Speaker 3: I think it's fair to say it evolved into that
Speaker 3: over time, right, But in the beginning they were definitely monastic,
Speaker 3: like you would you would have basic the Crusade's version
Speaker 3: of paying your household utilities and then all the other
Speaker 3: stuff doesn't go to you. It goes to build another
Speaker 3: house or to further your aim. And this is a
Speaker 3: really great and necessary thing for religious pilgrims, Christian pilgrims
Speaker 3: going to the Holy Land, because those like the two
Speaker 3: months perfect journey time from Italy to Jerusalem, it almost
Speaker 3: never happened because as you traveled you would run into
Speaker 3: things like sickness, war and the constant threat of robbery,
Speaker 3: all problems which became more severe and more likely the
Speaker 3: further you got from home. People got jacked all the time.
Speaker 3: They got robbed all the time because they had to
Speaker 3: carry a bunch of valuable stuff with them so that
Speaker 3: they didn't starve on the way. You know, you have
Speaker 3: to sleep somewhere, have to eat something, you have to
Speaker 3: bribe a lot of officials. And these pilgrims they're not
Speaker 3: badass monks, you know, they're regular people. So they usually
Speaker 3: don't have weapons. They might not have security, kind of
Speaker 3: like herd animals. The best safety they have is numbers,
Speaker 3: so they try to move in a big unit and
Speaker 3: then that just makes the predators evolve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's lots of opportunists at the time. And
Speaker 2: also it's been a war torn area that you've got
Speaker 2: to make your way through to get to Jerusalem, no
Speaker 2: matter where you're aheading from. So you know, good luck,
Speaker 2: I guess, very very dangerous.
Speaker 3: Go with God. Literally, indeed, it's a war zone. They
Speaker 3: are walking through a war zone pretty often. I want
Speaker 3: to go to Big Think a great piece by Tim Brinkoff.
Speaker 3: He's got a quote that I think sums up just
Speaker 3: how genius the idea of this remote banking was so
Speaker 3: the part of the Templars. Yeah, absolutely, he says.
Speaker 4: For most European pilgrims, getting robbed was simply a risk
Speaker 4: they had to take if they wanted to reach the
Speaker 4: place where Jesus Christ was believed to have been crucified
Speaker 4: and resurrected. British travelers, however, had a way to minimize
Speaker 4: that risk. In London, there was an organization known as
Speaker 4: the Temple Church where pilgrims could deposit a portion of
Speaker 4: their savings. In return, they were given a letter of
Speaker 4: credit that they could use to withdraw their savings once
Speaker 4: they reached Jerusalem. So this was literally in response to
Speaker 4: the rampant muggings, for lack of a better term, that
Speaker 4: was taken. So this gave people the ability to not
Speaker 4: have to carry all of their earthly wealth along with
Speaker 4: them and then it would be waiting for them on
Speaker 4: the other end, because there was such high demand from
Speaker 4: making this trip and it was so perilous. So, you know,
Speaker 4: the more I think about it, it's a pretty cool
Speaker 4: service being offered, I would say, you know, and it's
Speaker 4: also a system that is incentivized to be reliable.
Speaker 3: So it's because otherwise it's a heck of a trust fall,
Speaker 3: isn't it to say, here, I'm going to give you
Speaker 3: the equivalent of several years worth of everything I've worked for,
Speaker 3: And I just hope the little letter you wrote me
Speaker 3: matters when I get to this place I've never visited before,
Speaker 3: a foreign country. This did make the pilgrimage way safer.
Speaker 3: I mean, sure people still got robbed all the time
Speaker 3: and murdered and maimed and assaulted, but there's not really
Speaker 3: a better defense from a mugging than to not have
Speaker 3: anything to mug well, yeah, what I mean.
Speaker 2: And you also have the templars who are stationed along
Speaker 2: the routes there who can actually physically defend you.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's like a little part of the service, little perk.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, they probably didn't call it this
Speaker 3: because marketing wasn't what it is today, but they definitely
Speaker 3: had like premium travelers, you know, like pilgrimage plus. Ooh,
Speaker 3: that's what they would call it. Pilgrimage plus. Where you
Speaker 3: know you're the child of a noble family or you
Speaker 3: yourself are an aristocrat of some sort. They want to
Speaker 3: shepherd you through safely, and then later they want to
Speaker 3: come back to you and say like, hey, yeah, happy
Speaker 3: with your service, because we would love to not pay taxes.
Speaker 3: This is again all for God, right, we would love
Speaker 3: a donation since we saved your kid right in Jerusalem.
Speaker 3: And more often than not, the monarchs assented, they said yes,
Speaker 3: and they.
Speaker 2: Had a really good thing going until as history has
Speaker 2: shown us, the area Jerusalem exchanged hands again, as it
Speaker 2: would several other times after this. But it was in
Speaker 2: what twelve forty four.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, twelve forty four. Some I love that
Speaker 3: you said self swords earlier. Some mercenary armies from modern
Speaker 3: day in northern Iraq, they come in and they take
Speaker 3: over Jerusalem. And this is a bloody battle. Like we said,
Speaker 3: it had already been fortified by the occupying powers, so
Speaker 3: they paid in blood to overtake the city.
Speaker 4: So at this point, the Holy Land is no longer
Speaker 4: under European control, and European pilgrims as a result, stopped
Speaker 4: making those popular pilgrimages. Without those there was no reason
Speaker 4: for that system anymore, the one where they placed their
Speaker 4: savings with the Temple.
Speaker 2: Church, and that caused the holdings.
Speaker 4: Of this let's just call it what it is, you know,
Speaker 4: Holy Bank, I guess to begin to dwindle. So this
Speaker 4: began to be the start of kind of some cracks
Speaker 4: forming in the strength and the armor of the old
Speaker 4: knights Templar.
Speaker 2: Those those Corasmian mercenaries were the original disruptors.
Speaker 3: Guys. There we go. Yeah, they also I wonder you know,
Speaker 3: it's funny. I think mercenaries probably did do surge pricing.
Speaker 2: Oh, marks at a premium, Like what's the demand?
Speaker 3: They just set rate. That doesn't make sense. This is
Speaker 3: what sets us apart a flat fee per city or civilization.
Speaker 3: No searge priced.
Speaker 2: If I've learned anything from the quests where you have
Speaker 2: to protect somebody along a route. I hate escort quest
Speaker 2: I know they're awful, but they do change the price.
Speaker 2: Your reward changes depending on the route and the length
Speaker 2: of time and the number of people you're protecting.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, and the health points at the end.
Speaker 3: Hot take those guys.
Speaker 4: I just don't see anything inherently wrong with quote unquote
Speaker 4: dynamic pricing if it's done within reason and it's tied
Speaker 4: to supply chain issues like we were talking, or demand.
Speaker 4: Of course, you should be able to charge a little
Speaker 4: more if your services are more in demand, you know,
Speaker 4: because you're operating at like a premium and.
Speaker 3: It's almost like literally a service you're offering to even
Speaker 3: be available at that time. Anyway, No, you're right, I
Speaker 3: mean for pilgrimage plus, I've decided to call it, they have,
Speaker 3: like the templars, have to be predictable, they have to
Speaker 3: be reliable, they have to do what they said that
Speaker 3: were going to do. And so long as pilgrims keep
Speaker 3: pilgrimming business is good. To be very soulless about it,
Speaker 3: we're talking about inelastic demand. Right, People are still going
Speaker 3: to go on pilgrimages. In fact, sometimes the worst stuff
Speaker 3: gets in Europe, though more likely people are to travel
Speaker 3: because they want to get right with God.
Speaker 2: Well, so you got to get that emerald status of
Speaker 2: pilgrimage plus, you know what I mean. Emerald status is
Speaker 2: that better than diamond status.
Speaker 3: It's rail status is better than diamond status. Yes, there
Speaker 3: are so without these pilgrimages, they're still making money, just
Speaker 3: not as near as much, and they still get a
Speaker 3: lot of sweetheart benefits from different governments and state powers.
Speaker 3: They still have a lot of people who owe them money.
Speaker 3: But one guy who owes the money sees an opportunity,
Speaker 3: and all heavy P swoops in suppresses silences the order,
Speaker 3: and because they are suppressed, that means it was easy
Speaker 3: for people to make all sorts of weird claims about them.
Speaker 3: These claims grew more extravagant and bizarre over time. There
Speaker 3: was a lot of vilification, appropriation like oh I am
Speaker 3: actually my thing is the descendant of the Templars. And
Speaker 3: it teaches us something really common again in human dynamics.
Speaker 3: If you are afraid that someone will not fall for
Speaker 3: your propaganda, you're afraid that someone will not stand for,
Speaker 3: you know, character assassination, then just literally assassinate them or
Speaker 3: silo them, remove them from the conversation. You can say
Speaker 3: whatever you want and it doesn't matter whether it's true.
Speaker 3: And that's what happened with the Templars. That happens all
Speaker 3: the time, honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all the time. And just as a reminder, heavy
Speaker 2: P is King Philip the fourth of y.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so that's a good note. So we see
Speaker 3: this suppression, like there's a great article in the Conversation
Speaker 3: by author Patrick Masters and he says, because the Templars
Speaker 3: were suppressed, there was no one to safeguard their legacy,
Speaker 3: and then all these other groups came in and said, yeah,
Speaker 3: well we're actually the Templars now, you know, look at me,
Speaker 3: I'm the captain. Now of the Templars.
Speaker 2: Were Templars. But we do some of their practices, hold
Speaker 2: some of their beliefs, and there's a lot of them.
Speaker 2: And one of the I guess one of the next
Speaker 2: things we're gonna talk about is some of the weirder
Speaker 2: maybe religious beliefs and practices of the Templars because and
Speaker 2: again it's often because of this association with Freemasonry and
Speaker 2: Masonic orders of the time.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, and a lot of these orders claiming even
Speaker 3: today to be descendants of the Templars. They're not necessarily sinister,
Speaker 3: you know, they're not like bad guys or whatever.
Speaker 4: But I mean the Shriners, like you know, basically put
Speaker 4: all of their efforts into building children's hospitals and stuff
Speaker 4: that has happened. To drive the tiny little weird cars
Speaker 4: and wear funny hats. They do a lot of good.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say, I would say, without exception, all
Speaker 2: of the other orders that you know, in some way
Speaker 2: absorbed part of the Templar legacy. They are all at
Speaker 2: least front facing service organizations, all of them right, right, exactly,
Speaker 2: even the Order of Malta, like it's it's about a hospital, man,
Speaker 2: It's about providing services and good to the world through our.
Speaker 3: Our faith, really, yeah, through the power of faith. Right,
Speaker 3: And this idea of faith and religion plays a big
Speaker 3: role because now society, civilization at the time, is confronted
Speaker 3: with a murder mystery, Right, what happened to this powerful thing?
Speaker 3: How is it here one day and then the next.
Speaker 3: The juicier the story, the better, and that leads us
Speaker 3: to the moment we've all been waiting for our second
Speaker 3: ad break. We've returned onward to the occult. So this
Speaker 3: is the stuff you see about templars and fai, right,
Speaker 3: this is all the juicy like Indiana Jones, Dan Brown
Speaker 3: Catholic conspiracy stuff. There are accusations of occult rituals and
Speaker 3: trafficking with infernal powers. They're saying the people who are
Speaker 3: on the front face supposed to be godly are actually
Speaker 3: quite the opposite. There's an enemy within. The call is
Speaker 3: coming from inside the house. And this just kicks off
Speaker 3: when they arrest everybody. Because when they arrest all those folks.
Speaker 3: They get confessions appearing to confirm all this evil, magic,
Speaker 3: dark sided stuff. You know what you did, you cross piers.
Speaker 2: You guys. This comes from the stuff that Philip the
Speaker 2: fourth got Pope Clement the fifth to do. And it's
Speaker 2: that vox and excelsio excelso whatever it is. By the way,
Speaker 2: my character's name is Duke Wellington in Hardwart's legacy. But
Speaker 2: can I read just a little bit of this because
Speaker 2: this is what they were accused of. And then this is,
Speaker 2: I think, where all of these rumors come from. This
Speaker 2: is a reading from vox in excelso a papole decree
Speaker 2: issued by Pope Clement the Fifth on the twenty second
Speaker 2: of March thirteen twelve. Quote in view of the suspicion, infamy,
Speaker 2: loud insinuations and other things which have been brought against
Speaker 2: the Order, talking about the templars, and also the secret
Speaker 2: and clandestine reception of the brother of this order, in
Speaker 2: view moreover of the serious scandal which has arisen from
Speaker 2: these things just going on on a here we go
Speaker 2: danger to faith and souls, with the many horrible things
Speaker 2: which have been done by the very many of the
Speaker 2: brothers of this Order, and it talks about the sin
Speaker 2: of wicked apostasy, the crime of detestable idolatry, and the
Speaker 2: execrable outrage of the Sodomites. That that's when he says,
Speaker 2: it's not without bitterness and sadness of heart that we
Speaker 2: abolish the order of the Temple. So it's just like
Speaker 2: the Pope is saying, these are accused of these horrible things,
Speaker 2: and this is what they did.
Speaker 3: Apostasy is Apostasy is also it's denying the existence of God,
Speaker 3: and it is still a crime in some countries. Also,
Speaker 3: like you said, the accusations of having same sex relationships,
Speaker 3: they got very specific into acts of heresy, spitting, urinating
Speaker 3: on the cross. So that's uh, but that's it's just contradicting.
Speaker 2: It feels like the.
Speaker 4: Kind of stuff that could be, you know, coerced in
Speaker 4: during an act of torture.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. It's also you can tell it's a
Speaker 3: hit piece because it's contradictory. These folks say there is
Speaker 3: no God, but then they also believe there is a
Speaker 3: God enough to defame that thought's existence. Yes, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a very very good point, dude.
Speaker 2: It's a bully move and we talked sping a bully
Speaker 2: moves when they got arrested right and pulled from their
Speaker 2: houses all at the same time in that one big move. Uh,
Speaker 2: it's it's not like they went to jail and they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: confess to your sense. Well, they got.
Speaker 3: Tortured, like capital t torture. Oh yeah, like this is
Speaker 3: a little more dark jails, gnarly torture, more fingernails, no
Speaker 3: more teeth, lead out slowly, kind of gut wound, rack stretching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are you ready to confess yet? Of all these
Speaker 2: things we accuse you.
Speaker 3: Of cross and branding, you know, probably equivalent waterboarding.
Speaker 4: Yeah, guys, we talk about these sort of extreme torture
Speaker 4: techniques and how they lead to unreliable results, But have
Speaker 4: you ever really put yourself in that situation?
Speaker 3: Wouldn't you not only say whatever they wanted you to.
Speaker 4: Say, but maybe even believe it a little bit, Like
Speaker 4: when your mind and body are just being twisted to
Speaker 4: that degree. I think I could honestly say it and
Speaker 4: make myself even believe that I had done it.
Speaker 3: There are four lights star Trek reference.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you're you're right. Psychologically it's a minefield. That's
Speaker 3: why Confessions under duress are so tricky if you are.
Speaker 3: It's similar to like cult indoctrination, because we've talked about
Speaker 3: in the past. If you're just kept somewhere for hours
Speaker 3: and hours and hours even today, and you're just repeatedly
Speaker 3: gas lit and told the same things, then yeah, you
Speaker 3: may end up believing it. And they don't have to
Speaker 3: put their hands on you at all. These guys are
Speaker 3: doing both.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, exactly well, and at the hands of
Speaker 2: a freaking king that owed the group a ton of money,
Speaker 2: so he wins either way, if you confess or not,
Speaker 2: because if you don't confess, you get tortured to death.
Speaker 2: If you do confess, you get sentenced to You know,
Speaker 2: you're the rest of your life in prison or death, the.
Speaker 3: Most dangerous offer. You are going to die. It's up
Speaker 3: to you how it goes. You can make it quick
Speaker 3: if you tell us why you worship a deity called
Speaker 3: Bapha met shh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I think everybody who's listening to this knows
Speaker 2: Baha met. The most familiar one you've probably seen, has
Speaker 2: the goat head right and often is doing the as
Speaker 2: above so below motion with the hands and fingers isn't
Speaker 2: that also a.
Speaker 4: Reference to some of the poses that are done in
Speaker 4: like imagery like of Christ and religious you know figures,
Speaker 4: or they'll be doing the fingers up like the sort
Speaker 4: of peace sign, but this one is like one of
Speaker 4: them is inverted.
Speaker 3: Isn't that right? Are you accusing Christian symbolism of not
Speaker 3: being entirely original? Well, yeah, you're right, though, I agree,
Speaker 3: you're absolutely right, Noel. This there's a book from nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty seven whi's pretty great called The Knights Templar in
Speaker 3: their Myth and the author Peter Partner, which gave me
Speaker 3: a hard time. Still yeah, yeah, nominative determinism anybody, he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: pen name name. He says that in the some of
Speaker 3: the trials of the Templars, both as individuals and as
Speaker 3: a group, the main charge, like the big problem, was
Speaker 3: that they were not worshiping God. They were worshiping a
Speaker 3: different thing. This is where the idolatry comes in. They
Speaker 3: were worshiping an idol in the form of a head,
Speaker 3: and it was called Baphomet and batha Met. Is interesting
Speaker 3: because the Templars never talk about this before the trial.
Speaker 3: There's not one piece of writing documentation internal or external
Speaker 3: wherein they ever mentioned this thing. So the argument then
Speaker 3: is that they never mention it because it is such
Speaker 3: a secret, because they are seeing worships washed.
Speaker 2: Okay, but hold on it. There is an intrigue here,
Speaker 2: well at least I don't know. Look tell me if
Speaker 2: you guys are intrigued by this. But physical places like
Speaker 2: Bagras Castle, a place in Turkey. It's literally a castle
Speaker 2: up on a hill where you can look all the
Speaker 2: way over into Syria and a strategic position like that,
Speaker 2: you can see the Mediterranean, see you can see any
Speaker 2: armies that are coming your way right in this castle
Speaker 2: that was controlled by a bunch of different groups over time,
Speaker 2: but the Templars controlled it for a while. There are
Speaker 2: all of these hidden tunnels and passageways and secret places
Speaker 2: within that, within that castle that they controlled that it's
Speaker 2: been I guess it's an accusation. It's a mystery as
Speaker 2: to some of the writings and carvings and stuff that
Speaker 2: were found in there, some of the things that were
Speaker 2: considered secret. A lot of it you can't point to
Speaker 2: and say, hey, there's definitely this whatever. You can't say
Speaker 2: there's a baphomet in there in the you know, third
Speaker 2: corridor from the bottom or whatever. But there is weird
Speaker 2: stuff with some of the places they controlled that do
Speaker 2: seem to hint at some different worship than what would
Speaker 2: be described.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 4: But our secret rooms and passages sort of a staple
Speaker 4: of the Masons and of these types of orders.
Speaker 3: They're good for a siege, right, regardless of your belief.
Speaker 3: It's nice to have a place to squirrel away or
Speaker 3: a secondary exit that no one knows about, and that's
Speaker 3: part of it. But also in some of these locations,
Speaker 3: to be clear, it's like they moved into a house
Speaker 3: where someone else had lived. So the question is did
Speaker 3: the worship stay as well? Right did they introduce this?
Speaker 3: Were they just around it? This leads to what I
Speaker 3: think too, and I think we're on the same page,
Speaker 3: is the most fascinating possibility about the occult conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 3: So first we have to say the confessions that were
Speaker 3: derived under torture do not seem uniform. Some folks were saying,
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're talking about. Some folks were like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, leave me my other foot. I'll agree
Speaker 3: to whatever, and they're like, tell us about the idol.
Speaker 3: And in each case they told a different story about
Speaker 3: the idol, about its appearance. It was a cat ahead
Speaker 3: with three faces, a regular, a regular old severed head.
Speaker 3: And then it gets even weirder to your point, Matt,
Speaker 3: because the templars probably did have a couple spare severed
Speaker 3: heads laying around. That is true, it's just like, how
Speaker 3: did they treat the severed heads.
Speaker 4: I do also see potential motivation for turning away from
Speaker 4: traditional Christian beliefs in that they were railroaded by the
Speaker 4: church in such a hardcore way.
Speaker 2: But again, it's weird because all of that kind of
Speaker 2: happened relatively at the same time, right, and they were
Speaker 2: being persecuted for their previously held beliefs, like that's why
Speaker 2: they got railroaded, at least allegedly according to the Pope
Speaker 2: and the King of France. So it is weird. It
Speaker 2: is weird thing about that. But let's get back to
Speaker 2: the heads bend, because this is I didn't know this,
Speaker 2: but severed heads, like it was an okay thing to
Speaker 2: keep them around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you just had to treat them reliquaries. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like this this saint is very important to us, so
Speaker 3: we're keeping the head as a object of adoration, right,
Speaker 3: and still very it's it's still in the milieu of Christianity.
Speaker 3: It is normalized. They had kind of yeah, or just
Speaker 3: boil it out until it's until no soft matter remains
Speaker 3: and it's a skull, and then put some like silver
Speaker 3: precious metals around it, you know, pop a couple of
Speaker 3: jewels in the eyes. Just make it, you know, Jude,
Speaker 3: it up cool, nothing better, nothing weird. They they probably
Speaker 3: had the head of or the claims where they had
Speaker 3: the head of a saint, Saint Euthemia. They also quite
Speaker 3: possibly had the head of their other co founder, the
Speaker 3: first Grand Master of the Templars. Huge depals. It sounds
Speaker 3: like huge dependence to us. Uh, but they did. Okay,
Speaker 3: So here's what's interesting to me. This is a little
Speaker 3: bit like Heart of Darkness Colonel Curtsey stuff. But did
Speaker 3: they we know, proximity breeds familiarity in all things. Is
Speaker 3: it possible that some of these guys spent so long
Speaker 3: in these other parts of the world that they naturally,
Speaker 3: through cultural osmosis, began to pick up traditional beliefs. That's
Speaker 3: not a one on one or that's not a one
Speaker 3: two switch, that's not a yes no thing, that's a
Speaker 3: gradual increment, right, because you you know, you're increasingly not
Speaker 3: practicing your vow of poverty nor of chastity. You're getting
Speaker 3: a little closer with the local population.
Speaker 2: It isn't there some kind of weird translation thing here?
Speaker 2: That was all I read. I've read that bappha Met
Speaker 2: could have actually stood for like worship of Mohammed or
Speaker 2: turned into you know, converted maybe to Islam, and they
Speaker 2: were they had changed sides basically in the big religious.
Speaker 3: War, the calls coming from in the house.
Speaker 2: Did you find anything about that, because that's what it
Speaker 2: seems like it could be. But again, I don't know,
Speaker 2: And it's.
Speaker 3: Tough because it's under torture, right, But I agree with you,
Speaker 3: it does feel like a possible thing. There's a book
Speaker 3: from eighteen sixty five by Thomas Wright called The Worship
Speaker 3: of Generitive Powers, and I think with a with a
Speaker 3: quote from this, a quotation from this, we'll see that
Speaker 3: comparison of bathha Met as sort of a code for
Speaker 3: worshiping Islam or practicing I should say Islam. And it's
Speaker 3: it's interesting. I think we can unpack it. Who's got
Speaker 3: a who's got a good like old timey voice for
Speaker 3: this let's.
Speaker 5: Seem Desseren de mont Pissent, a nice of province, said
Speaker 5: that their superior showed him an idol made in the
Speaker 5: form of before Met. Another named Raymond Rubai described it
Speaker 5: as a wooden head on which the figure of before
Speaker 5: Met was painted, and adds that he worshiped it by
Speaker 5: kissing its feet and exclaiming Yallah, which was he says
Speaker 5: verbum sacra snorum, a word taken from the Saracens. A
Speaker 5: templar of Florence declared that in the secret chapters of
Speaker 5: the order, one brother said to the other, showing the idol,
Speaker 5: adore this head. This head is your God and your Mahammet.
Speaker 4: Not bathoetlham, but spelled like a combo meal of like
Speaker 4: Batha Met and Mohammad.
Speaker 3: Kind of it's very interesting.
Speaker 2: And Yallah doesn't that so familiar?
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. And it's also like we also
Speaker 3: know that Mahomet was an old French word that was
Speaker 3: a stand in for the prophet Mohammed of Islam. So
Speaker 3: now there's a political as well as a religious bent.
Speaker 3: The reasoning is, these monsters are supposed to support Christianity,
Speaker 3: but they've been perverting our trust. They're worshiping the enemy
Speaker 3: the whole time, and a lot of times, to be
Speaker 3: completely honest, literacy about other religions was not a thing.
Speaker 3: So the average person in Western Europe is aware that
Speaker 3: Islam is a thing by this point, but they don't
Speaker 3: know what it entails, right, They haven't read the Koran,
Speaker 3: they don't know about Ramadan or anything like that, so
Speaker 3: any they just know they consider these folks to be
Speaker 3: a largely hostile force. And with that preconception, kind of
Speaker 3: anything bad you say about them sounds really believable, which
Speaker 3: again happens today all the time.
Speaker 2: Right, But guys, uh, worship ahead as your god.
Speaker 3: This is your god? Now going blue? I see zikes.
Speaker 2: Oh, but you know it is it is. I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's it's fine.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it's all very above board. But uh but yeah,
Speaker 3: so they're they're accused of, you know, like you said,
Speaker 3: switching sides, the idea that their long occupation of these
Speaker 3: strategic sites in the Holy Land had led to them
Speaker 3: corrupting their own beliefs. And this happens as The weird
Speaker 3: thing is their beliefs had become corrupted. They were making
Speaker 3: a lot of money. The vows of chastity were increasingly irrelevant, right,
Speaker 3: They weren't living the letter of the templar rule. So
Speaker 3: it's not too far of a jump in the court
Speaker 3: of public or papal opinion to say what else, what
Speaker 3: else did they violate? And so we still know there's
Speaker 3: a lot of mystery around those practices. But I gotta say,
Speaker 3: confession under torture, Like we have all pointed out at
Speaker 3: some point in this episode, confession under torture, does it
Speaker 3: yield results? Yeah, if you're looking for the truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh man, you're right. Is it okay to switch
Speaker 2: to this next part? Is I think my favorite maybe
Speaker 2: set of theories, and it's something we've talked about before.
Speaker 2: It goes back to gnosticism spelled with a G.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out Yelda Bath and Sophia huh dude.
Speaker 2: Maybe just let's lay down some groundwork here. There's some
Speaker 2: interesting concepts within schools of narcissism about God that are
Speaker 2: don't really vibe with maybe the teachings of the Catholic
Speaker 2: Church and what the templars are supposed to be following.
Speaker 2: But it does make me think about my own eternal
Speaker 2: spiritual stuff going on when reading Old Testament versus recently,
Speaker 2: just looking at the God of the Old Testament as
Speaker 2: this jealous, dangerous, scary thing that the Gnostics may be
Speaker 2: kind of agreed with that view a little.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the spoiler for gnosticism, folks. The idea is
Speaker 3: that there are two different kind of planes of existence,
Speaker 3: and the one that you are hearing this podcast in
Speaker 3: is the crap one. It's the material world, and just
Speaker 3: like Madata, you're forced to live in this material world.
Speaker 4: Oh there's also a line from a police song called
Speaker 4: this is We are spirits in the material world, Our
Speaker 4: spirits and the material I guess that's a I think
Speaker 4: that must be a reference to that thing is a
Speaker 4: pretty philosophically minded fellow.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a concept that goes throughout a bunch of Sorry, Ben,
Speaker 2: it's it's good stuff.
Speaker 3: So if so.
Speaker 2: But this this concept, it goes throughout a bunch of
Speaker 2: different religions, right, Yeah, all that we experience is one thing.
Speaker 2: But really your goal and the stuff you should be
Speaker 2: focused on is in that other realm, the spiritual realm
Speaker 2: that you get to access once you die. It's where
Speaker 2: you were when you're before you were born. Very common thing.
Speaker 2: But just with the Gnostics that it's it's that a
Speaker 2: lot of the teachings about these creatures, there are gods
Speaker 2: that are the all powerful ones are actually evil forces,
Speaker 2: the ones that are trying to make you focus, I
Speaker 2: don't know, in some way on what you're doing here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're The idea is you're not just stranded in
Speaker 3: the less cool reality, the material world. You're in a
Speaker 3: hostage situation, and everybody is being held back in gnosticism,
Speaker 3: particularly in this kind of the general vibe of gnosta
Speaker 3: is that the thing you think is god of this
Speaker 3: material world is a prison Wharton more likely is a
Speaker 3: false god. His name's Yaldebath, and he's an absolute pill.
Speaker 3: And you have to, through gnosticism, learn how to get
Speaker 3: around this dude and lead a better life and then
Speaker 3: ultimately graduate to you know, the better universe. The Catholics
Speaker 3: don't like this.
Speaker 2: No, and the Templars got accused of having association with
Speaker 2: or being secret Gnostics.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, that somewhere, delving too deep into the desert,
Speaker 3: they had discovered unclean things, and those unclean things had
Speaker 3: turned them. And you know it's weird because later you
Speaker 3: see you see this accusation play out in a much
Speaker 3: more credible way with the Cathers. The Cather's heretical Gnostic
Speaker 3: movement also brutally supprese and persecuted by the Church. So
Speaker 3: it's like it may sound, you know, in an increasingly
Speaker 3: secular civilization, it may sound like these are silly reasons
Speaker 3: to torture and kill people.
Speaker 2: But yeah, guys, it makes me think about old school
Speaker 2: invisible college stuff you know that we love in fiction,
Speaker 2: and that stuff that actually goes back to theoretical secret writings,
Speaker 2: and it just makes you think about all of the
Speaker 2: human beings that have existed throughout the rule of these
Speaker 2: military almost state level hegemonic powers that were also religions,
Speaker 2: and the just human beings that are exploring the world
Speaker 2: and thoughts and having individual thoughts that would be considered
Speaker 2: heresy and then writing them somewhere and keeping them secret
Speaker 2: because they can't ever, no one can know that you
Speaker 2: even had these thoughts, right, right, And especially if you
Speaker 2: find other people that are kind of into your idea,
Speaker 2: you got to that stuff secret or else your head
Speaker 2: is literally going to roll. And it does just make
Speaker 2: me wonder about again, not necessarily even truths, right or
Speaker 2: actual religious movements or spiritual again truths, but like just
Speaker 2: thoughts about the world and what it could be and
Speaker 2: how it could function outside of those rigid structures that
Speaker 2: these religions have. I'm fascinated by that stuff, and I
Speaker 2: know you guys are too. I think we should go
Speaker 2: even deeper into that realm at some point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it. Because check out our episodes or
Speaker 3: various things we did on the Illuminati. A lot of
Speaker 3: the actual Illuminati, a lot of their conversations were about
Speaker 3: science and spiritualism, like they were hiding because they had
Speaker 3: to because power structures kill intelligent, innovative people. Yikes, I
Speaker 3: mean that's true. You know, like there's to your point, Matt.
Speaker 3: Somebody might write a treatise on gravity, right, or the
Speaker 3: passage of the heavens, and they're not making any crazy
Speaker 3: heretical claims, like directly confronting the current view of God.
Speaker 3: They're just saying, here's my how stuff works article, and
Speaker 3: I have to hide it because a church will come
Speaker 3: after me because they feel like what I am saying
Speaker 3: about physics is contradicting the spiritual view of the universe.
Speaker 4: Heck, we joke about you know, folks, coming after us,
Speaker 4: or having you know, the interns listening into our calls
Speaker 4: from the NSA or what have you. But at the
Speaker 4: end of the day, there's nobody shutting down any of
Speaker 4: the things that we're saying, and we pretty much are
Speaker 4: able to have open discourse about and not necessarily tribute,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: From.
Speaker 3: For the most part.
Speaker 2: Dude, Ben, do you think there's a secret vault of
Speaker 2: how stuff works articles somewhere that you can access if
Speaker 2: you had the right url.
Speaker 3: We're talking about how stuff works after dark?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a different thing.
Speaker 3: I thought that's a different thing. It's different thing, but
Speaker 3: related things get hot heavy. Yeah, we were all very
Speaker 3: into cinemax for a second. Sting, sting, sting, amass An Edger,
Speaker 3: What do you think gooning is together in a group?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 3: That's what Robert Evans told me.
Speaker 4: And he group we were we were recording a show,
Speaker 4: and he went out of his way to explain it
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 2: But very nice guy.
Speaker 4: It necessarily has to be in a group. I think
Speaker 4: it's just another form of like tantric. It's it's supposed
Speaker 4: to result in a hypnotics trance like state. I thought
Speaker 4: it was in a group too, But then I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's one of these things that I guess evolves gooning
Speaker 4: is a form of legal kidnapping.
Speaker 3: That's differ. And also we're looking at weird websites, so
Speaker 3: again goodbye to our search history. But yeah, folks, you'll
Speaker 3: have to ask Robert and maybe maybe you know, maybe
Speaker 3: the meaning is your own to give. I think that's right. Hey,
Speaker 3: it's a living language, you know, yeah, right in urch
Speaker 3: ate it. But this maybe gets us too, because we're
Speaker 3: closer to the modern day. Before you get to that question,
Speaker 3: I kind of have to ask, Like, I agree, there's
Speaker 3: much more to get into. But if like I think
Speaker 3: our mutually favorite conspiracy theories are true, if the Templars
Speaker 3: really did discover magic, really did traffic with infernal powers,
Speaker 3: and if they or if they found some genuine supernatural
Speaker 3: artifact the Holy Grail, head of a deity, arc of
Speaker 3: the Covenant, et cetera, if that magic worked, then why
Speaker 3: didn't it save them? You know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 3: if you have found the spiritual equivalent of a nuclear bomb,
Speaker 3: why didn't it detonate? That makes me think it's a
Speaker 3: little more of a heavy p king Philip hit piece
Speaker 3: but maybe we end today with the you know, the
Speaker 3: idea that we set up earlier, did the Templars go away?
Speaker 3: You know, like is there like the Freemasons are often
Speaker 3: very closely associated with the Templars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one person we can ask you guys, who's that?
Speaker 2: He goes by Friar John T. Dunlop Dunlap's. He's the
Speaker 2: grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. I
Speaker 2: think we can ask him. He's been the Sovereign grand
Speaker 2: Master since twenty twenty three May twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, he still got that new car smell. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, but you know, you know, he knows he
Speaker 3: knows something definitely, you know what that is. We'll have
Speaker 3: to figure out how to ask him the right way,
Speaker 3: you know, so much as in how we phrase the question.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he would probably know. I wonder if you
Speaker 3: would agree with historian Frank Sinello. In two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: Sinello writes a book called The Knights Templars, God's willriors
Speaker 3: the Devil's Bankers, and he says he says that it
Speaker 3: goes back to marketing and promo and propaganda because he's
Speaker 3: like look, if you travel back in time, there's a
Speaker 3: guy named Andrew Ramsey. He is a high level French Freemason,
Speaker 3: and he originally says, hey, Freemasons are descended from the Crusades.
Speaker 3: They're descended from the Order of the Knights, Hospitaller. And
Speaker 3: then he realizes, oh, that order is still around. They
Speaker 3: can come back and tell me or tell the public
Speaker 3: that I'm making this up. So he quickly changes his
Speaker 3: story and he says, did I say Hospitaller immense the templars,
Speaker 3: you know, because.
Speaker 2: Nobody can check nobody can check that out.
Speaker 3: And I think that's informing a lot of these, you know,
Speaker 3: bit more fan full claims. But again because of the mystery,
Speaker 3: because they were not all individually murdered, we don't know
Speaker 3: what happened. And I think that's why, like the Da
Speaker 3: Vinci Code and all these other assassins Creed, I think
Speaker 3: that's why templars are a regular recurring thing in fiction.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the freemason lore. Stuff that goes back to
Speaker 2: descending deep into the earth to pull out stone and
Speaker 2: discovering things within the earth that still stirs something within
Speaker 2: me gets me all tingly and excited.
Speaker 3: Her medic influences two Bulcane and all that jazz.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it just gets I really love it. And
Speaker 2: I'd liked the idea that somehow the Templars were connected
Speaker 2: to that, but this, it's a really good point.
Speaker 3: I do think it's cool too, you know, shout out
Speaker 3: to Fox Mulder, right, the truth is out there. We
Speaker 3: want to believe and if you can inform us, if
Speaker 3: you can, you know, give us this scoop, just like
Speaker 3: you would with a casual stranger who ask you a
Speaker 3: question that we would love to hear your take. We
Speaker 3: also want to point out that there is an official
Speaker 3: kind of descendant of the Templars that everybody agrees is
Speaker 3: descended from them. It's the Order of Knights in Portugal,
Speaker 3: the Order of the Knights of Jesus Christ, created in
Speaker 3: thirteen nineteen because the Templars played a big role in
Speaker 3: creating the Kingdom of Portugal, and the Pope approved this.
Speaker 3: The Pope was like, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that was in thirteen nineteen, which is not
Speaker 2: long after the Templars got.
Speaker 4: Right and Michael hag Or Hague basically referred to this
Speaker 4: as the Templar and under another.
Speaker 3: Name, but loyal to the King of Portugal. That's right,
Speaker 3: all right, little twist, but.
Speaker 2: Again there's just words. Again it goes back to the
Speaker 2: Order of Malta for me, just the way lands we
Speaker 2: have been gifted to some of these orders, and they
Speaker 2: all feel like political moves because so many of this group,
Speaker 2: including the Templars before. I don't know anything about the
Speaker 2: Order of the Knights of Jesus Christ, but the Order
Speaker 2: of Malta, this is these are people who have to
Speaker 2: prove their lineage back to the nobility in order to
Speaker 2: even join often, which just feels like this weird interconnected
Speaker 2: power thing it.
Speaker 3: Is, I mean very much so uh the you know,
Speaker 3: it would be while it may not be correct to
Speaker 3: assume that conspiracy theories about secret cabals are all automatically true,
Speaker 3: it would likewise be naive to assume that those very
Speaker 3: connected people don't speak with each other, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like, you recognize what your neighbors look like,
Speaker 3: and in the world of power, those folks are neighbors.
Speaker 3: They see each other.
Speaker 2: Dude, dude. It just it's taken me back to the
Speaker 2: project for a New American century and feeling like there's
Speaker 2: some kind of weird crusade things going on in the
Speaker 2: Middle East again in the two thousands.
Speaker 3: Oh like, when was it Bush who used the phrase
Speaker 3: crusade and then realized he had to walk that one
Speaker 3: back real quick?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah to seven years later. Just let's do it again.
Speaker 4: I have no doubt that there are certain members of
Speaker 4: certain extreme religious communities that would like nothing better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, terrorists too, like anders Brevic I think his name was.
Speaker 3: He saw himself as a new Templar, as a new crusader.
Speaker 3: But again, a lot of these a lot of folks
Speaker 3: who are who have some sort of historical association or
Speaker 3: maybe ancestry, A lot of these folks who are in
Speaker 3: organizations that claim to have descended from the templars. They're
Speaker 3: not bad, they're like a good story like almost anybody else.
Speaker 3: But there is a conspiracy of play, and it's a
Speaker 3: conspiracy about money. That's why they got wiped out.
Speaker 2: Dude, that's in power.
Speaker 3: Yeah, first to get the money, then you get the power,
Speaker 3: then King Philip comes for you. I think that's how
Speaker 3: the Little Kins song goes, right, Yeah, that's it. They
Speaker 3: got ill popd So with that, I think we've set
Speaker 3: up some episodes we want to explore in the future.
Speaker 3: We also want to hear from you guys. How cool
Speaker 3: would it be if a templar wrote to us, like
Speaker 3: an actual templar, oh from their secret underground bump bunker temple,
Speaker 3: send a picture of the head. Please do the deityfication.
Speaker 2: We really do want to hear from anybody out there
Speaker 2: who is a member of an organization that within that
Speaker 2: organization it finds ties to templars or to orders. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter if you believe it or whatever. Just
Speaker 2: does the order find its roots there somehow?
Speaker 3: Is it part of their lore?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, we would love to hear that.
Speaker 3: Also, want to go ahead and thank the people who
Speaker 3: took us up on sending your pet pictures. Get to
Speaker 3: go through some of those later today. And you know,
Speaker 3: if you've got a topic in your head, something just burning,
Speaker 3: that you want your fellow conspiracy realists to learn about,
Speaker 3: then let us know that too, or just send us puns.
Speaker 3: We're open. You know, we're easier to talk to than
Speaker 3: the Templars of old. We try to be easy to
Speaker 3: find on lot.
Speaker 2: Boy do we ever.
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