I Remember Jacques de Molay

Bonjour et bonsoir, mes amis,

Welcome back to another post-it note here where the photons do glow.

Just wanted to drop a few lines about Friday the 13th.



Fridays and the number 13 have been characterized by negative superstitions since before The Da Vinci Code was published. Long known as a kind of "day of bad luck", Friday the 13th is also steeped in conspiracy culture and its occult power reaches back to many deep secrets that lie at the heart of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Vatican, the Knights Templar, the founding of Freemasonry and the roots of international banking. Whether you believe the origins of "Friday the 13th" have anything to do with the Knights Templar, you've got to admit the intersection is a fun one to consider.



Here's some skinny from the Wiki(although they seem to deny a connection between the date and the fall of the KT):

On Friday, October 13, 1307 (a date sometimes incorrectly linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition)[24][25] Philip ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The Templars were charged with numerous offenses (including apostasy, idolatry, heresy, "obscene rituals" and homosexuality, corruption and fraud, and secrecy).[26] Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture, and these confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. After more bullying from Philip, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.[27]



Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310 Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.[28][29]

With Philip threatening military action unless the Pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the Order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in excelso, which officially dissolved the Order, and Ad providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.[31]

As for the leaders of the Order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his statement. His associate Geoffrey de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, followed de Molay's example and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer.[32] According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.[33]

With the last of the Order's leaders gone, the remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller, or pensioned and allowed to live out their days peacefully. Some may have fled to other territories outside Papal control, such as excommunicated Scotland or to Switzerland. Templar organizations in Portugal simply changed their name, from Knights Templar to Knights of Christ.[34]

Here at Insomnia, we associate these days with the undoing of Jacques de Molay and his Knights as well as with my birthday which I have always felt protects me from other "superstitions" like walking under ladders etc. When a black cat crosses my trail I feel "hey, I must be onto something". In other words, I feel that being born on a 13th gives me a kind of astral-immuno-booster, defending me from lesser demons and the frivolity of negative thinking.

For those of us who may feel a day like today to be frought with peril, here are the last words of the Templar's last leader, Jacques de Molay, right before he was executed by the Pope and King Philip IV. As you'll see, Jacques gets the last laugh:

"It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret."



The execution of Jacques DeMolay Reports say they were slowly roasted over a hot, smokeless fire prolonging their agony as their flesh slowly cooked and blackened. Jacques DeMolay insisted that his hands were not to be bound so that he could pray in his final moments and before he died he cursed both Philip and Pope Clement, summoning both of them to appear before God, the supreme judge, before the year was out. His last words were, "Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us." Guy of Advernge is reported to have added, "I shall follow the way of my master as a martyr you have killed him. You have done and know not. God willing, on this day, I shall die in the Order like him."

The chilling irony of the conclusion of this story is that Jacques DeMolay's final words did, in fact, come true. Pope Clement V died only a month later on April 20th (he is suspected of having cancer of the bowel) and Philip IV was killed while on a hunting trip on November 29th 1314. True to the claim both men did indeed die within the year of Jacques DeMolay's own death.

Have a good day everyone.

Watch out for false benefactors.

Love, Joe
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Love,
Joe Nolan