Post by scarletharlot on May 10, 2011 19:36:21 GMT -8
I would like to talk about a very odd connection I have with the Knights Templar. I discussed a little bit of it on the Masonic forum of Light, but that does not seem to be the right place for it, so i will talk about it HERE. Looking back and trying to figure out where it all actually started, I realize that it actually went back to my childhood, with a curious experience I had around my tenth or eleventh year (around 1967-8) that erupted into my consciousness under curious circumstances that seemed to 'conspire' in it, and which had no explanation whatever until I read "The Second Messiah YEARS later, in the year 2000.
I call the encounter I am about to relate “subjective” because that’s what it was, although, as i said, the sequence of events seemed to 'conspire' to bring certain significant images to my attention. of course I knew nothing of them at the time, but later on, when I recalled the incident, they would take on tremendous relevance which would serve to "identify" the experience as being connected with the Knights Templar.
An observer would have seen nothing going on more remarkable than a child peering intently through the crack of a door at what was going on beyond. In the mind of that child (me) however, a horrendous turmoil of unfamiliar and inexplicable emotion was occurring, because the events taking place beyond those doors had suddenly thrown me into a completely incongruous state of mind; though there were no images evoked (for which thank God), the emotional state that had been roused in me had, for all intents and purposes, arisen completely “out of the blue”, and had no reference to anything I had ever experienced to date, or even any relevance to the events of that moment. It was not till years later, when, reading the works of the magickians of the fin-de-siecle period, I discovered reference to the actual technique of gaining “past-life experience”. There was a sentence that I found very informative: “The emotions surrounding past-life experiences are what are retrieved first”. It was this particular statement that assured me that this strange experience had been genuinely “past life”.
But I am getting ahead of myself. The actual experience took place at a wedding reception. For some reason, my mother had taken me along with her; I cannot now recall just why she did so, other than that my father was not available to go, so I expect she needed to fill his seat. I was the only child in attendance there, and I recall I was very proud to be included in an “adult” event. I was a very precocious child; very intellectually advanced for my age, and not at all troublesome in the way children usually are, so this may have been why my mother felt comfortable bringing me with her.
It was after the dinner, and the dishes and tablecloths had all been cleared away. It was the custom to have the gift opening after the banquet, so all the adults were focused on the happy couple at the head table, and not paying any attention to me, who was getting bored watching adults get all excited over adult things, like coffeepots and electric frying pans. I whispered to my mother that I had to visit the ladies’ room and she, busy with the scene and the company, nodded distractedly. I slipped out of my chair and ambled along behind the seated crowd of adults, who took no notice of me at all.
The banquet hall we were in was lighted only in the front where the couple was unwrapping gifts, and the hall was dark towards the back, where I was walking. I made my way around towards the large double doors of the kitchen, with the intriguing round windows. As I walked past them, I noticed the wide crack between the doors, and being of a curious turn of mind, decided to take a look through it and see what there was to see beyond.
All I could see, for the most part, was a large mound of snowy whiteness. Almost directly in front of the doors, two long tables had been heaped with the linen tablecloths pulled from the banquet tables only a short while before. Over to the left, I could just see the big stove and all the appurtenances of an ordinary commercial kitchen. The kitchen staff, the greater part of their work more or less over for the moment, were some distance away, standing around the stove, chatting and enjoying a moment of relaxation. There was nothing of any particular interest to me, and I was just about ready to walk away, when “it” started…
There was suddenly a cry of “Fire!” From behind the mound of tablecloths I could now see smoke was rising. I have no idea what happened to cause it, whether there was a candle there that started it or what, but there was indubitably a fire burning in the tablecloths. One of the kitchen staff rushed over with a broom to beat it out, while the others hastened to fill buckets with water, as I watched this little drama with no more than the interest proper to any child, and no awareness of danger. Then the smell of the smoke that was rapidly filling the kitchen hit my nostrils- and catching the smell of it, I was literally catapulted, from one moment to the next, into what would nowadays be called a “panic attack”.
The smell of the smoke was not particularly unpleasant; on the contrary, some might have even found it pleasant. It was not unlike frying bacon, in fact. We lived a few miles from a local meat-packing industry: Canada Packers/ Maple Leaf, and thus the smell of meat smoking was a common feature of our neigbourhood, so I was perfectly accustomed to such an aroma, and had had no previously unpleasant reactions to it, or any negative associations. But the quality of this particular smell, though hardly unfamiliar in its way, was totally different; it instantly evoked in me an incredibly intense and completely inexplicable feeling of horror and dread, as if it was associated with something so unspeakably awful that the mind refused to recall the image associated with it.
I was frozen to the spot, staring at the tableau playing out in front of me, meanwhile trying to comprehend this sudden inexplicable surge of almost unbearable horror and fear and dread that was washing over me; I could not grasp why I should suddenly feel the way I did; nothing "bad" had actually happened to cause it; it was only that strange smoke-smell filling my nostrils that had called it up. Not knowing what to do, I simply stood where I was and watched as if hypnotized, the scene in the kitchen unfold before me..
The fire had spread quite a bit through the mass of cloth before being discovered, and two of the kitchen staff grabbed and heaved up a bundle of the tablecloths, presumably to get at the smoldering parts beneath. The scene had taken on a peculiar surreal quality with the advent of this strange emotional reaction, and I remember that it seemed to me that the mass of tablecloths being held up before me looked exactly like a mummy; a human body wrapped in a linen shroud, but tipped with char and flame. Time had seemingly slowed to a crawl, and the irrational notion came to me that the burning, linen-wrapped “body” was being held up especially for my scrutiny, as though the image of such an object needed to be “impressed” on my memory.
I remember that at one point the one and only concrete conviction about the strange reaction I was having came to me very strongly: “That’s what burning bodies smell like”. Though how a eleven-year-old who had never even seen a dead human body at the time (much less smelt one burning) would know such a thing has no other explanation than “anamnesis”: memories of things recalled from another life. I was actually confirmed in the conviction about the nature of the smell a couple of years later, when I read an eyewitness account in Readers' Digest ("The Last Days of the Third Reich" I seem to recall) of the final days of the Third Reich, the suicide of Hitler and his mistress, and the burning of the bodies ; the witness described the smell of them as being like “burning bacon”. I immediately recalled this odd experience to mind upon reading those words, but was as yet no closer to understanding its import…
But I digress. Finally the fire was put out, and the back door thrown open to help dispel the smoke in the kitchen. No hint of the semi-emergency in the kitchen had reached the wedding reception; I could hear the crowd all faintly laughing and talking behind me. The whole event had only lasted a few minutes, yet it felt like a small eternity. I realize now that I was fortunate that the fire had been contained and no one from the kitchen had found it necessary to run out into the main hall; frozen as I was with that strange horror, I probably would have been badly hurt from being hit in the face with the kitchen doors! As it was, the cold air rushing in snapped me out of my strange trance, and I slowly moved away from the doors and continued on to the ladies’ room, my knees still shaking.
The odd, inexplicable feeling of dread and horror was still lingering, and when I re-entered the hall and caught once again a faint whiff of that strange sickly-sweet smoke smell that had drifted out in faint whiffs from the kitchen, I wished only to leave that place and get away from the disquieting churn of emotions that odd smell continued to evoke in me. Finally, to my great relief, my mother announced our departure, and we got our coats and took our leave. I never mentioned the strange event that had taken place; I knew it was no use to talk about it to her or to anyone–what would I say?-and so I never mentioned it, and more or less forgot it, recalling it only briefly, when I read the aforementioned passage in Readers' Digest
Decades later, in the year 2000, however, I encountered the books “The Hiram Key” and “The Second Messiah”. While reading the graphic account of the last days of the Knights Templar, their theory as to the origin of the image on the Shroud of Turin, and the torture, suffering and death of the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, I found myself breaking down in sobs again and again, as though the event concerned me personally in some way. The story of the brave defiance of the great Templar Grand Master, standing tall before Notre Dame and proclaiming before all Paris the innocence of the Temple, and the agonizing death by “slow fire”, of both he and his right-hand man, Geoffroi de Charney, affected me so deeply I could hardly read for the tears pouring down my face.
Finally I had to stop reading. I put the book aside, and decided to meditate. But my mind persisted in going back to the terrible scene on the Ile de Javier so many centuries before, of Jacques de Molay tied to the stake, his legs being slowly burnt away…and a thought came to me: the smell of burning flesh must have been absolutely sickening…and that is when it hit me… the memory of that strange event years before, and my completely inexplicable reaction upon catching the peculiar "burning body" stench of those scorched tablecloths and the strange image of the “linen-wrapped body” being held up before me burst into my awareness-and I knew with absolute conviction that I finally had my “explanation” for the events lurking behind that mysterious, inexplicable, yet completely horrifying "past-life recollection" of my childhood…
I call the encounter I am about to relate “subjective” because that’s what it was, although, as i said, the sequence of events seemed to 'conspire' to bring certain significant images to my attention. of course I knew nothing of them at the time, but later on, when I recalled the incident, they would take on tremendous relevance which would serve to "identify" the experience as being connected with the Knights Templar.
An observer would have seen nothing going on more remarkable than a child peering intently through the crack of a door at what was going on beyond. In the mind of that child (me) however, a horrendous turmoil of unfamiliar and inexplicable emotion was occurring, because the events taking place beyond those doors had suddenly thrown me into a completely incongruous state of mind; though there were no images evoked (for which thank God), the emotional state that had been roused in me had, for all intents and purposes, arisen completely “out of the blue”, and had no reference to anything I had ever experienced to date, or even any relevance to the events of that moment. It was not till years later, when, reading the works of the magickians of the fin-de-siecle period, I discovered reference to the actual technique of gaining “past-life experience”. There was a sentence that I found very informative: “The emotions surrounding past-life experiences are what are retrieved first”. It was this particular statement that assured me that this strange experience had been genuinely “past life”.
But I am getting ahead of myself. The actual experience took place at a wedding reception. For some reason, my mother had taken me along with her; I cannot now recall just why she did so, other than that my father was not available to go, so I expect she needed to fill his seat. I was the only child in attendance there, and I recall I was very proud to be included in an “adult” event. I was a very precocious child; very intellectually advanced for my age, and not at all troublesome in the way children usually are, so this may have been why my mother felt comfortable bringing me with her.
It was after the dinner, and the dishes and tablecloths had all been cleared away. It was the custom to have the gift opening after the banquet, so all the adults were focused on the happy couple at the head table, and not paying any attention to me, who was getting bored watching adults get all excited over adult things, like coffeepots and electric frying pans. I whispered to my mother that I had to visit the ladies’ room and she, busy with the scene and the company, nodded distractedly. I slipped out of my chair and ambled along behind the seated crowd of adults, who took no notice of me at all.
The banquet hall we were in was lighted only in the front where the couple was unwrapping gifts, and the hall was dark towards the back, where I was walking. I made my way around towards the large double doors of the kitchen, with the intriguing round windows. As I walked past them, I noticed the wide crack between the doors, and being of a curious turn of mind, decided to take a look through it and see what there was to see beyond.
All I could see, for the most part, was a large mound of snowy whiteness. Almost directly in front of the doors, two long tables had been heaped with the linen tablecloths pulled from the banquet tables only a short while before. Over to the left, I could just see the big stove and all the appurtenances of an ordinary commercial kitchen. The kitchen staff, the greater part of their work more or less over for the moment, were some distance away, standing around the stove, chatting and enjoying a moment of relaxation. There was nothing of any particular interest to me, and I was just about ready to walk away, when “it” started…
There was suddenly a cry of “Fire!” From behind the mound of tablecloths I could now see smoke was rising. I have no idea what happened to cause it, whether there was a candle there that started it or what, but there was indubitably a fire burning in the tablecloths. One of the kitchen staff rushed over with a broom to beat it out, while the others hastened to fill buckets with water, as I watched this little drama with no more than the interest proper to any child, and no awareness of danger. Then the smell of the smoke that was rapidly filling the kitchen hit my nostrils- and catching the smell of it, I was literally catapulted, from one moment to the next, into what would nowadays be called a “panic attack”.
The smell of the smoke was not particularly unpleasant; on the contrary, some might have even found it pleasant. It was not unlike frying bacon, in fact. We lived a few miles from a local meat-packing industry: Canada Packers/ Maple Leaf, and thus the smell of meat smoking was a common feature of our neigbourhood, so I was perfectly accustomed to such an aroma, and had had no previously unpleasant reactions to it, or any negative associations. But the quality of this particular smell, though hardly unfamiliar in its way, was totally different; it instantly evoked in me an incredibly intense and completely inexplicable feeling of horror and dread, as if it was associated with something so unspeakably awful that the mind refused to recall the image associated with it.
I was frozen to the spot, staring at the tableau playing out in front of me, meanwhile trying to comprehend this sudden inexplicable surge of almost unbearable horror and fear and dread that was washing over me; I could not grasp why I should suddenly feel the way I did; nothing "bad" had actually happened to cause it; it was only that strange smoke-smell filling my nostrils that had called it up. Not knowing what to do, I simply stood where I was and watched as if hypnotized, the scene in the kitchen unfold before me..
The fire had spread quite a bit through the mass of cloth before being discovered, and two of the kitchen staff grabbed and heaved up a bundle of the tablecloths, presumably to get at the smoldering parts beneath. The scene had taken on a peculiar surreal quality with the advent of this strange emotional reaction, and I remember that it seemed to me that the mass of tablecloths being held up before me looked exactly like a mummy; a human body wrapped in a linen shroud, but tipped with char and flame. Time had seemingly slowed to a crawl, and the irrational notion came to me that the burning, linen-wrapped “body” was being held up especially for my scrutiny, as though the image of such an object needed to be “impressed” on my memory.
I remember that at one point the one and only concrete conviction about the strange reaction I was having came to me very strongly: “That’s what burning bodies smell like”. Though how a eleven-year-old who had never even seen a dead human body at the time (much less smelt one burning) would know such a thing has no other explanation than “anamnesis”: memories of things recalled from another life. I was actually confirmed in the conviction about the nature of the smell a couple of years later, when I read an eyewitness account in Readers' Digest ("The Last Days of the Third Reich" I seem to recall) of the final days of the Third Reich, the suicide of Hitler and his mistress, and the burning of the bodies ; the witness described the smell of them as being like “burning bacon”. I immediately recalled this odd experience to mind upon reading those words, but was as yet no closer to understanding its import…
But I digress. Finally the fire was put out, and the back door thrown open to help dispel the smoke in the kitchen. No hint of the semi-emergency in the kitchen had reached the wedding reception; I could hear the crowd all faintly laughing and talking behind me. The whole event had only lasted a few minutes, yet it felt like a small eternity. I realize now that I was fortunate that the fire had been contained and no one from the kitchen had found it necessary to run out into the main hall; frozen as I was with that strange horror, I probably would have been badly hurt from being hit in the face with the kitchen doors! As it was, the cold air rushing in snapped me out of my strange trance, and I slowly moved away from the doors and continued on to the ladies’ room, my knees still shaking.
The odd, inexplicable feeling of dread and horror was still lingering, and when I re-entered the hall and caught once again a faint whiff of that strange sickly-sweet smoke smell that had drifted out in faint whiffs from the kitchen, I wished only to leave that place and get away from the disquieting churn of emotions that odd smell continued to evoke in me. Finally, to my great relief, my mother announced our departure, and we got our coats and took our leave. I never mentioned the strange event that had taken place; I knew it was no use to talk about it to her or to anyone–what would I say?-and so I never mentioned it, and more or less forgot it, recalling it only briefly, when I read the aforementioned passage in Readers' Digest
Decades later, in the year 2000, however, I encountered the books “The Hiram Key” and “The Second Messiah”. While reading the graphic account of the last days of the Knights Templar, their theory as to the origin of the image on the Shroud of Turin, and the torture, suffering and death of the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, I found myself breaking down in sobs again and again, as though the event concerned me personally in some way. The story of the brave defiance of the great Templar Grand Master, standing tall before Notre Dame and proclaiming before all Paris the innocence of the Temple, and the agonizing death by “slow fire”, of both he and his right-hand man, Geoffroi de Charney, affected me so deeply I could hardly read for the tears pouring down my face.
Finally I had to stop reading. I put the book aside, and decided to meditate. But my mind persisted in going back to the terrible scene on the Ile de Javier so many centuries before, of Jacques de Molay tied to the stake, his legs being slowly burnt away…and a thought came to me: the smell of burning flesh must have been absolutely sickening…and that is when it hit me… the memory of that strange event years before, and my completely inexplicable reaction upon catching the peculiar "burning body" stench of those scorched tablecloths and the strange image of the “linen-wrapped body” being held up before me burst into my awareness-and I knew with absolute conviction that I finally had my “explanation” for the events lurking behind that mysterious, inexplicable, yet completely horrifying "past-life recollection" of my childhood…
