A Templar Encyclopedia - Prepared by Ray V Denslow for the Grand Commandery Knights Templar in Missouri.pdf - Wolnomularstwo - morefaya2006

Note: This material was scanned into text files for the sole purpose of

convenient electronic research. This material is NOT intended as a

reproduction of the original volumes. However close the material is to

becoming a reproduced work, it should ONLY be regarded as a textual

reference. This version was scanned , edited and copyrighted at

Phoenixmasonry by Ralph W. Omholt, PM, Librarian in June 2007.

A TEMPLAR

ENCYCLOPEDIA

Prepared by RAY V, DENSLOW for the

Grand Commandery, Knights Templar of Missouri

An Encyclopedia of the Chivalric

Rite of Freemasonry

By RAY V. DENSLOW

The poorest informed Freemasons of the American or York Rite

of Freemasonry are those belonging to the Order of Knights Templar.

The reason for this lack of information is not the fault of the individual

Templar, but because of the failure of the Grand Encampment and

Grand Commanderies to acquaint them with the facts regarding the

formation of the Order and its associated degrees (or Orders as they

prefer to call them). It is true there are encyclopedias of Freemasonry,

but the average Templar is not going to spend his time searching

through several thousand articles in an attempt to find something

concerning the Orders of Christian Knighthood. And again, he might not

recognize a Templar reference as such.

For the busy Templar, and we presume most of our colaborers

are such—we offer this condensed encyclopedia which we hope may

prove invaluable to the Templar enthusiast, enabling him to answer

some of those many requests for information. The editor is not infallible

and so will appreciate any suggestions or corrections that our readers

may find in any of the articles.

Many fallacies have crept into the story of Freemasonry and its

connection with the Crusades; we hesitate to debunk these various

claims, yet an Order founded on Truth and the practice of Christian

virtues should be the first to call attention to misstatements and

misrepresentations.

In the first place, the Order of Knights Templar, as we know it

today, is not a direct descendant of the Ancient Templars who fought to

wrest the Holy Land from the Saracen. The socalled Charter of

Larmenius, said to convey the title to the "moderns" is generally

regarded as a literary forgery. The socalled list of Grand Masters of the

Order, which many Grand Commanderies

2c FRATERNAL CORRESPONDENCE [May,

carry in the appendix of their proceedings is a feeble attempt to tie up

with our Ancient friends and serves no useful purpose except to the

printer who gets $6 or $7 per page.

The present day Templar, with the "Confederate Admiral's"

chapeau and its "flowing (sometime greying) plume" is a modern

innovation! Can you imagine one of our ancient brethren wearing one of

these headpinchers in the tropical atmosphere of the Holy Land?

We do not know who formulated the ritual of the various Orders

of Red Cross, Malta and the Temple. Whoever he may have been, he

was certainly unacquainted with history or he would never have joined

together such Orders as the Knights Hospitaler, the Order of Templars,

or the Order of Malta, for history proves that they were rival and

competitive Orders, having little to do with each other—a feeling that

resulted in many enmities and jealousies. The ritual has undergone so

many changes in the past century or more as to be unrecognizable to

our illustrious founders. Following World War I, superpatriotic

individuals added the pledge to the Flag, amplified and modified from

triennial to triennial, and so sectional as to make its use impractical

outside the U. S. A. Certainly it would not fit into the Mexican or

Philippine picture where the Grand Encampment has subordinates.

After all, it is immaterial whether we have direct connection with

the Ancient Templars, or whether we do not. We cannot live on the

reputation of our ancestors ! That has been tried out in Japan and in

China; our ancestors are just as good as they acted, and no better. Our

Templar antecedents were human beings—and history recounts they

were exceedingly human ! Some of their exploits proved their bravery,

but bravery without morality is worthless. Instead of taking the Gospel of

Christianity to the Holy Land, they brought back all of the vices of the

East.

Yet, we must pay tribute to their accomplishments, for out of all

this came the Reformation and the Renaissance.

The Crusades were great periods in our World History. We

advise our readers to study the forces at work. Here were a series of

wars brought on by religious zeal, encouraged by the Pope and the

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