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The rise of modern Gnosticism, part 1

There is a powerful Gnostic element within the power structure of the Roman Catholic Church today. There is a long history of infiltration by Gnostics pretending to be devout Catholics but whose purpose has been to gain control and then to change Church doctrines—and even Church history itself—for their own purposes. This movement has been gaining strength for centuries and has recently gained sufficient confidence to come out into the open.

Ancient Gnosticism had been confined largely to the Middle East after the Church successfully rooted the Gnostics from its midst through the teachings of the apostles—especially John. Its roots remained, however, among a particular bloodline that believed itself to be descended directly from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. This bloodline traces itself back to the Merovingian kings, which began with a man named Meroveus, who died about 456 A.D.

His bloodline, combined with the Carolingians, claim the divine right to rule the earth by virtue of being direct descendants of Jesus. This claim, I believe, was designed to upend the Catholic view of papal authority over the nations, which was based on a spiritual succession through Peter. The dispute over the centuries was whether spiritual apostolic success took precedence over actual bloodline.

As time passed, this dispute was largely defined in the power struggle between the popes and the kings of Europe who all came eventually into the Merovingian bloodline, if not directly, then through marriage. Nonetheless, it appears that the public as a whole were unaware of the real basis of this power struggle. All they knew was that various powerful families had their own representatives among the Cardinals in Rome and that popes were selected according to their agreements and alliances. When popes were finally selected, however, this was always attributed to the working of the Holy Spirit, who works in “mysterious ways.”

The Crusades

The rise of Islam in the seventh century, and its conquest of Jerusalem, eventually sparked the Crusades, beginning in 1099. They received a huge boost when Godfroi de Bouillon was made King of Jerusalem in 1099, for he was of the Merovingian bloodline and thus had a personal interest in establishing Merovingian power. When Jerusalem was lost again in 1187, the prestige of the Merovingians suffered a setback, but they retreated to their base in the southern French region of Provence and Languedoc.

The Knights Templar were organized with a two-fold mission. On the surface, they provided military might to help take back Jerusalem, hoping ultimately to build the third temple from the description in the latter chapters of Ezekiel and to establish the Merovingian kings as the virtual kings of the world’s foremost metropolis in Jerusalem. To accomplish this, they also sought to resolve the dispute (schism) in the Church, and so, in 1118 nine Knights Crusaders, including Geoffroi de Saint-Omer and Hugues de Payens, took an oath to the Patriarch of Constantinople to protect Orthodox Christians as well as those who were submitted to the Roman pontiff.

The Orthodox Church had already split from Rome in 1054, a generation before the Crusades began. The Templars hoped to overtake both sides and unite them under the greater authority of a line of kings in Jerusalem, who traced their supposed descent from Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

While the Templars were in Jerusalem, they came into contact with a Gnostic sect which may have actually converted them to Gnosticism. Albert Pike wrote in his Morals and Dogma of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, pages 816-817,

“The secret thought of Hughes de Payens, in founding his Order, was not exactly to serve the ambition of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. There existed at that period in the East a Sect of Johannite Christians, who claimed to be the only true Initiates into the real mysteries of the religion of the Saviour. They pretended to know the real history of Yesus the Anointed, and, adopting in part the Jewish traditions and the tales of the Talmud, they held that the facts recounted in the Evangels are but allegories, the key of which Saint John gives, in saying that the world might be filled with the books that could be written upon the words and deeds of Jesus Christ….”

Pike tells us further on page 817…

“Saint John himself was the Father of the Gnostics, and the current translation of his polemic against the heretical of his Sect and the pagans who denied that Christ was the Word, is throughout a misrepresentation, or misunderstanding at least, of the whole Spirit of the Evangel.”

The belief, of course, is that Gnosticism represents true Christianity and that John’s gospel was not really anti-Gnostic at all. In other words, rather than fight with John, the Gnostics decided to embrace him and to reinterpret his gospel to reflect favorably upon Gnostic teaching! To do so, they had to allegorize his statements and to cut it loose from actual history. We will say more about this later.

The Secret Mission

A more secret mission, however, was to find the temple treasure that the Romans had missed in 70 A.D. when Jerusalem was destroyed.

That temple treasure was located in a cavern under the temple mount. The Templars discovered it and transported it to southern France by 1124 A.D., leaving in its place only a broken Templar sword to be discovered long afterward. This treasure gave the Templars great power and influence, and it was used to build dozens of huge cathedrals across Europe, as well as to establish the beginnings of the modern banking system.

Such building projects required skilled architects, who designed the cathedrals according to Gnostic spiritual principles and numbers. Hence, Freemasons benefited from Templar employment, and soon the two groups were linked together in their religious beliefs and practices. In fact, Albert Pike makes it clear that Scottish Rite Freemasonry is a “temple” and that its adherents are “knights” in the tradition of the Knights Templar. Hence, the Templars and Freemasons largely merged as one, as many of them were members of both organizations.

Their interest in the Jerusalem temple seems to have motivated them to become skilled in temple building, but because the political situation did not allow them to build a temple in Jerusalem, they turned to building cathedrals throughout Europe. Many were named or dedicated to “Mary.” The public was told that these were being dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but privately, they were dedicated to Mary Magdalene, for the Templars had turned to Merovingian Gnosticism. Thus, they began the long process of using their wealth to rise to positions of power within the Roman Church, so that they could subvert and change it to a Gnostic Church.

The Templars Forced Underground

For two centuries the Templars grew in strength and power, and eventually, their wealth and power alarmed both King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V of Rome. They coordinated their plans and suppressed the Templars, arresting them on October 13, 1307. Many escaped, however, while others joined other Orders to provide cover for the remaining Templars who continued to meet secretly.

The Templar wealth had been well hidden, and much of it had been relocated to other places. But the Templar Order itself lost its legal and religious status as an approved Order of the Catholic Church. By the early 1600’s it had become an Order within an Order, largely merging with Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism until they were able to find an inroad within the Church itself.

Many of the suppressed Knights moved to Spain and Portugal, where they distinguished themselves in fighting the Islamic Moors who had occupied Spain since 711 A.D. When the Moors were finally expelled from Spain in 1492 by Queen Isabella, the knights were rewarded with the lands and castles previously owned by the Moors. Among these was Don Beltrán Yañez de Oñaz y Loyola, who had been given the castle at Loyola. His son, Inigo, born in 1491, was destined to establish the Jesuit Order. He is known commonly as Ignatius Loyola.

The Jesuit Order was a military order, whose disciplines were strangely reminiscent of the Templars in early centuries. I have no direct evidence, but there is circumstantial evidence to link the Templars with the Jesuits. I suspect that the Jesuit Order was actually a secret Templar plan to gain power within the Roman Church, pretending to be devoted to the pope but actually planning to take over the papacy and then introduce Gnosticism gradually.

Hence, it is of interest to us that Pope Francis is the first Jesuit pope and that he has already begun to overturn long-established Catholic doctrines.