Heretics of the Temple?

Previously posted on November 25, 2020

"Restoring the Temple of Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture" is a peculiar book by American scholar Marsha Keith Schuchard. So far, I only read 284 pages of this 800-page "door stopper", but I decided to make some preliminary comments anyway!

Schuchard's main thesis is that "Scottish" Rite Freemasonry really did come from Scotland and that the notorious Schwärmer Chevalier Ramsay (who claimed that the Rite had an ancient and illustrious pedigree) may not have been entirely wrong. A startling claim, on the face of it! What *is* clear is that the kind of esotericism which attracted many people during the 18th century, had earlier roots in the Renaissance. The 17th century Rosicrucians (studied by Frances Yates) could perhaps be seen as a kind of proto-Masons. 

Schuchard believes that the rabbit hole goes deeper. She attempts to trace the Masonic tradition to the Knights Templar, Jewish trade-guilds and Kabbalistic mystics all the way back to the First Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. In this scenario, the Templars really were "heretics" or heterodox. Even more controversially, the author believes that the mystical secrets are sexual or erotic in nature. I suppose the word "Tantric" could usefully be inserted here.

Today, many believe that original Israelite religion was polytheist. Referencing "The Hebrew Goddess" by Jewish historian Raphael Patai, Schuchard claims that it was also an orgiastic fertility cult. The two cherubs in the Holy of Holies were intertwined in sexual embrace. After the final destruction of the Second Temple, a kind of Temple cult survived among the mystics, who "interiorized" it. The Jewish mystics could "see" the Temple and meet God in anthropomorphic form during their ecstatic visionary experiences. The mysticism was often erotic in nature. This later became the Kabbala, which also included manipulations of Hebrew letters, speculations about cosmic geometry, and the like. Some Christian mystics were influenced by this kind of Jewish mysticism including Erigena and Raymond Lull. The latter had also studied Sufism.

At first glance, the connection between this and actual stone masons seem pretty remote. Schuchard believes otherwise. The builders of temples, synagogues, and cathedrals were skilled artisans and architects with closed guild organizations. The knowledge of how to build large structures was almost "esoteric". Sometimes it was literally esoteric, since religious buildings often had an intricate symbolism, known only to the priesthood and the builders. Jewish master builders probably knew about Temple lore and mysticism, since synagogues and other Jewish buildings attempted to mimic certain traits (or supposed traits) of Solomon's Temple. The Temple was a representation of the cosmos and God's presence in it. Hence the connection between geometry and mysticism, so baffling at first sight. Just as God had used sacred geometry to create the world, the builders used it to erect a building symbolizing God's creation. Schuchard believes that the so-called Art of Memory, a mnemonic technique popularized by Giordano Bruno during the Renaissance, comes from the Jewish builders. It also influenced Raymond Lull. Above all, the splendid Gothic architecture of the High Middle Ages is a Jewish influence on the Christians, mediated through Muslim Spain. This points to a connection between Christian and Jewish masons (or at least their lore).

The traditional Christian take on the Jewish Temple is that its destruction by the Romans in AD 70 was a good thing, a fitting divine punishment for the Jewish rejection of Jesus. Schuchard doesn't explain why Christians eventually began to revere the old Temple instead, but the change was obvious in the case of the Knight Templar, whose very name indicate the reversal. During the crusade, the Templars guarded Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Muslim Dome on the Rock had been converted to a Christian church. Many Templar churches in Europe were circular, apparently in the belief that the original Temple of Solomon had looked this way (perhaps the Muslims believed the same thing - the Dome is circular). Schuchard's theory is that this peculiar Christian cult of the Temple must have been the result of Jewish influence on the crusading knights!

Everyone familiar with "Ivanhoe" of course "knows" that Templars were proto-Nazis with a penchant for anti-Semitic witch-burning, but reality turns out to have been more complex. As I pointed out in another blog post, Jews were usually not persecuted in Christian Spain before the 14th century. Schuchard points out that there was a prominent Jewish family in Aragon called "the Men of the Temple". One of their members was known as Judah de la Cavalleria (Judah the Knight)! He closely worked with both the king and the Knights Templar. In crusader-controlled Acre, there was almost 1,000 Jews, many of them rabbis. They supported the crusaders against the Muslim Mamluks. Apparently, Jews were also involved in the trade and banking operations of the Templars. While this doesn't prove much in and of itself, it at least shows that the Templars weren't hermetically sealed off from the rest of medieval society (which included many Jews).

The next landfall is in Scotland, where Scottish Freemasons would emerge centuries later during the Early Modern Period. During the Middle Ages, the Scots developed some pretty peculiar legends. They were supposed to be descended from a Greek mercenary in ancient Egypt who married a daughter of the Pharaoh. There were also "Jewish" connections. The Scottish royal coronation stone, the Stone of Scone, supposedly belonged to the Biblical patriarch Jacob. The Scots identified themselves with the Maccabees, who had cleansed and rededicated the Temple. One Scottish king, actually called David I, was associated with the Knights Templar. A guild of builders based in Scotland had an extremely complex founding myth involving Hermes and Pythagoras alongside Biblical characters, suggestive of the previously mentioned connection between operative masonry and speculative esotericism. It's not entirely clear whether Schuchard believes in the popular story that some French Templars managed to escape persecution by absconding to Scotland, where they aided Robert the Bruce at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. The Templars already existed in Scotland and may simply have switched their allegiance.

I admit that I found "Restoring the Temple of Vision" interesting. A quick search on the web confirms many of the references. Still, I have two problems with the book so far. First, I find it difficult to believe in a single "tradition" going back 2,500 years. Constantly evolving traditions interacting with each other in a slightly chaotic fashion seems more likely. Another problem is that no direct evidence for Templar heterodoxy seem to exist.

Yet, something nevertheless struck me when reading Schuchard. The Bible actually contains an erotic poem attributed to Solomon. Yes, that would be the Song of Songs. One of the greatest mystics during the Middle Ages based his "bride-chamber mysticism" on it. His name was Bernhard of Clairvaux. And Bernhard was the foremost inspiration behind...the Knights Templar.

Hiding in plain sight?