The Templar’s Bowl
by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 16: Relics
“They are the power of faith, the voice of God, but they are not what we search for.” Beaumond was covered in sweat and dirt. The tunnels were having their way with him. His fair complexion was turning a pasty, chalky white as he stayed below, endlessly picking and shoveling.
Andres had cracked the wall open and cleared away enough of a space to enter into the chamber. He was calling for Beaumond now. He had found something, a thing of great import. I put my arm out, grabbed Beaumond by the shoulder, and pushed him away from the wall. In the dim light we had to feel along the wall for the entrance. There in the dark, Andres held a staff in his hands. His hair had turned gray and he no longer had the boyish looks of his family. He seemed to be losing consciousness. I reached out my hand to help him, but Geofray grabbed my arm and pulled it back. Andres had found the Great Staff of Moses, and it was now his charge to care for and protect. What he was experiencing was the spiritual rapture that came with an object that had known the face and voice of God. It now fell upon Andres’ back with the weight of God’s cross, and his life would forever be changed.
I never did find the Holy Grail, though before I departed I rummaged through the treasure cave for hours looking, for Theo said I had brought it to the new country as well. I found segments of the Cross upon which the Master died, a fragment of the crown of thorns He wore, the Veil of Veronica, Sacred Scrolls of the life of the Christ found in the wastelands of Jerusalem, and every other relic the Templars had found through their times. For some of these, I had been there when they were recovered. These objects, and others, were the true wealth of the Templars. These objects are so out of context in secular hands that their meaning and value are often lost in the myths and misunderstandings that have grown about them. Yet their power on and over mankind can be dramatic.
In all the years I’ve lived through, I have seen few relics that were, by themselves, able to produce a miracle or a miraculous end. These sad items own no miraculous or—as is often the misunderstanding—magical powers. These ‘things’ have crossed paths with the Infinite, and the encounter may leave an impression on them which elevates them beyond our reality, our five senses, to that place which is our true sixth sense: the realm of the Spiritual. But most are only a reflection of the faith in the human soul. For example, Christ left the imprint of His face on Veronica’s veil as an acknowledgement of her compassion and courage. Few women would have given comfort to a condemned man in the midst of Roman soldiers. Christ left his image upon it—through his Divinity, not because of it, and certainly not because of anything the veil did! Yet by having touched the face of the Christ at the hour of mankind’s redemption did that piece of cloth cross the threshold into the mystical, and those who believe may draw its power.
There are certain relics though, that are in themselves objects of immense power: the Arc of the Covenant, the Spear of Destiny. and especially the most powerful of all objects found by the Templar: the Holy Grail. Everything you know, think you know, or assume about Grail lore with a basis in truth... IS FALSE! The Grail and its intermingling with Arthurian Legend is the working of several very creative young writers from the Middle Ages on—and we paid them well for their work. They wrote well and, over substantial periods of time, people began to accept their writings as at least partially the truth (as we had desired). As rumors rose throughout history, Templars found ways to divert attention away from the truth of the Grail. Our best ruse, in my opinion, was to create the rumor that the Grail was in fact ‘Royal Blood,’ referring to a living relative of Christ. It even had a genealogy affixed to the rumor that made it all seem plausible. Then, f you preferred a tangible item to a distant relative, the Sinclairs of Scotland even started a myth that the Grail was incorporated into the building of their chapel at Templar request, and its walls enfolded it forever.
As far as I may attest, the only truth in all this is that Templars found the Grail. We never let it away from our care to the hands of a ruler or pope, its divine power being so overwhelming. It’s proximity to the redemption of mankind, with all its spiritual and human nuances, have left it with the power for good over evil—or evil over good. It is capable of bringing total peace to the world, but whether it is the peace of the temple or the tomb cannot be known. Only a handful of the Order, Beaumond for one, have ever known its whereabouts or the secret of its power. Through all the myths and legends, and on the word of a small passage in a Holy book, Mary Magdalene’s (not Joseph of Aramathea’s) alabaster cup caught the blood of Christ, and it could cure all illness merely by being drunk from. But all I could really learn of the True Grail is that Templars have found it, have kept it hidden, and have kept it in constant service to mankind... whatever that means.
But the relic of my tale is not a Grail, per se, but a weapon. The story is of John 19:31-37... or at least enough of a story to create a myth. It is a spear nearly two millennia old, no longer attached to its shaft. A Roman hasta close to twelve feet long, owned by a nearly blind Roman soldier by the name of Gaius Cassius who, assisted at executions (being no longer useful as a warrior). As an act of mercy he felt compelled to offer, he used the spear to reach up and press a vinegar-saturated sponge to the mouths of those suffering on the cross, as the vinegar acted as mild sedative. The hasta and its unorthodox use served little good to make this dim-sighted soldier popular with his officers. Gaius had been a good man, pagan or not, but as his sight disappeared so did his faith. It was only a matter of time before the army he had served his whole life would no longer have any use for him. The universe would leave him a blind beggar. How strange, that a man who no longer believed in gods should offer mercy to One in the same fashion as he did to all mortal men! God does not let such deeds die in silence. When Longinus, another soldier of not quite so humanitarian leanings, pierced the side of Christ with his hasta, drops of the Master’s Blood fell into the eyes of Cassius, his eyes were opened, and he saw! And what he saw caused him to weep, knowing now that all the rumors that he had heard of this Nazarene were true.
When the body was taken down from the cross and removed for burial, Gaius went back, took a nail drawn from the hand of Christ before it could be reused, and placed it firmly in the hollow of the body of the spearhead, that he might always remember. He returned to duty as a soldier, never again crucifying another soul. He removed the spearhead from the shaft, and attached it to one of half its height. In less than a year, through valor this once nearly-blind warrior was promoted to Centurion. In battle, he could not be defeated! A sip of Vinegar for a life of Valor; not a bad trade for a warrior.
So began the legend of the Spear of Destiny.
Every warrior who possessed it knew no defeat on the battlefield or in life while the spear was in his hands. Constantine, Alaric the barbarian who sacked Rome, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, Frederick of Barbarossa, Frederick II, and many more, all went into battle with the spear in their hands. But if they dropped it, their power, whether for good or evil, would be broken. And so it was. Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa, and many others were defeated when the spear passed from their hands beyond their control.
The myth became so powerful through the Middle Ages that several spears appeared after the first, which had been displayed in 570 A.D. in the Basilica of Mount Sion in Jerusalem. That spear, I believe, worked its way to the Sultan Bajet in the fourteenth century, who presented it to Pope Innocent VIII in 1409. I’ve seen that one as well as the one claimed by Peter Bartholomew in1098 while on Crusade in Antioch. Supposedly Andrew the Apostle, in a dream, told Peter where it was buried. When he appeared several days later with an old rusted spearhead, it so charged the Christian Army that they rose up and defeated a great Muslim armed force waiting to sack the city they were defending. There are several others, all claiming to be the Spear, but the true spear became the property of Saint Maurice, complete with a nail from the Cross. By the twentieth century it rested in the Hofsberg Museum in Vienna. And there in 1909, a nineteen-year-old Adolph Hitler saw a vision of his future while staring at it. And in subsequent visits, the Spear of Destiny showed him that his future was to conquer the world. The more Hitler embraced the power of the spear, the more his belief in the occult grew, and the grayer the line between religion and magic became to him. When the Nazis annexed Austria, the spear fell into their hands and the nature of war was changed forever. With the lancehead now in the hands of sadistic madmen, man’s inhumanity towards man climbed to new heights of depravity, and would stay with war from then on.
Seeking to justify their insanity, they turned to magic, then made that magic State Religion. The Norse Hammer of Thor, the Indian Swastika, the recreation of Ultima Thule... it didn’t matter where the power object came from, the Nazis found a way to pull it into the sphere of depraved Aryanism. Hitler’s high priest, Himmler, drew from the whole of history to obtain and perpetuate the supernatural for the Nazis to use as weapons of war. His Ahnenerbe, or Archeologists, crisscrossed the world seeking all manner of the sacred—the Grail, the Arc of the Covenant, documentation that the Christ was actually Arian... the false word being given that his father was a Roman Soldier. Himmler’s twisted mind drew from Templar lore and Teutonic Knight trappings and bled them into his SchutzStaffel, the SS. The SS, which essentially meant ‘protection unit,’ was born in 1925 to protect Hitler. But in secret, Himmler’s SS stood for Schwarze Sonne, or Black Sun, a thing that could bring enlightenment and great spiritual power to these men of the SS, to be harnessed and used as weapons of war and conquest. His SS took on a pagan aura, yet Himmler said he modeled these wicked men on the Knights of Saint John’s Hospital and the Poor Knights of the Temple Mount. As the atrocities and insanities built, because of the sacred relics being so perverted, the flow of time bent and a cry of shame and grief ushered forth from the groups of honest souls so offended. It was as if time itself had been offended.
Himmler’s mentality was itself Medieval. As Templar castles had been of sacred geometric design, so Himmler chose Wewelsburg Castle, a triangular castle nearly geometrically perfect built between 1603 and 1609 over ground that had been used as a castle since the ninth century. These unhappy stones became a bastion of evil like no other. As the Temple Mount served the Templar Army, Wewelsburg Castle served as the point in space and time from which the Nazis’ most powerful magic was dispensed. As a base of the SS to dispense the supernatural from, Himmler taught his disciples they were the Noble Class, and had them wear the Death’s Head insignia—a fitting symbol for those assigned the final solution—and he assured them that as part of the killing squads, these horrific murders were both needed and noble in order to keep the German community pure. Madness can be contagious, and soon Hitler and Himmler’s sick belief in world conquest and racial superiority snaked through the army, then through the very soul of the German people. Yet it was not at Wewelsburg Castle, but in the vault built beneath the church of Saint Catherine that the sacred relics stolen by Hitler were kept—I suspect to keep them from Himmler’s complete control.
It is an easy thing to fix blame. We say Germany was insane, yet there is little ever said of the insane reparations placed on Germany after the Great War—more than any nation could repay—with no one accepting blame for the misery that such self-righteous governmental sadism caused the German people. Once in time, I had sat upon the deck of a great warship and watched men sink into the sea or be pulled out to live as slaves. Instead of going and sinning no more, I told myself it was a perfectly right thing to do, as they would do the same to me... and in no time at all, I was perfectly fine to go on my way and kill again, as others for similar reasoning would do unto me.
But this was different. The Nazis had dragged forces they could not control into their insanity, and as they drew further into their lunacy, the greater their desire to find the Templar horde grew. In secret they had learned of the many relics we possessed, all of great spiritual power—and Himmler, through any means, would have them. From what means I knew not, for they had gained ancient maps that attested of ventures to the shores of Canada by Templars. Although exactly where along the mapped shoreline the horde was hidden, they knew not... but in their minds, it was there for sure.
Ancient cultures, cultures we call ‘primitive,’ will tell you right off that it is unwise to offend the dead, as they will extract their revenge. This was the great Nazi oversight, and the reason for my being. I had wandered in the course of time, led by my mentors through centuries of training and, while none of us knew why, we were all certain of a reason existing. The dead, by themselves, can do nothing unless influenced by the living. And the dead wanted their relics back from the living who had stolen them, perverted them, and stolen their dignity.
Before this task be done, I would know more of the Templar soul than anyone. And there were others; others who hung their heads even in Heaven’s Light because they had been used and shamed by these descendants of theirs. But more than revenge, the power of the Spear was beyond the force of good as long as Hitler kept it safe in his vault. If Himmler learned the true power of Cassius’ spear, nothing on earth would stop the Nazi armies in their conquests.
And there was more at stake. Three spirits were sworn to defend a great treasure and the sacred items contained there. And my evolvement? Why was a near-useless body chosen to defend against the greatest evil the human race had ever created? Deus lo Volt—God wills it!
1942 was a bad year for those of the Canadian seas and waterways. On January 12, the German U-boat 123 sank the British steamer Cyclops not one hundred miles southeast of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia. In short order, German U-boats began stalking the road to the heart of Canada, and the Battle of the Saint Lawrence—the very river I had found the mouth of centuries earlier—had begun. German U-boats, prowling the Saint Lawrence and the coastal waters as far out as the fishing grounds, in a matter of a few months had sunk forty four ships and attacked seven convoys, with only two loses of their own. On the thirtieth of September, Kapitan-Leutenant Ulrich Graf entered the Cabot Straits, sailed up the Saint Lawrence and, spotting a seven-ship convoy, attacked it. A public outcry rose up from Quebec to Labrador. The Home Office began censoring the attacks in the newspapers to try and curtail the terror that was growing. Nova Scotia, through the ports of Halifax and Sydney, was a convoy assembly area, and military ships there would be attacked. From the very first attack of the war, Canada’s Royal Navy would have expected that. But on October 14, U-69 found the Caribou, a ferry with 136 souls—of which, ten were children—and sank it. Dead bodies care little about being censored in the press as they float to shore.
Over the years, the U-boat assaults would become so fierce that trans-Atlantic trade was halted and inter-coastal trade was brought to a crawl. The fishing industry continued, but paranoia ran through the fleet as fishermen wondered if they’d ever return to shore. And yet through all this, there were few reports of landings, only annoying but sporadic attacks, and never the famous concentrated Nazi effort.
Most Canadians would never have guessed what this was all about.
