h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You are right once again!

But those same sources attribute the use of the word 'baphomet' to just two Templars in Provencal, precisely where the form for 'mahomet' was 'bafomet'. No cipher is therefore needed.

I regard both the gnostic derivations as coincidences, together with the other gnostic theories out there.

Maybe my last message came over a bit more abruptly than intended. Obviously one could regard the baphomet/bafomet/mahomet connection as nothing more than an amazing coincidence, as also the Florentine confession; and go for another theory. In the end one has to take one's choice. Another pointer for me is that according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1926) Mahomet appears to have been called by that name (i.e. Baphomet) in several mediaeval Latin poems.

The innocence of the Templars was defended by the greatest of all their European contemporaries, Dante. But maybe the famous church historian Ignaz Dollinger should have the last word - at least from my end, as I'll be away for most of the next month.

Dollinger was associated with the origins of the modernist party in the late 19th century, so I wouldn't normally agree with him.

But he passionately defended the Templars against the charge of a secret doctrine or coarse customs, as they were accused of. According to him the destruction of the Templars was a disaster not just for them but for the whole of Christendom, and the resulting scars lasted for centuries. 'If I were to name a day in the whole history of the world,' he said at the end of his last public lecture (1889), 'which appears to me in the truest sense as a *dies nefastus* (i.e. ill-omened day), I should be able to name no other than the 13th of October 1307.'

Wrestling with the confessions of the Templars, we see that as well as Baphomet, we have many references to "Spitting on the Cross", Kissing on the base of the spine.
I believe that these were trials of obedience. Any good Knight would know that spitting on the cross was tantamount to blasphemy, so to do it shows unthinking loyalty to the order. Likewise to profess to worship "Baphomet" was a sign of unthinking loyalty. I believe that after initiation, the Knights were good Catholics, and nothing else.

Gents,

thanks for the healthy discussion. Very interesting for someone who knows nothing about the subject.

To change the topic somewhat, was there not a story of a christian / gnostic influenced kingdom somewhere over towards Tibet, that possibly had some impact on Tibetan Buddhism?

Isn't it a prerequisite of joining the Masons that you must declare a belief in one true God? This doesn't necessarily imply any membership of any particular religion though.

I find that to hear comments from a Muslim perspective is good. Christians have been duped by "the Church" for centuries. The bible as we know it has been "sanitised" by those who would seek to provide a perfect history, when things that have been done in the name of religion that would make a saint swear. One of the biggest atrocities perpotrated by the church were the Crusades. Who is to say which is the "TRUE" religion...

Thank you once again for your input.