The Hanged Man, Templars and Gnosticism

Image from The Woman With The Alabaster Jar: Margaret Starbird

I allow synchronicities to guide me and recently there have been many around the life and deaths of the Knights Templar, a medieval order of knights committed to the ideals of christ, not the catholic messaging, but the hidden gnostic teachings that have been emerging in findings such as the Dead Sea and Nag Hammadi scrolls. 

Someone who has spoken on the Templars and of their mystical influence to this day is the theosophist Rudolf Steiner. I was drawn to his material this week, unaware that there is actually a full book dedicated to his teachings about the Templars. 

Steiner spends a good deal of time talking about the capture and torture of the templars and how they were lead to make claims under duress that were not true, but incriminated the order even to this day. He speaks of the two streams emanating from them, one of the nature of their secret works related to the 'mystery of Golgotha' as he calls it, Jesus' story with the cross, and another stream from the words spoken during torture. 

This same week I have also been experiencing multiple synchronicities around the Hanged Man of tarot, as I contemplate the 52nd Gene Key and its gift of Restraint. The first hanged man reference came by 'accident' in a discussion with a friend who posted a picture of a man hanging, by his hands, from a branch, which I jokingly labelled the hanged man.

After a day of digesting Steiner's work I sat down to watch the TV series Outlander, which still has its moments. At the beginning of this episode one of the characters was hung by the British, but managed to survive through quick thinking and perfect hand placement. Still, it left him with trauma from that event. Later in that episode we find him sitting down with one of the female characters who is drawing cards from a tarot deck. She pulls the hanged man and suddenly becomes aware of how this might be a trigger for Roger and so she shuffles the deck and resets the cards. Wouldn't you know it she pulls the Hanged man yet again. 

So, the Hanged Man has my attention. As someone who has a background with the tarot I knew enough to to understand that this was about surrender and periods of waiting, restrained by the universe. I could definitely relate this to my own life and definitely to the 52nd Gene Key I was contemplating. But I was motivated to look deeper.

In her books Margaret Starbird goes into the history of the tarot, relating it to how the Templars used it to convey wisdom of the feminine, hidden within the cards. They were distributed in secrecy so as not to be uncovered by the church of that time, eventually disappearing from circulation when they were beginning to be put under scrutiny. Many of the original cards are no longer in the deck and so what we see today, which is still very valuable, is in some sense a watered down version of the original deck, missing much of the Grail Mysteries that were woven into them. But, it does have the Hanged Man in it. So, what did Margaret Starbird have to say about it?

"Usually called the Hanged Man and said to be the most enigmatic picture in the deck, could be named the Tortured Templar." - Margaret Starbird

Oh boy, well that loops me back to Steiner now and his focus on the tortured templars. Suddenly this reference seems to be a little more than just a typical hanged man reading, there is something more to it. So what does the tortured templar reveal?

"It is at the same time a subtle reference to the sacred bloodline and to the crippled Grail King Anfortas. The money bags in the hands of the hanged man represent the legendary treasure of the Temple. In spite of the unspeakable tortures of the inquisitors, the leaders of the Temple did not divulge the whereabouts of their treasure, perhaps because their real treasure was one not made of gold. Their treasure was contained in earthen vessels—the royal bloodline of Jesus the King and the other version of the Christian story, which they held in their hearts." - Margaret Starbird, The Woman With The Alabaster Jar 

Even under duress the Templars did not reveal the location of their treasure, but more importantly the treasure was not something material. One of the reasons the Templars had been rounded up is that due to an obsession with money, King Phillip the Fair had wanted to get his hands on gold. He was in considerable debt elsewhere so he thought getting the templars might help him in many ways. In the end it didn't work out too well for him and the Templar treasure, the elusive grail, was something that each knight held within his own heart. 

In Gene Keys the Codon Ring of Trials (33, 56, 12) is the Hanged Man and so the reference to the Grail King Anfortas is also equally interesting. Each of us is the wounded king and it is the healing of our core wound that reveals the gifts we come to bear in this life time for the good of the whole. Our trial will attempt to make us forget (33), get distracted (56) and cling to our individuality (12), but through surrendering deeper into the wound we bring a new light into the world. This is explored as we get deep into the work of our core wound and SQ in the Venus Sequence. Perhaps this was something the Templars failed in during their trials, albeit understandably so. Steiner certainly suggests this was the case.

And for me, what stood out from Steiners work was although it was many moons ago the lives of the templars shaped many aspects of our modern world, the pain of their torture and their commitment to the divine being felt today, along with all the other truths and mistruths related to their work. There is a sense of mystery about them and no fact searching is bringing any resolution to something that is felt as a wisdom. 

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