Im way behind on this blog; naively I thought I could catch up with the anniversaries of many important events and persons in the story of

Gnosticism, Christian Mysticism, Hermeticism and all other particulars

of the Western Mystery Tradition. I`ll see if I can contribute something about

those persons and events eventually.

I am also way behind on my personal correspondence (per email), begging everyone pardon. please be patient with me…

One of those disquieting tendencies among enthusiasts about Gnosticism, early Christianity & all that western mystical jazz…is a certain absence of humour.

I hate to be the one to admit Im among the grinners rather than those devoted to the guffaw and the equal spreading of amusement. Or rather, im not the premeditated nor the impulsive (or compulsive) joker. I could blame my introvert personality, or perhaps my cultural heritage.

Strangely, Wisdom inspires tears of contrition and laughter of release.

If the comedian has a sensitivity for the absurd, as well as the simple within the complex – hiding itself in its own little game.. I suspect I appreciate his art nevertheless. I just can`t tolate desperation.. and needy, attention-craving, suffocating egos playing social charade, manipulating for kicks.

..So it was a joy to discover Brother Tom`s Book of Signs and Wonders at Jeremy`s Fantastic Planet Blog (one of the blogs I follow weekly for developements, He is seriously studying the Gospel of Thomas and shares his insights, impressions &c. not only from reading translations from the Coptic in english, but by conducting translation from Coptic himself)

it is a folksy version of the Gospel of Thomas.

We remember:
Jules-Ernest Houssaye (or Hussay); b. 1844 + 3.March 1912

Abbe Julio was born in 1844 in Mayenne.
He was the son of an engineer, but sought education towards the Roman Catholic priesthood. In 1870 he became the vicar at Grand Oisseau. At the instigation of the war he volunteered to become a chaplain for the Volontaires de l’Ouest of the Cahtelineau General. His service with the forces made Julio a national hero, not because of any strategic successes of his troop but rather due to his devotion to the wounded and dying; he volunteered to cross over into enemy territory to bring back the wounded. In his memories the Cathelineau General praises him officially as the “the honest Abbot Houssaye”. Continue reading →

Heinrich Suso /Sus /Seuse.
Writing as Amandus
Catholic Memorial 2nd March
assigned feast in the Dominican Order to 2nd March
upon the declaration of him being Blessed, in 1831
by Pope Gregory XVI.

Born March 21. 1300, in Constance
Dead Jan 25. 1366, in Ulm

Accounted to be foremost among the Friends of Godalong with John Tauler(1300-1361). This society of pious persons, both ecclesiastical and lay, sought different measures to advance the life of holiness in Catholic society. An endeavour inspiring many others, both heterodox and orthodox – among them The Brethren of the Common Life, founded by Geert Groote, and attended by Thomas à Kempis who was himself greatly inspired by HenrySuso. Continue reading →

@ copyright Terje Dahl Bergersen 2004

Bernard-Raymond Fabrè-Palaprat + 18th February 1838

the seal of Fabrè-Palaprats Templar Order

The Legend: As the execution (18th March 1314) of Jacques de Molay came close, he transmitted verbally the position of Grand Master of the Knights Templars to Jean-Marc Larmenius, a Palestinian born Christian Seneschal who was his secundant throughout most of his life. Now, strategically inactive the brotherhood pertaining to the already knighted did not disperse or desist in its other activities and were lead by Larmenius until February 1324 whereupon he allowed a document to be drafted, which afterwards are known as the Larmenius Charter, but allegedly where called The Charter of Transmission.
In this document he confesses he is too old and frail to continue the safeguarding of their lineage and oversee the fraternal functions, and gives a written statement with regard to the succession of himself to the elder and secundant he himself had chosen; Fransiscus Theobaldus. Theobaldus were at that time Prior (superior) for the Priory situated in Alexandria and received this document as a letter.Apparently he interpreted this as the means by which one perpetuates the Order of the Knights Templars, and made use of it as an internal circular of the Order. After this post-humous succession from Grand Master DeMolay and the circular Charter the Order made reapperances throughout much of modern history on the European continent.

Bernard-Raymond Fabrè-Palaprat and the foundation of an Order of the Temple.
This is the legend of the continuation of the Order of the Knights of the Temple (of Jerusalem), a brotherhood which has stirred the imaginations of quite a few
moderns. Among them a gentleman, A doctor, we shall presume, bearing the name Bernard Raymond Fabrè-Palaprat, who in 1838, on this day, passed into Light beyond the shadows of this world. He apparently begun his templar pilgrimage on New Year`s Day, 1814, 190 years ago, he where browsing the second-hand bookstalls at the waterfront in the bustling city of Paris, here he came upon a Greek vellum manuscript entitled _Evangelikon/Levitikon_(??) which he bought for his hard-earned cash, I am not quite in the dry with the version stating he straight away recognized what it was he held in his hands “Voila!”, but it appears the man was looking. Finding minor revelations of arcane interest or importance where actually increasingly becoming the vogue all over; the Scottish adventurer-dandy James Bruce apparently looked for evidence of the original Book of Enoch wherein, according to widely popular “hermetical” literature, we find stated that most of the secrets about our material universe are to be found, among them the precise method of making gold from any kind of base metal; a noble endeavour, we must agree. Bruce found a complete Codex with sigils, diagrams of every kind and written in a language he vaguely recognized as Coptic. Coptic=”ancient egyptian” to colonist brittons and excited them much more than the plain Arabic which was quite common among people in Cairo and Luxor in those days. The Egyptomania of his day caused every corner and byway of the cities in Egypt to be crammed with peddlers of amulets, parchments and manuscripts of all possible dispositions… and fortunately the rumour of making a mint by impressing foreigners caused the discovery at Nag Hammadi to come to light in Egypt, and the documents of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls and direct location of the Khirbet-Qumran to be discovered and known at the very least to scholars.

Zooming back at our old pal Bernard ; he`s fiddling around with the manuscript, probably calling together friends and their friends and demonstrating his newfound curiosity. He probably invested in acquiring a person with some knowledge of Greek as well, possibly a Greek national or something of the kind. We hear Bernard Raymond Fabrè-Palaprat where a Mason at the time. We are not surprised. We also hear he was blackballed after this new discovery and the enthusiasm it brought with it, caused him somehow to transgress against the discretion of the Grand Logè de Orient in France.Being blackballed or even disassociated in such circles rarely cause anyone to have less friends and less influence; it only transmogrifies into a different variety of friends and influence…so it only pertains to a small milieu of select company having no further ado with conversations with him at the Salòn of the Grand Logè itself – and Masonic historians having reason to strike him from their records.
Back to his discovery – what his little Greek manuscript discovery does, apparently, is inform its elect readership, by way of reading it as if it was
the precìs of the Gospel according to the Apostle John – that Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph proper, that Jesus was never actually called Messiah or Son of God, that he did not perform miracles,that his disciples did not understand as much as the other Gospels give them credit, that Jesus spent his youth in Egypt, studying the sacred sciences of the Egyptians and Greeks, becoming an Initiate of the Mysteries of Isis.. and that at the end when he died, he was not subject to any resurrection; the latter statement is significant because it also makes Jesus relevant for Deist and Atheist freemasons who nevertheless set store in this association with the ancient mysteries and sacred sciences of Egypt, while finding themselves unable to believe in any manner the story of Jesus resurrection. I dare say he was preaching to the already converted for his entire duration as bringer of “new light”, in this respect. According to his charter he was succeeding Claude-Mathieu Radix de Chevillon(grand maistre 1792-1804) about whom we know very little. We know of Phillipe Ledru (1754-1832), another Mason in Bernard-Raymond`s circle who apparently founded the visible and exemplary Order of the Temple.This was allowed to happen with some favour from Napoleon I and upon the first circularies there were many nobles and influential men enrolling with the Order. In the capacity of Grand Master, Bernard-Raymond Fabrè-Palaprat was succeeded by the englishman Admiral Sir William Sydney Smith (1764-1840), who in turn was succeeded by Augustus-Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843).Critical sources claim the Order was laid to rest with the Duke of Sussex briefly after his succeeding Sir William Sydney Smith at his death.Regardless there are many “templar” orders operative today, from such that the royal families protect or participate in, which is chiefly charities and fraternal networks – or secret and”sinister” ones such as the Order of Oriental Templars founded by Theodor Reuss at the beginning of the 20th century. The background for the foundation of Reuss` order (alternatively the Industrial Magnate Carl Kellner`s order) isn`t very unlike that of Bernard-Raymond Fabrè-Palaprats; first of all, according to own orientation, they were both Masons, both dissatisfied by conventional religion and its symbols and both apparently magnetically connected to a lot of currents about to manifest in Europe. Their vision of what great things the Order of the Temple might have been or still was, on some ethereal plane, differs a little – so also their social milieu. There is a large contigent of Templar Orders, some of them claim ascendency from Bernard-Raymond Fabre-Palaprat ; among Chivalric Orders that claim this lineage is the Militi Templi Scotia, the www.templarhistory.com site has an interesting writeup on them.

A Church Primitive and Johannite
Perhaps I am somewhat of an infidel in pointing this out, but when we look around In the year 1814 and Intellectual Paris we find
a lot of hooks to hang most of what news Fabrè-Palaprat brought with him back from the shelves of his city`s used bookstalls.
By July a revolution bursts upon the streets of the capitol ; its the kind where you mostly stay indoors, pour your coffee and nibble biscuits while reading
the newspaper – occasionally glancing down on the street to see what comes your way.I am just guessing it, and perhaps its not fair, but by this
time Bernard had not only presented the _Levitikon_ and its history to the knowmores, swearing he would protect the secrets of the Order from the knowless, but also tried to impress upon them other of his discoveries, among which included a grand cup or chalice he insisted was the Holy Grail. When a brief political turmoil hit again so the chandeliers danced and shook, he was nevertheless inspired; he declared that the Masonic Order had become but a bleak and anemic, and subservient, parody of the great work and that the means and mandate to transform Freemasonry and transpose it to its destined and intended place in society and the world – where in his hands. You can ruffle a lot of feathers by suggesting you can single-handedly, and with one foot balancing a plate of crepès suzettes – restore the lost secrets of a secret
societies and demonstrate the grand truths of Freemasonry. I dare you, gentlemen – to succeed in such endeavours. Anyways, what cannot
be said about Bernard-Raymond is that he was idling away his time and did not avail himself of obvious opportunities to “do good” like any gentleman are supposed to do. He was clearly not satisfied with these matters pertaining only to the cultural elite and the privileged – nor only having jurisdiction within the Masonic brotherhood: He declared he was also in possession of the means to reform and restore into its former glory, the actual Christian Church of the Apostles, the Eglise Chretiens Primitifs, the Primitive Christian Church to which is added Johannite, which pertains to the Gospel he found being that of John, to the primacy of the Apostle John in certain
grades of freemasonry which, if he had not received them himself, at least knew about – and of course, the grand symbol of the mythic Knights Templars – their secret symbol; the Head of St.John the Baptizer. The Johannine transference began a decade before his discovery of _Levitikon_ and it deserves at the very least a remark here.
When Monsignore Mauviel became the constitutional bishop, as a first, of Cayes, Haiti – he apparently, and according to his associates, where discreetly received into another Episcopacy whose origin is quite obscure but which apparently hailed directly back to the Knights Templars and their spiritual and religious practices, which were as unique as their military stratagems. From the Holy Lands, again, the Knights Templars, secured knowledge and succession from a secret brotherhood representing the “true church of St.John” in contradistinction to the Oriental Orthodox
Churches claiming John as the primary origin for their Apostolic successsion. Details are scarce with regards to these things, but upon his installment as Bishop for the province of Cayes, Msgr. Mauviel was made “Templar Bishop” in the year 1800. What precedes the event of Fabrè-Palaprat`s foundation of the Eglise Primitif Chretièn were the foundation, with authority from Mauviel, of a French Catholic Church by the the dissenting Roman Catholic clergyman Ferdinand Chatel; like the more modern manifestations of this current one of the chief features, long before the Vatican II councils revision inside the Roman Catholic Church – where insistance on liturgical services held in the so-called vernacular; Modern languages and the political move away from a centralized Primate towards self-governing parishes,it also became the vehicle of a gradually more radical reading of the Gospels.. by the time Mauviel and Fabrè-Palaprat became movers and shakers in this “Parisian underground” it had dispersed, but it had produced an awful lot of abbots, priests, monks, deacons and bishops. To those aware of these things, the ring of office becoming a fashionable accessory in the coture at the Salòn`s of Paris and other French cities comes as no surprise either. Whatever else the French Revolution did, it also in addition turned the soil over, so that the undergrowth of roots and bulbous outgrowths became visible. Bernard-Raymond Fabrè-Palaprat`s Templar Order Renoveè and Eglise Primitif were just natural symbioses of what was floating in the air like rhizomes from a giant fungus somewhere underground. A contention among religious non-Catholics where that the Roman Church never served frenchmen; the curiae and nuncios, clergy and bishops were all arrogant guests who treated the locals as if they owned the place, they interfered in petty political struggles with which the french were perfectly equipped to deal with themselves.
At Fabre-Palaprat`s death, there occured a schism within his Templar Order – over his Johannite Church. His alliance with Bishop Maichault and Bishop Ferdinand Chatel who now had positions within Fabre-Palaprat`s Church where far from controversial. The surviving episcopate of the Church where as much innovators as the founder.
Jean Bricaud came in contact, through a certain B.Clement, Primate of the Primitive Johannite Church who became a member of the High Synod of the new church for the Americas, around the time he founded his Universal Gnostic Church. At that time the Church had become a repository of traditional and symbolic representations which lended credence, as well as giving inspiration to the new spiritualistic fervour of the theosophists, illuminists, masons and gnostics of the early 20th century. There`s probably a lot of other things to be said of Bernard-Raymond Fabrè-Palaprat. But perhaps it is wise if it is not myself who should say so.