By Anna Von Reitz
Many people are confused about the Templars, but there is nothing so mysterious about them. They were mercenaries. They still are. They began their more obvious activities in the modern world after the official Fall of Rome and with respect to that event, filled a role similar to Air America in Vietnam --- smuggling, racketeering, selling "protection" and transportation services --- exactly what you would expect from quasi-military mercenary groups that spring up around all and any conflicts.
The Templars settled in as protectors of trade routes and, on the flip side, brigands blocking trade routes. They exacted steep charges for their protection of travelers and caravans moving both east and west and held a monopoly on such "services" for generations. They weren't Christian per se, and traded with Christian pilgrims and Muslim merchants with equal elan. They also began a rudimentary postal service along their trade routes and an equally simple banking system that allowed travelers to deposit money at the starting point of their journey and pick up the equivalent amount in local currency at their destination.
Like the Freemasons of today, the Templars admitted the existence of God, and also admitted their own ignorance of the subject, choosing to take a profitable "live and let live" approach to the whole subject of religion. As one Grandmaster of the early Freemasons put it, "Why argue about what can't be seen and can't be proven?"
The Templars were never exactly "Christian" and their red cross emblem is revealed, at least in earlier renditions, as an eight-pointed star associated with Zoroastrianism.
By the time the First Crusades rolled around, the Templars were well-settled fixtures along every trade route and held many commanding physical fortresses that guarded (and blocked) important mountain passes; at sea, they had established sea lanes for their traffic and customers, which they guarded from pirates --- and which required them to have their own naval branch, too.
Relations with the Roman Catholic Church and the various Kings on land and Monarchs at sea promoted by the Church were generally cordial; the Templars were very wealthy and able to grease palms on both sides of the aisle, provide needed and beneficial services, and reach the entire globe--- something that even the Church hadn't yet accomplished.
Tales of Templar adventures and their white-washing as an Order of Knighthood made them popular figures and increased their ability to interest new recruits. Their private mercenary navy which would eventually morph into the Merchant Marine Services, reached the New World long before the conventional European Navies could afford or justify such a venture.
No mistake that Christopher Columbus was a Templar living in Portugal, a "Phoenician", who brought news of Templar gold finds in South America, and who invited the Spanish King and Queen to invest in this latest venture. Please note that Columbus's ships, which were actually following a well-defined Templar sea route to the Caribbean, flew the red eight-pointed "cross" of the Templars, and the actual mission of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria had more to do with resupplying Templar bases and bringing news of the Royal Agreement than discovering anything.
South American gold was a raw resource, like crude oil. To be valuable as money, it had to be assayed, refined, cast into bullion or coinage, hallmarked or minted, all under the auspices of a Royal Mint. Once this value-added process was applied, the Spanish Monarchy would be able to launder the newly discovered gold into the European economy without a ripple. And so they did.
How do we know all this? Because for many centuries the von Reitzensteins were Templars and they guarded the passes of the Dolomite Mountains between Germany and Italy. As simple material proof of these facts, we offer the location of the ruined von Reitzenstein Castle, and the corn plants carved into the stone lintels and embellishments of Rosalyn Chapel, built by the Templars in Scotland, centuries before anyone was supposed to have "discovered" the New World -- or corn.
The wealth of the by-then Former Templars, made it possible for them to risk vast amounts of money and manpower on commercial and service expansion, far beyond the resources of any European kingdom at the time. So it is no surprise that these commercial mercenaries discovered the "Spanish" gold; those lucky enough to be both Spanish and Templars, like Cortez (the Avila Family), Santiago, Rodriguez, and others, received a double share of both gold and silver found in the South American Colonies, one share as crude gold, one share as minted gold coins. They paid the seigniorage one share and received the seigniorage on the other share.
During the Roman Catholic Church's persecution of their former friends and service providers and the dissolution of the Order of the Knights Templar that began with a virtual pogrom in 1312, ten years after Pope Boniface the Eighth declared himself the owner of the entire world, the Templars were forced to make more serious use of their bases in the New World to escape being hanged, gutted, or burned alive as heretics.
As they fled Europe en masse, the Templars came to safe harbors pioneered by earlier European refugees -- the Armoricans, who also fled westward from Church persecution, the so-called Cathar Crusade a hundred years before which decimated their cousins in Languedoc in Southern France -- the Albigensians.
The Armoricans living in Normandy were blood-relatives of the Albigensians living in Languedoc in Southern France; both groups were part of a much earlier wave of migration that came from the Balkan States into France, and stayed, scattered along a jagged longitudinal line running north and south through western France.
While not directly involved in the religion of the Cathars, their relatives, the Armoricans, were accused of being polygamists guilty of fornicating with heathens in New World, living with and having families with native women without mandating their conversion to Roman Catholicism and undergoing the Marriage Rites of the Church.
As a result of this secondary and less famous persecution, many Armorican sailors simply sailed over the westward horizon never to return. They had already had a thousand-year history of trading furs and fish and lumber in North America; moving there permanently and "going native" was not really that much of a stretch, if it meant escaping the Inquisition.
Thus the Armoricans and Templars both fetched up on the shores of North America, first the Armoricans in the 1220s, second the Templars in the 1310's, basically ninety years later, and the two groups --- both fleeing persecution by the Roman Catholic Church --- became friends and trading partners. The Armoricans had already established firm trading and social relationships with the native tribes and had followed the ancient practice of establishing Blood Treaties, by marrying into the tribes.
As for the more snooty and modern-minded Templars, they made good use of the Armoricans who were able to sneak back over the seas to Armorica and fit in with the remaining Norman French population as traders and boat builders, merchants, and fishermen.
By then, the Church had other worries and didn't notice the suddenly brisk trade accelerating the rise of the Hanseatic League and increasing the wealth and power of the Kingdom of Normandy.
The Templars were mercenaries, but they didn't start out as smugglers and thieves and pirates; that was a necessity forced upon them by the Roman Catholic Church. Likewise, the Armoricans were not the immoral reprobates that church lore would make of them; they were loyal to their families and their friends, honest trading partners, and excellent sailors. They embraced the principles of Christianity, but not the dogma.
Both these groups, the banished Templars and the Armoricans had good cause to cherish religious freedom --- and to demand it from the Church going forward.
Please note, these two populations are not Protestant. They had their own separate grievances with the Roman Catholic Church, but these grievances arose long before Martin Luther. The rise of conventional Protestantism afforded a welcome alternative culture that both the Templars and Armoricans supported, because, like them, the Protestants demanded religious freedom.
Thus, we had the unlikely Trifecta -- the Puritans and other Protestant Sects fleeing persecution in Europe, coming to North America and discovering the Templars and Armoricans who had already arrived here for the same basic reason. This is why, to this day, religious freedom and freedom of conscience are the bedrock of this country and a fundamental part of our cultural foundation.
Knowing this history we are better able to understand why the native people of this Continent welcomed Europeans and helped them to get established; after all, these same tribes had long-standing and beneficial relationships with both the Armoricans and the Templars. They had no reason to think that the British would be any different.
Suffice it to say, and to be observed on the public record, that the British and their Holy Roman partners in crime, were extremely different. Violent, given to immorality and avarice, deceitful, divisive, elitist, racist, extremely hypocritical, and coercive, the Puritans called these later Colonists the "Masters of Deceit" and described their manner of speaking as "Double-speak".
The American Indians described it similarly, as having a "forked tongue".
Less poetic ancestors simply called them "the Liars and Prevaricators".
We are now seeing and experiencing the long-term effect of this peculiar and distinctly evil characteristic of the British Government and their Holy Roman Empire Overlords coming home to roost; we can only express our determination that it comes home to roost with them, and not with us.
Issued by:
Anna Maria Riezinger, Fiduciary
The United States of America
In care of: Box 520994
Big Lake, Alaska 99652
September 27th 2024
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