Templar Globe

Bill Dietrich, assistant professor of environmental studies at Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment, shares “The Rosetta Key,” the sequel to “Napoleon’s Pyramids,” continuing the adventures of Ethan Gage, who’s now in the Holy Land in dogged pursuit of the magical “Book of Thoth” during Napoleon’s 1799 invasion of Israel that will climax at the epic siege of Acre.

Question: For those who may not have read “Napoleon’s Pyramids,” what should readers know about Ethan Gage, the hero of these two novels, in particular his (seeming) attitude that life is a gamble, one “plays the cards” and “takes the risks.” (I am also curious whether this is your attitude toward life?)

Answer: Ethan is my alter ego, not autobiographical! I don’t gamble, I’m a family man instead of a womanizer, a writer instead of a warrior, and judicious instead of impulsive. Ethan and I are alike, however, in a belief in destiny and opportunity; that while we’re responsible for our choices, our fate is not entirely in our own hands. Napoleon felt the same way.

Q: In this novel, there is much philosophizing and religious commentary/intrigue on “the philosopher’s stone,” the Rosetta Stone, the philosophy of truth, the nature of love, sacrifice and personal integrity. How do you blend the various voices and themes into a historical novel and still have Ethan relevant to today?

A: Ethan is deliberately modern in his outlook, so that readers can relate, and I’ve called Napoleon “the first modern man” because he was self-made, opportunistic, idealistic, optimistic, and yet also cynical, ruthless and narcissistic. These are characters I think today’s readers can relate to: they reflect our jumble of traits. “The Rosetta Key” weaves together the story of Napoleon’s 1799 invasion of the Holy Land, intriguing speculation about ancient mysteries and the Knights Templar that are not original with me, and fictional characters swept up in war and adventure.

Just as we feel somewhat helpless in the face of events like recession or 9/11, my heroes and heroines are ordinary mortals doing their best to prevail in a hostile, unpredictable world. This was the period of the Enlightenment and revolution, fledgling industry and science, and yet a mystical counter-reaction because people longed for religious mystery. It’s a rich period in which to speculate about life.

Q: What are some of the comparisons of the holy war in Napoleon’s time to today’s political situation?

A: Napoleon wanted to reform the Middle East. (Sound familiar?) The French Revolution had thrown out Christianity and yet he tried to portray himself friendly to the Koran. Muslims would have none of it, and resisted fiercely. Meanwhile, like today, you had cults, sects and philosophies that dabbled in philosophy and mysticism, like the (then-somewhat-secret) Freemasons, Jewish mystics, and others convinced there were ancient secrets to be rediscovered. Their golden age was the past, not the future. The Knights Templar, a Crusader sect, was rumored to have discovered fantastic treasures beneath Jerusalem.

Q: How did Napoleon change the way the world viewed Egypt, and if Ethan really existed, what impact would he have had?

A: The scientists who accompanied Napoleon started the science of Egyptology; up to that time almost nothing was known about the ancient world. French soldiers unearthed the Rosetta Stone, which was key to deciphering hieroglyphics. The conceit of my novel is that wayward Ethan plays a role in such events. A real American, jumping between armies, would probably have been executed many times over.

Q: What were some of your experiences as you traveled the Middle East doing research for this novel?

A: It’s unfortunate conflict dissuades tourism there, because the ruins are the most moving that I’ve seen. The depth of time is palpable. I was with an archeologist tour in Egypt that allowed us to squirm into some unusual places — at one we were literally crawling on our bellies into an old tomb — and the ruins of Petra in Jordan that play a role in “The Rosetta Key” are almost unbelievable: huge temple facades carved into towering rose sandstone cliffs.

I sweated a lot, but the closest I came to peril were the indefatigable souvenir sellers and the driving habits in Egypt! In Israel, a lone American mumbling about doing “research” did draw attention: security personnel examined every digital photo I had taken.

Q: Your female characters are really intriguing. How do they keep moving your plot forward? How do you “get to know” them?

A: I try to make my characters distinctive and fun, and sometimes humorous. My women tend to be smart and they keep Ethan grounded, a male-female partnership I’ve observed in real life. I try to make the women courageous partners, not witless ninnies screaming in a corner. Because my stories are thrillers dependent on plot, I have to keep tight rein on their actions, but their personalities emerge as the writing goes on. I end up liking them, even the villains.

Q: Any movie offers?

A: Interest, but no offers yet: these are expensive stories to film. My fiction has frequently been described as cinematic, but apparently the right people in Hollywood haven’t read those reviews.

Q: What’s the deal between Bill Dietrich the journalist, Bill Dietrich the professor, Bill Dietrich the novelist, and Bill Dietrich the family man?

A: It may seem an odd combination, but they’re all aspects of what is basically a curious, somewhat earnest personality. I’ve liked history and adventure since I was a child, I feel I can do the most for the environment through writing and teaching, and the stability I’ve gotten from wife and children has allowed me to do and try a lot of things. I get winded sometimes … but life is short!

in Trading Markets

Out-there researchers discuss the impending … something

The broadcast-quality lilt of Coast to Coast AM radio host George Noory wafted over a packed conference room at Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn last Saturday night as he a moderated a panel of out-there researchers engaged in a radical examination of Hollywood’s covert use of occult symbolism and alien agendas — the same week that the Vatican’s chief astronomer told an interviewer that belief in alien life does not contradict belief in God. As Noory told the audience, “There’s definitely a sense of an impending … something.”

Noory is the successor to radio’s legendary Art Bell, who stoked a particular millennial Zeitgeist with his fireside chats on UFOs, the paranormal and all manner of conspiracy theories with his syndicated radio program, before passing the mike to Noory in 2002. Coast to Coast AM remains a cultural touchstone, and Noory — personable and mustachioed — continues to bring so-called fringe ideas front and center.

We’re at “an extraordinary crossroads, with the way life is unfolding,” commented panelist Whitley Strieber, whose most recent novel is based on the doomsday/consciousness-shifting 2012 mythos, and who believes he was “implanted” with a device by his “visitors.” He recalled a bit of the aliens’ verbiage: “We will come from within you.”

According to panelist/abduction therapist Yvonne Smith, 17 functional-growth characteristics in humans born between 1947 and 1987 have been accelerated by 60 to 80 percent. “It’s not environment, it’s not evolution,” she asserted.

A “mutation of society” is under way, and “the skeptic community is getting quieter and quieter,” remarked Dr. Roger Leir, a Valley-based podiatrist, who removes alleged alien implants.

Jordan Maxwell, an expert in occult symbolism and secret societies, likened Americans to Alec Guinness’ blindly megalomaniacal lieutenant colonel in The Bridge on the River Kwai once he realizes he’s been working for the enemy: “What have I done? There is no way out.”

“Jordan’s been looking down the barrel of the New World Order for nearly 50 years,” Noory said.

Maxwell, expounding upon the secret fraternal orders to which our government and religious leaders are bound, remarked, “The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure are teasers. The powers behind Hollywood are Knights Templars, showing you what they can do.”

“What does Hollywood know that we don’t?” asked panelist Jay Weidner, producer of the documentary 2012: The Odyssey. Was Eyes Wide Shut a representation of a sex cult for rich perverts, or a portrait of the Illuminati? Subversive director Stanley Kubrick died two hours after bringing a rough cut of the film to Warner Bros. “Like the Zapruder film, you can see what he was trying to say by what’s missing,” said Weidner, who believes Kubrick fled for England in the ’60s after experiencing events depicted in the film. (Scientologists Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, he said, were simply cast as part of “an inside joke.”)

In Rosemary’s Baby, John Cassavetes’ character eagerly permits the devil to impregnate his wife to ensure his Broadway stardom. “He’s the spitting image of Jack Parsons [black magician and co-founder of Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory],” claimed Mike Bara, co-author with Richard C. Hoagland of the recent best-seller Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA. “It’s the magical ritual known as the Babylon Working. Rosemary becomes the mother of the antichrist.”

A question came from the audience: “There’s so much to dissect from entertainment now — Iron Man, Battlestar Galactica, The Mist, Marvel’s Sons of the Serpent. There’s even a conspiracy theorist in Justice League of America.” The bearded young man echoed the sentiments of many assembled: “Why now?”

“They release little bits of truth, so that in the future they can say, ‘We said that years ago,’” Maxwell answered. “You’ve got to read between the lines.” Entertainment is used to indoctrinate or spread disinformation. Case in point: Universal’s recent optioning of the “period” action script The Knights Templar. “Each time you get a bigger sense of how the game is being played, you are less manipulated by it.” Maxwell asked the audience to verify his contentions — Rome is still in control, a powerful occult system has dominated consensus reality for thousands of years — by forcing us to pay attention to “their” symbols: words, flags, coats of arms. “Once you see [it] organized, it’s frightening.”

“The Gnostic belief is that we must have an apocalypse to bring about the golden age,” Weidner commented. “But is that apocalypse the death of all of us, or the death of consciousness as we know it?”

The Mayan calendar, which runs out at midnight on December 12, 2012, is expected to take us out, whether by mass extinction, interplanetary invasion or a total paradigm shift — a metaphysical bang or a cosmic whimper. With four years and counting, Maxwell advised, “always trust those who are looking for the truth.”

But what the bleep is it?

BY SKYLAIRE ALFVEGREN

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Note: the OSMTHU does not endorse said “conspiracy theories”, but our editors tought that the article was interesting and provocative enough to be brought to the attention of our readers.

“Para qualquer festa importante, a gente costuma se preparar. Quanto mais importante a festa, parece que mais tempo leva a preparação. E na preparação já se começa a viver a festa.” Assim deveria ser o tempo da quaresma, segundo o padre Luis Carlos Rosa.

Ele também é pároco da igreja Nossa Senhora de Lourdes, no Parque Nossa Senhora das Dores, e resumiu: “trata-se de um período de quarenta dias, que prepara os cristãos para a festa máxima da Igreja Católica, a Páscoa, quando Jesus Cristo morreu e ressuscitou prometendo vida eterna aos seus seguidores”.
A Quaresma começa na Quarta-feira de Cinzas, que será celebrada amanhã (posterior ao Carnaval) e se estende até o Domingo de Ramos e da Paixão do Senhor. Caracteriza-se por um período de jejum, penitência e reflexão.
Mas com as mudanças globais, essas características não perderam o sentido? Para o padre, houve uma inversão de valores, mas o significado da época nunca foi perdido. Abstinência de carne em toda sexta-feira, durante os 40 dias, missas em latim, oração que varava a madrugada, Vias-Sacras, nada de festas, bailes, música, barulhos – todas essas imposições rigorosas da Quaresma foram suavizadas no famoso Concílio Vaticano II, realizado nos anos 60, e que promoveu uma verdadeira reforma litúrgica. “Quem viveu na primeira metade do século 20, mais precisamente até os anos 60, ainda lembra dos rigores da penitência”. Os padres seguiam ao pé da letra trechos da Bíblia como a Epístola de São Paulo aos Romanos, que diz: “Participamos dos sofrimentos de Cristo para participarmos também da sua glória”.

Segundo ele, “há uns tempos a Quaresma tinha um estilo de fazer penitência, mas hoje, com o mundo moderno e urbanizado, as formas de penitência também se modificam. Quando existem pobres e pessoas que passam fome, como você vai dizer para as pessoas fazerem jejum?”. Rosa, então, expôs algumas alternativas. “Deixar de acessar a internet por motivos banais. Esquecer o I-Pod ou outros eletrônicos, que já fazem parte da vida das pessoas. São novos desafios nesse tempo”. De acordo com ele, o sentido da penitência é abster-se de algo e praticar a caridade. “A Igreja não impõe, mas sugere e mostra o caminho da conversão, que leva ao Reino dos céus”.

Por isso, Quaresma é também tempo de revisão de vida, de penitência, de reconhecer com humildade e confiança onde estão as deficiências e buscar o perdão e a força de Deus. “Isso se faz com esperança, que vem da fé no amor de Deus Pai, que nos enviou seu Filho Jesus e na força do Espírito Santo, que sempre nos chama, nos ama, nos ajuda, perdoa e faz crescer”. A introdução da Campanha da Fraternidade nesse período, é um propósito aos cristãos.

QUEBRA DE PENITÊNCIA

Há quem, por algum motivo ou simplesmente por desistência, “quebra a penitência” durante a quaresma. Questionado sobre algum tipo de punição divina, o religioso explicou que o sentimento de culpa da pessoa, basta. Segundo ele, Deus não castiga, mas os que conseguem manter o que prometeu, está mais próximo da graça.

Mais do que um período de penitência, explica o padre, a Quaresma deve ser usada para um contato maior com a própria fé e com o legado deixado por Cristo. “Quaresma é tempo em que a gente se dedica com mais atenção à escuta da Palavra de Deus e à oração, um tempo em que a gente procura se educar com mais afinco para realizar melhor nossa missão de cristãos”

Assim, conforme o padre, o jejum na Quarta-feira de Cinzas e na Sexta-feira Santa deveria ser mais simbólico, “no sentido de renunciar às coisas supérfluas, como bebidas alcoólicas, fumo, e guloseimas, no caso das crianças”. (RR)

O significado das cinzas

A missa de Quarta-feira de Cinzas inclui uma cerimônia de imposição das cinzas. “Trata-se de uma homenagem à passagem em que o profeta Jonas foi à cidade de Ninive e disse que em 40 dias ela seria destruída se não fizessem penitência. Então o povo se vestiu com trapos e cobriu a cabeça com cinzas. “Mas também é um apelo, uma lembrança que nós somos pó, depois da morte não sobra nada do nosso corpo, das nossas vaidades, e é necessária esta conversão”, explicou o padre Luis Carlos Rosa.

in Gazeta de Limeira, Foto F. Ribeiro.

Tras el éxito de “El anillo”, “la herencia del último templario” (Martínez Roca) con más de 200.000 ejemplares vendidos en España, y traducido a veinte idiomas, Jorge Molist obtiene el Premio Alfonso X el Sabio 2007 con una novela histórica ágil en la que encontramos herejías, trovadores, griales, cábalas y otros misterios medievales…

¿Cómo surgió La reina oculta?

Para mi el libro es un elemento mágico. Hay obras que buscamos y hay otras que nos encuentran. Hay relatos que inventamos y otros que de alguna forma existían antes de ser escritos: nos seducen y hacen del escritor un mero instrumento para darles vida.

Siento que eso me ocurrió con La reina oculta. Todo empezó en París callejeando por el barrio latino. Entré en una librería y de repente me encontré con un libro titulado La chanson de la croisade albigeoise –Cantar de la cruzada contra los albigenses–. La obra es una narración de los trágicos sucesos que tuvieron lugar durante la cruzada de 1209, escrita en lengua occitana original –junto a su traducción al francés– por el clérigo navarro Guillermo de Tudela, quien fue testigo presencial de los hechos.

Estaba yo ocupado en otras cosas en ese tiempo y después de leerlo lo puse a dormir en un estante. Pero el libro se resistía al sueño haciéndome sucumbir a su llamada, fascinado por aquella historia. El relato me emocionaba. De vez en cuando, recitaba en voz alta los versos en occitano del cantar, aún sin entenderlos del todo, sólo por oír la voz del tiempo, que viajaba ochocientos años para llegar hasta mí.

Un par de años después, sobre el año 2000 ó 2001 estaba en la feria de los libreros de Girona cuando otro libro me sedujo de la misma forma: Cátars i trobadors –Cátaros y trovadores–. Se trata de reproducciones históricas en dibujos, con texto de tres autores, realizadas por Francesc Riart. En ellos aparecen los mismos protagonistas del cantar, escenas de las batallas, de las ciudades, etc.

Así que, por un lado tenía la historia y por otro, las imágenes. A partir de ahí se fue cociendo la trama y los personajes de La reina oculta, aunque en realidad ya existían ocho siglos antes de que yo empezara a escribir.

Hay libros brujos, historias con magia; y yo quiero creer que este relato estaba esperando a quien lo escribiera y que yo fui el afortunado.

Pero tras la novela hay un intenso trabajo de documentación…

Sí, claro. A la magia hay que ponerle trabajo: he recorrido un par de veces los escenarios donde acontecen los hechos y han sido casi cincuenta los libros que me han ayudado a una reconstrucción meticulosa y fiel de la época, para poder montar sobre ese entramado de guerras y pasiones una historia que mezcla los contenidos estrictamente históricos con la ficción. Ha sido un trabajo bastante intenso. Además, el hecho de que el jurado del Premio Alfonso X el Sabio de novela histórica haya concedido a La reina oculta el primer premio me llena de satisfacción y me hace confiar en que el libro gustará a los lectores.

Un personaje real y fundamental para la trama histórica de la novela es el papa Inocencio III…

Doscientos años antes de que éste accediera al trono, el poder que poseía el emperador alemán era enorme: ponía y quitaba papas. Con el tiempo, el representante de la Iglesia quiso convertirse también en un señor feudal y tener poder político para, entre otras cosas, no padecer las influencias germanas. De alguna manera era “la nobleza romana”. Era una cuestión de seguridad propia, tenía sus tierras, sus ejércitos y sus aliados.

Inocencio III, además de ser noble, venía de una saga de papas. Su tío, el papa Clemente III, fue quien le instruyó sobre todas las intrigas y entresijos para acceder a la silla de San Pedro, poder gobernar y restaurar la autoridad papal en Roma. Incluso llegó a proclamar una bula papal donde afirmaba que “él estaba por debajo de Dios, pero por encima de cualquier otro hombre”, síntesis de su doctrina teocrática que le llevaría a intentar imponerse como emperador de Europa.

Durante su mandato proclamó dos nuevas cruzadas: la Cuarta, que terminó por dirigirse a Constantinopla, y la otra, conocida también como Albigense, destinada a acabar con las herejías, sobre todo la cátara en Occitania, que amenazaba la doctrina única del papado. Fue la primera cruzada contra cristianos y católicos.

¿Su obsesión era erradicar las herejías o existían otras pretensiones?

En Occitania y también en el norte de España se estaba viviendo un renacimiento antes del Renacimiento. Era un momento en el que apareció el concepto del amor romántico y las figuras de las grandes damas del amor cortés. Se ritualizaron una serie de comportamientos, entre ellos el cortejo y el arte de los trovadores, y apareció una sociedad muy tolerante y liberal, algo que resultaba tremendamente popular, incluso en temas de creencias religiosas, con abiertos debates teológicos en los mismos castillos de los grandes nobles entre cátaros, católicos e incluso judíos.

Todo ello suponía un grave desafío para los deseos de expansión del Papa. Inocencio III ansiaba el poder espiritual y el poder político, y en Occitania se le estaban resistiendo ambas cosas. Su pretensión no era tanto perseguir a los herejes como eliminar ese tipo de sociedad y a los nobles poderosos que no le obedecían.

Es más, yo creo que la cruzada fue contra la tolerancia que había en ese momento y no contra la herejía religiosa.

¿Cuál es la parte esotérica, oculta en la obra?

En ese aspecto podríamos calificar a la misma de itinerante, porque junto al camino de la cruzada, visita los grandes paradigmas de la época: el amor cortés con sus diferentes artes y estrategias; las diferentes “herejías”, entre las que sobresale la ideología y enseñanzas cátaras; los templarios a través de un personaje que está vinculado a la tradición de los caballeros de Sión; los eclesiásticos, como Arnaud Amalric, a quien la historia atribuye la famosa frase durante el asedio cátaro a la ciudad de Béziers, “Matadlos a todos, que Dios ya reconocerá a los suyos”, o como Domingo de Guzmán, quien caminaba descalzo por los caminos predicando y no aceptaba ni la violencia ni otras armas que no fueran los buenos ejemplos; también la tradición judía de la Cábala, el reino de Septimania y la capacidad de creación de los golem, únicamente asequible para el poseedor de un gran poder espiritual; y finalmente, cómo no, aparece el simbolismo del Grial, tanto en la representación de la sangre real, como el uso de la misma para obtener la legitimidad del poder político y esotérico.

¿Cómo definirías a la novela?

La reina oculta es una novela épica –en tanto que se desarrolla en el contexto de una cruzada–, tiene un gran punto de intriga política y esotérica, y es histórica estrictamente cuando sigue a la Canción de la Cruzada, que es un documento histórico real. Pero por otra parte, la obra trata de emociones. Yo no he querido hacer un ensayo histórico sino que he puesto como narradora a una dama joven que habla de sus sentimientos cuando ve a su civilización brillante y a todo cuanto quería arrasado. Es una novela que visita los grandes iconos de la Edad Media bajo un sentido de “pico y aventura” todo el tiempo. Tanto por la acción, pues es de ritmo muy rápido y ágil, y por las emociones que despiertan los personajes, creo que he logrado lo que quería: enganchar al lector y que se divierta leyéndola.

¿Es difícil compaginar la dirección de empresas con la labor de escritor?

Tener la escritura como pasión y desarrollar en paralelo una actividad distinta que proporciona los recursos necesarios para sobrevivir tiene sus ventajas e inconvenientes. Un inconveniente obvio es la falta de motivación que da la necesidad; y la ventaja más evidente es la misma: no hay prisa.

Así cuando busco información para mis novelas tiendo a pasarme días investigando algo que al terminar la obra quizá no aporte más que una línea de texto, sólo por el placer de la curiosidad satisfecha.

David E. Sentinella

AS HEADTEACHER to hundreds of teenagers, it may seem that Dr Paul Doherty already has his work cut out.

But the dedicated teacher, who has been head of Trinity Catholic High School, Mornington Road, Woodford Green, for 26 years, has found time to write about 60 books.

Ahead of the launch of his latest tome, The Templar, the 61-year-old told of his passion for writing.

“I always wanted to do it. I loved reading and writing stories as a child and I was especially interested in history.

“But when I finished my doctorate at Oxford, I didn’t want to be an academic, I wanted to teach.”

The father-of-seven, who lives in Leytonstone with wife Carla, has been writing for 25 years and mainly pens historical mysteries.

His work has been published all over the world including Japan, Alaska and Canada, and readers across the globe email him about his books.

Dr Doherty said his latest has, in effect, been a work in progress for 25 years.

He said: “I’ve done a lot of research over the years, but I actually put pen to paper about a year ago.

“For some of my books, like a history book about Queen Elizabeth I, a lot of the information is already to hand, but when I get an idea I develop it and it can be easy. I enjoy writing and I do it at weekends and during holidays.”

His sons and daughters benefited from his writing flair when he would tell them stories as children and his family are interested in what he does.

His students know all about his other career and some caught him on TV last year talking about Elizabeth I. Parents also have been known to read his books.

A true story-teller, Mr Doherty writes his novels by dictating them on tape, so he knows how they will sound to readers. Then the manuscript is delivered to a typist for completion.

The latest book will be launched in a ceremony at the school on Thursday.

It’s a story about the First Crusade and the origins of the Templar Order.

He said: “I looked into it during my time at Oxford and I thought I’d write a story about how they were founded.

“It seems to be well received. It’s very vivid and readable.

by CLAIRE STILL

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Synopsis
The Templars exploded onto the public conciousness with Dan Brown’s THE DA VINCI CODE, now journey with Paul Doherty to 1095 and experience the founding of the Templar Order in all its epic and brutal detail. 1095 and crusading fervour has swept Europe. Christ’s fief of Jerusalem has been seized by the Infidels. The Frankish Knights of the West are to march east to liberate the Holy City. Hugh de Payens and Godefroi of St Omer, the soon-to-be founders of the Templar Order, and Hugh’s younger sister, Eleanor, leave the security of their homes in Burgundy, France, with a plan to join Count Raymond of Toulouse’s army, and march across the known world to Jerusalem. Follow the crusaders as they march through Europe into the glories of Byzantium and onto Syria. Witness the hardships, bloodshed and trickery on their treacherous travels to the Holy Land and know that though the crusaders’ journey, and this novel, will end with their entry into the Holy City, the Crusades have yet to begin in earnest.

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Book details
The Templar
By Paul Doherty
320 pages; £7.91.
Buy it on the Templar Globe Store

“Hoje a verdade é um cartucho vazio”. A afirmação é do historiador e jurista José Hermano Saraiva, que esteve esta semana em Pombal a gravar uma edição para o programa “A Alma e a Gente”, exibido na RTP2. Louriçal, Pombal e Abiul foram os lugares onde o famoso professor esteve para mostrar que “a história de Pombal pode-se apresentar como símbolo da própria formação de Portugal”. Um programa a ser exibido no próximo dia 29, pelas 21h30.

O [jornal] ECO acompanhou um pouco das filmagens e trocou impressões com José Hermano Saraiva no mesmo cenário onde, quatro anos e meio antes, tinha sido feita uma entrevista: no Castelo de Pombal. “Actualmente vive-se de faz de conta. Hoje a verdade é um cartucho vazio”, desabafou o professor, após ter feito uma explicação sobre a edificação, abordando as agitações entre os templários do Castelo de Pombal e a população do Cardal que terminaram “quando o Conde de Castelo Melhor levou a imagem de Nossa Senhora de Jerusalém lá para baixo”. Ainda a propósito da fortaleza, José Hermano Saraiva referiu que “eu daria vida ao Castelo chamando os templários (1). Esse é o castelo mais turístico de Portugal”.

Acompanhar as filmagens de José Hermano Saraiva, de 87 anos, é mais surpreendente do que os próprios enredos da História de Portugal que o professor vai desvendando. Isto porque, em cada cenário, a gravação é feita apenas uma vez, sem blocos de anotações ou paragens. “Faço o programa sem papéis ou qualquer outra indicação. Só digo o que manda o meu coração e as pessoas compreendem essa espontaneidade e aceitam”, acredita José Hermano Saraiva. E como explica ainda o sucesso de seus programas junto a um público tão diversificado? “É uma razão simples. É o poder da verdade. Agarra, convence e aceita-se”, destaca, acrescentando que “hoje o mundo está travesti, cheio de disfarces”.

O realizador d’“A Alma e a Gente”, José António Crespo, acompanha o professor nos programas de televisão há vários anos. “Estou com ele há 14 anos. Costumo dizer que estamos no quarto mandato”. Segundo o realizador, “é muito fácil trabalhar com o professor. Apesar de não podermos esquecer que faz muitas palestras para a elite, é um académico e, não sendo difícil, é essencial conhecê-lo para perceber a sua ironia”.

Já em pleno Largo do Cardal, quando explicava pormenores sobre a Igreja, José Hermano Saraiva atraía os olhares de todos os que passavam, a pé ou de carro. “É ele?” era a pergunta que mais se ouvia. De acordo com o historiador, “quatro anos depois encontro Pombal mais desenvolvido, a população cresceu imenso, além do comércio e trânsito. Pena porque não mostrei as coisas novas de Pombal. Há muito o que ver. Este é um dos lugares de Portugal em que os anos foram positivos”.

Por Adriana Afonso
www.oeco.pt

 (1) Estamos completamente de acordo!

The story has it all: Vatican intrigue, corruption, medieval castles, secret knights, papal enquiries, and royal conspiracies.

But it is not fiction.

More than 5 meters of recovered parchments reveal the actual account of one of the most important trials of the Middle Ages: The Processus Contra Templarios (Latin for “Trial Against the Templars”).

The Knights Templar was a powerful and secretive medieval order originally formed to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. The order was dissolved following charges of heresy in 1314.

This book reveals the order’s innocence.

The parchment is the transcript of the hearings that took place at Chinon, France in August 1308. It chronicles the accusations of heresy, the Templars’ defense and the Pope’s absolution of the order.

Since the Knights Templar was accused some seven centuries ago, the order has entered the realm of legend. Most recently the best-selling book, The DaVinci Code, speculated on the order’s actual, secret purpose.

Now, in an effort to restore the Templars’ reputation, the Vatican is selling 799 copies of the Processus Contra Templarios at 5,900 euros ($8,377) apiece.

The reproduction comes in a soft leather case, complete with a faithful replica of the original papal wax seals. Printed on a special synthetic parchment, it also contains translations into English and Italian, and scholarly commentary.

Barbara Frale, the 37-year-old Vatican archives official who rediscovered the Chinon parchment after more than 10 years of research in the Vatican Secret Archives, spoke with Discovery News about her find and about the medieval, crusading order.

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News: What’s it like working at the Vatican’s secret archives?

Barbara Frale: It’s such an incredible adventure. The archives are an endless labyrinth of historical treasures. The lives of so many Popes fill some 80 kilometers of shelves underground, beneath the Vatican. There are millions of original documents, you almost feel dizzy there.

It’s really detective work, and it begins right from the huge Index Room, which contains some 3,800 books.

Finding the right document is not easy at all. Also, you need years of study, a specialization in paleography, and several years of work experience to decode the ancient writings.

RL: What is your main area of study?

BF: I’ve been studying the history of the Knights Templar since 1995. At the Vatican Archives, I came across some big paper registers written when the papal court was in Avignon, France (1309-1378). I noticed that a bulk of documents which belonged to Pope Benedict XII actually contained some papers dating back to the reign of a former Pope, Clement V.

The document featured a piece of the trial of the Templars, namely the only enquiry which had been held by the pontiff, himself, at Poitiers, in the summer of 1308. There also was a “Rubrice,” a summary of notes written on some cheap paper.

These annotations turned to be a historical treasure far more than the refined and expensive parchments. There I could find the real thoughts of the Pope. My fascination with the Templars could only increase at this point. I had to dig deeper.

RL: So, how did you discover the Chinon parchment?

BF: In 2001 I found a list of provincial enquires that Clement V ordered to be held by diocesan bishops. An enquiry appeared to be a hearing held by Bérenger Frédol, one of the best canonist of his time and the Pope’s nephew. It appeared very strange to me that such a man would be sent to the country, to hold one of the ordinary diocesan hearings.

I was right: the enquiry was indeed the Chinon hearing. When I saw that original parchment with the seals of the three cardinals appointed by Clement V to judge the Templar General Staff in his name, I could not believe my eyes. It was the document so many historians had been searching for.

RL: What these documents from the Vatican Archives reveal that wasn’t known before?

BF: Since the trial of the Templars ended with the destruction of the order, with the Grand Master Jacques De Molay burning at the stake in 1314, it was believed that Pope Clement V agreed on the heresy charges moved by the King of France, Philip IV “The Fair.”

On the contrary, the Chinon parchment and the Rubrice show that Clement V wanted the Templar order to be saved. He wanted to reform and restore it to its original strength. Indeed, the Knights received the papal absolution from all charges of heresy.

RL: How did it happen that the Templars were imprisoned?

BF: It was a very dramatic event: on Friday 13, October 1307 the French soldiers broke into all templar preceptories and imprisoned the monks. It was a heavy abuse of power as the Templars were a religious order completely independent from royal authority.

The truth is that the King of France, who badly needed money, wanted to seize the Templars’ wealth. The order amassed fortunes through property and banking but declined after the Muslim reconquest of the Holy Land.

RL. What were some of the charges against them?

BF: The accusation of heresy focused on them denying Christ, spitting on the cross, and giving ‘three obscene kisses’ on the low spine, the navel and the mouth.

RL Were these charges true?

BF No. In reality, this was an initiation ceremony. It was performed to show the new knights the humiliation they could suffer if they fell into the hands of the Saracens. The hearings made Pope Clement conclude that the ritual was not blasphemous, although he did find the Templars guilty of lesser infractions of church law because of this ceremony.

RL: The Pope’s absolution did not prevent the King of France from burning many Templar leaders at the stake and basically dissolving the order. Could you explain why Clement V did nothing to save the Templars?

BF: The risk for the Pope was a schism in the Church. So he decided to sacrifice the Templars. The order was already enjoying a bad reputation because of charges of heresy and sexual misconduct

RL: The Catholic Church has been asked by several supposed descendants of the Templars to offer apology for what happened 700 years ago. What do you think?

BF: A serious historian knows that medieval issues must remain confined to the Middle Ages. You cannot transfer such issues, even if they are dramatic, to present time.

There has been a lot of talking about the Templars. So many books have taken inspirations only from legends, obscure traditions, supposed secret rituals and lost treasures. This has nothing to do with the historical documents.

RL: Your discovery is going to rewrite the history of the Templar order. Have you received a free copy of the Vatican book?

BF: No, but I am not missing it. After all, it is such a large book I would not know where to put it. The only place I can think of is a box under my bed, but I think it would not be the best company to sleep with.

in Discovery News

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It should be said that the first Templar group to be officially taken on a tour of the Secret Archives of the Vatican and to be presented with copies of the Chinon Parchment was the OSMTHU, back in 2002 under the Mastership of Fr+ Fernando de Toro-Garland.

After the visit was made public, many other groups claimed to be present and tried to legitimate their “close ties with the Vatican” (which were non-existent) by saying it had actually happened to them! Well, it hadn’t.

The fact that we were the first to be invited to take a look at the document was never used to legitimate or not our position. As Barbara Frale says, the parchment should not be taken out of its context, which is the middle ages. It does nothing to legitimate our Order or any other Order for that matter (look at this piece of news). And we never claimed that it would.

But it’s nice to remember that in the serious academic world, where history is history, we were considered back in 2002 worthy enough to be invited to look at it closely. And we have the photos.

Photo taken during the visit. From left to right the late F+ Horacio Amadeo Della Torre, by then Preceptor of the Order, Prior of Argentina and member of the Magisterial Coucil; F+ Rosario Tomarchio (hidden behind F+ Horacio), Bailiff of Catania; Father Sergio Pagano, Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archive; F+ Fernando de Toro-Garland, by then Master of the Order; Barbara Frale; Fr+ Antonio Paris, by then Priori of Italy and Seneschal of the Order, member of the Magisterial Council (today Master of the Order) and F+ Jose Antonio Cabrera Diaz, by then Prior of Spain (now Treasurer of the Order and member of the Magisterial Council). Other Templars were present, including Fr+ William McCallum, Australian member of the Magisterial Council, but not pictured here.

 As you can see it wasn’t a group of tourists that visited a library, it was the true elite of the OSMTHU that has been governing the Order for many years. I still can’t forgive myself for not having been there!

Antes que autor de ficción de éxito -su novela ‘La cena secreta’ (2004) ha sido un ‘bestseller’ mundial-, Javier Sierra (Teruel, 1971) se dedicó al periodismo paranormal y fue considerado el ‘niño prodigio de la ufología española’. Redactor de revistas como ‘Año Cero’ y ‘Más Allá’, que llegó a dirigir, escribió centenares de artículos sobre ovnis y presuntos enigmas. ‘La ruta prohibida’ (Planeta, 2007), su último libro, se centra en misterios de la Historia que, según él, «llevan siglos aguardando a ser desvelados».

-En su obra, se pregunta: «¿Acaso la Historia (con su inmerecida H mayúscula) se ha ocupado alguna vez de los ‘pequeños’ indicios?».

-Bueno, considero que no ha profundizado en ellos o no les ha dado la relevancia que tienen. La tesis del libro es que la Historia es incomprensible sin el factor ocultista, sobrenatural… Muchos grandes personajes actuaron cómo lo hicieron porque profesaban creencias de ese tipo. El reinado de Felipe IV, por ejemplo, sería absolutamente incomprensible sin tener en cuenta la influencia de su correspondencia con sor María Jesús de Ágreda.

-Que él creía que se comunicaba con el Más Allá.

-Exactamente. Y la utilizó de médium para comunicarse con su mujer fallecida y el príncipe Baltasar Carlos. Todo el mundo ha recurrido a estas cosas para justificar ciertos actos, pero la Historia ha metido el factor creencias debajo de la alfombra, cuando es muy importante para entender muchas cosas.

-Los historiadores no pasan eso por alto. Otra cosa es que esa monja fuera un personaje clave del reinado de Felipe IV.

-Hombre, no fue el conde-duque de Olivares. Pero que el rey decida en un momento prescindir de los servicios del conde-duque se entiende, en buena medida, gracias a la correspondencia con sor María Jesús.

-Quizá sea sólo un factor más, ¿no?

-Para mí, importante.

-No he encontrado en su libro nada que obligue a los historiadores a cambiar una fecha.

-¿Por ejemplo?

-La del Descubrimiento de América, que usted anticipa.

-Lo que mantengo es que habría que cambiar ese dogma de que América no se conocía hasta 1492.

Historia y dogmas

-¿Se refiere a los vikingos?

-No. De hecho, en el capítulo que dedico al mapa de Vinlandia, que algunos consideran la prueba de que los vikingos descubrieron América hacia el año 1000 porque aparece cartografiada una zona que parece la bahía del Hudson, lo pongo en jaque. Al hacer el análisis espectrográfico de la tinta, da que no tiene más de…

-Unos ochenta años.

-¿Como mucho! El mapa de Vinlandia es un falso histórico.

-Entonces, ¿quiénes conocían América antes de Colón?

-Yo hablo del siglo XIII. ¿Quiénes tenían flota en esa época? Los templarios. Y doy una serie de indicios: la piedra de Westford, en Massachusetts, que contiene un ‘graffiti’ de un caballero con una espada…

-Decir que es un caballero con una espada…

-Es lo que parece.

-Pero las cosas no son siempre lo que parecen.

-Pero tampoco al contrario.

-¿Dónde están las pruebas de que los templarios llegaron a América?

-Hay indicios, sólo indicios. No se han encontrado los restos de un barco templario; pero sí indicios como el ídolo de Carabuco, en Colombia. Es una escultura precolombina de un señor con barba, cuando los indios del altiplano son lampiños.

-¿A algunos les parece barba!

-Sí, vale. Pero no está fuera de contexto. En Tiahuanaco, está también el monolito Kontiki, con barba.

-…

-Vale, con lo que parece barba, pero es mucha barba.

-Son indicios, mientras que pruebas del Descubrimiento de 1492 las hay a patadas.

-Sí.

-Sin embargo, usted dice que Colón llegó a América siete años antes.

-Son indicios. Uno piezas sueltas e intento vislumbrar una explicación. Yo las explicaciones contundentes me las guardo para las novelas.

-Entonces, ¿qué base de realidad hay en las afirmaciones que hace en ‘La ruta prohibida’?

-Es que yo no pretendo imponer un dogma sobre otro.

-No estamos hablando de dogmas. La Historia no es un dogma.

-No pretendo imponer un escenario histórico sobre otro. Digo que, dentro de la Historia que nos han contado, hay una serie de indicios que no encajan, de piezas incómodas de las que no se habla. Éste es un libro en el que no he partido de una visión preconcebida de los temas. Habló del manto de la Virgen de Guadalupe y me encuentro con que el profesor Garza Valdés, un creyente en la sábana santa, sostiene que es una pintura, y no una imagen milagrosa. No me interesa mantener mitos clásicos del misterio por mantenerlos.

-Como… ¿por ejemplo?

-En los capítulos sobre la catedral de Chartres admito que, cuando escribí ‘Las puertas templarias’, me equivocé con el ‘milagro de la luz’, según el cual el día del solsticio de verano un rayo de luz pasa por un agujero de un vitral del templo e incide sobre una loseta marcando el arranque de la nueva estación. ¿Qué pasa? Que me he encontrado con que ese milagro no es del XII, sino que es del XVIII.

-Es el milagro del que habla Louis Charpentier en ‘El enigma de la catedral de Chartres’, ¿no?

-Exacto. Yo soy un ‘fan’ de Charpentier. Lo admito. Pero Charpentier se equivocó al atribuir el milagro de Chartres al siglo XII, cuando es un reloj astronómico del XVIII.

-No es raro que se equivoque. Usted dice en su libro, basándose en él, que las primeras catedrales francesas forman sobre el mapa la constelación de Virgo, y no es así.

-Tienes razón. Pero Charpentier no elige una constelación cualquiera, sino Virgo, que encaja muy bien con las catedrales dedicadas a Nuestra Señora. Lo que me fascina de esa historia es que es paralela a lo que hacen otras civilizaciones de la Antigüedad imitando constelaciones con sus monumentos.

-Pero la ubicación de las primeras catedrales no se corresponde con la constelación de Virgo. Las que cita Charpentier no sólo no son las primeras catedrales, sino que algunas no son catedrales. Además, las mueve de sitio… Es como si usted y yo elegimos unas capitales de provincia determinadas para decir que representan en España la constelación de Tauro. Las encontraremos. Y eso es lo que hace Charpentier, según los historiadores.

-Ja, ja, ja… La teoría de Virgo no es aceptada por los historiadores, pero, por otro lado, hay historiadores que han buscado en laberintos la constelación de Teseo. ¿Qué pasa, que para unas cosas sí y para otras no?

El cielo en la Tierra

-Despende de las pruebas.

-Trascendiendo el detalle, los antiguos tenían una obsesión por el cielo y por imitar en la Tierra lo que veían en los cielos.

-Desde que aparece la agricultura, el hombre necesita de la astronomía para controlar el paso del tiempo.

-Yo hablo de algo más que usarla para el calendario. Me refiero a cosas como la interpretación de ‘Las Meninas’ como un talismán astrológico, una teoría de Ángel del Campo Francés, miembro de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Este señor pone en relación la pintura y la astronomía.

-Dice que ‘Las Meninas’ refleja…

-La constelación de Corona Borealis, siguiendo los corazones de los personajes principales, y Capricornio si se cierra el círculo y se extiende hacia los otros personajes. La estrella más importante de Corona Borealis se llama Margarita, como la infanta protagonista del cuadro, y Capricornio era el signo de Mariana de Austria, la esposa de Felipe IV, que había sufrido dos abortos y tenía a toda la corte pendiente de que pariera un varón.

-Pero Corona Borealis tiene seis estrellas y los personajes cuyos corazones aparecen unidos por una línea en su libro son cinco.

-Es que esta imagen (explica ante la de la constelación que aparece en su libro) procede de un catálogo moderno. A mí, Ángel del Campo me dijo que en los catálogos de Diego Velázquez eran las mismas estrellas. Probablemente la más pequeña tenga una magnitud que pasaba desaparecida para algunos catálogos de aquella época.

-Buscando y buscando, a todo se le puede encontrar una explicación ‘ad hoc’.

-Es que yo no las busco. Ángel del Campo da una explicación coherente a por qué Diego Velázquez pinta esa obra de tema menor en unas proporciones de lienzo tan importantes como el retrato ecuestre de Felipe IV. El pintor da una importancia impresionante a esta obra, para que sólo sea exhibida en una estancia del Alcázar de Madrid.

-El que paga, manda.

-Sí. Pero es que en esa época, yo parto de ese concepto, hay una intencionalidad narrativa detrás de cada obra de arte. Quieren contar algo o quieren que sirva para algo. Yo no se la había encontrado a ‘Las Meninas’ hasta que Ángel del Campo dijo que es un talismán astrológico. En aquella época se creía en eso.

in El Correo Digital

Upcountry Maui resident Brandon Wilson followed in the footsteps of the first Crusaders last year when he walked from Dijon, France, to Jerusalem, spreading a message of commonality among people.

This fall, he will follow another pilgrimage route in the same, traditional way, trekking the 625-mile Via de la Plata trail through Spain on foot.

Wilson said he has been drawn to spiritual pilgrimages since 1992 when he first hiked through Tibet with his wife. He has made six pilgrimages since then, following what he calls “deliberate travel” by slowing down the pace and immersing himself in the journey.

“It becomes a sort of transcendent experience,” said Wilson, a writer and photographer who has published two books about previous walks. “Outside of the cocoon of the known, you put yourself out there in the universe. You learn to have trust and you learn to have faith.”

Where crusaders trod

From April to September 2006, he walked the Templar Trail, so-called because it was the route that a leader of the First Crusade, Godfrey de Bouillon, and the original Knights Templar traveled on their way to battle in the Holy Land in the ninth century.

“This trail that was used for war … throughout the Crusades,” said Wilson, who considers himself Christian. “I wanted to do it as a walk for peace — to walk through nations that had been so war-torn for so many generations and to remind people that there are better ways to solve our problems instead of resorting to war.”

He hopes the Templar Trail will be designated as a “trail for peace,” especially since it cuts through so many different countries with people of varied religious and ethnic backgrounds.

“The ultimate route for peace becomes a path that begins with every individual,” he said. “A physical path such as this sets people in that direction.”

During his 2,620-mile, 160-day journey, Wilson carried only a 15-pound backpack. He began his journey with an older French companion, who had to turn back once they reached Istanbul. Wilson often had to change his planned route because of political unrest in certain areas.

When Wilson needed food, water or shelter, they were somehow provided.

“I walked through 11 different countries on two continents and I was shown universal hospitality by complete strangers,” he said.

Wilson said that every day he would stop and talk to people about being an American, about the war in Iraq, and other world issues, often clearing up misconceptions and learning much himself.

“Once people, no matter what background they have, start off on these trails, reduce their lives to the basic essentials that they carry with them on their backs, learn to trust again and deal with lots of pent up feelings and emotions … we realize how much we are alike, no matter what our religions, no matter what our cultures, no matter what our nationalities,” Wilson said.

A road less traveled

His next pilgrimage, along Spain’s Via de la Plata, follows part of an ancient Roman road stretching from Seville in the south to Astorga in the northwest. The pilgrimage route ends in Santiago de Compostela where the remains of St. James the Apostle are said to be buried.

“It’s a less traveled route,” Wilson said, compared to the popular Camino Francés route that also ends in Santiago de Compostela. “There will be a lot of time for contemplation, I’m sure.”

Wilson will publish a book this coming January called “Along the Templar Trail: Seven Million Steps for Peace” about his pilgrimage from France to Jerusalem. He also has a website: www.pilgrimstales.com.

Sufism is typically thought of as a mystical branch of Islam whose practices developed in the Middle East during the eighth century and whose adherents can now be found around the world. But whereas some Sufis continue to identify themselves as part of Islam, others do not. Anne Scott has worked with the Naqshbandi Sufi path, a non-Islamic tradition, for 16 years.

Scott was attracted to the basic Sufi idea that love is the essence of God and that only through love can we humans draw closer to God. Followers also seek to resolve the dualities and apparent contradictions of life, believing that unconditional love helps us understand that everything — the good and even what we might consider the bad and the ugly — is a manifestation of the divine.

Scott, 56, through her DreamWeather Foundation, lectures and leads workshops and retreats for women on spirituality in everyday life. She is the author of “Serving Fire: Food for Thought, Body and Soul” (Celestial Arts, 1994) and “The Laughing Baby” (Celestial Arts, 2001). She spoke with me last week by phone from her home in Sebastopol.

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Earlier you told me that your first spiritual experience involved a Buddhist chef, but you didn’t give me any details. Can you tell me more about that?

I was in China on a two-week trip as a photojournalist for Money magazine. I was doing a story on one of the first tour groups to be allowed into the country, and I had asked for vegetarian food, even though I’m not a vegetarian, because I didn’t want to eat the meat and the large quantities of unappetizing food they were serving to the other tourists. This caused a little problem because every place that we went they didn’t seem to know what to do with me, and each time I received a bowl of rice, a plate of cabbage and a bowl of peanuts. Everywhere! But I was so happy to be in China I didn’t care.

On the last few days of the trip, we stayed in a rural inn. Everyone was fed their usual fare, and I expected the same thing — the cabbage, the peanuts and the rice. But just as everyone else was nearly finished, out came a cook with a tray of over a dozen dishes of the most amazing vegetarian food that you have ever seen. It was absolutely beautiful! And there was silence in the room, because everyone was awestruck by the beauty and the reverence of this man as he carried the food and put it on the table.

Then he bowed before me and thanked me for [enabling] him to cook vegetarian food — because it turns out he used to be the head cook in a monastery, a Buddhist monastery — and of course with the Communists in power that was just not allowed and those monasteries were closed. After he left there was so much love in this food, so much love in his preparation that I could barely eat it.

I would think you’d want to dig right in after eating the same thing for two weeks.

Honestly, it was an experience that I had never had before, particularly all the bowing, and I was very uncomfortable — I didn’t know what to say to him. Anyway, that night I went to bed, and I had a dream about the Buddhist cook. I saw him bowing before me, and his bowing evoked something in my heart, and I felt a pain, like a great sorrow, and then — like a movie being repeated — he bowed, and bowed, and bowed again. Each time I felt that pain.

As I told you before, I had no religious or spiritual background before this. I had a few years of church training when I was young, but I had no belief in anything beyond my own mind, basically. But during this night it felt as if my heart had been broken open, and all the protection, all the defenses and all the barriers were melted by this love of this chef. Every time he bowed in my dream, I would again feel this pain — and I was crying and filled with love. I had never known love in that way.

The experience was so beyond the mind that my mind couldn’t wrap around it. And so I didn’t tell anyone about it, not even my husband, for about 10 years, until I began to realize what the experience really was — that it was a spiritual awakening.

You have followed the Naqshbandi Sufi path for 16 years. Can you tell me a bit about the basic beliefs of this tradition?

Like all Sufi paths, it’s a path of love. In Sufism, there is an understanding that this love is in the heart of every human being, only it’s covered over by our conditioning and by the ego and many other aspects that we accumulate during life that might give us a different impression of who we really are. And so the Sufi path helps you to uncover the truth of your own being and this love that’s in the center of your heart. The practices are very simple: meditation and awareness of the presence of the divine.

It’s also described a mystical path. What makes it mystical?

I would describe “mysticism” as a way of making a direct connection to the divine or to what Sufis call the “beloved.” There is no intermediary between you and God.

Many of us find it difficult to make that connection. The Sufi path helps you find it within yourself, often through a deep inner journey and through tremendous longing. I think longing is the stamp of Sufism — the longing in the heart.

What led you to Sufism in the first place?

It started with a book I read during one of the darkest times in my life. I had just taken my husband to the emergency room with a severe asthma attack in 1987, and I didn’t know if he was going to live.

The name of the book was “The Last Barrier: A Journey Into the Essence of Sufi Teachings,” by Reshad Field. It was about a man’s journey to find his spiritual path, which turned out to be Sufism. I had never heard of Sufism before, but I finished the book in about three hours. Afterward, I realized that everything that happened in my life, every seeming failure or sorrow, every difficulty, was not really a mistake. It had all been pointing towards this deeper journey, which I didn’t even know I had. And that was the journey to find the truth in myself — the journey to God.

I had been raised to think that if you weren’t really happy in life, then you were a failure. The Sufi path shows you that life is much bigger than that, and I realized that inside, what I thought was just sorrow, was really the longing for God. Suddenly, my whole life was given context. It’s like walking around with only one leg, and then you are given another leg, and you can stand there with full dignity because you understand yourself better. And you understand there is a purpose to your life that is much deeper than you ever knew.

(more…)

Practically every major city in America has a Masonic temple, often a grand structure featuring an ornate stone facade, towering columns and a sprawling interior. However, exactly what goes on behind closed doors remains a mystery to most outsiders. The Freemasons, an international fraternal organization, are known for keeping their activities secret.

For centuries, that penchant for secrecy has fueled countless conspiracy theories — Masons have been accused of everything from plotting world domination to acting as an agent of the pope. In recent years, the novelist Dan Brown has drawn heavily on Masonic lore and symbolism in his best-selling novels “Angels and Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code.”

Although the organization maintains no particular religious affiliation, its largely aging male membership — there are a few women, too — does espouse certain ideals of a metaphysical nature. Masons live by a moral code that emphasizes charity and community service.

Dustin Erwin, a 26-year-old graduate student at the University of San Francisco, is a member of the Freemasons in San Francisco. I interviewed him by e-mail last week.

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Why did you decide to join the Freemasons?
I joined for a number of reasons. For one, I’ve always been interested in “secretive” societies. Even though Freemasons are adamant that they are not a “secret society” but rather a “society with secrets,” it still had that mysterious attraction. I also have an interest in European/Christian/early American history, and the history of the Freemasons is absolutely fascinating.

Secondly, I was raised in a suburban, Protestant household. So I’ve had a fair amount of exposure to Christianity. But as I got older, went to college, began studying philosophy and other religions, I took issue with the “my way is right, your way is wrong” mentality that many of the Christians I was raised around had. I wouldn’t say I was ever an atheist, but I was a hard-core agnostic.

I wanted a way to get closer to God. I wanted some rational spiritual structure and guidelines. Freemasonry turned out to be exactly this — a system of morality. In fact, one of their mottos is “We make good men better.”

Tell me more about the Freemasons’ idea of morality. What are the main ideas?

It’s a very simple concept: Masons seek to improve themselves and help others not only because it’s the right thing to do but also because we want to do it. All of the major religions share some variation of this same idea, and that is part of the reason why Freemasonry is so welcoming of people from different backgrounds. It really all boils down to this simple theme.

So you don’t have to be part of a particular religion to join?

A Freemason can be of any faith. The only requisite is that he believe in a supreme being (whom they diplomatically refer to as “The Great Architect of the Universe”).

Why did you think that Freemasonry would help you “get closer to God,” as you put it earlier?

I feel like being righteous is about much, much more than simply believing and praying; it’s about your actions. I liked the fact that Freemasonry reinforced the idea that one’s actions are as important as one’s faith or intentions. In this way, I felt it might help put me on the right track in being closer to God.

I want to point out that I’m not on a high horse or preaching or trying to tell you all how good I am. I’m very, very far from perfect, and I’m still very far from where I want to be. But you have to figure out which direction you’re walking before you can take that first step, and I feel like Freemasonry is the compass in this sense.

Was it difficult to become a member? Did they make you jump through a lot of hoops?

Joining was not that difficult. It’s a rather long story, but I’ll summarize by saying that a Mason friend took me to a lodge dinner where he introduced me to several members. I filled out an application signed by two sponsors, paid my application fee and waited for a couple of months. Then I was contacted by three Masons individually, who asked if they could come to my apartment to interview me.

What did they want to know?

It was less intimidating than you might think. They asked questions like, What did I hope to get out of Masonry? What do I do [for a living]? Had I ever been arrested? And then there was some basic small talk. I think they were just trying to get a sense of what kind of person I am.

The Freemasons are known for their unusual initiation rituals, although exactly what goes on is kept secret. What can you tell me about them?

The initiation is essentially a drama that begins to reveal and explain the symbolism and ritual of Masonry. It was a little strange in that it was very old and completely foreign to me. I’ve never been a joiner — I was never in a college fraternity or anything.

There is no tomfoolery involved, and it’s meant to be a very solemn event. It turned out to be a very intriguing and memorable experience.

Was the process upsetting or scary?

It definitely wasn’t upsetting. And I wouldn’t quite call it scary either. I was out of my element, for sure, which made it slightly uncomfortable. I really didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be completely benign — there was no hazing involved.

Tell me about your lodge. How often do you meet?

There are lodge events nearly every week. As an entered apprentice, a sort of entry-level Mason, I am not permitted to attend all of the events — so far I’ve only been to dinners. Like I said, I’m very new to this.

What happens at meetings?

Some nights they do “degree work,” where a Mason is promoted to a higher level, and some nights are strictly social functions. There is a large social component to being a Freemason. You have to realize that many members are retired, and this is their primary social outlet. However, I have noticed that many of the new members are younger (in their 20s), and I’ve read that there are more younger people joining.

Is it true that you have a secret handshake?

There are a few handshakes.

I’m sure you’re aware that Freemasonry has been linked to numerous conspiracy theories over the centuries. It’s been described in some circles as an occult and even an evil power. What do you make of these claims?

I really can’t answer this question for fear of my life — just kidding! For the most part, I find these claims to be ridiculous. If you were to walk into the lodge on any given night, you’d find a bunch of good-natured older guys playing billiards and telling unfunny jokes. It’s not like there is a dark-robed master sacrificing goats by candlelight or anything.

I think most conspiracy theories stem from the unknown. For example, we don’t know who killed JFK, and therefore there are countless conspiracy theories about who did it. Most people are uninformed or misinformed about Freemasonry, and I think this is the cause of a lot of it. From what I’ve seen, the Masons are about as harmless as the Girl Scouts.

The group has also been seen by some religious leaders, particularly the Catholic Church, as a threat to their beliefs.

I honestly don’t understand why certain religious leaders condemn Freemasonry. I suspect it’s mostly influenced by power and paranoia.

Like I said, I was raised Christian — Sunday school, Bible camp, the whole nine yards. And everything I know about Freemasonry is completely compatible with Christianity and has really provided me with a way to implement those principles into my life.

What do your friends think about your joining the Freemasons?

It’s quite funny to try to explain it to them. They’re like, “Isn’t that some sort of satanic cult?” It can be tough, especially in San Francisco. I don’t come across a lot of people my age wanting to talk about God, religion or righteousness. When I’ve tried to bring these things up at bars or parties, the conversation tends to die, although I think that is changing.

I think a lot of younger people are getting tired of our increasingly materialistic and shallow culture, and are looking for something more traditional. I know that was part of the appeal for me. You can only hang out in bars and go to shows for so long. I felt like I needed something more relevant and lasting.

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By David Ian Miller

During his far-flung career in journalism, Bay Area writer and editor David Ian Miller has worked as a city hall reporter, personal finance writer, cable television executive and managing editor of a technology news site. His writing credits include Salon.com, Wired News and The New York Observer.

His “Finding My religion” series of interviews that you can find in SFGate.com look at individual experience of how different people found their religion. It is considered that this is a subject close to all Templars heart, that will surely resonate with some of our own individual experiences, helping us understand how mystical traditions far apart from ours have so many common points. You will also read about people that today follow mystical disciplines that it is said the historical Templar Order was familiar with, including Sufism, Kaballah, Gnosticism, Sacred Geometry, Meditation, etc.

 Photos of the Grand Lodge of New York and Temple - Luis de Matos (c) 2007

For centuries, the study of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, was considered off-limits to anyone but the most mature scholars. Some believed you could go crazy if you weren’t ready to take its powerful truths about the nature of God and reality.

That was, of course, before a wave of Hollywood stars became entranced with the teachings of esoteric Judaism. Now, it seems, anyone can study Kabbalah, even Madonna and Britney Spears.

Noted Kabbalah scholar Daniel Matt was 19 when he read his first few lines of the Zohar, the ancient text that is the foundation for Kabbalah. He’s been fascinated by it ever since and is now one of the world’s leading Zohar translators.

Matt, 54, spent more than 20 years as a professor, most recently at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and is the author of “Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment,” “The Essential Kabbalah” and other popular guides to Jewish mysticism. He is working full time on the first complete English translation of the Zohar based on the original Aramaic text.

Matt recently finished the third of volume of that translation, “The Zohar: Pritzker Edition” (Stanford University Press). The three volumes are available now.

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I understand there’s some controversy about when the Zohar, the ancient text that you are translating, was actually written. Can you tell me about that?

Traditional Kabbalists believe that it dates back to early rabbinic times, to the second century, because the main figure in the Zohar is a rabbi who lived then, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. But most scholars think it was actually composed 1,100 years later in Spain in the 13th century. And there is strong evidence for that.

What kind of evidence?

Well, the Aramaic itself is very strange. There are invented words, and occasionally there is a Spanish term or references to medieval events or personalities. So if you look at it objectively, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it is a medieval creation.

Assuming it was written in the 13th century, why would someone be interested in reading the Zohar today? What is its relevance?

The Zohar is written as a commentary on the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, beginning with Genesis. It challenges that text constantly and overturns many traditional teachings. In that sense, you could say that it reimagines Judaism.

In what ways does it rethink Judaism?

For one thing, it challenges the traditional notion of God. It says that none of our usual names for God are adequate. They all fail to capture God’s true nature. The only name that really is correct is the name Ein Sof, which in Hebrew literally means “there is no end,” or the infinite.

So in the Zohar, God is infinity?

Yes. And any picture we have of God, any theological formulation, is really inaccurate and misleading because it doesn’t do justice to the open-endedness of God.

At the same time, the Zohar also says, “If you are going to describe God, you have to balance the masculine with the feminine.” So I think one of its most important contributions is to insist that God is equally male and female. And it does that very graphically. It actually refers to masculine and feminine halves of God, and the goal of religion — the goal of life — is to unite these two halves of God. And how do you do that? By acting ethically and spiritually in the world.

Besides being a commentary on the Bible, the Zohar is also a sort of mystical novel about a group of wandering rabbis. How does that story unfold?

It is a very loose narrative structure, but these rabbis are wandering through Galilee and sharing their mystical secrets with each other. They also run into strange characters on the road who puzzle them. Often, these people seem to be total idiots — for example, a wandering donkey driver or a little child who stumps the rabbis with questions. But it turns out these figures who seem to be fools end up having the greatest wisdom. So part of its message is, you know, you can’t tell where you’ll find teaching, where you’ll find insights.

Traditionally, studying Kabbalah was something you weren’t supposed to do unless you were an older man — I think the cutoff was 40 years old. What was the reason for such restrictions?

There were several reasons. One had to do with an awareness of the power of these mystical teachings. If you lose a sense of yourself and feel that you are melting into the divine — a common experience among students of mysticism — there is a danger you won’t be able to function in the world. You could lose your sanity or be unable to provide for your family or contribute to society.

There’s also the fear that if people really felt that they could contact God on their own terms, then what need would there be for the rabbinic authorities and for the structures of Jewish law? So there is a social danger as well as a psychological one.

Today, it seems like everybody’s studying Kabbalah. Thanks to Madonna and Britney Spears, Jewish mysticism has become chic. What do you make of that trend?

I’m intrigued by it. I think it has, you know, positive and negative aspects. The question I’m often asked, and I wonder myself is, “What about Kabbalah appeals to Hollywood types or to modern Americans?” There are a couple of things I’ve been able to identify.

One is that Kabbalah is a kind of spirituality that doesn’t demand that you flee from the material world. Rather, it says that spiritual seekers should try to transform the world by engaging it. So I think many Westerners who are obviously hungry for the spiritual but aren’t willing to give up the material realm might find that appealing.

Another reason for Kabbalah’s appeal may be that it is an interesting combination of something very strange and exotic but at the same time familiar. What I mean is that the Kabbalah is based on the Bible - the foundational text of Western civilization — and yet it reinterprets it in a radical way.

Is the Kabbalah that you are studying the same one that Madonna and others are studying?

Well, one thing we have to make clear is that there is no book called the Kabbalah. So when people say they are studying the Kabbalah, it could be thousands of texts. That said, the Zohar is the major text of the Kabbalah. Every Jewish thinker would agree with that.

So what’s being taught and promoted by the Kabbalah Learning Center — now they are called the Kabbalah Center [where Madonna goes] — is the Zohar. This is the same Zohar that I’m working on, although they have their own translation, which is based on a Hebrew translation of the original Aramaic.

Let’s talk about your own spiritual background. Did you grow up in a religious family?

Yeah. My father was a Conservative rabbi on the East Coast. I would say God and religion were central in the home, and that the Shabbat [the Jewish Sabbath] was a core part of that. There was a lot of studying and singing and guests and taking walks with my father on Shabbat afternoons.

Did you consider becoming a rabbi yourself?

I considered it, but I was keenly aware of my father’s frustration — he was a very genuine spiritual teacher and demanded a lot of his congregation. And I saw him suffer because of that, not to mention that he was often out in the evening at meetings. I remember once telling him, “I can’t be a rabbi.” And he said, “I didn’t expect you to be.”

Eventually, I decided to teach spiritually but outside the congregational framework and without the rabbinical title. So I went the academic route, and I got a doctorate in Jewish studies. For my doctorate I edited the first translation ever done of the Zohar, which was [from Aramaic] into Hebrew in the 14th century. People say that what you work on in your doctorate often determines what you will do later in life. I didn’t realize that it would determine it so much.

I read in a magazine article that you begin each day by meditating on a few lines of the Zohar after taking a walk up the hillside near your home in Berkeley. Do you still do that?

Yeah. Now I have a more strenuous walk in the morning. I find that if I do a good walk, then I can sit for most of the day without taking a break.

How much a part of your spiritual life is the Kabbalah? It seems like it’s more than just an academic interest for you.

I really try to combine an academic and a spiritual approach. I think you lose some of the richness of the Zohar if you look at it only academically — certainly because it is a spiritual text, and it grew out of spiritual experience. The person writing it is really striving to contact the divine through Scripture, through plumbing the depths of Scripture, trying to discover the divine light hidden in the letters or hinted at by the verses of the Bible.

On the other hand, you lose something, too, I think, if you don’t understand when it was written and who composed it. The person writing the Zohar is trying to present it as something ancient, but he knows what he is doing, and when he talks about hidden levels of meaning, part of the hiddenness is his own project of creating the Zohar. His own creativity is part of what’s going on. It really is an experiment in fiction, a medieval experiment in fiction. And that’s part of its wonder, too.

What is it like to be alone with this mystical material day in and day out? How do you keep your perspective?

I don’t really feel alone. I have one research assistant. Right now, that’s an Israeli in Australia. I’m also in touch with colleagues all around the country, and in Jerusalem, who are involved in Kabbalah or in Zohar specifically.

Fortunately, my wife works at home — she’s involved in spiritual counseling. Our daughter is a senior in college now, but our son is still in high school, and it’s precious to me to take him in the morning to his car pool and to pick him up. So I have that feeling of structure for the day, and then in between, you know, from 8 to 3, I try to immerse myself. Often, I continue to work in the evenings.

Actually it’s harder for me not doing it than doing it. Like now I’ve finished volume 3, and I told myself I needed to take a break. So this past week I really tried consciously not to do Zohar and it was very difficult. I just felt unfulfilled, like I was wasting my time.

It sounds like you love what you do. So, my last question: Zohar the movie? What do you think?

I think it definitely has cinematic possibilities. The running into the donkey driver and the spectacular account of creation are pretty compelling. But I’ll leave that for others.

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By David Ian Miller

During his far-flung career in journalism, Bay Area writer and editor David Ian Miller has worked as a city hall reporter, personal finance writer, cable television executive and managing editor of a technology news site. His writing credits include Salon.com, Wired News and The New York Observer.

His “Finding My religion” series of interviews that you can find in SFGate.com look at individual experience of how different people found their religion. It is considered that this is a subject close to all Templars heart, that will surely resonate with some of our own individual experiences, helping us understand how mystical traditions far apart from ours have so many common points. You will also read about people that today follow mystical disciplines that it is said the historical Templar Order was familiar with, including Sufism, Kaballah, Gnosticism, Sacred Geometry, Meditation, etc.

Alcohol has long been part of spiritual practices, from the Grecian rites of Dionysus, the god of wine, to the observance of the Christian Eucharist. The Talmud, a sacred book of Jewish law, insists that the celebration of Purim is not complete until a person has drunk so much that he “cannot tell the difference between ‘Cursed be Haman’ and ‘Blessed be Mordechai.’”

But there can be a dark side to divine intoxication. Ken Barnes, a 67-year-old pastor and Oakland native, has struggled with alcoholism for much of his life, including the 22 years that he served as senior minister at the Arlington Community Church in Kensington.

Initially, Barnes says that drinking brought him closer to God, but eventually his addiction threatened to destroy everything he held sacred. With the help of recovery groups, meditation and other spiritual work, he has been sober for more than 30 years. He is now the interim pastor at Community Congregational Church in Tiburon. I spoke with him recently at his home in Kensington.

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You’ve been clean and sober since the early 1970s. When did you start drinking?

I started drinking in college, a little bit before I turned 21. That was mainly beer, and at parties. But as I look back and piece things together, I realize I had a desire to get high much earlier than that.

I can remember in about the fifth grade someone teaching us that if you take 10 deep breaths, and then if you kneel and put your thumb in your mouth and blow as hard as you can, you’ll keel over. Well, we all did this once to show how macho we were. But I loved it and I’d do it regularly.

Then I got totally immersed in athletics. I was the one who they had to chase off the practice field — I always wanted to go out for one more pass. I’m realizing now exercise put my body into different states — changed my body chemistry. Now we call it “getting in the zone.”

I actually went to school on a football scholarship, at Redlands University. And then I switched to Cal because I played football for two years and didn’t like it. And I got an injury. Looking back on it, I believe my increase in drinking started when I no longer got high athletically. Drinking, from the very beginning, just put me in the zone in a similar way that athletics did.

When you say drinking “put you in the zone,” what do you mean? It made you happy?

It made me happy, made me free. Later on, I had this little mantra I would say to myself: God is in the heavens and everything is right on earth. And that’s what alcohol did for me.

At the early stages of my drinking, before I lost control of it, I’d be amazed when I played basketball with my buddies that most of them wanted to stop drinking after one beer or so. They just wanted to focus on basketball. But I’d want another beer or two. I thought maybe I’d play better. I thought they were so strange! Drinking was my favorite joy — my recreation.

You told me earlier that drinking was sort of a key to a spiritual doorway for you — until it started killing you. Tell me more about that.

It was for me at that time. I felt a sense of transcendence. Of course, alcohol has always been that for people. In the Middle Ages, it was called aqua vitae, the water of life. Jews and Christians have always used it in sacred ceremonies.

When I went to seminary at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, I would study at night with this Irish friend of mine, and after looking at visions of Isaiah and the Hebrew words behind the verb tenses, we’d close our books up and run down to this pub that we liked. And the person would see us coming and he would pour us a glass of whisky and a pint. And we would sit and talk about what we had been studying. And as we got the buzz on, we felt like we really understood what we had been studying meant at a deep level. I used to love doing that.

At what point did alcohol become a problem for you?

Sometime in my mid-20s drinking went from being a recreational activity — something I tried to bring into most social events — to a daily part of my life. Partly, it was when I had the financial means to procure alcohol, after I got my first [job at a] church.

Most evenings I was either at the pub or at home with the bottle. And most of the time I didn’t get rip-roaring drunk. I tried to maintain that high and the spontaneity that it gave me. But pretty soon I crossed that invisible line where I lost control.

Did anyone try to confront you about it?

I dated a couple of women, and they would at times wonder about it. But then I would back away from them. So no, I was for the most part a very congenial, sensitive, aware drunk. And I’d feel so good that I would just be so interested in whomever I was with.

What about your congregation? Didn’t they notice?

Not right away. I was a good pastor. Most of my folks just loved me, and I loved them. And when there were important events at night, I would work really hard to keep my drinking down. I probably drank addictively for five to seven years before things started getting bad. And then I really got scared.

What happened?

For one thing, I started having partial blackouts where I couldn’t remember or piece together everything that had happened the night before. Sometimes I would go through a radical personality change. I’d be so delighted with my wife, and then suddenly I’d get quarrelsome with her for no good reason. And later it would confuse the heck out of me. It didn’t seem like the real me who was acting this way.

Then I started getting hangovers. For a long time I never got them. That’s how I decided I wasn’t an alcoholic. I’d drink my buddies under the table. They’d be puking in the morning, and I’d be fine. But then I started getting them, too. That was pretty serious. And I started doing some things that I didn’t like, like hiding my drinking and not being truthful in other ways.

Denial is a big temptation for alcoholics. At what point did you decide you had a problem and needed to stop drinking?

I got pulled over a number of times by the police. Two or three times it was city cops who stopped [me], and since I chaired the fire liaison board for the city, they just took me home and told me where my car was. But one time I was on [Highway] 880 and the highway patrol pulled me over. I ended up in the Santa Rita jail.

My wife bailed me out, and the whole thing really scared me. Plus, we were expecting our first daughter. At that time, I practically kept a furniture repairman in business by falling and breaking things [when I was drunk]. I was terrified that I would fall while I was holding her and hurt her.

So I called a pastor friend of mine who I knew was in recovery, and he took me to my first meeting. And that was the beginning of my recovery process.

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No matter what you think about the book or the movie — love it, hate it or totally sick of hearing about it — “The Da Vinci Code” has sparked a debate about the nature of faith and the foundations of Christianity. It’s also turned a spotlight on some lesser-known religious traditions that have been operating quietly for centuries.

Among the religious groups brought blinking into the “Code”-inspired publicity glare are Gnostic Christians. The word Gnostic, from the Greek word for knowledge, expresses the central tenet of this faith — Gnostics believe Jesus’ mission was to teach people that the divine lives within each of us, and that salvation can be achieved through spiritual knowledge rather than faith and good works. Only through truly knowing God can humans transcend the sins and flaws of this world.

Gnosticism was declared a heresy in the early days of Christianity. But the religion didn’t die, and it’s flourishing in the 21st century. As in the Protestant faith, there are many separate factions within Gnosticism. Gnostics, like most initiatory mystical faiths, refer to these sects as “traditions.”

Tau Malachi is a Gnostic bishop of the Sophian tradition, which teaches that Mary Magdalene was also a savior and spiritual teacher, equal to Jesus and an embodiment of the divine. He is the author of several books, including “St. Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride.” He spoke with me last week by phone from his home in Nevada City.

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Gnostic ideas figure prominently in “The Da Vinci Code.” What is your take on the book’s presentation of Mary Magdalene and Gnostic beliefs? Is it on target?

Well, I think it hints at things. But I’m not sure the spiritual content that Gnosticism teaches is really present in the book. To give you an example, Magdalene is referred to in “The Da Vinci Code” as the grail and mother of the royal blood because she is a close disciple to Jesus — she is his wife and has his children. That’s kind of painting her as being similar to the Virgin Mary, simply because she has had children.

In Sophian Gnosticism, she’s viewed as a spiritual master, a close disciple to whom Jesus pours out the fullness of the light, or the Christos, and she becomes a Christ-bearer (messiah) also. She is the apostle to the first apostles, igniting what we call the Gnostic apostolic succession. And in this end she is mother to the royal blood on a spiritual level. So the issue for us wouldn’t be whether she literally had children or not. Either way, it wouldn’t make a difference.

How did you feel about the book in general?

The book didn’t have quite the same power for me that it did for other people, I think, because I’ve been practicing the tradition that honors Magdalene since I was 8 years old. Really, I felt like I was reading a thriller like any other. But I could also see that if I knew nothing about Magdalene this would be a very powerful book. To many, these are revolutionary thoughts — the idea of Magdalene being innermost disciple, wife and consort [to Jesus].

It seems like there’s no end to the controversy about the book and the movie. Do you think it’s worth all the fuss?

For some mainstream Christian churches, alternative views of Jesus, of Christ, of Christianity are very threatening. So in that sense it’s understandable.

Personally, I think it’s interesting that we are having discussions about traditions and ideas based on a novel. Not to say that there aren’t grains of truth in it, but it wasn’t written to be something other than fiction — it’s entertainment.

Your latest book, “St. Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride,” presents what are described as secret oral traditions concerning the Gnostic view of Mary Magdalene. Why publish those secrets now? Did the popularity of “The Da Vinci Code” have anything to do with it?

No. Actually, all this was underway before the “Da Vinci Code” phenomenon. Sophian Gnosticism has been moving away from a more private or secretive mode for some time. We’ve been progressively sharing teachings more and more openly over the years.

Why was this information kept secret in the first place?

Sophian Gnosticism has a known history that goes back to about the mid-18th century. That was a very dangerous time to hold alternative Christian beliefs — there was a great deal of persecution by mainstream Christians. So that drove a lot of Gnostics underground.

What originally drew you to Gnosticism?

As a very little boy, I guess you could say there was a propensity in me toward a spiritual life, and apparently toward a Gnostic Christian spiritual life. But when I met a Sophian teacher, whose name was Tau Elijah ben Miriam, and I started to get to know him, it just fit. It was so familiar to me. I felt like a duck in water.

Eight years old is pretty young to get started with a spiritual teacher. What was that like for you?

Elijah was a very fascinating spiritual master. When I met him, he was 81 years old but a very active gentleman. He was a brilliant man. I basically became his sidekick when I wasn’t in school. Hanging around him and his circle became much of my childhood life.

And your parents were OK with that?

Yes. My mom actually had been a student of his when she was younger, but due to illness couldn’t continue [working with him]. So she was very happy that one of her children had this interest.

Your story reminds me of the Dalai Lama and how the Buddha of Compassion is believed to reincarnate in an infant who begins his religious training as soon as he is identified as such. What are the Gnostic teachings on the afterlife?

It’s actually very similar to those found in Bhagwan or Tibetan Buddhism. We believe that one continues to go through many lifetimes until one’s soul is fully realized, or awakened.

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