I have just finished reading The Templar Meridians for the second time (in addition to having my two teenagers read it as part of their history studies), and thought I would share a brief summary I wrote as the topic greatly interests me and it's what's on my mind...

Like many inventions we now tend to take for granted, cartography was once occulted knowledge.   This was especially true in times and places where any assertion against the popular opinion could provoke the ruling authority.  More than a handful lost their lives for insisting the world wasn't flat, or possessing maps which proclaimed too much of the Truth.  And even now, with the public very much aware of the world and its geography, there are still secrets.

Long before the time of Christopher Columbus there were startlingly accurate maps of lands that were supposedly undiscovered at the time, that haven't been above sea level since the end of the last ice age, and that we can only postulate the details of with the assistance of modern technology.  These maps illustrate North and South America with an accuracy we've only been able to match for 200 years, show islands which haven't been above sea level since the end of the last ice age, and clearly display the shores of Antarctica free of its thick cap of ice.  At least one such map references maps held by Columbus as its source, while another references maps housed in the library of Alexandria before its demise.  Yet regardless of the controversies surrounding the maps and their alluded sources, we do know a few things for certain.  These ancient cartographers not only knew without a doubt the world was round, they knew its circumference and used spherical trigonometry and corrected northern points to translate the round earth into accurate flat depictions.  Also the archaeological evidence itself is that long before Columbus, transatlantic exploration and settlement occurred on a regular basis in the "New World".

Step outside the reality of our present day and just imagine how Knowledge of a precise ancient meridian as the starting point of a global navigational grid could offer those in the know great powers in terms of trade, resources, and control.  Now imagine if this Knowledge hid a grand secret - the New World - and afforded those who were in on the secret the ability to enjoy a seemingly limitless supply of precious and rare metals (namely gold, copper, and titanium) without accountability or the need of record.

According to William F. Mann, author of The Templar Meridians, this grand secret buried within the long-lived vein of occulted mapping Knowledge was precisely the Hidden Treasure of the Templars.  The New World was their "King Solomon's mines" - their private supply of gold and the source of the titanium used to make their swords especially strong and indestructible.  While this could at first seem far fetched, the evidence is abundant and Mann's use of historical records, exhaustive.

What took this from plausible to probable for me is a personal awareness of the many associations between the New World and the "New Jerusalem" historically made by the various occulted Traditions.  This would make it easy to juxtapose - or even combine - Truth and lies when the Templars alluded to a secret wealth discovered in Jerusalem, and lend credence to the Baconian allusion of the land of Ophir (home of King Solomon's legendary mines) sited on the Atlantic coast!

After my previous post on the Interior Stars I received several messages asking if I would expound more on (my understanding of) the relationship of Hebrew Letters to the chakra centers.  And so I shall.  However, as I must accomplish this task in those few and far between spaces when my precious little one is sleeping, I will split-up my response into seven parts, one for each Star...

The first Star - the one related to lessons of Cause and Effect - I call Power.  Its letter is Peh which literally means "Mouth" and corresponds to the planet Mars... Mars is our Power center, the root of our physical energy, and the seat of our sexuality.  The energy here is catabolic; as with the physical plane and the mouth, it breaks things down to aid in their digestion.  Complex structures are refined into simpler forms so that energy can be released.  Too much consumption doesn't equal ever-increasing fulfillment (or Power) but rather makes structures too cumbersome to efficiently refine, promoting their stagnation.  This letter is seen in The Tower card of Tarot's Major Arcana, where the old is torn down to be replaced by what's new.  Often depicted is the Tower of Babylon, a good symbol for connecting Cause and Effect to physical activity and its result; especially that which pertains to sexuality, decadence, and the mouth (i.e. the confusion of tongues; the breakdown of language into smaller parts).

The second Star - the one related to lessons of Reciprocity - I call Life.  Its letter is Gimel which literally means "Camel" (implying travel and trade) and corresponds to the Moon.  The Moon is our Life essence, the Etheric matrix which interconnects the All, and the abode of our fertility.  It is our ability to replicate (i.e. reflect) and exchange the building blocks of life.  The energy here is unifying, connecting one point to another - like the ship of the desert (i.e. the camel) carries news and goods from one place to another or like our fertility which enables the connection of genetic sequences.  Gimel is said to be the perfect memory of the One Identity that compels personalities to link and connect, thus reawakening to the matrix of the Whole.  This letter is seen in the card of The High Priestess, where an individual's travel toward reunification is symbolized by her scroll.  The scroll is named Memory, as it is through recollection that we draw closer to Self.

The third Star, related to lessons of Identifying, I call Unity.  Its letter is Tav which literally means "a Mark" and is correspondent to Saturn.  The planet Saturn symbolizes our Self Center - the throne of individualized Awareness or our consciousness of "self".  It is said that we are all marked in this spot by our navel to remind us of our connection and unity with others.  Tav is the letter "T" or a Tau cross, the three points of which represent the three-fold consciousness that marks our vessel.  It is also called the Egyptian cross, being the symbol marked on the forehead of Egyptian initiates.  Self-consciousness allows for our individual experience of the world but when individualized traits are identified as the absolute what would otherwise be an instrument becomes the instrumentalist, rendering Tav the so-called "mark of the beast".  Within this inverse reality of the ego-beast, the planet Saturn is easily perceived as the "great malefic" or Lord Death with his sickle of Time and unwelcomed limitation.  Yet in Actuality, Saturn's Harvest is the collection of Souls, ripened through the passage of Time and unwelcomed limitation here in "The World"... the name of the card Tav is assigned to.

The fourth Interior Star I call Love.  Its letter is Daleth meaning "the Door", and its correspondent planet, Venus, is sometimes referred to as the Gate of Heaven.  Indeed this being the fourth center out of seven, it can be seen as the entryway from the lower worlds into the more subtle heavenly spheres, or even as a sort of fulcrum that can allow for up or down, open or shut.  Venus is our Heart Center.  It represents the Seat of the Soul; our Astral Body and our portal to the Astral Realm, that starry ocean which reflects energy as pattern, symbol, or image.  The lessons here are all about magnetism and attraction, reflection and appearance.  Where we focus attention energy goes, building images that eventually condense into the "solid" forms of our reality.  Thus for whatever the external appearance of any form (or form of experience), there is always a spiritual and energetic seed at its core.  One seed can produce an abundance of fruits, expressing the manifold appearance of countless potentials.  But what expression do we call reality?  What expressions do we Love and value?  One of the many appearances, or the Truth at the core?  What we perceive - and what we favor - generates more of the same by way of attraction.  The Heart is the ever-bearing Grail, the free-flowing and fertile stream of life as seen in The Empress card of Tarot's Major Arcana.  Yet just as with the Grail hero, the fertile stream can appear as a mere specter of its originating energy - if not altogether a wasteland - until fully realized as the Beautiful Truth and consequence flowing from the Source.

The fifth Star, related to Self-Direction, I call Will.  Its letter is Resh, which literally means "Head" and corresponds with the Sun.  The Sun symbolizes our guiding power; our head director.  Do we lead ourselves by unbridled impulse or like a Hero/ine, with an ever-present forethought of the Greater Good?  It is said that the "Great Work" of the Hero/ine is specifically collection and restoration - that is gathering energies and impulses and all that we are conscious of and, by choice, radiating out and expressing our Power in a way that restores the Human condition to a higher estate.  As the message of The Sun card signifies, the Sun is the Great Regenerator.  It can turn the garden sterile and dry or entice fertility and growth from the desert just as the Human can regenerate their world by consciously directing their Powers - moment by moment, day by day...