Course XXVI - Teaching 7: Ancient Initiatic Ceremonials of Knights

For ancient Initiates, the year is the movement of the sun through the twelve zodiacal houses, the way of the soul, from birth to death, in its quest for perfection. So for them annual festivities are important because symbolize different steps and aspects of the material and spiritual life.
Arbitrarily, Julius Caesar reduces some hours of the year and sums up all of them together in one day every four years, in the leap year. But the students of esotericism ever protested against this decision that affects the true Mystical Year.
A true year is like a daiva year among the Hindu: 365 days, 5 hours, 30 minutes, 31 seconds; and Dom Alfonso the Sage, king of Castille, assigned to the year 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, 16 seconds. Even the beginning of the present year does not coincide with the year of the ancients: the true years begins in the equinox of spring.
The Mystical Year is divided into four parts, such as the spiritual life of the Initiated Knights does. The first part, which begins in the equinox of spring, begins with the festivity of the reopened Book of the Mother. It is the return to those things that have been left, for their sublimation.
Nature opens the book of her manifestation and shows her wisdom through flowers that emerge from the bosom of the earth like a foretaste of its fruits. In the magical ritual, it represents the continuous change of all things, the descent of the spirit on the matter, and the sacrifice of a being that possesses more for the sake of a person that possesses less, by distributing his possessions.
Symbolically, someday the disciple shall kill his enemy as soon as he becomes stronger. So this first part of the Mystical Year also symbolizes the reincarnation and law of consequences by which one returns to the root cause.
Those beings who reach a very high grade of spiritual evolution periodically feel the impulse to come back and stay among men to share with them their values and to give them love; and even to become smaller in order transform them into bigger beings.
The Knights, all together, receive the message that the Masters have transmitted to the Great Master. Much shall be demanded from him who has received much.
They are standing and receive the order with their swords unsheathed and covered by their white robes. The Knight appointed to achieve certain Great Work in the world embraces his comrades and gives them his kiss of peace; and after the blessing of the Great Master, riding his white horse goes in secrecy to fulfill his mission, when the others kindle a big fire on the mount to guide the redeeming Knight during his journey through the darkness of the world; then the rest of Knights return to their studies, exercises and concentration, and wait for their own time.
The sword wrapped by the robe represents the Divine Mother, the Supreme Will covered by the Veil of Ahehia, the manifested wisdom that the Knight must strive to discover. His descent to the lower worlds and his unblemished passage through them become indispensable to achieve the supreme realization.
His journey represents the wheel of lives and deaths; and the big fire on the mount, the higher part of man, high ideal and spiritual vocation, which ever stays with him.
Christians imitated this beautiful Initiatic Ceremony with big fires of Saint John and with the festivity of the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary.
Even after their knighthood, the ancient Medieval Knights wandered through the world seeking adventures, ever wishing to find the woman of their dreams or the cup of the Holy Grail.
Wagner offers wonderful images: Lohengrin is the Initiated Knight that leaves the castle of the Knights Monsalvat and goes to defend the maiden that was falsely accused.
Even today the Tables open their course on this date: the time of festivity and joy is over: and the time for discipline, work and sacrifice returned. The Book of the Teaching, which remained closed, is open again; every one sacrifices the best of himself for the sake of others. Also in this date the new Tables begin, always with the sacrifice of the sponsoring Table.
The second part of the year begins with the summer solstice. Fruits are mature and wheat may become bread. The Knights can prepare their feast to consummate the Mystical Wedding of Union between matter and spirit. This ceremony represents the alliance of spirit and soul, that is, of coincidental principles that finally meet and become one.
The solemn Full Moon ceremony is held at this part of the hemisphere in May, but is repeated in a more simple way during the year.
During the Full Moon night all members of the Table are together as if they were only one. The feast is at night, because the night is the mother of mysteries, intimacies and weddings. It is held at Full Moon, for Full Moon indicates that, although the past is dead, it contacts the present to become perpetual in the time to come. Those souls who once were united by the same ideal, although dead, shall meet and be together again.
The feast takes place at a square room, whose table is like a horseshoe. The Great Master is in the center, and the rest of Knights to his right and in order.
The table must be arranged as follows: a straight line should be traced on it by means of a white cord, and plates should be placed on this line. Cups should be placed on another line of orange cord; bottles, on another parallel line of black cord; and platters, also on another parallel line of white cord.
In the antiquity, plates were of silver, perchance to explain that certain metals, such as silver and gold, remove the animal magnetism; every place had to be personal of every one.
In all times, the cup was of especial wood, and made of a very subtle vegetal fiber; hence all those marvelous legends about the Chalice of the Lord and the Holy Grail.
Wine, as we said, represents the lower nature; the Initiate drinks the juice of grapes, knows how to transmute and transforms lower values into higher values.
After the feast, there was a solemn toast, as if the happy and festive part of every soul wished to become only one expression of beauty in order to last like a guiding entity.
After the toast, the Great Master would break his cup.
A table is always a sign of agreement and alliance. In all religions, the altar is the table of the Gods. God comes to an agreement with Jacob, and as a memorial of this agreement, they raise an altar, or mystical table.
Christ established the Eucharistic Sacrament during the paschal feast; usually the early Christians celebrated a fraternal feast.
A table reunites all family members at the time to have a meal. It is the hour of togetherness, of a father along with his children and of a satisfied mother because her family is together. It is the hour to perpetuate the family alliance.
In Full Moon, during the feast, also the sun –image of the Spiritual Sun– is on its nadir; also the sun has descended from above to the underworld seeking her beloved woman, like Orpheus going down to the underworld for her wife Eurydice and for a new alliance, a new agreement and a new wedding.
Members of the Order should observe all these ceremonies with fervor and understanding, because otherwise these ceremonies shall be in vain. Every one should try an alliance with his companions, a union of souls, a union of feelings and ideals, and then this union shall be the future victorious soul of the Spiritual Ideal.
At the end of the work, its celebration took place on the equinox of autumn since the earth has yielded its fruit. Its name was “Festivity of the King” because Knights gave a party in honor of their Chief and of the Initiated Knight.
In winter solstice, the Knights had the festivity of Renunciation; the most advanced left the community and climbed the Mount toward the Castle of the Perfect. This is the most rhythmic and poetic ceremony of all, perhaps because in this fourth part of the year the last visible ceremony in the physical plane takes place.
Always there is someone that excels and reaches a state of inner liberation in every way of life and in every group. These select souls, even keeping their physical body, understand that have nothing to do among men, and an irresistible desire of loneliness drives them to seek an isolated life devoted to contemplation.
It is well-known the Indian belief that these extraordinary beings live in desolate places, hidden in high mountains.
The Theosophical Society based its entire Work on messages from these Masters of the Himalayas.
A splendid ceremony takes place in the ancient Orders to symbolize this one-way mystical journey. When a Knight of high perfection feels the impulse to abandon all external things, the Great Master assembles the Knights and all together they sing the Hymn of Liberation. At once two Ladies, holding a blue cloth, enter with their faces covered by a veil, which is a symbol of the new worlds that the chosen Knight has to conquer, holding a blue cloth in the hands. They take out the white robe of the Knight and line it with blue cloth; later the Knight cuts with his sword the right end of the robe, divides it into seven parts and gives them to the seven remaining Knights like a his souvenir.
This is an image of the Eternal Knight, of the Everlasting Knight; nobody knows if he dies or not. He has been able to control his lower and higher principles at will.
But where do these chosen beings live? In what area of the world do they live?
These secret places, where the Initiatic Orders had, or have their official seat, are not located at random, but correspond to the seven plexuses of forces in the planet. On the earth there are seven sites, not sea sites, whose animal magnetism is much more intense than in other places. Of course, always in mountain areas; there are numberless holy mountains.
A magnetic place on the earth is in Tibet and, especially, in the area of Shambhala, where the Yellow Lamas have their main seat; the most magnetic place in Europe is on the mountain of Monserrat, Catalonia, where –even today– the Rosacrucian Brothers celebrate their astral meetings. In America there are several magnetic places of this kind; one of them can be found in desolate mountains of San Luis Province, and other on the lake Hueche Lauquen, both in Argentina. Lohengrin describes one of these places and calls it Monsalvat and, to make it more inaccessible, describes it surrounded by waters and calls it “unknown place”.
But really did these initiatic castles exist in the antiquity? Actually they existed; and all medieval castles are a copy of them: of those castles founded by Initiated Knights.
Castles of this kind, or ruins of them, can be found in Catalonia and South Galicia, Flanders, Normandy and Scotland; and wonderful samples of them, in North Germany, but of later construction.
Of course, the Ancient Order had to possess their isolated places and castles where the Initiated Knight stayed confined.
Here we shall not refer to the mountain of Kaor, because just ruins of the early Temple may remain there, but we may describe how these secluded spots could have been. At a height of more than one thousand meters, on an unknown and almost uninhabited area, a building totally surrounded by ramparts and water was erected; no member of the Order knew this place, except those who would inhabit it and the Great Masters. No woman, no foreigner could tread this isolated place. In the moat around the castle, they fed to white and black swans, which symbolized the Eternity, manifested and non-manifested. These lonely Knights, these pure guards of the Eternal Wisdom, lived there in such a pure and serene way that just in hours of inner ecstasy and perfect prayer one can glimpse the meaning of this.
These places may have disappeared, but an inaccessible and isolated place still remains for the Knights: the impregnable castle of the Inner Sanctuary.
The four seasons of the year also symbolize the four great eras of the Aryan race since its birth. The first part of the race is from the birth of the Atlantean-Semite race, 850,000 years ago, to the final stagnation of the Aryan race, 118,769 years ago (1941).
The second stage corresponds to this time: from the establishment of the Aryan race to the war of 1,500 years, 25,868 years ago (1941).
The third stage is from the war of 1,500 years to the sinking of Poseydonis, the last Atlantean relic, 11,000 years ago.
The fourth stage is from the sinking of this island up to our present days.
These four stages also recall those four stages of the Esoteric Schools.
The first splendid, golden stage was of the Initiated Masters. It is from that time the Temple of Kaor, 25,868 years ago, to the sinking of Poseydonis, 11,000 years ago.
The second stage represents a time of power and supremacy, the golden era, from the sinking of Poseydonis to the reign of Amenophis IV, 3,311 years ago (1941).
The third stage is the esoteric priestly era. In this stage, the Esoteric Schools already had completed their reserve of knowledge. It lasted from Amenophis IV to the foundation of the Teutonic Order by Hernan von Salza, 1197.
The fourth stage corresponds to the era of the Christian Knights, of action and sacrifice, and lasts from the esoteric foundation of the Teutonic Order up to our present days.
Also it symbolizes the year in the life of man, with four main periods of time: childhood, adolescence, manhood and old age.
The Mystical Year also must foster the true meaning of years, months, days and hours. A fool does not pay attention to them and suddenly finds himself white-haired and empty-handed.
But a sage measures his time. He knows that every hour past is a chance less for his spiritual progress. Like a year, also his chances in life pass by, along with good opportunities, energy and mental clarity in youth, as well as gifts within his reach to become perfect.
So, the Initiatic ceremonials of the Knights, in the Mystical Year, keep a lofty rhythm, measure and stability in the frame of time: this material of which life is made, according to the legend written by the ancients on the luminous faces of their clocks.