A Memoir by Michael Henry Dunn
copyright 2018, all rights reserved
INTRODUCTION — THE TIME RETURNS
This book contains a story of vast treasure – but lost Templar treasure is not the theme. It contains a story of ancient bloodlines – but bloodlines carry only a secondary power. Here is told the story of Lord Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the rise of the Divine Feminine in our time – but do not look here for the promotion of a new matriarchy to replace the patriarchal abuses which have come so clearly to light.
The alchemy of divine balance within each soul of Divine Feminine and Sacred Masculine was the true goal of the Templars – a balance which the worldwide Chivalry Movement seeks to restore as an essential element in the healing of our planet in this global crisis.
Bloodlines matter, and they are not ignored here – but the true story of the Templars and their modern restoration is not founded on unprovable rumors of holy ancestry. The Code of Chivalry and the Temple Rule of their patron, St. Bernard de Clairvaux which the Templars followed mandated humble service to humanity and the Divine. Claims of bloodline superiority are antithetical to the meritocracy which the Templars practiced. The Grand Master of the Order was never a hereditary bloodline office – a successor was chosen from among the brothers by election based on merit.
The concept of a divine union between Christ and the Magdalene is a core tradition of the Templar legacy – but it was never a dogma the acceptance of which was required of Templars. The possibility of bloodline descent exists, but the safeguarding of descendants of the so-called “Holy Bloodline” promulgated as the hidden mission of the Templars in such books as “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” and “The Da Vinci Code,” is likewise antithetical to authentic Templar values and the way of life mandated by St. Bernard, wherein worthiness to lead was proven not by bloodline but by humble service and the absence of ambition for power.
Indeed, it is somewhat astonishing at this late date, after centuries of ample proof that the great-grandson of a sainted visionary monarch may prove to be a bloodthirsty tyrannical imbecile, that any nostalgic impulse yet exists to impute some inherent genetic superiority and “right to rule” to mere bloodline descent from a great soul. Mahatma Gandhi – a sainted visionary leader if ever there was one, whose “right to rule” was spontaneously accorded him by the millions of Indians who gave him his title of “great soul” – endured the sorrow of seeing his eldest son end his life as a drunk in the gutter.
In the end, it is “soul ancestry” which brings leaders forward as the ages pass. It is the legacy of inspiration, not bloodlines, which sets history afire. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., boasted no provable royal bloodline, but he was a king indeed – a “great soul” equally worthy of Gandhi’s title as a Mahatma.
The true mission of the Templars – whose origins begin thousands of years before the famed medieval Order of Chivalry – was and is to set history afire; afire with a flame of love and courage in the name of the betterment of the human family, through direct communion with the Source of all life.
Most books on the Knights Templar focus on lost treasure, sacred geometry/sacred architecture, the Holy Grail, and the mystique of the Magdalen bloodline. They look backward and tell grand and heartbreaking tales of the defeat of virtue by greed, the torture and seemingly fruitless death of thousands (no, millions) of martyrs who were wiped out by hypocritical ruling elites who murdered in the name of gentle Christ.
In this book you will find elements of those tales, but this is a story which looks forward, and deals in the hard geopolitical realities of the 21st Century – a story which sheds light on the emergence of a vast movement to restore the Divine Feminine to her place of balance with the Sacred Masculine.
This restoration has direct impact in the here and now, impacting international law, human rights, the central banking and fiat currency systems, religious and sectarian strife, the upheaval of climate change, and the crisis of relations between the sexes embodied in the #MeToo Movement.
As one well-known Templar scholar put it, “The Templars have something to do with everything.”
It is tempting to view the current upheaval between the sexes as a passing corrective: a much-needed but soon to dissipate explosion of long-repressed righteous rage by women against men, which must inevitably fade from the headlines and from popular consciousness, whereupon things will return to the more-or-less normal condition of female vulnerability and male domination.
It has already gone too far, some say, and the pendulum must swing back: men will need to be able to flirt without fearing for their careers or their reputations, and women will eventually “calm down” enough to enjoy again a respectful manifestation of the assertive/receptive dynamic which is presumed to underlie “normal” relations between the sexes.
Something like this may indeed occur, but in fact the world will never be the same.
For this is not a fleeting series of revelations of bad behavior, but is rather a sea change, a paradigm shift in which the timeless values of honor, respect, love, and courage which we once called “chivalry” are being restored to their rightful place at the center of humanity’s moral universe. And just in time too (one hopes), as without the restoration of this nearly-lost Code of Honor, the human family’s chances of surviving the world-wide crisis now upon us are small indeed.
For a world in which a man can be elected leader of a great nation despite openly boasting of habitual sexual assault is also a world in which the masculine energy is so grossly out of balance that the Earth itself – the Mother of all Life – has been habitually assaulted to such a degree that it is not too much to say that she is now dying of 200 years of environmental gang-rape.
And a world in which a religious lineage claiming to spring from perhaps history’s greatest Champion of Love is convicted of systematically shielding the rape of children is also a world in which obscenely rich arms merchants virtuously claim to be “fighting terror” by the remotely controlled decapitation and incineration of children and women, excused by the horrifically amoral concept of “collateral damage.”
In essence, the insidiously encroaching acceptance of rape culture and even pedophilia as a regrettable aspect of “the way the world is” is a manifestation of this same out-of-control imbalance and perversion of the Divine Balance between Sacred Masculine and Divine Feminine – the alchemy which is the nearly forgotten esoteric legacy woven into the Arthurian tales by the Knights Templar.
So the Restoration of Chivalry is not a mere matter of a man feeling good about holding open a door for a woman or offering her his umbrella in a storm (or of women accepting such gestures without feeling patronized). It is rather a matter of life and death for humanity itself.
For the true story of Chivalry is grounded in far more profound matters than armor-clad knights and their ladies fair, or of placing womanhood on an impossible pedestal, both worshipped and belittled (bringing to mind Frank McCourt’s remark that “Ireland is a matriarchy. That’s where we look down on our women with reverence!”). At heart, the Code of Chivalry is simply one well-known iteration of the best universal values of humanity, expressed in multiple modes in various times and places.
The Code is actually fairly simple:
Defending the oppressed against tyranny. Upholding the dignity of women. Honoring one’s word. Communing directly with Spirit in meditation. Fearlessness in battle and mercy in victory. And (unique to the Templars) the compassionate treatment of animals – and by extension, of Nature herself.
These may seem commonplaces of what has long been held up as “admirable behavior.” Not so. When the Code of Chivalry filtered down through the ages as the “Gentleman’s Code” still widely observed in the 19th and 20th centuries, it still had moral force in a dark and brutal world. Massacres and war-profiteering were no less prevalent than now, the abuse of children was perhaps not less than now, but the remnants of a moral standard still held sway, and justice could still be sought by that standard.
Now darkness and brutality seem on their way to becoming the accepted norm. The United States under its current leadership has abandoned even the pretense of occupying the moral high ground, and is now nakedly vengeful and self-seeking. One may at least applaud the abandonment of American hypocrisy, but the tragedy of it is sickening. For it is this writer’s view that America actually was once (and for a long time) the authentic bearer of Lincoln’s “last, best hope” for humanity.
Justice is bought and sold both domestically and on the world stage. The principles of Magna Carta – the fruit of a centuries-long Templar-led struggle to shield humanity from the tyranny of kings – are now so enfeebled that international law is widely viewed as a joke; an unenforceable fig leaf over the obscene systematic violations of human rights law by which those behind the military-industrial complex, the fossil fuel industry, and the central banking system do their daily business.
This all sounds fairly bleak. And so it is. But it is the premise of this book that the resiliency of the human spirit is already rising toward authentic hope. We are to endure a time of nearly unprecedented upheaval in the coming decades. But we will still face the same daily choice which women and men have faced on every sunrise since the dawn of self-reflective consciousness: what does it mean to be human? Are love and compassion and honor merely pretty words, or are they in fact the stark parameters by which our souls either perish or ascend?
There are hard geopolitical consequences to the effective return of this Code. This writer happens to be a veteran of a years-long effort to make Chivalry a meaningful force on the world stage. And so there is a personal story to tell here – indeed, there is (I find) no other way to fulfill the purpose of this book than by writing of my adventures in Sacred Activism, of interfaith reconciliation, of the meaning of 2012, of the exposure of the hoarded wealth of the Global Collateral Accounts, of the alliance to defeat the corrupt elite, and of my stumbling upon the lineal restoration of the original Templar Order.
For I have, in fact, taken an Oath of Chivalry, imperfectly striving toward perfection. Chivalry has, in fact, returned as an effective geopolitical force as well as a spiritual one. As with Shakespeare, the Templar legacy is in the air we breathe, woven deeply into our cultural DNA, whether we know it or not. From banking to Magna Carta to Joan of Arc to the vital ley lines of Gaia to ancient Egypt…and even to the Jedi Knights of “Star Wars,” the Templars are both unseen and ubiquitous.
But no longer underground, and not a “secret society.” In our medieval heyday, we never were. It is simply about the Code, and the passionate effort to embody it.