The Nine Knights and the Subterranean Vaults of Solomon
The annals of the exoteric world speak of nine impoverished knights who, in the year of our Lord 1119, presented themselves before King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. Hughes de Payens and his companions, claiming the noble purpose of protecting the pilgrim roads to the Holy City, were granted quarters on the Temple Mount, the very site of the destroyed Temple of Solomon. Thus began the Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Yet, to the initiate, to those who perceive the subtle threads of the grand design, this narrative is but the outermost shell of a profoundly esoteric reality. The true mission of the Nine Knights was not the safeguarding of dusty roads, but the excavation of the Subterranean Vaults of Solomon, a descent into the labyrinthine depths of both the earth and the human soul. For nine long years, these knights recruited no new members. Nine years, a number resonating with the culmination of the alchemical process, the completion of the gesta...