Templar Treasure as covered in The Grail Conspiracies

“As you probably know," she went on, "there are many accounts about
the supposed lost treasures of the Templars—just as there were stories
about the lost treasure of the Cathars. The Cathars were another group
operating in Southern France in that same general time period as the
Templars. Like the Templars, the Cathars—or Albigensians as they
were also known—were eradicated as supposed heretics. What was so
heretical? We don’t really know, because the victors get to write the
histories. But, basically, the Cathars were Gnostics—they were open to
gnosis, direct knowing of the divine, without the intervention of
intermediaries who would tell them who God was and what God wanted.
That, of course, made them anathema to the Vatican.”

She broke off, with a laugh. “Ah! But there I go, lecturing you. I warned
you about me. Once I start lecturing I can't stop."

I shrugged. “That’s fine, you’ve done my research for me.” I’d actually
read some of this before, but wanted to hear her take on it.

Another sip of beer. “I understand why you went to La Rochelle, Greg,
but what brought you to London? Why here? Or am I being too
snoopy?”

Truth could carry me only so far: “It seemed that if I could get a better
sense of what my uncle turned up, that might provide some clues on
what happened to him. I was hoping Foyle’s might have the perfect
book.”

That skipped over why I’d come to London in the first place—to track
Willoughby to his lair. But Willoughby was dead, so there was no point
in taking her down that track.

She said nothing for a bit; it took willpower to resist filling the silence by
blurting out more.

Finally she said, “If the various legends of the Templars are true, their
ultimate raison d’etrewas accumulating and safeguarding the spiritual
and occult wisdom they’d accumulated over two centuries. And you’re
suggesting that your uncle found it?”

“May have found it.”

“But does it really make sense that the Templars would run from La
Rochelle and leave behind their spiritual core, the occult wisdom they’d
spent two centuries amassing? It seems to me that’s absolutely the last
thing they’d leave behind.”

“Unless they felt it was so irreplaceable it couldn’t be risked in a sea
journey.”

She nodded. “Good point.”

□

After a moment she asked, “You said your uncle turned up some
artifacts in La Rochelle. Do you have any idea what they might have
been?”

Normal curiosity, or serious snooping? I shook my head. “I’m still
floundering.”

“The reason I ask is—well, the Templars were a very interesting order.
Do you know much about them?”

“Not a lot,” I said, again wanting to hear her take.

“That’s the point, nobody really knows that much about them. In part,
that’s because they were suppressed by the Catholic Church, and the
winners get to write the history. But in part also because they were a
secretive bunch—actually the prototype for secret groups that came
later, like the Freemasons, the supposed Illuminati, and others. They
were dedicated men, who took vows of silence, and kept their vows.”

Most of this I’d read in that pamphlet. Then she said, “But the biggest
secret of all is what they were really about. Supposedly, the order was
formed to protect pilgrims on their journeys to the Holy Land. But it
seems they didn’t really do much protecting. Instead, the first dozen
members got to Jerusalem and then spent years tunneling under the
old Jewish Temple. Why? What were they looking for? Did they find it? If
so, what happened to it?”

“The Grail, the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper, could very well have
been hidden under the Temple. After all—”

“That’s possible,” she said, “provided you take the legend of Grail as
cup at face value. Which I don’t. I think that was another instance of
long-ago disinformation—to send everyone off looking for a cup so they’
d miss the point of the real Grail. The real question is, What IS the
Grail? I think it’s one-and-the-same as what I’ve been calling the LMP—
oops! LMP is my personal jargon, my mental shorthand for what I term
the ‘Latent Miracle Power.’”

“Where do the Templars come into it?”

“According to the rumors of the time, they spent years excavating under
the Temple—and I think there is truth to that. There are other stories,
very likely true, that they sent expeditions out over the known world of
the time, the rest of the Middle-east, even the Far-east, so some claim.
Were they on a quest for the ancient wisdom of other traditions? I’d love
to say yes, but the fact is we just don’t know. It was a very long time
ago, and the Templars were very secretive.”

If she was there to pick my brain, she was doing a good job of letting me
pick hers first.

“It’s even possible that—well, keep in mind that the Christians controlled
the Holy Land for a couple of centuries during the peak of the Templar
power and influence. Think of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jordan, think of
the Nag Hammadi Scrolls found in Egypt—they’ve only been turned up
in the past half-century or so, since the end of World War II.
Manuscripts that no one knew ever existed. But think of it, the Templars
had the virtually unfettered run of the Holy Land for decades, a band of
rugged warriors who could go where they wanted, and had the stamina
to dig down and to climb up and explore caves. It’s quite possible that
they turned up other ancient manuscripts, ones we’ve never heard of,
containing knowledge that we can’t even begin to conceive of.”

I kept my mouth shut, let her go where she wanted without signaling my
special interest.

“The short answer is, yes, I think the Templars were formed not to
protect pilgrims—that was just disinformation, a cover story.”

She paused, then added, “That was the cover story. But the truth, I’ve
become convinced, is that the real mission of the Templars, at least at
the start, was to search for lost wisdom, particularly what we’d call occult
knowledge—the secrets of tapping the hidden human possibilities.”

That sounded very close to what Larkwood had said was what the Nazis
had been looking for: Whether there was a power within the human
mind—or at least within certain trained minds—that can direct and focus
energies from other dimensions.