Esotericism in Germany and Austria

EPL- INFORMATION FOR YOUR BUILDING SOUL

Knights Templar and occultism[edit]

The original Knights Templar, founded around 1119, had been a crusading military order, that, at some time, had established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. In 1307, King Philip IV of France mounted a "slanderous campaign"^[1] to strip the Order of its economic and political influence. The Templars were accused of Satanic practices, perversions and blasphemy and ruthlessly suppressed; Its leaders were burned on March 18, 1314. The circumstances of their suppression gave rise to legends surrounding the Knights Templar. In Germany, "where the growth of deviant Masonic rites was greatest,"^[2] the Templar heritage was adopted for irregular Freemasonry. (Freemasonry had been officially founded in England in 1717.)

The idea of chivalric Freemasonry first occurred ca. 1737 in France.^[2] In 1775 Baron Gotthelf von Hund (1722–76) founded the Order of Strict Observance, claiming the possession of secret Templar documents which allegedly prove that his order represented the legal Templar succession.^[2]