3 THE GUARDIANS OF THE HOLY LAND

Among the functions of the Orders of Chivalry, particularly the Templars, one of the best known, though in general not the best understood, is that of ‘Guardian of the Holy Land’. Certainly, if we restrict ourselves to the most outward meaning, we can find an immediate explanation of this fact in the connection between the origin of these orders and the Crusades, because, for Christians as for Jews, it does seem that the ‘Holy Land’ designates nothing other than Palestine. The question becomes more complicated, however, when we notice that various Eastern organizations of which the initiatic character cannot be doubted, such as the Assassins and the Druse, also took this same title of ‘Guardians of the Holy Land’. In such cases it can certainly no longer be only a question of Palestine; and it is moreover remarkable that these organizations share a fairly large number of features with the Western Orders of Chivalry and that in certain cases there was even communication between them historically. What then ought we really to understand by the ‘Holy Land’, and to what exactly corresponds this role of ‘guardian’, which seems to be attached to a specific kind of initiation that might be called ‘chivalric’, giving the term a wider sense than usual but which the analogies that exist between the different forms in question will fully justify?

We have shown elsewhere, particularly in _The King of the World_, that the expression ‘Holy Land’ has several synonyms (‘Pure Land’, ‘Land of the Saints’, ‘Land of the Blessed’, ‘Land of the Living’, ‘Land of Immortality’), and that these equivalent designations are found in the traditions of all peoples and always apply essentially to a spiritual center whose location in a given region may be understood either literally or symbolically, or sometimes in both senses at once. Every ‘Holy Land’ can be further designated by such expressions as ‘Center of the World’ or ‘Heart of the World’, something that calls for explanation since even such uniform terminology, when used in such different senses, could easily lead to confusion.

If, for example, we consider the Hebraic tradition, we see that the _Sepher Yetsirah_ speaks of the ‘Holy Palace’ or ‘Interior Palace’, which is the true ‘Center of the World’ in the cosmogonic sense of the term; and we see also that this ‘Holy Palace’ has its image in the human world in that the _Shekinah_—the ‘real presence’ of the Divinity—abides in a specific place.^[1] For the Israelites, this abode of the _Shekinah_ was the Tabernacle (_Mishkan_), which in consequence they considered to be the ‘Heart of the World’, for it was indeed the spiritual center of their own tradition. This center, moreover, did not at first have a fixed location, since the spiritual center of a nomadic people, as they were, must necessarily move with them while nevertheless always remaining the same. ‘The abode of the _Shekinah_,’ says Paul Vulliaud, ‘was not fixed until the completion of the Temple, for which David had provided Solomon the gold and silver and everything else necessary to perfect the work.^[2] The Tabernacle of the Holiness of _Jehovah_, the abode of the _Shekinah_, is the Holy of Holies that forms the heart of the Temple, which is itself the center of Zion (Jerusalem), just as Holy Zion is the center of the Land of Israel, and the Land of Israel is the Center of the World.’^[3]

In these successive applications we notice a gradual extension of the idea of the center, so that the appellation ‘Center of the World’ or ‘Heart of the World’ is finally extended to the entire land of Israel insofar as this is regarded as the ‘Holy Land’; and it should be added in this connection that it has still other designations, among them ‘Land of the Living’. One speaks of the ‘Land of the Living comprising seven lands’, and Vulliaud observes that ‘this land is Canaan, in which there were seven nations,’^[4] which is correct in its literal sense although a symbolic interpretation is equally possible. This expression ‘Land of the Living’ is exactly synonymous with ‘abode of immortality’, and Catholic liturgy applies it to the celestial abode of the elect, which the Promised Land in fact symbolized, since upon entering it Israel was to reach the end of all its tribulations. From yet another point of view, the land of Israel, as a spiritual center, was an image of heaven, for according to Judaic tradition ‘all that the Israelites accomplish on earth is in accord with the patterns that unfold in the celestial world.’^[5]

What has been said here of the Israelites may equally well be said of all peoples possessing a truly orthodox tradition; and in fact the nation of Israel is not the only one to have likened its country to the ‘Heart of the World’ and to have regarded it as an image of heaven, two ideas that are, after all, really one. This same symbolism is encountered among other peoples who also possessed a ‘Holy Land’, that is, a country where a spiritual center played a role comparable to that played by the Temple in Jerusalem for the Hebrews. In this respect the ‘Holy Land’ is like the Omphalos, which was always the visible image of the ‘Center of the World’ for the people inhabiting the region where it was situated.^[6]

This symbolism is found especially among the ancient Egyptians. According to Plutarch, ‘Egypt . . . which has the blackest of soils, they call by the same name as the black portion of the eye, “Chemia”,^[7] and compare it to the heart.’ The rather strange reason given by the author is that ‘it is warm and moist and is enclosed by the southern portions of the inhabited world and adjoins them, like the heart in a man’s left side,’^[8] for ‘the Egyptians believe the eastern regions are the face of the world, the northern the right, and the southern the left.’^[9] These correspondences are rather superficial, and the true reason must be quite different since the same comparison with the heart has been applied likewise to every land to which a sacred and spiritually ‘central’ character has been attributed, no matter what its geographical situation. Moreover, according to Plutarch himself, the heart, which represented Egypt, at the same time represented heaven: ‘And the heavens, since they are ageless because of their eternity, they portray by a heart with a censer beneath it.’^[10] And so, whereas the heart is itself figured as a vase, which is none other than what the legends of the Western Middle Ages were to call the ‘Holy Grail’, it functions in turn and simultaneously as hieroglyph both for Egypt and for heaven.

The conclusion to be drawn from these considerations is that there are as many particular ‘Holy Lands’ as there are regular traditional forms, since they represent the spiritual centers that correspond respectively to these different forms; however, if the same symbolism applies uniformly to all these ‘Holy Lands’, it is because all these spiritual centers have an analogous constitution, often extending to the most precise details, inasmuch as they are all images of the same unique and supreme center that alone is truly the ‘Center of the World’, from which they take their attributes as participating in its nature by direct communication (which is what constitutes traditional orthodoxy), and as effectively representing it more or less outwardly for particular times and places. In other words, there exists one ‘Holy Land’ par excellence, the prototype of all the others and the spiritual center to which all other centers are subordinate, the seat of the primordial tradition from which all the particular traditions are derived by adaptation to whatever specific conditions attach to a people or an epoch. This ‘Holy Land’ par excellence is the ‘supreme country’, according to the meaning of the Sanskrit term _Paradesha_, from which the Chaldeans made _Pardes_ and Westerners _Paradise_; it is indeed the ‘Terrestrial Paradise’, which is the starting-point of every tradition, having at its center the unique source from which the four rivers flow to the four cardinal points,^[11] and which is also the ‘abode of immortality’, as can easily be seen by turning to the first chapters of Genesis.^[12]

We cannot think of returning here to all the questions concerning the supreme center and which we have already treated more or less amply elsewhere: its preservation, with varying degrees of secrecy, according to the period concerned, from the beginning to the end of the cycle, that is from the ‘Terrestrial Paradise’ to the ‘Celestial Jerusalem’, which represent its two extremes; the many names by which it has been known, among them _Tula_, _Luz_, _Salem_, and _Agarttha_; and the different symbols that have represented it, such as the mountain, the cavern, the island, and many more, standing for the most part in direct relation to the symbolism of the ‘Pole’ or the ‘World Axis’. To these representations we may also add those which make of it a city, a citadel, a temple, or a palace, according to the particular aspect under which it is envisaged; and this gives us occasion to recall not only the Temple of Solomon, which relates more directly to our subject, but also the triple enclosure, of which we wrote recently that it represents the initiatic hierarchy of certain traditional centers,^[13] and also the mysterious labyrinth, which, though in a more complex form, pertains to a similar conception, with the difference that it emphasizes above all the idea of a ‘journey’ to the hidden center.^[14]

We must now add that the symbolism of the ‘Holy Land’ has a double meaning: whether it be related to the supreme center or to a subordinate center, it represents not only that center itself, but also, by natural association, the tradition emanating from the former or conserved by the latter, that is, in the first case, the primordial tradition, and in the second, a particular traditional form.^[15] This double meaning appears again clearly in the symbolism of the ‘Holy Grail’, which is at once a vessel (grasale) and a book (gradale or graduale), the latter manifestly designating the tradition, while the former more directly pertains to the state corresponding to the effective possession of this tradition, that is, the ‘edenic state’, if it is the primordial tradition that is being considered, for whoever has attained this state is thereby reintegrated into Pardes, so that one can say his abode is henceforth in the ‘Center of the World’.^[16] It is not without reason that we bring these two symbolisms together here, for their very close similarity shows that when we speak of the ‘Knighthood of the Holy Grail’ or of the ‘Guardians of the Holy Land’ we must understand one and the same thing. It remains, then, for us to explain as far as is possible just what the function of these ‘guardians’ was, a function that fell particularly to the Templars.^[17] In order to understand clearly what is involved here, a distinction must be made between the custodians of the tradition, whose duty is to conserve and transmit it, and those who to one degree or another only receive from it a communication and, one might say, a participation. The original trustees and dispensers of the doctrine remain at its source, which is strictly the center itself; thence the doctrine is communicated and distributed hierarchically to the different initiatic degrees in accordance with the currents represented by the rivers of Pardes, or, recalling a figure we have examined elsewhere,^[18] by the channels running from the interior to the exterior, linking together the successive enclosures that correspond to these degrees. Thus not all who share in the tradition reach the same degree or fulfill the same function; and a distinction should even be made between these two things, for although in general they correspond to each other, they are not strictly inseparable, for it can happen that a man may be intellectually qualified to attain the highest degrees but is not thereby qualified to discharge all the functions in the initiatic organization. Here only the functions are under consideration, and from this point of view we would say that the ‘guardians’ stand at the boundary of the spiritual center, taken in its widest sense, or in the uttermost enclosure, which both separates the center from the ‘outer world’ and brings it into contact with the latter. Thus, these ‘guardians’ exercise a double function: on the one hand, they are truly the defenders of the ‘Holy Land’ in the sense that they bar access to those not possessing the qualifications required for entry, and constitute what we have called the ‘outer covering’ that conceals it from the eyes of the profane; on the other hand, however, they assure regular relations with the outside world, as we shall explain. In the language of the Hindu tradition the role of defender clearly belongs to the Kshatriyas, and it is precisely ‘chivalric’ initiation that is essentially adapted to the nature proper to the men of this warrior caste. From this derive the special features of this initiation, the particular symbolism it uses, and especially the intervention of an affective element designated very explicitly by the term ‘love’, something we have already explained elsewhere and cannot pause to consider now.^[19] But in the case of the Templars there is something more to keep in mind: although their initiation was essentially ‘chivalric’, as was appropriate to their nature and function, they had a double character, at once military and religious; and it had to be so if they were, as we have good reason to think, among the ‘guardians’ of the supreme center, where spiritual authority and temporal power are brought together in their common principle, communicating the mark of that reunion in turn to all things directly connected with it. In the Western world, where the spiritual takes a specifically religious form, the true ‘guardians of the Holy Land’, as long as they had any ‘official’ existence, had to be knights, but knights who were at the same time monks; and that indeed is just what the Templars were. This brings us directly to the second role of the ‘guardians’ of the supreme center, a role that consists, as we have just said, in assuring certain exterior relations and above all, let us add, in maintaining the link between the primordial tradition and the secondary, derived traditions. To this end each traditional form must possess one or more special organizations constituted, to all appearances, within that form itself, but composed of men aware of what lies beyond all ‘forms’, that is to say of the one doctrine that is the source and essence of all the others, and that is none other than the primordial tradition. In the world of the Judeo-Christian tradition such an organization naturally enough took as its symbol the Temple of Solomon, which had long since ceased to exist physically and could thus have only an altogether ideal significance as a reflection (as is every subordinate spiritual center) of the supreme center; and the very etymology of the name Jerusalem quite clearly indicates that it is only the visible image of the mysterious Salem of Melchizedek. If such was the nature of the Templars, in order to fulfill the role allotted them and which concerned a certain specific tradition, that of the West, they had to remain outwardly attached to the form of that tradition; but at the same time the inner consciousness of the true doctrinal unity must have enabled them to communicate with the representatives of other traditions,^[20] which explains their relations with certain Eastern organizations, especially, as is only natural, with those who furthermore played a role similar to their own. These considerations make it clear on the other hand why the destruction of the Order of the Temple^[21] should have brought in its wake the rupture of regular relations between the West and the ‘Center of the World’; and the deviation that inevitably followed this rupture and that has become gradually more marked since then up to our own time must indeed be traced back to the fourteenth century. This is not to say however that all ties were severed at one blow; for quite some time it was possible to maintain relations with the supreme center to some degree, though only covertly, through the mediation of such organizations as the Fede Santa^[22] or the Fedeli d’Amore,^[23] the Massenie du Saint-Graal, and doubtless many others also heir to the spirit of the Order of the Temple and for the most part attached to it by more or less direct filiation. Those who preserved this spirit alive and who inspired such organizations, though without themselves constituting a formal group, came to be known by the essentially symbolic name ‘brothers of the Rose-Cross’; but a day came when even these brothers of the Rose-Cross had to leave the West, where conditions had become such that no further action was possible; and so, it is said, they withdrew to Asia, reabsorbed as it were by the supreme center of which they were a kind of emanation. For the Western world there is no longer a ‘Holy Land’ to guard, since the path leading to it was from that moment utterly lost. How much longer will this situation endure, and is it even to be hoped that communication might be re-established sooner or later? It is not for us to answer this question, for apart from the fact that we do not wish to risk any prediction, the solution depends entirely upon the West itself, for only by a return to normal conditions and a recovery of the spirit of its own tradition will it prove able to open anew the way that leads to the ‘Center of the World’.