Blessed Night Loves 😊

I Pray All Is Well With Everyone…And Your Hearts And Minds Are Full Of Love, Joy, And Compassion…For All God’s Children…And All God’s Creation! And With Everything That Is Going On In The World Today – With Corruption In The Hearts And Minds Of Much Of Mankind… Hate And Violence Amongst God’s Children…And Natural Disasters That Are Happening More Often; It Is, Indeed, A Necessity That Those Higher Qualities Of Love, Joy, And Compassion Dominate Our Individual Thoughts And Actions – Since Individually We Make Up The Collective! And To Positively Align Ourselves With The Shifting That Is Taking Place In The Earth…And To Raise The Vibration Of The Collective In Preparation For World Elevation – We Must Firstly Begin To Acknowledge The Presence Of The Living God…Within Ourselves! For Just As Continuous Ignorance, Violence, And Corruption Can Cause The Crumbling Of A Society, Nation, And The World; So, Too, Can Those Higher Qualities Of Our “Mighty I AM Presence” – Those Of Love, Joy, And Compassion – Weaved Into The Matrix Of Darkness – Make Smoother And Immediate Mankind’s Transition To Those Higher Dimensions…For Which We All Are Destined! Cuz Believe It Or Not…LOVE…IS THAT POWERFUL! Amen…

Give Thanks And Praises For Love And Life…

And Y’all Be Love…

“Among the many extraordinary phenomena which the Middle Ages present, none is more deserving of attention, or more characteristic of the times and the state of society and opinion, than the institution of the religio-military orders of the Hospitaliers, the Templars, and the Teutonic Knights. Of these orders, all of which owed their origin to the Crusades, and commenced in the 12th century, the last, after the final loss of the Holy Land, transferring the scene of their activity to the north of Germany, and directing their arms against the heathens who still occupied the south coast of the Baltic, became the founders, in a great measure, of the Prussian power; while the first, planting their standard on the Isle of Rhodes, long gallantly withstood the forces of the Ottoman Turks. And, when at length obliged to resign that island, took their station on the rock of Malta, where they bravely repelled the troops of the greatest of the Ottoman sultans, and maintained at least a nominal independence till the close of the 18th century.

A less glorious fate attended the Knights of the Temple. They became the victims of the unprincipled rapacity of a merciless prince; their property was seized and confiscated; their noblest members perished in the flames; their memory was traduced and maligned; the foulest crimes were laid to their charge; and a secret doctrine, subversive of social tranquility and national independence, was asserted to have animated their councils. Though many able defenders of these injured knights have arisen, the charges against them have been reiterated even in the present day; and a distinguished Orientalist (Von Hammer), has recently even attempted to bring forward additional and novel proofs of their secret guilt.

To add one more to the number of their defenders, to trace the origin, develop the internal constitution of their society, narrate their actions, examine the history of their condemnation and suppression, and show how absurd and frivolous were the charges against them, are the objects of the present writer, who, though he is persuaded, and hopes to prove that they held no secret doctrine, yet places them among the secret societies of the middle ages, because it is by many confidently maintained, that they were such.

…The opinion of the Crusades having been an emanation of the spirit of chivalry is one of the most erroneous that can be conceived, yet it is one most widely spread.

…Chivalry and the Crusades commenced in the same century and drew their origin from the same source. One was not the cause of the other, but both were effects of the same cause, and that cause was feudalism. This inculcated “the proud submission, the dignified obedience”, etc., etc., which were gradually idealized into chivalry; it impressed on the mind of the vassal those principles of regard to the rights and property of his lord, which seemed to justify and sanction the Holy War. Previously, however, to explaining the manner in which this motive acted, we must stop to notice another concurring cause of the Crusades, without which it would perhaps never have begun to operate.

…The country which had witnessed the life and death of their Lord, naturally acquired importance in the eyes of the early Christians, many of whom, moreover, were Jews by birth, and had always viewed Jerusalem with feelings of veneration.

All too confounded – as has unfortunately been too much the case in later times, the old and the new law; and saw not that the former was but “beggarly elements” in comparison with the latter, and deemed that the political and economical precepts designed for a single nation inhabiting one small region were obligatory on the church of Christ, which was intended…to comprise the whole human race, many of the practices of Judaism were therefore observed by the Christians, and to this principle we are perhaps in a great measure to ascribe the rapid progress of the practice, and the belief in the efficacy, of pilgrimage to the Holy City. The abuses of pilgrimage were early discerned, and some of the more pious Fathers of the Church preached and wrote against the practice. But piety and eloquence were vain and could little avail to stem the torrent when men believed that the waters of Jordan had efficacy to wash every sin, though unattended by sincere repentance.

The Church, as she advanced in corruption, improved in worldly wisdom, and, taking pilgrimage under her protection, made it a part of her penal discipline. The sinner was now ordered a journey to the Holy Land as a means of freeing his soul from the guilt of his perhaps manifold enormities. Each year saw the number of the pilgrims augment, while the growing veneration for relics, of which those which came from the Holy Land were esteemed the most efficacious, stimulated pilgrimage by adding the incentive of profit, as a small stock of money laid out in the purchase of the generally counterfeit relics always on sale at Jerusalem, would produce perhaps a thousand percent on the return of the pilgrim to his native country. A pilgrim was also held in respect and veneration wherever he came, as an especial favourite of the Divinity, having been admitted by him to the high privilege of visiting the sacred places, a portion of whose sanctity it would be supposed might still adhere to him.

The 11th century was the great season of pilgrimage. A strange misconception of the meaning of a portion of Scripture had led men to fancy that the year 1000, was to be that of the advent of Christ, to judge the world. As the valley of Jehoshaphat was believed to be the spot on which this awful event would take place, the same feeling which leads people at the present day to lay a flattering unction to their souls by supposing that death-bed repentance will prove equivalent in the sight of God to a life passed in obedience to his will and in the exercise of virtue, impelled numbers to journey to the Holy Land, in the belief that this officiousness, as it were, of hitherto negligent servants would be well taken by their Lord, and procure them an indulgent hearing before his judgment-seat.

Pilgrimage, therefore, increased greatly; the failure of their expectations, the appointed time having passed away without the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven, gave it no check, but, on the contrary, rather an additional impulse; and during this century the caravans of pilgrims attained to such magnitude and strength as to be deserving of the appellation of the armies of the Lord – precursive of the first and greatest Crusade.

In truth, the belief in the merit and even the obligation of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in the sight of God, was now as firmly impressed on the mind of every Christian, be his rank what it might, as that of the necessity and advantage of one to the Kaaba of Mecca is in the apprehension of the followers of Mohammed. And in the degraded state of the human intellect, at that period, a pilgrimage was deemed adequate to the removal of all sin.”

Secret Societies of the Middle Ages, by Thomas Keightley, 1837

Still Standing – Anno Domini Beats