Knights Templar and the church’s hidden history

In Part 1, we discussed the connection of the Byzantine church in Kalambaka with the local mythology, the ancient religion, and the general historical context in which the Knights Templars left evidence of their presence here at Meteora. In this part, we’ll present exclusively and for the first time actual evidence of what appears to be Templar symbols in the Byzantine church of Kalambaka. One of the last places around the world you would expect to find Templar symbols, and yet they are there, hidden in plain sight under the shadow of the giant Meteora rocks. With this post, we’ll attempt to decipher their hidden meaning and symbolism, so buckle up and prepare to dive into the fringes of hidden history and the occult mystery.

Ancient reliefs and pagan gods on the south wall of the church 

Starting from the outside of the Byzantine church, located on the south wall, are a few carved marble stones that appear to belong to the ancient period. That by itself is not unusual for the Dark Ages, the period when the church underwent extensive restorations. Because people at that time were used to recycling marble stones from ruined ancient buildings that they would find on the building site or nearby. There are numerous Byzantine monuments spread all over Greece with such ancient marbles embedded on their walls.

The ones placed on the church at first glance appear to be randomly arranged, but that’s deceptive at the least. For someone without prior knowledge of Templar occult symbology, it’s very easy to walk away without ever recognizing their true meaning. But that was probably the intention of the church builders: to hide everything in plain sight. Only those who are initiated into the Templar secret code and its symbolic language would be able to recognize them immediately. We see two triangular marble stones standing out on the southwest corner of the church’s outside wall. The one on the left has the carving of two opposing snakes, while on the other side is the sun god, also known as god Helios by ancient Greeks.

The strange snakes and the god Helios

If one takes a closer look at the stone with the two snakes, it becomes evident that there are no visible snakeheads carved on the upper part. The heads of the snakes one would expect to find on the upper part of the relief are either missing or degraded completely. So, the snake carvings are headless, and oddly enough, this upper section seems quite disproportionate to the rest of the snake’s body. To us, this would imply possibly a re-carving of this part taking place for whatever purpose at a later time. Then, we started searching for similar ancient carvings that would have the same motive in order to make a correlation, if possible. We found nothing to make a reasonable match of similar style reliefs, but one exception: a mythical figure named Abraxas!

Magic, amulets, and charms of early Christian Gnostics

Abraxas is an Egyptian Sun God adopted by the early Christian Gnostics. Abraxas was no ordinary god; however, as a ruler of the ‘first Heaven’, he had dominion over the cycles of birth, death, and Resurrection. The name Abraxas also had a mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides, as the name of the “Great Archon”, the supreme ruler of all creation. This Gnostic system of Basilides (Basilides was an early Christian Gnostic religious teacher in Alexandria, Egypt who taught from 117 to 138 AD) became quite popular and spread from Egypt to the rest of the Roman world, at a period when the Church had not yet canonized Christianity. The name Abraxas is found in Gnostic texts such as the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, appearing also in the Greek Magical Papyri. It was engraved on certain antique gemstones, called Abraxas stones, which were used as amulets or charms, as seen in the picture.

Abracadabra…Say the magic words.

The first form of the word comes to us from that period and the 2^nd century AD with the words Abrac, or Abracar; a name which Basilides had given to God, who he said was the creator of three hundred and sixty-five heavenly realms. In the system of Basilides, the seven letters spelling Abraxas, and seven stars often found on Gnostic gems, represent each of the seven classic planets—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Some speculate that the words “abracadabra” we used as magic words when we were kids originate from the name Abraxas. He’s always represented as having the torso of a man, the head of a chicken, or other animal heads; for feet, he has two snakes. He is always associated with… well, guess who: the sun disc, or Helios, as seen in the picture below. The latter was mind-blowing because to the right of the church’s headless snakes we find the relief of god Helios, the sun god of ancient Greece. Now, interestingly enough, guess who else was using the depiction of Abraxas as one of their official seals: The Knights Templar, of course!

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May 18, 2018

The Templars’ seal and the sealed door

As seen in the picture on the left, Abraxas was among the official seals that the Templars used. In between the two triangular reliefs, there is a door sealed by bricks and stones. The sealed door, judging from the looks of it and the way it was constructed, is highly probable to have never been intended to serve as a functional door. It was rather made to look that way right from the start. The lack of a functional arch above and from the arrangement of the stones around or the absence of any visible door casing tells us that most likely the “door” was made and sealed off when the rest of the wall was constructed. Thus, it never served as a functional door, as many locals believe, nor is it older than the rest of the church’s south wall. We believe it was by the stonemasons’ design to look that way. It’s not coincidentally placed there either, and the rest of the reliefs around it possess deep alchemical meaning. Such alchemical doorways always represent a secret passage, a gateway to other realms. It also represents secret knowledge safely placed and guarded behind the sealed door.

How deep this Rabbit Hole is?

We won’t attempt to “wide open” that gate in this post because the Rabbit’s Hole in this one goes too deep and too dark for the taste of average readers. One may notice, though, the similarities between the Church’s sealed door and the Royal Arch of the Freemasons, or Moria’s magic gate of Durin, as described in his book “The Fellowship of the Ring” in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy he wrote. The gate of Durin in Tolkien’s book was the only passage to the subterranean dwarven kingdom of Moria and the Great City of Khazad-Dum. Moria, in Tolkien’s LOTR, was inhabited by the Balrog, a demon of fire of the Ancient World.

In part 1, we briefly commented about a persistent local belief of underground chambers existing in the church and alleged tunnels connecting the church with the citadel of ancient Trikki, Asclepius city! Not many people know there is a very important place in the world that has a similar name to Tolkien’s Moria: Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. It’s the Temple Mount, the site in Jerusalem where King Solomon made his Temple. The very same place where the Knight Templars went upon their arrival in Jerusalem and settled down to start excavations of Solomon’s Temple. The order itself was named Templars because of Solomon’s Temple. Persisted rumors mention to this day that the Templars’ hidden goal was to search for secret underground chambers lying beneath the ruined Temple.

Interestingly enough, in Ezekiel’s vision in which the Lord took him into the future and showed him how the Temple on Mount Moriah would be, we find this interesting reference to a hidden doorway he sees on the Temple’s wall:

“Then said he unto me, “Son of man, dig now in the wall”, and when I had dug in the wall, behold a doorway. And he said unto me, “Go in and behold the wicked abominations that they do here”. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the walls round about…”                                                         

Ezekiel 8

If our hypothesis about the snakes’ relief being the lower part of Abraxas is correct, and although the seven stars are not actually depicted there, one can assume that the stars are not entirely absent either, since the seven stars always accompany the Abraxas figure. If the upper missing part of the snake’s relief is indeed the figure of Abraxas, as we believe, then the seven stars are also present by definition! This is clearly visible in the Templar seal of Abraxas that depicts him having the seven stars around him.

The feminine energy and the moon

On the far right of the wall, towards the eastern side of the church, we see the relief of a lady and a child, and right beneath them lies a six-petal flower. The official explanation of the mentioned carvings is that the lady and the child are probably a depiction of the goddess Estia from the Roman period. In contrast, the flower is mentioned to be a sacred symbol without much further explanation attached to it. The relief depicting the lady and the child definitely relates to the flower-carving beneath. The 6-petal flower depicts the ‘Egg of Life’ in sacred geometry. The shape of the Egg of Life is made up of 7 circles cutting into each other and referred to as the geometrical framework for the whole of creation. The shape of this ‘Egg of Life’ succeeds in the “Seed of Life” as seen in the picture.

So, what we see in fact in this part of the wall is the feminine aspect of creation; the Egg and fertility, birth, Life, and death. Death itself is represented by the Roman epitaphic stone placed beneath the lady and the child. So, in the southwest corner, we find the relief of the snakes, potentially showing Abraxas and the god Helios, who represent both the masculine force. In contrast, on the opposite southeast corner, we see the feminine aspect of creation through the reliefs of the lady and the child and the “Egg of Life” beneath them.

The duality within the creation and the two pillars is one of the most favorable themes in the Templars’ mystical tradition. And in between stands the sealed gate, a closed doorway to other realms and knowledge. Why do the Templars mark this particular church? No one knows for sure today. Meteora, above anything else, is a place filled with spiritual energy. Something that all visitors experience is a powerful sense of awe-inspiring feeling. It’s not coincidental that the monks and the hermit monks before them all came here to pray and to connect with the divine. They felt it too, and so did the ancients. The Templars were no exception to that, and for whatever hidden agenda they might have, they decided to mark the Byzantine church!

Roger de Flor and the Knights Templar

We’ve tried so far to decipher the hidden meaning behind the marbles embedded on the south wall of the Byzantine church. We are going to leave the rest of the things for you to discover and decode on your own; the more obvious Templar symbols inside the church. It will be up to you to discover this fascinating monument in the old part of Kalambaka’s town if you ever visit Meteora. In the end, and instead of an epilogue, we’ll provide you with a few more tantalizing historical facts relating to the final days of the Templars, the Byzantine Empire, and the church.

Roger de Flor (1267 – 30 April 1305), also known as Ruggero/Ruggiero da Fiore or Rutger von Blum or Ruggero Flores, was an Italian military adventurer and condottiere active in Aragonese Sicily, Italy, and the Byzantine Empire. He was the commander of the Great Catalan Company and held the title Count of Malta. At eight years old, Roger de Flor was sent to sea in a galley belonging to the Knights Templar. He entered the order and became captain of a galley. After rescuing wealthy survivors during the siege of Acre by the Mamluk Sultan Al-Ashraf Khalil in 1291, he went to Cyprus. Following some intrigues and personal disputes, he was accused by the rest of the Templars of robbery, and he was denounced by the pope as a thief and an apostate. This resulted in his relegation from the order.

During the same period, Emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus of the Byzantine Empire was facing siege by the Ottoman Turks, an Islamic tribe approaching the capital of his empire after defeating his armies and ransacking most of his domains. Looking for assistance from the European kingdoms, he made Roger an offer of service along with the Almogavar army under his command. In September 1302, Roger, with his fleet and army, now known as the Catalan Company, 6,500 strong, arrived at Constantinople. He was adopted into the imperial family by marrying the emperor’s niece, Maria Asenina (daughter of Ivan Asen III of Bulgaria). He was made grand duke (Megas doux) and commander-in-chief of the Byzantine army and the fleet.

He was able to engage the Ottoman Turks on many occasions successfully. Still, in April of 1305, after serving his own personal interests, he was assassinated in Adrianople (modern Edirne in East Thrace) by Andronicus’ son, Michael. The Company of mercenaries avenged itself, plundering everything on their path, from Thrace to Macedonia and Thessaly in what has been called the “Catalan Vengeance”. The plundering of the Catalans in Greece was so devastating that in Thessaly, even up to the last century, the expression “you are a Catalan” was considered an insult.

Emperor Andronicus III and his visit to the Byzantine Church

A few decades later, Emperor Andronicus III, the son of Michael and grandson of Andronicus II, in 1333 managed to briefly put Thessaly under his control, and in 1336 he visited the Byzantine church in Kalambaka (known at the time as Stagi). Inside the church lies an imperial inscription located on the north wall, a letter of Andronicus III to the local bishop in which he validates the boundaries of his bishopric. Was Andronicus’ visit to the church a coincidental one or not? Why did he write this imperial letter to the local bishop, who was a figure of no political importance compared to other parts of Thessaly? Is it unreasonable to assume that the local bishop received the privileges from the emperor in exchange for a favor he did to him? Did Roger de Flor accidentally reveal something he wasn’t supposed to, something of great importance he had learned as a member of the Templars, resulting in his murder by the father of Andronicus III Michael back in 1305?

Those are all interesting connections and questions one may ask, but it’s almost certain that historical research will never prove anything. So, the mystery remains to this day. A few years after Andronicus’ visit, in 1340, a monk named Athanasios, who had also arrived in the area at around the same time as Andronicus back in 1336, successfully established the first monastery of Meteora, the Holy Monastery of Transfiguration. Athanasios eventually became the founder of the 7-centuries-old monastic community of Meteora! He’s also the one who named the site by giving it the name Meteora. The word “meteoro” in the Greek language translates into the thing that remains suspended between the heavens and earth…