The Ninth Templar

The story of the Knights Templar is full of yet still unresolved mysteries and only documented by partial clues of possibilities. To develop a theory of what could have happened you must try to place yourself into the mindset of their founder, Sir Hugh de Payens, a French knight of the First Crusade.

#NinthTemplar

He and seven of his close friends and relatives formed a small fighting company of men crusading under the flag of the Count of Champagne. Their initial goal was to pillage and uncover treasure that could make they and their benefactor richer.

Their initial plan was finalized and set into motion on Christmas Day 1118. Sir Hugh knew that in order to pull this off he needed leverage to keep their discoveries a secret and get them out of the Holy Land without being stolen and/or confiscated by the other monarchs. For that reason he formed the Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of the Temple of Jerusalem. This was quickly simplified to the Knights Templar. To secure this anonymity he kept one of the nine founding members completely secret, even from the others. Sir Hugh knew that if they were captured any of them could under torture be broken and then forced to divulge their secrets. This was serendipity because at the time he had no idea of the enormous magnitude of their future discovery under the Temple of Solomon.

Eventually, this Ninth Templar would be designated by Sir Hugh as the official keeper of their secrets. Sir Hugh allegedly died in 1136 AD. No one to this day knows the identity of this Ninth Templar. This Ninth member was the appointed guardian of the secrets of the templars and it is believed the written record of the early history as written by Sir Hugh de Payens. To begin to understand the Templar mystery you must start with these first unsolved questions of who could this Ninth Templar have been? How would he transfer such knowledge for safekeeping to the next guardian?