wanderer of the mountains

About This Old......:wheelchair:



Cheers Glen.

 

I resemble that remark...

 

You Have 10 Years To Catch Up To Me "Young Man"...



Cheers Glen.

 

Hi Druminmama, you are right about Robin. I heard Boots is still in the Canyon. Chris W is still tending bar there and living in the house that has the Indian TP up front. Same crowd at Columbine Lodge. Peace& Light to you.

 

Hi Beachball, The "Older Guy Club" is an epistemological thingy. Its overt signs are glorious displays of wisdom and a cunning-linguist talent of the speaker.

 

Oh I see.

Well, some of use don't know any words with more than two syllables.

 

Well, older guys can be good teachers and education is a good thing. Also, older guys can be very understanding, tender, and with soft shoulders. By the way, I have sandals too. When I was in England, I went to Carnaby street in London. Is that place still a hip shop and café area? I have relatives who live in Beaconsfield. I haven't seen them in a long time. Have you ever been to Malta? I was thinking of sailing from the UK to Malta and Turkey in a small motor-yacht. I want to have a Hobza in Malta and some Antep Fistkli Lokum in Istanbul.

 

I sure have been to Malta.

First went there in 1976, I think it was. I preferred Gozo when I was little because of the beaches. But now I prefer the mainland because of the history.

Mind you, back in 1976 the Hypogeum temple was still open to visitors ...

 

Oh, I just loved Gozo! I bough a miniature Gozo boat for my room decoration. And I loved Saint Paul's bay, because of the beautiful sandy beach. Malta has some fantastic history. I've been wanting to read up on the Templar history of the place. I'm just finishing up Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. It's about Templar history.

 

hi there storm.. welcome.. i looked up 'cache le poudre'.. it is breathtaking..

 

I don't think there is any, is there??

It was the Knights Hospitaler on Malta. They were given it by the Emperor Charles V following their expulsion from Rhodes in 1535 ... by which time the Templars had long since been suppressed.

 

Hi mvmcd1950, it is nice to meet you on this web site.

 

Hi Beachball, I lived in Malta in the 60s. I went to school there. I seem to remember something about the regular Templars, or maybe the Rosicrucians? It is something worth looking into. I remember Malta was liberated from Muslim rule by some knights. That would have fit in with your dates. I also remember that Knights were there in the 1100s and 1200s. That would have been original Templars. I know the Templars had several safe ports in the Mediterranean. Syria and Lebanon have a bunch of Templar history. Malta is solidly in the Catholic world. That would have made the place unsafe for the Templars, after the Catholic church turned against them.

 

Hmmmm ... that's really interesting, storm. I didn't know about that at all. I had always thought that the Templar operations were focused exclusively on the Holy Land.

Learn something new every day

 

Raymond Khouri wrote the Last Templar. His was a good fiction tale. But, it was fiction. His theory is that the thing that the Catholic Church wanted from the Templars, was serious enough to go after them and torture them for it. Dan Brown pretty much said the same thing. In the case of Khouri, his thinking is that the Templars had found the Gospel of Jesus; that is, written by Jesus. And it must have contained information that would have reduced their stature in the world. Another good fiction book on it is by a Canadian, who's name I cannot recollect right now, is the Knights of the Black and White. By the way, about Malta and the Templars, the Maltese Cross is a Templar Cross. It is usually red and white, or Black and white, and split at the ends like on the war shield of a Templar Knight. Oh well, that's enough for this letter. I have to go now. If I keep looking at your sandals, I 'm going to start having adulterous thoughts.

 

The Templar cross was red on white.

The Hospitaler cross was white on red.

The "Maltese" cross is properly called the Cross of Amalfi ...

 

Hi again Beachball, I looked it up on the net. And you are right about the Amalfi Cross. The info I saw also indicated that the Maltese cross was based on the cross first used in the first crusade. That makes it based on Templar. However, there was a coin in Malta called the Tari and it had the cross on it. The coin was made by "Grand Master Jean Parisot De La Vallette" and the capitol city of Malta is Valletta. I looked at it from across the harbor everyday in my school. The interesting thing here is what Dan Brown says about it, in the Da Vinci Code. The Maltese cross and the Templar cross both have that V at the end of each post. Dan Brown said that is symbolism about the belief of the Templars. They were French descendants of the Mary Magdalene followers who had immigrated from Egypt to the southern part of France and set up a kingdom. Dan Brown also says that they were the one who started the Priori of Sion. And the leader of that secretive group is always called a Grand Master. Here we have a guy in Malta with the same title. It's been a long time since I was in Malta; but, I still remember hearing from my local friends that there was a connection between Malta and the Templars.

 

Hmmmmm ... Templars didn't exist until AFTER the first crusade, surely?

The two orders, Templars and Hospitalers, were formed after the First Crusade had taken Jerusalem - the one to defend the temple and the other to run the hospital and to tend to sick and needy pilgrims.

 

Hi Beachball, maybe I wasn't clear. I was trying to say that I read the Maltese cross first appeared on a coin made by De La Vallette in Malta. It was based on the Templar cross with the V ends on its posts. The Templar cross had been in use since the first crusade. I was trying to say that I agreed with you that the Maltese cross was based on the earlier cross. However, I seem to remember that Malta's connection to the Templars went back farther than the 1500s, and not just with the Hospitalers. Malta was a safe harbor for the route between the Holy Land and Europe for a long time. Remember Saint Paul was shipwrecked there, at Saint Paul's bay. I remember that the Templars sailed from southern France to the Holy Land. They must have used Malta for several reasons. Even today, there is a Templar resort hotel there.