23.5 Degrees: Pro Fide, Pro Utilitate Hominum

… It’s so reassuring to be in the safe haven of 23.5 Degrees, when there is so much turbulence all around us. Everything is so confusing now. Is it a coincidence that, as we approach the anniversary of Philip’s final curtailment of the Knights Templar’s, “God’s bankers’â€, power, we find ourselves again in a world where the bankers have taken all power from the king and the people? The bankers have provided the blood in the system of the body societal and that blood has dried up. Again the blood was money – maybe our holy blood, maybe even the Holy Grail. Without that blood, we run the risk that the order system could collapse into civil disorder and mass suffering. Who is right today? Who are the good guys? Will the “fool for Godâ€, St George, and his fellow princes find a way this time to curtail our contemporary Knights Templar, to start the holy blood flowing again? Will the Muslim bail us out? Will the old order be kick-started again into life? Or will we move to a new, perhaps, better order system – away from “pro utilitate denariiâ€? Who knows? This year, 13 October will be at least as important as when it fell on a Friday so many centuries ago.<br /> Perhaps now is the right time to ask Gournamond’s question: Whom does the Grail serve?<br /> … But why waste time philosophising? I’m off to treat myself to that blood-red Testarossa I always promised myself. You can get amazing deals now… <br />

... I don't know the answer to Professor W's question, but I read this in a book when I was young man: "...the Grail serves the Grail King...Translated, this means that life serves what a Christian would call God, Jung calls the Self, or and we call by the many terms we have devised to indicate that which is greater than ourselves..." [From "He" by Robert Johnson] Perhaps, it means that now may not be the best time to be buying expensive sports cars, even blood-red models! Maybe a global economic collapse wouldn't be such a bad thing... A time to rebalance?

Does this museum belong to the Venerable Order of St. John (chartered in 1888) or to the Grand Priory of England of the SMOM (re-established 1993)? Seems a bit odd that the English seat of either would have a portrait of Ramon de Perellos, who served as Grand Master of the SMOM from 1697 to 1720, given that the Order had been abolished in England back in 1540.

Good catch, Buzz! The full name of the museum's order is the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem - but, they claim a historical connection with SMOM. It would be interesting to find out if they actually have an official association since SMOM was re-established in England in 1993, as St John is now a chivalric order rather than a religious order as it previously was. 

It's definitely odd that they have a portrait of Perellos, I've never been able to get to the bottom of it. They also have coins minted under Perellos in their collection.

Their library's collection of books and manuscripts on the history of the Hospitallers is said to be second only to the National Library of Malta, so maybe the portrait was simply acquired as a historical curiosity somewhere along the line. 

But, there were several underground attempts to reconstitute the order after Henry dissolved it, so it's tempting to speculate that Perellos might have come to London to plot with his erstwhile brothers during the rumblings of Jacobite machinations that began in the early 1700s. 

Hey, maybe he even brought The Holy Grail with him? ;-)

BTW, Prof W... you probably realise that your head at Templecombe is actually the head of John the Baptist painted on a Templar charger, altered after the property was transferred from Templar ownership into Hospitaller ownership. Hope your work with the electromagnetic wombats went well... you can see, from what happened at Michaelmas, that we definitely have more Work to do before All Soul's Day. Ironically, my bank was virtually nationalised on the 13th... does this mean that I have to send a Maltese Falcon to Gordon Brown now?!