The Black Madonna, the Tables of Chartres, and the Templar Code

“The ways of the Lord are inscrutable”, the Church teaches us, and that is how I have felt myself over the past year. My path has led me down many side roads and detours to a point whose essence is fundamental.

The Call of the Black Madonna

My journey began when I intuitively felt that the Black Madonnas were calling me and had something important to tell me. So I started recording Black Madonnas in Switzerland on my map of Sacred Places in Switzerland.

Swiss map with Black Madonnas

I quickly immersed myself in the subject and realized that the Black Madonnas appeared at the same time as the Knights Templar (12th century). This connection is not historically proven, but my intuition told me that there might be more to it than we are being told. The Knights Templar led me to the Cathars and finally to Gnosticism and, with Sofia, to another symbolic Black Madonna.

The Tables of Chartres – the first code

When I wanted to read up on Gnosticism, I went to my favorite bookstore and, although I didn’t find a book on Gnosticism, I did find “The Tablets of Chartres” by George Pennington. I’ll start with that.

George Pennington’s book is a practical guide. After a brief overview of cultural history, it offers a step-by-step introduction to meditation using the Tables of Chartres. The form of meditation presented by George Pennington draws on a meditation practice still alive among French gypsies, which is based on ancient Gnostic traditions of the Western world.

So we have the concept of the Tables of Chartres, three geometric shapes of equal area. A rectangle with a side ratio of 2:1, a square with the same area, and a circle with the same area. Pennington mentions that this geometric pattern is encoded in the floor plan of Chartres. Chartres is a cathedral with far-reaching symbolism, which refers to the battle between Theseus and Minotaur with its labyrinth. That got me thinking.

The Tables of Chartres also represent a symbolic path of initiation from the rectangle (matter) to the square (spirit) to the circle (divinity) – literally squaring the circle. What irritated me from the outset was that, according to Pennington, the Tables of Chartres are interpreted in exactly the opposite order, i.e., from the circle (Arthur’s Round Table) to the square (Joseph of Arimathea’s vision) to the rectangle (Jesus’ Last Supper table). I therefore decided to reverse the original order of the Tables of Chartres.

The Chartres Cathedral

Chartres is associated with the Tables of Chartres in many documents and websites. I have now reconstructed the Tables of Chartres in reverse order and deliberately matched them to the Gothic cathedral. The result is astonishing. The Tables correspond 100% to the floor plan.

Planning and construction phases of Chartres Cathedral over the centuries. (Dr. Gordon Strachan)

Source: https://publicism.info/architecture/gothic/1.html

The labyrinth is now in the correct position, as a search for the path from matter to divinity. The source is located in the circle.

Einsiedeln – the double blueprint

So we have a gypsy tradition, a cathedral with unprovable but obvious connections to the Knights Templar and Black Madonnas. Can these be linked? There is another famous monastery church with a Black Madonna, and here too we have unprovable but obvious connections to the Knights Templar.

• Einsiedeln horses with Arab roots
• 1291 (founding of Switzerland) coincides with the fall of Acre in 1291
• The Schwyz coat of arms is a color inversion of the Templar coat of arms
• A few farmers are suddenly able to defeat entire armies
• Switzerland as a country of banks
• Legends about knights who helped the Confederates in battle
• ….

The list could be extended indefinitely. I therefore took the next step of trying to transfer the Tables of Chartres to the architecture of the monastery church in Einsiedeln, and here too, the Tables of Chartres fit the floor plan 100%.

With kind permission from Einsiedeln Abbey.

The Tables of Chartres are woven into the architecture of Einsiedeln in two places. Classically horizontal from the choir towards the Chapel of Grace with a square which, unlike Chartres, is not rotated by 45°, and once vertically at the Chapel of Grace (and the original chapel of Meinrad). The length of the Romanesque church (black and pink) was used as a benchmark.

It therefore appears that this is a code that was not only used in Chartres, but also in other churches.

There is much more to say about Einsiedeln, but that will be covered in another article.

Temple Church London – the Templar Evidence

The next logical step was to establish a connection to the Knights Templar. There is no historical evidence of such a connection in either Einsiedeln or Chartres. However, there are several buildings that could be considered for this purpose. The Temple Church in London is certainly predestined for us to check whether we can find the Tables of Chartres embedded in the architecture here as well. That would be a first indication of a verifiable connection to the Knights Templar.

Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquaries-journal/article/abs/brotherly-rivals-templars-hospitallers-and-the-architectural-expansion-of-the-temple-church-in-london/D2A58FEE4A2F936389DF619B256E5CD8

The Tables of Chartres are also encoded in the floor plan of Temple Church. In this case, the circle and square correspond to the choir of the cathedral. “Coincidentally,” there is also a Black Madonna located 200 meters from Temple Church, namely in St. Dunstan-in-the-West.

It can be assumed that the Knights Templar brought this knowledge back with them from the Holy Land. We know that the Knights Templar had their headquarters in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount and that they carried out excavations there during periods of relative peace. But more on that later. So now we have a concrete thread that leads from Jerusalem via the Knights Templar to London, Chartres, and Einsiedeln.

Tomar – the Portuguese hub

Then this geometry should also be found in Tomar in the Convento de Cristo (Christ Monastery), which was the headquarters of the Knights Templar in Portugal from 1160 onwards. Tomar confirms my assumption, and the Tables of Chartres are also encoded here, similar to the Temple Church with a circle and square in the choir of the church. We do not find a Black Madonna here, but there is one nearby (Nazaré, also a Templar legend).

Source: https://picryl.com/media/haupt-planta-do-convento-de-cristo-tomar-13ec30

Notre-Dame de Paris – in the financial center of the Knights Templar

If there is one building that cannot be left off the list, it is Notre Dame de Paris, another place where the Knights Templar were very active and which also has a connection to Mary, namely in its name. Once again, the Tables of Chartres are encoded, just as in Chartres, with the circle at the very front of the choir.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Plan-of-Notre-Dame-de-Paris-with-principal-phases-of-construction-Retrieved-from-Sandron_fig19_365447931

A Black Madonna with a history worth reading used to be located in Saint-Etienne-des-Grès, in the immediate vicinity.

Le Puy en Velay

The Tables of Chartres are also encoded in the cathedral of La Puy en Velay. Here, too, we find a Black Madonna, and Le Puy en Velay is the starting point for the Way of St. James. The order of the panels is reversed here, i.e., from circle to square to rectangle.

Source: https://www.hades-archeologie.com/operation/logis-des-clergeons/

The Black Madonna is located here in the rectangle in the choir of the cathedral, but there was another lost predecessor that stood in a different location. This is an intriguing detail that still needs to be interpreted.

Initial conclusions

What these codes prove is that there was a connection between the Knights Templar and the corresponding churches all the way to Einsiedeln. The coding is not always entirely consistent, but it is undoubtedly present, albeit with minor variations in some cases. The coding generally ascends toward the choir of the church, with the exception of Le Puy en Velay.

Jerusalem

What could the Knights Templar have found on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem? Solomon’s Temple? What do we know about Solomon’s Temple? We know that it was 70 cubits long and 20 cubits wide.

And the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.

And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house.

1 Kings chapter 6

If we now encode the Tables of Chartres again, this means the following:

Circle at the Holy of Holies (diameter 20 cubits)
Square with a 45° rotation (diameter 25.07 cubits)
Rectangle with the long side (side length 25.07 cubits)

This results in a total length of 70.14 cubits, which is a deviation of 0.17%. Since we have both pi and the square root in the calculation, it is unlikely to be much more accurate than this. Here again, the circle is at the most sacred point, the classic ascending order.

7 is the number of perfection and harmony in God’s plans and deeds in the Bible, and 70 is the number of completeness in grace and judgment.

And where are the Black Madonnas? I don’t think we need to look for Black Madonnas here; with Mary and Mary Magdalene, we have, in a sense, the “originals” who are rooted in this place.

Timeline

The significance of the Black Madonna

The significance of the Black Madonna is enormous. She not only symbolizes Mary and Mary Magdalene, but can also be traced back via Sara-la-Kali among the Roma to the mother goddess Kali in India, to Isis in Egypt, and further to Black Tara in Buddhism and Palden Lhamo in Tibetan Buddhism. The pattern is always the same: a black goddess embodies wisdom, the underworld, destruction, and renewal – but at the same time also the imprisonment of the spiritual in matter, as reflected in the Gnostic figure of Sophia.

One can also speculate about other meanings of the Black Madonna. What if the Knights Templar, knowing their own mortality, found a way to store their knowledge in the Black Madonnas, a kind of spiritual blockchain? Many of the Black Madonnas in Switzerland spent a night with their “mother” in Einsiedeln and were touched by her. Perhaps at that moment, the knowledge was transferred to the new Black Madonna and “a new node in the spiritual blockchain” was initiated. Of course, these are all speculations, but they are certainly plausible when you consider my findings above.

The Black Madonna thus appears as the guardian of ancient knowledge that lives on in geometry, symbolism, and architecture – knowledge that leads from matter to insight, from darkness to light.