Graded Initiation

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It is aso important to note that, in a system of graded initiation, at each succeeding grade the initiate was allotted an increasing amount of "sacred knowledge,"and privy to more of the order's secrets. So Templars of lower grades, may not have fully understood what was taking place within the higher grades of the order, and there would have been a definite air of secrecy over all of it. This sort of graded initiation is still standard in Freemasonry and other occult groups, and it is suggested that this is the way the Hashishins worked as well. Some of the more heretical ideas likely would have horrified a brand-new initiate who just arrived to the order with their typical Christian or Muslim world view. If devotees of Scientology, for instance, were presented with the tales of the alien leader Xenu and atomic bombs in volcanos, on their first day, we can imagine it would be a short lived commitment. Possibly through the grades of initiation used by both the Hashishin and Templars, potential initiates were slowly seduced away from their orthodox beliefs, and through a series of initiations these were replaced with expanding cosmological knowledge.

Chris Bennett