Jacques de Molay is the Grand Master of the Order of the Temple, commander of a crusade marching from Damascus toward Jerusalem, and a man with two heads whose true head the cult of Baphomet requires to be severed.
| Type | Character |
| Office | Grand Master of the Templars |
| Order’s seat | Cyprus |
| Spanish entry | Jacques de Molay |
The Grand Master in arms
The Order is seated in Cyprus, but Molay is cantoned in Damascus with about ten thousand men: “a couple of crusaders, a couple of youngsters and so on”, plus Tartar troops. He acts as the king’s arm. The general staff’s standard marks his camp; after staff meetings he comes out “not only with 20 Templars, with his generals”.
A Templar fortress with “a sumptuous church” sends reinforcements to the island of Arwa; there a “lord Jacques” ordains those who join the gesta (campaign-cycle) and says mass for those leaving. Whether he is the Grand Master is not established.
The two heads
“Jacques de Molay has two heads, and the false one must attract the true one, without being discovered.” The true head, “on his shoulders and alive”, must be “separated” from a throne, and “wishes to conquer Jerusalem”; the false one “also wishes to conquer Jerusalem, but for other ends, and it is not its primary aim”.
The ritual rule: “For our cult to be established, the true head must be separated from its throne”, and “the true head must be separated, and the false one must not be”. The cult awaiting this beheading is that of Baphomet.
Traitor
Nur al-Din’s emissaries call him “a traitor to his cause”; others, “a terrible traitor and a pact-maker with demons”.
Conflicting accounts
- The ritual’s last clause is also heard as “must not burn”.
- Events are dated “after the death of Jacques de Molay”.
- In a Paris of Antiterra linked to Notre-Dame, he “lived eternally for having brought Baphomet to glory”, the last worthy Templar. A corrupted formula, «Ponente a Notre-Dame», hangs on that Paris, its meaning lost.
Other Jacques
- Jacques Sautot, tied to the dodecagonal balance and the Libertadurs, is held to be a garbled name from another plan.
- Jacques the butler is another man: “a boy with blue hair and strange locks, a sort of half blue mud, an intelligent sorcerer visiro” (viceroy, probably vizier).
Open questions
- His appearance and the terms of any pact are not recorded.
- How the false head is told from the true, and what “attract” means, is unknown.
- Whether the throne is a seat, the body, or the office of Grand Master is unknown.
- How Cyprus, Damascus and the fortress supplying Arwa connect is not recorded.