In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and continuing into the fourteenth, the wide region that we know as the South of France, northern Spain and which extends all the way to Portugal was home to the troubadours, poets whose lyrics were heard from the Pyrenees to the Villa Real. These poets did not speak French, Spanish or Portuguese but Occitan, the vernacular language of the region. The word troubadour represents Occitan trobador, from the verb trobar, meaning 'to find,' 'to invent,' or 'to compose'; hence, a troubadour is 'one who finds, invents, or composes.' Women troubadours are called by the infrequent feminine form of the word, trobairitz.
In the beginning, troubadour poems were transmitted as songs from one musical performance to the next. The poems gained increasing prestige over time, and by the mid-thirteenth century, if not earlier, scribes began to write them down. In the manuscripts that have survived, the poems present themselves to us directly, enveloped in an aura of prestige that implies high esteem for their art. The original environment of the poems, however - their social, political, literary, and musical context - is more difficult to grasp. These poets and singers lived in a world very different from our own.
The troubadours exemplify vivid individualism as well as recurrent mystic impulses. The troubadours anticipated the spirit and the poetry of such figures as Dante and Petrarch, both of whom publicly acknowledged their inheritance with admiration and gratitude. For this reason Italian culture to this day regards the troubadours as the source of its poetic tradition. There were dangers however because the troubadour tradition brought with it a revolt against preceding religious tradition.
For more than two centuries, the troubadour poems spoke of desire that was usually but not always heterosexual. In general, male poets describe male desire for a woman, and women poets describe a woman’s desire for a man, but there are also poems in which a troubadour imagines a woman’s desire and a trobairitz imagines the desire of a man. The expression of desire ranges from frank sex talk in the first troubadour, Guilhem IX of Aquitaine, to humble beseeching for the lady’s intimate favor in Bernart de Ventadorn, and from the self-confident projection of the Comtessa de Dia to the long-suffering misery of Castelloza. The beloved, in the eyes of the lover, possesses pretz or 'merit,' valor or 'worth,' cortesia or 'courtesy,' and above all jovén or 'youth, youthfulness.'
For the troubadours and their listeners, sexuality is the worldly expression of the sacred. The pleasure of desire brings happiness, and the sexual narrative holds the promise of continuity. The yearning and fulfillment that lovers experience makes sense of the world - its seasons, its wars, its anguish. As we may see in the first stanza of a song by Guilhem IX of Aquitaine (Poem 5), one of the earliest in the repertoire:
Ab la dolchor del temps novel
Foillo li bosc, e li aucel
Chanton, chascus en lor lati,
Segon lo vers del novel chan;
Adonc esta ben c’om s’aisi
D’acho don hom a plus talan.
With the sweet beauty of the new season
The woods leaf out, and the birds
Sing, each one in its language
To the measure of a new song;
Then it is well for a man to enjoy
What he most desires.
In the the first stanza of an alba, or dawn song, attributed without certainty to Gaucelm Faidit (Poem 54), we can already recognize the mystical sexual element that was to become paramount in the troubadour tradition and which would later permeate subtly within the mystery schools of Europe:
Us cavaliers si jazia
Ab la re que plus volia.
Soven baizan li dizia,
“Doussa res, ieu que farai?
Que.l jorns ve et la nueytz vai,
Ay!
Qu’ieu aug que li gaita cria,
‘Via! Sus! Qu’ieu vey lo jorn
Venir apres l’alba.’”
Once a knight was lying
With the woman he loved best.
He kissed her many times and said,
"Sweetheart, what should I do?
The day comes and the night goes,
Oh,
I hear the watchman crying,
'Away! Up! For I see day
Coming after dawn.'"
This attribute to 'dawn' is common to mystical literature of the time and refers to the important symbol of the sun rising. There is a connection here between the solar and the phallic and examples may be found as early as the eleventh century in the bilingual dawn song titled: Phebi claro nondum orto iubare / By the bright glow of Phoebus, ready to rise. It reads:
1 By the bright glow of Phoebus, ready to rise,
The first light falls over the earth.
The watchman calls to the sleepers, 'Arise!'
The dawn glimmers, the seas swell; the sun
Rises, watchful, to destroy dark night.
2 Behold the evil ruses of enemies, spread
To carry away the careless and slow
Who fail to hear the herald’s cries.
The dawn glimmers, the seas swell; the sun
Rises, watchful, to destroy dark night.
3 Polaris pulls away from Arcturus;
The stars of heaven hide their rays;
The Great Bear moves toward the East.
The dawn glimmers, the seas swell; the sun
Rises, watchful, to destroy dark night.
It may seem surprising that the Church did not more openly or specifically oppose troubadour idea of mystical love. This was perhaps partly because troubadours of the satirical tradition such as Marcabru or Peire Cardenal performed this function, perhaps also because until the Albigensian Crusade, when it began to crack down on the courtly way of life, the Church did not take troubadour activities seriously. Furthermore, troubadour articulations of love were often vague and ambiguous, encouraged by the permeability of erotic and mystical language in the Middle Ages. Just as mystics such as St Bernard expressed in sensual terms the longing of the soul for union with God, so Jaufre Rudel largely if not exclusively incorporated religious language into a secular longing and addresses a courtly domna in the same language as he does the Virgin Mary.
The early troubadours,
then, created the first 'modern' European examples of the individual
artist, a genius set apart from the common folk, whence the connotations
of value and 'high seriousness' associated with the high style. But
for such development the troubadour at the same time also risked the
fires of persecution. To escape such trouble the troubadour resorted to
a clever system of symbolism - both visual and linguistic - and such
symbolism may even today be found in Masonry and other surviving Western
mystery schools. What does such symbolism represent? It is important to keep in mind that the Troubadours emerged at the height of the Albigensian Cathar movement and immediately following their slaughter in the Albigensian Crusade. Many troubadours were themselves Cathars or at least influnced by Cathar notions. The Cathars were a Gnostic group of mystics who rivaled the Catholic Church in Southern France and other parts of Europe, until they were declared heretical and ultimately driven underground. The Cathar Elect were vegetarians who upheld notions of non-violence, reverence for the natural world and the equality of women. There have even been suggestions of links between the Cathars and certain very underground Sufi groups in Spain and Palestine.
The symbolism hidden in the troubadour lyric relates to the ideal in courtly love that was to embody the archetypal forces of Lover and Beloved. The Beloved was usually the woman. She was to embody the ideal of the Divine Feminine, Sophia, Divine Wisdom. She was to be ever slightly out of reach, but within sight. Her presence was to draw the Lover with her presence, her feminine divinity. She was to be a beacon. In striving to embody this for her Lover, she was to merge with the Divine she embodied.
The Lover was usually the man. His was the more active role. He was to seek his Beloved, his idealized Lady. He had to prove himself worthy of her, face great obstacles with humility and perserverance, in her name. In the Lover's intense passion for his Beloved, his constant focussing on her, he was to ultimately become a perfect Lover of the Divine and unite with the divinity he saw embodied in his Beloved.
The goal of courtly love represented a spiritual force that drew the man and woman as Lover and Beloved to the goal of spiritual marriage. This was the ideal, and certainly not every couple followed this path, nor did every troubadour always celebrate the inner sacred meaning of the path. Yet this was the core, and it was a pathway taught through societies and particularly passed on through troubadour poetry and song. Courtly love should be seen as genuine spiritual pathway and not be superficialized. It is not inappropriate to think of courtly love as similar to Tantric sexual spirituality, as developed in India.
Troubadours were also to some degree influenced by the great Arab poetry, and especially the Sufi
poetry, flowing in through Moorish Spain, the trade
routes of North Africa, and Palestine and the Crusaders interacted with
the Muslim world there. The Beloved of the troubadours is the same
Divine Beloved of the Sufis. When reading troubadour poetry, as with
Sufi poetry, the Beloved - though she may also be a real person - should
be understood to be the Divine and no other.Ultimately, the Cathars were declared a heretical sect by the Church and they were brutally suppressed. The Troubadours scattered, but their influence continued with the many related poetic/mystical traditions that emerged from their diaspora: the Trouveres in norther France, the Minnensingers in Germany (including Wolfram von Ehrenbach, author of the first Grail romance), the Fideli di Amore in Italy (including Dante), and the Fadistas of Portugal.
Christians were not the only ones attacking such practices, the Islamic powers also were attacking the Sufi cults of love. Sufi mysticism survived underground, carried on by certain members calling themselves Lovers and adoring the feminine principle as a world-sustaining power. Such troubadours were branded sinful because they loved women instead of God; and, women were equated with the devil by the theological opinion of the time.
As interesting, the troubadour tradition also appears to have picked up Tantric traditions from India. Although Courtly Love practiced Tantric maithuna under the name of drudaria, a sort of love associated with male self-denial, it was anything but chaste. To the contrary, its poetry was highly erotic.The bardic verse indicated Tantrism origins, especially when Peredur’s mystic lady-love revealed that she came from India or when Tristan told his lady-love Iseult that his name was the syllabically-reversed Tantris.
In connecting the troubadours to magic we find that in 1195 the troubadour Gauvaudan composed a poem titled "Senhors, per los nostres peccatz" which mentions the name Bafometz. This was one of the earliest times the title Baphomet makes its appearance and it appears in connection with it's original symbol relating to initiation. Around 1250 another poem by troubadour Austorc d'Ornac refers to Bafomet in reference to a defeat. De Bafomet is also the title of one of four surviving chapters of an Occitan translation of Ramon Llull's earliest known work, the Libre de la doctrina pueril, "book on the instruction of children". We also find a later dated poem by an unknown troubadour who is thought to have been a Templar and makes reference to some battles in 1265 that were not going well for the Crusaders:
"And daily they impose new defeats on us: for God, who used to watch on our behalf, is now asleep, and Muhammad [Bafometz] puts forth his power to support the Sultan."
The name Baphomet comes up in several of the confessions leveled against the Knights Templar. Peter Partner states in his 1987 book The Knights Templar and their Myth, "In the trial of the Templars one of their main charges was their supposed worship of a heathen idol-head known as a 'Baphomet' ('Baphomet' = Mahomet = Muhammad)."
The claims of an idol named Baphomet were unique to the Inquisition of the Templars. Karen Ralls, author of the Knights Templar Encyclopedia, argues that it is significant that "no specific evidence [of Baphomet] appears in either the Templar Rule or in other medieval period Templar documents." One of the accusation charges against the Templars states:
"Gauserand de Montpesant, a knight of Provence, said that their superior showed him an idol made in the form of Baffomet; another, named Raymond Rubei, described it as a wooden head, on which the figure of Baphomet was painted, and adds, 'that he worshipped it by kissing its feet, and exclaiming, 'Yalla,' which was,' he says, 'verbum Saracenorum,' a word taken from the Saracens. A templar of Florence declared that, in the secret chapters of the order, one brother said to the other, showing the idol, 'Adore this head—this head is your god and your Mahomet.'"
The influence of Sufism was diffusing into Western mysticism in the form of magic and Alchemy and remained closely guarded in the many mystery schools. Even today we find the Sufi mystery present in the Masonic initiation but I fear that any further explanation would merely muddy the waters and so instead I leave you to your own study accompanied by a delightful troubadour song:
"For your sake, I hurry over land and water:
For your sake, I cross the desert and split the mountain in two,
And turn my face from all things,
Until the time I reach the place
Where I am alone with You."
-Mansur Al Hallaj
