In the doctrine of esoteric chivalry, a new charter does not require the theft of an old institution's name; it requires living tactus, the unbroken physical transmission of the accolade from shoulder to shoulder. On Friday, 13 October 2000, in Yonkers, New York, that physical transmission passed to Jeremy Crow through the sword of Ronald V. Cappello.
The Reservoir of Tactus
Just as the 1804 revival of Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat drew its physical investiture from men who already held the chivalric and initiatic honors of the eighteenth century, Patriarch Cappello stood as a major late twentieth century reservoir of chivalric, Masonic, Martinist, and Gnostic sacramental lines. His attested offices and initiatic streams included:
- The Templar and Chivalric Stream: Operating within the international Neo-Templar succession, conferring American and Portuguese successions at the October 2000 vigil, and later recorded in the 29 December 2001 chronicle of SMOTH MIT as founding Grand Prior of the United States.
- The Egyptian and Martinist Stream: Sovereign Grand Master of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraïm for the United States, and Past Grand Master of the Martinist Order of the Temple.
- The High-Grade Masonic Stream: Master Mason in Huguenot Lodge No. 46 F. & A.M., Royal Arch, Cryptic Council, Grand College of Rites, and the Royal Order of Scotland, alongside York Rite and chivalric bodies recorded in family archives as Bethlehem Crusader Knights Templar and Knights Templar Order of the Temple.
- The Gnostic Apostolic Stream: Consecrated as Tau Mikaël I, Patriarch of the Old Templar Church, figure of the 1991 North American Gnostic concordat, and participant in the Synod of 2000.
Forensic Note on the 2000 Act
The 29 December 2001 Notice: The published historical chronology of SMOTH MIT records under the year 2001 that a Grand Priory of the United States was founded under Ronald Cappello. While this external chronicle independently corroborates Cappello's senior standing in that international field during that era, the Yonkers dubbing of 13 October 2000 predates the December 2001 notice by fourteen months.
Distinct Charter: In the manner that the Military Order of Christ (1319) carried the living tactus of the Portuguese Templars into a new sovereign charter without claiming to be the suppressed Roman Temple, the Knights of the Ziggurat carries the physical sword-line conferred by Cappello in 2000 without claiming corporate identity with modern external Templar administrations.