Father of Understanding

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"May the Father of Understanding guide you."

―Masun, writing the Templar blessing to a Masyaf basket weaver, 1191 CE

The Father of Understanding is a title originating in the Isu Era. Originally part of a triad of titles, alongside the Mother of Wisdom and the Sacred Voice, the Order of the Ancients took these titles and its holders as divine beings to worship until being reformed into the Templar Order. Subsequently, the "Father of Understanding" became a subject often mentioned in reverence by Templars, particularly during ritual ceremonies, blessings or as a form of greeting to one another.

Symbolism and reverence

It is unknown what the title symbolized in the Isu Era. Following the Great Catastrophe, the Father of Understanding, along with the Mother of Wisdom and the Sacred Voice, was adopted as a Trinity of Deities by a secretive religious cabal, the Order of the Ancients. During the Ancient World, the Order of the Ancients strictly revered them as divine beings in secluded temples throughout the Old World. It was not until the rise of an early incarnation of the Templar Order, founded by Alfred the Great, that this trinitarian practice was abolished for being regarded as "pagan blasphemies".

By the time the Templar Order became a public monastic order, only reverence for the Father of Understanding remained. In addition to its religious significance, the title also came to allude to the principle of order that the Templars embraced. As part of Templar dogma, it not only served as a reverence for a divine supreme being, but also as the "divinely" logic the Templars appeal to in their ambition to shepherd and transform the world and humanity as a whole into an eternally peaceful utopia which blossoms and advances under their secluded leadership.

History

Isu Era

On the 24th day of 2161 Isu Era, Samael, an Isu official tasked with the preparatory work for Project Anthropos, referred to Yaldabaoth as the Father of Understanding alongside Saklas as the Mother of Wisdom and Samael as the Sacred Voice.

As part of the Capitoline Triad, Suttungr was titled the Father of Understanding, in counterpart to Hyrrokin as the Mother of Wisdom and Gunnlǫð as the Sacred Voice.

Antiquity and early history

In 15th March 44 BCE, when the leader of the Order of the Ancients, Lucius Septimius engaged in battle with the Hidden One Aya, she questioned whether Julius Caesar was the new king of the Order of the Ancients, to which Septimius replied that Caesar was the Father of Understanding.

During the Viking expansion, members of the Order of the Ancients in England revered a Trinity of deities they called the Father of Understanding, the Mother of Wisdom and the Sacred Voice. It was noted in King Alfred the Great's research that these beliefs were from the Gnostic texts, and therefore blasphemous to his accepted religion of Christianity. He stated that the Mother of Wisdom and the Sacred Voice were vile blasphemies, and that the Father of Understanding was God, the one true creator of the universe. After destroying the Order of the Ancients in England, King Alfred vowed to create a new order, in which the Father of Understanding would be revered as the almighty source of goodness, harmony and order for all mankind.

Influence

Over the next two hundred years, worship of the Father as an entity ceased with the rise of Christianity and the name instead became a symbolic catchphrase among Templars, representing their goal to lead humanity by adopting the role of a concerned "father" instructing a wayward child. However, this did not stop the Templars' continued use of the Father's title among themselves. By the Third Crusade, the Levantine Templars would sign his name as a closing in their letters. Similarly, the Italian Templars during the Renaissance would invoke him when resolving meetings.

In 1715, the phrase was used briefly by Laureano de Torres y Ayala, Grand Master of the West Indies Templars, during his first meeting with the pirate Edward Kenway, who was impersonating the late Assassin turncoat Duncan Walpole.

Before and during the American Revolutionary War, the phrase was used three times by Haytham Kenway; first, during the induction of Charles Lee to the Colonial Templars in 1755, again, when inducting Shay Cormac to the Order in 1757, and lastly, when Haytham used it as a password to enter the Smith and Company Brewery with his son, Connor.

During his investigation into the Parisian Templars' affiliation with the Cult of Baphomet, the French Assassin Arno Dorian required a password to gain entrance into the cult's lair. He was informed by a cult recruiter that the password was "The Father of Understanding".

The use of the blessing continued, though infrequently, into the modern era. In 1868, James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, a British Templar, and a Tory in the House of Commons, wrote to Grand Master Crawford Starrick, informing him that the death of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli would indefinitely stall the House passing the Corrupt Practices Act and that William Gladstone would be far more pliable to puppeting, before signing the letter in closing with the traditional blessing.

Over a century later in September 2012, Abstergo Industries' CEO Alan Rikkin emailed Warren Vidic regarding historical events or artifacts to investigate further and placed the phrase at the end of his message. In 2014, the Master Templar Juhani Otso Berg voiced a belief that the Father of Understanding had guided the research analyst pejoratively known as "Numbskull" to Abstergo Entertainment in order to prove one of Berg's theories by reliving Shay Cormac's memories.

Behind the scenes

In Western Mystery Religions, especially Gnosticism, Yaldabaoth is one of the many names of the Demiurge, an omnipotent supreme entity who is believed to have created humans and imbued them with souls, while also trying to limit mankind's knowledge by forbidding them the fruits of paradise.