Here is a very concise account of the Templar initiation practices. I have seen longer descriptions, as well as various references to the initiation that are contained in Templar documents (and let’s not forget the Chinon parchment, where some of the references are potentially incriminating). For a brief account, though, this should suffice.

“A knight was received as a Templar in the following manner:

Their chapters or meetings were generally held at night in their church. The candidate remained outside the door, and was three times asked, by messengers from the Grand Master, if he wished to be made a ‘ Templar.’ When he had answered, he was formally brought in. ‘The rules of our order,’ the Grand Master would say, ‘ are strict, and you are beginning a life of endurance, and not one of ease; one of danger, and one of self-denial. You will have to watch, when perhaps you will be sighing for sleep; to endure fatigue, when you would fain rest; to be hungry and thirsty, when you are longing to eat and to drink; and to leave one country for another without a moment’s hesitation, if your vow requires it. Do you really wish to be a Templar? Are you in good health? Are you betrothed or married ? Are you in debt, and cannot pay? Do you belong to any other order?’ If the candidate was able to give satisfactory replies to all those searching questions, the vow of the order was administered to him. It consisted of three things — ‘poverty, chastity, and obedience,’ and was in these words: ‘I swear to defend with my life, my strength, and my speech, the holy doctrines of the Trinity and the Catholic faith ; I promise to be obedient and submissive to the Grand Master; and to travel by sea or by land if need be, to defend my brother Christians against the Infidels. My right hand and sword shall be dedicated to the service of the king and church against the Moslems; and I swear never to shun a combat with any miscreants if only three in number. I will fight them in single combat, and never fly from an enemy.’ The principal duty of a Templar was to fight Infidels; and three seemed their especial number, as they were enjoined to communicate three times a year; to hear mass and eat meat three times a week; and if they failed in doing their duty, they were flogged three times in the presence of the whole chapter. If a Templar failed in his especial duty of fighting the Moslems, he was banished for ever from the order.”

From “Heroes of the Crusades”, by Barbara Hutton, Paolo Priolo

Visitors that like this page may also enjoy this:
Initiation of Jaques de Molay
How do I become a Knight Templar?

There is a site that goes into considerable detail about the ways Knights Templar held certain numbers in great respect and built their practices around them. Such as:

The number 3 (omnipresent)

* The 3 religious vows (common to all monastic orders).
* The 3 mandatory alms every week.
* The 3 annual fasts.
* The 3 meals per day.
* The 3 meat meals per week.
* The 3 presentations of the novice before the Chapter prior to the reception ceremony.
* The obligation to accept a 3 against 1 fight.
* The 3 assaults of the enemy before the Temple’s counterattack.
* The 3 horses that the Knight Templar received when setting off on an expedition.

and the list goes on…

The number 8

* The 8 days of penitence to be suffered by a Knight Templar guilty of a venial sin.
* The 8 sacraments received by the Knights Templar.
* The 8 angles of the cross pattee humettee.
* The 8 articles of the oath taken by the future Knight Templar.

The number 9

* The 9 traditional founders of the order.
* The 9 Knights Templar required to form a commandery.
* The 9 provinces of the Temple of the West.
* The 9 years’ preparation for the Temple (1118 to 1127).
* The 72 articles (7 + 2 = 9) of the Primitive Rule.
* The 180 years (1 + 8 + 0 = 9) for which the order was in existence.
* The 9 000 Templar commanderies (unverifiable number given by Matthieu Paris).
* The 117 (1 + 1 + 7 = 9) charges leveled at the order during the Inquisition.
* The death of the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, also characterized by the number 9: he was executed on March 18 (1 + 8 = 9), 1314 (1 + 3 + 1 + 4 = 9).

Here is my take on this. Notice that there is a lot more things and entities listed under the auspices of number 3. It seems that 3 is just a good number for most things that are not in particularly great supply. So, there was nothing specifically “Templar” about using 3. 8 and 9, although both numbers with substantial numerological pedigree, are more difficult to come by in most cases. It seems to me that 9 was of particular importance, because the Templars for a long time insisted that there were only 9 members, even when undoubtedly daily operations of the Order required more knights and servants (who technically are also Templars).

http://www.maisnie-champenoise.org/uk/temple2.html

It seems to me that the role of Cornelius Agrippa in originating modern myths about the Knights Templar has been exagerated. I will not bore the reader with multiple references to the works of modern researchers who borrow from each other’s books the quote from Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia. Nobody even bothers to indicate the exact place in the treatise that the quote originates from. So, first things first.

Chapter 39 of De Occulta Philosophia begins as follows:

Nemo ignorat malos daemones malis ac prophanis artibus allici posse, quemadmodum narrat Psellus gnosticos magos consuevisse, quos penes execrandae et abhominabiles turpitudines exequebantur quales olim in sacris Priapi et in servitio idoli quod vocabatur Panor, cui pudendis discoopertis sacrificabatur. Neque istis dissimile est (si modo veritas et non fabula est) quod legitur de Templariorum detestanda haeresi et similia horum de maleficis mulieribus constant, quae quidem anilis dementia saepe in eiusmodi flagitiis errare deprehenditur.

“Everyone knows that evil spirits can be summoned through evil and profane practices (similar to those that Gnostic magicians used to engage in, according to Psellus), and filthy abominations would occur in their presence, as during the rites of Priapus in times past or in the worship of the idol named Panor to whom one sacrificed having bared shameful parts. Nor is any different from this (if only it is truth and not fiction) what we read about the detestable heresy of the Knights Templar, as well as similar notions that have been established about witches, whose senile womanish dementia is often caught causing them to wander astray into shameful deeds of the same variety.”

Michael Haag (“The Templars. The History & the Myth”) believes that by placing the Templars in the same context with witches Agrippa “thrust the order into the phantasmagoria of occult forces which were subject of the persecuting craze for which the Malleus Maleficarum was a handbook.” Obvious anachronism aside (the Templars have been well put away by the early 16th century), Cornelius Agrippa says absolutely nothing that his contemporaries did not know. Marino Sanudo (c. 1260 – 1338) in his Historia Hierosolymitana comfortably discusses the worship of the gilded head, the practice of dissolving the ashes of deceased knights and drinking the concoction for increased strength by their comrades, and of course smearing the idol with fat produced by roasting baby girls engendered by the Knights Templar. This account is often repeated by later writers. In Agrippa’s time, for instance, Pietro Crinito (Peter Crinitus, 1475 – 1507) relates such horrific details in his work De Honesta Disciplina (incidentally, a book used by Nostradamus). The tradition continued in such works as Hofmann’s (1635-1706): Lexicon Universale. Nicholas Guertler also mentions these allegations, but clearly does not find them to be grounded in reality.

As far as I am concerned, Cornelius Agrippa’s brief mention of the Knights Templar is of very little importance. Agrippa himself certainly did not make much of it.

See also: Medieval torture methods applied to the Knights Templar