Well, I don't know... Like 90 % of my knowledge of Knights Templar comes from Maurice Druon's The Accursed Kings series, which - while a great fun! - is not exactly educative, and the Templars stuck around only long enough to curse the Capetians and go down in flames. Googling them know, apparently their main jam aside of fighting had been... banking. Color me surprised. I can see some similarities with the Jedi, but I'm not sure if there's a place for them in the GFFA. I mean, the only thing the Jedi could protect in a manner similar to the Templars are the kyber crystals, which is something what the Guardians of the Whills already do, but without much glamour, and I can't for the life of me imagine them as businessmen.
My own impression of the Jedi is that that they are a bit too... aggressive? in their symbolism (I can't find a better word for it) to be just monks. I remember reading a meta that highlighted the symbolism of lightsabers - image-wise they are de facto the perfect weapon - a sword made of fire - fire has the connotation of cleansing and punishing, the sword speaks for itself. Considering what emphasis they put on their lightsaber, I just don't think their main purpose had ever been to meditate and ignore the outer world.
Anyway, I'm not generally well-informed about the new canon, but I flicked through the companion picture book for Rogue One, and what surprised me is that apparently due to its name many people in the GFFA belive that Jedha is the place of origin of the Jedi, which is frankly surprising, since the movie makes it clear that it were the Guardians that made it their home. The Jedi don't seem to have done more than pay it an occasional visit in order to harvest crystals and build around those statues much like on Ilum. I thought that it was strange that in such a large galaxy, two of the very few known Force religions would have originated on the same planet - if only for the reason that it wouldn't be very original on the creators' part.
So, I've been thinking that either the Jedi - Jedha connection was a misdirection, or the Guardians and the Jedi have common origins. My pet theory is that the Jedi started as the offshoot of the Guardians akin to how Christianity split from Judaism, and quickly gained numbers and became the dominant religion. I'm thinking that a long time a group of Force sensitive Guardians felt that what they were doing with protecting the crystals and the locals wasn't enough anymore (they had a vision, perhaps?) and decided to play a more active role in the larger world. So, they took some of those crystals and went to Do Good in the name of the Force and convert more Force sensitives to their ideals. If the GFFA was more of a Wild West back then, they could have well been a vigilante group. But times changed and they were forced to change as well.
I recognize that the GFFA could be much mellower about things like racism and religious intolerance, but I don't think that the Templars are a good comparison, since they were all catholics. Sure, there were differences among them, but they were all raised with the same basic ideology. But it is true that one of the major reasons as to why crusades came into being was that the Catholic Church wanted to give the Christendom a common foe, so they would stop fighting among themselves.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Recruiting
Date: 2019-02-08 01:51 am (UTC)Well, I don't know... Like 90 % of my knowledge of Knights Templar comes from Maurice Druon's The Accursed Kings series, which - while a great fun! - is not exactly educative, and the Templars stuck around only long enough to curse the Capetians and go down in flames. Googling them know, apparently their main jam aside of fighting had been... banking. Color me surprised.
I can see some similarities with the Jedi, but I'm not sure if there's a place for them in the GFFA. I mean, the only thing the Jedi could protect in a manner similar to the Templars are the kyber crystals, which is something what the Guardians of the Whills already do, but without much glamour, and I can't for the life of me imagine them as businessmen.
My own impression of the Jedi is that that they are a bit too... aggressive? in their symbolism (I can't find a better word for it) to be just monks. I remember reading a meta that highlighted the symbolism of lightsabers - image-wise they are de facto the perfect weapon - a sword made of fire - fire has the connotation of cleansing and punishing, the sword speaks for itself. Considering what emphasis they put on their lightsaber, I just don't think their main purpose had ever been to meditate and ignore the outer world.
Anyway, I'm not generally well-informed about the new canon, but I flicked through the companion picture book for Rogue One, and what surprised me is that apparently due to its name many people in the GFFA belive that Jedha is the place of origin of the Jedi, which is frankly surprising, since the movie makes it clear that it were the Guardians that made it their home. The Jedi don't seem to have done more than pay it an occasional visit in order to harvest crystals and build around those statues much like on Ilum. I thought that it was strange that in such a large galaxy, two of the very few known Force religions would have originated on the same planet - if only for the reason that it wouldn't be very original on the creators' part.
So, I've been thinking that either the Jedi - Jedha connection was a misdirection, or the Guardians and the Jedi have common origins. My pet theory is that the Jedi started as the offshoot of the Guardians akin to how Christianity split from Judaism, and quickly gained numbers and became the dominant religion. I'm thinking that a long time a group of Force sensitive Guardians felt that what they were doing with protecting the crystals and the locals wasn't enough anymore (they had a vision, perhaps?) and decided to play a more active role in the larger world. So, they took some of those crystals and went to Do Good in the name of the Force and convert more Force sensitives to their ideals. If the GFFA was more of a Wild West back then, they could have well been a vigilante group.
But times changed and they were forced to change as well.
I recognize that the GFFA could be much mellower about things like racism and religious intolerance, but I don't think that the Templars are a good comparison, since they were all catholics. Sure, there were differences among them, but they were all raised with the same basic ideology. But it is true that one of the major reasons as to why crusades came into being was that the Catholic Church wanted to give the Christendom a common foe, so they would stop fighting among themselves.