Book Reviews Perceptions Magazine, April 2022
The Healing Practices of the Knights Templar and Hospitaller:
Plants, Charms, and Amulets of the Healers of the Crusades
By Jon G. Hughes
Inner Traditions
Bear & Company
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
April 2022, 416 pages, 6 x 9, US $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-64411-330-1
Imprint: Destiny Books
www.InnerTraditions.com
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
The author of this book, Jon G. Hughes, a resident of Ireland, is the director of the Irish Center for Druidic Practices, is part of a lineage of Druids that have been practicing for five generations, and is the author of A Druid’s Handbook to the Spiritual Power of Plants and The Druidic Art of Divination. Thus he’s the perfect author to pen this book!
Pulling back the veil of history, Hughes gives us a comprehensive and authoritative look at the Crusades, how the likes of the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller were accompanied by monastic mediciners who treated the sick and wounded. At that time, using the leading cures of medieval Europe, these mediciners also educated themselves on other methods along the way like local folk-healers and even Arabic healing traditions. He describes numerous recipes for many cures, as well as a wide variety of magico-medical approaches like charms, spells, enchantments, and amulets. Hughes also does an exhaustive review of herbal medicines, listing plants and providing preparatory instructions. Hughes even traveled to the locations that the Crusader physicians traveled, like Poland, the Czech Republic, Malta, Morocco, and the island of Rhodes where still today he was able to meet healers who continue to practice those ancient methods, and who were willing to share their knowledge with him.
