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What has always worked for me is coming in gently on the tip of the horn, and going downhill from each direction there.
Especially important here to have the least amount of material as possible.
Ever since my very first routing experience where I caught end grain and had the body ripped out of my hands, I keep a death grip on that sucker and that combined with light passes and proper direction have not had an incident since.

Jeez, Filippo, do us all a favor (and yourself) and get a book on routers and safety. I'd be scared to be in the room with you doing that!
The proper way to have done that would have been to make the top carved part the actual size, glue it on, cut the bottom close and then rout the bottom to it.
You are very lucky you still have 8 & 2...

That's it Filippo. Screwing on a floppy template to a contoured piece of wood is asking for a trip to emergency.

Small bits would just make smaller bites, to be honest, but with that much to route away, you're asking for trouble. I bandsaw as close as safely possible, then sand (spindle) close (within 1/16"), and finish with a full-depth pass with the router. I tend to route the body first, glue to top, then trim the top to the body with a router (or sander).

Here is how we do carve tops in my shop .. the carve comes last .. after the body is all glued up.

In order to template route ....

Make a template a 1/16 narrower than the actual size/shape you want. Now you dont have to use a full height, or at least tall, top or bottom bearing bit and trake it all in one pass. Screw the template down into PU route areas, pot positions, neck pocket, whatever is usefull. Use a template guide, and bit that is 1/8 smaller in DIAMETER ... so 1/16 per side of the bit. I like to use 5/8 guide and 1/2 inch bits. Now you can route in small passes, taking only 1/8 to 3/16 per pass, then dropping the bit. You may get a bit of witness between the passes, but a spindle and disk sander take them out in a couple minutes.

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

That is what I do on my electrics, make the top to size, glue together, and route the rest of the body to the top.

edward, gently, key word.
tiny bites.

Amazing that no one has talked about climb cuts versus non-climb cuts yet. The problem was not the template. The problem was taking too big of a cut in end grain and (most important) cutting in the wrong direction. If you had started on the other horn and cut towards the horn that got torn up, this would not have happened.

Cutting in the direction that you did, allowed the router bit to self-feed into the stock which pulled the work from your hand. I'm glad you were not hurt.

There are some situations where a climb cut is acceptable. Such as a small cut, parallel to the grain, in a chip prone wood like ebony. But your situation had all the wrong things going for it (i.e.; thick stock, hardwood, end grain, heavy cut) and an accident was almost guaranteed. So most of the time, you should be making a non-climb cut where the stock moves from the right to the left (the reverse is true for hand held routing). I draw an arrow on my router plate right next to the bit to remind me which way to cut.