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This
extraordinary and controversial topic is packed with
intrigue. It begins where others have ended. Laurence
Gardner has been granted privileged access to European
Sovereign and Nobel archives, along with favoured
insight into Chivalric and Church repositories. He
"proves" for the first time that there is a royal
heritage of the Messiah in the West, and documents the
systematic and continuing suppression of these records
tracing the descent of the sacred lineage by regimes
down the centuries.
This unique lecture gives a detailed genealogical
account of the authentic line of succession of the
"Blood Royal" from the sons of Jesus and his brother
James down to the present day. It casts a penetrating
new light on the Bible story, and onto the enigmatic
figures of Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene, and
on the real truth behind the Arthurian legends and the
Holy Grail. There is also a fascinating history of the
Knights Templars of Jerusalem.
Laurence Gardner, Prior of the Celtic Church’s Sacred
Kindred of St Columba, is an internationally known
sovereign and chivalric genealogist. Distinguished as
the Chevalier Labhràn de Saint Germain, he is
Presidential Attaché to the European Council of Princes
- a constitutional advisory body established in 1946. He
is formally attached to the Noble Household Guard of the
Royal House of Stewart, founded at St German-en-Laye in
1692, and is the Jacobite Historiographer Royal.
Now let our quest begin, let us search for the "True"
meaning of the Holy Grail. We will take you on a journey
of discovery that will lead you to new paths of personal
discovery. |
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Today we shall embark upon the time-honoured
Quest for the Holy
Grail. Some have called it the Ultimate Quest, but the Christian
Church has condemned it as a heresy.
A Christian heresy is described as ’an opinion which is contrary to
the orthodox dogma of the Christian bishops’ and, in this regard,
those other quests which comprise much of today’s scientific and
medical research are equally heretical. The word ’heresy’ is, in
essence, nothing more than a derogatory label - a tag used by a
fearful Church establishment that has long sought to maintain
control of society through fear of the unknown. A heresy can
therefore define those aspects of philosophy and research which
quest into the realms of the unknown and which, from time to time,
provide answers and solutions that are quite contrary to Church
doctrine.
In Christian terms, most of the world’s population is heretical,
because the Christian Church (which defines its own heresies)
represents little more than a quarter of that population. As for the
remaining three-quarters - the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and
others - they are all, by definition, heretics and infidel.
Only 365 years ago, the Italian scientist Galileo announced that the
Earth was in motion around the sun (a discovery by the Polish
astronomer, Copernicus) and for this the Church proclaimed him a
heretic. As a result, Galileo was hauled before the Catholic
Inquisition and kept under house arrest for ten years until he died.
Soon afterwards, Isaac Newton pursued the concept of orbital force,
but he too was condemned and it was not until recently, in 1992,
that the Church finally admitted that the Earth was in solar orbit.
Indeed, it was not until the summer of 1996 that the notion of Hell
was abolished by the General Synod of the Anglican Church, and it
was this very notion which had caused such problems for Galileo,
Newton and others. The
Catholic Church, on the other hand, maintains
the notion of Hell - and so, in the eyes of Rome, the Anglican
Protestants have now become heretics in this regard.
Historically, as far as the Christian Church was concerned, the
Earth was flat and at the centre of the Universe. Heaven was above
the Earth and Hell was below. Consequently, the Earth had to be
motionless and could not possibly be in orbital motion unless Heaven
and Hell moved as well - which, it was maintained, they did not.
1996 was also the year when Pope John Paul formally acknowledged
Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution - proclaiming it to be ’quite
compatible’ with the Christian faith. But, hitherto, all scientists
and scholars who upheld the principles of evolution were classified
as heretics.
Additionally, the Vatican has now established a Miracles Council,
consisting of scientists, medical men and theologians. Their brief
is straightforward: to investigate ancient and modern miracles so as
to determine what does and what does not fall into the category. If
a plausible and acceptable reasoning can be found for a said miracle,
then it is taken off the miracles list. If not, then it stays on the
list until such time as a logical explanation is put forward by the
Council.
And so, one by one, yesterday’s heresies (for which so many have
been persecuted and executed) are being accepted by the Church’s
more rational members. But there is, nevertheless, a significant
element that prefers to retain the old dogma - creating a modern
schism in the very structure of the Church itself.
As the years progress, it is evident that scientific and medical
discovery must overturn much of the medieval religious dogma that
has persisted to modern times. And, in this regard, some previously
cited heresies are already being taken on board by a Church that has
little option to do otherwise. But there are also other forms of
heresy: heresies with an essentially spiritual base - the heresies
which may be called pagan or occult and those which form the very
roots of religions other than Christianity.
Then there are the historical heresies: those which do not
immediately fall within the realms of science, medicine or
philosophy, but whose testing and questing fall mainly to historians,
linguists and theologians. It is in this particular category that we
find the Quest for the Holy Grail and, in pursuing the Quest, it
becomes increasingly apparent why the Church pronounced Grail lore
to be a heresy when society at large perceives the Grail to be a
thoroughly Christian relic.
Quests are, by their very nature, intriguing and historical research
is enlightening, but the findings from neither are of any use
whatever unless there are present-day applications which, like
science and medicine, can sow the seeds of a better future.
History is no more than recorded experience - generally the
experience of its winners - and it is common sense to learn from the
experience of yesterday. Indeed, it is that very experience which
holds the moral, cultural, political and social keys of tomorrow -
and it is in this context that the Holy Grail supports its own
Messianic code. This is the code of social practice instituted by
Jesus when he washed his apostles’ feet at the Last Supper.
It
pertains to the obligations of giving and receiving ’service’. It
determines that those in positions of elected authority and
influence should always be aware of their duties as ’representatives’
of society, obligated to Serve society, not to presume authority
over society. The Grail Code is the essential key to democratic
government. This is defined as government BY the people FOR the
people. Without the implementation of the Code, we experience the
only too familiar government OF the people. This is not democratic
government.
In the course of our journey, we shall discuss many items which are
thoroughly familiar, but we shall be looking at them from a
different perspective to that normally conveyed. In this regard it
will appear that we are often treading wholly new ground, but it
was, in fact, only the ground that existed before it was carpeted
and concealed by those with otherwise vested interests. Only by
rolling back this carpet of purposeful concealment can we succeed in
our quest for the Holy Grail.
Our quest will begin in the Holy Land of Judaea in the time of
Jesus, and we shall spend a good while there so as to set the
emergent scene. We shall then progress through 2000 years of history
to the present day - travelling through the Dark Ages to spend some
time in medieval Europe. The Grail mystery will then be followed
into King Arthur’s Britain and, eventually, even to the United
States, where the American fathers were among the greatest exponents
of the Grail Code.
Eminent Americans such as
George Washington, John
Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Thompson and Thomas Jefferson were
as much champions of the Holy Grail as were King Arthur, Sir
Lancelot and Galahad.
Bloodline of the Holy Grail has been described as
The Book of
Messianic Descent and it carries the subtitle The Hidden Lineage of
Jesus Revealed. This of course indicates that Jesus had children
and, by implication therefore, that he was married. So was he
married? Did he have children? If so, do we know what became of
them? Are their descendants alive today? The answer to each of these
questions is ’yes’.
We shall be looking at the emergent family in some detail, following
their story, century by century - the story of a resolute royal
dynasty: the descendant heirs of Jesus, who struggled against all
odds to preserve the Messianic initiative of the Holy Grail.
Our story is one of conspiracy; of usurped crowns, persecutions,
assassinations and the unwarranted concealment of information from
the people of the Christian world. It is an account of good
government and bad government; about how the patriarchal kingship of
people was supplanted by dogmatic tyranny and the dictatorial
lordship of lands. It is a compelling journey of discovery: a view
of past ages, but with its eye firmly set upon the future. This is
history as it was once written, but has never been told.
Let us begin with the most obvious of all questions:
The fact that Jesus had descendants might come as a
surprise to some, but it was widely known in Britain and Europe
until the late Middle Ages.
In medieval times, the line of Messianic descent was defined by the
French word Sangréal - deriving from the two words Sang Réal,
meaning ’Blood Royal’. This was the Blood Royal of Judah: the kingly
line of David which progressed through Jesus and his heirs. In
English translation, the definition Sangréal became ’San Graal’ (as
in San Francisco). When written more fully it was ’Saint Grail’ -
the word ’saint’, of course, relating to ’holy’. Then, by a natural
linguistic process, came the more romantically familiar term, ’Holy
Grail’.
From the Middle Ages there were a number of chivalric and military
orders specifically attached to the Messianic Blood Royal in Britain
and Europe. They included the Order of the Realm of Sion and the
Order of the Sacred Sepulchre. But the most prestigious of all was
the Sovereign Order of the Sangréal - the Knights of the Holy Grail.
This was a dynastic Order of Scotland’s Royal House of Stewart.
In symbolic terms the Grail is often portrayed as a chalice that
contains the blood of Jesus; alternatively as a vine of grapes. The
product of grapes is wine, and it is the chalice and the wine of
Grail tradition that sit at the very heart of the Holy Communion
(the Eucharist). In this sacrament, the sacred chalice contains the
wine that represents the perpetual blood of Jesus.
It is quite apparent that, although maintaining the ancient
Communion custom, the Christian Church has conveniently ignored and
elected not to teach the true meaning and origin of the custom. Few
people even think to enquire about the ultimate symbolism of the
Chalice and Wine sacrament, believing that it comes simply from some
Gospel entries relating to the Last Supper.
What is the significance of the perpetual blood of Jesus? How is the
blood of Jesus (or of anyone else for that matter) perpetuated? It
is perpetuated through family and lineage. So why was it that the
Church authorities elected to ignore the ’bloodline’ significance of
the Grail sacrament? Indeed, why was it that they went so far as to
denounce Grail lore and Grail symbolism as heretical?
The fact is that every Government and every Church teaches the form
of history or dogma most conducive to its own vested interest. In
this regard we are all conditioned to receiving a very selective
form of teaching. We are taught what we are supposed to know, and we
are told what we’re supposed to believe. But, for the most part, we
learn both political and religious history by way of national or
clerical propaganda, and this often becomes absolute dogma:
teachings which may not be challenged for fear of reprisals.
With regard to the Church’s attitude towards the chalice and the
wine, it is blatantly apparent that the original symbolism had to be
reinterpreted by the bishops because it denoted that Jesus had
offspring and, therefore, that he must have united with a woman.
But it was not only sacraments and customary ritual that were
reinterpreted; the very Gospels themselves were corrupted to comply
with the ’male-only’ establishment of the Church of Rome - much like
a modern film editor will adjust and select the takes to achieve the
desired result.
We are all familiar with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
- but what about the other Gospels: those of Philip, of Thomas, of
Mary and of Mary Magdalene? What of all the numerous Gospels, Acts
and Epistles that were not approved by the Church councils when the
New Testament was compiled? Why were they excluded when the choices
were made?
There were actually two main criteria for selection, and these (from
an earlier short-list prepared by Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria)
were originally determined at the Council of Carthage in the year AD
397, to be finally ratified in the later Renaissance era. The first
criterion was that the New Testament Gospels must be written in the
names of Jesus’s own apostles. Matthew was, of course, an apostle,
as was John - but Mark was not an apostle of Jesus as far as we
know; neither was Luke; they were both colleagues of the later St
Paul.
Thomas, on the other hand, was one of the original twelve, and yet
the Gospel in his name was excluded. Not only that but, along with
various other texts, it was sentenced to be destroyed. And so,
throughout the Mediterranean world, numerous unapproved books were
buried and hidden in the 5th century. Only in recent times have some
of these early manuscripts been unearthed, with the greatest of all
discoveries made (after 1500 years) in 1945 at
Nag Hammadi in Egypt.
Although these books were not rediscovered until this present
century, they were used openly by the early Christians. Certain of
them, including the Gospels mentioned, along with the Gospel of
Truth, the Gospel of the Egyptians and others, were actually
mentioned in the 2nd-century writings of early churchmen such as
Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyon and Origen of Alexandria.
So, why were these and other apostolic Gospels not selected? Because
there was a second, far more important criterion to consider - the
criterion by which, in truth, the Gospel selection was really made.
It was, in fact, a wholly sexist regulation which precluded anything
that upheld the status of women in Church or community society.
Indeed, the Church’s own Apostolic Constitutions were formulated on
this basis. They state,
’We do not permit our women to teach in the
Church, only to pray and to hear those who teach. Our master, when
he sent us the twelve, did nowhere send out a woman; for the head of
the woman is the man, and it is not reasonable that the body should
govern the head’.
This was an outrageous statement with no apparent foundation, but it
was for this very reason that dozens of Gospels were not selected,
because they made it quite clear that there were many active women
in the ministry of Jesus: women such as Mary Magdalene,
Martha,
Helena-Salome, Mary-Jacob Cleophas and Joanna. These were not only
ministering disciples, but priestesses in their own right, running
exemplary schools of worship in the Nazarene tradition.
In his Epistle to the Romans, St Paul makes specific mention of his
own female helpers: Phoebe, for example, whom he called a ’sister of
the Church’ - along with Julia, and Priscilla who ’laid down her
neck for the Cause’. Writings of the Gospel era are simply alive
with women disciples, but the Church ignored them all. When the
Precepts of Ecclesiastical Discipline were drawn up, they stated,
’It is not permitted for a woman to speak in Church, nor to claim
for herself a share in any masculine function’.
The Church of Rome was so frightened of women that it implemented a
rule of celibacy for its priests - a rule that became a law in 1138:
a rule that persists today. But this rule has never been quite what
it appears on the surface, for it was never sexual activity as such
that bothered the Church. The more specific problem was priestly
intimacy with women. Why? Because women become wives and
mothers -
and the very nature of motherhood is a perpetuation of bloodlines.
It was this that bothered the Church: a taboo subject which, at all
costs, had to be separated from the necessary image of Jesus.
However, it was not as if the Bible had said any such thing. In
fact, quite the reverse was the case. St Paul had actually said in
his first Epistle to Timothy that a bishop should be married to one
wife and that he should have children, for a man with experience in
his own family household is actually far better qualified to take
care of the Church.
But, even though the Roman Church authorities claimed to uphold the
teaching of St Paul in particular, they chose completely to
disregard this explicit directive to suit their own ends, so that
Jesus’s marital status could be strategically ignored.
Notwithstanding this, the Church’s celibate, unmarried image of
Jesus was at variance with other writings of the Gospel era, and it
was openly contradicted in the public domain until the perpetuation
of the truth was proclaimed a punishable heresy (only 450 years ago)
at the Italian Council of Trento in 1547 (the year that Henry VIII
Tudor died in England).
It is, however, not just the Christian New Testament which suffers
from these sexist restrictions. A similar editing process was
applied to the Hebrew Old Testament, making it conveniently suitable
to be added to the Christian Bible. This is made particularly
apparent by a couple of entries that bypassed the editors’ scrutiny.
The books of Joshua and 2-Samuel both refer to the importance of the
more ancient
book of Jasher. But where is this book? Like so many
others of equal importance, it is not to be found in the Bible!
Does the book of Jasher still exist? It certainly does. The
nine-foot Hebrew scroll was a jewel of the Court of Emperor
Charlemagne and the translation of the book of Jasher was the very
reason that the University of Paris was founded in the year 800 -
more than a century before the now familiar version of the Old
Testament was compiled.
Jasher was the personal staff-bearer to Moses, and the writings
attributed to him are of enormous significance. The accounts relate
to the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and tell of their exodus into
Canaan. But they differ considerably from the version of the story
that we know today. They explain that it was not Moses, but Miriam
who was the spiritual leader of the tribes who crossed the Red Sea
to Mount Sinai.
Artists Depiction of Mount Sinai
At that time, the Jews had never heard of
Jehovah; they worshipped
the goddess Asherah and their spiritual leaders were largely female.
Indeed, Miriam posed such a problem for Moses in his attempt to
create a new environment of male dominance that he imprisoned her,
whereupon the Israelites rose up against Moses to secure Miriam’s
release. This is in the
book of Jasher, but it is not in the Bible.
Let us now move to where the Christian story began - to the Gospels
themselves. And, in doing this, let us first consider what the
Gospels actually tell us, against what we perhaps think they tell
us.
We have all learned to go along with what we are taught about the
Gospels in schoolrooms and churches. But is the teaching correctly
related? Does it always conform with the written scriptures? It is
actually quite surprising how much we learn from pulpits or
picture-books without checking the biblical text. The Nativity story
itself provides a good example.
It is widely accepted (as the Christmas cards keep reminding us)
that Jesus was born in a stable - but the Gospels do not say that.
In fact, there is no ’stable’ mentioned in any authorized Gospel.
The Nativity is not mentioned at all in Mark or John, and Matthew
makes it quite plain that Jesus was born ’in a house’.
So where did the stable idea come from? It came from a
misinterpretation of the Gospel of Luke which relates that Jesus was
’laid in a manger’ (not ’born’, as often misquoted, but ’laid’) and
a manger was, and still is, nothing more than an animal feeding-box.
In practice, it was perfectly common for mangers to be used as
emergency cradles and they were often brought indoors for that very
purpose.
So why has it been presumed that this particular manger was in a
stable? Because the English translations of Luke tell us that there
was ’no room in the inn’. But the old manuscript of Luke did not say
that. In fact, there were no inns in the region - travellers lodged
in private houses and family hospitality was a normal way of life in
those days.
In fact, if we are really going to be precise, there were no stables
in the region either. ’Stable’ is an English word that specifically
defines a place for keeping horses. But few (apart from some Roman
officers) ever used horses in 1st-century Judaea - they mainly used
mules and oxen which, if kept under cover at all, would have been in
some type of outhouse - certainly not a stable.
As for the mythical inn, the original Greek text of Luke does not
relate that there was ’no room in the inn’. By the best translation
it actually states that there was ’no provision in the room’ (i.e.
’no topos in the kataluma’). As previously mentioned, Matthew states
that Jesus was born in a house and, when correctly translated, Luke
reveals that Jesus was laid in a manger (an animal feeding box)
because there was no cradle provided in the room.
While on the subject of Jesus’s birth, we ought to look at the
chronology here, because the two Gospels which deal with the
Nativity actually give different dates for the event. According to
Matthew, Jesus was born in the reign of Herod the Great, who debated
the event with the Magi and apparently ordered the slaying of the
infants. King Herod died in the notional year 4 BC - so we know from
Matthew that Jesus was born before that. Indeed, because of this,
most standard concordance Bibles give 5 BC as Jesus’s date of birth.
In Luke, however, a completely different date is given. This Gospel
states that Jesus was born while Cyrenius was Governor of Syria -
the same year that Emperor Augustus implemented the national taxing
census which caused Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem.
There are two relevant points to mention here, both of which are
recorded in the 1st-century Jewish annals (such as The Antiquities
of the Jews). Cyrenius was not appointed Governor of Syria until AD
6, and this was the very year that Emperor Augustus implemented the
census, which was supervised by Cyrenius himself.
So Jesus appears to have been born on two separate occasions:
’before 4 BC’ and again ’in AD 6’. Is there a mistake in one of the
Gospels? Not necessarily - at least not in the way things were
originally portrayed. We are actually looking at two quite specific
births: Jesus’s ’physical’ birth and his ’community’ birth. These
were defined as the ’first’ and ’second’ births - the second being
an initiation into society by way of a ritual ceremony of rebirth.
Second births for boys took place at the age of twelve (a ceremony
in which they were ritualistically born again from their mother’s
womb). And so we know from Luke that Jesus was twelve in AD 6.
Unfortunately, the latter-day Gospel translators and transcribers
completely missed the significance of this, while subsequent Church
teachings combined the Matthew and Luke accounts into one, giving
rise to the spurious nonsense about a Nativity scene in a stable.
Since Jesus was twelve in AD 6 (as given in Luke), then he was
actually born in 7 BC, which was indeed during the late reign of
Herod the Great as related in Matthew. But we now discover what
appears to be another anomaly. The Luke Gospel then says that when
Jesus was twelve years old, his parents, Mary and Joseph, took him
to Jerusalem for the day - only to walk homewards for a full day’s
journey with their friends before they realized that Jesus was not
in their party. Then they returned to Jerusalem to find him at the
temple discussing his father’s business with the doctors.
In reality, what sort of parents would wander for a whole day in the
desert, without knowing their twelve-year-old son was not with them?
The fact is that the whole point of the passage has been lost in the
translation, for there was a wealth of difference between a
twelve-year-old son and a son in his twelfth year.
When a son, on
completing his initial twelve years (that is to say, on reaching his
thirteenth birthday) was initiated into the community at the
ceremony of his Second Birth, he was regarded as commencing his
first year. It was the original root of the modern bar mitzvah. His
next initiation - the initiation of manhood in the community - took
place in his ninth year, when he was twenty-one (the root of the
age-twenty-one privilege). Various ’degrees’ then followed and the
next major test was at the end of his twelfth year: at the age of
twenty-four.
It is, therefore, apparent that when Jesus remained at the temple in
his twelfth year, he was actually twenty-four years-old - not
twelve. As for his discussion with the doctors, this would have
related to his next degree - the degree set by his spiritual father,
whose business he discussed. At that time, his spiritual father (the
overall patriarch) was Simeon the Essene - and we see, in Luke, that
it was precisely this man (the ’just and devout Simeon’) who had
legitimated Jesus under the law.
So, can we trust the Gospels? The answer to this question is ’yes’,
we can trust them to a point, but we cannot trust the convoluted and
distorted versions which are published and presented to us today.
Subsequent to the original apostolic writings, the Gospels of the
early Church were written in 2nd and 3rd century Greek. Along with
the Bible as a whole, they were translated into Church Latin in the
4th century, but it was then to be more than a thousand years before
any English translation was made.
The present English-language Gospels date back to the Authorized
Bible compiled for King James VI Stuart of Scots (James I of
England) in the early 17th century. This was published and set into
print no more than 165 years before America’s Declaration of
Independence - only a few years before the first Pilgrim Fathers set
sail from England.
Bible translation was, however, a risky business in those days. For
daring to translate the Bible into English, the 14th-century
reformer John Wycliffe was denounced as a heretic and his books were
burned. In the early 16th century William Tyndale was executed by
strangulation in Belgium, and then burned just to ensure his death,
for translating the Bible into English. A little later, Miles Coverdale (a Tyndale disciple) made another translation but, at that
stage, the Church had split into two main factions. As a result,
Coverdale’s version was accepted by the Protestant Church, although
he remained a heretic in the eyes of Rome.
The problem was that, for as long as the printed text remained in an
obscure form of Church Latin which only the bishops could understand
or interpret, they could teach whatever they wanted. But if it were
translated into popular languages that people could read for
themselves, the Church teachings would doubtless be open to
question.
It is the Bible translated for King James upon which the majority of
subsequent English-language editions have been based. But, in
practice, this 17th-century Authorized Version was not a direct
translation from anything; it was mostly translated from the Greek,
partly from the Latin and, to some extent, from the works of others
who had made previous illegitimate translations.
In their rendering of the New Testament, King James’s linguists endeavoured to appease both the Protestants and the Catholics. This
was the only way to produce a generally acceptable text, but their
ambition was not entirely successful. The Catholics thought the
translators were siding with the Protestants and tried to blow up
King James in the Houses of Parliament (the famous Gunpowder Plot),
while the Protestants maintained that the King was in league with
the Catholics!
The translators were not only concerned with denominational
appeasement; they also tried for something that we would today call
’political correctness’. In one instance the direct translation
referred to a group of people called ’heavenly soldiers’, but this
was crossed out and ’heavenly army’ was inserted instead. This,
however, was deleted yet again (since the concept of an armed unit
was not acceptable) to be replaced with ’heavenly host’. The problem
was that no one knew precisely what a ’host’ was; the word had been
resurrected after centuries of obscurity to enter the dictionaries
of the era with the vague description: ’a lot of people’.
It is actually quite surprising how many ambiguous words were
brought back into use to facilitate political correctness for the
King James Bible while, at the same time, William Shakespeare was
doing likewise in his plays. Indeed, the English-language vocabulary
was increased by more than fifty percent as a result of words
invented or brought back from the mists of time by the writers of
the period.
So, although eminently poetic, the language of the Authorized
English Bible is quite unlike that ever spoken by anyone in England
or anywhere else but, from this approved canonical interpretation,
all other English-language Bibles have emerged in their various
forms. However, for all its faults and its beautifully designed
verse pattern, it remains the closest of all translations from the
original Greek manuscripts.
All other Anglicized versions (Standard,
New English, Revised, Modern, Good News, etc.) have been
significantly corrupted and they are quite unsuitable for serious
study because they each have their own specific agenda. An extreme
version of how this works in practice is found in a Bible presently
issued in Papua, Pacific New Guinea, where there are tribes who
experience familiarity on a daily basis with no other animal but the
pig. In the current edition of their Bible, every animal mentioned
in the text, whether originally an ox, lion, ass, sheep or whatever,
is now a pig. Even Jesus, the traditional ’lamb of God’, in this
Bible is ’the pig of God’!
To facilitate the best possible trust in the Gospels, we must go
back to the original Greek manuscripts with their often used Hebrew
and Aramaic words and phrases. In this respect, we discover that
(just as with the Nativity story) a good deal of relevant content
has been misrepresented, misunderstood, mistranslated, or simply
just lost in the telling. Sometimes this has happened because
original words have no direct counterpart in other languages.
Christians are taught that Jesus’s father Joseph was a carpenter, as
explained in the English-language Gospels. But it did not say that
in the original Gospels. By the best translation, it actually said
that Joseph was a Master of the Craft or Master Craftsman. The word
’carpenter’ was simply a translator’s concept of a craftsman. Anyone
associated with modern Freemasonry will recognize the term ’the
Craft’ and it has nothing whatever to do with woodwork. The text
simply denoted that Joseph was a masterly, learned and scholarly
man, and the description was especially concerned with matters of
scientific metallurgy.
Another example is the concept of the Virgin Birth. English-language
Gospels tell us that Jesus’s mother Mary was a ’virgin’ and, as we
understand the word, it denotes a woman with no experience of sexual
union. But this was translated not from the Greek initially but from
the Latin, which referred to her as being a virgo, meaning nothing
more than a ’young woman’. To have meant the same thing as ’virgin’
does today, the Latin would have been virgo intacta - that is to
say, a ’young woman intact’.
Looking back beyond the Latin text we discover that the word
translated to virgo (a young woman) was the old Semitic word
almah
which meant the very same: a ’young woman’, and it had no sexual
connotation whatever. Had Mary actually been physically virgo
intacta, the Semitic word used would have been bethulah, not
almah.
So, have we been completely misguided by the Gospels? No; we have
been misguided by the English translations of the Gospels. Also by a
Church establishment that has done everything in its power to deny
women any normal lifestyle in the Gospel story. Hence, the New
Testament’s key women are portrayed as virgins, whores and sometimes
widows - but never everyday girlfriends, wives or mothers, and
certainly never priestesses or holy sisters.
Notwithstanding the Virgin Birth dogma, the Gospels tell us time and
time again that Jesus was descended from King David through his
father Joseph. Even St Paul explains this in his Epistle to the
Hebrews. But Christians are taught that Jesus’s father was a lowly
carpenter, while his mother was a virgin - neither of which
descriptions can be found in any original text. It follows,
therefore, that to get the best out of the Gospels we have to read
them as they were written, not as they have been interpreted
according to Church doctrine and modern language.
Precisely when the four main Gospels were written is uncertain. What
we do know is that they were first published at various stages in
the second half of the first century. They were unanimous initially
in revealing that Jesus was a Nazarene. This is actually upheld in
the Roman annals. Additionally, the 1st-century Jewish chronicles,
along with the Bible’s Acts of the Apostles, confirms that both
Jesus’s brother James and St Paul were leaders of the sect of the
Nazarenes.
This Nazarene definition is very important to the Grail story
because it has been so often misrepresented to suggest that Jesus
came from the town of Nazareth. For the past 400 years,
English-language Gospels have perpetuated the error by wrongly
translating ’Jesus the Nazarene’ as ’Jesus of Nazareth’, albeit
there was no historical connection between Nazareth and the
Nazarenes. In fact, the settlement at Nazareth was established in
the AD 60s, thirty years or so after the Crucifixion. Nobody in
Jesus’s early life came from Nazareth - it was not there!
The Nazarenes were a liberal Jewish sect opposed to the strict
Hebrew regime of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Nazarene culture
and language were heavily influenced by the philosophers of ancient
Greece and their community supported the concept of equal
opportunity for men and women. Documents of the time referred not to
Nazareth but to the Nazarene community, wherein priestesses
coexisted in equal status with priests. It has to be remembered,
therefore, that Jesus was not a Christian: he was a Nazarene - a
radical, westernized Jew. The Christian movement was founded by
others in the wake of his own mission, with the word ’Christian’
first recorded in AD 44 in Antioch, Syria.
In the Arab world, the word used to describe Jesus and his followers
is nazara. This is confirmed in the Islamic Koran and the word means
’keepers’ or ’guardians’. The full definition is Nazara ha-Brit:
’Keepers of the Covenant’.
In the time of Jesus, the Nazarenes lived in Galilee and in that
mystical realm which the Bible calls the ’wilderness’, which was
actually a very defined place. It was essentially the land around
the main settlement at Qumrân which spread out to Mird and other
places near the Dead Sea. It was, of course, at Qumrân that the Dead
Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1948.
Map of Galilee
Some time after the Crucifixion, Peter and his friend Paul went to
Antioch, then on to Rome, beginning the movement that became
Christianity. But Jesus, along with his brother James and the
majority of apostles, continued the Nazarene teachings, progressing
them into Europe, where they were associated with the Celtic Church.
This Church had been formally implemented as the church of Jesus in
AD 37, while the Roman Church was itself formed 300 years later.
Through many centuries the Celtic Church, with its Nazarene culture,
was directly opposed to the Church of Rome - the main difference
being that the Celtic faith was based upon the teachings, codes and
practices of Jesus himself. Roman Christianity, on the other hand,
turned Jesus into the object of its religious veneration, forsaking
his teachings to create an Imperial ’hybrid’ faith for the benefit
of the emperors and popes. It exists, in fact, not as Christianity,
but as ’churchianity’.
Apart from straightforward misunderstandings, misinterpretations and
mistranslations, the canonical Gospels suffer from numerous
purposeful amendments. Some original entries have been changed or
deleted, while other entries have been added to suit the Church’s
vested interest. The majority of these edits and amendments were
made in the 4th century, when the texts were translated into Latin
from their original Greek and Semitic tongues.
Even earlier, in about AD 195, Bishop Clement of Alexandria made the
first known amendment to the Gospel texts. He deleted a substantial
section from the Gospel of Mark (written more than a hundred years
before that time) and justified his action in a letter, stating:
’For even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth
should not, even so, agree with them - for not all true things are
to be said to all men’.
What he meant was that, even at that very
early stage, there was already a discrepancy between what the Gospel
writers had written and what the bishops wanted to teach.
Today, this section deleted by St Clement is still missing from the
Gospel of Mark. But when Mark is compared with the Gospel that we
know today, we find that today’s Gospel is a good deal longer than
the original, having had spurious additions made. One of these
additional sections comprises the whole of the Resurrection sequence
- amounting to twelve full verses at the end of Mark, chapter 16. It
is now known that everything told here about the events after the
Crucifixion was added by Church scribes sometime in the late 4th
century.
But what exactly was in this section of Mark that Clement saw fit to
remove? It was the item which dealt with the raising of Lazarus. In
the context of the original Mark text, however, Lazarus was
portrayed in a state of excommunication: spiritual death by decree,
not in a state of physical death. The account even had Lazarus and
Jesus calling to each other before the tomb was opened. This, of
course, defeated the bishops’ desire to portray the raising of
Lazarus as a spiritual ’miracle’, not as a straightforward release
from excommunication. More importantly, it set the scene for the
story of the Crucifixion of Jesus himself, whose own subsequent
raising from spiritual death was determined by the same three-day
rule that applied to Lazarus.
Jesus was raised (released or resurrected) from death by decree on
the statutory third day but, in the case of Lazarus, Jesus flouted
the rules by raising his friend after the three-day period of
symbolic sickness. At that point, civil death would have become
absolute in the eyes of the legal elders of the Sanhedrin Council,
whereupon Lazarus would have been wrapped in sacking and buried
alive. His crime was that he had led a violent people’s revolt to
safeguard the public water supply which had been diverted through a
new Roman aqueduct in Jerusalem. What made the Lazarus raising
special was that Jesus performed the release while not holding any
priestly entitlement to do so - subsequent to which Herod-Antipas of
Galilee compelled the High Priest of Jerusalem to acknowledge the
unprecedented event.
There was, however, rather more to the removed section of Mark
because, in telling the story of Lazarus, the account made it
perfectly clear that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were man and wife. The
Lazarus story now appears only in the Gospel of John, but contains a
strange sequence which has Martha coming from the Lazarus house to
greet Jesus, whereas her sister, Mary Magdalene, remains inside
until summoned by Jesus. In contrast to this, the original Mark
account related that Mary did come out of the house with Martha, but
was then chastised by the disciples and sent back indoors to await
Jesus’s instruction. This was a specific requirement of Judaic law,
whereby a wife in ritual mourning was not allowed to emerge from the
property until instructed by her husband.
There is a good deal of information outside the Bible to confirm
that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. But is there anything
relevant in the Gospels today - anything which perhaps the editors
missed? Indeed there is.
There are seven lists given in the Gospels of the women who were
Jesus’s regular companions. These lists all include his mother, but
in six of these seven lists the first name given (even ahead of
Jesus’s mother) is that of Mary Magdalene, making it plain that she
was, in fact, the First Lady: the Messianic Queen.
But is the marriage itself detailed in the Gospels? Actually, it is.
Many have suggested that the wedding at Cana was the marriage of
Jesus and Mary Magdalene - but this was not the wedding ceremony as
such, being simply the pre-marital betrothal feast. The marriage is
defined by the quite separate anointings of Jesus by Mary at
Bethany. Chronologically, these anointings (as given in the Gospels)
were two-and-a-half years apart.
Readers of the 1st century would have been fully conversant with the
two-part ritual of the sacred marriage of a dynastic heir. Jesus, as
we know, was a Messiah, which means quite simply an ’Anointed One’.
In fact, all anointed senior priests and Davidic kings were
Messiahs; Jesus was not unique in this regard. Although not an
ordained priest, he gained his right to Messiah status by way of
descent from King David and the kingly line, but he did not achieve
that status until he was ritually anointed by Mary Magdalene in her
capacity as a bridal high priestess.
The word ’Messiah’ comes from the Hebrew verb mashiach: ’to anoint’,
which derives from the Egyptian messeh: ’the holy crocodile’. It was
with the fat of the messeh that the Pharaoh’s sister-brides anointed
their husbands on marriage, and the Egyptian custom sprang from
kingly practice in old Mesopotamia. In the Old Testament’s Song of
Solomon we learn of the bridal anointing of the king. It is detailed
that the oil used in Judah was the fragrant ointment of spikenard
(an expensive root oil from the Himalayas) and it is explained that
this ritual was performed while the kingly husband sat at the table.
In the New Testament, the anointing of Jesus by Mary Magdalene was
indeed performed while he sat at the table, and specifically with
the bridal ointment of spikenard. Afterwards, Mary wiped Jesus’s
feet with her hair and, on the first occasion of the two-part
ceremony, she wept. All of these things signify the marital
anointing of a dynastic heir.
Other anointings of Messiahs (whether on coronation or admission to
the senior priesthood) were always conducted by men: by the High Zadok or the
High Priest. The oil used was olive oil, mixed with
cinnamon and other spices, but never spikenard. This oil was the
express prerogative of a Messianic bride who had to be a ’Mary’ - a
sister of a sacred order. Jesus’s mother was a Mary; so too would
his wife have been a Mary, by title at least if not by baptismal
name. Some conventual orders still maintain the tradition by adding
the title ’Mary’ to the baptismal names of their nuns: Sister Mary
Theresa, Sister Mary Louise, for example.
Messianic marriages were always conducted in two stages. The first
(the anointing in Luke) was the legal commitment to wedlock, while
the second (the later anointing in Matthew, Mark and John) was the
cementing of the contract. In Jesus and Mary’s case the second
anointing was of particular significance for, as explained by
Flavius Josephus in the 1st-century Antiquities of the Jews, the
second part of the marriage ceremony was never conducted until the
wife was three months pregnant.
Dynastic heirs such as Jesus were expressly required to perpetuate
their lines. Marriage was essential, but community law protected the
dynasts against marriage to women who proved barren or kept
miscarrying. This protection was provided by the three-month
pregnancy rule. Miscarriages would not often happen after that term,
subsequent to which it was considered safe enough to complete the
marriage contract.
When anointing her husband at that stage, the Messianic bride was
said to be anointing him for burial, as confirmed in the Gospels.
From that day she would carry a vial of spikenard around her neck,
throughout her husband’s life, to be used again on his entombment.
It was for this very purpose that Mary Magdalene would have gone to
Jesus’s tomb, as she did on the Sabbath after the Crucifixion.
After the second Bethany anointing, the Gospels relate that Jesus
said:
’Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the
whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a
memorial of her’.
But did the Christian Church authorities honour
Mary Magdalene and speak of this act as a memorial? No they did not;
they completely ignored Jesus’s own directive and denounced Mary as
a whore.
To the esoteric Grail Church and the Knights Templars, however, Mary
Magdalene was always regarded as a saint. She is still revered as
such by many today, but the interesting fact of this sainthood is
that Mary is the recognized patron saint of wine-growers: the
guardian of the Vine. Hence, she is the guardian of the sacred
Bloodline of the Holy Grail.
There is much in the Gospels that we do not presume to be there
because we are never encouraged to look beyond a superficial level.
However, we have been aided greatly in this regard in recent years
by the Dead Sea Scrolls and by the extraordinary research of
Australian theologian Dr Barbara Thiering. The Scrolls not only
explain the offices of the Messiah of Israel; they tell about the
council of twelve delegate apostles appointed to preside over
specific aspects of government and ritual. In turn, this leads to a
greater awareness of the apostles themselves through understanding
their duties and community standing.
We now know that there are allegories within the Gospels: the use of
words that have hitherto been misunderstood. We know that baptismal
priests were called ’fishers’, while those who aided them by hauling
the baptismal candidates into the boats in large nets were called
’fishermen’, with the candidates themselves being called ’fishes’.
The apostles James and John were both ordained ’fishers’, but the
brothers Peter and Andrew were lay ’fishermen’, to whom Jesus
promised ministerial status, saying, ’I will make you to become
fishers of men’.
Also, we now know there was a particular jargon of the Gospel era, a
jargon that would have been readily understood by readers of the
time, embodying words that have been lost to later interpretation.
Today, for example, we call our theatre investors ’angels’ and our
top entertainers ’stars’, but what would a reader from some distant
culture in two thousand years’ time make of a statement such as ’The
angel went to talk to the stars’?
The Gospels are full of such jargonistic words: the ’poor’, the ’lepers’, the ’multitude’, the
’blind’ - but none of these was what we presume it to mean today.
Definitions such as ’clouds’, ’sheep’, ’fishes’, ’loaves’ and a
variety of others were all related (just like our modern ’stars’) to
people.
When the Gospels were written in the 1st century they were issued
into a Roman-controlled environment and their content had to be
disguised against Imperial scrutiny. The information was often
political, so it was coded and veiled. Where such relevant sections
appear, we see them often heralded by the words, ’for those with
ears to hear’ - for those who understand the code. It was, in
practice, no different to the coded information passed between
members of oppressed groups throughout history, such as the
documentation issued by latter-day Jews in Germany in the 1930s and
1940s.
Through our knowledge of this scribal cryptology, we can now
determine dates and locations with very great accuracy. We can
uncover many hidden meanings in the Gospels, to the extent that the
miracles themselves take on a whole new context. This does not in
any way decry the fact that Jesus might have had special powers, but
the Gospel ’miracles’ were not in themselves supernatural events.
They gained prominence because, in the prevailing political arena,
they were thoroughly unprecedented actions which successfully
flouted the law.
Let us consider the water and wine at Cana by following the story as
it is told in the Bible, in contrast to its common pulpit portrayal.
Of all the four Gospels, only John records the wedding feast at Cana
- an event which embodies the said ’miracle’ of the water and wine
transformation. Actually, if this was such an important miracle (as
Church teaching promotes) one would rightly expect the account to
appear in the other Gospels as well. However, in the context of this
story, Christians are generally taught that the party ’ran out of
wine’ - even though the Bible text does not say that. What it says
is: ’When they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said, They have no
wine.’
In practice, wine taken at betrothal feasts was only available to
priests and celibate Jews, not to married men, novices or any others
who were regarded as being unsanctified. They were allowed only
water - a purification ritual, as stated in John. When the time came
for this ritual, Jesus’s mother (clearly not happy about the
discrimination and directing Jesus’s attention to the unsanctified
guests) said: ’They have no wine’.
Having not yet been anointed to Messiah status, Jesus responded,
’Mine hour is not yet come’, at which Mary forced the issue and
Jesus then flouted convention, abandoning the water to provide wine
for everyone. The Ruler of the Feast made no comment whatsoever
about any miracle; he simply expressed his amazement that the wine
had turned up at that stage of the proceedings.
It has often been suggested that the feast at Cana was Jesus’s own
wedding ceremony because he and his mother displayed a right of
command that would not be associated with ordinary guests. However,
this event can be dated to the summer of AD 30, in the month
equivalent to our modern June. First weddings were always held in
the month of Atonement (modern September) and betrothal feasts were
held three months before that. In this particular instance, we find
that the first marital anointing of Jesus by Mary Magdalene was at
the Atonement of AD 30, three months after the Cana ceremony which
appears to have been their own betrothal feast.
Aspects of the Gospels (though not always in agreement with each
other) can actually be followed outside the Bible; even the trial
and crucifixion of Jesus are mentioned in the Annals of Imperial
Rome. We can now determine from chronological survey that the
Crucifixion took place at the March Passover of AD 33, while the
Bethany second marriage anointing was in the week prior to that. We
also know that, at that stage, Mary Magdalene had to have been three
months pregnant - which means she should have given birth in
September of AD 33.
If the Gospels are read as they are written, Jesus appears as a
liberating dynast, endeavouring to unite the people of the region
against the oppression of the Roman Empire. Judaea at the time was
just like France under German occupation in World War II. The
authorities were controlled by the military occupational force and
resistance movements were a part of everyday life. Jesus was
awaited, expected and, by the end of the Gospel story, had become an
anointed Messiah. Interestingly, in the Antiquities of the Jews,
Jesus is called a ’wise man’, a ’teacher’ and the ’King’, but there
is no mention whatever about about his being divine, as contrived in
later ’churchianity’.
While the Dead Sea Scrolls identify the Messiah as the supreme
Military commander of Israel, the New Testament also makes it clear
that the apostles were armed. From the time of recruitment, Jesus
checked that they all had swords and, at Jesus’s arrest, Peter drew
his sword against Malchus. Even Jesus himself said, ’I came not to
send peace but a sword’.
Many of the high-ranking Jews in Jerusalem were quite content to
hold positions of power backed by a foreign military regime. Apart
from that, the Hebrew groups were sectarian and did not want to
share their God
Jehovah with anybody else, certainly not with
unclean Gentiles (Arabs and other non-Jews). To the Pharisees and
Sadducees, the Jews were God’s ’chosen people’: he belonged to them;
they belonged to him. But there were other Jews - in particular the
Nazarenes and Essenes, who were influenced by a more liberal,
western doctrine. In the event, Jesus’s mission failed because the
sectarian rift was insurmountable - and the rift is still there
today.
The sentencing of Jesus was by the Roman Governor,
Pontius Pilate,
but Jesus had actually been condemned and excommunicated prior to
that by the Sanhedrin Council of Jewish elders. It was decided,
however, to contrive a punishment whereby Jesus would be formally
sentenced by Pilate, who was already trying other prisoners for
leading insurrections against himself. As recently confirmed by the
Supreme Judge and Attorney General of Israel, it was quite illegal
for the Sanhedrin Council to sit at night or to operate during the
Passover - so the timing for committing Jesus to Roman law was
perfect.
As for Jesus’s death on the cross, it is perfectly clear this was
spiritual death, not physical death, as determined by the three-day
rule that everybody in the 1st century would have understood.
In civil and legal terms, Jesus was already dead when he was placed
on the cross, prior to which he was denounced, scourged and prepared
for death by decree (excommunication). For three days Jesus would
have been nominally ’sick’, with absolute death coming on the fourth
day. On that day he would be entombed (buried alive), but during the
first three days he could, in fact, be raised or resurrected, as he
had predicted would be the case.
Raisings and resurrections (apart from the fact that Jesus once
flouted the rule with Lazarus) could only be performed by the High
Priest or by the Father of the Community. The High Priest at that
time was Joseph Caiaphas (the very man who condemned Jesus),
therefore the raising had to be performed by the patriarchal Father.
There are Gospel accounts of Jesus talking to the Father from the
cross, culminating in ’Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’,
and the appointed Father of the day was the Magian apostle Simon Zelotes.
Christians are taught that Jesus’s physical death was proved by the
blood and water that flowed when he was pierced by the spear, but
this has been very badly translated. The original word does not
translate to ’pierced’ ; it translates to ’pricked ’ or ’scratched
’.
This in turn was mistranslated into the Latin verb ’to open’, and
then into the English word ’pierced’. Indeed, just like today, a
common test for reflex action was scratching, prodding or pricking
the skin with a sharp instrument.
A surgeon of the British Medical Association recently stated:
’Medically, the outflow of water is impossible to explain. Blood
flowing from a stab wound is evidence of life, not death. It would
take a large, gaping laceration for any drop of blood to flow from a
dead body because there is no vascular action’.
In the event, it is
blatantly apparent that Jesus survived. This is explicitly
maintained in non-canonical Gospels and even the Islamic Koran
confirms the fact in no uncertain terms. During that Friday
afternoon when Jesus was on the Cross, there was a
three-hour-forward time change.
Time was recorded then by sundials
and by priests who marked the hours by a sequence of measured prayer
sessions. In essence, there were daytime hours and there were
night-time hours. Today we have a twenty-four-hour day but, in John,
Jesus is recorded as saying, ’Are there not twelve hours in a day.’
There were, in practice, twelve hours in a day and another twelve
hours in the night - with the daytime hours beginning at sunrise.
From time to time, the beginning of daytime changed, as a result of
which the beginning of night-time changed. At Passover time (modern
March), the beginning of daytime would have been somewhere around
six o’clock in the morning as we know it.
We know from the Gospels that Joseph of Arimathea negotiated with
Pontius Pilate to have Jesus removed from the cross after only a few
hours of hanging, but the Gospels do not actually agree on the
precise timing of events. This is because of the notional time
change, when three hours disappeared from the day, to be replaced
with three night-time hours (that is to say, daylight hours were
substituted with hours of darkness).
The Gospels explain that the
land fell into darkness for three hours, which relates to our own
split-second changing of clocks for daylight saving. However, these
three hours were the crux of everything that followed The Hebrew lunarists made their change during the daytime, but the
solarists
(of which the Essenes and the Magi were factions) did not make their
change until midnight. This actually means that, according to the
Mark Gospel (which relates to Hebrew time), Jesus was crucified at
the third hour, but in John (which uses solar time) he was crucified
at the sixth hour.
On that evening the Hebrews began their Sabbath at the old nine
o’clock, but the Essenes and Magians still had three hours to go
before their Sabbath. It was those extra three hours which enabled
them to work with Jesus during a period of time wherein others were
not allowed to undertake any physical activity.
And so we come to one of the most misunderstood events in the Bible
- the Ascension. And in consideration of this, the births of Jesus
and Mary Magdalene’s three children become apparent.
We know from Gospel chronology that the Bethany second-marriage
anointing of Jesus by Mary Magdalene was in the week before the
Crucifixion (at the time of the March Passover). Also that, at that
stage, Mary was three-months pregnant and should, therefore, have
given birth six months later. So, what do the Gospels tell us about
events in the notional month of September AD 33? In fact, they tell
us nothing, but the story is taken up in the Acts of the Apostles,
which detail for that month the event which we have come to know as
the Ascension.
One thing which the Acts do not do, however, is to call the event
the ’Ascension’. This was a tag established by way of a Roman Church
doctrine more than three centuries later. What the Bible text
actually says is:
’And when he had spoken these things ... he was
taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight’.
It then
continues, relating that a man in white said to the disciples:
’Why
stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus ... shall so come in
like manner as ye have seen him go’.
Then, a little later in the
Acts, it says that heaven must receive Jesus until ’the time of
restitution’.
Given that this was the very month in which Mary Magdalene’s child
was due, is there perhaps some connection between Mary’s confinement
and the so-called Ascension? There certainly is - and the connection
is made by virtue of the said ’time of restitution’. Not only were
there rules to govern the marriage ceremony of a Messianic heir, but
so too were there rules to govern the marriage itself. The rules of
dynastic wedlock were quite unlike the Jewish family norm, and
Messianic parents were formally separated at the birth of a child.
Even prior to this, intimacy between a dynastic husband and wife was
only allowed in December, so that births of heirs would always fall
in the month of September - the month of Atonement, the holiest
month of the calendar.
Indeed, it was this very rule which Jesus’s own parents (Joseph and
Mary) had themselves broken. And this was the reason why the Jews
were split in opinion as to whether Jesus was, in fact, their true
Messiah. When a dynastic child was conceived at the wrong time of
year, the mother was generally placed in monastic custody for the
birth so as to avoid public embarrassment. This was called being ’put away privily’ and Matthew states quite plainly that, when
Mary’s pregnancy was discovered, ’Joseph, her husband, being a just
man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put
her away privily’.
In this instance, special dispensation for the birth was granted by
the angelic priest Simeon who, at that time, held the distinction of
’Gabriel’, being the archangel in charge. The Dead Sea Scrolls
detail that the archangels (or chief ambassadors) were the senior
priests at Qumrân who retained the traditional Old Testament titles
of Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Sariel, etc. In the case of Jesus and
Mary Magdalene, however, the rules of wedlock had been obeyed to the
letter, and their first child was properly conceived in December AD
32, to be born in September AD 33.
From the moment of a dynastic birth, the parents were physically
separated - for six years if the child was a boy and for three years
if the child was a girl. Their marriage would only be recommenced at
the designated ’time of restitution’. Meanwhile, the mother and
child would enter the equivalent of a convent and the father would
enter the ’kingdom of heaven’. This kingdom was actually the Essene
high monastery at Mird, by the Dead Sea, and the ceremony of entry
was conducted by the angelic priests under the supervision of the
appointed Leader of the Pilgrims. In the Old Testament book of
Exodus, the Israelite pilgrims were led into the Holy Land by a
cloud and, in accordance with this continued Exodus imagery, the
priestly Leader of the Pilgrims was designated with the title ’Cloud’.
So, if we now read the Acts verses as they were intended to be
understood, we see that Jesus was taken up by the Cloud (the Leader
of the Pilgrims) to the kingdom of heaven (the high monastery),
whereupon the man in white (an angelic priest) said that Jesus would
return at the time of restitution (when his earthly marriage was
restored).
If we now look at St Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews we discover that
he explains the said Ascension event in some greater detail. Paul
actually tells of how Jesus was admitted to the priesthood of heaven
when he actually had no entitlement to such a sacred office. He
explains that Jesus was born (through his father Joseph) into the
Davidic line of Judah - a line which held the right of kingship but
had no right to priesthood, for this was the sole prerogative of the
line of Aaron and Levi.
However, says Paul, a special dispensation
was granted, and that ’for the priesthood being changed, there is
made of necessity a change also of the law’. As a result of this
express change of the law, it is explained that Jesus was enabled to
enter the kingdom of heaven in the priestly Order of Melchizedek.
In September AD 33, therefore, the first child of Jesus and Mary
Magdalene was born, and Jesus duly entered the kingdom of heaven.
There is no reference to this child being a son (as there is for the
two subsequent births) and, given that Jesus returned three years
later (in AD 36), we know that Mary must have had a daughter on this
occasion.
By following the chronology of the Acts, we see that in September AD
37 a second child was born, followed by another in AD 44. The period
from the first of these two births to the second restitution in AD
43 was six years, which denotes that the AD 37 child was a son. This
fact is also conveyed by the use of cryptic wording - the same
cryptic wording afforded to the AD 44 child - so we know that this
third child was also a son.
In accordance with the scribal codes interpreted from the
Dead Sea
Scrolls, everything cryptic within the New Testament is set up
beforehand by some other entry which explains that the inherent
message is ’for those with ears to hear’. Once these codes and
allegories are understood, they never ever vary. As Dr Thiering has
pointed out, they mean the same thing every time they are used, and
they are used every time that same meaning is required. For example,
the Gospel of John explains that Jesus was called the ’Word of God’:
’And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’. John goes to
great lengths to explain the relevance of this definition and
subsequent entries give details such as ’the Word of God stood by
the lake’ and ’the Word of God was in Samaria’.
Messages conveying information about fertility and new life are
established in the Parable of the Sower, whose seed ’bore fruit and
increased’. Thus, when it is said that ’the Word of God increased’,
those ’with ears to hear’ would recognize at once that Jesus
increased - that is to say, he had a son. There are two such entries
in the Acts, and they fall precisely on cue in AD 37 and AD 44.
Probably the most misrepresented book of the New Testament is the
book of The Revelation of St John the Divine - misrepresented by the
Church, that is, not by the book itself. This book is quite unlike
any other in the Bible. It is dubbed with terrible supernatural
overtones and its straightforward imagery has been savagely
corrupted by the Church to present the text as some form of
foreboding or prophecy of warning. But the book is not called The
Prophecy or The Warning’; it is called The Revelation.
So, what does the book reveal? Chronologically, its story follows
the Acts of the Apostles and the book of The Revelation is, in fact,
the continuing story of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and their sons -
particularly the elder son, Jesus Justus. It follows his life and
details his marriage, along with the birth of his own son. This much
misunderstood New Testament book is not a foreboding or a warning as
the fearful Church would have us believe. It is precisely what it
says it is: a revelation.
As we saw earlier, ordained priests of the era were called
’fishers’; their helpers were called ’fishermen’ and baptismal
candidates were called ’fishes’. Jesus became an ordained fisher
when he entered the Kingdom of Heaven, but until that time (as
explained by St Paul) he held no priestly office. In the rite of
ordination, the officiating Levite priests of the Sanctuary would
administer five loaves of bread and two fish to the candidates, but
the law was very firm in that such candidates had to be circumcised
Jews.
Gentiles and uncircumcised Samaritans were on no account
afforded any such privilege. Indeed, it was this particular custom
which Jesus had flouted at the so-called Feeding of the
Five-thousand, when he presumed entitlement to his own liberal
ministry by offering the loaves and fish to an unsanctified
gathering.
Apart from eventually becoming a fisher, Jesus was also referred to
as the Christ - a Greek definition (from Khristos) which meant the
King. In saying the name Jesus Christ, we are actually saying
King Jesus, and his kingly heritage was of the Royal House of Judah (the
House of David), as mentioned numerous times in the Gospels and in
the Epistles of St Paul.
From AD 33, therefore, Jesus emerged with the dual status of a
Priest Christ or, as is more commonly cited in Grail lore, a
Fisher
King. This definition, as we shall see, was to become the hereditary
and dynastic office of Jesus’s heirs, and the succeeding Fisher
Kings were paramount in the continuing Bloodline of the Holy Grail.
Prior to the birth of her second son in AD 44, Mary Magdalene was
exiled from Judaea following a political uprising in which she was
implicated. Along with Philip, Lazarus and a few retainers, she
travelled (by arrangement with King Herod-Agrippa II) to live at the Herodian estate near
Lyon, in Gaul (which later became France).
From the earliest times, through the medieval era, to the great
Renaissance, Mary’s flight was portrayed in illuminated manuscripts
and great artworks alike. Her life and work in France, especially in
Provence and the Languedoc region, appeared not only in works of
European history but also in the Roman Church liturgy - until her
story was suppressed by the Vatican.
Mary Magdalene’s exile is related in the book of The Revelation,
which describes that she was pregnant at the time. It tells also of
how the Roman authorities subsequently persecuted Mary, her son and
his heirs:
’And she, being with child, cried and pained to be
delivered. And behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and
seven crowns stood before the woman for to devour her child. And she
brought forth a man-child. And the woman fled into the wilderness.
And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war
forever with the remnant of her seed - which have the testimony of
Jesus Christ’.
It was to Gaul that Mary was said to have carried
the Sangréal (the
Blood Royal: the Holy Grail), and it was in Gaul that the famous
line of Jesus and Mary’s immediate descendant heirs, the Fisher
Kings, flourished for 300 years. The eternal motto of the Fisher
Kings was ’In Strength’ - inspired by the name of their ancestor,
Boaz (the great-grandfather of King David), whose name similarly
meant ’In Strength’. When translated into Latin, this became In Fortis, which was subsequently corrupted to
Anfortas, the name of
the key Fisher King in Grail romance.
We can now return to the Grail’s traditional symbolism as a chalice
containing the blood of Jesus. We can also consider graphic designs
dating back well beyond the Dark Ages to about 3500 BC and, in doing
this, we discover that a chalice or a cup was the longest-standing
symbol of the female. Its representation was that of the Sacred
Vessel - the vas uterus: the womb.
And so, when fleeing into
France, Mary Magdalene carried the Sangréal in the sacred chalice of her womb - just as the book of
The
Revelation explains. And the name of this second son was Joseph.
The equivalent traditional symbol of the male was a blade or a horn,
usually represented by a sword or a unicorn. In the Old Testament’s
Song of Solomon and in the Psalms of David, the fertile unicorn is
associated with the kingly line of Judah - and it was for this very
reason that
the Cathars of Provence used the mystical beast to
symbolize the Grail bloodline.
Mary Magdalene died in Provence in AD 63 and, in that very year,
Joseph of Arimathea built the famous chapel at Glastonbury in
England as a memorial to the Messianic Queen. This was the first
above-ground Christian chapel in the world, and in the following
year Mary’s son Jesus Justus dedicated it to his mother. Jesus
the
younger had previously been to England with Joseph of Arimathea at
the age of twelve, in AD 49. It was this event which inspired
William Blake’s famous song Jerusalem: ’And did those feet in
ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green’.
But who was Joseph of Arimathea - the man who assumed full control
of affairs at the Crucifixion? And why was it that Jesus’s mother,
his wife and the rest of the family accepted Joseph’s intervention
without question?
As late as the year 900, the Byzantine Church (which had split from
the Church of Rome) decided to announce that Joseph of Arimathea was
the uncle of Jesus’s mother Mary. And from that time, portrayals of
Joseph have shown him as being rather elderly at the Crucifixion,
when Mother Mary was herself in her fifties. Prior to the Church
announcement, however, the historical records of Joseph depicted a
much younger man. He was recorded to have died at the age of 80 on
27 July AD 82, and would therefore have been aged 32 at the time of
the Crucifixion.
In fact, Joseph of Arimathea was none other than Jesus
Christ’s own
brother James, and his title had nothing whatever to with a
place-name. In fact (like Nazareth), the place later dubbed Arimathea never existed in those times. It therefore comes as no
surprise that Joseph negotiated with Pilate to place Jesus in his
own family tomb.
The hereditary ’Arimathea’ title was an English corruption of the Graeco-Hebrew style
ha-Rama-Theo, meaning ’of the Divine Highness’,
or ’Royal Highness’ as we use the term today. Since Jesus was the
senior Messianic heir (the Christ, or King), then his younger
brother was the Crown Prince - the Divine (Royal) Highness, Rama-Theo. In the Nazarene hierarchy, the Crown Prince always held
the patriarchal title of ’Joseph’ - just as Jesus was a titular
’David’ and his wife was a conventual ’Mary’.
In the early 5th century, Jesus and Mary’s descendent Fisher Kings
became united by marriage to the Sicambrian Franks, and from them
emerged a whole new reigning dynasty. They were the noted
Merovingian Kings who founded the French monarchy and introduced the
well-known fleur-de-lys (the ancient gladiolus symbol of
circumcision) as the royal emblem of France.
From the Merovingian succession, another strain of the family
established a wholly independent Jewish kingdom in southern France:
the kingdom of Septimania, which we now know as Languedoc. Also, the
early princes of Toulouse, Aquitaine and Provence were all descended
in the Messianic bloodline. Septimania was specifically granted to
the Royal House of David in 768, and Prince Bernard of Septimania
later married a daughter of Emperor Charlemagne.
Also from the Fisher Kings came another important parallel line of
succession in Gaul. Whereas the
Merovingian Kings continued the patrilinear heritage of Jesus, this other line perpetuated the
matrilinear heritage of Mary Magdalene. They were the dynastic
Queens of Avallon in Burgundy: the House del Acqs - meaning ’of the
waters’, a style granted to Mary Magdalene in the early days when
she voyaged on the sea to Provence.
Those familiar with Arthurian and Grail lore will by now have
recognized the ultimate significance of this Messianic family: the
Fisher Kings, the Queens of Avallon and the House del Acqs
(corrupted in Arthurian romance to du Lac).
The descendant heirs of Jesus posed an enormous threat to the Roman
High Church because they were the dynastic leaders of the true
Nazarene Church. In real terms, the
Roman Church should never have
existed at all, for it was no more than a strategically designed
hybrid movement comprised of various pagan doctrines attached to a
fundamentally Judaeo-Christian base.
Jesus was born in 7 BC and his birthday was on the equivalent of 1
March, with an official royal birthday on 15 September to comply
with dynastic regulation and the month of Atonement. But, when
establishing the Roman Church in the 4th century, Emperor
Constantine ignored both of these dates and supplemented 25 December
as the new Christ’s Mass Day - to coincide with the pagan Sun
Festival with which his Imperial subjects were familiar. Later, at
the Synod of Whitby held in England in 664, the bishops also
expropriated the Celtic festival of Easter (Eostre), the
Goddess of
Spring and Fertility, and attached a wholly new Christian
significance by aligning it with the Resurrection of Jesus. In so
doing, they actually changed the date of the old festival to sever
its traditional association with the Jewish Passover.
Hence, today’s two main Christian festivals (Christmas and
Easter)
are spurious Roman inventions and, historically, they have nothing
whatever to do with Jesus. Christianity, as we know it, has evolved
as a composite religion quite unlike any other. If Jesus was its
living catalyst, then Christianity should rightly be based on the
teachings of Jesus himself - the moral and social codes of a
fair-minded, tolerant ministry, with the people as its benefactors.
But orthodox Christianity (’churchianity’) is not based on the
teachings of Jesus: it centers upon the teachings of the bishops,
which are entirely different.
There are a number of reasons for this, the foremost of which is
that Jesus was deliberately sidestepped in favour of the alternative
teachings of Peter and Paul: teachings which were thoroughly
denounced by the Nazarene Church of Jesus and his brother James -
teachings which the Nazarenes called ’the faith of fools’.
Only by removing Jesus from the front-line could the popes and
cardinals reign supreme. When formally instituting Christianity as
the State religion of Rome, Constantine declared that he alone was
the true Saviour Messiah - not Jesus! As for the Bishops of Rome
(the popes), they were granted a fabricated Apostolic descent from
St Peter, since the legitimate Messianic descent from Jesus and his
brothers was retained within the parallel Nazarene Church.
The only way for the Roman Church to restrain the heirs of Mary
Magdalene was to discredit Mary herself and to deny her bridal
relationship with Jesus. But what of Jesus’s brother James? He too
had heirs, as did their other brothers, Simon, Joses and Jude. For
all its effort to forge a new scriptural history, the Church could
not escape the Gospels, which state quite clearly that Jesus was the
Blessed Mary’s ’firstborn son’, and so Mary’s own motherhood also
had to be repressed.
As a result, the bishops portrayed Mother Mary as a virgin and
Mary
Magdalene as a whore - neither of which description was mentioned in
any original Gospel. Then, just to cement Mother Mary’s position
outside the natural domain, her own mother, Anna, was eventually
said to have borne her daughter by way of immaculate conception!
Over the course of time, these contrived doctrines have had
widespread effect. But in the early days it took rather more to
cement the ideas because the original women of the Nazarene mission
had a significant following in the Celtic Church. These included
Mary Magdalene, Martha, Mary-Jacob Cleophas and Helena-Salome, each
of whom had run schools and social missions throughout the
Mediterranean world. These women had all been disciples of Jesus and
close friends of his mother, accompanying her to the Crucifixion, as
confirmed in the Gospels.
In the face of such records, the Church’s only salvation was to
denigrate women altogether; to deny them not only rights to
ecclesiastical office, but to deny them rights to any status in
society. Hence, the Church declared that women were all heretics and
sorceresses!
In this, the bishops were aided by the words of Peter and Paul, and
on the basis of their teachings the Roman Church was enabled to
become wholly sexist. In his first Epistle to Timothy, Paul wrote:
’I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp any authority over the
man, but to be in silence’. In the Gospel of Philip, Peter is quoted
as saying that ’Women are not worthy of life’. The bishops even
quoted the words of Genesis, wherein God apparently spoke to Eve
about Adam, saying ’He shall rule over thee’.
The Church Father Tertullian summed up the whole Roman attitude when
writing about the emergent disciples of Mary Magdalene:
’These
heretical woman! How dare they! They are brazen enough to teach, to
engage in argument, to baptize. It is not permitted for a woman to
speak in church, nor to claim a share in any masculine function -
least of all in priestly office’.
Then, to cap it all, came the Roman Church’s most amazing document,
The Apostolic Order. This was compiled as an imaginary conversation
between the apostles after the Last Supper. Contrary to the Gospels,
it supposed that Mary Magdalene had been present at the event, and
it was agreed that the reason why Jesus had not passed any wine to
Mary at the table was because he had seen her laughing!
On the basis
of this extraordinary, fictitious document, the bishops ruled that,
even though Mary might have been a close companion of Jesus, women
were not to be afforded any place within the Church because they
were not serious! But why has this sexist attitude persisted within
the Church to the present day? Because Mary Magdalene had to be
discredited and removed from the reckoning so that her heirs could
be ignored.
Notwithstanding the avid sexist movement, the Messianic heirs
retained their social positions outside the Roman Church
establishment. They progressed their own Nazarene and Celtic Church
movements and founded Desposynic (Heirs of the Lord) kingdoms in
Britain and Europe. They were a constant threat to the Roman High
Church and to the figurehead monarchs and governments empowered by
that Church. In fact, they were the very reason for the brutal
Catholic Inquisition because they upheld a moral and social code
which was contrary to High Church requirement.
This was especially apparent during the Age of Chivalry, which
embraced a respect for womanhood, as exemplified by the Knights Templars whose constitutional oath supported a veneration of the
Grail Mother, Queen Mary Magdalene.
Prior to the Middle Ages, the individual stories of the Grail family
were historically well known, but when the Church began its reign of
fanatical persecution, the whole Nazarene and Desposynic heritage
was forced underground. But why did the vengeful persecutions begin
at that particular time?
Because the Knights Templars had not only
returned from the Holy Land with documents that undermined the
Church’s teachings, they also established their own Cistercian
churches in opposition to Rome. These were, however, not just any
churches - they were the greatest religious monuments ever to grace
the skylines of the western world: the Notre Dame cathedrals of
France.
Despite their present-day image, these impressive Gothic cathedrals
had nothing whatever to do with the established Christian Church.
They were funded and built by the Knights Templars in collaboration
with their Cistercian allies, and they were dedicated to Mary
Magdalene - Notre Dame (Our Lady) - whom they called
’the Grail of
the world’.
This, of course, defeated every dogma that the High Church had
encouraged, and the bishops retaliated by re-dedicating numerous
other churches to Mary, the mother of Jesus. But, in so doing, they
made a strict decree that all artistic portrayals of Mother Mary
(the Madonna) must henceforth show her dressed in ’blue and white
only’ - so as not to grant her any rights to ecclesiastical office
in the male-only priesthood.
Mary Magdalene, on the other hand, was being portrayed by the
world’s greatest artists wearing the red mantle of cardinal status,
the black robe of a Nazarite High Priestess, or the green cloak of
fertility, and there was nothing the Church could do about it. The
bishops’ only option was to proclaim the practice sinful and
heretical because, in having previously elected to ignore Mary
Magdalene and her heirs, she was for all practical purposes outside
their jurisdiction.
It was at that time that Grail lore was itself denounced as a heresy
by the Vatican. The 6th-century prophesies of Merlin were expressly
banned by the Ecumenical Council, and the original Nazarene Church
of Jesus became an underground stream, aided by such notable
sponsors as Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli. In those days,
the Church policed and controlled most literature in the public
domain and so, in order to avoid outright censorship, the Grail
tradition became allegorical and its message was communicated by way
of secret watermarks, esoteric writings, Tarot cards and symbolic
artwork.
But why should Grail lore and the prophesies of Merlin have posed
such a problem for the Roman Church? Because, within the context of
their adventurous texts, they told the descendant story of the Grail
bloodline - a bloodline which had been ousted from its dynastic
position by the Bishops of Rome who had elected to reign supreme by
way of a contrived apostolic succession.
This succession was said to have been handed down from the first
bishop, St Peter (indeed, this is still the promoted view), but one
only has to consult the Church’s own Apostolic Constitutions to
discover that this is simply not true. Peter was never a Bishop of
Rome - nor of anywhere else for that matter! The Vatican’s
Constitutions record that the first Bishop of Rome was Prince Linus
of Britain (the son of Caractacus the Pendragon), who was installed
by St Paul in AD 58, during Peter’s own lifetime.
From the 1100s, the powerful Knights Templars and their cathedrals
posed an enormous threat to the male-only Church by bringing the
heritage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene to the fore in the public
domain. The cardinals knew that their whole establishment would
tumble if the Messianic descendants gained the upper hand. They had
to be crushed - and so the brutal Inquisition was implemented: a
hideous persecution of all who dissented from the rule of the
bishops.
It all began in 1209, when Pope Innocent III sent 30,000 soldiers
into the Languedoc region of southern France. This was the home of
the Cathars (the Pure Ones), who were said to be the guardians of a
great and sacred treasure -a mysterious secret which could overturn
orthodox Christianity. The Pope’s so-called Albigensian Crusade
lasted for thirty-six years, during which time tens of thousands of
innocent people were slaughtered - but the treasure was never found.
In 1231, the main thrust of the Inquisition (or Holy Office as it
was called) was instituted by Pope Gregory IX during the course of
the Languedoc massacre, and it was set against anyone who supported
the Grail heresy. By 1252 the torture of victims was formally
authorized, along with execution by burning.
Heresy was a wonderful charge to level against captives, because
only the Church could define it. The victims were tortured until
they confessed and, having confessed, they were executed. If they
did not confess, then the torture continued until they died anyway.
One recorded form of torture was to spread the victim with fat, and
then to roast him alive (upwards from the feet) over an open fire.
These savage persecutions and tortures were openly waged for more
than 400 years, to be extended against Jews, Muslims and Protestant
dissenters. But the Catholic Inquisition was never formally
terminated. As recently as 1965 it was renamed the Sacred
Congregation and its powers are theoretically still in force today.
Undaunted by the Inquisition, the Nazarene movement pursued its own
course, and the story of the bloodline was perpetuated in literature
such as the Grand Saint Grail and the High History of the Holy
Grail. These writings were largely sponsored by the Grail courts of
France (the courts of Champagne, Anjou and others) and also by the
Knights Templars and the Desposyni.
In the course of this, Arthurian
romance became a popular vehicle for the Grail tradition.
Consequently, the Templars became a specific target of the
Inquisition in 1307, when the henchmen of Pope Clement V and
King
Philip IV of France were set in their direction. The papal armies
scoured Europe for the Templar documents and treasure but, like the Cathar inheritance, nothing was found. Nevertheless, many Knights
were tortured and executed in the process.
In all this, however, the Templar hoard was not lost and, while the
Vatican emissaries were searching, the treasure and documents were
locked away in the Chapter House Treasury vaults of Paris. They were
under the protection of the Templar Grand Knights - those styled the
Guardian Princes of the Royal Secret - who loaded the hoard one
night onto 18 galleys of the Templar fleet at La Rochelle.
By
daybreak, the ships had set sail for various destinations - notably
Portugal and Scotland. The latter were welcomed, upon their arrival,
by King Robert the Bruce who, along with the whole Scottish nation,
had been excommunicated by the Pope for challenging the Catholic
King Edward of England. The Templars and their treasure remained in
Scotland, and the Knights fought with Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314
to regain Scotland’s independence from Plantagenet England.
Subsequent to the Battle of Bannockburn, Bruce and the Guardian
Princes founded the new Order of the Elder Brothers of the Rosy
Cross in 1317 - from which time the Kings of Scots became hereditary
Grand Masters, with each successive Stewart King holding the honoured title of
Prince Saint Germain.
But, why was it that King Arthur, a Celtic commander of the 6th
century, was so important to the Knights Templars and the Grail
courts of Europe? Quite simply, because Arthur had been unique, with
a dual heritage in the Messianic line. King Arthur was by no means
mythical, as many have supposed, but he has generally been looked
for in the wrong places. Researchers, misguided by the fictional
locations of the romances, have searched in vain through the
chronicles of Brittany, Wales and the West of England. But the
details of Arthur are to be found in the Scots’ and Irish annals. He
was indeed the High King of the Celtic Isle and was the sovereign
commander of the British troops in the late 6th century.
Arthur was born in 559 and died in battle in 603. His mother was
Ygerna del Acqs, the daughter of Queen Viviane of Avallon, in
descent from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. His father was High King Aedàn of Dalriada (the Western Highlands of Scotland, now called
Argyll), and Aedàn was the British Pendragon (Head Dragon or
King of
Kings) in descent from Jesus’s brother James. It is for this reason
that the stories of Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea are so closely
entwined in the Grail romances.
Indeed, the coronation records of
Scotland’s King Kenneth MacAlpin (a descendant of Aedàn the
Pendragon) specifically refer to his own descent from the dynastic
Queens of Avallon. King Aedàn’s paternal legacy emerged through the
most ancient House of Camu-lot (England’s Royal Court of Colchester)
in a line from the first appointed Pendragon, King Cymbeline, who is
well-known to students of Shakespeare.
By the 6th century, Messianic descendants had founded Desposynic
kingdoms in Wales and across the Strathclyde and Cambrian regions of
Britain. Arthur’s father, King Aedàn of Scots, was the first British
monarch to be installed by priestly ordination when he was anointed
by Saint Columba of the Celtic Church in 574. This, of course,
infuriated the Roman bishops because they claimed the sole right to
appoint kings who, according to them, were supposed to be crowned by
the Pope!
As a direct result of this coronation, Saint Augustine was
eventually sent from Rome to dismantle the Celtic Church when St Columba died in 597. He proclaimed himself
Archbishop of Canterbury
three years later, but his overall mission failed and the Nazarene
tradition persisted in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and across the
breadth of northern England.
An important fact to remember is that the Grail dynasts were never
territorial governors of lands. Like Jesus himself, they were
designated guardians of the people. The Merovingians in Gaul, for
example, were Kings of the Franks - never Kings of France. King Aedàn, Robert the Bruce and their Stewart successors were Kings of
the Scots - never Kings of Scotland. It was this implicitly social
concept which the High Church found so difficult to overcome, for
the bishops preferred to have dominion over territorial kings who
were authorized by the Pope. Only by maintaining ultimate spiritual
control over individuals could the Church reign supreme, and so
whenever a Grail dynast came to the fore he was met by the wrath of
the papal machine.
In 751 the bishops managed to depose the Merovingian succession in
Gaul, and they established a new tradition whereby kings of the
Carolingian succession (that of Charlemagne) had to be approved and
crowned by the Pope. But the Church could never topple the Desposynic lines in Scotland, even though the old Celtic kingdoms of
England had been dismantled by Germanic Anglo-Saxons from the 6th
century.
Even into the Middle Ages - long after the Norman Conquest of
England - the Nazarene Church and the long prevailing cult of
Mary
Magdalene were prominent in Europe. Women’s rights of equality were
upheld throughout the Celtic structure, and this was an enormous
problem for the male-only priesthood of orthodox ’churchianity’.
The underlying principle of the Grail monarchs was always one of
Service, in accordance with the Messianic code. Hence, they were
kings and common fathers of their realms, but they were never
rulers. This key aspect of the Grail Code was perpetuated at the
very heart of nursery tale and folklore. Never did a valiant
cardinal or bishop ride to the aid of an oppressed subject or a
damsel in distress, for this has always been the social realm of
Grail princes and their appointed knights.
The Grail Code
recognizes advancement by merit and acknowledges
community structure, but above all it is entirely democratic.
Whether apprehended in its physical or spiritual dimension, the
Grail belongs to leaders and followers alike. It also belongs to the
land and the environment, requiring that all should be as one in a
mutually unified Service.
Throughout the ages, parliaments and governments have had as much
trouble as the Church in confronting the Messianic social code, and
the position is no different today. Presidents and prime ministers
are elected by the people. They are supposed to represent the people
- but do they? In actual fact, they do not. They are always
affiliated to a political party and they achieve their positions by
way of majority party vote.
But not everybody takes the trouble to
vote and sometimes there are more than two parties to vote for.
Consequently, at any given time, more than half the people of a
nation may not be represented by the political party in power. In
this regard, even though a majority vote has been applied, the
democratic principle fails. What emerges is not ’government BY the
people FOR the people’, but ’government OF the people’.
Jesus confronted a very similar situation in the 1st century. At
that time, Jerusalem and Judaea were under Roman occupation, with
King Herod and the Governor, Pontius Pilate, both appointed by Rome.
But who represented the people? The people were not Romans; they
were Holy Land Jews: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and the like.
Apart from that, there were large numbers of Samaritans and Gentiles
(non-Jews; the Arab races). Who represented them? The answer is ’no
one’ - until Jesus made it his mission to do so.
This was the
beginning of the Grail code of non-affiliated princely service: a
code perpetuated by the Messianic dynasts in their continuing role
as people’s guardians. The Grail code is based on the principles of
liberty, fraternity and equality, and it was particularly apparent
in the American and French Revolutions, both of which discarded the
lordship of despotic aristocracy. But what has replaced it? It has
been replaced by party politics and largely non-representative
government.
Many people have asked me why the hitherto suppressed information in
Bloodline of the Holy Grail is coming to light at this particular
time. The fact is that the information has never been suppressed by
those whom it concerns. It has been suppressed by outside
power-seekers who have sought to serve their own interests, rather
than serve the communities they are supposed to represent.
Today,
however, we are in a new age of questing as many people grow more
disillusioned with the establishment dogmas that prevail. We live in
an age of satellite communications, sound-barrier travel, computers
and the Internet - so the world is effectively much smaller than
before. In such an environment, news travels very quickly and the
truth is far more difficult to restrain.
Also, the very fabric of the male-dominated Church and governmental
structures is being questioned, and it is generally perceived that
the old doctrines of spiritual control and territorial management
are not working. More and more people are searching for the
original, uncluttered roots of their faith and for their purpose in
society. They are seeking more effective forms of administration to
combat the all too apparent slide into social and moral decline.
They are, in fact, questing for the Holy Grail. This quest for new
enlightenment is considerably heightened by the coming new
millennium and there is a widespread feeling that this should also
present a new Renaissance: an era of rebirth wherein the precepts of
the Grail Code are acknowledged and practiced - the precepts of
liberty, fraternity and equality. Indeed, Grail lore spells out loud
and clear that the wound of the Fisher King must first be healed if
the wasteland is to return to fertility.
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