The Wheel of Fate

The adoption and modification of the Chi Rho Ankh by the Church was a late event and it is said that the Chi Rho symbol was based on the six pointed Gallic rune because, as we shall see, the symbol had such tremendous influence.

As we know this rune was the Sumerian symbol for the gods. It invariably preceded the name of any deity and therefore, as the Chi Rho, in relation to Jesus, it was used to imply his divinity, not as the son of the Jewish storm and corn imp Jehovah, but as a God-King in his own right as a descendant of the Dragon Gods of the Egyptians.

The Church were and are past masters at assimilation for political ends, and the use of the Chi Rho, like much else, must be seen as another way that the Church sought to be identified and adopted by non christian Europeans.

The six pointed Gallic rune, similar to the Norse rune Haegl would originally have been eight spoked, like the Buddhist Wheel of Life or the Tarot’s Wheel of Fortune. In this guise it is the Web of Arachne, the Web of Fate and the plan view of the ribbons of the Maypole dance.

The missing horizontal spoke of the Chi Rho is accounted for in its having been often carved into wood. Inevitably one spoke would always follow, and disappear into, the grain and so rune masters omitted it.

According to Count d’Alviella the Chi Rho is sometimes found situated in the loop of the Ankh itself. In Egypt the Chi Rho was known as the Chrism of Philae, or the anointing of pure love, which intimates the Entheal nature of the symbol, particularly in relation to the Ankh itself, which in some creative work has been thought of as the "vampire cross" being, as it is, the symbol of eternal life and youth.

Other examples have been discovered with the loop made of the Dragon Cross of Cain. The Ankh was said to have migrated into the christian crucifix and this seems obvious when one remembers the Celtic Cross, which would seem to support the foregoing, as does the pre-christian cross of Bacchus and the Albigensian (or Gaulish Fairy) use of the Ankh in relation to heterodox christian belief and ritual.

The Bethel stone was shaped like an Ankh and had associations with the various pine cone or dove capped pillars, the Perrone of the sacred groves. At later times the Perrone were capped by crosses and the name seems to be reminiscent itself of Persephone. Later still, in European Heraldry, one can see the pine cone column in the Pyr of Augsburg. In particular these columns were associated also with barrows and bergs.

In Belgium they were known as the stones of Justice, which again links them with the Tir or Tau and the Ankh, whilst in Scandinavia, according to the Saga of Gudrun, they become the white stone pillars (Gita/Cita) on the barrows which were venerated by the peasants. The white stone, as a portable panacea features in the story of St. Columba and King Brude of the Picts.

The Goddesses of death and the underworld are again prominent here (in the transcendent sense, as with Persephone, but one also remembers Mithras and the World Bull or Minotaur of Theseus), and one can imagine the presence of the Bethel Stone, as the Perrone of the Ankh, in the midst of the Necromanitons (a variant of the druidic grove of the Nemeton in Galatia, rel. to Nemesis or justice, the Tau or Fate), such as that built in Greece at Ephyranus, which had buried at its core, a subterranen cell for the rites which invoked the dead from Hades.

When thinking of Greece and Galatia, it must be remembered that these were originally under Scythian (Sidhean-Aryan) overlordship, manifesting draconian culture and subject to druidic law. These influences also helped to shape the Hindu, Sumerian, Egyptian and Judaic traditions, beliefs and iconographies, and it is therefore understandable that we find that there are many themes and symbols which these seemingly disparate cultures hold in common.

Within all these crosses and figures, there are held layers of meaning that can be interpreted to represent a close knit variety of rites or anatomical attributes within the strict parameters of their genre. Consequently, to settle for one simple explanation for any given glyph is simplistic, and at variance with the intentions of the Dragon Culture which invented them.

In the following figures the upturned crescent moon features, and this should be remembered in relation to the Galley or moon barque, which, accompanied by the Lion, is a prominent badge of the Scottish clans and features in the heraldry of Leith, near Edinburgh, where the ship carries the figure of the "Virgin Mary" (Magdalene), another Ankh variant.

The Moon Boat is also said to be the origin of the Genesis Ark and with the symbol of the Templar’s Anchor, the crescent moon becomes the hull of the boat which carries the Ankh as its mast and sails.

The key to understanding this symbol is to refer back to the notes and remember that the virgin womb, (the crescent or new moon), carries the Ankh, The An-Ka or Pneuma, the secret of the Benedicta Viriditas, the Green Blessing of the Mouth - "The Fairy Gift" (also "the Dark Gift", "the Thirst", "The Hunger") of eternal life in this life (transcendence) and youth, the blessing of the virility of life regardless of age, as was said of anyone ’seeing the Grail’, that although their hair might turn grey, they would not age from that day forth (Eschenbach).

The migration of the Ankh and its collaterals are included in the following figures which are illustrated in the work of the Count d’Alviella.

fig. 31 The Egyptian Ankh migrates

fig 32 The influence of the Swastika and becomes the Chi Rho. On the Chi Rho.

fig. 33 The Chi Rho Ankh, the Cain fig.

34 The cross of Bacchus and Ankh and the Celtic Cross. TheAlbigensian Ankh

fig. 35 The Ankh of Isis and Nephthys. fig.

36 The Fleur de Lys and the Gallic Haegl Rune

fig. 37 The Bethel Stone as Perrone or God-Stone. fig.

38 The Assyrian Bethel Stone.

fig. 39 The cuneiform symbol for the gods.

fig.40 The medieval Ankh of black magic.

Supporting material from D P Silverman, Richard Dufton, W H Matthews, Michael Grant, Oxford English Dictionary, Count D’Alviella, Ward Rutherford., Z. Sitchin.

The Lily and the Rose/The Dragon Tree
Being pertinent to the appreciation of the contents of the following essays, the author here includes a brief word on the Dragon Tree or Dragontree, which is a massive plant which grows in Persia and Gran Canaria. Its Latin name is Dracaena Draco and it belongs to the genus Lillaceae or Lily.

Its resin is called Dragon’s Blood and was used as a dye which the Romans called Lac. Poetically therefore "the blood of the Lily is the blood of the Dragon", giving it especial ritual significance as a tincture for ceremonial robes and as as an epithet for the branches of the bloodline, as in a popular spelling of del Acqs as Du Lac.

In relation to the Greek word derkesthai there is, in Gaelic, a reminiscent word, dergflaith, which means ’red beer’. The word dergflaith is used to describe the otherworld drink which conveys sovereignty upon a king. It is quite possible therefore, given the Greco-Gaelic connections in history, that one word has influenced the other. Derk and Derg might derive from a similar or common root and Flaith might be related to the Gaelic fola, which is used in relation to the family and blood. In which case Dergflaith actually might originally have meant Dragon’s Blood, being rather the blood of a dragon princess, conveying the Derkesthai ability

The Lily of the Valley
In relation to the discussion herein, the following is a brief discourse on the subject of the Lily. For the purposes of this essay we will be concentrating on both the Lilliaceae and Nymphaea Lotus varieties which are regional variants of each other in Dragon Lore.

The former, the Iris family, include the Lily of the Valley, whilst the latter are the species known as Blue Nile Lilies. Furthermore, for the purposes of providing an illustrative narrative we will concentrate here on Hylas and the water nymphs, a portrait by the pre-Raphaelite artist John William Waterhouse, whose depictions of water nymphs and Grail characters are somewhat prodigious. In alchemical lore we know that the lily represents the virginal seminal fluid of the vulva and the rose represents the womb blood. However the White Lily of the Valley produces red berries in Autumn that are reminiscent themselves of the droplets of Virgin blood. The Lily of the Valley is highly toxic and can be fatal, a reminder of the love that is death.

The virgin vendors themselves, like Melusine et al, are often described as water nymphs or naiads and in Waterhouse’s picture the naked, pale skinned, otherworldly ladies in the woodland pond are surrounded by and are wearing in their hair specimens of the Nymphaea Lotus, the "lily sacred to the nymphs". Hylas (Helios - the Sun Dragon, representative of the Sephiroth of Kether or the Ajna Chakra) is a crew member of the ship Argo, which, captained by Jason had been sculling around in Scythian territorial waters looking for the Golden Fleece which, like the ark of the Covenant, is a symbol of the Holy Grail.

Having been at sea without a break for some time, it had been decided that, now they’d sailed back through the Hellespont, they would put to shore on the island of Chios and seek for provisions and water. It fell to Hylas to wander off alone into the forest to look for a fresh spring. After a protracted peregrination Hylas entered in upon the scene where Waterhouse’s nymphs were bathing - and is depicted crouching on the banks of the woodland pool. Here we now see Hylas being tempted to enter the water and avail himself of the tender but fateful embraces of these emissaries of death.

Waterhouse painted his model of Hylas wearing a blue-black robe tied about with a red thread. This, the dreaded "little thread of the Cathars" was a memorial of the Old Testament, Hebrew scapegoats, one of which had a red thread tied about its horns, prior to its being pushed into the scorching desert to face its ultimate death, whilst the other was sacrificed. This double ritual was enacted because the Jews thought that the goat sacrificed to Jehovah was insufficient to take away the sins of the people.

The Goat was called Azazel, a figure who was said to have been a fallen angel and whose name has several etymologies derived from its ritual functions but who is certainly "Satan" or Samael. The red thread represented the sins of the Jews.

The symbolism is simple, the Jews ultimately laid all the responsibility for purging their sin upon Azazel/Samael, when in the first instance, the sin belonged not to him who was their true creator, but to the usurper Jehovah alone. For this reason, as a memorial and to express their true allegiance, the Cathars, the witches and the nobles of the blood wore the red thread.

The Cathars wore it as a belt about their black robes and the latter two groups wore it as a garter or ’points’. In this manner, for them it also represented the womb blood, the ’Rtu’ or ’red-gold flow’ of the virgin priestesses of the Kaula Vama Marg.

On the Aziluth or imperial scale of the Kabalistic Tree of Life, red and black are the empress and emperor colours of the sephirah of Binah, the "sphere of understanding". Binah is ruled by Saturn or Chronos and its sacred plants are the lily and the cypress, whilst its sacred animal is the bee. Cypress was used in the Levant as an incense to celebrate weddings and mourn the departed, whilst the lily traditionally represents virginity and death.

Here we have the symbols of Enthea and the love that is death, with the bee describing the manner of such congress. In Waterhouse’s beautifully evocative painting the nymphs are immersed in water, the element which is a Scythian symbol of the Daleth, the door to the otherworld and Hylas is about to undergo a profound process of alchemical initiation.

The girls, whose watery embrace is said to spell death, are the shunnamites, the lilies or virgins who are portrayed in the Song of Solomon. In their connection with water, the nymphs are thus depicted as the embodiment of the wells of living waters. Their deathly embrace is but the death of the ego, of the will and of desire. In uniting with them Hylas’ soul will die and his mind, once stilled, will ’understand’ and give way to the transcendent spirit of the cosmos. Such is the nature of this mystical process.

The nymphs are priestesses of Lilith, Diana and Persephone, they represent Melusine, Magdalene and the La Belle Dame Sans Merci: The Maid of Kent who was Edward III’s ’Queen of the Witches’. They are the Leanaan Sidhe, the Grail Maidens who, as perfect representations of the Goddess and the Muse, are the externalizations of man’s longed for Anima.

Enthea, divine union with these meremaids, is intended to facilitate the exultant union of the animus and anima which, via this external hierogamy or alchemical marriage, brings the death of the finite, isolated being, from whence emerges as if reborn, the universal spirit, unattached, undesiring and immersed in eternal love and life. In such terms the essence and the embrace of a Grail Maiden end all desire.

Hers is the embrace of death because her spirit and her energy enliven the tired spirit of the pilgrim and her beauty and completeness, her stillness and poise, are the sum of all that the initiate might seek. Her quiet, matter of fact acceptance which needs no striving for and is not gained by worldly show, infuses the stillness of the journey’s end into the lover who, having to achieve nothing more to attain her transcendent love other than just to be, melts in her embrace and without barriers, melts his being into hers.

Her love is then his death, beyond which is Daleth, the door to Elphame, Oneness and eternal, silent understanding. Such is the watery grave to which Hylas has wedded his fate. The story of Hylas and the water nymphs links the pineal and womb chakras, giving a complete teaching picture of the Grail Process.

The Lotus Eaters
In Greek myth the lotophagi - the lotus eaters - to which Hylas’ story is related, experienced a similar phenomenon in consuming the Nymphaea Lotus and lost their desire to return to homes which they had forgotten, along with all those emotional trinkets and fond memories which once possessed their hearts. (Homer: The Odyssey, IX - 90ff).

As an infusion in wine the petals of the Nymphaea Lotus are narcotic and bring about psychotropic effects similar to certain mystical states. In Waterhouse’s painting the nymphs are surrounded by and wearing these flowers in their hair. Their immersion in the lily bedecked water implies that their "living waters" or seminal fluid, the "dew of their lilies", had similar transcendent, psychotropic qualities.

The wearing of the lily on the head signifies that the source of the divine essence represented by the lilies in the pool originates with the pineal gland and the ’thousand petalled lotus’ of the Ajna Chakra, which energizes it and the other cerebral glands. The water these swan maidens are swimming in is the "sea of Binah" and they are thus the daughters of understanding, witches of the waters of wisdom and the children of the Hive.

The nymphs are here seven in number and represent the Pleiades, the fairy daughters of the Titan Atlas who were pursued by the Boeotian Orion or Osiris in an ancient ritualized form of the Wild Hunt. They became the seven stars of the constellation that bears their name and which, in a superimposed arc, adorns and suggests the Ankh-like Cross upon which Bacchus was crucified.

Waterhouse’s nymphs therefore were also the wild Bacchantes or Dionysic Maenads who themselves hunted for and drank human blood in rites whose central feature was that of union with the divine.

Associated with these nymphs is the Romano-Celtic goddess Coventina (coven, covenant or union) who was depicted either alone or as a tripartite figure, bathing in a pool, surrounded by lilies. She is pictured in the act of pouring a jug of water into the pool itself. Her other name is Dea Latis meaning both Goddess of the Mere and also Bright Shining One, which links her with the elves. In this she shares the attributes of the cult spirit of the river wharf in Teesdale, whose name was both Verbeia and Latis.

Related to the nymphs are the Biblical Miriams or Marys, and the Tamarises whose symbol was the Palm which represents the Sufi Tree of Life. Theirs was also the Pomegranate of Persephone, with which the Palm appears in mystical symbolism and the pool or oases adjacent to which the sacred Palm itself grows.

Miriam or Mary and Tamaris were the names of females who occupied specific dynastic offices within the royal dragon bloodline in Israel. In Hebrew the name Miriam is represented by the consonants M’R’Y’M and means ’bitter’, (defined here as sorrowful). From this we obtain Mary, Mari, Marie, Marion, Maryon or Marian and all these examples contain the M’R’Y or M’R’I consonant group. In the following passages we will encounter the Myr syllable group relating to myrrh, which is relevant here, particularly in relation to Tamaris.

From Marion we obtain the "Maid Marion" of the Robin Hood cult, whose name and title equate with that of the Virgin Mary (Magdalene), to whom Robin and his band were devoted. In Egypt the name is Mery, as in Mery Ataten The name Mary or properly Mari is Indo-Aryan and means several things.

The component Mer, Ma or Mar means,

i)   A Mere or Pool

ii)  The Sea

As Mari it is associated with the Mori orfates and is the An or Ankhou of the Basque witches. Mari is also Mar Righ, meaning royal pool or royal waters where righ defines royalty or kingship. Where king further relates to knowing and understanding, Mary as Mar Righ becomes,

i)   the waters of wisdom

ii)  Binah, the primordial sea

In Marian the syllables break down into Mari and An. Mari as we have seen means pool whilst An, the root of the names of many of the earliest Dragon Queens and Kings, relates to the Grail and means fire or spirit, and so Marion means ’chalice’ or ’pool of fire’ which then renders the ’pool of the spirit’.

The sacred cups, pools, wells and fountains we have so far encountered all relate to the womb and the vulva. In this manner Mary or Marion means ’spirit in the womb’ or ’womb fire’ and it is in the latter instance that we have a direct reference to the Tantric, Kaula ritual of enlivening or inflaming the chakra of the uterine region to produce the ’waters of life’ or, as the Song of Solomon puts it "The Well of Living Waters".

Mary’s symbol is the white lily of the valley, the fleur de lys. In relation to Mary Magdalene as the Virgin Mary of Robin Hood’s devotion, this is particularly relevant. In this cultic cycle there appears ’The One Ring that rules them all’ - the Draupnir or Andvarinaut - the "Gold Dripper" (or source of Rtu, the red-gold thread or flow of the valkyrie womb) that belonged to Robin’s father Aubrey or Oberon, who is Alberich or Andvari.

As "The Well of Living Waters", Mary’s relationship to Jesus becomes clearer as the child handmaiden of the Messach, the dragon god-king. Marie is an ancient form of the word Marry, meaning: to join or unite with, as in alchemical marriage, divine enthea, hierogamy, the sacred marriage ritual of Solomon’s Song, with which we will deal shortly.

The Hebrew meaning of Miriam is ’bitter’- transf. "attended by pain or suffering: grievious (OE), hence of a state: Full of affliction, mournful, pitiable (1485), expressing or betokening intense grief or misery" (OED).

Here we are reminded of Mr. Keats’s ’palely wandering knight’ and nanny Melusine as ’La Fontaine du Soif’ and ’the cup of sorrows’.

In many Dragon and Grail stories, the maidens inhabit or frequent pools or fountains in forest gardens. Waterhouse’s water-babes inhabit a forest pool. Janet March encounters the fairy knight Tam Lin by a rose-covered well in Carterhaugh forest, in a genealogical variation of Beauty and the Beast. Solomon has his Sheba, a well of living waters in a labyrinth garden bedecked with sacred Pomegranate trees and Melusine is the fountain and well in a garden maze in the Forez.

Relating these symbolic representations of the virgin priestess-goddess with works such as Sir Richard Burton’s "Perfumed Garden" and Francis Israel Regardie’s "Garden of Pomegranates", gives a clear picture of the forest as the pubis which is conceptually broadened by the maze in the dell on the hill, as the entrance to the otherworld, hidden within the mons veneris.

In the Song of Solomon we encounter the pubis as a lock, which like the well, is an old but well known European euphemism for the vagina. In Chapter 5 vs 4 - 5 "My beloved put his hand by the hole of the door (the "lock"), and my bowels were moved for him (contractions): I rose up to my beloved and my hands dropped with Myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling Myrrh upon the lock".

Whilst earlier in Chapter 4 vs 12 and 16 "A garden enclosed is my sister my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed: A fountain of Gardens, a Well of Living Waters..." Throughout the Song Sheba, who is "black but comely" i.e. an Annis or Persephone figure likened to Lilith, remains a virgin. Sheba was described as "the lily of the valley" and thus, as her forest garden equates with the pubis, then the lily of her valley is the water lily in the valley of her vulva.

Naiads or mermaids are described as being semi divine and the handmaidens of the gods. This is aside from their usual mythic, pantheistic interpretation or symbolic representation as nature spirits, elementals or energy complexes, and such a description applies to the era during which these stories emerged, which was described by Euhemerus as the age when mighty men became deified and the gods were born of flesh and blood.

The Irish descriptions of their "gods", the Tuadha D’Anu, mix the qualities of divinity with some very human sounding foibles whilst the descriptions of the naiads or mermaids present us with the qualities of human femininity but blended to a much greater extent with those of the divine. As we have seen, as handmaids to the gods and essentially young goddesses themselves, the naiads or nixes were the Dragon Princesses of the Grail, the Ladies of the Lake, water witches and meremaids.

They were the avatars, the Sybils who supported the elder goddess queens and god kings, fed them, guided them to the otherworld and, in the embrace of death, empowered their beings with the integrity that gives birth to vision and wisdom: the wholeness that is sovereignty over self and consequently sovereignty over all things.

Such a condition releases creativity, but such a quality is not a product of ordinary human thinking, rather it is a phenomena which lies beyond thought and beyond the capability of mundane knowledge to encapsulate or describe, both of which are processes bounded by time and limited by definition. It is the still mind in union with the infinite, or more precisely that knows no distinction between it and the infinite, that becomes truly fertile and creative.

Such was the nature of true sovereignty, the state of mind that, in kingship, affected the people and the land through good management and foresighted husbanding. If the king was of the tinker or warrior variety, then he was by virtue of his birth and cerebral physiological capacity, barren and infertile, and incapable of transcending his nature. In consequence the land and the people suffered by virtue of their having a king who was no king at all.
 

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