J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is one of the most enchanting and successful tales of all time. First issued in the 1950s, this famous trilogy could just as well have emanated from the Dark Ages or medieval times, for it has all the qualities and attributes of the most ancient Grail and Ring traditions. This was made possible by the fact that Tolkien (an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon and English language) had the legendary wealth of ages at his fingertips and moulded his story accordingly.

In considering the history of the Ring Quest, its parallel association with the Quest for the Holy Grail becomes increasingly apparent, as do the origins of fairies, elves, pixies, sprites, gnomes and goblins. Ring lore is also deeply rooted in many of the best loved nursery tales, and provides the essential facts behind numerous time-honoured characters of popular legend.

Grail stories are generally associated with Arthurian knights roaming the Wasteland in search of the sacred relic. But the genre also embodies many other questing tales, incorporating such characters as Cinderella, Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Count Dracula. Each account holds its own separate mystery and fascination, but it is not generally understood that they all stem from a common historical base which is rooted in the ancient culture of the Ring Lords.

Even though some of the themes have their origins in very old lore, the majority of these tales were newly slanted from the Dark Ages onwards, when the Church set its sights against the Ring tradition. This was especially the case from medieval times when the persecution of heretics was in full swing, leading to the brutal Inquisitions which began in the 13^th century.

From around 4000 BC, the Ring was a primary device of the Anunnaki overlords, who were recorded as having been responsible for the establishment of municipal government and kingly practice in ancient Mesopotamia. In view of this, it is of particular relevance that, in 1967, when Professor Tolkien was asked about the Middle-earth environment of The Lord of the Rings, he wrote that he perceived its setting to be about 4000 BC.

In this respect, the root of Tolkien’s popular tale was extracted directly from Saxon folklore and was not actually new in concept. Indeed, the early Saxon god Wotan (the equivalent of the Sumerian Lord, Anu) was said to have ruled the Nine Worlds of the Rings – having the ninth Ring (the One Ring) to govern eight others.

The contested ownership of the One Ring, as related in The Lord of the Rings, is little different to the enduring quest for the Holy Grail; they are both quests for the maintenance of sovereignty. But, in both fact and fiction, the Ring and the Grail are each seen to be misappropriated by those who perceive them as weapons of power.

As the generations passed from ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian times, the ideal of dynastic kingship spread through the Mediterranean lands into the Balkans, the Black Sea regions and Europe. But, in the course of this, the crucial essence of the old wisdom was lost and this gave rise to dynasties that were not of the original kingly race. Instead, many were unrelated warrior chiefs who gained their thrones by might of the sword.

The sacred culture of the ancients was, nevertheless, retained in the Messianic line of King David of Judah (around 1008 BC), whose significance was in his pharaonic heritage, not in his generally portrayed descent from Abraham and the Shemite strain. It was because of this particular inheritance that David’s son, Solomon the Wise, was enabled to create his Egyptian-style Temple project in Jerusalem.

This led to a Holy Land revival of the pharaonic and one-time Mesopotamian Rosi-crucis movement at a time when Egypt was beset by foreign influences, first from Libya, Nubia and Kush, and then from further afield. Resultantly, the traditional marriage arrangements of the pharaohs and princesses gave way to diplomatic alliances.

The Rosi-crucis (whose supporters were called Rosicrucians) is often misidentified as if it referred to a Rosy (or Red) Cross - but in fact the term has a rather different origin. It stems from the old Greek ’rosi’, meaning ’dew’, and from ’crucis’ meaning ’fire-cup’ (as in the word ’crucible’). Hence, the Rosi-crucis was the dew-cup of fire – or fiery cup of the waters.

In symbolic form, the Rosi-crucis was the original and longest standing mark of sovereignty – and this is where the secondary Rosy Cross definition comes into play, for this insignia was indeed a red cross within a ring. The early Bible writers condemned this royal device as being the Mark of Cain.

This same emblem was deemed to be symbolic of the Holy Grail, whose representative form as the Dew-cup (or Chalice) emanated directly from the Sumerian word ’gra-al’. This defined the ’nectar of supreme excellence’ – the prestigious legacy of the Anunnaki queen Nin-kharsag, great mother of the kingly bloodline.

Originally, and for the longest time, the Ring was a symbol of perpetually divine justice, which was measured by the Rod. In ancient depictions various Sumerian overlords, kings and queens are individually portrayed holding the Rod and Ring devices - characters such as Marduk and Lilith, Shamesh, Ur-Nammu, Ashur, Samael and others from the 3^rd and 2^nd millenniums BC. In some instances the Rod is clearly marked in calculable units (like a modern ruler). In Babylonia it was referred to as the Rule – and the one who held the Rule was the designated ‘ruler’: which is from where the governmental term derives.

In time, rather than holding the golden rings, the sovereigns began to place them on their heads where, from a general course of ornate embellishment through the ages, they ultimately became crowns, while the Rod (or Rule) evolved into the royal scepter. In the course of this, the Rosi-crucis emblem of the cross and circle also became a solid object – a cross surmounted on a sphere – to become the Orb of sovereign regalia.

In all the Grail romances, and in the tales of the Ring, the message is relentlessly clear: in the wrong hands, both the Ring and the Grail can bring disaster. The power of the Ring has to be withstood, otherwise it will enslave its master, whereas the Grail will retaliate with a vengeance if misused. Either way, the moral is the same in that, ultimately, power is self-destructive when achieved through selling one’s soul. Consequently, the Ring can be a halo or a crown, but it can equally become a noose.

There is, however, an essential difference between Tolkien’s ’One Ring’, which is portrayed as dark and divisive, and the Golden Ring of Grail romance, which is a ring of love and enlightenment. The latter (the ring with which Arthur made his vow to Guinevere) was further symbolized by the iron-clad ring of knights who sat at the Round Table – a Ring that was broken (leading the land into chaos and waste) when Guinevere was unfaithful to Arthur with Lancelot.

Prior to the year 751, kings of the Grail succession were priests in their own right; they were priest-kings, known as Fisher Kings. But, when their rights to priesthood were undermined by the Church, the legacy was forsaken in all but the Gaelic realms.

Before this, the representative substances of priest-kingship were Gold (for nobility), Frankincense (for priesthood) and Myrrh (for knowledge). These were the very substances presented to Jesus by the Magi in the New Testament, thereby positively identifying him as a dynastic priest-king of the Grail bloodline. The significance of this Magian presentation has been lost however, within a contrived fable of humble birth in a stable, which is not mentioned in any original Gospel.

Yet, for some obscure reason, the Grail symbolism was retained by the Church in its Eucharist – the Communion sacrament, wherein the wine (figuratively the Gra-al blood of Christ) is drunk from the sacred chalice of the Rosi-crucis. In this regard, the true symbolism of the ancient custom, which began in Anunnaki times, has been strategically veiled, while both Grail lore and Ring lore are denounced by the Church as unofficial heresies.

As confirmed in historical records, the disputes between the descendant Grail family and the Church establishment prevailed for centuries because of their conflict of interests. From the 1^st century, Imperial Rome had decreed that the Messianic heirs should be hunted down and put to the sword. Then, once the Roman Church was formally operative from the 4^th century, the sacred dynasty was forever damned by the bishops.

It was this formal damnation which led to such events as the Albigensian Crusade in 1209 and the subsequent Catholic Inquisitions, for these brutal assaults by the papal machine were specifically directed against the upholders and champions of the original concept of Grail kingship, as against the style of pseudo-monarchy which had been implemented by the Bishops of Rome. In practical terms, Church kingship has prevailed from the 8^th century and has continued, through the ages, to the present day. But the fact is that, under strict terms of sovereign practice, all such monarchies and their affiliated governments have been invalid.

Church kingship is precisely that with which we have become so familiar. It applies to all monarchs who achieve their regnal positions by way of Church coronation by the Pope or other Christian leader (in Britain, by the Archbishop of Canterbury). In terms of true kingship, there was no necessity for coronation because kingly and queenly inheritance were always regarded as being ’in the blood’ – to be precise, in the DNA of the Gra-al.

In order to understand the legacy of the Ring, we must look at how Church kingship was made possible in the first place by way of a document called the Donation of Constantine – a document which led to just about every social injustice that has since been experienced in the Christian world. All monarchical and governmental practice has, for centuries, been based upon the initial precept of this charter but, in reality, its dogmatic precept is wholly invalid.

When the Donation of Constantine made its first appearance in the middle 8^th century it was alleged to have been written by Emperor Constantine some 400 years earlier, although strangely never produced in the interim. It was even dated and carried his supposed signature. What the document proclaimed was that the Emperor’s appointed Pope was Christ’s elected representative on Earth, with the power to ’create’ kings as his subordinates since his palace ranked above all the palaces in the world!

The provisions of the Donation were put into operation by the Vatican in 751, whereupon the Merovingian Fisher Kings of the Grail bloodline in Gaul were deposed and a whole new dynasty was supplemented by way of a family of hitherto mayors. They were dubbed Carolingians and their only king of any significance was the legendary Charlemagne. By way of this strategy, the whole nature of monarchy changed from being an office of community guardianship to one of absolute rule and, by virtue of this monumental change, the long-standing Grail Code of princely service was forsaken as European kings became servants of the Church instead of being servants of the people.

The fact is, however, that over 500 years ago in the Renaissance era, proof emerged that the Donation was an outright forgery. Its New Testament references relate to the Latin Vulgate Bible – an edition translated and compiled by St. Jerome, who was not born until AD 340, some 26 years after Constantine supposedly signed the document! Apart from that, the language of the Donation, with its numerous anachronisms, is that of the 8^th century and bears no relation to the writing style of Constantine’s day. It is known today as "the most famous forgery in the world", but despite this, the Donation’s overwhelming dictate, which cemented the Pope as the supreme spiritual and temporal head of Christendom, has prevailed regardless.

Prior to the Grail’s formal subjugation by the Church Inquisition in the Middle Ages, the victimized heterodox Christians (or ’heretics’ as they were called) included the Cathars – the Pure Ones of the Languedoc region in the South of France. The Cathars were fully conversant with the Ring Lord culture and, in accordance with tradition, referred to the Messianic bloodline as the Elven race, venerating them as the Shining Ones. This is of course wholly indicative of the very same style afforded to the ancient Anunnaki – the great sons of Lord Anu, also called the Anna-nagge: the Shining Ones.

In the language of old Provence, a female elf was an ’albi’, and Albi was the name given to the main Cathar centre in Languedoc. This was in deference to the matrilinear heritage of the Grail dynasty, for the Cathars were supporters of the original Albi-gens: the Elven bloodline which had descended through the Grail queens of yore such as Nin-kharsag, Eresh-kigal, Lilith, Miriam, Bathsheba and Mary Magdalene. It was for this very reason that, when Simon de Montfort and the armies of Pope Innocent III descended upon the Languedoc region in 1209, it was called the Albigensian Crusade.

Through some thirty-five years, tens of thousands of innocent people were slaughtered in this savage campaign, all because the inhabitants of the region were upholders of the original concept of Grail kingship, as against the inappropriate style of monarchy which had been established by the papal machine and its fabricated document of charter.

The concept of calling the princely race of the Grail the Shining Ones, while also defining them as Elves, dates well back into ancient Bible times and can be traced into Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Canaan (Palestine). The ancient word ’El’, which was used to identify a god or lofty-one (as in El Elyon and El Shaddai) actually meant Shining in old Mesopotamian Sumer. To the north in Babylonia, the derivative ’Ellu’ meant Shining One, as did ’Ilu’ in Akkad. Subsequently, the word spread across Europe to become ’Ellyl’ in Wales, ’Aillil’ in Ireland, and ’Elf’ in Saxony and England.

The plural of El was Elohim, the very word used in old Bible texts to denote the gods, but strategically mistranslated to conform to the Judaeo-Christian ’One God’ image. Interestingly, in Gaelic Cornwall, South West England, the word ’el’ was the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon ’engel’ and the old French ’angele’ which, in English, became ’angel’.

There exists in Iran (ancient Persia) and the Canary Islands a large plant called the Dragontree. This plant is of the lily variety, and its resin is known as dragon’s blood. The red extract was used as a ceremonial dye in the East, where it was referred to as ’lac’, whose derivative ’lac’ or ’lake’ pigment is found today in the artists’ paint colour Scarlet Lake.

Dragons were very important to the descendant Shining Ones, who were anointed upon their kingly installation with the fatty oil of the sacred dragon – essentially a large four-legged monitor native to the Euphrates valley. In Mesopotamia, this creature was called the Mûs-hûs, and in Egypt his equivalent was the Messeh. On anointing, the kings were reckoned to gain the prowess of the sacred beast, becoming Messehs in their own right – and it is from this that the Hebrew term Messiah (meaning Anointed One) derived. Jesus was in no way unique in this regard – all the successive kings of the early Albigensian line were Messiahs.

By virtue of the Dragontree, it is easy to recognize why the blood of the dragon was always associated with the essence of the lily – and indeed why the Grail queens of yore were often given applicable names such as Lily, Lilith, Luluwa, Lilutu and Lillet. It is, in fact from the very tradition of the ’lac’ pigment that the family name of du Lac became prominent in Arthurian lore – as for example the Burgundian dynasty of Queen Viviane du Lac, mother of Lancelot du Lac. This was translated into English to become Lancelot of the Lake, but its more correct representation was Lancelot of the dragon blood.

Alongside this, the Grail dynasty was also variantly styled the House del Acqs, meaning ’of the waters’, from which came the queenly tradition of the Ladies of the Lake. The Rosi-crucis (or Dew-cup) – the emblem of the Holy Grail – was itself identified with the Messianic blood held within the sacred chalice of the maternal womb. It can, accordingly, be seen that the styles of du Lac and del Acqs are entirely synonymous, as are the historical traditions of the Dragon and the Grail. These conjoined traditions are especially significant in the story of the ’blood and water’ which flowed from Jesus’s side at the Crucifixion – being emblematic of the fact that he (Jesus) was truly a kingly dynast of the Shining Ones (Anunnaki).

The concept of fairies (the fair folk) was born directly from Dragon and Ring Lord cultures, being a derivative of the Greek ’phare’, meaning ’great house’. (it is from this that the word ’pharaoh’ also derives). In the Gaelic world, certain royal families (especially those of the Pendragons) were said to carry the fairy blood – that is to say, the fate or destiny of the Grail bloodline and of humankind at large – while the Elf-maidens of the Albi-gens were the designated guardians of the earth, starlight and forest. It is for these reasons that fairies and elves have so often been portrayed as shoemakers and lamplighters, for the fairy cobblers made the shoes which measured the steps of life, while the Shining Ones of the elven race were there to light the way.

In national terms, although fairies present a widespread image, they are particularly associated with Ireland, where they are epitomized by the ancient people of the Tuatha Dé Danann. This formidable king tribe was, nevertheless, mythologized by the Christian monks, who rewrote the majority of Irish history to suit their own Church’s vested interest in Eire. From a base of the monastic texts (which arose onwards from medieval times) it is generally stated that these people were the supernatural tribe of the agricultural goddess Danaë of Argos, or perhaps of the Aegean Mother-goddess Danu. But their true name, rendered in its older form, was Tuadhe d’Anu – and as such, they were the people (or tribe) of Anu, the great sky god of the Anunnaki.

Onwards from the year 751, the Church sought all possible measures to diminish the status of any royal strain emanating from the original Ring Lords so that the fraudulent Donation of Constantine could be brought into play. Henceforth, only the subjugative Church could determine who was and was not a king, while the elves and fairies of the Albi-gens were maneuvered from the forefront of history into a realm of apparent fantasy and legend.

In this regard, it is significant that the Elves in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings are quite unlike the cute little characters of many fairy tales; they are actually larger and more powerful than average mortals. They are also endowed with greater powers of wisdom; they ride magical horses and closely resemble the ancient king tribe of the Tuadhe d’Anu. Settling in Ireland from about 800 BC, the Tuadhe d’Anu hailed from the Central European lands of Scythia, the Black Sea kingdoms which stretched from the Carpathian mountains and Transylvanian Alps, across to the Russian River Don. They were strictly known as the Royal Scyths and their classification as fates or fairies occurred because they were masters of a transcendent intellect called the Sidhé, which was known to the druids as the Web of the Wise.

As the Church rose to power following the 8^th-century implementation of the Donation of Constantine, so the ’underground stream’, which supported the true Albi-gens, found strategic methods of preserving the old culture of the royal bloodline. In the course of this, and based upon a traditional principle of folklore and legend, the fairy tale concept was born – stories which were not unlike many of the parables inherent in the New Testament Gospels. They were likewise contrived ’for those with ears to hear’, while others among the uninitiated would perceive them simply as fanciful children’s entertainment.

A key focal message built into these fairy tales was an understanding of the importance of perpetuating the family line of the Sangréal (Blood Royal), regardless of the power of the bishops and the Church’s puppet kings. The whole scenario was presented, time after time, as if it were a struggling nightmare, wherein the female (the Elf-maiden who carried the essential mitochondrial DNA) was out of reach of the Grail prince, so that his torturous quest to find her was akin to the quest for the Holy Grail itself.

Consequently, many of the tales which emanated from this base were stories of lost brides and usurped kingship, based upon the Church’s subjugation of the Grail bloodline. The fairy tale ideal was essentially geared to relate the truth of these persecutions. They were allegorical accounts of the predicament of the Messianic family – the Ring Lords of the Sangréal, whose fairies and elves (having been maneuvered from the mortal plane of orthodoxy and status quo) were confined to a seemingly Otherworld existence. They emerged as tales of valiant princes who were turned into frogs; of Swan knights who roamed the Wasteland and of Grail princesses locked in towers, or put to sleep for hundreds of years. In the course of their persecution, the Elf-maidens were pricked with bodkins, fed with poisoned apples, subjected to spells or condemned to servitude, while their champions swam great lakes, battled through thickets and scaled mighty towers to secure and protect the matrilinear heritage of the Albi-gens.

These romantic legends include such well-known stories as the Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel. In all cases, the underlying theme is the same, with the princess kept (through drugging, imprisonment or some form of restraint) out of reach of the prince, who has to find her and release her in order to preserve the dynasty and perpetuate the line.

It was during the period of France’s Carolingian dynasty (the dynasty of Emperor Charlemagne), which began in 751, that the seeds of most of these popular stories were planted, and it is because of the inherent truths which lie behind the stories that we find them so naturally appealing. Some academics argue that fairy tales survive and thrive because they are often based upon a ’rags-to-riches’ doctrine, but this is not the case. They survive because deep within the Western psyche is an inherent, inbred awareness that the Grail (symbolized by the Lost Bride) has to be found if the Wasteland is to return to fertility.

The Rapunzel story relates that, in order to function as an effective seer, Rapunzel was confined to a tower by an enchantress as a measure of protection against the world at large – in essence to preserve her maidenly virtue and the supernatural power related to that virtue. Hence, as in all similar stories, although the lost bride has been confined (whether by fair means or foul), she always emerges in a fit mental and physical state for the Grail prince.

Another important facet of the desired virginal portrayal, as evident in the tale of Rapunzel, is the allegorical symbolism of long hair. Rapunzel’s golden locks are presented as being plaited into a lengthy braid which the prince used to scale the tower. Before eventually being freed, however, Rapunzel’s hair was cut off by the enchantress, thereby implying the release of the maiden’s chastity to the wilderness. The importance of very long hair was that it afforded an appropriate veil of modesty even when in a naked state. Although perhaps physically or metaphorically divested of clothes (as symbolized by the willing or compulsory subordination to another), the Elf-maiden with tresses was never vulnerable; her dignity was always preserved and neither her body nor soul was ever bared until the appropriate time.

The oldest complete version of the Ring Cycle comes from the Norse mythology of the Volsunga Saga. This was described by the English poet and designer William Morris as "the great story of the North which should be to all our race what the tale of Troy was to the Greeks". Compiled from more than forty separate legends, the 13^th-century Icelandic tale relates to the god Odin, to the kingdom of the Nine Worlds and to a dark forest called Mirkwood – a name later repeated by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings.

It also tells of how Prince Sigmund of the Volsung dynasty is the only warrior able to pull the great sword of Odin from a tree in which the god had driven it to its hilt – as replicated in the Arthurian story of the sword and the stone. Additionally, we learn of the Water-dwarf Andarvi, whose magical One Ring of red-gold could weave great wealth and power for its master – precisely as depicted in all related Ring legends.

Contemporary with the Volsunga Saga was a very similar tale which appeared in and around Burgundy in the 1200s: a Middle High German epic called The Nibelungenlied. In this account, which follows a similar path, the hero is called Siegfried and the tale is given a knightly gloss of the Gothic era, while unfortunately losing some of the pagan enchantment of the Northern legend. No musical composer has done so much to preserve the legacy of Ring lore as Richard Wagner, whose renowned opera, The Ring of the Nibelung, was largely drawn from the Burgundian folklore of The Nibelungenlied and, to some extent, from the Volsunga Saga.

Over the years, many people have likened Tolkien’s wizard, Gandalf, to Merlin of the Arthurian tales. At the same time, Tolkien’s Aragorn has been likened to King Arthur but, as Tolkien himself pointed out (in a letter written in 1967), there was really a closer similarity between Aragorn and the historical Charlemagne. The challenge which faced Charlemagne in the 9^th century (having been charged by the Pope to establish a viable Empire from various disunited kingdoms) was not unlike that which confronted Aragorn, who reunited the divided kingdoms of Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings. But there was a marked difference in practice, for Aragorn was far more like Arthur in having an advisory wizard, whereas Charlemagne did not because the Church would not consent to royal counsellors outside its own appointees.

Aragorn’s was, therefore, more of a Gaelic-style environment, with his enemy being the evil Sauron of Mordor. Charlemagne, on the other hand, was supposedly a champion of the Roman Church whose adversaries were the supporters of the unlawfully ousted Merovingian establishment – an establishment to which Aragorn would personally have been well suited. The difficulty one has in understanding Charlemagne is that, for all the apparent Carolingian attachment to the Vatican, he does not seem to have been wholly committed to the Roman ideal and clearly inherited a strong contrary legacy from his mother, who was a daughter of the Merovingian Princess Blanche Fleur.

Undeterred by the Donation of Constantine, which had enabled his father, King Pepin, to usurp the Merovingian throne, Charlemagne retained advocates of both the Grail Church and the Roman Church at his Court. He was not even too keen on the idea of becoming Holy Roman Emperor but, on Christmas Day in the year 800, while in the Roman Basilica of St. Peter’s in the company of several bishops, Pope Leo III crept up behind him and placed the Imperial crown on his head without warning!

Traditionally, the Albi-gens (Elven bloodline) has been identified with water – a concept that can be traced back some five millennia to Tiâmat the Dragon Queen. Her Akkadian name actually means ’salt waters’ and had its equivalent in the Hebrew ’tehôm’ (or ’tehômot’ in the plural), as used in Old Testament references to ’the deep’.

The name Mary, which is associated with the Messianic line (as in the Blessed Mary, Mary Magdalen, etc.), was itself linked to the sea (as in the French: ’mer’, and its Latin equivalent) – also with water in general. It is an English form, based upon a Greek variant of the Hebrew Miriam along with the Egyptian Mery, meaning ’beloved’ (as in Merytaten: Beloved of Aten). For this reason, in some conventual orders, the nuns still use the titular style of Mary in front of their baptismal given names: Sister Mary Louise, Sister Mary Theresa and the like.

Alongside the Mary Magdalene movement in 1^st-century Provence was that of her colleague Mary Jacob. She was the New Testament wife of Cleopas (as given in the Gospel of John) who had accompanied the Magdalene to Gaul in AD 44, as detailed in The Acts of Magdalene in the Vatican Archives. St. Mary Jacob was a Nazarene priestess, who became better known in Europe as Mary the Gypsy or Mary the Egyptian (from which the word ’gypsy’ derived). In England her cult was widespread in medieval times and her Oath of Wedlock was referred to as the Merrie – from which the verb ’to marry’ derives, as does the tag applied to Merrie Englande. Often depicted with a fish-tail, Mary the Gypsy was an original ’merrie-maid’ (a mermaid), and she was given the attributive name Marina in the Middle Ages. She is portrayed as such alongside Mary Magdalene in a window at the Church of St. Marie in Paris, and her memory is preserved in Maid Marian and the Merrie Men of the Robin Hood legends.

In ancient Egypt it was common practice for the pharaohs to marry their sisters in order to progress their kingship through the female line. These wives were often the pharaohs’ half-sisters, born of their mothers by different fathers, for it was the mitochondrial DNA of the matrilinear succession that was important to the dynasties. (Although mitochondria is inherited from mothers by both sons and daughters, it is only passed on by the daughters, since this DNA resides within the female egg cells.)

It can be seen from plotted genealogical charts of the era that, although Egypt had many successive kingly dynasties, these houses were only renamed and renumbered when a pharaoh died without a male heir. The important thing was that his queen had a female heiress, and it was upon that daughter’s marriage into another male line that a new dynasty began. Many pharaohs had a number of strategically chosen wives and often married into the various strains of the original royal blood of Mesopotamia from which the early pharaonic dynasties were themselves descended. In such cases, the crown princes would marry the daughters of their fathers’ second or junior queens, thereby perpetuating an apparent patrilinear descent, but in fact heightening the female blood of their line in favour of successive generations.

The story of matrilinear royal descent traces back thousands of years to the very dawn of recorded time when the great Anunnaki Lord of the Sky was Anu. He is documented on clay tablets and cylinder seals from the 3^rd millennium BC, discovered in the Sumerian delta eden of the Persian Gulf. His queenly consorts were his sisters: Antu, Lady of the Sky, and Ki, the Earth Mother.

Anu had two sons: Enlil (whose mother was Ki) and Enki (whose mother was Antu). Enki had two wives, one of whom was his half-sister Nîn-khursag, the Lady of Life. By the same token, Enlil similarly had two wives, including Nîn-khursag who was, therefore, consort to each of her brothers. This deiform family had descended from the great Mother Goddess Tiâmat – described in the Enûma elish (the original Creation account which preceded the writing of the Old Testament’s book of Genesis by more than 2000 years) as ’She who bore them all’.

The rule of kingly descent through the senior female line appears to have been established from the outset when a dispute over entitlement arose between the brothers Enki and Enlil. The Anunnaki overlords were said to have governed by way of a Grand Assembly of councillors who sat at Nippur. They consisted of eight members (seven males and a female), who held the Rings of divine justice, along with their president, Anu, who held the One Ring to bind them all. This conforms precisely with the Nine Kingdoms of the Volsunga Saga, which cites Odin as the ultimate presidential Ring Lord. As the original god-kings of Mesopotamia, this Assembly was said to have introduced kingly practice which, according to the Sumerian King List (dating from before 2000 BC) was ’lowered from heaven’.

The Anunnaki fraternal dispute arose when Anu resigned his presidency of the Grand Assembly, at which point his elder son Enlil became the apparent candidate. His brother Enki challenged this on the basis that, although he was younger than Enlil, he was the senior son and royal successor because his mother, Antu, was Anu’s senior sister, whereas Enlil’s mother, Ki, was Antu’s junior. Therefore, claimed Enki,

"I am the great brother of the gods. I am he who has been born as the first son of the divine Anu".

As such, it was his mother Antu who held the primary office of queenship, and among her variously recorded titles, the later Kassite Kings of Mesopotamia (from around 1750 BC) called her the Lady of the Fire-stone, granting her the name Barat-Anna. This derived from the Kassite royal stem BRT (rather like the modrn HRH) and from the Akkadian An-na (meaning Fire-stone).

Barat-Anna (Barati to the Phoenicians) was the Great Mother of the Air and Sea, the Goddess of Light and Fire who was later identified with Diana of the Nine Fires. Her symbol was the Rosi-crucis (the Cup of the waters) – a cross within a circle which, as we have seen, was the original emblem of the Grail bloodline from the 4^th millennium BC. On early Phoenician coins, it is significant that Barat-Anna is portrayed sitting on the sea-shore with the Rosi-crucis emblem beneath her chair. This very same image was transported by the Kassites into the Gaelic realms of Europe and, eventually, found its way onto the coins of Britain, where Barat-Anna was redefined as Britannia and given a torch to signify her fire-alchemy status.

From the 17^th century, when Frances la belle Stuart (the daughter of Lord Blantyre) modelled for the updated Britannia image used on British pennies until recent times, the Rosi-crucis emblem was enlarged and adapted to become the Union Jack shield, but it remained a rounded device. Also, the torch of fire was replaced by a lighthouse and Britannia was given a trident but, in all other respects, this supposed unique symbol of Britain’s tribal goddess is not British at all; it is ancient Phoenician.

The Kassites of Mesopotamia, who venerated the goddess Barat-Anna, were kin to a line descended from the biblical Esau. The book of Genesis explains that Esau had a number of wives, one being a princess of the old line called Bashemath, by whom he had two prominent grandsons: Nahath, Lord of Edom, and Shammah-si, also Lord of Edom. Despite their listing in the Bible (only to be sidestepped in favour of pursuing a junior course from Esau’s brother Jacob), the powerful Lords of Edom are still given an amount of temporary prominence, being cited as ’The kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel’ .

Not only did the family of Esau inherit Edom, but they became Kings of Assyria and Lords of the Babylonian Sea Land from around 1780 BC. Later successors of the line were the Hyksos Kings of Egypt: the shepherd-guardians who reigned in the Nile Delta simultaneously with the 17^th pharaonic dynasty of Thebes. During that same era, from about 1750 BC, their cousin line of Kassites governed Greater Mesopotamia, bringing a return to law and order after some 200 years of turmoil since the departure of the Anunnaki overlords. Subsequently, from around 1600 BC, they ruled more specifically in Babylonia and Sumer for another 500 years.

What emerges from these coextensive tribal histories is that there were common Sumerian roots in Anunnaki times between the Kassites and the biblical family of Esau who, as Genesis explains, descended from the patriarchs of Ur. Their mutual interest in horse-drawn vehicles is also significant since it pulls the families back beyond Sumerian times to the Kurgan race of Scythia and the Russian steppe-lands who originated the concept.

In recent times there have been some astonishing discoveries in this regard – discoveries which prove that Sumerian was not the first written language as is commonly portrayed, and that the Sumerian culture (generally held to be the earliest cradle of civilization) had an older origin of its own. Indeed, the Ring Lord culture and the notion of earthly kingship did not begin in ancient Sumer; it began long before in the Balkans, specifically in Transylvania and the Carpathian regions.

Since these discoveries are especially relevant to the fairy lore of the druidic Sidhé, we shall consider them at a more appropriate later stage of our investigation. Meanwhile, in preparation for this, we should continue our journey with the Kassites. These people gained their name from the word Kassi, which meant ’Place of Wood’ – the place in question being a sacred royal mound dwelling, variantly called a Caddi. By virtue of this, the Kassites were designated Wood Lords.

In the 12^th century, Melusine’s descendant, Robert de Vere, 3^rd Earl of Oxford and legal pretender to the Earldom of Huntingdon, was appointed as King Richard I’s Steward of the forest lands of Fitzooth. As Lord of the Greenwood and titular Herne of the Wild Hunt, he was a popular people’s champion of the Sidhé heritage - as a result of which he was outlawed for taking up arms against King John. It was he who, subsequently styled Robin Fitzooth, became a prototype for the popular tales of Robin Hood.

Of all the monarchs who ever sat upon the Throne of England, the Tudor Queen, Elizabeth I, was by far the most in tune with ancient cultures and wood lore. She was even called the ’Fairie Queen’ and, before being formally crowned, she was installed by the people as their Queen of the Greenwood. This was an ancient ritual of the Shining Ones - the elven race of the Albi gens. The ceremony was conducted in the mist of early dawn in the depths of Windsor Forest and, to facilitate the installation, the customary Robin Hood legacy of the House of Vere was brought into play.

At that time the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain was Edward de Vere of Loxley, 17^th Earl of Oxford, and it was his office to invest Elizabeth by first deposing the Caille Daouine. This was the traditional King of the Forest (whose name had given rise to Scotland’s Pictish realm of Caledonia) - the mighty Stag of the Seven Tines, upon whose back Lord Vere rode into the ceremonial clearing.

Edward de Vere of Oxford was a friend and student of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Secret Service operative, John Dee, and he worked closely with the statesman and philosopher, Francis Bacon (later Viscount St Albans). Between them (along with others) they comprised the Royal Court Syndicate, which was responsible for providing much of the material for the works of their playwright colleague, William Shakespeare.

As mentioned in connection with Melusine, fountains, springs and water in general were always associated with the Ring Lord female line. This stems from the very earliest times of the Anunnaki, whose founding mother (as explained in ancient Mesopotamian literature) was Tiâmat the sea-dragon. In later times these queens were commonly represented as mermaids (mere maids), and were often called Ladies of the Lake. This was a style granted to Mary Magdalene when she had settled in Provence from AD 44.

While the male descendants of her and Jesus became the noted Fisher Kings in Gaul, the female line retained its Dragon Queen status, in a quite separate dynasty, as the matriarchal Queens of Avallon in Burgundy. They were known as the House del Acqs (the House of the Waters) and among their number was the great 6^th-century Queen Viviane, revered as the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian romance. This heritage was so important to the Celtic Church that, when King Kenneth MacAlpin united the Scots and Picts in 844, his extant installation document made special mention of his descent from the Queens of Avallon.

The true significance of King Arthur was his immediate joint descent in both the male and female lines of the Albi gens. His father was King Aedàn of Dalriada, the Pendragon of Britain in the year 559 - a descendant of the Wood Lord, Beli Mawr. His mother was Ygerna del Acqs, the daughter of Queen Viviane, whose grandson (by Ygerna’s sister, Viviane II) was the legendary Lancelot del Acqs. Ygerna (sometimes called Igraine in the Grail tradition) was the High Queen of the Celtic kingdoms and her daughter, Morgaine (by her first husband, Gwyr Llew of Carlisle), was High Priestess of the Sisters of Avallon.

There have, over the years, been any number of speculations concerning the historical Arthur, but these are mainly fronted by tourist establishments endeavouring to claim the Arthurian heritage for their particular parts of England or Wales. The fact is, however, that (in line with the traditional accounts) there was only ever one High King of Britain called Arthur. There was only ever one Arthur born as the son of a Pendragon. There was only ever one Arthur whose mother was Igraine of Avallon and whose grandmother was the recognized Lady of the Lake. There as only ever one Arthur with a son named Modred, and there was only ever one Arthur with a sister called Morgaine (or Morganna as some of the stories refer to her). In this regard, the old annals of Scotland and Ireland, along with the records of the Celtic Church, are unanimous in identifying Arthur mac Aedàn of Dalriada. He was invested as Sovereign Commander and High King in the year 575 by the druid, Merlin Emrys, and his primary seat was at Carlisle in the north of England, from where he controlled the military defence of the English-Scottish Border country.

Reverting, once more, to the Raths (or royal mound dwellings), we should perhaps consider the fact that, as mentioned, these Portals to the Netherworld were called Tepes - for this was the very style afforded to one of the most enigmatic of all Gothic figures - Count Dracula. Historically, and quite outside the Christian propagandist mythology which surrounds the vampire character of Bram Stoker’s famous novel, Dracula was Prince Vlad III of Wallachia, who is often referred to as Vlad Tepes.

Since the word ’Tepes’ relates to wooden poles, it is often thought that Vlad’s descriptive nickname relates to his individual method of executing enemies of the State by impaling them upon wooden stakes. Hence, Vlad Tepes is sometimes said to mean Vlad the Impaler. This, however, is completely untrue. He was called ’Tepes’ (as were many other druidic elders before him) because, within the ancient Ring Lord culture of the Sidhé, he was an appointed Creachaire Portal Guardian.

Vlad Tepes, a 15^th-century Prince in Romania, founded the capital city of Bucharest. His popularized name, Dracula, means, ’Son of Dracul’, and Dracul (or Dragon) was a style by which his father was known within the Grail fraternity of the Ordo Draconis (The Imperial Court of the Dragon) from 1431. During this past century, ever since the 1897 novel, Dracula, was published, Vlad has become an archetype of the Church-promoted Gothic tradition. However, the establishment’s real fear of Dracula was not his harsh treatment of enemies, as is so often cited, nor that he was a blood-sucking vampire in the Stoker tradition. What they feared was his in-depth knowledge of alchemy and the fact that he was truly an operative Oupire - a venerated Overlord of the Rath - a Portal Guardian in the ancient Yulannu manner of the Ring Lords.

Those of you who have read Bloodline of the Holy Grail, or maybe even Genesis of the Grail Kings, will be familiar with the terracotta portrayal of the Sumerian goddess, Lilith (below image), from around 2000 BC. In this depiction (as in those of other Anunnaki hierarchy) Lilith is seen to be holding the Rod and Ring of Divinely Measured Justice. The Rod was actually an instrument of measure - and in some portrayals it is very clearly marked in calculable units (like a modern ruler). By Babylonian times, it was referred to as the Rule, and the one who held the Rule was the ’Ruler’ - which is from where our governmental term derives.

The Ring (as mentioned at the beginning of this talk) was a symbol of wholeness, unity and eternity. It represented a continuance of divine justice - a justice that was measured by the Rod (or Rule). Hence, the Ring was the ultimate insignia of the Anunnaki overlords - the enigmatic Oupires who were responsible for the establishment of municipal government and kingly practice - for they were the progenitors of civilization from about 4000 BC.

In view of this, it is of particular interest to note that Tolkien answered (when asked about his book’s Middle Earth environment) that he perceived its setting to relate to somewhere around 4000 BC.

"The cauldron has always been boiling", he said, "We simply add new ingredients to the soup".

In this respect, his popular tale, although enthralling, was not actually new in concept. From the earliest of European times, the Saxon god, Wotan (or Odin - the equivalent of the Sumerian Anu), was said to have ruled the world with eight rings - having one more, the ninth ring (the One Ring), to govern the others.

During the medieval days of the Church’s persecution of heretics and, indeed, through the Middle Ages and beyond, all manner of Grail-related subject matter fell prey to the wrath of the bishops and friars. Unsuspecting victims were accused of any number of apparently unsavoury practices, and any association with the Ring culture was proscribed. Indeed, when Joan of Arc was accused of witchcraft, one of the charges laid against her by the bishops was that she used magical rings for enchantment and curative purposes. As a result, she was burnt at the stake in 1431. But recently, in 1920, the Church reconsidered her case and she was pardoned and canonized!

As detailed in Bloodline of the Holy Grail, not only were proscriptions levelled against the Prophesies of Merlin - with a good deal of other literature confined to the supposedly ’lost’ coffers of the Dark Ages - but pictorial art also came under close scrutiny and many new rules were made. One of these was that the Virgin Mary must only be portrayed wearing blue and white (just as she is commonly depicted today). The reason for this was that other colours, especially the red of the cardinals, might have implied that she held some form of ecclesiastical office within a Church that afforded no clerical status to women.

What is not so commonly known is that the Church’s regulations also applied to music - in particular ancient music which could be traced to cultures other than that of Rome, Greece or Lydia. It is by virtue of these implemented regulations that so many of today’s reference books determine that, for the most part, music evolved either from Greece, or from various parts of the Roman Empire.

It is precisely the same with the English language, which is largely, but quite erroneously, said to derive from Greek or Latin. To cement this notion very firmly into our culture, we are taught from the classical literature of Homer and Virgil - but what is always forgotten is that both the Greek and Roman languages themselves evolved from other, far older, sources. Much of the language of Europe, including the English language, can be traced back into Phoenicia, Syria, Egypt, India and Mesopotamia - with many of the word stems being thousands of years old.

In the world of music, we have the very same scenario and, by virtue of discoveries made in the past few decades, there is no doubt that structured and sequenced music played a major role way back in the days of the Babylonian kingdoms and beyond. Silver pipes, bells and drums, along with beautifully ornamented harps and lyres, have all been unearthed in ancient Sumer from graves dating back five or six thousand years, and it is known that lutes were also used.

Buried along with kings and queens of the Dragon succession, these finely produced instruments were clearly ceremonial, and would appear to have been used in ancient Star Fire and Fire-stone rituals described in Genesis of the Grail Kings. The Fire-stone ritual (the ritual of the goddess Antu - or Barat An-na) was largely a levitation ceremony conducted with the monatomic, superconductive element of the Highward Fire-stone (the White Powder of Gold).

Even in modern times, music has been used to perform levitational feats - notably in Tibet, where prohibitively large stone blocks have been lifted and positioned high in the mountains by using anti-gravitational sound frequencies. The ritual involves 19 musicians and, behind them, 200 monks, radiating outwards in lines (in groups of five) at 5-degree intervals facing towards a mountain cave.

The musicians use 13 barrel-drums of variant sizes (weighing up to 150 kilograms apiece) - suspended from wooden frames and directed towards a bowl-shaped cavity in which the required boulder is placed, between the musicians and the cave. Also, there are six long trumpets positioned at intervals between the drummers. On command, the trumpets and drums begin, with the monks at the rear providing a baffle whilst chanting. The time-span before levitation of the stone occurs is four minutes and, in this manner, stones have been lifted some 400 meters to be lowered into their necessary mountain temple positions.

Having made an intensive study of the intricacies of this ancient procedure, Adrian Wagner has recreated a musical enactment in The Phoenix and the Fire-stone track of the Genesis of the Grail Kings album - strategically breaking the sequence with a Golden Mean partition and concluding immediately before the four-minute deadline. Locked within this are frequencies that are so low as to be inaudible to conscious awareness, but which resonate directly with the frequency of the pineal gland. This, as many of you will know, is the gland responsible for heightened states of awareness and perception.

Compilation Track from 'Realm of the Ring' by Adrian Wagner

Also included within the Genesis album are aspects of musical harmonics which were banned by the Vatican in the Middle Ages, subsequent to their use by the Knights Templars and Cistercian monks in the construction of their Magdalene-dedicated Notre Dame cathedrals, which are noted for their architectural defiance of gravitational theory. The Knights of this particular branch of the Templars (constituted by King Baldwin of Jerusalem in 1118) were called The Guardian Princes of the Royal Secret.

One of these musical sequences is the most famous of all - a Tritone dubbed by the Church as the ’Devil’s Interval’. This is a direct extraction from the discovered harmonic scales of ancient Mesopotamian deities, which include the Enki Scale, Enlil Scale, Anu Scale, Marduk Scale, Kingu Scale, Inanna Scale and others.

No composer has done so much to preserve the legacy of Ring lore as Adrian’s great-great-grandfather, Richard Wagner. His renowned 16-hour, 4-part Nibelungen Ring Cycle (The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried and Gotterdamerung - The Twilight of the Gods) was largely drawn from Burgundian folklore, and to some extent from the very old Norse mythology of the Volsunga Saga.

The Ring’s ultimately key character is the warrior Siegfried who, while under the spell of a potion, betrays the woman he loves - a goddess turned mortal called Brunhilde - who then masterminds his death. Subsequently, however, she realizes her error and throws herself upon Siegfried’s funeral pyre to be with him in eternity. The magical Ring that Siegfried gave to Brunhilde is retrieved from the ashes by the Rhinemaidens - the rightful water guardians of the gold. And, by virtue of this, along with Brunhilde’s self-sacrifice, a hitherto curse (placed upon the Ring by Alberic the Nibelung, Dwarf-lord of the Underworld) is lifted.

The Ring had originally been stolen from the Rhinemaidens by the Nibelung, who lost it to Brunhilde’s father, the sky-god Wotan. Then Siegfried had won it by killing a dragon. But, upon the final cleansing of the Ring by the Rhinemaidens, Wotan perishes, together with his dream kingdom of Valhalla. With the Ring now back in its rightful hands, the world is redeemed and the Cycle is complete.

And so, once again the traditional Ring lore is apparent - just as in Tolkien and the Grail stories, for the Ring is finally seen to destroy those who hold it without the right of affinity. The golden Ring itself (forged from the enchanted flat-stone of the Rhinegold) had the power to afford its master the lordship of all the world, but only at the cost of forsaking love and selling his soul to the Ring’s awesome power. In terms of the straightforward Messianic line of King David and Jesus, the most powerful of the Ring Lords was King Solomon who, in the traditional Judaic writings of the Talmud, was said to be the mightiest magician of his age. His great wisdom and considered judgment as a sorcerer-king were directly attributed to his ownership of an enchanted ring, and the legend of King Solomon’s Ring was clearly a major inspiration for Tolkien.

In the same manner as Solomon, Tolkien’s Ring Lord, Sauron, used his One Ring to command all the demons of the earth. Solomon used the demons to build a Temple of Jerusalem, whilst Sauron used them to build the Tower of Mordor. The rings were also similar (as is usual in the tradition) in that each had the power to corrupt and destroy its master. Solomon’s ring achieves his downfall through the agency of the demon Asmodaeus, whereas Sauron is, in effect, his own destructive demon.

Along with the rings, there are also story similarities concerning the possession of light-radiating jewels, with Solomon’s being the Schamir and the Elf-king Thingol’s being the Silmaril - each of which is said to be an heirloom of the respective King’s race.

By virtue of such Jewish writings, the Dominican wrath of the Spanish Inquisition (from about 1480) was largely directed against the Jews - especially those connected with Kabbalistic studies - and it was really as a direct result of this persecution that the witch-hunts began.

Prior to that, the Roman Inquisition had been more concerned with heterodox Christians: those heretics who were Christians of one sort or another (Arians, Nestorians, Nazarenes, or whatever), but were not members of the Roman Church and whose culture revolved, to some extent, around traditions of magic and alchemy that were outside Church control. But, here were the Jews putting forward their own versions of the old lore - particularly those in the Narbonne region of the Spanish Marches, where the House of David had once been given privileged rights of princely independence by Emperor Charlemagne. It was recognized, therefore, that the net should be cast over a wider arena, so as to take account of those of completely different persuasions. It was no longer a matter of the Church simply endeavouring to clean up the Christian house. What of the Jews? What of the Muslims? What of the pagans in general?

And so, from the late 15^th century, the Inquisition began a thorough process of ’ethnic cleansing’. No one who was other than a full-blooded and obvious Catholic was safe. But, there had to be some new form of classification to pull all the prey into the ever expanding net. The Grand Inquisitor at the time was the brutal Tomâs de Torquemada, senior confessor to Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain. Under his direction the answer was found and, very soon, the friars had set their sights upon what it called ’the most diabolical heathens who ever conspired to overthrow the Roman Church’.

In 1484, two Dominicans, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, published a book called The Hammer of Witches. This evil but imaginative work gave full details of what was perceived to be the hideous new threat posed by all the practitioners of satanic magic. The book was so persuasive that, two years later, Pope Innocent VIII issued an official Bull to authorize the suppression of this blasphemous sect. Up to that point, the cult known as ’witchcraft’ (to the extent that it existed at all) had not really constituted a threat to anyone. It rested mainly in the continuation of pagan ritual and fertility rites by the peasant classes.

In real terms, it was little more than the vestige of a primeval belief in the divine power of natural forces, focused above all on Pan, the mischievous Arcadian god of the shepherds. Pan was traditionally portrayed with the legs, ears and horns of a goat, but the creative Dominicans had other ideas about the pipe-playing Horned One, and they blackened his image so that he was seen to correspond to the very Devil himself. However, since the Inquisitors were all men, it was determined that witchcraft must be a form of depravity linked to the insatiable wantonness of women!

The problem was that nobody really knew who these presumed witches were - and so a series of ludicrously tragic trials and tests was devised to root them out. In the midst of all of this, the harsh Puritan sect became politically allied to the Roman strategy, implementing their own witch-hunts in England and, later, in America. Over a period of some 250 years, more than a million innocent men, women and children were murdered by the delegated authority of the witch-finders.

It was against the backdrop of this religious fanaticism and persecution that the Renaissance movement was born - an era of rebirth and resurrection facilitated by an environment of democratic free-thinking. This era (with its height in the early 1500s) was the age when Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo developed the harmony of classical art to its highest form. And it was the age in which the excitement of pagan-orientated scholarship re-emerged in a burst of colour to cross new frontiers of science, architecture and design.

During the course of this, in 1614 and 15, two tracts known as the Rosicrucian Manifestos emerged from Germany. These were immediately followed by an associated romance called The Chemical Wedding, written by the Lutheran pastor Johann Valentin Andreae. The publications announced a new age of enlightenment and Hermetic liberation in which certain universal secrets would be unlocked and made known.

In view of the advent of Britain’s scientific Royal Society and the inspired work of Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Edmund Halley, Christopher Wren and others a few decades later, the prophecies were correct enough but, at the time, they were veiled in allegory and appeared to convey an even more pertinent message. The writings centered upon the travels and learning of a mysterious character named Christian Rosenkreutz - a Brother of the Rosy Cross. His name was plainly designed to have Rosicrucian significance, and he was depicted wearing the apparel of the Knights Templars.

The action of The Chemical Wedding takes place in the magical Castle of the Bride and Bridegroom - a palace filled with lion effigies, where the courtiers are students of Plato. In a setting worthy of any Grail romance, the Virgin Lamplighter arranges for all present to be weighed on the scales, while a clock tells the motions of the heavens and the Golden Fleece is presented to the guests. Music from strings and trumpets is played throughout, and all is cloaked in an atmosphere of chivalry, while knights in Holy Orders preside.

Beneath the castle stands a mysterious sepulchre bearing strange inscriptions, and outside in the harbour lie twelve ships of the Golden Stone flying their individual flags of the Zodiac. Amid this curious reception, a fantasy play is conducted to tell the compelling story of an unnamed princess who, cast ashore in a wooden chest, is discovered by a prince, whom she marries, thereby causing a usurped royal heritage to be restored.

This is another Lost Bride fairy story of the type we have already seen. But, when combined with the two earlier publications, The Chemical Wedding’s Grail significance was blatantly obvious, and the Church wasted no time in bringing the full weight of its condemnation against the Rosicrucian movement.

Having considered the historical fairies, pixies and elves, we can now take a look at some others of the so-called Shining Ones: the sprites, goblins and gnomes.

The definition ’sprite’ means no more nor less than a ’spirit person’ - one of the transcendental realm of the Sidhé. The original Sprites were the ancient Scythian ghost warriors, who painted their bodies grey-blue to look like corpses when they entered the battlefield.

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the character, Puck, is described as a ’sprite’ and, in traditional English wood lore, Puck is identified with a certain Robin Goodfellow, who was said to be a ’goblin’. His father was Herne the Hunter. Hence, Oberon and Herne are one and the same. The name, Oberon (a variant of Albrey the Elf-king, as we have seen) is itself a derivative of the Scythian Oupire (meaning ’over’) and Ron (meaning ’reign’). Oberon, therefore, means ’Over Reign’ - which is the same as High King or Pendragon.

The description of ’goblin’ stems immediately from the Germanic word, ’kobelin’ - and the ’kobelins’ were said to be mine-workers or those who worked underground. In the context of the Ring culture, goblins were, in essence, attendants of the Oupire Portal Guardians of the Rath - the mound dwellings of the Tepes gateways to the ancestral Netherworld - and they were just as human as the Oupires themselves.

Gnomes, like goblins, were said to be the guardians of the underground treasures - which is why the word is today associated with banking, as in the Gnomes of Zurich. The word root is in the Greek equivalent of gno, from which we get gnosis and gnoble (noble). The gnomes were, therefore, once again, of the noble race and were referred to as the Wise Ones. Their job was indeed one of guardianship: they were guardians of the gnosis (the knowledge) and of the sacred bloodline of the Albi gens. It is by way of the noble (or gnomic) distinction that the fairy race in general was referred to as the ’gentry’ - particularly the druidic caste of the Pict-sidhé (the pixies) who were the ultimate custodians of law and culture. Their female counterparts were the Behn-sidhé (the Banshee), which, in old Irish, simply means ’wise women’.

In life, when presented with a seemingly unsurmountable problem, one can either submit to the stress and pressure that it causes or, alternatively, one can mentally diminish the problem. That does not mean that it goes away, but it can appear less harassing and more controllable. Well, that was precisely what the Church did with the Dragon succession: the Ring Lords of the Albi gens - the sacred Bloodline of the Holy Grail.

By way of redefining all the original names: fairies, elves, pixies, gnomes, goblins, sprites or whatever, they diminished the problem by miniaturizing the nominal significance. In so doing, the transcendental race of the Sidhé were portrayed as minute little figures and were moved into the realm of mythology. The fraudulent Donation of Constantine was then brought into play and, henceforth, only the Church could determine who was and was not a king!

If this strategy did not work sufficiently on its own, as was indeed the case in the Renaissance (a period of a more general awareness and enlightenment), then Par t-2 of the plan was brought into operation. This was more specifically targeted at the key members of the Messianic strain - the ultimate Dragon succession of the Albi gens: the dynastic kings and queens of the Sangréal and their senior Oupires. These people were real, and everyone knew that - so they could not be confined to the superficial realm of fantasy. They could, however, be portrayed as if (being of the Dragon blood) they were of a weird, half-human strain, beyond the Christian pale. At best, they were perhaps mermaids and, at worst, they were vampires but, either way, they were the evil shapeshifting emissaries of Satan!

The fact that anyone believed such nonsense is difficult to comprehend in these more level-headed times. However, the myth is still operative and, to some extent, it is still working with a vengeance. It is even working on some whose apparent mission in life is to expose such propagandist dogma, but who (by way if its own cleverly contrived strategy) have actually fallen prey to it. In this regard, at this very moment, there are some well-known, supposedly intelligent folk, who should know better, claiming that the British Royal Family, along with myself and others, are really hideous reptiles from another planet!

One of the most surprising things about the Scythian Ring Lords is that their preserved remains from thousands of years ago (discovered even as far north as Siberia) show their bodies substantially tattooed with ring-tailed lemurs. Lemurs, we are led to believe, are native to (and pretty much restricted to) Madagascar and the Comoros Islands off Mozambique - but here they are, where we are told they never were, in Northern Europe and the Black Sea regions!

It has long been known that there was once a continent, inhabited by a great king-tribe, which was noted for its lemurs. Hence, it has been dubbed ’Lemuria’ - setting a good many enthusiasts searching for its sunken whereabouts beneath the Atlantic, Pacific or Indian Oceans, as if it were the Lost City of Atlantis. Maybe such a concealed territory does exist. However, the fact is that (by whatever name it was once known) the mightiest Lemurian land tract was never lost. It was the great mainland continent which still exists today - stretching across eastern Europe through the one-time USSR.

This was the original realm of the great Ring Lords - tracing back to about 40,000 BC - the homeland of the Oupires of the Pict-sidhé. It was the land of the mighty Warlords of the Dragon before they migrated and battled their way southwards in the ever cooling climate of the last Ice Age. Undoubtedly, the environment was once very warm there, as is proved by the fact that the lemurs travelled about as far south as they could possibly go by land before Madagascar and the Comoros broke away from the southern African mainland.

What did these early God-kings look like? Well, they are now thoroughly identifiable from their preserved remains, which have been excavated at various sites from as far afield as Transylvania and Tibet. With their light-brown to red hair and pale eyes, the leather-clad men stood at least 6ft 6ins and upwards, while even the women were over 6ft tall. Undoubtedly, these forebears of the Gaelic and Celtic High-kings were among the most awesome warriors of all history.

Of particular interest is the fact that the Anunnaki gods were as much a part of the Sidhé culture as they were of the Mesopotamian tradition. It was not for no reason that the settlement of Anu was hundreds of miles north of Sumer on the Caspian Sea. It was not for no reason that the ancient centre of Scythopolis (Sidhé-opolis), which the Syrians called Beth-Shean (the House of Power), was 800 miles away in Galilee.

Indeed, It is now suspected that the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia - the culture which introduced municipal structure from about 5000 BC - was actually the ’Uper-ad’ culture: that of the Scythian Overlords - the Upers (or Oupires). It is also reckoned that the subsequent culture of the region, phonetically called ’Sumerian’ (pronounced Shumerian), was actually Sidhé-murian (Shee-murian). In fact, the case for this is now considerable, since the early Ring Lords of Scythia (the Tuatha Dé Danann king-tribe) were actually called the Sumaire. And in the language of old Ireland - to where many of the caste migrated - the word sumaire meant ’dragon’.

So, why have we not learned about these people in our histories? The answer is straightforward. They were, in practice, the real Elves and Fairies of our heritage, but their story was quashed from the earliest days of Roman suppression and subjugation - as the diminution of their figures caused a parallel diminution of their history.

The fact is, however, that for all we have been told about our cultural identity being from the classical scholarship of Greece, or from the imperial majesty of Rome, these things are entirely untrue. Such establishments appeared very late in the day.

The true sovereign heritage of our culture - the culture from which derived all the so-called myth and legend which sits so comfortably within our race memory (no matter what the Church and academics might say in their attempts to sway us) - comes from one place alone. It comes from a place and time that might just as well be called Middle Earth as by any other name. It comes from the long distant Realm of the Ring Lords.