Well, the first thing you can do is to trace your family tree. Laura did it. But from what little I know and remember I don't think she continued because that information would later be sold or used by third parties. Correct me if I am wrong.
That is very interesting. I knew Laura was tracing her ancestry but I didn't know she had abandoned it because she feared that the information would be sold or used by third parties. She did have this to say about it in the transcripts though:
Q: Well, they claim that they are the direct descendants of Christ through Mary Magdalene. But, getting back to the subject of Percy and knight. Through Gaelic we relate Percy to Perch, to March, to horse, to Mer, to sea, to "Mary," and then knight goes back again to juga and yogi, which then comes forward to Jadczyk, and all of them relate to genetics. And then we come back to the issue of my father, as a Knight, and my own ancestors, Henry Percy and Elizabeth Mortimer. The Mortimers were the Earls of March, and the carriers of the only extant line of the Welsh kings. So back to my father. Realizing of course, that he was a fraternal twin, he had black hair and brown eyes, and his brother was red haired and blue eyed, which makes for an unusual situation to start with. Was there something else unusual about his birth?
A: Yes.
Q: And what was this?
A: It was "conscripted."
Q: Do you mean that one or the other of the twins was implanted?
A: Well, maybe you should research "conscript."
[....]
Q: Okay. If the line of the Percys' comes through my mother, what are we looking for through the Knights? What came together here in my parents? It is beginning to look like something was 'engineered' for some definite purpose?
A: Yes. And we suggest you research this!
Q: I was only able to take the Knight line back to Abel Knight* who came to America from York, in the mid 1600’s. Is there some connection in York?
A: Further research is needed, and it is easier than you think.
*The name "Abel" may create an interesting reference to something the C's once said in the
session dated 21 June 1997:
Q: Funny spelling! But, what is the contrast between the concept of the shepherd and the agriculturalist? This goes back to the very roots of everything? There is Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Ishmael...
A: Are not you "abel" to figure this out?
In the biblical
Book of Genesis, Cain and Abel are the first two sons of Adam and Eve. Cain, the firstborn, was a farmer, and his brother Abel was a shepherd. The brothers made sacrifices, each from his own fields, to God. God had regard for Abel's offering, but had no regard for Cain's. As a result, Cain killed Abel out of envy and God then cursed Cain, sentencing him to a life of transience or wandering. Genesis provides that Cain then dwelt in the
land of Nod (נוֹד, 'wandering'), where he built a city and fathered the line of descendants beginning with Enoch.
No doubt the C's were having a bit of fun at Laura's expense by using the word or name "
abel" in place of the verb "
able" here. However, is there any chance they may also have been trying to draw attention to Laura's ancestor Abel Knight at the same time?
Cain and Abel are clearly archetypes and we know that Jacob was just another persona of Abraham/Moses whilst Esau was yet another biblical figure created to embellish the Jewish or Hebrew historic narrative as the chosen race through Abraham's son Isaac. However, Isaac and Ishmael were true historic figures as sons of Sarah/Nefertiti and Hagar/Kore/Meritaten respectively, both fathered by Abraham/Moses. I have suggested that Meritaten eventually took refuge in the British Isles after her flight from Egypt. If so, did she bring her son Ishmael with her after both had supposedly been abandoned in the desert by Abraham/Moses at the behest of Sarah/Nefertiti? I have also suggested that Meritaten may be the figure of the goddess Brigid of the Tuatha de Danann of Irish folklore (the Tribe of Dan?). She even leant her name to a Celtic tribe, the Brigantes, found in both Ireland and northern England, including the area where the present day city of York is situated.
Bearing in mind that the C's indicated that Kore (Hagar/Meritiaten) was the last of the Perseid bloodline, her son Ishmael would also have been of this bloodline too, as would his descendants. I have argued that the Percy's may in fact be of the Perseid family tree but what about the Knights? Were they possibly of Brigantes stock?
It is interesting that Laura's ancestor Abel Knight left York in the mid-1600's to go to America. This would be at the time when Britain was a republic ruled over by
Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, who died in 1658. Cromwell represented the high tide of Puritanism in England. However, after his death, King Charles II (my ancestor) was restored to the throne and reasserted the dominance of the more centrist Protestant Church of England. This would lead some Puritans to abandon England for the New World that was being established in North America (think of the Voyage of the Mayflower here). It should be noted that York was the traditional home of English Freemasonry but was also a bastion of Catholic resistance to Protestantism. For example, York was the home city of
Guy Fawkes who was one of the ringleaders in the
Gunpowder Plot to assassinate King James I (Charles II's grandfather). York had also been the centre of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 when the citizens had revolted against King henry VIII's religious reforms, which established the Church of England. Henry brutally suppressed the uprising with the main leaders being executed. Interestingly, one of those executed was
Sir Thomas Percy, the son of
Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland who was born at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland then, as today, the seat of the Percy family, the Dukes of Northumberland. Hence, could Abel Knight have been a recusant Catholic who, growing tired of living under oppressive puritan rule orchestrated by the dictator Oliver Cromwell, decided to seek a new life in the relatively more tolerant fledgling colonies of English North America?
Alternatively, if, as Laura suspects, her Knight ancestors were descended from a former Knight Templar, an order or society that may well have spawned English Freemasonry, could her ancestor Abel Knight have left York to help institute Freemasonry in North America. There are today many ancestry tracing sites in Britain that offer people the means of checking their ancestry. These on-line based companies probably did not exist when Laura was conducting her research back in the late 1990's. Might it be worth enlisting their services?
Robin Hood and his Merry Men
As to Laura's reference to "
Through Gaelic [Irish] we relate Percy to Perch, to March, to horse, to Mer, to sea, to "Mary ..." in the transcript extract above, this makes me think of the term the "Merry Men" who figured strongly in pre-Reformation English spring time festivities - think here of the legend of Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood Forest fame. Robert Graves, the English poet and mythologist, believed that such an historical character did really exist being one Robert Hood who was born in Wakefield in Yorkshire between the years 1285 and 1295, whose father was a forester called Adam. Robert (Robin) Hood spent 22 years as a bandit in the greenwood successfully evading and defying the authorities with his wife Matilda becoming the 'Maid Marian' of legend. Graves in his book The White Goddess holds that Robert Hood's outlaw band formed a coven of thirteen with his wife Matilda acting as the pucelle or maiden of the coven. However, Maid Marian was also identified with the 'Lady of Misrule' in the medieval Yuletide revels deserting Robin for his rival, the Lord of Misrule. She thus earned a bad name for inconstancy and Maid Marian would often be written as 'Maud Marian', Maud being Mary Magdalene the penitent fallen woman saved by Jesus.
Graves viewed the character of Robin Hood as a cover for an older Celtic religion where "Hood" (or Hod or Hud) meant "log", the log put at the back of the fire, and it was in this log cut from the sacred oak that Robin had once been believed to reside. Thus, Robin Hood's steed was the woodlouse which ran out when the Yule log was burned. In popular superstition, Robin himself escaped up the chimney in the form of a Robin bird and, when Yule ended, he went out as Belin against his rival Bran or Saturn, who had been the 'Lord of Misrule' at the Yule-tide revels. Bran then hid from pursuit in the ivy bush disguised as a Gold Crest Wren but Robin always caught and hanged him - an event recalled in the medieval song 'Who'll hunt the Wren?' cries Robin the Bobbin.
However, as Graves points out, although Christmas was certainly merry in the Middle Ages, 'May Day' was merrier still. As he describes, it was the time of beribboned, Maypoles (phallic symbols), of Collyridian cakes and ale, of wreaths and posies, of lovers' gifts, of archery contests, of merritotters* (see-saws) and merribowks (great vats of milk-punch). But it was particularly the time of mad-merry marriages 'under the greenwood tree' when the dancers from the Green went off hand-in-hand into the greenwood and built themselves little love-bowers and listened hopefully for the merry nightingale. 'Mad Merry' was another popular spelling of 'Maid Marian' and as an adjective it became attached to the magician Merlin (the original 'Old Moore' of the popular almanacs), whose prophetic almanacs were hawked at fairs and merrimakes. Merlin was really Merddin but by the Middle Ages Robin Hood had taken his place as the May Bride's lover. Graves tells us that many of these greenwood marriages, blessed by a renegade friar styled Friar Tuck, were afterwards formally confirmed in the church porch. But very often these 'merrybegots' were repudiated by their fathers. Graves thinks it was probably because each year, by old custom, the tallest and toughest village lad was chosen to be 'Little John' (or 'Jenkin') Robin's deputy in the Merry Men masque that Johnson, Jackson and Jenkinson are today amongst the commonest of English names - Little John's merrybegots. The same may also be true of Robin as well with names like Robson, Hobson, Dobson (all short for Robin), Robinson, Hodson, Hudson and Hood.
*Graves tells us that the word 'merritotter' was perhaps called after the scales (representing the Autumn Equinox) held in the hand of the Virgin in the Zodiac (Virgo) who featured in the Mad Merry Merlin almanac. He also points out that devoted readers of the almanac would naturally have identified her instead with St. Mary Gypsy, for true lovers' fates tottered in her balance, see-sawing up and down. Indeed, according to Graves, the reference to "merry" may not have been to "Mary", as in the Blessed Virgin Mary of Catholic tradition as many believe, but to St. Mary Gypsy. So who was St. Mary Gypsy?
St. Mary Gypsy
Graves explains that when the Crusaders invaded the Holy Land in the early 11th century and built castles and settled down, they found a number of heretical sects living there under Moslem protection who soon seduced them away from orthodoxy (this would certainly seem to be true of the Knights Templar who imbibed a lot of gnostic teachings). Graves tells us that this was how the cult of St Mary Gypsy came to England, having been brought through Compostella in Spain by poor pilgrims with palm branches in their hands, copies of Apocryphal gospels and Aphrodite's (Venus's) scallop shells stitched into their caps - the 'palmers', celebrated in Ophelia's song in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Graves tells us that the medieval troubadours of France enthusiastically adopted this Marian cult. From their French songs would derive the lyrics by 'Anon' which became the chief glory of early English poetry. The troubadours also promoted the concept of chivalry and romantic love (as well as the Grail legend) which swept Western Europe, whereby good manners and courtesy took hold in the courts of the nobility, which subsequently spread to the rude country folk. For Graves, this process saw the emergence of 'Merry England' as the country most engrossed with Mary worship.
As to the pagan roots of Mary Gypsy, Graves explains that this charming virgin with the blue robe and pearl necklace was really the ancient pagan Sea-goddess Marian in transparent disguise - aka Miriam, Mariamne ('Sea Lamb') Myrrhine, Myrtea, Myrrha (the mother of Adonis - the city of Byblos in Lebanon being the 'City of Myrrha'), Maria or Marina - patroness of poets, lovers and proud mother of the 'Archer of Love'. Robin Hood in the ballads always swore by her. Intriguingly, in a medieval Book of the Saints, she is recorded as having worked her passage to the Holy Land, where she was to live for years as a desert anchorite (a female hermit), by offering herself as a prostitute to the whole crew of the only vessel sailing there. Hence, once a saint in Heaven, she showed particular indulgence to the carnal sins.
Graves then tells us that a particular disguise of this Marian was the "merry-maid", as once the word "mermaid" was written. The conventional figure of the mermaid - a beautiful woman with a round mirror, a golden comb and a fish tail - expresses 'The Love Goddess rising from the Sea' - think here of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (see below), which Graves said was an exact icon of her cult:
Quoting Graves: "Tall, golden-haired, blue-eyed, pale-faced, the Love Goddess [Venus/Aphrodite] arrives in her scallop shell at the myrtle grove, and Earth, in a flowery robe, hastens to wrap her in a scarlet gold-fringed mantle."
Graves goes on to say that every initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were of Pelasgian origin, went through a love rite with her representative after taking a cauldron bath. Graves thought the round mirror, to match the comb, may have been some bygone artist's mistaken substitute for the quince (a pear-shaped fruit), which Marian always held in her hand as a love gift but he adds that the mirror also formed a sacred part of the Mysteries and probably stood for 'know thyself'. Graves also adds that the comb was originally a plectrum for plucking lyre strings.
The Greeks called her Aphrodite ('risen from the sea foam') and used the tunny, sturgeon, scallop and periwinkle, all sacred to her, as aphrodisiacs. Her famous temples were built by the sea-side, so it is easy to understand her symbolic fishtail. She can also be identified with the Moon goddess Eurynome whose statue at Phigalia in Arcadia was a mermaid carved in wood. The myrtle, murex and myrrh tree were everywhere sacred to her as was the palm tree, the love-faithful dove and the colours white, green, blue and scarlet.
In English ballad-poetry the mermaid stands for the bitter-sweetness of love and the danger run by the susceptible mariners (once spelt 'merriners') in foreign ports: her mirror and comb standing for vanity and heartlessness.
Graves tells us that Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, officially abolished this Mary or Marian worship but much of the ancient ritual survived within the Church. He cites, for example, the Collyridians, an Arabian sect who used to offer the same cake and liquor at her shrine as they had once offered to Ashtaroth. They offered myrrh too but this practice was considered more orthodox since St Jerome had praised the Virgin Mary as Stilla Maris or 'Myrrh of the Sea'. St Jerome was punning here on the name 'Mary' by connecting it with the Hebrew words marah (brine) and mor (myrrh), recalling the gifts of the Three Wise Men to the infant Jesus at Bethlehem. I would add here that Stella Maris ('Star of the Sea') is one of the official title's of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Catholic tradition.
Returning to Merry England, Graves tells us that Mary Gypsy was soon identified as the Love Goddess known to the Saxons as 'The May Bride' because of her ancient association with the may-tree cult brought to Britain by the Celtic Atrebates tribe in the first century BC or AD. She then paired off with Merddin, by this time Christianised as Robin Hood, apparently a variant of Merddin's Saxon name, Rof Breoht Woden, meaning 'Bright Strength of Woden', also known euphemistically as 'Robin Good-fellow'. Graves tells us that in French the word Robin, which is regarded as a diminutive of Robert but is probably pre-Teutonic, means a ram and also a devil. Thus, a robinet, or water-faucet or tap, is so called because in rustic fountains it was shaped like a ram's head. Graves explains that the two senses of ram and devil were combined in an illustration to a pamphlet published in London in 1639 called Robin Goodfellow, his Mad Pranks and Merry Gests (see below):
Robin was depicted as an ithyphallic god of the witches with young ram's horns sprouting from his forehead, ram's legs, a witches besom over his left shoulder and a lighted candle in his right hand. Behind him in a ring dance a coven of men and women witches in Puritan costume, a black dog adores him, a musician plays a trumpet and an owl flies overhead.
Goodfellow was, as far as historians are aware, a native British spirit who personified the medieval character of the ‘Puck’. His unusual name reflected the popular reference to fairies as the ‘good people’, which symbolised their love of flattery despite their mischievous nature. In the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, as with other supernatural beings, Goodfellow became the subject of negative texts written by Protestant polemicists. In 1625,
Ben Jonson published a ballad from Goodfellow’s perspective which described some of his favourite ways to cause mischief. The song proclaimed that he had been sent from Oberon to play pranks in the human world. He is portrayed as
a lively trickster that could shape-shift [
MJF: Are we possibly looking at an oblique reference to Grey Aliens here?] to confuse the people he encountered, stating ‘
sometimes I meet them like a man, sometimes an oxe, sometimes a hound, and to a horse I turn me can’. Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, was also a character in William Shakespeare's play,
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Based on the Puck of English mythology and the
púca of Celtic mythology, Puck is the first of the main fairy characters to appear in the play and he significantly influences events. He is seen to delight in pranks such as replacing
Nick Bottom's head with that of an ass.
Graves also reminds us that the witches of Somerset called their god Robin and 'Robin Son of Art' was the Devil of Dame Alice Kyteler, the famous early 14th century witch of Kilkenny in Ireland (where my ancestors were the Seneschals or Sheriffs at the time), and used to take the form of a black dog. As to the Devil as a ram, Graves cites the classical instance where in 1303 the Bishop of Coventry honoured the Devil with a satanic Black Mass and saluted with a posterior kiss (
MJF: something the Knights Templar were accused of at their trials in the early 14th century). Curiously, in Cornwall the name Robin means phallus - perhaps linked with the phallic like Maypoles. 'Robin Hood' was also a country name for Red Campion (meaning "champion") perhaps because the flower's cloven petal suggested a ram's hoof and because 'Red Champion' was a title of the witch-god. Graves thought it might be no more than coincidence that 'ram' in Sanskrit was
huda.
So, there you have it. The legend of Robin Hood and his Merry Men and that of Maid Marian are based on ancient pagan beliefs that were preserved through clever disguise in the May Day celebrations (May being the month of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church) of medieval Merry England. Suffice to say that when the Puritans came to power under the leadership of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell in the mid-17th century, all such celebrations were immediately banned.
Brigid as Mary
However, Graves is aware of another Mary who may well come into the frame here who is a familiar figure to us on this thread since it is the Celtic goddess Brigid or Bride. Graves tells us that in medieval Irish poetry, Mary was plainly identified with Brigit or Brigid, the Celtic goddess of poetry. He also tells us that the Christian St Brigit was popularly known as 'Brigit of the Gael'. As mentioned before, Brigid was a triple goddess as the goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft respectively. Graves further tells us that in Gaelic Scotland, where she was known as Bride, her symbol was the White Swan [
MJF: a bird that is also linked to the Greek god Zeus] and she was known as Bride of the Golden Hair [
MJF: think here of the golden-haired Tuatha de Danann of Irish folklore that she was a member of], Bride of the White Hills and mother of the King of Glory. In the Isles of the Hebrides (Bride's isles) she was the patroness of childbirth. Graves thought that her Aegean prototype was Brizo of Delos, a moon-goddess to whom votive ships were offered and whose name was derived by the Greeks from the word
brizein meaning 'to enchant'. The cult of Brigid was much cultivated in Gaul and Britain in Roman times as numerous surviving dedications to her attest. Since Brigid was a goddess of poets, Graves saw her as a muse. He mentions that she shared this muse-ship with another Mary, i.e., 'Mary Egypt' or St. Mary of Egypt in whose honour the oath 'Marry' or 'Mary Gyp!' was sworn. Graves tells us that Brigid, through the character of St Brigit, retained her character of Muse until the Puritan Revolution (in the mid-17th century), her healing powers being exercised largely through poetic incantations at sacred well dedicated to her.
However, Graves did not make a connection between Brigid and another Mary or "Mery" as I have proposed on this thread, which could be the source underpinning the Brigid legend. I have argued that there was a real historic character behind the Celtic cult of the goddess Brigid of the Tuatha de Danann. That person was princess Scotia of Irish and Scottish legend. As I set out in my recent article
The Epic Voyage of Meritaten, Scotia was considered to be an Egyptian princess, the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh, who in my view was Akhenaten. Although Akhenaten had six daughters, the most likely candidate among them to have been Scotia was his eldest daughter Meritaten. The prefix "Meri" or "Mery" means "
beloved of" as in "Beloved of the Aten". Gypsies supposedly take their name from the country of Egypt (although their origins may lie in India) so it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Princess Meritaten of Egypt could have been remembered in Britain as Mery or Mary of Egypt.
Sarah the Egyptian
Some support for this proposition can be found in the writings of the English writer and researcher
Andrew Collins. It is possible that Mary the Egyptian may have been conflated with another saint venerated in France by Gypsies called 'Sarah the Egyptian'. I set out below what I said about this in a post on this thread in September last year (see:
Alton Towers, Sir Francis Bacon and the Rosicrucians):
Collins admits that the name Sa-re had been the final aspect to confuse him. He asked himself why Sobek-nofru-re should have only given her name as Sa-re, the male variant of the title Son of Re. He wondered if it had simply been Phillips’ ability to get her name right, or did this epithet have some deeper meaning. Thus, he began to wonder whether Sa-re had ever been worshipped by unsuspecting worshippers under some other guise. This made him look at books on Christian mythology with particular references to any divinities connected with Isis and Egypt.
His enquiries were rewarded when he found a reference to a saintly woman known as Sarah the Egyptian, who was venerated at a place called
Les Saintes Maries de la Mer (The Holy Marys of the Sea) in France. According to tradition, she was
a black serving maid who had accompanied her mistress to this age-old Christian shrine dedicated to St. Mary of the Sea. Interestingly,
Sarah or Sara became a revered divinity sacred to the Gypsies, who descended upon the coastal town from across to Europe to offer up prayers to what was an insignificant Egyptian saint. As Collins reminds us, many Gypsies claim descendancy from ancient Egypt, the title Gypsy merely being a corruption of the word Egyptian. Quoting from Wikipedia:
Saint Sarah, also known as
Sara-la-Kâli ("Sara the Black", Romani:
Sara e Kali), is the patron saint of the Romani people. The centre of her veneration is
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a place of pilgrimage for Roma in the Camargue, in Southern France. Legend identifies her as the black, Indo-Egyptian servant of one of the
Three Marys (usually
Mary Jacobe), with whom she is supposed to have arrived in the Camargue. Saint Sarah also shares her name with the Hindu goddess Kali who is a popular goddess in northern India from where the Romani people originate. The name "Sara" itself is seen in the appellation of Durga as Kali in the famed text
Durgasaptashati.
Though the tradition of the Three Marys arriving in France stems from the High Middle Ages, appearing for instance in the 13th century
Golden Legend, Saint Sarah makes her first appearance in Vincent Philippon's book
The Legend of the Saintes-Maries (1521), where she is portrayed as "a charitable woman that helped people by collecting alms, which led to the popular belief that she was a Gypsy." Subsequently, Sarah was adopted by Romani as their saint. [
MJF: Could the Three Marys really be a disguise for the triple goddess and by extension Baphomet as the Grail? Did the Templars have a hand in reviving the cult though the veneration of the Black Madonna?]
Some authors have drawn parallels between the ceremonies of the pilgrimage honouring Saint Sarah and the worship of the Hindu goddess
Kali*(a form of Durga - a major Hindu goddess worshipped as a principal aspect of the mother goddess Mahadevi), subsequently identifying the two. Ronald Lee (2001) states:
“
If we compare the ceremonies with those performed in France at the shrine of Sainte Sara (called Sara e Kali in Romani), we become aware that the worship of Kali/Durga/Sara has been transferred to a Christian figure... in France, to a non-existent "sainte" called Sara, who is actually part of the Kali/Durga/Sara worship among certain groups in India.”
The name Kali comes from the Sanskrit root word Kal, which means both “time” and also “black”.
Similarly, author
Ashwin Sanghi in his novel
The Rozabal Line puts forward the notion that
Sara-la-Kali refers to the three Hindu goddesses –
Saraswati,
Lakshmi, and Kali – the goddesses of Knowledge, Wealth and Power – symbolising the trinity of female power (a triple goddess theme that may be a disguise for the Grail). What intrigues me about this though is that the goddess
Saraswati has been linked to the Celtic goddess
Brigid, Bride or Brigantia, who is triple goddess figure too. And, of course, I believe Brigid, of Tuatha de Danann fame, may be linked to Meritaten/Hagar/Helen (see more on this link below).
The shrine of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Collins learned from more than one source that the cults of Sara the Egyptian and St. Mary of the Sea – whose symbol curiously is the seven stars [MJF: those of the Great Bear or Ursa Major?] – are but latter-day remnants of a European Isis cult which predated Christianity. As I suggested at the beginning of this article, this may be yet another example of the Christian Church absorbing a former pagan cult by transforming it into a cult of two Christian saints. To back this up, Collins points out that St. Mary of the Sea’s annual feast date just happens to be 22nd July, the eve of the ancient Egyptian Isis-Sirius festival.
St Mary Magdalene
Collins also wondered whether the cult of St Mary Magdalene, which was, and is, especially strong in France, could also be added to this Christian form of disguised Isis worship, as she too celebrates her annual feast day on 22nd July. Many of you may see a certain resonance with the mystery of Rennes-le-Château here, since Abbe Berenger Saunière seemed to have a deep reverence for St Mary Magdalene (his church was dedicated to her), which the authors Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in their book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail interpreted as being a disguised devotion to the Sang Real or sacred royal bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (the San Graal or Holy Grail). In fairness, Collins looked into the Magdalene cult much more closely in his later book Twenty-First Century Grail and reached the conclusion that the idea of the Holy Grail as the Sang Real or sacred royal bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene cannot be substantiated and he also viewed the idea that Mary Magdalene may have come to France as nothing more than a medieval subterfuge on the part of French clerics who profited from the cult.
St Mary the Egyptian
However, Collins noted that there was also another saint, who like Mary Magdalene was a considered to be a reformed harlot, and that was St Mary the Egyptian. Although he provides no background for her, quoting from Wikipedia:
Mary of Egypt (c. 344 – c. 421) is an Egyptian saint, highly venerated as a Desert Mother in the Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Churches. The Catholic Church commemorates her as a patron saint of penitents.
Mary of Egypt, also known as Maria Aegyptiaca, was born somewhere in the Province of Egypt, and at the age of twelve ran away from her parents to the city of Alexandria. There, she lived an extremely dissolute life. In her Vita it states that she often refused the money offered for her sexual favours, as she was driven "by an insatiable and an irrepressible passion", and that she mainly lived by begging, supplemented by spinning flax.
After seventeen years of this lifestyle, she travelled to Jerusalem for the Great Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. She undertook the journey as a sort of "anti-pilgrimage", stating that she hoped to find in the pilgrim crowds at Jerusalem even more partners to sate her lust. She paid for her passage by offering sexual favours to other pilgrims, and she briefly continued her habitual lifestyle in Jerusalem. Her Vita relates that when she tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the celebrations, she was barred by an unseen force. Realising this was because of her impurity, she was struck with remorse, and upon seeing an icon of the Theotokos (the Virgin Mary) outside the church, she prayed for forgiveness and promised to give up the world (i.e., become an ascetic). She attempted again to enter the church, and this time was able to go in. After venerating the relic of the True Cross, she returned to the icon to give thanks, and heard a voice telling her, "If you cross the Jordan, you will find glorious rest." She immediately went to the monastery of Saint John the Baptist on the banks of the river Jordan, where she received absolution and afterwards Holy Communion. The next morning, she crossed the Jordan eastwards and retired to the desert to live the rest of her life as a hermit in penitence. She took with her only three loaves of bread she had bought, and once she had eaten these, lived only on what she could find in the wilderness.
In iconography, Mary of Egypt is depicted as a deeply tanned, emaciated old woman with unkempt gray hair [
MJF: Shades of the triple goddess in her persona as the Hag here]
, either naked and covered by her long hair or by the mantle she borrowed from Zosimas. She is often shown with the three loaves of bread she bought before her final journey into the desert. In Italy, she became associated with the patronage of "fallen women" much like Mary Magdalene, to whom similar traits were associated.
Collins then notes that he found these dusky Christian female figures are also connected in one way or another to the
cult of the Black Madonna. He further notes that these dark, sometimes ebony statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary are, even today, found in dim candle-lit crypts in Catholic shrines or chapels. He points out that so greatly are the Black Madonna icons revered and venerated that the more obvious representations of the Madonna as the Queen of Heaven elsewhere in a church or cathedral are often ignored in preference to images of the Black Madonna. He states that in many places, such as in France and Spain, whole cults have been built up around individual statues associated with particular miracles and visions. He added that some of these statues are well over a thousand years old and
may once have been statues of Isis with the infant Horus before being rededicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although the church authorities tried to suppress such unorthodox and uncanonical forms of mass veneration, these attempts were usually to no avail.
For Collins, on an occult level, the Black Madonna appeared to embody a power, a magical current far older than Christianity, perpetuating the worship of Isis as an Egyptian goddess of the night sky, whose symbols were
the seven stars of Ursa Major and the Dog Star Sirius. Indeed, Collins points out that the seven stars was one of the primary symbols of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am not so sure about this, as the images of the Blessed Virgin Mary with stars around her that I am familiar with normally depict twelve stars, which represent the twelve Apostles.
Collins then claims that most important of all was the belief that Sara the Egyptian was an avatar, an earthly incarnation of her starry form. Was it possible that Sa-re, as the historical
Sobek-nofru-re, had become a dark force of the goddess Isis and was now masquerading under the guise of ‘harlot’ saints such as St Mary the Egyptian and St Mary Magdalene or as Sara the Egyptian and St. Mary of the Sea, and ultimately as the Black Madonna?
However, if Sa-re had taken on the darker virtues of Isis, it appeared from Graham Phillips’ statements that
Akhenaten’s daughter Meryt-aten (Meritaten) had been seen as the embodiment of the purer aspects of the ancient goddess. Sa-re and Meritaten therefore seemed to be two polar opposites, avatars who symbolised Isis’s dual nature – one black and the other white.
Conclusion
If we take Collins’s theory further, the fact that the C’s have hinted that Hagar the Egyptian servant maid of Sarah in the Bible was Princess Meritaten and Sara or Sarah was really her mother Queen Nefertiti, this may put an entirely different complexion on things (N.B. a deliberate pun on my part). Indeed, the two polar opposites of Isis may now be seen as Meritiaten/Hagar as the white aspect of Isis and Sa-ra or Sarah/Nefertiti may be seen as the dark aspect of Isis. This might also mean that
some of the more ancient statues of the Black Madonna with child could in fact be representations of Meritaten/Hagar (as an avatar of Isis) with her son, the biblical Ishmael, representing Horus. As we know from her bust preserved in the Museum of Berlin, Meritaten was darker skinned and more African in appearance than her mother. Could the person of Sarah the Egyptian, who was by legend a black serving maid who accompanied her mistress, be a long-term conflation of the real personages of Meritaten/Hagar and her mother Nefertiti/Sarah?
Did the Romanies (Gypsies) from Egypt/India help to preserve Meritaten/Nefertiti’s story through the character of Sarah of Egypt and, if so, did it become the basis for the subsequent veneration of the Black Madonna in Europe?
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I would now add to this analysis whether or not Meritaten's story was also preserved through the character of Mary the Gypsy. Although Robert Graves proposes that the cult of Mary the Gypsy came into England via poor pilgrims who visited the shrine of St James Compostella in Spain in the Middle Ages, there is another possibility and this one involves an English Crusader knight bringing a group of Gypsies back with him from the Holy Land.
The Gypsies of Biddulph Moor
Andrew Collins writing in his book
The Seventh Sword states: “
According to Graham [Phillips],
during medieval times, Biddulph was apparently the property of a Cistercian abbey at nearby Hulton, which had strong connections with the Knights Templar who possessed the Green Stone”. The Cistercians were the sister order of the Templars whose great Abbott, St Bernard of Clairvaux, had drawn up the Templars’ rule. The Templars had also placed some special importance in the prehistoric monuments and mystical significance of the region.
Most curious of all was Biddulph Moor’s apparent association with
a Gypsy tribe referred to psychically as ‘
the golden red-haired folk’ [
MJF: Recalling here that Robert Graves described Venus/Aphrodite as a golden haired one and the Tuatha de Danann of Irish legend were described as golden red-haired folk too.] and the ‘Azarkre’. Led by a Tachipen – a word apparently meaning ‘truth’ – named Leila, they were found wandering the Holy Land by the Templars connected with the Biddulph estate in Stafforshire. The Gypsies’ claim that their ancestors originated in ancient Egypt had so impressed the Templars that they invited the tribe to stay at Biddulph Moor because of its ancient Egyptian associations. There they settled down, preserving their own customs, language, and traditions. Very much later they took the surname
Bailey and were still to be found in the area today.”
Andrew Collins would remark in his book
The Seventh Sword that the story of the Gypsy tribe brought to Biddulph did check out since the story had been recorded on a wall plaque in Biddulph Moor’s church. It spoke of a community of nomadic Saracens, brought back from the Crusades, who had settled on Biddulph Moor. For hundreds of years, they had kept themselves to themselves, preserving their ancient customs and interbreeding to continue the family line. Hardly any of them spoke English, and those who could had such a strange accent that no one could understand them. They were indeed referred to as a Gypsy race, and as Phillips had suggested, had take the name of Bailey.
Collins further explained that he, Phillips and Martin Keatman had revisited Biddulph and nearby Biddulph Moor but had been told that most of the old nomadic race had moved on owing to the housing estates built in the area over the past forty or so years. Despite this Collins and Keatman had managed to track down and interview one of the last remaining members of the dark-featured and strange-accented race. Unfortunately, they were unable to understand a word that he said. Graham Phillips during his own research, which he conducted during his quest for the ‘
Heart of the Stone’, would meet a descendant of these Gypsies who turned out to be a university history lecturer who spoke perfect English.
Collins adds that according to historians, the Gypsies were brought back to this country by one of the Biddulph family (the Templar Knight
Ormus le Guidon perhaps?) The authors could not find out whether they were ever known as the Azarkre or if they were led by a Tachipan named Leila, although they did discover that in Romany “tachipan” did indeed mean “truth”.
So, was it these Staffordshire Gypsies who helped to spread the cult of Mary Gypsy in early medieval England, a cult that would seep into the May Day revels with the re-enactment of the tales of Robin the Hood and Maid Marian (Mary), which in reality disguised an ancient worship of Venus/Aphrodite and the Egyptian goddess Isis?
Isis/Venus and the Seven Stars of the Great Bear
In ancient Egyptian mystery, the goddess Isis was linked with the seven stars of the constellation of the Great Bear or Ursus Major. In an earlier post, I described how Graham Phillips and Andrew Collins discovered that the Victorian stately home of Biddulph Grange became the centre of an occult society called the Meonia or Fire Phoenix group led by a lady called
Mary Heath (so we encounter yet again another Mary
). This group had links with other occult groups and movements of the late 19th century in England including the Pre-Raphaelite painters and the Rosicrucian orientated
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This period in England also saw a huge spike in interest in all things ancient Egypt, which was illustrated by the fact that Mary Heath's group constructed a replica of an ancient Egyptian temple at Biddulph Manor in Staffordshire, which survives to this day. By all accounts it was not just a mere Egyptian folly but was used by the group for occult ceremonies. Although it is not known whether the Irish author
Bram Stoker was a member of the Golden Dawn he certainly had friends and associates who were members of that society. One of these was Florence Farr the renowned Victorian actress. Bram Stoker, the author of the vampire novel
Dracula, also wrote a novel called
The Jewel of the Seven Stars. This novel centred around an ancient Egyptian queen called Tera who had magical powers that she tried to use to bring around her resurrection in another body in modern times. Andrew Collins believes that almost certainly Stoker based this queen on a real Egyptian queen called
Sobekneferu. As mentioned above, Collins wondered whether Sara the Egyptian or Sa-re was in fact the historical Sobekneferu who became a dark force of the goddess Isis (later the Roman goddess Venus and the Greek goddess Aphrodite) and subsequently masqueraded under the guise of ‘harlot’ saints such as St Mary the Egyptian and St Mary Magdalene or as Sara the Egyptian and St. Mary of the Sea, and ultimately as the Black Madonna? Sobekneferu had a special devotion to the seven stars of the Great Bear. In my recent post on Patrice Chaplin's pilgrimage of Cabbalistic initiation around the eastern Pyrenees, I mentioned that her guide had described the initiation route as that of the Great Bear (Ursus Major) and the stops along the way had all formed particular numbers on a magic square called the '
Venus Magic Square'. Is this just mere coincidence or another example of how Isis worship has been preserved down to the modern day?
Does the constellation of the Great Bear therefore hold some special cosmic significance that was linked to the worship of Isis? If so, perhaps this may shed some light on what the C's said here:
Q: Why is this described as a Widow's son? This was the appellation of Perceval...
A: Perceval was knighted in the court of seven.
Q: The court of seven what?
A: Swords points signify crystal transmitter of truth beholden. [
MJF: Is the crystal transmitter the Grail which is buried in Galle?]
Later the C's added to this when they said:
Q: (L) They also talk about the ‘Seven Sages.’ You once said that Perceval was ‘knighted in the Court of Seven and that the sword’s points signify ‘crystal transmitter of truth beholden.’ Do these seven sages relate to this ‘Court of Seven’ that you mentioned?
A: Close.
Q: (L) When you said ‘swords points signify crystal transmitter of truth beholden,’ could you elaborate on that remark?
A: Has celestial meaning.
Are the seven stars of the Great Bear the "
celestial [
stellar]
meaning" the C's had in mind here. The naïve figure of Percival was one of King Arthur's knights of the Round Table who went on a quest to find the Holy Grail. In a way, it can be said that Percival went through an initiation ceremony before he found enlightenment or illumination through his encounter with the Grail (the Philosopher's Stone of the Alchemists). In Patrice Chaplin's case, she also found enlightenment when she went through a portal at the last stop (which was on a sacred mountain top in the Pyrenees) on her cabbalistic initiation pilgrimage following the route of the Great Bear (Ursa Major) that saw her travelling through time to the past in another dimension or reality, a trip that helped her to resolve past conflicts in her complex life.
Mérovée and the Quinotaur
Laura also made reference to
Mer, to sea, to "Mary", which brings to mind the founder of the Merovingian dynasty
Mérovée (aka as Merovech). The word "mer" in French means "sea" and
Mérovée was in legend meant to be the offspring of both a human father and a sea monster called the Quinotaur who attacked his mother whilst she was pregnant and swimming in the sea. Today, this colourful story might suggest that
Mérovée was the product of a human/alien hybrid experiment. According to the legend,
Mérovée grew up with supernatural powers and became a sorcerer-king, a monarch-magician.
Mérovée, who supposedly ruled as a Frankish king from 448-457 AD, would go on to command the Salian Frankish forces which assisted the Visigoths and the Roman army under the command of Flavius Aetius at the Battle of Mauriac, where the marauding Huns of Atilla were finally defeated. As I have mentioned before, ancient Frankish graves have on occasions revealed skeletons where the skulls have been found to be unduly elongated, something they would therefore seem to have had in common with
Queen Nefertiti and her children, including
Princess Meritaten. This would tend to support the idea that the Merovingian kings were descended from a special hybrid bloodline.
People in recent posts have made various references to science fiction films and books and the legend of
Mérovée is no exception in this sci-fi regard. Quoting from Wikipedia:
The identity and historicity of Merovech is one of the driving mysteries in The Widow’s Son, second book of Robert Anton Wilson’s The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, first introducing the fish legend to the reader by having the early Merovingians appear in a vision as a hideous fish creature. Wilson then goes a step further by identifying Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the bridegroom and bride in The Alchemical Marriage of Christian Rosycross and Merovech as the titular Widow's Son from Masonic lore, positing that the entire bloodline is descended from alien-human hybrids.
Percival was, of course, 'The Widow's Son' who the C's said stalked the paths of wisdom incarnate and was knighted in the court of seven. It is curious to note here that Andrew Collins states that on one occasion when he encountered the malign spirit of the magus Aleister Crowley, a member of the Golden Dawn, Crowley used the name "Percival" as a command for Collins to "Pierce the Veil", an expression that can be taken to mean leaving this 3rd density realm to experience the higher realm of 4th density. Of course, one way to do this is to travel through a portal as Patrice Chaplin and the painter Salvador Dali did (see my earlier post). Since the C's have said that the Grail is a trans-density device, experiencing the Grail at first hand may also be a way to enter into 4th density, as Percival in the Grail story appeared to do.
If the Percy family are in some way connected to the Frankish Merovingian dynasty through intermarriage, as many Norman families were known to have intermarried with the Frankish nobility after they took up residence in Normandy, then is it possible that the Percy's are descended from the legendary
Mérovée and are thus descendants of a special hybrid bloodline? Could the legend of
Mérovée have merely been a cover story though for a much earlier hybridisation which produced a special bloodline, one that may be tied to the Nordic Covenant perhaps:
:
Q: Well, let me get to some of these other questions. Previously you said that the central thing about the Nordic Covenant was that there were bloodlines that extend off the planet. From what I understand, all humans on the planet have bloodlines that extend off the planet. In what sense did you mean this about the Nordic Covenant; that the bloodlines extend off the planet?
A: Not all so recent, not all so “pure.”
Q: In the sense of recent, how recent do you mean?
A: Speculate, using your transcripts.
