John Dee and the 13 Crystal Skulls
If the Holy Grail is in fact a pure crystal skull, then this picture of John Dee performing some magic trick or scientific experiment at the Court of Queen Elizabeth takes on a very different perspective. We must also ask what is that the artist was seeking to convey here.
The painting certainly makes Dee look every bit the magus or magician at the court performing his conjuring tricks.
The painting was executed by the British artist Henry Gillard Glindoni (1852-1913). It imagines a scene with Elizabeth visiting Dee’s house in Mortlake. To her left are her chief adviser William Cecil and her favoured courtier Sir Walter Raleigh. Seated behind Dee is his trance medium, or scryer, Edward Kelley, who is wearing a long skullcap to conceal the fact that his ears had been cut off as a punishment for his youthful crimes.
However, it is the X-ray version of the painting that gives us an additional perspective when you see Dee seemingly surrounded by a circle of human skulls. Why Glindoni painted them out is unknown. Perhaps he had to make it look like what we now see, which is august and serious, from what it was, which was occult and spooky on the instructions of the person who commissioned the work. Alternatively, did the patron realise Glindoni was hinting at something that should remain hidden and asked him to paint over it?
Glindoni's (original name ‘Glindon’ - an Irish name) speciality was that of 17th and 18th century costume and he was noted for his paintings of Cardinals. He frequently exhibited between 1872 and 1904, at the
Royal Academy. He was accepted as a full member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1879.
As the person who posted this image noted, there are five skulls in front of him and three behind him. Three plus five make eight and the numbers 3, 5 and 8 from part of the Fibonacci sequence, which is reflected both in nature (the number of petals on flowers and in shell spirals) and in the golden ratio. If you add 5 and 8 together you get the next number in the Fibonacci sequence, which is 13. Hence, is the artist trying to intimate something to us here? If he had painted more of the foreground in front of Dee, would he have painted five more skulls into the picture perhaps? And what might be the significance of 13 skulls?
If you look carefully, you will see on the extreme left of the picture an ugly looking figure, which may represent a crone or an
old hag (an unpleasant English expression for an old woman). This figure of an old hag has though deep occult significance and pops up in mythical tales from all over the world.
As to etymology - the term “
hag” appears in Middle English, and was a shortening of “
hægtesse”, an Old English term for '
witch'; similarly the Dutch heks and German Hexe are also shortenings, of the Middle Dutch haghetisse and Old High German hagzusa, respectively. All of these words are derived from the
Proto-Germanic hagatusjon, which is of unknown origin; the first element may be related to the word “
hedge”.
A hag, in European folklore, was an ugly and malicious old woman who practices witchcraft, with or without supernatural powers – think of the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Hags are often said to be aligned with the devil or the dead. Hags are often seen as malevolent, but may also be one of the chosen forms of
shapeshifting deities, such as
The Morrígan or
Badb, who are seen as neither wholly benevolent nor malevolent.
The “
night hag” or “
old hag” is also the name given to a supernatural creature, commonly associated with the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. It is a phenomenon during which a person feels a presence of a supernatural malevolent being which immobilises the person as if sitting on their chest or the foot of their bed. This variety of hag is essentially identical to the Old English
mæra — a being with roots in ancient Germanic superstition, and closely related to the Scandinavian
mara. According to folklore, the Old Hag sat on a sleeper's chest and sent nightmares to him or her. When the subject awoke, he or she would be unable to breathe or even move for a short period of time.
The expression
Old Hag Attack also refers to a
hypnagogic state in which paralysis is present. Quite often, it is accompanied by terrifying hallucinations. When excessively recurrent, some psychiatrists and physicians consider these attacks to be a disorder. Many populations treat such incidents as part of their culture and mythological worldview, rather than any form of disease or pathology.
Hags in Irish Mythology
In Irish and Scottish mythology, the
cailleach is a hag goddess concerned with creation, harvest, the weather, and sovereignty. In partnership with the goddess
Bríd, she is a seasonal goddess, seen as ruling the winter months while Bríd rules the summer. In Scotland, a group of hags, known as
The Cailleachan (The Storm Hags) are seen as personifications of the elemental powers of nature, especially in a destructive aspect. They are said to be particularly active in raising the windstorms of spring, during the period known as
A Chailleach.
Hags as sovereignty figures abound in Irish mythology. The most common pattern is that the hag represents the barren land which the hero of the tale must approach without fear and come to love on her own terms. When the hero displays this courage, love, and acceptance of her hideous side, the
sovereignty hag then reveals that she is also a young and beautiful goddess.
What is interesting here is that the hag goddess is also linked with our familiar goddess
Tara (Hagar) in the form of Brid or Brigit and sometimes these hags may form a triple or group of such beings as depicted in
Shakespeare’s play Macbeth (c. 1603–1607), where the main protagonist of the play encounters three witches round a cauldron. The three witches, also known as the
Weird Sisters or
Wayward Sisters, eventually lead Macbeth to his demise and hold a striking resemblance to the Three Fates of classical mythology. The
Three Fates (particularly
Atropos) are often depicted as hags. The hag is also similar to
Lilith of the Torah, the Bible’s Old Testament.
Perceval and the Old Hag
However, there is one depiction of the old hag that links us directly to the
Holy Grail and that is the hag in the story of Percival, as depicted in
Chrétien de Troyes ‘
Perceval, the Story of the Grail‘ written in the late 12th century.
Perceval is the earliest recorded account of what was to become the Quest for the Holy Grail but it describes only a golden grail (a serving dish) in the central scene and does not call it "
holy" and treats a lance, appearing at the same time, as equally significant. [
MJF: Could this lance have been a reference to the Spear of Destiny perhaps?]
For those not familiar with Perceval, here is a brief description of the tale:
The poem opens with Perceval, whose mother has raised him apart from civilisation in the forests of Wales. While out riding one day, he encounters a group of knights and realises he wants to be one. Despite his mother's objections, the boy heads to King Arthur’s court, where a young girl predicts greatness for him. Sir Kay taunts him and slaps the girl, but Perceval amazes everyone by killing a knight who had been troubling King Arthur and taking his vermilion (red) armour. He then sets out for adventure. He trains under the experienced
Gornemant, then falls in love with and rescues Gornemant's niece
Blanchefleur. Perceval captures her assailants and sends them to King Arthur's court to proclaim Perceval's vow of revenge on Sir Kay.
Perceval remembers that his mother fainted when he went off to become a knight, and goes to visit her. During his journey, he comes across the
Fisher King fishing in a boat on a river, who invites him to stay at his castle. While there, Perceval witnesses a strange procession in which young men and women carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another. First, comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabra, and then a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated
graal, or grail. Finally, another maiden carries a silver plate (or platter or carving dish). They passed before him at each course of the meal. Perceval, who had been trained by his guardian Gornemant not to talk too much, remains silent through all of this. He wakes up the next morning alone and resumes his journey home. He encounters a girl in mourning, who admonishes him for not asking about the grail, as that would have healed the wounded king. He also learns that his mother has died.
Perceval captures another knight and sends him to King Arthur's court with the same message as before. King Arthur sets out to find Perceval and, upon finding him, attempts to convince him to join the court. Perceval unknowingly challenges Sir Kay to a fight, in which he breaks Sir Kay's arm and exacts his revenge. Perceval agrees to join the court, but soon after a
loathly lady enters and admonishes Perceval once again for failing to ask the Fisher King whom the grail served.
No more is heard of Perceval except in a short later passage, in which a hermit explains that the grail contains a single mass-wafer (MJF: clearly a reference to the Holy Eucharist) that
miraculously sustains the Fisher King’s wounded father. The loathly lady announces other quests that the Knight of the Round Table proceed to take up and the remainder of the poem deals with Arthur's nephew and best knight Gawain, who has been challenged to a duel by a knight who claims Gawain had slain his lord. Gawain offers a contrast and complement to Perceval's naiveté as a courtly knight having to function in un-courtly settings. An important episode is Gawain's liberation of a castle whose inhabitants include his long-lost mother and grandmother as well as his sister Clarissant, whose existence was unknown to him. This tale also breaks off unfinished.
The Loathly Lady
The motif of the loathly lady is that of a woman who appears unattractive (ugly =
loathly) but undergoes a transformation upon being approached by a man in spite of her unattractiveness, becoming extremely desirable. It is then revealed that her ugliness was the result of a curse which was broken by the hero's action. The
loathly lady (
Welsh:
dynes gas, Motif D732 in
Stith Thompson's motif index), was a tale type or device commonly used in medieval literature, most famously in
Geoffrey Chaucer's
The Wife of Bath's Tale, in which a knight, told that he can choose whether his bride is to be ugly yet faithful, or beautiful yet false, frees the lady from the form entirely by allowing her to choose for herself. A variation on this story is attached to Sir Gawain in the related grail romances
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle and
The Marriage of Sir Gawain.
Another name for a loathly lady is, of course, a hag. Hence, we see a hag appearing in the story of Perceval. However, there are three main women who appear in the Perceval grail story. The first is a beautiful young girl who carries the grail followed by another carrying a silver platter [
MJF: etymologically driving from the word for “knee”]. The second is the girl in mourning, who admonishes him for not asking about the grail, as that would have healed the wounded king [
MJF: was he symbolically wounded in the thigh like the Patriarch Jacob perhaps?]. The third, the hag, enters the court and admonishes Perceval once again for failing to ask the Fisher King whom the grail served. In this use of three women, we see the echo of the triple goddess theme once more. The admonishment of Perceval represents the failure of the young knight to ask the question who does the Grail serve as this would have healed Arthur the Fisher King, since, unless you ask that question, you will never escape your present 3D state and will remain in wounded blissful ignorance just like the Fisher King. To illustrate this point, here is what the C’s said about the Fisher King in the session dated 5 July 1997 session, which I quoted in the thread
Session 13 March 2021 where there was a discussion about the issue of repeating time loops:
"Laura's suggestion of reading the romantic novels may help speed up the process of learning these karmic lessons in the short time we have left. Moreover, the C's have said this is the end of a grand cycle, which may well provide an opportunity for people to break out of the time loop once and for all."
Session dated 5 July 1997:
Q: Okay. I am not going to get into all of this, but I would like to know the significance of the Fisher King?
A: Do you mean of the person or of the designation?
Q: The designation, first.
A: The one who resides within a circular continuum.
Q: What about the significance of the person?
A: Transcendental.
Q: What is a circular continuum?
A: Trapped within the grasp of one's own significance, to the exclusion of the acquisition of a broader knowledge base and understanding."
The Grail therefore serves to dispense knowledge and wisdom allowing you to escape the circular continuum of ego in 3D reincarnation, which ties in with the kundalini awakening, the serpent fire that will trigger your dormant junk DNA and repair the DNA strands currently residing in the etheric realm. This makes sense if the Grail is a trans-dimensional crystal device such as Baphomet, the Merkabah Stone, which contact with will only serve to strengthen your abilities (see Part 2 below for more on this).
The Triple Goddess
A triple deity (sometimes referred to as threefold, tripled, triplicate, tripartite, triune or triadic, or as a trinity) is three deities that are worshipped as one. Such deities are common throughout world mythology.
Carl Jung considered the arrangement of deities into triplets an archetype in the history of religion. In classical religious iconography or mythological art, three separate beings may represent either a triad who always appear as a group (Greek
Moirai,
Charites,
Erinyes;
Norse Norns; or the
Irish Morrígan) or a single deity known from literary sources as
having three aspects (Greek
Hecate, Roman
Diana. According to the linguist
M. L. West, various female deities and mythological figures in Europe show the influence of pre-Indo-European goddess-worship, and
triple female fate divinities, typically "
spinners" of destiny, are attested all over Europe and in Bronze Age Anatolia [
MJF: see also the Three Fates above.].
The Roman goddess
Diana [Artemis to the Greeks] was venerated from the late sixth century BC as
diva triformis, "three-form goddess", and early on was conflated with the similarly-depicted Greek goddess
Hekate.
Andreas Alföldi interpreted a late Republican numismatic image as Diana "conceived as a threefold unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess and the goddess of the nether world, “Hekate". This coin shows that the triple goddess cult image still stood in the
lucus of Nemi in 43 BC. Spells and hymns in
Greek magical papyri refer to the goddess (called
Hecate, Persephone, and Selene, among other names) as "triple-sounding, triple-headed, triple-voiced..., triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked". In one hymn, for instance, the "
Three-faced Selene" is simultaneously identified as the three
Charites, the three
Moirai, and the three
Erinyes; she is further addressed by the titles of several goddesses.
Hans Dieter Betz notes: "The goddess
Hekate, identical with Persephone, Selene, Artemis, and the old Babylonian goddess
Ereschigal, is one of the deities most often invoked in the papyri.
[
MJF: With all these references, are we really just seeing echoes of Hagar/Kore and Nefertiti/Sarah? Is there also a hint here that the Holy Grail may be a three faced crystal skull, as was suggested for Baphomet by Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn?]
Miranda Green observes that "triplism" reflects a way of "
expressing the divine rather than the presentation of specific god-types.
Triads or
triple beings are
ubiquitous in the Welsh and Irish mythic imagery" (she gives examples including the Irish battle-furies,
Macha, and
Brigit). "The religious iconographic repertoire of Gaul and Britain during the Roman period includes a wide range of triple forms: the most common triadic depiction is that of the triple mother goddess". In the case of the
Irish Brigid it can be ambiguous whether she is a single goddess or three sisters, all named Brigid.
The Morrígan also appears sometimes as one being, and at other times as three sisters, as do the three Irish
goddesses of sovereignty,
Ériu,
Fódla and
Banba.
Brigit,
Brigid or
Bríg (
/ˈbrɪdʒɪd, ˈbriːɪd/, Old Irish, meaning
'exalted one') is a goddess of
pre-Christian Ireland. She appears in
Irish mythology as a member of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, the daughter of
the Dagda and wife of
Bres, with whom she had a son named Ruadán.
As we have seen before, she is associated with wisdom, poetry, healing, protection, blacksmithing and domesticated animals.
Cormac's Glossary, written in the 9th century by Christian monks, says that Brigid was "
the goddess whom poets adored" and that she had two sisters: Brigid the healer and Brigid the smith. This suggests she may have been a
triple deity. And as we have previously discovered, she is also thought to be related to the
British Celtic goddess
Brigantia.
[
MJF: However, could Brigid have been Hagar the daughter of Nefertiti/Sarah - the Dagda, her husband Bres - Abraham and her son Ruadan - Ishmael?]
Modern Wicca Traditions
In many modern
Wiccan traditions, the Goddess takes a three-fold form, known as the Triple Goddess. Her individual aspects, known as the
Maiden, the
Mother, and the
Crone, are aligned with the phases of the Moon’s cycle as it orbits the Earth — the waxing crescent, the Full Moon, and the waning crescent. These aspects also represent the three phases of a woman’s life in terms of physical reproduction — before, during, and after the body’s ability to have a child.
But while a woman will proceed linearly through these phases in a literal sense during her lifetime, each aspect of the Triple Goddess has qualities that all of us — male and female —resonate with at various points in our lives. Indeed, the three-fold form of the Goddess could be said to reflect the complexities of the human psyche, as well as the cycles of life and death experienced by all who dwell on Earth. Another example is the goddess
Hera, who has three different roles in Greek mythology: Girl, Woman, and Widow.
The Crone
As the Moon wanes and the darkness of the night sky grows, the Crone steps into her power. Called the “Hag” in earlier iterations of the Triple Goddess, she represents the post-childbearing years of life, and is associated with Autumn and Winter, sunset and night, and the winding down and ending of the growing season. The Crone is the wise elder aspect of the Goddess, and governs aging and endings, death and rebirth, and past lives, as well as transformations, visions, prophecy, and guidance.
You can see these themes reflected in the mythical aspects of Persephone, Demeter, Kore, Selene, Nyx, Hecate and Ariadne who are connected either to the seasons or to the night.
Although feared as an archetype for millennia, she is the one who reminds us that death is part of the life cycle, just as the Moon's dark phase precedes the New Moon. The Crone is often represented by goddesses associated with death and the underworld, such as the Greek
Hecate, the Russian
Baba Yaga, and the Celtic
Morrigan and
Cailleach Bear.
In her capacity as a quest-bringer, the loathly lady or crone can be found in much of the literature of the
Holy Grail, not just
Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval but also
Wolfram von Eschenbach's
Parzival as well.
Perceval and Irish Legends
Wolfram von Eschebach’s Parzival, one of the greatest works of medieval Germany, is based largely on Chrétien's poem. When comparing Wolfram's
Parzival to Chrétien's
Perceval some scholars not only suggest that the structure is different, but that Chrétien focuses on the religious context of knighthood while Eschenbach focuses on other aspects. I hope to say a lot more about Parzival in a subsequent post, as there is a great deal of alchemical symbolism built into von Eschebach’s story.
However, from the perspective of our own quest, there are possible parallels in
Perceval with the Irish mythological race of the
Tuatha Dé Danann. This race of god like beings has three central talismans - a spear, a cauldron, and a sword - that correlate with the spear, grail, and sword present in
Perceval. I don’t think this is any coincidence either as I hope to show in an upcoming post on the Tuatha De Danann.
Chrétien's
Perceval includes many similarities to the Irish saga
The Boyhood Deeds of Finn. The main character, Finn, is raised in isolation and undergoes many adventures akin to those of Perceval, suggesting that this narrative may have been a source of inspiration for Chrétien.
For more on the Loathly Lady and Irish and other legends connected to this theme, see:
Loathly lady - Wikipedia.
Whether Gildoni intended to convey all of this in the images he concealed within his painting of John Dee (which only X-rays can bring out) is not something we can prove over a century later, since nobody knew of any of this until recently and, as far as anyone knows, Gildoni never left any comments or clues on the matter. Thus, at this removal in time we can now only speculate. However, there is one school of thought, which takes the view that artists may not always be completely aware of what they may be incorporating in their works when the muse takes hold of them. Having covered the old hag, it is now time to turn to the hidden skulls within the painting.
Continued in Part 2