I have recently been re-reading ‘
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ since this is the book in the English speaking world that first truly brought to light the mystery of
Rennes-le-Château. The authors, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, sought to prove that an ancient secret society, the Priory of Sion, had preserved a secret concerning the descendants of a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene whose offspring were the ‘Sang Raal’ or ‘Sang Réal’ meaning royal blood. They then equated the Sang Réal with the Holy Grail or ‘Sangraal’, later called the Sangreal by Malory in his book ‘
Le Morte d’Arthur’. This Sang Réal appeared to run through the Merovingian Kings descended from the Franks who had occupied much of France by the 6th Century. They even came across documents that purported to prove their hypothesis. Unfortunately for them, it was subsequently proven that they were the subjects of a hoax perpetrated by Pierre Plantard, who had planted fake documents linked to the Priory of Sion for them to find. However, they did perform a lot of valuable research into the mystery including an investigation of Nicolas Poussin and his painting, the Shepherds of Arcadia, and an in-depth analysis of the Knights Templar. This last point is important to us since the Knights Templar were, according to the Cassiopaeans, the guardians or custodians of ‘
Baphomet’, a pure crystal skull and the seer of the passage, which I have suggested in previous articles is in fact the Holy Grail.
It was noticeable that when Laura asked where the Ark of the Covenant was, the C’s responded by saying ‘
Alternative 3’. I have previously linked this response to Mars. My reason for doing so is that Alternative 3 was the subject of a drama documentary shown on British television in 1977 see:
Alternative 3 - Wikipedia. Purporting to be an investigation into the UK's then contemporary "brain drain", Alternative 3 supposedly uncovered a plan to make the Moon and Mars habitable in the event of climate change and a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth. Although the programme was a completely fictitious drama, it subsequently became the basis of many conspiracy theory interpretations and took on a life of its own. People started to make links with real missing scientists and took the programme to be factual. This may be because scientists who work on secret black projects often disappear from view for long periods of time. The point is the writers and makers of the programme, and Leslie Watkins who later wrote a book based on the screenplay, may have unwittingly uncovered a real secret. In the same way the authors of the ‘
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ may have been wrong in their working hypothesis but they may still have uncovered a real secret within their research, which can therefore be of assistance to us.
In their book, they went to great lengths to uncover the secret bloodline connected to the Holy Grail. However, let us say for a moment that this bloodline was not descended from Christ and the Magdalene but from somebody else and that it ran through the Franks and the Merovingian Kings and that it also may have passed through the Perseid family, whose last living member, according to the C’s, was Kore. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln recognised that this bloodline was inextricably tied up with the Holy Grail. The C’s have said that there are about 7,500 living persons with this bloodline, a small group in truth for a bloodline that extends back thousands of years. We also know that Kore was a human hybrid given her mother’s (Nefertiti’s) elongated skull. However, even given his odd appearance in artistic depictions of him, there is nothing to suggest that her father, Akhenaten, was a hybrid – although we can’t rule that out. Indeed, the C’s confirmed for us that Akhenaten did not really look like the strange figure depicted in paintings of him. In addition, we have a Nordic Covenant hiding a secret pertaining to our alien or off-world origins, which may relate to Kantek or to the Orion region of space. We also have the blood covenant made by Moses and the children of Israel. These may be two separate things or possibly connected in a parallel way.
I recall that the C’s once said that the Annunaki were Kantek survivors who emerged as the gods of Mesopotamia. The C’s said that Kantek exploded approximately 80,000 years ago but the Mesopotamian civilisation of the Fertile Crescent did not emerge until about 4,000 BC with the Uruk culture, although there was an earlier Ubaid culture dating back to at least 6,000 BC – and some Ubaid figurines do look very reptilian in appearance. There is also evidence for a more primitive Neolithic society as well. However, there is certainly no evidence for a culture dating back to 80,000 BC. The Annunaki have been taken to be alien gods by ‘
Ancient Astronaut Theory’ proponents, as first proposed by Zecharia Sitchin, based on his interpretation of myths found written on ancient Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets. The C’s have contradicted this view though and replaced it with a human origin for the Annunaki. We cannot rule out that the Annunaki could have been Atlantean survivors who had preserved their advanced technology and scientific knowledge in some way post the Deluge. They may also have been members of the subterranean civilisation (the ‘Nation of the Third Eye’) who first went underground in 14,000 BC prior to the Deluge, some of whom may then have emerged after the Deluge to mastermind the re-establishment of civilisation on the surface – the fact that Nefertiti and ‘Sargon the Great’ both came from this underworld society may support this idea. It could even be possible that they arrived in Mesopotamia using time travel capabilities linked with the capabilities of the Merkaaba Stone? Could the secret the Nordic Covenant is hiding also relate to the Holy Grail, since this may have been the means by which the covenanters or their ancestors reached Earth?
Whatever the truth may be, if we take Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s special bloodline and view it as a bloodline preserving the secret of the Holy Grail rather than being the Grail (Sangraal) itself, we can then use their various findings to see if this helps to support our theory. There is no question that the C’s wanted Laura to explore bloodlines, particularly her own. Evidently, she is descended from this special bloodline and this fact may be highly relevant when it comes to locating the Grail. Perhaps it will take someone of the bloodline to break through the frequency fence protecting it and ‘
draw the sword from the stone’. On this basis, let us look at what Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln had to say about the Grail family and the Knights Templar who were the medieval custodians of the Grail.
The Knights Templar
I won’t bore you with a long, detailed description of the origins of the Knights Templar, the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, since there is plenty of material on the internet that can fill in the details. Suffice to say, the orthodox view is that they were founded as a religious military order in 1118 AD by Hugues de Payen, a nobleman from Champagne who owed allegiance to the Count of Champagne. Unsolicited he presented himself to Baudouin I, the King of Jerusalem, with eight colleagues at Baudouin’s palace and they supposedly offered to keep the roads and highways safe for pilgrims to the Holy Land – a tough ask with only nine men you would think. They king immediately placed an entire wing of his royal palace at their disposal, which was quite lavish for men who had supposedly taken an oath of poverty.
Guillaume de Tyre a chronicler, writing half a century later, states that for nine years the Templars admitted no new candidates to their order. Interestingly, Baudouin had an official royal historian, Fulk de Chartres, who made no mention of Hugues de Payen, his companions or anything even remotely connected to the Knight Templar. This seems most strange don’t you think. In 1127 most of the nine knights returned to Europe to a triumphal welcome where they would receive official recognition and were incorporated as a religious-military order – a militia of Christ, with Hugues de Payen becoming the first Grand Master of the order. In 1139 a Papal Bull was issues by which the Templars would henceforth owe no allegiance to any secular or ecclesiastical authority other then the pope himself. Within the next few decades they expanded at an extraordinary rate with substantial estates throughout France, England, Scotland, Flanders, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary and, of course, the Holy Land. They would become bound up not only with war, diplomacy and political intrigue but also trade and banking. They could even be said to have invented modern banking and they became the bankers to every throne in Europe. They could make or break kings and princes. As I mentioned before on this thread, this could be seen in action when King John of England signed the ‘Magna Carta’ at Runnymede with the Master of the Templar Order in England standing by his side.
However, the Templars traded not only in money and goods but in thought and ideas as well. As Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln point out, through their sustained and sympathetic contact with Islamic and Judaic culture they came to act as a clearing-house for new ideas, knowledge and new sciences – many of these ideas being alien to orthodox Roman Catholicism, including Gnostic dualism and the Cabaala. From its earliest years the Order had also maintained warm and cordial relations with the Cathars, especially in the Languedoc region. It is possible that one of the original co-founders was a Cathar but what is certain is that Bertrand de Blanchefort, the Order’s fourth Grand Master, came from a Cathar family. It is noteable that during the Albigensian Crusade, the Templars stayed neutral, sitting on the sidelines as observers. After the abandonment of the Holy Land in 1291, the Templars lost their original raison d’être. They never recovered from this and, having garnered increasing hostility and no doubt envy for their privileged position, King Philip IV of France, with papal approval, moved against them on Friday 13th October 1307 with the arrest of all Templar officers in France and the confiscation of their property. In 1312, the Pope officially dissolved the Order with no conclusive verdict of guilt or innocence. In 1314, the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burned to death and that was the supposed end of the Order. However, history shows that elements of the Templars would survive in one form or another but the famous Templar treasure stored in the Templar’s preceptory in Paris was never found and has still not been located to this day.
Strange Rituals of the Templars
As early as 1208, Pope Innocent III had admonished the Templars for un-Christian behaviour and referred explicitly to the charge of necromancy (communication with the dead). The authors felt certain the the Templars did hold secrets of some kind pertaining to esoteric matters. Symbolic carvings in Templar preceptories suggested that some officials in the Order’s hierarchy were conversant with such disciplines as astrology, alchemy, sacred geometry, numerology and astronomy. The three authors felt that there had to be some real basis for the charges levelled against the Templars by the Inquisition and French royal authorities. Too many knights in too many places had, for example, referred under interrogation to ‘
Baphomet’ for it to be the invention of a single knight or even a single preceptory. Without revealing what Baphomet was, the Templars seemed to have regarded it with great reverence almost tantamount to idolatry. After speculating what Baphomet might have been, the three authors claimed they had found indisputable evidence to sustain the charge of the Templars engaging in secret ceremonies involving a head of some kind and this seems to have been a dominant theme running through the Inquisition’s records.
They then mentioned various possibilities as to what the head called Baphomet might have represented, including the head of Christ on the Shroud of Turin (reputed to have once been in the Templars’ possession) or the severed head of St John the Baptist. Inquisition records also referred to a gilded silver reliquary in the shape of a woman’s head that was confiscated from the Paris Preceptory. Inside it were two head-bones wrapped in a cloth of white linen with another red cloth around it and a label attached to it with the words ‘CAPUT LV111m’ written on it. I have referred to this reliquary in an earlier post but I should point out that it was also mentioned in a session with the C’s in which the date was discussed - the C’s making a joke or pun out of the word “
caput”, which literally means in Latin a “head” but is also used as a reference to being finished or dead in English/American parlance, deriving, however, from the German word “Kaputt” meaning “destroyed”. They could also have been referring to the fact that Philippe IV of France died in 1314 and his three sons reigned in quick succession without leaving a male heir to continue the line. This brought the Capetian line of French kings to an end – “
capetian” deriving from the Frankish House of Capet, which commenced in 987 AD with Hugh Capet. The name "Capet" derives from the nickname (of uncertain meaning) given to Hugh but it is etymologically similar to “caput”, which might therefore explain the C’s pun on “caput”. The Capetians were succeeded by the House of Valois. However, it should be noted that Philippe’s daughter Isabella married Edward II of England, a Plantagenet, thus creating a link between the Capetians and the Plantagenets, which dynasty would come to an end with Richard III’s defeat at the Battle of Bosworth. This reliquary is worthy of further exploration in its own right, as it may be linked to a Templar chalice that was found with a strange inscription written on its side. However, that particular mystery will have to wait for another post.
The authors then pointed out that the head featured again in another mysterious story that has been traditionally linked to the Templars – the tale of the
great lady of Maraclea. They quoted the tale in full:
“
A great lady of Maraclea was loved by a Templar, a lord of Sidon; but she died in her youth and on the night of her burial, this wicked lover crept to the grave, dug up her body and violated it. Then a voice from the void bade him return in nine months time for he would find a son. He obeyed the injunction and at the appointed time he opened the grave again and found a head on the leg bones of the skeleton [i.e., a skull and crossbones].The same voice bade him ‘guard it well, for it would be the giver of all good things’, and so he carried it away with him. It became his protecting genius and he was able to defeat his enemies by merely showing them the magic head. In due course it passed into the possession of the Order.”
The story can be traced back at least as far as the late twelfth century, so it is contemporaneous with the Templars, although there is no proof that it was linked directly to the Templars at that time. However, by 1307 it had become closely associated with the Order and at least two knights under interrogation confessed their familiarity with it to the Inquisition. The three authors could see that the story seemed to be some sort of symbolic account of an initiation rite involving figurative death and resurrection, echoing the mysteries associated with Isis as well as those of the Mesopotamian Tammuz or Adonis, whose head was flung into the sea or of Orpheus, whose head was flung into the river of the Milky Way. They also felt that the magical properties exhibited by the head evoked those displayed by the head of ‘
Bran the Blessed’ in Celtic mythology and the Welsh
Mabinogion – whose mystical cauldron has been identified as the pagan pre-cursor of the Holy Grail. We did, of course, look at those attributes in a recent post, so I am glad that the authors drew this comparison.
From my own point of view, the story also reminds me somewhat of the strange bear skull found propped up on two leg bones in the Drachenloch (Dragon’s Cave) near St Gallen in Switzerland, which featured in an earlier post. It also leads me to associate the skull with the pure crystal skull the C’s referred to, which I believe is the Holy Grail that the Templars kept hidden in a cave illumined by everlasting lights. The giver of all good things is also a quality of the Grail and links with the C’s description of it as the ‘Gift of God’. The fact that the story seems to date from the twelfth century suggests that if the Templars found the Grail, they did so in that period. I aim to do a follow-up post on the Templars, which will attempt to prove where they found it. Spoiler alert, it is not under Temple Mount where historians believe the Templars conducted digging operations during their initial stay in Jerusalem in 1318.
The Inquisition clearly believed the Templars ‘
cult of the head’ to be important and in a list of charges drawn up in August 1308 it featured prominently:
Item, that they surrounded or touched each head of the aforesaid idols with small cords, which they wore around themselves next to the shirt or the flesh.
From M. Barber’s ‘Trial of the Templars’ – N.B. this is an abridged list of the charges. Other serious charges included blasphemy and heresy.
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln were struck by the head’s purported capacity to engender riches, make trees flower and bring fertility to the land since they recognised that these were all properties which coincided with those attributed in the Grail romances to the Holy Grail. I would echo this correspondence and endorse what they say. I would also point out that these attributes in no way bear any resemblance to the qualities attributed to the Ark of the Covenant in the Bible.
Evidence for an earlier inception for the Templars
After dealing with the esoteric nature of the Templars, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln drew attention again to the strange details of the Templars’ founding and early history in which they detected a deliberate cover-up. They started by proposing an earlier date for the creation of the Templars, between 1111-1112 AD. They also pointed to the involvement of the Count of Champagne, one of the wealthiest nobles in Europe who joined the Order in 1124. There is a letter extant from the Bishop of Chartres to the Count, sent in 1114 AD at the time when the Count was preparing for a visit to the Holy Land, in which the Bishop notes that the Count had made a vow to join ‘
la milice du Christ’, the original name for the Templars. At least three of the nine founding knights, including Hugues de Payen, seem to have come from adjoining regions, to have had family ties, to have known each other previously and, most importantly of all, to have been vassals of the same lord, the Count of Champagne. In 1115, the Count donated land to St Bernard of Clairvaux, the early patron of the Templars, on which he built Clairvaux Abbey. Moreover, one of the nine founding knights,
André de Montbard, was St Bernard’s uncle. One should also note that the City of Troyes, where the Count of Champagne had his court, hosted an influential school of cabalistic and esoteric studies, which had flourished since 1070 and it was in that city in 1128 that the Templars were officially incorporated. It would remain a strategic centre for the Templars for the next two centuries [MJF: strange it should be Troy – a city named after the vanquished city of Troy in Homer’s epic ‘The Iliad’]. And it was in Troyes that one of the earliest of the Grail romances, if not the earliest, was written by Chrétien de Troyes. Is this all just mere coincidence?
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln therefore deduced that the Templars had been involved in some clandestine activity involving their quartering on Temple Mount, where in AD 70 the Temple of Herod the Great had been sacked and plundered by Titus’s Roman legions, the treasure being taken to Rome or possibly the Pyrenees. However, they speculated that there could have been something else, something even more important than the pillaged treasure, which might have been concealed beneath the Temple by the priests. They then referred to the Copper Scroll, which had been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and was deciphered at Manchester University in 1955-56. This scroll makes specific references to great quantities of bullion, sacred vessels, additional unspecified material and ‘treasure’ of an indeterminate kind. It cited twenty-four different hoards buried beneath the Temple itself. Obviously, the Copper Scroll only came to view in the mid-20th Century but could the Templars have had access to another source of this information? It would seem that the nine original knights were involved immediately after their inception in carrying out excavations under the Temple where they were actively looking for something. This implies that they were deliberately sent to the Holy Land with the express commission of finding something. If so, who sent them and why?
The Count of Champagne
In 1104 AD the Count of Champagne met in conclave with certain high ranking nobles, at least one of who had just returned from Jerusalem, which had come under the control of the Crusaders. Among those present at the conclave were representatives of certain families – Brienne, Joinville and Chaumont – who the authors would later discover to figure significantly in their story [MJF: which suggests they may have been bloodline families]. Also present was the liege lord of André de Montbard, one of the co-founders of the Templars. Shortly after this conclave the Count of Champagne departed for the Holy Land, remaining there for four years until 1108. In 1114 he made a second trip to Palestine, intending to join the Milice du Christ, but then changed his mind and returned to Europe a year later. Immediately upon his return he donated a tract of land to the Cistercian Order of Monks on which St Bernard would subsequently build the Abbey of Clairvaux, which became St Bernard’s own residence. Prior to this the Cistercian Order had been close to bankruptcy but under St Bernard’s guidance their fortunes were completely turned around and this would lead to the establishment of over 300 Cistercian abbeys by 1153, of which St Bernard personally founded sixty-nine himself. Could André de Montbard, St Bernard’s uncle and a co-founder of the Templars, have had anything to do with this incredible change of fortune?
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln came to the conclusion that something had been discovered in the Holy Land, either by accident or design, something that was of immense import, which aroused the interest of some of Europe’s most influential noblemen. They further supposed that this discovery involved, directly or indirectly, a great deal of potential wealth – and perhaps something else that had to be kept secret, something which could only be divulged to a small number of high ranking lords. They concluded that this discovery had been reported and discussed at the conclave in 1104. This might be why the Count of Champagne had immediately thereafter departed for the Holy Land himself, perhaps to verify personally what he had heard or to implement some course of action – the foundation, for example, of what subsequently became the Order of the Temple. By 1114 the Templars were established with the Count playing some crucial role, perhaps acting as a guiding spirit and sponsor. By 1115 money was already flowing back to Europe and into the coffers of the Cistercians. Behind the phenomenal growth of both the Cistercians and the Templars during this period loomed the presence of uncle and nephew, as well as the wealth, influence and patronage of the Count of Champagne. At this stage the authors detected that if some elaborate, concealed design existed behind all this, it must have required a great deal of co-operation from certain other people and a great deal of meticulous organisation, which suggested a third and secret order behind the known orders of the Cistercians and the Templars. In due course they deduced that this was the Priory of Sion.
If the Priory of Sion eventually proved to be a hoax or smokescreen, this does not mean there was no hidden group or organisation assisting the Templars’ endeavours lurking in the shadows. Could this group have been the bloodline families the C’s referred to, who communicated between themselves with kites? If so, were they planning to regain what they regarded as their heritage, the Holy Grail?
The Templar Treasure
At the end of their history the Templars kept inviolate the secret of their treasure’s whereabouts and nature. Not even documents survived. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln argue that if the treasure in question was simply financial – bullion for example – it would not have been necessary to destroy or conceal all records, all rules and all archives. The implication was the Templars had something else in their custody, something that was so precious that not even torture would wring any intimation of it from their lips. They could not conceive that wealth alone could have prompted such absolute and unanimous secrecy. The authors felt that whatever it was it had to do with other matters such as the order’s attitude to Christ. However, I would suggest that if the Holy Grail was what I think it is, it would be the most important object on the planet, worth more than all other treasures combined. This would be a treasure worth dying to conceal, particularly if you had taken an oath to guard it.
I have previously recounted how in 1307 all Templars throughout France were arrested by King Philippe’s seneschals. However, this is not quite true since one preceptory slipped unscathed through the King’s net – this was the preceptory of
Bézu, adjacent to Rennes-le-Château. Why was this? The answer may lie in the fact that the commander of the Templar garrison at Bézu was a
Seigneur de Goth. Before taking the name of Pope Clement V, the archbishop of Bordeaux (King Philippe’s effective pawn) was
Bertrand de Goth. Moreover, his mother was
Ida de Blanchefort of the same family as Bertrand de Blanchefort, the Templar’s fourth Grand Master between 1153 and 1170. Was Pope Clement privy to some great secret entrusted to the custody of his family? Was this a secret that remained in the Blanchefort family until the 18th Century, when the
Abbé Antoine Bigou, the curé of Rennes-le-Château and confessor to
Marie de Blanchfort, composed the parchments found by
Abbé Sauniere in a column within his church, which would spark of the mystery of Rennes-le-Château? If this were the case, it would explain why the pope might well have extended some sort of immunity to his relative commanding the Templar detachment at Bézu.
Strange Goings-on at Bézu
Bertrand de Blanchefort was perhaps the most significant of all the Templar Grand Masters. It was he that transformed the Templars into the superbly efficient, well organised and highly disciplined hierarchical institution that they thereafter became. It was he that launched them into high level diplomacy and international politics. It was he that created for them a major sphere of influence in Europe, particularly in France. According to the evidence that survives, his mentor (and perhaps the immediately preceding Grand Master) was none other than André de Montbard, St. Bernard’s uncle and one of the co-founders of the Templars. Within a few years of the Templars’ incorporation, Bertrand not only joined their ranks but also conferred on them lands in the region of Rennes-le-Château and Bézu.
In 1156 when Bertrand was Grand Master, the Order is said to have imported to the area a contingent of German-speaking miners. These miners were subject to a rigid, virtually military discipline whereby they were forbidden to fraternise in any way with the local population and were kept strictly segregated from the surrounding community. Their alleged task was to work the goldmines on the slopes at the mountain of Blanchefort – mines which had been utterly exhausted by the Romans nearly a thousand years before. During the 17th Century, French engineers were commissioned to investigate the mineralogical prospects of the area and to draw up detailed reports. One of these engineers, Cesar d’Arcons, discussed the ruins he had found within his report. On the basis of his research, he concluded that the German miners did not seem to have been engaged in mining. He was not sure what they had been engaged in – smelting maybe, melting something down, constructing something out of metal, perhaps even excavating a subterranean chamber or crypt of some sort and creating a type of depository. One should remember that the Templars normally stored their wealth and treasure within their well-guarded preceptories, so this is highly suspicious behaviour. Could it be that they were preparing a secret hideaway for a very special treasure that they had either located or were expecting to find and bring back to France in the near future?
For those who think the Holy Grail is just a metaphorical symbolism, the authors point out that elements within the Nazi hierarchy actually believed in the Grail’s physical existence and undertook excavations for it in the South of France, whilst the Germans occupied the country during the Second World War. This Nazi quest was probably instigated by Otto Rahn, a colonel in the SS, who, as the author of ‘
Croisade contre le Graal’ and ‘
La Cour de Lucifer’. He had a great interest in the Cathars and the Grail. Rahn claimed that the Grail castle in Wolfram von Escenbach’s
Parzival, ‘
Munsalvaesche’, was Montségur, the Cathar’s bastion where they mounted their last stand during the Albigensian Crusade. Rahn allegedly committed suicide in 1939 but one French researcher has found documentary evidence that suggests he may still have been alive in 1945, in which case he could have been behind the excavations that mainly centred on Montsegur and other Cathar sites. Perhaps he should have focused on Templar sites instead?
The Roussillon Detachment
Hence, we see there had been a Templar presence in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château since at least the mid-twelfth century. By 1285 there was also a major preceptory at Campagne-sur-Aude a few miles from Bézu. However, near the end of the 13th Century,
Pierre de Voisins, the lord of Bézu and Rennes-le-Château, invited a separate detachment of Templars to the area from the Aragonese province of Roussillon. This detachment established itself on the summit of the mountain of Bézu, erecting a lookout post and a chapel. Ostensibly, they had been invited to maintain the security of the region and protect the pilgrim route which ran through the valley to Santiago de Compastela in Spain. It is unclear why these extra knights were needed since they cannot have been very numerous – not enough to have made a significant difference. Besides, there were already Templars in the surrounding area. Moreover, Pierre de Voisins already had troops of his own, who, together with the Templars already there, could guarantee the safety of the region. So why did the additional Roussillon Templars come to Bézu? According to local tradition, they came to spy and to exploit or bury or guard a treasure of some sort. Could this treasure have been the Holy Grail? Whatever their mysterious mission was, they obviously enjoyed some kind of special immunity since, alone of all the other Templars in France, they were left unmolested by King Philippe on that fateful day of 13th October 1307.
The Grail Story
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln then made a very pertinent point for the purposes of our quest. They pointed out that if the medieval Grail romances commencing with Chrétien de Troyes proposed that the Grail was intimately connected with Jesus, then why was there no reference to it for over one thousand years. Where was it during all this time? Why did it not figure in earlier literature, folklore or tradition? This is a very good question. They then asked the question - why should the Grail suddenly emerge at the very peak of the Crusades, when the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem was in its full glory and the Templars at the full apex of their power. This led them to analyse the Grail romances more closely.
They noted that in the 20th Century, grail scholarship seems to concur in the belief that the Grail romances rest ultimately on a pagan foundation connected with the cycle of the seasons, the death and rebirth of the year. Indeed, in its most primordial origins it would appear to involve a vegetation cult related in form to, if not directly derived from, those of Tammuz, Attis, Adonis and Osirus. This is an interesting observation given what we have previously considered about the link between Inanna, Brigid, Demeter and Persephone as regards the cycle of the birth, death and rebirth or the resurrection of nature through the seasons as personified by these pagan deities. They also found a similar link to these themes in both Irish and Welsh mythology with their repeated references to death, rebirth and renewal, as well as to a similar regenerative process in the land – sterility and fertility. They noted that this theme was central to the 14th Century poem ‘
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ and the ‘cauldron of rebirth’ associated with
Bran the Blessed as depicted in the Welsh ‘
Mabinogian’, which is roughly contemporary with the Grail romances but clearly drawing on much earlier material. The authors felt that these motifs had been subsequently incorporated in the Grail romances and there was no question that Bran, with his head, cauldron and platter, had contributed something to later conceptions of the Grail. For them Bran’s Head shared not only attributes with the Grail but also with the heads allegedly venerated by the Knights Templar. In my view this is not surprising, since I have been arguing that they are one and the same thing.
The authors then noted that during the mid to late 12th Century the original pagan foundation for the Grail romances underwent a curious and important transformation, which has eluded the investigation of Grail researchers, that saw the Grail became uniquely and specifically associated with Christianity – and a rather unorthodox form of Christianity at that. They felt that this involved something more than a facile grafting of pagan and Christian traditions together. However, with the fall of the Holy Land in 1291 and the dissolution of the Templars between 1307 and 1314, the Grail romances also disappeared from history until 1470 when
Sir Thomas Malory took them up again with his
Le Morte d’Arthur. By Malory’s time, the Grail had assumed the identity ascribed to it today as the chalice or cup of the Last Supper. However, the authors point out that Malory took considerable liberties with the original sources, in which the Grail is something much more than a cup and the mystical aspects of the Grail are far more important than the chivalric qualities that Malory extolled.
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln then analysed the most famous of the Grail romances starting with Chrétien de Troyes’ ‘
Le Roman de Perceval or
Le Conte del Graal’. I won’t bore you with the details of their analysis as we have previously considered this tale in earlier posts. However, I would mention two important observations that they made concerning Perceval. The first is that he learned that he was himself of the Grail family and the mysterious ‘Fisher King’, who was sustained by the Grail, was in fact his uncle. Perceval at this point then makes a curious confession. After his unhappy experience with the Grail, he declares that he has ceased to love or believe in God. This is quite a telling observation for a story written in the early Middle Ages when belief in God was almost universal.
What is also interesting is that Chrétien’s poem was never finished since he seems to have died about 1188 quite possibly before he could finish it. Even if he had completed it, no copy of the finished work survives. If such a copy had existed, it may well have been destroyed by a fire at Troyes in 1188. Some scholars think this fire to be vaguely suspicious, coinciding as it did with the poet’s death. One can only wonder if Chrétien had more to reveal but certain shadowy figures determined that he had already revealed enough and took steps to ensure that no further revelations would be forthcoming from him. Nevertheless, Chrétien’s version of the Grail story became a precursor for the future Grail romances. Chrétien dedicated his poem surprisingly not to Marie de Champagne but to Philippe d’ Alsace, the Count of Flanders as it was composed specifically at Philippe’s request, since it was from Philippe that Chrétien had heard the story in the first place. Indeed, the authors note that Philippe d’ Alsace may have had access to some Grail source document which in turn acted as a source for Chrétien’s poem. Robert de Boron (see below) similarly claimed to have had access to a book about the secrets of the Grail, which provided the bulk of his information. Indeed, this book may have been a common source for both Chrétien’s and Robert de Boron’s works. You should note that Philippe d’ Alsace frequently visited Champagne and in 1182 had tried unsuccessfully to marry Marie de Champagne (the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine) who had been widowed the year before.
The Order of Sion and the Rose Cross
The year 1188 also saw another important event, which may be linked to Chrétien’s death and the fire at Troyes. According to Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln this was the year that saw a permanent rupture or rift between the Templars and the Order (later Priory) of Sion who seemed to have been the former’s founders. The previous year had seen the loss of Jersusalem to the Saracens chiefly through the ineptitude and impetuosity of
Gérard de Rideford, the Templars’ Grand Master. According to the documents they received, this event was marked by a ritual or ceremony of some kind, which allegedly took place at Gisors and was referred to as ‘
the cutting of the elm’. Such an event did take place in 1188 near to Gisors but it seems to have involved Henry II of England with his son Richard the Lionheart (who frequently rode in the company of the Templars and wore their attire in battle) and King Philippe II of France, which saw a clash of arms between English and French forces after a formal negotiation between the sides broke down in acrimony. An ancient elm tree that stood in a meadow called the
Champ Sacré – the Sacred Field, which had been deemed sacred since pre-Christian times, was cut down by French forces after the military confrontation. After this event the two orders seemed to go their separate ways.
The Order of Sion subsequently changed its name to the Priory of Sion and adopted the curious sub-title of ‘
Ormus’, which it used until 1306, a year before the arrest of the Templars. “Orme” in French means ‘Elm’ and ‘Or’ is, of course, ‘Gold’. The Ormus symbol (see below) also contains the word “Ours’, which in French means ‘Bear’ or ‘Ursus’ in Latin and as we saw in an earlier article this symbolism is linked to the Merovingian dynasty, which died out after the murder of Dagobert II. Finally, the ‘M’ that forms the frame enclosing the other letters is also the astrological sign for Virgo, which can be linked to ‘Notre Dame’ in the language of medieval iconography. The authors could find no evidence of a medieval order or institution bearing the name ‘Ormus’ but noted that it does figure in Zoroastrian thought and in Gnostic texts, where it synonymous with the principle of light. I would mention something here that the authors did not make a connection with and that is that Ormus (ref. Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements) has also been linked to Mono-Atomic Gold, as first brought to public attention by David Hudson in 1975. Mono-Atomic Gold, in white powder form, seems to have antigravity and superconductive capabilities. This subject has been touched upon by Laura and has also featured on the Forum but it makes me wonder if there is any connection with the Rosicrucians here, when the C’s suggested to Laura and Ark that they should investigate the frequency of light. Since many Rosicrucians practised alchemy, one wonders if they had some legacy knowledge of Mono-Atomic Gold. I also note that in the classical tale of ‘
Jason and the Argonauts’ that when the Argonauts visited the Garden of the Hesperides, the nymphs of the Garden had turned themselves into trees after Hercules had visited and ran amok and one of the nymphs, Eretheis, had become an elm tree. Could there be a connection here perhaps as to why the elm tree in the Champ Sacré was regarded as sacred?
According to Masonic teachings, Ormus was also the name of an Egyptian sage and mystic who was a Gnostic ‘adept’ in Alexandria and lived during the early years of the Christian epoch. Supposedly he and six of his followers were converted by Saint Mark in AD 46, thereby establishing a new sect/order, which fused the tenets of Christianity with the teachings of older mystery schools. Ormus is said to have conferred on his new order of initiates a specific identifying symbol – a red or rose cross. It may be worth bearing this story in mind when we come to look at the Essenes, who may have played a part in concealing knowledge of the whereabouts of the Holy Grail post the fall of Jerusalem and been a model for the later Cistercians, Knights Templar and Carmelite orders. For now though the authors mentioned that in 1188 the Priory of Sion is said to have adopted a second sub-title in addition to Ormus by calling itself
l’Ordre de la Rose-Croix Veritas – the Order of the True Rosy Cross.
It is important to note here that there is no known evidence for the existence of any ‘Rosicrucians’ (at least by that name) before the early 17th Century, which saw the publication of the three Rosicrucian tracts. The authors could find no substantiating evidence for a secret order or society that actually existed as a genuine clandestine brotherhood or confraternity 425 years before its name ever became public. However, in 1629, when Rosicrucian interest was at its zenith, a man named
Robert Denyau, the Curé of Gisors, composed an exhaustive history of Gisors and the Gisors family. In this manuscript, Denyau states explicitly that the Rose-Croix was founded by
Jean de Gisors in 1188 (who was supposedly the first Grand Master of the Priory of Sion). Granted that his manuscript was created four and a half centuries after the alleged event, its existence does seem to support the idea of an earlier creation for the Rosicrucians. It should be borne in mind here that the Cassiopaeans have said that the Rosicrucians do have a very ancient pedigree and it was they who moved against the Knights Templar as a ‘thief in the night’. This would suggest there was a revenge motive operating here for an earlier transgression (the fall of Jerusalem perhaps?) by the Templars and it may also suggest that they knew the Templars had the Holy Grail and the Rosicrucians now wanted it for themselves. If the C’s are right, they are still seeking it.
Perlesvous
After discussing Chrétien’s work, the authors then analysed two other works – the
Roman de l’Estoire dou Saint Graal by Robert de Boron written between 1190 and 1199 and
Perlesvous written by an anonymous author between 1190 and 1212 who may have been a Templar. Both stories link the Grail with Christ and both lay an enormous stress on lineage. I won’t go into detail here on Robert de Boron’s story but will look instead at
Perlesvaus.
Although the Knights Templar are not named as such in
Perlesvaus, their appearance in the poem would seem to be unmistakeable. In his wanderings, Perceval happens upon a castle. This castle does not house the Grail but it does house a conclave of initiates who are evidently familiar with the Grail. This conclave of initiates makes you wonder if there is a link here with the conclave that the Count of Champagne attended before departing for the Holy Land. Perceval is received by two ‘masters’ – who clap their hands and are joined by thirty three (an occult number which has Masonic significance – there being 33 degrees in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry) other men who are all clad in white garments with a red cross on their breast. One of these mysterious masters states that he has personally seen the Grail – an experience only permitted to an elect few and he further states that he is familiar with Perceval’s lineage, which is that of Joseph of Arimathea. However,
Perlesvaus is clearly not set in Joseph’s lifetime but that of King Arthur and the Holy Land is apparently meant to be identified with Camelot. To a greater degree than either Chrétien’s or Robert de Boron’s poems
Perlesvaus is magical in nature. The anonymous author of the poem displays a good knowledge of conjuration and invocation (necromancy) and there are numerous alchemical references as well, which may echo the mysteries surrounding the Templars. Of particular interest to us is when one of the masters says to Perceval – ‘
These are the heads sealed in silver and the heads sealed in lead, and the bodies whereunto these heads belonged; I tell you that you must make them come thither the head both of the King and of the Queen.’ This clearly has resonances with the mysterious head the Templars venerated called ‘Baphomet’, which here takes on a double headed/Janus like character, as we have encountered before in previous posts.
Apart from abounding in magical allusions, the poem also abounds in other allusions that are both heretical and/or pagan. These include references to a sanctioned ritual of king-sacrifice, to the roasting and devouring of children and a scene of desecration and abuse of a cross – which has echoes of the accusations levelled against the Templars by the Inquisition. In
Perlesvaus the dualist or Gnostic thought extends in some sense to the Grail itself, which is seen by Gawain as a changing sequence of images or visions so that it would seem to be several things simultaneously or something that can be interpreted on several different levels. So at one level it can be a mundane thing such as a cup but at a metaphorical level it could be connected to a lineage and would also seem to be an experience of some sort – probably a Gnostic illumination.
Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Grail
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln then analysed in some detail Wolfram von Eschenbach’s story of Parzival, which they considered was the most famous and artistically significant of the Grail poems. It was written at some stage between 1195 and 1216, which for me is important, as I believe the Templars found the Grail during the 1180’s.
We have previously looked at the story of Parzival, so I won’t repeat all the details here, just those that are relevant for our purposes. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln thought at first that the fact that Wolfram was Bavarian might distance him from the subject and render his account less reliable than others. However, they soon concluded that if anyone could speak authoritatively of the Grail, it was Wolfram. Indeed, at the beginning of Parzival, Wolfram boldly asserts that Chrétien’s version of the Grail story is wrong, whilst his own is accurate because it is based on privileged information. He later explains that this is because his information was obtained from
Kyot of Provence – who received it in turn from someone called
Flegetanis. I set out below Wolfram’s words in full on the provenance of his information:
“
Anyone who asked me before about the Grail and took me to task for not telling him was very much in the wrong. Kyot asked me not to reveal this, for Adventure commanded him to give it no thought until she herself, Adventure, should invite the telling, and then one must speak of it, of course.
Kyot, the well known master, found in Toledo, discarded, set down in heathen writing, the first source of this adventure. He first had to learn the abc’s but without the art of black magic …
A heathen, Flegetanis, had achieved high renown for his learning. This scholar of nature was descended from Solomon and born of a family which had long been Israelite until baptism became a shield against the fire of Hell. He wrote the adventure of the Grail. On his father’s side Flegetanis was a heathen, who worshipped a calf …
The heathen could tell us how all the stars set and rise again … to the circling course of the stars man’s affairs and destiny are linked. Flegetanis the heathen saw with his own eyes in the constellations things he was shy to talk about, hidden mysteries. He said there was a thing called the Grail, whose name he had clearly read in the constellations. A host of angels left it on the Earth.
Since then, baptised men have had the task of guarding it and with such chaste discipline that those who are called into the service of the Grail are always noble men. Thus wrote Flegetanis of these things.
Kyot, the wise master, set about to trace this tale in Latin books, to see where there ever had been a people dedicated to purity and worthy of caring for the Grail. He read the chronicles of the lands in Britain and elsewhere, in France and in Ireland, and in Anjou he found the tale. There he read the true story of Mazadan, and the exact record of all his family was written there.”
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln drew four main conclusions from the above passage which were: (1) the Grail story apparently involves the story of an individual named Mazadan; (2) the House of Anjou is in some way of paramount importance; (3) the original version of the story seems to have filtered into Western Europe over the Pyrenees from Toledo in Muslim occupied Spain; and (4) the Grail story’s derivation would seem ultimately to be of Judaic origin.
This last point is most telling since if the Grail was so awesome a Christian mystery, as depicted in the Grail romances, why should its secret be transmitted to Judaic initiates and why should Judaic writers have had access to specifically Christian material, which Christendom itself was unaware of?
Given what we have learned of Hagar/Kore/Meritaten/Brigid, the answer may be clearer to us, since if Abraham had possessed the Grail, then knowledge of it and its powers would have been preserved in Jewish esoteric circles and their writings. There is a lot mentioned in the above passage which is also of interest to us in our quest for the Grail. Like the three authors I would draw attention to four things: (1) Where it mentions that Kyot had first to learn the abc’s without the art of black magic, this suggests to me that he had to become familiar with the Cabaala without using necromancy or divination techniques; (2) The passage mentions that Flegetanis was familiar with astrology and through his knowledge of this subject he was able to discern hidden mysteries, including the existence of the Grail whose name he had clearly read. This suggests to me that he was able to look behind the mythical tales linked to the naming of the constellations and deduce the reality of the Grail within them, perhaps in a similar way to the way we have done so in this thread; (3) The passage mentions that a host of angels left it on the Earth. I believe this links with what the C’s have told us about a group of Kantekkians bringing the Merkaaba stone to Earth from Kantek; and (4) Finally, we also learn that Kyot read the chronicles of the lands in Britain and elsewhere, in France and in Ireland, and in Anjou where he found the tale. This suggests that like us he read the ancient Celtic tales of Britain, Ireland and France, including no doubt the Tuatha de Danann legends, and seemed to find the answer to the Grail in Anjou.
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln then make the all important discovery that Kyot of Provence was a real historic person and not a fictitious creation of Wolfram. They assert that Kyot of Provence was
Guiot of Provins, a troubadour, monk and spokesman for the Templars who did live in Provence and who wrote love songs, attacks on the Church, paeans or poems in praise of the Temple and satirical verses. Moreover, he was known to have visited Mayence, in Germany, in 1184 to attend a chivalric festival of Pentecost at which
Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, conferred knighthoods on his sons. The festival was attended by poets and troubadours from all over Christendom. As a knight of the Holy Roman Empire, Wolfram would almost certainly have been present and it is quite reasonable to suppose that he would have met with Guiot. The authors propose that in Wolfram Guiot he may have found a kindred spirit – to whom he may have confided certain information about the Grail, even if only in symbolic form. We may pre-suppose that Flegetanis may have been a real person too but, even if he was a fictitious creation, Wolfram and/or Guiot may have had some special purpose in creating him and giving him the distinctive background and pedigree he is said to have had.
Whether Guiot sparked Wolfram’s special interest in the Templars is not known but we do know that like Guiot, Wolfram made a special pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he observed the Templars in action at first hand. It should again be noted that in Parzival, Wolfram emphasises that the Templars are the guardians of the Grail and the Grail family are Templars. If the Templars were the guardians of the Grail, for the authors there is one overwhelming implication and that is that the Grail not only existed in Arthurian times but also during the Crusades, when the Grail romances were being composed. They assert that by introducing the Templars, both Wolfram and the anonymous author of Perlesvaus were suggesting that the Grail was not just something of the past but also something which for them possessed contemporary relevance. Moreover, Wolfram makes it clear in his poem that the Grail is not merely an object of gratuitous mystification and fantasy but a means of concealing something of immense consequence.
In the poem he constantly reiterates the urgency of secrecy in relation to the Grail. Thus, he states in the poem: “
For no man can ever win the Grail unless he is known to Heaven and he called by the name to the Grail. And the Grail is unknown save to those who have been called by name … to the Grail’s company.”
This might explain why STS forces can’t find it today since it is hidden behind a frequency fence and they cannot draw the ‘Sword from the Stone’ as King Arthur did, as he was of the Grail family and was called by name to the Grail.
Although Wolfram is elusive in describing the Grail he does say this about it:
“
She [the Queen of the Grail Family] was clothed in a dress of Arabian silk. Upon a deep green achmardi she bore the Perfection of Paradise, both root and branch. That was a thing called the Grail, which surpasses all earthly perfection. Repanse de Schoye [“Chosen Response”]
was the name of her whom the Grail permitted to be its bearer. Such was the nature of the Grail that she who watched over it had to preserve her purity and renounce all falsity.”
Notice that is the Queen of the Grail family who bears the Grail and it is the ‘Perfection of Paradise’ – which makes me think of the ‘
Gift of God’, since any gift from God will have about it an aura of heavenly perfection. The reference to ‘root and branch’ makes me think of a family tree and reminds me of Kore, the last surviving branch of the Perseid (Perseus – Perceval) family. The reference to renouncing all falsity reminds me of what the C’s said about the Ark of the Covenant, which could read the hearts of men and would destroy those who came near that did not have the correct disposition. It seems the Grail shares this capability of discerning what is in men’s minds and only the pure of heart may approach it.
Wolfram also draws attention to another attribute of the Grail, which reminds one of the magical cornucopia that was the ‘Head of Bran’ or the Norse ‘Horn of Plenty’:
“
I was told, and I tell you too, that whatsoever one reached out his hand for, he found it ready, in front of the Grail, food warm or food cold, dishes new or old, meat tame or game. ‘There never was anything like that’, many will say. But they will be wrong in their angry protest, for the Grail was the fruit of blessedness, such abundance of the sweetness of the World that its delights were very like what we are told of the Kingdom of Heaven.”
However, when Parzival’s hermit-uncle expounds on the Grail, it becomes an object decidedly more powerful:
“
Well I know that many brave knights dwell with the Grail at Munsalvaesche. Always when they ride out, as often as they do, it is to seek adventure. They do so for their sins, these templars, whether their reward be defeat or victory. A valiant host lives there and I will tell you how they are sustained. They live from a stone of purest kind. If you do not know it, it shall here be named to you. It is called lapsit exilles. By the power of that stone the phoenix burns to ashes, but the ashes give him life again. Thus does the phoenix moult and change its plumage, which afterwards is bright and shining and as lovely as before. There never was a human so ill but that, if he one day sees that stone, be it maid or man, as on the day he saw the stone, the same as when the best years of his life began, and though he should see the stone for two hundred years, it will never change, save that his hair might perhaps turn grey. Such power does the stone give a man that flesh and bones are at once made young again. The stone is also called the Grail.”
Hence, Wolfram clearly calls the Grail a stone and it is of the purest kind. This is the reason I linked the pure crystal skull that the C’s mentioned the Templars had guarded and venerated with the Holy Grail. The C’s have spoken of TDARMs, Trans-dimensional Atomic Remolecuralisation Machines in the transcripts and this object appears to have the same attributes. If I am right, it can be used to teleport people and objects, it can resurrect or rejuvenate dead or aged flesh and it can provide whatever you require – like a Star Trek replication machine or a hyper-advanced 3D printer. It might even allow you to time travel. BTW: I recently learned that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was a Rosicrucian belonging to AMORC.
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln discussed what ‘lapsit exilles’ might mean and came up with the standard ideas we have looked at before, including a stone fallen from heaven and linking it also with the Philosopher’s Stone of alchemy. From our perspective, it might just mean the ‘exiled stone’ – having been exiled from Kantek.
The authors wanted to find some association between the stone and Christ – who in the Gospels likened himself to the corner stone of the Temple rejected by the builders (i.e., the Jews). They therefore quoted from the passage, which immediately followed the one quoted above, where they think that Wolfram clearly seeks to link the Grail specifically with the Crucifixion and, through the symbol of the dove, with Mary Magdalene:
“
This very day, there comes to it [the Grail] a message wherein lies its greatest power. Today is Good Friday, and they await there a dove, winging down from Heaven. It brings a small white wafer, and leaves it on the stone. Then, shining white, the dove soars up to Heaven again. Always on Good Friday, it brings to the stone what I have just told you, and from that stone derives whatever good fragrances of drink and food there are on Earth, like to the perfection of Paradise. I mean all things on Earth may bear. And further the stone provides whatever game lives beneath the heavens, whether it flies or runs or swims. Thus, to the knightly brotherhood, does the power of the Grail give sustenance.”
Wolfram and the Templars were, of course, Catholics so a correspondence of the white wafer with the Eucharist and the dove with the Holy Ghost is natural. However, the catholic theology of the Eucharist permits of a spiritual food for the soul, not a physical food or drink for the belly or the palate. The dove, as a symbol, has also been associated with pagan deities such as Aphrodite or Venus. Hence, I am not altogether convinced by the connection here, although the Catholic Mass at which the Eucharist is consecrated is regarded as a mystical re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross on Good Friday.
Continued in Part 2
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