Alton Towers, Sir Francis Bacon and the Rosicrucians

[Palinurus]

As English is not my native language, I have to ask is this "Priuie" here the same as the "Priory" in "Priory of Sion"? How common is this word actually in English speaking lands?

No, this is an old spelling form of privy meaning private. See here: Privy Council of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

U > V is a common spelling transition from old Latin (or French, Italian and Spanish) into their modern versions.

So, no link whatsoever to Priory of Sion I wouln't think.

 

[MJF]

Here is the conclusion of France Yates from "The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age":

DEE’S THIRD PERIOD (1589–1608): DISGRACE AND FAILURE

When Dee returned to England in 1589, he was at first received by the queen, but his old position at the centre of the Elizabethan
world was not restored. During his absence, the Armada victory of 1588 had occurred, and this, one would think, might have been seen as the triumph on the seas of the patriotic movement in which Dee had had so large a share. On the other hand, the Earl of Leicester’s movement for landward extension of the Elizabethan ethos in his military expedition to the Netherlands in 1586 had failed; his nephew Philip Sidney lost his life in that expedition; and the whole enterprise was checked by the queen who withdrew Leicester from his command in disgrace.Leicester never got over this; he quietly died in 1588. Thus Leicester and the Sidney circle, Dee’s supporters in the old days, were no longer there except for some survivors, such as Edward Dyer, Sidney’s closest friend, who had been in touch with Dee and Kelley in their recent adventures.

Shunned and isolated, Dee was also confronted with a growing witch-hunt against him. The cry of ‘conjuror’ had always been sporadically raised but in the old days the queen and Leicester had protected his studies. Now the enemies were
increasingly vocal. Dee felt obliged to defend himself in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, printed in 1604 but written
earlier.
View attachment 47425

It is illustrated with a woodcut which shows Dee kneeling on the cushion of hope, humility, and patience with his head raised in prayer to the cloudy heavens wherein can be seen the ear, eye, and avenging sword of God. Opposite to him is the many-headed monster of lying tongues and unkind rumour, its heads malevolently turned in his direction. He earnestly assures the archbishop that all his studies have been directed towards searching out the truth of God, that they are holy studies, not diabolical as his enemies falsely assert. From his youth up it has pleased the Almighty

to insinuate into my hart, an insatiable zeale, and desire to knowe his truth: And in him, and by him, incessantly to seeke,
and listen after the same; by the true philosophical method and harmony: proceeding and ascending . . . gradatim, from things
visible, to consider of things inuisible; from thinges bodily, to conceiue of thinges spirituall: from thinges transitorie, and
momentarie, to meditate of things permanent: by thinges mortall . . . to have some perceiuerance of immortality. And to con-
clude, most briefeley, by the most meruailous frame of the whole world, philosophically viewed, and circumspectly wayed,
numbred, and measured . . . most faithfully to loue, honor, and glorifie alwaies, the Framer and Creator thereof.

One hears in these words the voice of the pious author of the Mathematical Preface, rising with number through the three
worlds. But the admired Dee of other days, mentor of Elizabethan poets, must now defend himself from being a black
conjuror of devils.
The implications of the angel-conjuring side of Dee’s doctrine had come out more prominently during his continental mission;
probably rumours of this, and of Jesuit opposition to it, had reached England. Elizabeth and her advisers, always nervous of
committing themselves to the rash projects of enthusiasts, would now be understandably nervous of Dee. Elizabeth had with-
drawn her support from Leicester’s continental enterprise; Leicester and Sidney were both dead. No wonder that Dee’s
position in England was very different from what it had been before his continental journey and that many people might now
refuse to believe that the famous mathematician was a Christian Cabalist, and not a conjuror of devils.

Of Dee’s three periods, the first one, the successful one, has been the most explored. We are all now familiar with the idea
that John Dee, dismissed in the Victorian age as a ridiculous charlatan, was immensely in fl uential in the Elizabethan age, an
in fluence which is far from being, as yet, fully assessed or understood. Of the second period, the period of the continental mis-
sion, we are beginning to know a good deal more than formerly, enough to realise that it had some very large religious or reform-
ing scope, and that its in fl uence long persisted in ways difficult to decipher. The third period, the period of failure verging on per-
secution of this once so admired and important fi gure, has been the least studied of all. What I now say about it must be pro-
visional, awaiting further much-needed research. For the third period is most essential for the understanding of Dee as a whole.
Dee was very poor after his return and in great anxiety as to how to provide a living for his wife and family. A former friend
with whom he was, apparently, still in contact was Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom Dee dined at Durham House on 9 October
1595.

Raleigh, however, was himself out of favour, and would be unlikely to be able to help him to a position. At last, in 1596,
he was madewarden of a college in Manchester, whither he moved with his wife and family. It was an uncomfortable place
and he had di ffi culty with the fellows of the college. In fact the Manchester appointment seems to have been something like a
semi-banishment where he was, for reasons not quite clear, unhappy.
One of his activities when at Manchester was to act as adviser about cases of witchcraft and demonic possession. He had books
on these subjects in his Manchester library which he lent toenquirers investigating such cases. One of the books which he
thus lent was the De praestigiis daemonum by Weyer, the friend of Agrippa, in which it is argued that witchcraft is a delusion,
witches being only poor, melancholy old women. Another book which Dee lent was the Malleus male ficarum, a work which is very
positive as to the reality of witches.
It would seem strange that the conjuring suspicions against Dee should have taken the form of turning him into an expert on
demonology to be consulted in trials, but such seems to have been the case.
The reality of witches and witchcraft was being forcibly maintained in these years by no less a person than the King of
Scotland, soon to succeed Queen Elizabeth as James I. In his Daemonologie (1587), James is profoundly shocked by the
‘damnable error’ of those who, like Weyer, deny the reality of witchcraft. He refers the reader to Bodin’s Démonomanie where he
will find many examples of witchcraft collected with great diligence. And for particulars about the black arts the reader should
consult ‘the fourth book of Cornelius Agrippa’. This was the spurious fourth book of the De occulta philosophia which James
accepted as genuine (Weyer had said that it was not by Agrippa).
James has much more to say about ‘the Divel’s school’ which thinks to climb to knowledge of things to come ‘mounting from
degree to degree on the slippery scale of curiosity’, believing that circles and conjurations tied to the words of God will raise
spirits.

This is clearly ‘practical Cabala’ interpreted as a black art, a fruit of that tree of forbidden knowledge of which Adam
was commanded not to eat. James’s work, if read in Manchester, would not have helped Dee’s reputation.
Dee appears to have been away from Manchester from 1598 to1600; eventually he returned to his old house at Mortlake, living
there in great poverty, though still partially in touch with ‘great persons’.
The accession of James I in 1603 boded little good for the reputed conjuror. Nevertheless Dee made desperate appeals to the new monarch. In a printed pamphlet, dated 5 June 1604, John Dee appeals to the king asking that those who call him a conjuror should be brought to trial:
‘Some impudent and malicious forraine enemie or English traytor . . . hath affirmed your Maiesties Suppliant to be a Conjuror belonging to the most Honorable Priuie Counsell of your Maiesties most famous
last predecessor. . . .’
Note that Dee suspects foreigners or traitors of fomenting the rumours against him, and that he hints that such rumours might implicate the late queen and her council. All was in vain. Dee was not cleared. He died in great poverty at Mortlake in 1608.

The last act of Dee’s extraordinary story is the most impressive of them all. The descendant of British kings, creator (or one of the creators) of the British imperial legend, the leader of the Elizabethan Renaissance, the mentor of Philip Sidney, the prophet of some far-reaching religious movement, dies, an old man, in bitter neglect and extreme poverty.

I am not interested here in the sensationalism which has gathered round Dee’s story and which has tended to obscure his real significance. That significance, as I see it, is the presentation in the life and work of one man of the phenomenon of the disap-
pearance of the Renaissance in the late sixteenth century in clouds of demonic rumour. What happened in Dee’s lifetime to
his ‘Renaissance Neoplatonism’ was happening all over Europe as the Renaissance went down in the darkness of the witch-hunts. Giordano Bruno in England in the 1580s had helped to inspire the ‘Sidney circle’ and the Elizabethan poetic Renaissance.
Giordano Bruno in 1600 was burned at the stake in Rome as a sorcerer. Dee’s fate in England in his third period presents a similar extraordinary contrast with his brilliant first, or ‘Renaissance’, period.

The Hermetic–Cabalist movement failed as a movement ofreligious reform, and that failure involved the suppression of
the Renaissance Neoplatonism which had nourished it. The Renaissance magus turned into Faust.

As English is not my native language, I have to ask is this "Priuie" here the same as the "Priory" in "Priory of Sion"? How common is this word actually in English speaking lands?

Priory (disambiguation) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

No it is not. Dee's English was of an old style, where there was not yet common agreement on the spelling of many common words. What Dee is referring to here is the 'Privy Council' of Queen Elizabeth I. It still exists today as a formal body of advisers to the sovereign of the United Kingdom. Its membership mainly comprises senior politicians who are current or former members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. In a crisis, where there was no effective government, they can convene and pass Orders in Council having direct effect in law.

Our word 'Priory' (a monastery headed by a prior) today is derived from the French word 'Prieure', which itself probably derives from the French word 'prière' meaning prayer. In Dee's time it may well have been written as 'priore'. When England was still a Catholic country, there were a lot of priories. However, by the reign of Queen Elizabeth I they had all been closed. However, the name does live on since many of the monastic buildings survived and were converted into residences or were put to other uses. Woburn Abbey, a famous English stately home, is a good example of this. See Woburn Abbey - Abbey / Priory in Milton Keynes, Milton Keynes - Visit South East England. My brother taught at a girls secondary school, which had been an Augustinian Priory and parts of the building still reflect its original heritage. With Catholic emanicipation in the early part of the 19th century, monks and friars returned to England and established new abbeys, monasteries and priories. Thus, there is a prominent Dominican Priory in Cambridge today. I even have a Benedictine Abbey located in my own village here in England. Occasionally, the monks or friars even regained their original properties. A good example of this is at Aylesford in Kent, which the Carmelites bought in 1949. See The Friars - Aylesford Priory, Maidstone, Kent. It became their mother house after they were forced out of the Holy Land in 1242 (as mentioned in my earlier post). The Carmelite General at the time was an Englishman called Simon Stock. People tend to view most Catholic devotions as being Italian, Spanish or French etc. but it was in fact in England that the popular devotion of the brown scapula commenced, which in essence is a scaled down version of the Carmelite's own larger brown scapula.

Hence, to answer your question, most English people would recognise the name priory today, without perhaps really knowing what a priory was. We also have a lot of 'Granges' in England, which was an outlying farm with tithe barns belonging to a monastery or feudal lord. Again we have an example of a medieval grange in the village where I live in Surrey, which once belonged to the now ruined abbey of Waverley.

 

[MJF]

No, this is an old spelling form of privy meaning private. See here: Privy Council of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

U > V is a common spelling transition from old Latin (or French, Italian and Spanish) into their modern versions.

So, no link whatsoever to Priory of Sion I wouln't think.

Sorry Palinurus but our responses crossed. However, you got it spot on.

 

[MJF]

Here is the conclusion of France Yates from "The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age":

DEE’S THIRD PERIOD (1589–1608): DISGRACE AND FAILURE

When Dee returned to England in 1589, he was at first received by the queen, but his old position at the centre of the Elizabethan
world was not restored. During his absence, the Armada victory of 1588 had occurred, and this, one would think, might have been seen as the triumph on the seas of the patriotic movement in which Dee had had so large a share. On the other hand, the Earl of Leicester’s movement for landward extension of the Elizabethan ethos in his military expedition to the Netherlands in 1586 had failed; his nephew Philip Sidney lost his life in that expedition; and the whole enterprise was checked by the queen who withdrew Leicester from his command in disgrace.Leicester never got over this; he quietly died in 1588. Thus Leicester and the Sidney circle, Dee’s supporters in the old days, were no longer there except for some survivors, such as Edward Dyer, Sidney’s closest friend, who had been in touch with Dee and Kelley in their recent adventures.

Shunned and isolated, Dee was also confronted with a growing witch-hunt against him. The cry of ‘conjuror’ had always been sporadically raised but in the old days the queen and Leicester had protected his studies. Now the enemies were
increasingly vocal. Dee felt obliged to defend himself in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, printed in 1604 but written
earlier.
View attachment 47425

It is illustrated with a woodcut which shows Dee kneeling on the cushion of hope, humility, and patience with his head raised in prayer to the cloudy heavens wherein can be seen the ear, eye, and avenging sword of God. Opposite to him is the many-headed monster of lying tongues and unkind rumour, its heads malevolently turned in his direction. He earnestly assures the archbishop that all his studies have been directed towards searching out the truth of God, that they are holy studies, not diabolical as his enemies falsely assert. From his youth up it has pleased the Almighty

to insinuate into my hart, an insatiable zeale, and desire to knowe his truth: And in him, and by him, incessantly to seeke,
and listen after the same; by the true philosophical method and harmony: proceeding and ascending . . . gradatim, from things
visible, to consider of things inuisible; from thinges bodily, to conceiue of thinges spirituall: from thinges transitorie, and
momentarie, to meditate of things permanent: by thinges mortall . . . to have some perceiuerance of immortality. And to con-
clude, most briefeley, by the most meruailous frame of the whole world, philosophically viewed, and circumspectly wayed,
numbred, and measured . . . most faithfully to loue, honor, and glorifie alwaies, the Framer and Creator thereof.

One hears in these words the voice of the pious author of the Mathematical Preface, rising with number through the three
worlds. But the admired Dee of other days, mentor of Elizabethan poets, must now defend himself from being a black
conjuror of devils.
The implications of the angel-conjuring side of Dee’s doctrine had come out more prominently during his continental mission;
probably rumours of this, and of Jesuit opposition to it, had reached England. Elizabeth and her advisers, always nervous of
committing themselves to the rash projects of enthusiasts, would now be understandably nervous of Dee. Elizabeth had with-
drawn her support from Leicester’s continental enterprise; Leicester and Sidney were both dead. No wonder that Dee’s
position in England was very different from what it had been before his continental journey and that many people might now
refuse to believe that the famous mathematician was a Christian Cabalist, and not a conjuror of devils.

Of Dee’s three periods, the first one, the successful one, has been the most explored. We are all now familiar with the idea
that John Dee, dismissed in the Victorian age as a ridiculous charlatan, was immensely in fl uential in the Elizabethan age, an
in fluence which is far from being, as yet, fully assessed or understood. Of the second period, the period of the continental mis-
sion, we are beginning to know a good deal more than formerly, enough to realise that it had some very large religious or reform-
ing scope, and that its in fl uence long persisted in ways difficult to decipher. The third period, the period of failure verging on per-
secution of this once so admired and important fi gure, has been the least studied of all. What I now say about it must be pro-
visional, awaiting further much-needed research. For the third period is most essential for the understanding of Dee as a whole.
Dee was very poor after his return and in great anxiety as to how to provide a living for his wife and family. A former friend
with whom he was, apparently, still in contact was Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom Dee dined at Durham House on 9 October
1595.

Raleigh, however, was himself out of favour, and would be unlikely to be able to help him to a position. At last, in 1596,
he was madewarden of a college in Manchester, whither he moved with his wife and family. It was an uncomfortable place
and he had di ffi culty with the fellows of the college. In fact the Manchester appointment seems to have been something like a
semi-banishment where he was, for reasons not quite clear, unhappy.
One of his activities when at Manchester was to act as adviser about cases of witchcraft and demonic possession. He had books
on these subjects in his Manchester library which he lent toenquirers investigating such cases. One of the books which he
thus lent was the De praestigiis daemonum by Weyer, the friend of Agrippa, in which it is argued that witchcraft is a delusion,
witches being only poor, melancholy old women. Another book which Dee lent was the Malleus male ficarum, a work which is very
positive as to the reality of witches.
It would seem strange that the conjuring suspicions against Dee should have taken the form of turning him into an expert on
demonology to be consulted in trials, but such seems to have been the case.
The reality of witches and witchcraft was being forcibly maintained in these years by no less a person than the King of
Scotland, soon to succeed Queen Elizabeth as James I. In his Daemonologie (1587), James is profoundly shocked by the
‘damnable error’ of those who, like Weyer, deny the reality of witchcraft. He refers the reader to Bodin’s Démonomanie where he
will find many examples of witchcraft collected with great diligence. And for particulars about the black arts the reader should
consult ‘the fourth book of Cornelius Agrippa’. This was the spurious fourth book of the De occulta philosophia which James
accepted as genuine (Weyer had said that it was not by Agrippa).
James has much more to say about ‘the Divel’s school’ which thinks to climb to knowledge of things to come ‘mounting from
degree to degree on the slippery scale of curiosity’, believing that circles and conjurations tied to the words of God will raise
spirits.

This is clearly ‘practical Cabala’ interpreted as a black art, a fruit of that tree of forbidden knowledge of which Adam
was commanded not to eat. James’s work, if read in Manchester, would not have helped Dee’s reputation.
Dee appears to have been away from Manchester from 1598 to1600; eventually he returned to his old house at Mortlake, living
there in great poverty, though still partially in touch with ‘great persons’.
The accession of James I in 1603 boded little good for the reputed conjuror. Nevertheless Dee made desperate appeals to the new monarch. In a printed pamphlet, dated 5 June 1604, John Dee appeals to the king asking that those who call him a conjuror should be brought to trial:
‘Some impudent and malicious forraine enemie or English traytor . . . hath affirmed your Maiesties Suppliant to be a Conjuror belonging to the most Honorable Priuie Counsell of your Maiesties most famous
last predecessor. . . .’
Note that Dee suspects foreigners or traitors of fomenting the rumours against him, and that he hints that such rumours might implicate the late queen and her council. All was in vain. Dee was not cleared. He died in great poverty at Mortlake in 1608.

The last act of Dee’s extraordinary story is the most impressive of them all. The descendant of British kings, creator (or one of the creators) of the British imperial legend, the leader of the Elizabethan Renaissance, the mentor of Philip Sidney, the prophet of some far-reaching religious movement, dies, an old man, in bitter neglect and extreme poverty.

I am not interested here in the sensationalism which has gathered round Dee’s story and which has tended to obscure his real significance. That significance, as I see it, is the presentation in the life and work of one man of the phenomenon of the disap-
pearance of the Renaissance in the late sixteenth century in clouds of demonic rumour. What happened in Dee’s lifetime to
his ‘Renaissance Neoplatonism’ was happening all over Europe as the Renaissance went down in the darkness of the witch-hunts. Giordano Bruno in England in the 1580s had helped to inspire the ‘Sidney circle’ and the Elizabethan poetic Renaissance.
Giordano Bruno in 1600 was burned at the stake in Rome as a sorcerer. Dee’s fate in England in his third period presents a similar extraordinary contrast with his brilliant first, or ‘Renaissance’, period.

The Hermetic–Cabalist movement failed as a movement ofreligious reform, and that failure involved the suppression of
the Renaissance Neoplatonism which had nourished it. The Renaissance magus turned into Faust.

Thank you for adding this extract. I believe that Laura is quite a fan of Frances Yates' work. Yates helped to bring Dee to people's attention as a major (if not the greatest) influence of the Elizabethan Renaissance. The problem with Dee was that his involvement in necromancy and conjuring destroyed his reputation as a serious thinker and it has coloured people's views of him ever since, with people viewing him more as a magus or wizard rather than as one of the fathers of modern experimental science. His legacy would be carried on through men like Francis Bacon, Robert Fludd and into the Royal Society with Sir Isaac Newton. Ironically though, it was with Newton (an alchemist with many other esoteric interests) that the modern age of emperical science was born that would subsequently condemn subjects such as astrology and numerology to the sidelines as pseudoscience at best or as meddling with the occult at worst. Dee though would have viewed these subjects just as worthy of study as mathematics, astronomy, chemistry and physics. Today they may form part of paranormal studies, which in itself is a fairly recent field of study. Thus the Renaissance would give way to the 'Age of Reason' of Descartes and Voltaire etc. and the eventual triumph of scientific materialism in our own age, which leaves no room at all for the spirit. I am sure if Dee returned today he would be horrified since he seemed to be a very spiritual man deep down, whatever else one may think of him.

 

[MJF]

As a follow-up to my post on "It is not germaine", I thought I would add some further comments on this unusual use of the word "germaine" that Laura subsequently queried with the C's. It is important to note that they linked it to a French clue when they said - "Tis French" .

The C's used the term again in the Session dated 5 December 1998 in relation to some stone beehives that have been found in the Rennes-le-Chateau area:

Q: Well, there were some funny things going on in that session where you mentioned it. But, we will drop it for now. Okay, regarding this Rennes-le-Chateau business, Mike asks: I would like to know what or who created this pattern of mountains?

A: Mountains are a natural construct.

Q: Then he asks: about the beehive huts in the area, to which you answered 'not germaine,' and he said 'yes, but I'm curious about the beehive huts.' Is there any symbolism to the beehive huts in the area? {Not to mention the funny spelling of the word “germane”.}

A: None.

Q: What were they used for?

A: Honey production!

As you can see, the C's negated the idea of there being any special symbolism in these less then ancient beehives. I would add though that the bee does have a special significance to Freemasons and it is often used as a symbol in their artistic works and devices (Napolean Bonaparte, a freemason, certainly used it), since it represents industriousness. As 'germaine' might be linked to the Stuart kings and their role as leaders and custodians of Freemasonry and its traditions, this could be a way of saying that trying to make a masonic connection to the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery is a blind alley or dead end. However, I dicovered a further link with the word or name 'Germaine' in the church of Rennes-le-Chateau, which could have more relevance to our quest, in the same session.

Q: Well, on the same subject: did Abbe Saunier put clues in the stations of the cross in the Church at Rennes-le-Chateau?

A: Some, but they are gilded.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: You will see.

Q: Does the message involve all the stations of the cross?

A: Just look. Now folks, remember: Rennes-le-Chateau is a means, not an end. Sort of like unlocking the trunk, expecting to find the gold, and merely finding a map.

Q: So, when you said 'template, Templar,' you were possibly referring to the fact that what was going on here, the constructions, the name and word clues, and even the events and incidents may have been a model that we should look for in other places?

A: Temples too.

Q: What is the...

A: What is behind your temples?

Q: Behind, in a general sense? The creators, the instigators? The church?

A: Place your fingers upon...

Q: What do you put your fingers on that has to do with a temple? Place your fingers on your temple? On your head? What is behind your temple? Your brain...

A: Which part?

Q: Well, the TEMPORAL lobe... the part of the brain where magnetite is found.

A: Yes....

Q: So, what are you getting at here?

A: We are not, you will.

Q: So, the instructions or clues found in this place, may, in fact, apply to some other location? Is that it?

A: Or to a grid.

Q: Was Saunier aware of this grid?

A: It is not important, the grid is.

Q: What I am trying to get at is, if he was aware of it, he might have put clues about it in his decorations in the church.

A: Who says?!

Q: He wrote across the doorway of the church: Terribilis locus est, or This is a Terrible Place...

A: And some have put: "Biohazard" where they store riches.

Q: What grid are we talking about? An EM grid...

A: Yes. Meridians...

Q: In response to your remark from last week, 'ever feel that you are dancing around in circles?' Mike wanted to know if this was a reference to crop circles?

A: No, not directly!

Q: Then, you also said: 'quite simply we would say, where is Arcadia?' Arcadia ...

A: You need to work on that one. The answers to these mysteries are not easily solved, but well worth it!

Q: The chief thing I noticed about Arcadia was, the Arcadians were the enemies of the Trojans, they were the creators of the Trojan Horse - a huge deception... and the Celts are supposed to be the descendants of the refugees from Troy. And, when Hitler came along, one of his ideals was to resurrect Arcadia, and that Germany was going to be the new Arcadia and destroy the 'old corrupt civilization,' which was Troy. Troy is 'three' and is connected to 'Ilium,' and I guess what my question is here is: just who's on first?

A: Who is on second

There are some very suggestive comments contained in this extract as regards 'dancing round in circles', the EM grid, Arcadia, Troy and "who is on second [base]". However, I will leave these on the sidelines for now. The C's then followed-up on the stations of the cross being clues theme in the subsequent Session dated 12 December, 1998:

Q: Last week when I asked about the stations of the cross in the church of Rennes-le-Chateau, whether they were important or would give clues, you said 'some, but they are gilded.' Mike suggested that this term could mean 1. To overlay with gold; 2. To give an attractive, but deceptive appearance; and 3. Guild, as in organization. He asks: I wonder which definition they meant?

A: 2.

Q: Okay, he asks again about the beehive huts. You said they were not 'germain' and we have already discussed that issue. He writes: were these huts really used for honey production, that doesn't seem logical. Were they built in the 19th century by the agrarians you mentioned, or just used by them? Because some of them are completely filled with rocks.

A: Crystals figure in here.

Q: Why do crystals figure in here?

A: Look to see.

Q: He asks if there is a technology buried in the area to facilitate the workings of the window?

A: No need for that.

Q: He asks: Could WE use it?

A: You could be zapped by it.

Q: He wanted to know why the EM grid was important...

A: See 1954 UFO mapping study: France.

Hence, the C's having negated the masonic connection (germaine) in the previous session are linking the stone beehives filled with rocks to the property of crystals, which may in turn link with the utilisation of the EM grid. However, we also see that the C's are telling us that the stations of the cross in the church of Rennes-le-Chateau are gilded (i.e., painted with gold leaf so to make them more attractive or to adorn or brighten them) so as to give an attractive but deceptive appearance. When looking at some of the statues adjacent to the stations of the cross in Abbe Saunier's church, I noted two in particular which may convey hidden meanings for our purposes. The first example is the statue of Saint Germaine erected between the fourth and fifth stations, which, as you can see in the photo below, is gilded.​

Germaine Cousin, also Germana Cousin, Germaine of Pibrac, or Germana, (1579–1601) is a French saint. She was born in 1579 of humble parents at Pibrac, a village 15 km from Toulouse.

Of her, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

"From her birth she seemed marked out for suffering; she came into the world with a deformed hand and the disease of scrofula, and, while yet an infant, lost her mother. Her father soon married again, but his second wife treated Germaine with much cruelty. Under pretence of saving the other children from the contagion of scrofula she persuaded the father to keep Germaine away from the homestead, and thus the child was employed almost from infancy as a shepherdess. When she returned at night, her bed was in the stable or on a litter of vine branches in a garret. In this hard school Germaine learned early to practise humility and patience. She was gifted with a marvellous sense of the presence of God and of spiritual things, so that her lonely life became to her a source of light and blessing. To poverty, bodily infirmity, the rigours of the seasons, the lack of affection from those in her own home, she added voluntary mortifications and austerities, making bread and water her daily food. Her love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and for His Virgin Mother presaged the saint. She assisted daily at the Holy Sacrifice; when the bell rang, she fixed her sheep-hook or distaff in the ground, and left her flocks to the care of Providence while she heard Mass. Although the pasture was on the border of a forest infested with wolves, no harm ever came to her flocks."

She is said to have practised many austerities as reparation for the sacrileges perpetrated by heretics in the neighbouring churches. She frequented the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist, and it was observed that her piety increased on the approach of every feast of Our Lady. The rosary was her only book, and her devotion to the Angelus was so great that she used to fall on her knees at the first sound of the bell, even though she heard it when crossing a stream. The villagers are said to have inclined at first to treat her piety with mild derision, until certain signs of God's signal favour made her an object of reverence and awe.

The ford in winter, after heavy rains or the melting of snow, was at times impassable. On several occasions the swollen waters were seen to open and afford her a passage without wetting her garments. Notwithstanding her poverty she found means to help the poor by sharing with them her allowance of bread. Her father at last came to a sense of his duty, forbade her stepmother henceforth to treat her harshly, and wished to give her a place in the home with his other children, but Germaine begged to be allowed to remain in the humbler position. At this point, when men were beginning to realize the beauty of her life, she died. One morning in the early summer of 1601, her father found that she had not risen at the usual hour and went to call her, finding her dead on her pallet of vine-twigs. She was 22 years old at the time.

Her remains were buried in the parish church of Pibrac in front of the pulpit. In 1644, when the grave was opened to receive one of her relatives, the body of Germaine was discovered fresh and perfectly preserved, and miraculously raised almost to the level of the floor of the church. It was exposed for public view near the pulpit, until a noble lady, the wife of François de Beauregard, presented as a thanks-offering a casket of lead to hold the remains. She had been cured of a malignant and incurable ulcer in the breast, and her infant son whose life was despaired of was restored to health on her seeking the intercession of Germaine. This was the first of a long series of wonderful cures wrought at her relics. The leaden casket was placed in the sacristy, and in 1661 and 1700 the remains were viewed and found fresh and intact by the vicars-general of Toulouse, who have left testamentary depositions of the fact.

Expert medical evidence deposed that the body had not been embalmed, and experimental tests showed that the preservation was not due to any property inherent in the soil. In 1700 a movement was begun to procure the beatification of Germaine, but it fell through owing to accidental causes. In 1793 the casket was desecrated by a revolutionary tinsmith, named Toulza, who with three accomplices took out the remains and buried them in the sacristy, throwing quick lime and water on them. After the Revolution, her body was found to be still intact save where the quick-lime had done its work.

The private veneration of Germaine had continued from the original finding of the body in 1644, supported and encouraged by numerous cures and miracles. The cause of beatification was resumed in 1850. The documents attested more than 400 miracles or extraordinary graces, and thirty postulatory letters from archbishops and bishops in France besought the beatification from the Holy See. The miracles attested were cures of every kind (of blindness, congenital and resulting from disease, of hip and spinal disease), besides the multiplication of food for the distressed community of the Good Shepherd at Bourges in 1845.

On 7 May 1854, Pius IX proclaimed her beatification. He proclaimed her a saint on 29 June 1867, the day on which a vast assembly of prelates gathered in Rome to mark the 18th centenary of the martyrdom of Peter the Apostle, and he congratulated the archbishop of Toulouse, Florian Desprez, and his diocese for giving the church a saint "so powerful, so kind, and so dear to its heart". Her feast is kept in the Diocese of Toulouse on 15 June. She is represented in art with a shepherd's crook or with a distaff; with a watchdog, or a sheep; or with flowers in her apron."

It is understandable why Abbe Sauniere, a French village priest, might wish to erect a statue of a French saint who had only fairly recently been canonised by the Pope from Saunier's time perspective and was a native of Toulouse, a nearby city. However, could there be a hidden message contained within his choice? When you consider the painting of the Shepherds of Arcadia, which includes a young woman, who may represent Demeter, Kore or other earth godesses such as Brigid, Athena etc, then Saint Germain is a good choice, since she was a shepherdess and is depicted carrying a shepherd's crook - with all that entails as regards enlightenment and illumination (see earlier posts). Also a watchdog is often connected with Egyptian and other ancient symbolism to denote a spiritual guide. She also carries flowers in her apron, which again can signify the spring equinox linking her with Demeter and Kore etc.​

However, this is not the only statue in Saunier's church that may conceal a hidden reference. I set out below a photo of a gilded statue of another French saint, Saint Roch for your consideration, which is erected between the tenth and the eleventh Stations of the Cross in the church:



Saint Roch
Saint Roch - Wikipedia

Roch or Rocco (lived c. 1348 – 15/16 August 1376/79 (traditionally c. 1295 – 16 August 1327) is a Catholic saint, a confessor whose death is commemorated on 16 August and 9 September in Italy; he is especially invoked against the plague. He may also be called Rock in English, and has the designation of Rollox in Glasgow, Scotland, said to be a corruption of Roch's Loch, which referred to a small loch once near a chapel dedicated to Roch in 1506.

He is a patron saint of dogs, invalids, of falsely accused people, bachelors, and several other things. He is the patron saint of Dolo (near Venice) and Parma. He is also the patron of Casamassima, Cisterna di Latina and Palagiano, Italy.

Saint Roch is known as "São Roque" in Portuguese, as "Sant Roc" in Catalan, and as "San Roque" in Spanish (including in former colonies of the Spanish colonial empire such as the Philippines and in Serbia there is a church Sveti Roka in Petrovaradin named after him.

According to his Acta and his vita in the Golden Legend, he was born at Montpellier, at that time "upon the border of France," as the Golden Legend has it, the son of the noble governor of that city. Even his birth was accounted a miracle, for his noble mother had been barren until she prayed to the Virgin Mary. Miraculously marked from birth with a red cross on his breast that grew as he did, he early began to manifest strict asceticism and great devoutness; on days when his "devout mother fasted twice in the week, and the blessed child Rocke abstained him twice also when his mother fasted in the week and would suck his mother but once that day."

On the death of his parents in his twentieth year he distributed all his worldly goods among the poor like Saint Francis of Assisi—though his father on his deathbed had ordained him governor of Montpellier—and set out as a mendicant pilgrim for Rome. Coming into Italy during an epidemic of plague, he was very diligent in tending the sick in the public hospitals at Acquapendente, Cesena, Rimini, Novara, and Rome, and is said to have effected many miraculous cures by prayer and the sign of the cross and the touch of his hand. At Rome, according to the Golden Legend, he preserved the "cardinal of Angleria in Lombardy" by making the mark of the cross on his forehead, which miraculously remained. Ministering at Piacenza he himself finally fell ill. He was expelled from the town; and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves, which was miraculously supplied with water by a spring that arose in the place; he would have perished had not a dog belonging to a nobleman named Gothard Palastrelli supplied him with bread and licked his wounds, healing them. Count Gothard, following his hunting dog that carried the bread, discovered Roch and became his acolyte.

On his return incognito to Montpellier, he was arrested as a spy (by orders of his own uncle) and thrown into prison, where he languished five years and died on 16 August 1327, without revealing his name, to avoid worldly glory. (Evidence suggests, as mentioned earlier, that the previous events occurred, instead of at Voghera in the 1370s.)

After his death, according to the Golden Legend;

"anon an angel brought from heaven a table divinely written with letters of gold into the prison, which he laid under the head of S. Rocke. And in that table was written that God had granted to him his prayer, that is to wit, that who that calleth meekly to S. Rocke he shall not be hurt with any hurt of pestilence."

The townspeople recognized him as well by his birthmark; he was soon canonized in the popular mind, and a great church erected in veneration.

The date (1327) asserted by Francesco Diedo for Roch's death would precede the traumatic advent of the Black Death in Europe (1347–49) after long centuries of absence, for which a rich iconography of the plague, its victims and its protective saints was soon developed, in which the iconography of Roche finds its historical place: previously the topos did not exist. In contrast, however, St. Roch of Montpellier cannot be dismissed based on dates of a specific plague event. In medieval times, the term "plague" was used to indicate a whole array of illnesses and epidemics.

The first literary account is an undated Acta that is labeled, by comparison with the longer, elaborated accounts that were to follow, Acta Breviora, which relies almost entirely on standardized hagiographic topoi to celebrate and promote the cult of Roch.

The story that when the Council of Constance was threatened with plague in 1414, public processions and prayers for the intercession of Roch were ordered, and the outbreak ceased, is provided by Francesco Diedo, the Venetian governor of Brescia, in his Vita Sancti Rochi, 1478. The cult of Roch gained momentum during the bubonic plague that passed through northern Italy in 1477–79.

Saint Roch in Art

Following the Black Death, especially the Italian plague epidemic of 1477–79, new images of Christian martyrs and saints appeared and Roch gained new fame and popularity. The religious art of the time emphasized the importance of the saint to plague-ridden Christians.

The new plague-related images of Roch were drawn from a variety of sources. Plague texts dating from ancient and classical times, as well as Christian, scientific and folk beliefs, all contributed to this emerging visual tradition. Some of the most popular symbols of plague were swords, darts, and most especially arrows. There was also a prevalence of memento mori themes, dark clouds, and astrological signs (signa magna) such as comets, which were often referenced by physicians and writers of plague tracts as causes of plague. The physical symptoms of plague – a raised arm, a tilted head, or a collapsed body – began to symbolize plague in post-Black Death painting.

Plague saints offered hope and healing before, during, and after times of plague. A specific style of painting, the plague votive, was considered a talisman for warding off plague. It portrayed a particular saint as an intercessor between God and the person or persons who commissioned the painting – usually a town, government, lay confraternity, or religious order to atone for the "collective guilt" of the community.

These plague votives worked as a psychological defense against disease in which people attempted to manipulate their situation through requesting the intercession of a saint against the arrows of plague. Rather than a society depressed and resigned to repeated epidemics, these votives represent people taking positive steps to regain control over their environment. Paintings of Roch represent the confidence in which Renaissance worshipers sought to access supernatural aid in overcoming the ravages of plague.

The very abundance of means by which people invoked the aid of the celestial court is essential in understanding Renaissance responses to the disease. Rather than depression or resignation, people "possessed a confidence that put even an apocalyptic disaster of the magnitude of the Black Death into perspective of God's secure and benevolent plan for humankind."

The plague votives functioned both to request intercessory aid from plague saints and to provide catharsis for a population that had just witnessed the profound bodily destruction of the plague. By showing plague saints such as Roch and Sebastian, votives influenced the distribution of God's mercy by invoking the memory of the human suffering experienced by Christ during the Passion. In the art of Roch after 1477 the saint displayed the wounds of his martyrdom without evidence of pain or suffering. Roch actively lifted his clothing to display the plague bubo in his thigh. This display of his plague bubo showed that "he welcomed his disease as a divinely sent opportunity to imitate the sufferings of Christ… [his] patient endurance [of the physical suffering of plague was] a form of martyrdom."

Roch's status as a pilgrim who suffered plague is paramount in his iconography. "The sight of Roch scarred by the plague yet alive and healthy must have been an emotionally-charged image of a promised cure. Here was literal proof that one could survive the plague, a saint who had triumphed over the disease in his own flesh."

It is certainly interesting to learn that medieval physicians and writers of plague tracts were referring to comets as the cause of plague. Modern science seems to be in denial of this fact but our medieval ancestors appeared to be aware. However, what I wish to bring to your attention is: (1) that we have a saint who has a name that may be called "Rock" in English and we know that Abbe Saunier liked to collect magnetised rock for some reason and (2) Saint Roch was miraculously marked from birth with a red cross on his breast.

What relevance does the red cross birthmark have for us? Well, when we looked at the Merovingian monarchs in an earlier post, they were reputed to have had a special red birthmark on their breasts or chests. Legend has it that it was in the form of a cross. Was it just coincidence that Abbe Saunier chose this particular French saint or was it to draw attention to the Merovingian connection, which would feature heavily in 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail'? Is this what the C's meant when they responded to Laura's question: "Abbe Saunier put clues in the stations of the cross in the Church at Rennes-le-Chateau?" by saying "Some, but they are gilded"?

There are other statues too but I would just draw your attention to one final piece of artwork and this is a sculpture found at the entrance to the churchyard:



Although an image of the skull and crossbones may seem appropriate in a churchyard, the fact that is also a device linked with the Knights Templars and Freemasonry is in itself quite interesting.

However, we must bear in mind what the C's said about the clues contained in these Stations of the Cross:

Q: Does the message involve all the stations of the cross?

A: Just look. Now folks, remember: Rennes-le-Chateau is a means, not an end. Sort of like unlocking the trunk, expecting to find the gold, and merely finding a map.

This indicates to me that there is a genuine mystery to be found at Rennes-le-Chateau but solving it is not in itself the end of the quest but merely a stepping stone by which one can penetrate to the heart of the real mystery. I also think the comparison to finding merely a map is a significant statement, since Poussin's painting of the Shepherds of Arcadia is perhaps the real clue here and somewhere in that painting is a map which will allow one to find the Holy Grail. If Louis XIV was of the Nordic Covenant bloodline, it would explain why he was so determined to get his hands on the painting and then hide it away.

There is also the question of solving where ancient Arcadia was as part of the puzzle:

"Q: In response to your remark from last week, 'ever feel that you are dancing around in circles?' Mike wanted to know if this was a reference to crop circles?

A: No, not directly!

Q: Then, you also said: 'quite simply we would say, where is Arcadia?' Arcadia ...

A: You need to work on that one. The answers to these mysteries are not easily solved, but well worth it!

Q: The chief thing I noticed about Arcadia was, the Arcadians were the enemies of the Trojans, they were the creators of the Trojan Horse - a huge deception... and the Celts are supposed to be the descendants of the refugees from Troy. And, when Hitler came along, one of his ideals was to resurrect Arcadia, and that Germany was going to be the new Arcadia and destroy the 'old corrupt civilization,' which was Troy. Troy is 'three' and is connected to 'Ilium,' and I guess what my question is here is: just who's on first?

A: Who is on second?"

Where they refer to dancing around in circles seems to me to connect us to Stonehenge in England, where the god Apollo was supposed to dance until dawn every 19 years (the Metatonic cycle of the Moon) and where many crop circles have materialised over the years in close proximity to the ancient site. The Trojans, as Celts, were also based in England. Hence, Arcadia is unlikely to be England. However, the C's responded to Laura's question about who is on first base by saying "Who is on second?" This suggests to me, given the Baseball reference of moving from first base to second base, that we need to identify a group of people, the Arcadians, who moved from one place to another over time. According to Iman Wilkens in 'Where Troy Once Stood', Argo was in northern France. The Arcadians were though the allies of the Greeks, who we now realise were really Celts from various northern European provinces. Could Arcadia have been in another part of France, e.g., Brittany or southern France near to the Pyrenees?

The fact that Carnaac in Brittany is phonetically so similar to Karnak in Egypt, where we now know that Egypt was located in France prior to 2,300 BC , makes me think a group of Celts moved from France to today's Egypt and brought their place names with them. From what I have learned recently, the dynasty most associated with Karnak was the 18th dynasty that included Akhenaten. Unfortunately, later Pharaohs tended to remodel the Temple Complex at Karnak by refashioning the stonework and engravings. The worst culprit was Ramses II of the 19th dynasty who obliterated his own father Seti I's engravings by overwriting them with his own. Moreover, a Temple dedicated to Tutenkhamun was torn down by Ramses and the stones repurposed. Fortunately there has been work done in recent times to restore this temple, which may yield more light on the Amarna period. However, of all the 18th dynasty Pharaohs to look at more closely, I think Tuthmosis IV is the one who warrants such closer consideration and I intend to explain why in a subsequent post.

However, before doing that I would like to focus on the Freemasons and their rituals to try and answer another matter Laura brought up with the C's.

 

[MJF]

Whilst still working on my next post, I thought I should post a final reference on the subject of "It is not germaine", which came up in the session dated 10 October 1998:

Q: (A) Okay, I will. Now, I was communicating a little bit with a Finnish guy, Mattie Pitkanen, and he has a lot of material on his web pages and in his publications, which are very close to what I am thinking. First question, is he somehow channeling through his publications?

A: Yes.

Q: (A) Who is he channeling?

A: All the masters have channeled, whether aware or not. The "who" is not Germaine.

By saying "The "who" is not Germaine" are the C's telling us that the channelling of knowledge is not just the preserve of the Rosicrucians/Illuminati and men like Count Saint-Germaine, who most likely channelled 4D STS, but can apply to others too who may be unwittingly channelling other sources? I assume here that Mattie Pitkanen is a scientist. It has been alleged, particularly by Ancient Alien theorists, that many great scientific minds unwittingly channelled some of their ideas from hyperdimensional beings or the Akashic Records. This list includes people such as Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Wernher von Braun and Steve Jobs to name but a few. Tesla admitted to seeing his inventions in his mind in three dimensions and was able to turn them around in his mind to see them from different perspectives. Eisntein carried out all his experiments as thought experiments in his mind. He admitted to going into an alpha state often when doing so. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple who launched the IPhone and IPad, amongst other things, admitted to using Zen Buddhist meditation techniques to dream up his inventions.

There was also the Indian mathematican Srinivasa Ramanujan (22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920). Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable. Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation: according to Hans Eysenck: "He tried to interest the leading professional mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part. What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar, and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could not be bothered". Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a postal correspondence with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge in England. Recognizing Ramanujan's work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Hardy commented that Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that "defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before", and some recently proven but highly advanced results.

During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations). Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research. Nearly all his claims have now been proven correct. The Ramanujan Journal, a scientific journal, was established to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan, and his notebooks—containing summaries of his published and unpublished results—have been analysed and studied for decades since his death as a source of new mathematical ideas. As late as 2012, researchers continued to discover that mere comments in his writings about "simple properties" and "similar outputs" for certain findings were themselves profound and subtle number theory results that remained unsuspected until nearly a century after his death. He became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society and only the second Indian member, and the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his original letters, Hardy stated that a single look was enough to show they could have been written only by a mathematician of the highest calibre, comparing Ramanujan to mathematical geniuses such as Euler and Jacobi.

A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess Namagiri Thayar (Goddess Mahalakshmi). He looked to her for inspiration in his work and had visions of scrolls of complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes. He once said, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God". See Srinivasa Ramanujan - Wikipedia

I wonder if Ark has looked into Ramanujan's work? Given what the C's have said about the importance of Prime Numbers, I wonder if Ramanujan's work on the Ramanujan prime might yield interesting results when studied.

Hence, I suspect this is what the C's were referring to when they said "All the masters have channeled, whether aware or not". One could even add non-scientists to this list such as Edgar Cayce and even theologians such as Saint Thomas Aquinas (who was an alchemist as well).

Thomas Aquinas never finished his greatest work the Summa Theologica — the summary of theology and his masterwork - after he had an awe inspiring vision. While saying mass on December 6, 1273, the noble-minded philosopher experienced a heavenly vision in which he saw all sorts of truths cascading down around him. In this vision, God revealed to Thomas that all his efforts to describe Him fell so far short he resolved to never write again. Thus, afterwards he said: "I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw.” He stopped writing altogether, leaving his Summa Theologica incomplete. See the article Thomas Aquinas -. In stating that Thomas was much concerned with explaining how angels speak and move, this would seem to suggest that he had some things in common with John Dee, who was obsessed with learning the heavenly language of the angels. Aquinas’s monumental contribution was to teach Western European civilisation that any human being – not just a Christian – could have access to great truths whenever they made use of God’s greatest gift to human beings: reason. He therefore broke a logjam in Christian thinking, the question of how non-Christians could have both wisdom and at the same time no interest in, or even knowledge of, Jesus. He universalised intelligence and opened the Christian mind to the insights of all of humanity from across the ages and continents. The modern world, in so far as it insists that good ideas can come from any quarter regardless of creed or background, remains hugely in his debt.​

 

[Palinurus]

A forum search gave three interesting results for Ramanujan:

The man who knew infinity
Hidden Secrets of all existence in Prime Numbers?
Hyperdimensional Politics, (three consecutive posts)

 

[MJF]

A forum search gave three interesting results for Ramanujan:

The man who knew infinity
Hidden Secrets of all existence in Prime Numbers?
Hyperdimensional Politics, (three consecutive posts)

Thank you for bringing this to everyone's attention. I first came across Ramanujan in an Ancient Aliens episode. The most interesting thing about his mathematics was that it was so far advanced for its time that mathematicians and scientists of that period often had no use for it. It is only as quantum physics and other areas of science have advanced that people are now finding applications for some of his theorems.

I also see that you unearthed yet another possible reference to 'Zuber' in Jean=Bernard Zuber, see: https://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~zuber/index_en.html, a physicist who Ark had referred to in the session dated 14 September 2002 in connection with quantum field theory. If I am right in thinking that the C's also had in mind Zuber in Florida, which is on the 29th parallel along with the Great Pyramid, the small pyramid found in the Canary Islands and possibly the huge Atlantean pyramid 300+ miles off the coast of Florida in the Bermuda Triangle (see my earlier post), this would suggest that the Atlanteans and their survivors knew how to apply quantum field theory in order to utilise the EM grid surrounding the planet. If so, this paints a very different picture of the post Deluge survivors knowledge and their technical capabilities, for this would support suggestions that the Great Pyramid of Giza was an extremely advanced piece of engineering in the manner that Christopher Dunn, Dr. Joseph Farrell and others have proposed.

 

[moyal]

I would add though that the bee does have a special significance to Freemasons and it is often used as a symbol in their artistic works and devices (Napolean Bonaparte, a freemason, certainly used it), since it represents industriousness.

I would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention once again to the series of articles "Ancient Spooks I-V", by a certain "Garry", published by Miles Mathis on his website. Part 1 in particular has some interesting theories regarding the bee symbol in occult contexts. Napoleon also makes an appearance.
-> Updates

 

[MJF]

I would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention once again to the series of articles "Ancient Spooks I-V", by a certain "Garry", published by Miles Mathis on his website. Part 1 in particular has some interesting theories regarding the bee symbol in occult contexts. Napoleon also makes an appearance.
-> Updates

Thank you for suggesting this material. Your comments are always welcome. I will read it and see what else it may reveal to us in this context. Napoleon also had a great interest in the Great Pyramid and spent a night in it alone in meditation. He obviously took esoteric matters very seriously, which suggests he may have been an ardent Freemason.

 

[MJF]

Hiram Abiff – The Widow’s Son

In the same session in which Laura had enquired about the meaning of the cord around the waist, she also enquired about the relevance of the Free Mason's symbolism of the rope tied around the neck.​

Session dated 20 June 20 1998:

Q: So, there is a 'table' involved... hmmm... alright, now: for a long time I have been curious about the reason for the wearing of the cord around the waist, against the skin, that is a symbol of many secret societies. What was the meaning of the cord around the waist?

A: Balance.

Q: How can a cord symbolize balance?

A: Body magnetic field.

Q: I don't see how that relates to wearing a cord around the waist? Are you saying it balanced the body's magnetic field, or was supposed to?

A: Symbolism.

Q: There's gotta be something else to this cord around the waist... it was some big symbolic thing and it relates to the wearing of the Masonic apron... (C) Maybe it's a symbol of the larger garment? (L) Any comments?

A: No need for any.

Q: Alright then. {Later note: What came to mind as I was re-reading this is the Hermetic maxim "as above, so below, and the cord symbolizing this division between above and below in a physiological sense. This then would lend substance to the Chinese alchemical figure of the "three cauldrons," and the practice of Tantra where the sexual energy is conserved until it overflows into the middle cauldron, continued conservation would then cause it to overflow into the "upper cauldron," or the consciousness.} There is another thing: the five-fold bond. There is the very famous figure from the Maya of the guy who is tied up - they call it 'hog-tied.' The person is tied with feet and hands tied together and then to the head. Five parts of the body are tied together. This is seen as a ritual activity or symbol of same. What can this possibly mean? The Mason's have the remnant of this with the rope tied around the neck.

A: You need to research the Masonic rites.

Q: I have. And that is what I am talking about. All I can see is that they are re-enacting the 'opening of the mouth' ceremony of the Pyramid Texts. Why haven't they made that connection? That is clearly what they are doing.

A: Who is?

Q: The Masons, when they go through their initiation. I read a description of the rites, and this is what it seems they are going through. Is this a re-enactment of the slaying of Hiram? No, that doesn't make sense... Anything else you want to say about it?

A: We have already commented about the need for you to further research the Masonic rites.

I don’t know if Laura ever found the answer to her query but in reading Laurence Gardner’s ‘The Shadow of Solomon’ I came across a plausible explanation to the image of the ‘hog-tied’ man and it has nothing whatsoever to do with Hiram Abiff. Before looking into the origins of the Masonic apron, I would like to add a few comments Laura made about Laurence Gardner in the session dated 12 December 1998:​

Q: Now, I was preparing these genealogies to print for Christmas and, while waiting for them to print, I wondered who would be last if one started at the present and worked backward... not specifically in terms of time, but in terms of generations. I wondered WHO the tree would end with. Well, it ended with the Frankish King Clovis. So, I wondered about your use of the term 'cloverdale,' and how it might relate to Clovis. Is it a deliberate or accidental connection?

A: Your quest is your own. We do not "steer." We supply the mortar, you are the Masoness.

Q: Well, I don't know how to take that! I mean, the Masons could be the most evil organization in existence! BRH thinks so.

A: Such judgements miss the point, if there are keys stored within the envelope.

Q: Alright, I found this article on the net called 'Hidden History of Jesus and the Holy Grail' written by Sir Laurence Gardiner, KT etc., author of 'Bloodline of the Holy Grail,' transcribed from a lecture given at 'The Ranch' in Yelm, Washington. What he says is that he had been appointed historian and 'sovereign genealogist' to 33 royal families... he was putting together written chronological accounts of things these families knew the substance of, but not the details.

He talks about the fact that Jesus was married and that he had heirs and that this was discussed in the published papers of Mary, Queen of Scots, and in the papers of James II of England. He says:

'I began this work with separate commissions from separate families, doing work on these genealogies. What happened was they began to converge. It became very apparent, and it took a long time, because genealogies have to be done backwards, put together backwards, and constructed backwards; but what was happening was that a triangle from a large top base with numerous family lines, was pulling to a point. I suddenly realized what this point was and I said 'wow! do you realize what I have found here?' and they said 'oh, you know, the father of so and so,' and I said 'oh, no, no, what I am finding is that this comes out of the house of Judah in the first century.' And they said: 'yeah, we know all that, what we wanted you to do was blah blah blah.'

So, he says that he had access to Celtic Church records dating back to 37 A.D., the very documents that the Knights Templar brought out of Europe in 1128 and confronted the Church establishment with, and frightened the life out of them because these were documents that talked about bloodlines and genealogies. Blah blah blah. Before I go on, this guy says that all these family lines go back to the house of Judah. Do they actually have written genealogies back to the house of Judah connecting the royal families of Europe to this house?

A: Somewhere, maybe.

Q: Did Jesus descend from the house of Judah?

A: Is it important really?

Q: I don't know. I am building a basis for further questions.

A: You need not build bases.

Q: In other words, this guy is just blowing more smoke over the issue? I think he is blowing smoke.

A: Okay.

Q: You are agreeing with me that he is blowing a lot of smoke?

A: Perhaps.

You will observe that the C’s answer to Laura’s question as to whether Laurence Gardner was just blowing smoke over the issue of Christ’s descent from the House of Judah appears to draw a rather non-committal response by virtue of their use of the word “perhaps”. Although the C’s seem to be uninterested in the issue of Christ’s descent from the House of Judah, their answer suggests to me that they are indicating that we should not ignore or discard all that Gardner has to say on the subject of bloodlines, genealogies and the Knights Templar. As we say in England: ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’.

Since Gardner is an expert on Masonic history and rituals, I think it is worthwhile quoting him since a lot of his ideas are out of the box, which suggests he is someone who is prepared to look beyond conventional explanations and agreed historical narrative in order to answer difficult questions concerning the use of symbolism in rituals and artistic representations.​

Hiram Abiff in Masonic Lore

Gardner starts by pointing out that no part of Masonic craft ritual is better known beyond the Masonic fraternity than the legend of Hiram Abiff, even if the details are vague or obscure to outsiders. For those not familiar with Masonic ritual, the Hiram Abiff ritual is relevant to candidates who are being initiated into the third Craft Degree of Master Mason and involves the role playing of the murder and burial of the reputed architect of the Temple of Solomon, Hiram Abiff. The third degree candidate directs and takes on the character of Hiram Abiff during the ritual. Hiram is a character who is mentioned in the Old Testament as being the ‘widow’s son’ (cf. Perceval and Perseus etc.) of the tribe of Napthali, whose father was a man of Tyre (originally a Phoenician city in today’s Lebanon). Hiram became the chief artificer of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem (although the C’s have suggested this was actually in Egypt). He was described as a worker in brass and he was filled with wisdom and understanding and cunning (i.e., knowing) to work all works in brass. It should be pointed out that the reference to brass is a product of poor translation since brass (an alloy of bronze and tin) is a modern creation and was unknown to the ancient world. It is more likely that the Bible is referring to works in bronze, which therefore places the story firmly within the Bronze Age. The first Book of Kings goes into great description as regards the temple decorations Hiram was responsible for. In the second Book of Chronicles, Hiram is further discussed in a letter from Huram, King of Tyre, who introduced Hiram to King Solomon. In doing so, Huram goes into more detail concerning Hiram’s expertise. Hiram comes across as an all-round craftsman who can work in just about any decorative material. This includes mastery of working in purple, crimson and blue dyes, which were unique to the Canaanite region including the dye of the murex shellfish, which produced the most famous purple dye in the ancient world. This is a particular art that was a speciality of the Phoenicians, the sea peoples who settled in the northern Mediterranean in the late Bronze Age and were probably displaced Celts forced to relocate during the last visit of the 3,600 year periodic comet cycle.

Hiram is particularly renowned for making two hollow pillars for the porch to Solomon’s Temple, which became known as Joachim and Boaz. These pillars have also become a part of Masonic folklore. However, the Biblical account makes it clear that Solomon was the chief architect of the Temple, not Hiram. It is also worth pointing out that the original Hebrew account concerning Hiram makes it clear that he was not ‘a skilful worker in stone and timber’ but a skilled worker in stones, as in gemstones, and woods, as in carvings. Hence, there is nothing on record to suggest that he was a master stonemason and nothing to determine that he was involved in the main building construction of the Temple as is promulgated in Freemasonry. Hence, Hiram was neither the architect nor the master mason of the Temple but was instead the master artificer – the chief decorator and fittings manufacture after the Temple had been built.

Hiram’s death is not mentioned in the Bible, nor in the rituals connected to the first and second degrees of Freemasonry but takes centre-stage in the third degree. Although he is named in James Anderson’s 1723 Masonic Constitutions, the legend of his death is not mentioned. The legend of Hiram’s death made its first appearance in Anderson’s revised Constitutions of 1738 even though the third degree of Craft Freemasonry had been introduced in 1724. It would seem that the man who introduced Hiram to Freemasonry was a French clergyman, the Reverend Jean Theophilus Desaguliers, the Grand Master of Grand Lodge (1719-1722) and the author of the General Regulations in the 1723 Constitutions. A member of the Georgian Royal Society, he was a prominent philosophical scientist and the inventor of the planetarium. According to Gardner he was also an inventor of mythology.

It would appear that before Desaguliers brought Hiram upon the scene, the principal character to represent the construction industry (stone masons) in Masonic tradition was Noah, the patriarch of the Flood. It is here that we see the similarities with the Mayan ceremony where a man is tied with his feet and hands together and then to the head – i.e., five parts of the body are tied together or ‘hog-tied’.​

The Five-Point Hold (Hog-Tied)

The earlier Noah story related how his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japeth went to their father’s grave in an attempt to discover a secret that had been buried with him, but could only be found on his body. In trying to lift him by pulling at a finger, it came away. The same happened when they pulled at his wrist and elbow but eventually they succeeded in raising him by way of a five-point hold – subsequently known in Freemasonry as the Five Points of Fellowship. This is a form of embrace: foot to foot, knee to knee, breast to breast, cheek to cheek, and hand to back. The bizarre tale relates that one brother said, ‘Here is marrow in the bone’. Another said, ‘But a dry bone’, at which they dubbed the event with the nonsensical word Mahabyn*.​

*According to Gardner, this is the lost Word of Freemasonry.

Gardner points out that whatever the original purpose of this strange story was, it lacked the ‘key**’ elements of a ‘good’ story and so further elements were added – those of betrayal, murder, martyrdom and revenge. Hence, with these additions, Desaguliers now had a more exciting plot but one where he had felt it necessary to change the central character in order to associate the tale with stonemasonry instead of Noah’s woodworking. Thus the legend of Noah was replaced by the legend of Hiram Abiff against a backdrop of the building of Solomon’s Temple.

** The reference to ‘key’ here makes me think of the C’s remark that where the clandestine, secretive nature of Freemasonry was concerned – “Such judgements miss the point, if there are keys stored within the envelope”. In this last regard, the word ‘Mahabyn’ might just be the key we are looking for.

It is worth recalling that the C’s also said in the session dated 20 June 1998 when Laura asked about the significance of the 17th January as an anniversary date:​

Q: What happened on January 17th?

A: Consult Maya.

Q: But January 17th recurs repeatedly in the alchemical texts...

A: And you may see the connection. Why do you suppose alchemists knew of the secrets brought "to the table" by the Maya/Egyptians?

Q: They constructed a mathematical table of some sort and this fits into that table, is that it? Is that why it reveals a secret?

A: It is a start.

The Knights Templars practised alchemy as did the Rosicrucians, which suggests that the Knights Templar discovered the alchemical secrets of the Egyptians and presumably the Knights of Christ (as successors to the Templars) and the Rosicrucians discovered the similar alchemical secrets of the Mayans through the Spanish Conquistadors. This might provide an alternative reason for the destruction of the Mayan sacred texts and codices, since they may have held the secrets to alchemy and the Rosicrucians wanted to keep them hidden. You should note, however, that when the C’s spoke about the alchemical secrets in the above extract, they put the words “to the table” in quotes, no doubt for a good reason. Laura quite reasonably assumes that this may imply a reference to a mathematical table of some kind. However, having read Gardner and his interpretation of the word ‘Manna’, I think the C’s may in fact have been referring to a metaphorical meal table. I will expand on this point later as it connects to the ‘Mason Word’ and the ‘Master’s Secret’.​

Death of Hiram the Builder and the Master’s Secret

In the Hiramic legend, which replaced the earlier Noah story, two Fellow Craft masons called Jubela and Jubelo insist that with the Temple completed, they must now be told the secret of a Master Mason. After Hiram refuses to tell them, Jubela strikes him with a 24 inch rule and then Jubelo strikes him with a square. Hiram cannot escape from the Temple courtyard because the gates are blocked. He is then confronted by a third antagonist, Jubalem, who persists with the same question but, on receiving the same refusal, Jubalem strikes him on the fore-head with a maul (a type of long handled hammer) and kills him. The three assailants then drag Hiram’s body over to a remote corner and dump it with the Temple rubbish.

On the following day, Hiram’s unexplained absence causes concern back at the Temple. King Solomon is then approached by twelve Fellow Craft masons who tell him what they suspect has happened. When the roll is called the three assailants are found to be missing whereby a hunt is instigated with the twelve Craft masons forming parties of three to search north, south, east and west. Eventually, one of the three hunters from the party who had headed west pulls on a sprig of acacia whilst resting and discovers it to be loose. Thereupon the three murderous assailants appear and surrender themselves into custody. Solomon has them executed and sends the others back to find the body of Hiram.

At this point the Noah legend comes back into play when Solomon instructs the men to search Hiram’s grave for the Master’s secret. It is reckoned that the secret can be unlocked by knowing a particular word, which it is hoped may be written down and buried with Hiram. Although they find Hiram’s badge of office identifying him, they have to report back to Solomon that no secret word could be found. At this, it is decreed that Hiram’s body should be disinterred and that the first word uttered by any of the group after this will become the new Mason Word in place of that which was lost. After this a grand procession is made to Hiram’s grave, where attempts are made to raise Hiram with the grips (handshakes) of the first and second degrees but they each prove ineffective. The masons present then in unison exclaim, ‘Oh Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow’s son?’ At this, the Worshipful Master (in the role of Solomon) takes Hiram’s hand with the Master Mason’s grip (called the ‘lion’s paw’) and raises the body on the Five Points of Fellowship. With Hiram’s body then close up to his, he utters the substitute Mason Word, Mahabyn, the nonsensical word used in the earlier Noah tale. The word is whispered into the third degree candidate’s ear who has played the role of Hiram throughout the enactment of the story.​

Time and the Virgin

Garner explains that the Five Points of Fellowship relate to aspects to which masons should serve, pray for, keep the secrets of, support and counsel their brother masons. Gardner admits these are worthy precepts but they have no practical relevance in the way they are presented in the ritual. Gardner acknowledges that Hiram Abiff is undoubtedly the most celebrated mason of all time yet he was not a mason, neither was he called Abiff. Although his Masonic works and ethics are revered by Freemasons worldwide, they have no historical foundation.

Gardner also points out that Hiram is not resurrected in the story, he stays dead. Contrast this with the story of the Phoenix bird of alchemical lore that is consumed by fire but resurrects as a new bird. Similarly, consider the stories of the Holy Grail, Bran’s head or the magic cauldron, which can bring around resurrection. In the continuing Masonic account of the tale of Hiram Abiff, his body is brought back for burial in the Temple and a monument is erected to his memory that consists of a beautiful virgin weeping over a broken column, which is meant to represent the unfinished Temple, even though we were led to understand that the Temple had been finished – we should recall that Hiram was merely supplying the decoration and fittings for the completed structure. The virgin is usually depicted with a book in front of her listing the virtuous accomplishments of Hiram. She also holds in her hand an urn containing his ashes – even though we were told that he was buried. In her right hand she holds a sprig of acacia (N.B. the wood from which the Ark of the Covenant was made) whilst the figure of Time stands behind her, unfolding the ringlets of her hair. This monument is known as the ‘Freemason’s Rest’ and is often used in cemeteries to identify Masonic burials.

​

Time and the Virgin Monument (the Freemason's Rest)

Gardner points out how extraordinary amounts of time and ingenuity have been expended by Masonic scholars in attempting to trace the probable or possible origin of the Hiramic myth but all such efforts have fallen short. It would seem certain that the account of Hiram’s burial is an adapted version of an earlier story about the sons of Noah but, even then, the story of Noah’s disinterment was itself clearly fictional. In reality, it seems likely that both stories are symbolic representations of another event – the unearthing of someone or something, which sits at the heart of an older Masonic tradition. Gardner does not speculate what this event may have been but I am going to stick my neck out here and suggest that it may have been the unearthing of something that had long been buried in the desert sands, something of great importance that was found near Giza by Tuthmosis IV after a dream he had. Tuthmosis was Pharaoh Akhenaten’s grandfather and the knowledge of what he found would almost certainly have been known to Akhenaten and Abraham/Moses. I am suggesting that this something is none other than the Holy Grail. Indeed, it is to Moses and the Ark of the Covenant that we now turn.​

Bezaleel and the Ark of the Covenant

Gardner then refers to a pre-Hiramic Masonic manuscript, the Graham Manuscript of 1726, which contained the grave of Noah account but also contained the story of Bezaleel, who built the Ark of the Covenant for Moses at Mount Horeb in Sinai. It is worth recalling here that the Cassiopaeans have told us that Moses was in reality Abraham and the Ark of the Covenant had already been constructed in Egypt and had been stolen from Pharaoh Akhenaten by Nefertiti/Sarah and given to Abraham (as covered within the Bible by the story of Rachel and her father’s household idols – see earlier post). However, Gardner notes that it is significant in the Bible that Bezaleel is described in the Old Testament with the very same distinctions and attributes that are later afforded to Hiram. This can be demonstrated by quoting Exodus 31:1-5:​

31 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, “See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass. And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship”.

In addition to making the Ark of the Covenant, Bezaleel made all the accoutrements for the wilderness Tabernacle – items that are identical to those listed in Book 1 of Kings’ story of Hiram, which included the altar, the laver, the candlesticks, the showbread table, the bowls and shovels. The Tabernacle, moreover, had the same dimensional ratios, including the square Holy of Holies (MJF: perfectly squared perhaps?) for residence of the Ark that were later replicated in Solomon’s Temple (or if we go with the C’s, the other way around). It therefore seems clear that the model for Hiram was not Noah but the earlier craftsman Bezaleel.

Gardner then points out an obvious issue in that the Tabernacle (Mishkan: Dwelling Place) was an enormous portable structure when you consider that the Sanctuary of the Ark by itself comprised a 15 foot cubic space. It also raises the question why Hiram, the artificer of King Solomon’s Temple, would later be required to make all these artefacts again if they had already existed (MJF: ignoring here for these purposes the C’s prior dating for the building of Solomon’s Temple).

Gardner then refers back to the Graham Manuscript, which included an extra-biblical element concerning Bezaleel. It discusses two young princes who sought instruction from Bezaleel, whereupon the craftsman agreed so long as they promised not to impart the secrets to anyone else. The princes swore an oath to this effect and were duly instructed by the Master. After Bezaleel’s death, it was thought by many that his secrets had died with him but they were in fact safe with the princes he had taught. This leads me to wander whether the secrets taught to the two young princes involved the secrets of alchemy, which were tied-up in the unknown and mysterious Mason Word Mahabyn. Could the two young princes have been Akhenaten and Abraham/Moses perhaps? To Gardner’s mind, it would seem that around 1730 Jean Desaguliers and James Anderson had amalgamated the Biblical account of Hiram of Tyre with the manuscript stories of Noah and Bezaleel to create a composite legend, which focused on their newly conceived figure of Hiram Abiff. For this reason Gardner considers the third degree initiation as the ‘let-down’ degree since it based on a fabricated legend of the death of Hiram Abiff.​

The Masonic Apron

As mentioned above, Laura had queried the symbolism of the cord around the waist and its link to the white lambskin Masonic apron with the C’s:

Q: There's gotta be something else to this cord around the waist... it was some big symbolic thing and it relates to the wearing of the Masonic apron... (C) Maybe it's a symbol of the larger garment? (L) Any comments?

A: No need for any.

Masonic lore holds that the Masonic apron is more ancient than the Golden Fleece and the Roman Eagle and more honourable than the Star and Garter (England’s most prestigious knightly Order founded as the ‘Most Noble Order of the Garter’ by Edward III in 1348). Gardner regards this claim as ridiculous. He points out that like much else in modern Freemasonry the apron is a latter day introduction no more than 300 years old at best. Notwithstanding this, he points out that there is a legitimate way to attach an ancient and relevant symbolism to the Masonic apron, one that has been overlooked by the ritual writers. In the Old Testament there was a particular garment worn by the High Priest that was a bibbed and girdled item, which we have encountered before. This is the High Priest’s Ephod. Gardner states that it was specifically the badge of the Levite Guardians of the Ark of the Covenant and with its bib folded down over the girdle (in a similar fashion to today’s Masonic apron) it formed a small linen apron. Indeed, in the second Book of Samuel 6:13-15, King David (the father of Solomon) is said to have been ‘girdled with a linen ephod’ when he danced before the Ark. I actually believe Gardner is on to something here and would cite an interesting remark the C’s addressed specifically to Ark, which may link with this particular matter in the session dated 10 October 1998: Session 10 October 1998​

Q: (L) So there is a window of opportunity, so to speak? A period in which this CAN occur, and if it were to be forestalled in some way beyond this 14 year period, does that mean it would NOT occur?

A: End word.

Q: (L) Is that what you meant? 'End word?'

A: Yes.

Q: (L) What does 'end word' mean?

A: Who knows. We like Ark to have the floor when it is time to dance.

Now I don’t know if this ‘End word’ of the C’s has anything to do with Mason Word (it may do given what else the C’s had to say in that particular session – see below) but I am particularly intrigued by the C’s talking about the Ark and dancing when you connect this to the biblical account of King David dancing before the Ark girdled with a linen ephod. Remember that the C’s had talked about Laura finding treasure in the Rhineland in previous sessions. When she asked about this treasure in the same session here is what the C’s said:​

Q: Is there a time gate where this treasure is buried in the Rhineland?

A: Stones.

I should add at this stage that Gardner in his book argues strongly that the Philosophers’ Stone of alchemy fame and the Manna bread of the Israelites was in fact the fine white powder of mono-atomic gold rediscovered by David Hudson in the late 20th century - See White Gold Essential Liquid (ORMUS) for typical claims made about the medical properties and benefits of Ormus. Hence, when the C’s say “stones”, this response might indicate mono-atomic gold, particularly when you consider their earlier comments in the same session, which on the surface seem to relate to making bread:​

Q: I want to ask a little bit about this book, 'The Tomb of God,' and the clues it has given me, or that I THINK it has given me, to tracking this treasure in the Rhineland. Is this book and the clues that I believe that I have found in it, one of the major conjunctions that you mentioned in a previous session?

A: Yes, but add some flour.

Q: What? Add some flour? Why did you say 'flour?'

A: Why do you think?

Q: What does flour do when you add it?

A: Clues, my dear, clues. That is what these are.

Q: What is the result when one adds flour?

A: Emulsion...

Q: What does one get from an emulsion?

A: Transference.

Q: Where should I look for the flour?

A: Whey.

I believe the word “Emulsion” may be a pun on “Orimulsion”, a term the C’s used in an earlier session, which in turn may link us to the Rosicrucian reference to ‘Ormus’ (“ORME” today meaning Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic Elements - aka ORMUS or M-State – see my earlier post with reference to Roiscrucians and the Order of Sion who supposedly adopted the name “Ormus”) that takes us back in a roundabout fashion to David Hudson’s mono-atomic gold (see later in this article). Here is what the C’s had to say about ‘Orimulsion’ in the session dated 7 June 1997:

Q: In a previous session where you introduced the concept of perpendicular realities, you stated that (T) was connected to a particular reality called 'Neormm.' You also designated the 'thought center' of STS as Ormethion. I noticed the similarity of the names. Is there a relationship?

A: The orm is close to orimulsion. Look it up.

[It turns out that Orimulsion is a registered trademark name for a bitumen-based fuel that was developed for industrial use by Intevep (from Wikipedia). orimulsion - Google leit

“Orm” (in Old Norse and in modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (bokmål and nynorsk) the word for "snake", "worm" or "dragon") became an Anglo-Saxon personal name during period of the Danelaw. This would seem appropriate when applied to an STS reptilian thought centre such as that suggested by Ormethion, particularly when connected to the mind control properties associated with mono-atomic gold, as mentioned by the C’s in an earlier session.

“ORM” can also mean ‘object–relational mapping’ in computer science, which is a programming technique for converting data between incompatible type systems using object-oriented programming languages. This creates, in effect, a "virtual object database" that can be used from within the programming language. Were the C’s in effect demonstrating something similar in a linguistic sense by comparing the transmutation of gold into ingestible mono-atomic gold with bread making from flour? Object–relational mapping - Wikipedia]

Q: Well, what I am asking is about the possible relationship between Neormm* and Ormethion...

A: Our answers have meaning best not to presuppose!

Subsequently, the C’s seemed reticent to say any more on this subject when Laura raised it again in the session dated Session 31 October 1998:

“Q: Now, I have long wondered about something you said to Terry, about him being connected to a thought centre called Neormm, and that it was related to orimulsion, and this is some kind of a fuel. I wonder if you could clarify that remark. What is Neormm*?

A: Not yet.”

*For more on “Neormm” see the Session dated 29 April 1995 where the subject was first brought up: Session 29 April 1995

Continuing with the theme of bread making per the session dated 10 October 1998, I also think the C’s reference to “whey” (i.e., the watery part of milk that remains after the formation of curds) is a pun on the word “weigh”, since one of mono-atomic gold’s attributes is that it can weigh less or even be weightless when measured on conventional weighing scales. Gardner in his book goes into some detail about this matter and makes the connection with the old Mesopotamian term for this exotic white powder of gold, which the Sumerians called ‘shem-an-na’. In ancient Egypt, it was called ‘mfkzt’. To the Children of Israel it was Manna or the Shew bread and Gardner reminds us that the Israelites were forced to consume it after Moses ordered the melting down of the Golden Calf as a punishment for their idolatry and sexual permissiveness.

In the book 'The Tomb of God’ by Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, the authors advanced the idea that Christ was buried in France near to Carcassone. Hence, the C’s off- hand response about bread making would appear, at least on the surface, to be ridiculing this idea. However, in doing so, I think they were instead giving us clues to the Ark of the Covenant (or Ark of Testimony) in which the Manna or Shew bread (the white bread of gold of the Egyptian White Brotherhood who founded the college of physicians known as the Therapeutate - who may be linked to the later Essenes and from which we get the word ‘therapeutic’ today) was stored in a container along with the stone slabs on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed? As mentioned above, the C’s also spoke about the treasure buried in the Rhineland being ‘stones’. Could stones here have meant perhaps the stone slabs on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed or could it have meant the gem stones that were sewn into the ephod, which the Israelite high priests usually wore in the Holy of Holies and which King David wore on that occasion when he danced around the Ark? It is also worth recalling that the C’s have said that King David was a Levite rather than being from the House of Judah and the Levites were the appointed bearers of the Ark and sometimes were priests themselves in their own right. Please note that the issue of ‘stones’ will be relevant again in my next post on the finding of the Ark of the Covenant.

Continued in Part 2​

 

[MJF]

Part 2 of Hiram Abiff – The Widow’s Son

The Lost Word

Gardner sums Freemasonry up in brief as a mystical quest, like that of the Holy Grail, to find a ‘Lost Word’ that provides the key to unlocking particular ancient secrets. Masonic tradition holds that Noah, Moses, Solomon, Hiram and other past masters knew the word and were guardians of the secrets.

It would seem that the meaningless word Mahabyn was introduced in the 1720’s because the original word had been lost or forgotten. Shortly afterwards a revised Masonic catechism introduced the alternative word ‘Machbenah’. Apparently, this was an attempted correction based on a phonetic recollection, which seems to me to have more of a Scottish flavour about it. However, the word still has no meaning in any known language as things stand. Ironically, since an element of uncertainty prevails as to which is the better word, lodge ritual today provides for both alternatives to be said together as ‘Mahabyn or Machbenah’, although still being referred to as a single Mason Word. The concept of a secret Mason Word can be traced back to 1638, when it was referred to as if had been in existence for some while before – but for how long is not clear.

The reference can be found in a lengthy Scottish ode or poem by Henry Adamson, a Perth schoolmaster, entitled ‘The Muses Threnodie’. Given in the form of an imaginary dialogue, one of the characters in the lament assures the other that the Tay Bridge (destroyed in a flood in 1621) will be rebuilt, exclaiming:

“For we brethren of the Rosie Crosse;

We have the Mason Word and the second sight.”

At first glance, the above reference to the Mason Word would seem more appropriate to operative stonemasonry rather than speculative Freemasonry except for the reference to the Rosie Crosse. However, when the matter was discussed at an assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1649, the Presbyterians of the Kirk had become alarmed at the Word’s association in the poem with the ‘second sight’, which they regarded as something highly sinister (like the evil eye). In consequence, Freemasons were accused of being involved in wizardry and of communicating with spirits (necromancy). Eventually, as in Cromwellian England, the Kirk, concerned at the influence of craft guilds, clubs, societies and confraternities of friends, including the Masonic lodges, with their colourful pageants and processions celebrating feast days (think of St Patrick’s Day parades today) and festivals, stepped in with laws of suppression prohibiting public ceremonies and pageants so that even plays and dramas were banned. In the case of the Freemasons, this forced the quest for enlightenment behind closed doors and led to the birth of the secretive lodge.

For a period of 30 years or more there were less than a dozen extant written references to the Mason Word – all emanating from Scotland. The first known reference by an Englishman came in 1672 when the famous metaphysical poet Andrew Marvel used it in a satirical pamphlet entitled ‘The Rehearsal Transposed’. Marvel states in the pamphlet “those who have the Mason Word secretly discern one another”’. Subsequently in 1691, another reference to the Mason Word was made in a treatise by the folklore enthusiast Robert Kirk. In the treatise, Kirk refers to a letter to Robert Boyle of the Royal Society wherein it is stated that the Mason Word was like rabbinical tradition linked to the Boaz and Joachin pillars of King Solomon’s Temple supposedly created by Hiram of Tyre. He also commented on the secret sign of a handshake passed between Brethren. Then, in 1697, an English visitor to Scotland wrote: ‘The Lairds of Roslin [Rosslyn] have been great architects of buildings for these many generations; they are obliged to receive the Mason Word’.​

Sir Francis Bacon and Enlightenment

For Gardner, in one way or another, the original Mason Word was plainly meaningful and it clearly related to some sort of divine inspiration. Gardner then points out in his 1605 treatise called ‘The Proficience and Advancement of Learning’, Sir Francis Bacon drew a distinction between knowledge and wisdom, thereby separating the human from the divine referring to wisdom as ‘the light of the nature’. He identified the spirit of man as being the Lamp of God and that universal knowledge obtained from its light. Hence, when a candidate to the first degree of Craft Masonry is asked in his initiation ritual what he desires the most, the required answer is Light. Those things which are not in the light are in the darkness – the blackness (void) and alchemy is the science of overcoming ‘the blackness’ (Arabic al-khame). He points out that just as the Dead Sea Scrolls describes the great cosmic battle between the Children of Light and the Sons of Darkness (the Sons of Belial and the sons of the Law of One?), so the same conflict is played out on the chequered pavement of the Masonic lodge floor. Gardner then indicates that the pavement is reminiscent of the black and white Beauceant war banner of the Knights Templar. In a document known as the Dundee Manuscript of 1727, it is stated that, as in battle tactics, the square pavement of masonry ‘is for a master mason to draw his ground draughts on’ – in essence a draught board or chess board. Since a draughts or chess board is a square board of 64 squares with each side made from eight squares, could this be what the C’s were alluding to when they spoke of ‘perfectly squared’?

Gardner then points out that Bacon in his ‘Advancement of Learning’ quoted from the Proverbs of Solomon concerning God’s divine plan: “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the glory of a king is to find it out” (a variation of Proverbs 25:2). Gardner then quotes Albert Pike, the Grand Master of the Southern Jurisdiction (Scottish Rite) in Arkansas who in 1864 wrote: “Masonry to the Masonic Brethren is a search after, and a journeying towards, Light.” For these reasons, Gardner believes strongly that undoubtedly the Mason Word is related to light, in perfect accord with the ‘point within a circle’ inscription ʘ (the Egyptian ideogram for light) found at the Temple of Moses on Mount Horeb in Sinai where according to the Bible the Tabernacle was erected, the Golden Calf was transformed (transmuted) into an ingestible powder and the Ark of the Covenant was constructed. Interestingly, this same ideogram can be seen on Masonic first degree and third degree Tracing Boards.

​

The Mason Word

Gardner makes the point that the Mason Word was never written down by those who truly knew it and it progression though time was a phonetic progression. On this basis he takes Machbenah instead of Mahabyn to be the more reliable source as the key to the Mason Word, as it would seem to have come first in time. As previously stated, the Masonic quest is for enlightenment and this is reflected in the ritual of initiation in the first degree of Craft Masonry when the candidate is asked about his direction of travel in the lodge, to which he replies that he comes ‘from the west travelling east’. On being asked why he travels eastwards, he answers ‘In search of Light in Masonry’ – an allusion to the illuminating light of the rising sun. This links again with the first degree Tracing Board where you will see (ref. image below) at the foot of Jacob’s ladder there is a sun symbol that is also the symbol of light, which is delineated as a point within a circle ʘ.

This was also the symbol of On (the Israelite name for the city of Heliopolis) – the Egyptian temple of the sun god and was the symbol of Ra (Re) the sun god himself. At some stage it also became an alchemical symbol for gold. In addition, the twin standing pillar concept of King Solomon’s Temple (Boaz and Joachin) was based on the free-standing pillars of the Egyptian temples – the obelisks, which were specifically dedicated to Ra whose capital was at Heliopolis. The bird of enlightenment was known to the Egyptians as the ‘benu’ bird, which came from the East as a physical manifestation of Ra. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about Egyptian customs and traditions in the fifth century BC, called this bird the "Phoenix". Some of the titles of Benu or Bennu were "He who came into being by himself", and "Lord of Jubilees"; the latter epithet referred to the belief that the Benu periodically renewed itself just like the sun was thought to do. The name is related to the Egyptian verb wbn, meaning "to rise in brilliance" or "to shine". Also associated with this culture was the pyramid shaped benben stone (ben stemming from the verb weben – to rise up). The pillars of Tuthmoses at Heliopolis were symbols of unity and the concept of Ma’at, which, as we have seen before, represents balance and a just foundation, which was synonymous with divine kingship and the ideal of righteous judgment. Ma’at, the goddess of truth and law, was said to be the sister of Toth. Her weighing of truth in the balance (the scales of justice) was conducted with a feather and her truth was identified with the most noble of metals - gold.

Gardner then claims that in the same way that the Wisdom of Lamech was preserved in the antediluvian pillars of Tubalcain, the secrets of Heliopolis were said to be held in the obelisks - most especially in the pyramidions. He then points out that the stone of these obelisks (usually granite) was called Mat, while the Egyptian word for pillar was Mecht. The great ‘enlightenment of the stone’ was Mat-benu and the ‘light of the pillars’ was the Meht-benu. Finally, the ‘light of truth’ was the Ma’at-benu. All of these terms are phonetically similar and, whether as Mat-benu, Meht-benu or Ma’at-benu, Gardner thinks we therefore have a very persuasive root for what sounded perhaps in Scotland like Machbenah. There would also appear to be a close phonetic resemblance between Ma’at-benu and Mahabyn, the alternative form of the Mason Word. Hence, if Gardner is correct, the Mason Word would appear to be linked with light, truth and enlightenment and have an Egyptian origin.​

Princess Scota and Jeremiah

Gardner in his book relates the stories of the two Egyptian-Scythian royal marriages involving the legendary Princess Scota in each case (N.B. he doesn’t try to deal with the distinction between them though), which occurred according to him during the 18th and 26th dynasties respectively, although he makes the mistake of identifying Pharaoh Akhenaten directly with the Patriarch Moses. Although Gardner does not propose it, if Meritaten/Hagar was Scota, an Egyptian princess who ended up in the British Isles, then she or one of her entourage might have been the means of transmitting the original Egyptian term that became the Mason Word. Alternatively, it could have been Princess Tea Tephi, aka Scota, an alleged Israelite princess and descendant of King David (see my earlier post), who brought the term with her or possibly it could have been the Prophet Jeremiah, who Irish legend holds travelled with Scota as a refugee to Ireland (Jeremiah may have been aware of the alchemical significance of the term given his role as a Guardian of the Temple and of the Ark of the Covenant), who became the means of transmitting the Mason Word to Scotland via the later Gaelic invasion of Scotland. Indeed, Mahabyn may be the Brythonic version of the Egyptian term and Machbenah the later Goidelic (Gaelic) version of the same term. To lend some support for this Egyptian-Irish link, Gardner argues that the Irish emulated the obelisks of Egypt by building their own version of the obelisks, which survive today as the Round Towers of Ireland. Gardner also makes some interesting observations in his book about the apex pyramidions of the obelisks, which were capped by a substance called tcham, which Garner claims modern research has discovered to be a bright form of gold in a glass-like state, which was also used apparently on the pyramid capstones. It transpires that this form of gold has proven to be highly superconductive – a very telling point in connection with anti-gravity propulsion. This aspect of Gardner’s work really deserves a separate post of its own but space does not permit further coverage of the subject here. It also may be the reason why the C’s stressed the importance of the suffix “pyr”.

Sir Francis Bacon and the Temple of Salomon

Having discussed the possible Egyptian derivation of the Mason Word, Gardner then makes an astonishing statement for a Freemason. He argues that Freemasonry would be far better defined and understood today if the Heliopolis Temple structure had been introduced into the ritual rather than the Temple of Solomon model. There is a huge irony in this for us since the C’s have supported Laura in suggesting that there never was a Temple of Solomon, as Solomon was in fact an Egyptian Pharaoh and his Temple was located in Egypt, not Jerusalem. Whether it was Heliopolis or not is, of course, another question. My suspicion is that it may have in fact have been at Abydos or possibly the Great Pyramid itself, which has been a continuing object of fascination for Freemasons.

Speaking of Abydos, you may recall those strange hieroglyphs at Abydos that were shown in a photograph that I posted in connection with an earlier article, which seem to depict some very modern technology. In reading Gardner’s book, I came across an interesting statement that he made concerning Sir Francis Bacon that may establish a possible connection with the hieroglyphs at Abydos. Gardner refers us to Sir Francis Bacon’s famous work, the New Atlantis (written in 1623) where he refers to the ‘House of Salomon’ [Solomon] in connection with his ideal state or utopia. Gardner states that in this context, well over a century before the Industrial Revolution commenced, Bacon’s visions of future technological advancement were extraordinary. He discussed air travel, submarines, propulsion engines and advanced ballistics (N.B. Leonardo da Vinci also had similar advanced notions a century earlier, which makes me think of that statement by the Cassiopaeans that the Masters all ‘channel’ whether consciously or sub-consciously). In fact Bacon set down so many ideas for scientific discovery that the Fellows of the Royal Society had a ready-made check-list of things to research, discover and invent. Bacon called these visionary ideas the ‘Riches of Salomon‘ and described them almost as if they had once existed but were in need of rediscovery. You may recall that those strange hieroglyphs seem to depict a helicopter, a submarine, a tank and other high tech machinery amongst other things. Could Bacon have been shown the hieroglyphs at Abydos in a vision or through remote viewing perhaps? Alternatively, was it possible that he could have travelled to Abydos incognito in his youth, where he was informed that this was the real Temple of Solomon? This seems to be unlikely as there is no record of him ever having travelled beyond the confines of Europe. In any event, Bacon’s prediction that they needed rediscovery would now seem to have been fulfilled. In fairness, I must acknowledge that there is the possibility that the hieroglyphs depict pre-Deluge or ancient technology that we have simply reinvented in our modern age. Finally, Gardner adds an important statement by the Rosicrucian and occult scholar Frances Yates that links the Temple of Salomon with the Rosicrucians when he writes that in Rosicrucian circles, the Temple of Salomon was referred to as the Temple of the Rosie Cross.​

The Light Bearer or the Rose of Sharon

Gardner also made an important link between the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians where the city of Heliopolis, the centre of their sun worship, was concerned. Although the city was known to the Israelites as On (which may have a very important link to Abraham as I hope to discuss in a subsequent post), the Egyptians also knew the city as Anu. In Akkadian Mesopotamia (the empire established under Sargon the Great) Annu or Annum (also known as Innu or Innu Mehret) had been the equivalent of Ra, the Egyptian sun god whereas in the older Sumerian civilisation he was the great sky god Anu, the leader or king of the Annunaki. Remember that the C’s have told us that the deluge survivors had travelled from Sumer in Mesopotamia (an Atlantean colony) to Egypt post the Deluge. Gardner then makes the observation that this is the reason why the winged disk of the Lord of the Sun is found in both Mesopotamia and Egypt. However, it needs to be pointed out that the winged disk (particularly as used by Akhenaten) also represented the Aten, the primary sun god of the Egyptians before Ra.

The determination of the earthly calendar was said to be the prerogative of the great Anu. The annum (as used later by the Romans to denote a year) related to the earth’s solar orbit and yet again was denoted by a point within a circle ʘ. It was called a sha – an ideogram of 360˚, which stemmed from sha-at-am, literally meaning a passing as in a 360˚ passing defining an orbit. Even in 3000 BC (prior to the Greco/Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy) the Mesopotamians knew that the earth revolved around the sun. The orbit of light was deemed to be the realm of the sun god (think of Ra riding in his celestial ship or Apollo riding his fiery chariot) and was thus defined as the sha-ra-on (Sharon).

The transmitter of light (the light bearer or Lucifer in Latin) was the Rose of Sharon: the carrier of the Rosi Crucis. Rosi represented the ritu (the redness of truth from which we derive the word ‘ritual’) and crucis related to a cup as in ‘crucible’. Gardner then makes the comparison between the Rosi Crucis and the sacred Vessel of Light in the Kabbalah and is the reason he argues that the mystical technology of the light in The Zohar (meaning radiance of light; see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoha) has been likened to the Holy Grail. The light bearer has been variously identified in different cultures from Nin-kharsag to Venus and in that guise was the queen in the Old Testament Song of Solomon 2:1: “I am the Rose of Sharon …” (in other words - I am the Truth of the Orbit of Light).

Interestingly, as Gardner observes, the direct Greek equivalent of the Rose of Sharon or Latin Lux-fer (Lucifer) meaning light-bearer was phos phoros from which the English word phosphorous derives. The term also relates to the day or morning star, which we think of as the planet Venus.​

The Divine Bread

As I said earlier, Gardner links the alchemists’ Philosophers’ Stone with the miraculous ‘powder of projection’ of the Egyptian priests of Karnak and the ingestible powder Moses made from the melted down Golden Calf that he forced the rebellious Israelites to consume, which became the Hebrew Manna (which the Sumerians called the ‘shem-man-na’ meaning ‘highward fire-stone’). This divine food would appear to be the mono-atomic gold David Hudson accidentally rediscovered with all its incredible physical and transdimensional properties. Effectively, for Gardner this is the Holy Grail of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. This point can be emphasised by the question that Perceval failed to ask when he saw the Grail passing him in the strange procession that he witnessed in the Grail Castle. He failed to ask what the Grail was. This links with the Israelite Manna since in ancient Hebrew the word meant a question “what is this?” Similarly, in the Egyptian Book of the Dead (aka the Papyrus of Ani), which is an 18th dynasty scroll from Thebes, the ‘bread of the presence’ is called tchefau food and the Pharaoh seeking the terminal enlightenment asks, at every stage of his journey, the repetitive question “What is it?”​

David Hudson, the modern re-discoverer of mono-atomic gold also had this to say on the same subject:

In ancient Egypt, which I traced this back to, there’s a book, called The Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Papyrus of Ani, by Budge. This is the oldest book of the dead, from Old Kingdom Egypt. They found it, dating from about 3500 B.C., in the tomb of Pepi II. It says, “I am purified of all imperfections. What is it? I ascend like the golden hawk of Horus. What is it? I pass by the immortals without dying. What is it? I come before my father in Heaven. What is it?”
It goes on and on and on. It keeps asking this question, “What is it?”

The Hebrews worked in Egypt for many, many generations — they were the artisans and the metallurgists. When they left Egypt, Baalzelael, the goldsmith and Moses prepared the bread of the presence of God. He prepared the bread that the high priest partook of, the Melchizedek priest. The word in Hebrew that means “What is it?” is Manna. The word, manna, literally translates, verbatim, into a question, “What is it?” If you don’t believe it, look in the Travels of Josephus. The very same words that were used in Old Kingdom Egypt, 3500 B.C. [Pepi II reigned 90 years from c. 2300 to 2210 (traditional dating), or 1720 to 1630 (Immanuel Velikovsky’s dating).]

If you ask a Rabbi, have you ever heard of the white powder of gold, he’ll say yes, we’ve heard of it, but to our knowledge, no one has known how to make it since the destruction of the First Temple. The Temple of Solomon. This knowledge has been lost. But it wasn’t completely lost, the high priests when they left the temple when it was destroyed, went out on the desert and organized a commune called Qumran. They were the Essenes. In The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered [Eisement and Wise] this in ancient times, when the white powder was mixed in water, was known as The Golden Tear from the Eye of Horus. It was called, “That which issues from the mouth of the creator.”

In the Egyptian tradition, as inscribed on the walls of the Temple at Horeb, where Baalzelael supposedly made the Ark of the Covenant, the hermetic culture of the Pharaohs was described as the House of Gold. In the subsequent (but genealogically related) culture of Jerusalem, the equivalent kingly tradition was referred to as the House of Bread (Beth-le-hem). For Gardner, the gold and the bread are the same thing, as can be seen on the treasure relief of Tuthmoses III at the Temple of Karnak. Moreover, Gardner points out that King Solomon’s dynasty was called the ‘House of Bread’, which, given that the C’s have said Solomon was in fact an Egyptian Pharaoh called ‘Narmer’, makes for a very interesting connection.​

The Holy Grail

So is this white powdered mono-atomic gold really the Philosophers’ Stone and by extension the Holy Grail? Is this the ultimate secret the Knights Templar discovered when finding the Ark of the Covenant, which then helped to generate their huge wealth? Well I think the white powder may well be the Philosophers’ Stone but is it the Holy Grail? I think not. My reason for saying this is that the C’s sent Laura on a quest or challenge to find the Grail. If the secret of the Grail was simply mono-atomic gold, then David Hudson had clearly already beaten Laura to it by the time the C’s discussed the subject with her. Arguably, Sir WM Flinders Petrie, the famous British archaeologist who excavated the Temple at Mount Horeb in 1904 now known as Serâbît el Khâdim (the Prominence of the Guardians), may have beaten both of them to it.

The ruined temple at Serâbît el Khâdim was built as an extension out of a large man-made cave and dated back at least as far as 2600 BC, since an inscription was found to Pharaoh Sneferu of the 4th dynasty. The whole site had been buried and no one had any knowledge of it until the site was cleared. To their amazement, the archaeologists found metallurgical tools and apparatus and a baffling hieroglyph that seemed to relate to a white powder. Indeed, they found a white ash powder in a metallurgist’s crucible. Indeed, in another account of Petrie’s excavation, I read that he lifted a stone floor slab and a fine white powder blew away on the wind before they could analyse it. On top of this, Petrie noted that there seemed to be innumerable inscribed references to ‘bread’ found at the ancient temple.

On one of the rock tablets near the cave entrance, for example, they found a representation of Tuthmoses IV in the presence of the Goddess Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of the sky, of women, and of fertility and love. Before the image of Tuthmoses were two offering stands topped with lotus flowers and behind him a man carrying a conical object described as ‘white bread’ – which was very similar to an image of Tuthmoses previously found in the treasure relief at the Temple in Karnak. Bearing in mind that this image was found in 1904, it strikes me as being somewhat similar to the image of the Grail depicted in the stain-glass window at Chartres Cathedral (see my earlier post) where there is a conical object with a stone within it being carried on a cart. Is this just a coincidence or are the two images separated by nearly 3,000 years in time depicting the same thing? Another stela showed the mason Ankhib offering the Pharaoh two bread cakes and there were similar portrayals elsewhere in the temple complex.

Gardner states though that one of the most significant representations was of Hathor and Amenhotep III in which the goddess, complete with her customary cow horns and solar disc, is shown holding a necklace in one hand whilst offering the emblem of life and dominion to the Pharaoh with the other. Behind her is the treasurer Sobekhotep holding in readiness a conical loaf of ‘white bread’. Sobekhotep is described as the man who ‘brought the noble precious stone to his majesty’. He is also said to be the ‘true royal acquaintance’ and the ‘Great One over the secrets of the House of Gold’. However, Petrie could find no gold at the temple complex, which is not surprising as gold was never mined in Sinai. Gardner then points out that the ultimate symbol which governed the mysterious secret of the House of Gold was found in the Shrine of the Kings. It was the pharaonic cartouche emblem of Ra, the sun god of Heliopolis, which was the traditional ideogram for Light ʘ - the point within a circle.

I also have no doubt that mono-atomic gold in the form of Manna was stored within the Ark of the Covenant. If the ruined temple at Serâbît el Khâdim was indeed the Mount Horeb of the Bible where the Ark of the Covenant was constructed (I actually have doubts about both matters), then it makes sense that Moses, a prince of Egypt trained in all the sciences, would have gone there knowing of the complex’s metallurgical capabilities and this would be where the Golden Calf was melted down in what was in reality an alchemical transmutation – i.e., an application of what the Egyptians called the Sacred Art or the Divine Science.

The white powdered mono-atomic gold was evidently viewed as a divine food and a medical remedy by the Mesopotamians, Egyptians and Israelites. However, for those who have read the Cassiopaean transcripts and commentaries, you will know that the C’s took a very dim view of mono-atomic gold and its uses. Here is just one excerpt from the Session dated 7 June 1997 to illustrate the point:​

A: You are right, but, do not underestimate the significance of that just delivered! What better deception than to divert the meaning of alchemy, by focusing upon substance, then addicting those souls bound to 3rd density to the substance?

Q: Okay, it is the magnetite that acts as a conduit. And the concentration is upon the substance, that is, the magnetite. Let me conjecture that the thing that is believed to be distilled out of the alchemical operations is magnetite, is that correct?

A: No, because no need, if not deceived by other efforts.

Q: Were these other efforts involved with sexual function?

A: More like the results of same.

Q: Okay, they were concentrating on...

A: Today's version of the deception could be your favourite and mine, "monoatomic gold."

Q: Oh, the David Hudson fiasco...

A: There too, one is lead astray by substance... Remember our little dissertation about all the really big bangs?

Q: Yes.... I remember... and I got a lot of flack from that... The three days of darkness, et cetera... the implications... let's back up...

A: Oh my, oh my, we can turn this powder into gold!! And if you eat enough of it, you will have orgasms forever as a light being... Oh my, oh my!!

Hence, I am certain that mono-atomic gold is not the Holy Grail, at least as far as the C’s are concerned. However, that does not mean the Knights Templar did not discover the Holy Grail in the Holy Land, as I am quite sure they did and they subsequently brought it back to Europe. In my next post I will deal with where they may have located it and Mount Horeb will certainly feature in this, as will the Prophet Jeremiah.​

 

[MJF]

Postscipt to the Comte de St. Germain

In my earlier post on that most mysterious of 18th century figures the Count of St. Germain, I queried how he came to use a title reserved for the hereditary claimants to the Throne of Scotland. Here is a reminder of what I said about the matter:​

"Laura evidently took the view that Saint-Germain was just a talented conman although a genuine alchemist. However, could he have been concealing another more serious role behind this façade? Was he in reality a clever, calculating spy and agent provocateur? Clearly, he seems to have acted on behalf of King Louis XV of France but he also seems to have played the role of agent for others including the Jacobite supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The fact he was a genuine alchemist makes me think he may have had a relationship with the enclave of alchemists in the Pyrenees who were involved with the Oak Island mystery. He may also have been a Rosicrucian agent, given his links with the Jacobites and his use of the name Count Saint-Germain, which, as we learned before, rightly belonged to the hereditary holder of the throne of Scotland".

By 1745, it was the Stuart princes in exile who were the legitimate holders of the title of Count of St. Germain and the title by that time had fallen into the hands of Charles Edward Stuart, known to history as Bonnie Prince Charlie. You will recall that Laura had noted that Laurence Gardner had been tasked by some of the royal families of Europe to draw up a genealogical family tree that he claimed seemed to lead back ultimately to the House of Judah. Gardner is a leading Scottish antiquarian attached to the European Council of Princes as the Jacobite Histriographer Royal. Hence, one might assume he is something of an expert when it comes to tracing royal lineages. This is an important point to remember given what I am about to say concerning Gardner's comments on the Comte de St. Germain.

You will recall that someone calling himself the Comte de St. Germain was arrested in London in late 1745 on suspicion of being a Jacobite spy and claimed that the incriminating letters he was found to be carrying had been planted on him. Horace Walpole, English author and Member of Parliament, wrote a letter about this incident to Sir Horace Mann on December 9, 1745 saying:​

“The other day they seized an odd man who goes by the name of Count Saint-Germain. He has been here these two years, and will not tell who he is or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings and plays on the violin wonderfully, is mad and not very sensible.”

You will note that he had supposedly been in Britain for two years by that time. What was he doing here? Well Gardner sheds some light on this matter, which paints the Count in a very different light.

Gardner writes that in 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie was regarded as the hereditary sovereign head of Stuart Freemasonry as the direct linear descendent of King Charles II. He was the Grand Master of all Jacobite Masonic lodges and, therefore, the rightful Count of St. Germain. Gardner claims that Prince Charles Stuart was formally invested as Grand Master of the Order of the Temple of Jerusalem in the Audience Room of Holyrood Palace in Edingburgh Scotland on Tuesday, 24 September 1745. This was in the early stages of the Jacobite rising against King George II, the Hanoverian monarch who held the thrones of England and Scotland at the time, that would eventually end in disastrous defeat at the Batttle of Culloden Moor in April 1746. During the Stuart exile in Europe, the Temple Grand Mastery had been held in trust for the exiled Kings of Scotland by appointed Regents. The Regent at that time had been James Murray, Duke of Atthol. However, in December 1743, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie's father, had by a royal declaration transferred all his hereditary entitlements and regencies to his son. Gardner claims that it is recorded in the Statutes of the Order of the Temple that, on taking his vow in the presence of ten knights, Prince Charles declared: "You may be sure that when I truly come into my own, I will raise the Order to what it was in the days of William the Lion" (King of Scotland 1165-1214).

Gardner then points out that one of the most debated issues in terms of Jacobite Freemasonry is that of the Chapitre Primordian de Rose Croix. The Chapter was founded in 1745 - the same year as the Highland uprising. It was formally constituted by the Charter of Arras in 1747 by Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his cousin, the Marquis de Montferrat. Well guess who the Marquis de Montferrat was according to Gardner. Yes - none other than the Comte de St. Germain. Gardner explains that the Count of St. Germain title comes by way of the Chancellorship of the Elder Brethren of the Rosy Cross, which, as we learned in a previous post, was created by King Robert the Bruce in 1317. There is an 18th century painting engraving (depicted in Gardner's book) showing Prince Charles and the Comte de St. Germain presenting the Charter of Arras to the Companions of the Order.

If this is true (and I have no way of proving it, as I don't have access to the records that Gardner has seen) then it casts a very different light on Count St. Germain and his dealings. A list of the Marquises and Dukes of Montferrat can be found here at List of rulers of Montferrat - Wikipedia. You will see that the last holder of the title was Ferdinand Charles (1665–1708), Duke of Montferrat and Mantua. Son of Charles II and last of the Gonzaga Dynasty. If Gardner is correct, then Count St. Germain would have to have been Ferdinand's son, Giovanni Gonazaga. See Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat - Wikipedia. You will note that Ferdinand Charles Gonzaga was declared a traitor in 1701 by Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor and was then blamed with felony by the Diet of Regensburg, 30 June 1708, and all his possessions were subsequently confiscated. Hence, if Giovanni Gonazaga was the Comte de St. Germain, it would explain why he had an aristocratic bearing about him and could easily mix in royal circles, given he was from royal stock himself. Given his father's support of Louis XIV of France, it would also explain why he was welcome at the French Court and acted willingly as an agent for King Louis. He would also seem to have been a cousin of the Stuart princes and the suspicions that he was a Jacobite agent when he was arrested in London were probably warranted. He could also have mounted a claim to be King of Jerusalem given that Conrad Marquis of Montferrat was the last de facto King of Jerusalem during the Third Crusade see Conrad of Montferrat - Wikipedia.

Gardner also claims that the Count of St. Germain wrote the alchemical work entitled Holy Trinosophia. Sophia is, of course, associated with wisdom but could the title also have been a tribute to Sophia, the daughter of Princess Elizabeth Stuart (King James I of England's daughter) and Frederick V, Elector of the Palatine who in turn was married to Ernest Augustus, the Elector of Hanover and was the mother of King George I of England. Sophia's father had briefly been the Winter King of Bohemia until he was forced to flee into exile at the Hague by the Catholic forces of the Holy Roman Emperor. Bohemia, and Prague in particular, was a hotbed of Hermeticism which had drawn such famous hermeticists and alchemists as Michael Maier, John Dee, Edward Kelley, Robert Fludd, Giordano Bruno and Johannes Kepler to it. Hence, it is almost certain that Sophia herself was steeped in hermeticism.

Finally, Gardner goes into great detail concerning the adverserial attitudes that existed between Jacobite Freemasonry and Hanoverian Masonry that was exacerbated in Britain by the Jacobite uprisings. This led to a split in Masonic lodge loyalties between the Whig Party supporters (mainly pro-Hanoverian) and the Tory Party supporters (mainly pro-Jacobite), which at times exploded into open fighting. This split would also be felt during the American War of Independence, where George Washington and his Masonic confreres would have been predominantly from Jacobite Masonic lodges. If the Count of St. Germain had been active in America at the time of the Declaration of Independence, then his motives can more clearly be seen in the light of these purported Stuart and Rosicrucian links.​

 

[MJF]

I just wanted to let people know that I am currently preparing future posts but I have my youngest son currently staying with me at the moment during the school holidays, so there may be a slight delay in posting them for a while. Apart from a post on the Templars finding the Holy Grail, I also would like to shed some light on the reason why the Scottish Rite Freemasons have 33 degrees, which ties in with a comment the C's once made to Laura. Moreover, I have found a new book on Rennes-le-Chateau, which takes a very different angle on the treasure hidden there and on the Holy Grail. It also made me realise that I had overlooked an important clue in the name of the town, which in French means 'Queen of the House' and may be a clear reference back to Isis and other mother earth goddesses and perhaps to the Grail itself.

 

[MJF]

The Knights Templar, Jeremiah and the Ark of the Covenant

I have previously remarked that the Knights Templar found the Ark of the Covenant with the Holy Grail but not in Jerusalem. We know the Templars carried out excavations under Temple Mount where they were originally quartered. Indeed, this may have been the true purpose of their foundation, since it is unlikely that nine knights could have managed to preserve the safety of the highways for Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land on their own.

There is some archaeological evidence to support the fact that the Templars were involved in extensive excavations under Temple Mount since an 1867 investigation by a team of British Royal Engineers found a 25 metre (80 foot) tunnel hewn through solid rock that at the bottom radiated out into a network of tunnels under the Dome of the Rock mosque in which various Templar artefacts such as part of a Templar sword, the remains of a lance, a spur and a small Templar cross were found. As these tunnels were built so precisely, it raises the question why were they quarried and what function did they serve. Were the Templars looking for something specific and did they find it?​

The Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1952 an archaeologist found a copper scroll near a cave in Khirbet, Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. Unlike the other Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in eleven caves near Khirbet, which were all made of parchment or papyrus, this scroll was made of copper mixed with a little tin. Although the Dead Sea Scrolls comprise fragments of extra-biblical and early Jewish writings, the Copper Scroll by way of contrast features, in Hebrew, a list of locations at which sacred artefacts and treasures are meant to be buried or hidden. Dating from circa 50-100 AD, the Copper Scroll contains an inventory of items that were taken from the Temple before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar. These items have not been seen or accounted for since. Among other things, the Copper Scroll claims that the ‘Tabernacle of the Lord’ was hidden in a desolate valley – 40 stones deep under a hill on its east side. This has led many to speculate that the Jewish sect who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls (most probably the Essenes) buried the Ark in the Jordan desert before they were overpowered or they hid it in a carved-out secret chamber ‘40 stones’ under Temple Mount. Hence, although the Templars had no knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were not discovered until 1947, they may still have been trying to locate the Ark of the Covenant under Temple Mount based on other documentary evidence that may have come into their possession. An international team during the mid-20th century investigated the Dead Sea Scrolls and searched every site listed on the Copper Scroll but found nothing relating to the Temple or any biblical artefacts. However, they did find further evidence of the Templar presence in the 12th century, which gave rise to speculation that the Templars were looking for certain things and that they knew where to look.​

The Prophet Jeremiah

The prophet Jeremiah will prove to be a key figure in our quest. Laurence Gardner has pointed out in his book ‘The Lost Word’ that according to French Masonic lore stemming from the Middle Ages, the treasure the Knights Templar found in the Holy Land was the specific responsibility of the Templar Grand Knights of Saint Andrew, instituted by King Baudoin II of Jerusalem in 1118. Apparently these elite Knights were called the Guardian Princes of the Royal Secret. Gardner then claims that according to ancient Scottish tradition, the Knights of Saint Andrew were the inheritors of the Samaritan Magi who were therefore the true ancestors of speculative Freemasonry and this history dates back to the Temple Guard of Jerusalem in 586 BC. He further claims that before the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II, the Temple Guard were summoned by the High Priest Hilkiah (who according to Gardner was a priest of the goddess Anath rather than Yahweh or Jehovah). Hilkiah was renowned for finding the Mosaic Book of the Law. The captain of the Guard was the High Priest’s son, Jeremiah now known to us as the Prophet Jeremiah. His task was to secret the Ark of the Covenant and other valuable Temple treasures away from the invading Babylonians.

However, we have also seen that Jeremiah was by ancient Irish tradition supposed to have been the person charged by King Zedekiah, the last King of Israel, with getting his daughter, Tamar Tephi or Scota, to safety, first to Egypt and then to Ireland, although there is no actual biblical authority for this tradition.

As to Jeremiah’s role in hiding the Ark, the Second Book of Maccabees tells us at the beginning of chapter 2 how the records show that it was the prophet Jeremiah who ... prompted by a divine message ... gave orders that the Tent of Meeting and the Ark should go with him. Then he went away to the mountain from the top of which Moses saw God's Promised Land [Mount Nebo in Jordan]. When he reached the mountain, Jeremiah found a cave-dwelling; he carried the Tent, the Ark, and the incense-altar into it, then blocked up the entrance. Here is the actual narrative:​

“He came forth to the mountain where Moses went up and saw the inheritance of God. And when Jeremiah came thither he found a hollow cave and he carried in thither the Tabernacle and the Ark and the altar of incense, and so stopped the door”.

Some of his companions came to mark out the way, but were unable to find it. When Jeremiah learnt of this he reprimanded them and said:​

"The place shall remain unknown until God finally gathers his people together and shows mercy to them. The Lord will bring these things to light again, and the glory of the Lord will appear with the cloud, as it was seen both in the time of Moses and when Solomon prayed that the shrine might be worthily consecrated”.

Although the Book of Maccabees is accepted as a canonical work by the Catholic Church and by Orthodox Christianity it is considered to be apocryphal by Orthodox Judaism and most Protestant denominations and is not therefore included in the Torah or the Protestant Bible. Apart from this extract from Maccabees, there is also a reference to the Ark in the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah, where the prophet Jeremiah condemns the Jewish people for losing their faith in God and reverting to idolatry. For this reason, he tells them, the Ark will be lost for generations to come and they will no longer have the means to overcome their enemies:​

“The ark of the covenant of the Lord: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it: neither shall they visit it”. (Jeremiah 3:16)

Finally, there is also some support for Jeremiah’s part in hiding the Ark in the Mishneh Torah, which are 14 books of Jewish religious law compiled between 1170 and 1180 and written by Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (aka Malmonides 1135-1204). It states that the prophet Jeremiah gave instructions to King Josiah that it was imperative for him to remove the Ark of the Covenant from the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem. Since Josiah reigned over Jerusalem from 641 BC to 609 BC, this was twenty years before the Babylonians overran the city.

It is interesting that the Rabbi’s name is ‘Moshe’ as it reminds me of something the C’s once said to Laura during a session when she enquired about the name:​

Q: I know that, I'm sorry. Let me ask this: when you mentioned the name 'Moshe' at the time that Roxanne was present, was it this Moshe you were referring to?

A: There are so many Moshes, perhaps you should study the Hebrew root.

The Hebrew root of the name ‘Moshe’ is found in the word Mosheh meaning to ‘draw out’, ‘pull out’ or ‘rescue’. Hence, it is curious that we should be considering what a celebrated Jewish Rabbi called Moshe had to say about the hiding of the Ark of the Covenant, particularly if it was eventually found by the Knights Templar who in recovering it had to draw it out or pull it out of a hidden chamber in order to rescue it nearly 1800 years later. Were the C’s giving us an important clue here perhaps?​

The Mountain of God

The mountain in question where Moses went up and saw the inheritance of God appears to have been Mount Sinai but the only problem is that the exact location of this holy mountain of God has been forgotten over time. This issue was the key one that vexed the English writer Graham Phillips in his book ‘The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant’ written in 2004. I have previously mentioned in an earlier post another one of Phillips books ‘Act of God’ in which he linked the Exodus and the biblical plagues of Egypt to the date of the eruption of Thera (the modern day Island of Santorini), which he set in the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Hence, he is one of the few authors who concur with the C’s on this point. I could not remember which Egyptian prince he had identified Moses with. However, he usefully repeated some of what he had said about this matter in Act of God and I can now confirm that he identified Moses with Prince Tuthmose, the older brother of Akhenaten. If he is correct in his analysis, this would make Tuthmose also Abraham according to the C’s. This places an amazing spin on Abraham being Paris, a prince of Troy according to Homer’s Iliad. However, we are not concerned with this issue insofar as the finding of the Ark of the Covenant is concerned and I am therefore content to leave this matter for further discussion when returning to the subject of who Abraham/Moses really was.

I am going to relate the incredible story that Phillips sets out in his book ‘The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant‘, since it involves a real life treasure hunt on his part that yielded genuine treasure in the shape of some unusual artefacts that he and his friends discovered in England that may well be linked to the Ark of the Covenant. However, Phillips very usefully sets out a truncated version of this book on his website, so you are welcome to read it for yourself at your leisure at this link The Ark of the Covenant 1. The accompanying photographs included with his article will prove useful when looking at his evidence for the location of the Mountain of God, which most biblical experts take to be Mount Sinai.

In modern times biblical scholars have fiercely debated Mount Sinai’s true location, and to this day it remains one of the Bible’s most contested mysteries. Phillips points out in his book though that the ‘Mountain of God’ is referred to by two different names in the Old Testament: Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb, or simply Horeb. However, the Bible leaves no doubt that these were both the same mountain. The holy laws that God is said to have revealed to the Israelites at the Mountain of God are referred to in the Bible as ‘the Covenant’. When the book of Deuteronomy talks of the Covenant it refers to Horeb. For example:

“God made a covenant with us in Horeb” (Deut 5:2)​

“And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God” (1 Kings 19:8 concerning the Prophet Elijah)

Mount Sinai merely refers to a mountain in the Sinai Wilderness while in Hebrew the word ‘horeb’ simply means “mountain in the desert”, “hor” meaning “mount” and “choreb” meaning a dry or desert place. Hence, neither Mount Sinai nor Mount Horeb refers to a specific site. Today there is an area called Sinai, an area of land in Egypt, east of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. However, in biblical times the Sinai Wilderness also included what are now southern Jordan and Israel, and part of north-western Saudi Arabia.

Through dutiful research into the biblical texts and, in particular, by using the biblical narrative relating to the famous story of Moses miraculously causing a torrent of water to gush forth to quench the children of Israel’s thirst, Phillips was able to pin down the mountain’s location to the Land of Edom. According to the book of Exodus, when the Israelites first arrived in the Valley of Edom, God commanded Moses to use his sacred staff to create a miraculous spring:​

“Behold I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it”. (Exodus 17:6)

Edom was a small kingdom in the northwest of the Sinai Wilderness that was inhabited by a Semite people known as the Edomites from around 1700 BC. After poring over ancient maps, Phillips noticed a mountain range in southwest Jordan running through what was once the Land of Edom but is today called the Shara Range. It has been determined by archaeologists that the Edomites had migrated south from Canaan at the same time other Semitic groups (including the Israelites) had settled in Egypt. The Edomites would therefore appear to have been closely related to the Israelites and this would seem to be reflected in the Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau. After Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his inheritance, Jacob and his family was supposed to have migrated eastwards to Egypt where his descendants became the Israelites, whereas Esau was supposed to have moved south from Canaan into Edom where his descendants became the Edomites. DNA tests on Edomite and Israelite skeletons have shown that they did in fact share a common ancestry. Phillips recognises that the story may have been allegorical and we, of course, have been told by the C’s that the biblical patriarch Jacob was in fact just another guise for Abraham/Moses.

However, Phillips also noted in the Genesis account of Esau settling in the land of Edom a passage which made reference to a specific mountain around which the Edomites lived called Mount Seir:​

“Thus dwelt Esau in mount Seir … And these are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites in mount Seir.” (Genesis 36: 8-9).

Mount Seir is mentioned a number of times in the Old Testament and, like Mount Sinai, it is considered to be a holy mountain associated with God. God is said to have resided on Mount Sinai and there are repeated references in the Old Testament to God also residing in Seir. The prophet Isaiah, for instance, tells us that when God speaks to him, “He calleth to me out of Seir” (Isaiah 21:11). The prophet Ezekiel, for example, tells his followers to “set thy face against mount Seir” (Ezekiel 35:2). One particular passage leaves us with little doubt that God was thought to reside here and that Mount Sinai is somewhere in the Seir Range. In the Book of Judges 5:4-5, the prophetess Deborah prays to God:​

“Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before the Lord, even that Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel.”

The Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy 33:2 is even more specific. When Moses is dying he calls upon God to bless the children of Israel: “the Lord came from Sinai and rose up from Seir unto them”. Not only is this evidence that God was thought to reside in Seir but that Mount Seir is in fact another name for Mount Sinai.​

The Valley of Edom

The Edom Valley is around half a mile wide and three miles long. Although the entire Negev Desert was known as the land of Edom, at the time of the ancient Israelites, the Kingdom of Edom was a tiny realm centred on this fertile vale. In ancient times an important trading route ran through the Valley of Edom from east to west connecting Egypt and Africa with the Arab world and the East and the Edomites who controlled it prospered from the tariffs they charged. Phillips points out that if the Israelites had come from the southern Sinai Wilderness, then they would have arrived at the border of the Edomite Kingdom at a gorge that is today known as the Siq al Barid (the Arabic for “cold canyon”), which is called Siq for short.

The Valley of Edom is today called Wadi Musa, which in Arabic means the “valley of Moses”. It was so named because the local Bedouin of the Shara Range believed that it was here that Moses brought forth the miraculous spring in the Old Testament story. In fact they had built a shrine to identify the exact site at the foot of the mountain where they thought the incident had occurred near the entrance of the Siq. They called it Ain Musa – the Spring of Moses. Phillips conjectured that if this spring had really been the one Moses had brought forth from a rock “in Horeb”, then presumably the mountain rising above it was Mount Horeb itself or Mount Sinai. He learned again that the local Bedouin had long considered the mountain to be a sacred place and called it Jebel Madhbah – Mountain of the Altar - as there was an ancient shrine on its summit that dated back well over 3,000 years (radio carbon dating places it at 1500 BC). Phillips subsequently took a ride through the Siq, the long winding gorge, and in doing so made a monumental discovery for when the gorge finally opened out he immediately recognised the ruins of the City of Petra, the place Steven Spielberg had used as the last repository of the Holy Grail in his movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade*. The irony of this point will soon become clear.

* Interestingly, Spielberg had met with Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh (the authors of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) in Paris for discussions before shooting Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

​

The Edomite temple located on the summit of Jebel Madhbah – the Mountain of the Altar. This may have been the place where the Bible says Moses communed with God and received the Ten Commandments.

For further images of Mount Horeb and the ancient temple on its summit see The Mountain of God.

However, before moving on to the Knights Templars’ discovery of the Holy Grail, I must point out something that the Cassiopaeans had said about Abraham/Moses and the Israelites concerning their forty years of wandering in the desert. When Laura had asked what they had been doing during this time, the C’s replied they had been Bedouins. Hence, one must ask if it is possible that Abraham’s link with the Bedouins could explain why the local Bedouins of the Shara Range to this day retain the tradition of Ain Musa being the Spring of Moses and Jebel Madhbah – the Mountain of the Altar - being a sacred place where Moses met with God.​

The Knights Templar and the Forgotten Cave

The most striking building in the City of Petra is the structure hewn out of the bedrock called the Treasury or ‘Al Khazneh’ in Arabic. Old as this building may be, it was not there when the Edomites occupied the Valley of Edom in Old Testament times. It was built by the Nabateans who moved into the valley in the 4th century BC and replaced the Edomites as the principal occupants of the valley. The City of Petra was constructed by the Nabateans in accordance with Greco-Roman designs and became one of the most important cities in the Middle East where it dominated the ancient trade route between the Mediterranean lands and the Near East and Asia until the Romans ended its independence in AD 106. Whilst visiting Petra, Graham Phillips discussed with his Arab guide the reason why the Treasury had got its name. He discovered that it was due to the legend of hidden treasure being found there. Apparently, in the 12th century, European Crusaders had found jewels and artefacts of pure gold hidden in a nearby cave. Phillips subsequently met up with an Australian historian, Jonathan (Jack) Warren, who was working on a Ph.D thesis on the history of Petra who confirmed there was no contemporary record of the Crusaders’ purported find of treasure and the oldest historical references to it dated back to the early 19th century. Apparently, the story had been told to a Swiss explorer, Johannes Burckhardt, who was the first westerner to have visited the ruined City of Petra since the Crusaders abandoned their forts on the site in 1189. The Crusaders had occupied the valley briefly and had constructed a series of forts but, after they abandoned them, Europeans had completely forgotten about the ancient city until Burckhardt stumbled upon it completely by accident in 1812. It was Burckhardt’s Bedouin guide who had told him about the legend of the treasure found by the European Crusaders, which included jewels and a gold chest.

The Treasury’s full Arabic name was Khaznat al-Faroun meaning ‘the Treasury of the Pharaoh’. One Bedouin myth had told of the Pharaoh of the Exodus chasing the Israelites to the valley at the time that Moses had made the Ain Musa spring. We should recall that that the C’s confirmed that Pharaoh Akhenaten had chased after Abraham and his party to recover the Ark of the Covenant but had failed. However, it is clear that the Treasury could not have been built in Edomite times so was there evidence of an earlier structure at the site? Phillips learned from Jack Warren that an excavation of the site organised by the Jordanian Ministry of Antiquities in the early 1980’s had found that the valley floor at the time when the Treasury was constructed over 2,000 years ago had been much lower than it is today. The archaeologists had then excavated down into the flood debris in front of the Treasury until they reached the level where the valley floor had been at the time of the earliest Edomite occupation of the area, as determined by radiocarbon dating of animal bones found in the rubble. At this level, the archaeologists found evidence of a much earlier chamber cut into the rock to a depth of about 20 feet directly below the present entrance to the Treasury. It turned out to be a passageway about four feet wide and five feet high, leading to a plain chamber measuring approximately ten feet square and seven feet high. Warren ventured that it might have been an Edomite tomb as the entrance was partially sealed by purposely placed boulders. However, it appeared to have been robbed centuries ago as there was nothing found inside.

Phillips subsequently learned that the Crusaders who had briefly occupied the Valley of Edom and the City of Petra in the 1180’s had been the Knights Templar and it must have been they who were credited with finding the lost treasure. This leads me to recall what the C’s said in the Session dated 20 June 1998:​

Q: What was the head worshipped by the Templars that was supposed to have been called "Baphomet?"

A: Seer of the passage.

Q: What does that mean?

A: Remember, secrets of Knights Templar were kept in caves guided by eternally burning lamps.

Moreover at this time the commander of the Edom Valley Templars was the English Knight, Ralph de Sudeley. According to an Arab chronicler Numairi, who wrote around AD 1300, in the 1180s the knights discovered a sealed cave at Jebel Madhbah where they found "treasures of pure gold, precious stones and a golden chest". There was no specific reference to the Ark of the Covenant, but the knight did claim that these were holy relics that had belonged to the ancient Israelites. Numairi described the chest as being made from panelled gold with two winged figures on the lid, which he described as being similar to ancient statues that still survived in his native Egypt. Unfortunately, he did not give the dimensions of the chest, which may have been any size. However, Numairi’s description of the chest does bear a striking resemblance to the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat. Phillips had by this time exhausted his resources in Israel so he returned to England to delve deeper into the history of the Templar commander at Jebel Madhbah, Ralph de Sudeley.​

Ralph de Sudeley and the Templars of Herdewyke

Ralph de Sudeley, the leader of the Templars who apparently found the treasure at Petra in the 1180s, was an English knight who joined the Templars at their Jerusalem garrison in the Holy Land in 1182. Although he came from a reasonably wealthy family, as a younger son he did not stand to inherit his father’s estate. However, in 1189 he returned to his home at Herdewyke (now called Temple Herdewyke) in the county of Warwickshire in central England, only ten miles from what would later be Shakespeare’s birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, an extremely wealthy man.

On his arrival home, de Sudeley immediately bought a large estate in the area and founded a Templar preceptory to train new recruits for a fresh Crusade planned by King Richard I of England, which was to commence in 1190. He built a lavish manor house on the estate, married and settled down to raise a family. During this period, there was no such thing as a full-time, professional army in England, and in wartime troops were supplied by landlords (earls and barons) who raised the required number of men from among their tenants. Most of these were sent into battle with little or no training. The exception, however, could be found in warrior orders such as the Knights Templar. A Templar preceptory was a strange cross between a military base and a monastery. While they were there, the monks lived a monastic life in one part of the camp, while the military laymen lived in traditional barracks in another part of the base. From the records that survive, it is clear that the Herdewyke preceptory was a huge establishment, housing around a thousand men. To feed, shelter, equip and train such a large body of men would have cost a fortune. This is proof positive that De Sudeley was clearly by now an exceedingly rich man even though only a decade before, when he had set off to join the Crusades, he had been a man of modest means. Phillips points out that he could have made his wealth from plundering the Arabs or from charging a levy on the merchants who travelled through the Valley of Edom, since he was the commander of the small Templar garrison at Jebel Habis (a Templar fort located on a small rocky mesa that overlooked the ruined city of Petra) that controlled the valley. However, Phillips suggests there was an alternative explanation, which would go some way towards accounting for his sudden and mysterious wealth – holy relics – which were big business at that time (MJF: I wouldn’t rule out alchemy either since the Templars seemed to possess the knowledge of this arcane science).

The local Feet of Fines, contemporary records of land and property holdings, show that de Sudeley’s preceptory possessed expensive holy relics brought back from the Middle East. An entry for the year 1192 included mention of certain objets sacrés - "sacred artifacts" - that were housed in the chapel of the Herdewyke preceptory. As official documents in the twelfth century were frequently written in French, the term objets sacrés was the usual way of describing holy relics returned from the Crusades, often precious objects thought to have been associated with the Bible. Phillips points out that from the 1600’s there did survive record of a local tradition that held that the Herdewyke Templars had hidden some kind of treasure when they were forced to disband in the 14th century (indeed the legend would draw the famous Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh to the estate in the year 1600 in search of the Templar treasure – see more on this below). Unfortunately, no specific details are given of these relics in the contemporary records other than the fact that pilgrims donated large sums of money to the preceptory when they visited the chapel to see these items. Nevertheless, the chances are that these could well have been some of the same items discovered in the cave at Jebel Madhbah. The question is - what happened to them?​

The Herdewyke Treasure

Upon Ralph de Sudeley’s death, the Herdewyke preceptory had been bequeathed to the Templar order and they were still in residence at the time of King Edward II’s purge of the English Templars in 1322. In England, King Edward II (the son-in-law of King Phillip IV of France) had fallen out with the Pope and had allowed the order to continue, particularly as he enjoyed their financial support. However, in 1322, when the Templars had refused to continue financing the king, he ordered them to be arrested and their property seized. Accordingly, the Herdewyke Templars’ possessions were seized by the Crown – or at least some of them were.

According to the Warwickshire historian William Dugdale, who wrote in 1656, the Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh visited Herdewyke in 1600 and was told a story about the Templars hiding treasure in the area. For some reason or other, Raleigh took it seriously and spent months looking for treasure. He persuaded his wealthy wife (Elizabeth Throckmorton, Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth I) to buy the Herdewyke estate and had a gang of men excavate the ruins of the Templar preceptory. Apparently, nothing was found. Nevertheless, could this legendary treasure have been the same relics that had once been housed in the Herdewyke chapel in Ralph de Sudeley’s time?

The Herdewyke estate had encompassed about nine square miles and included both a region of low-lying land now called Temple Herdewyke after the Templars who were once there, and an area of high land rising to over a thousand feet to the immediate southeast of it called the Burton Dassett Hills. Temple Herdewyke and the Burton Dassett Hills are now sparsely populated with a couple of tiny villages and a few small farms. Nothing remains of the medieval barracks or monastic buildings but, remarkably, the shell of the preceptory chapel still survives and the country lane that leads up into the Burton Dassett Hills from the northwest runs right past it. When Phillips first visited the chapel ruin it was being used as a cowshed but it has now been renovated into a country house.

Phillips soon concluded that it was most unlikely that any of the Templars' sacred possessions had been hidden around or beneath the chapel. Not only was the entire area thoroughly dug by Raleigh’s men but it has more recently been excavated by archaeologists who have found nothing to indicate that anything was hidden here. Moreover, in the last couple of years extensive digging has occurred for the foundations of the modern house. There was, however, another possibility. The relics could have been hidden in another church that the Templars had built nearby

In 1327, five years after they had been outlawed and thrown from their land by Edward II, the Herdewyke Templars helped depose the king by aiding his queen, Isabella of France*, who placed her young son Edward III on the throne as puppet king. In gratitude, the queen granted these Templars amnesty although their lands were not returned. As their preceptory was now in the possession of rival landowners, the Templars raised the money to build a new church in the village of Burton Dassett, one-and-a-half miles to the southeast, up on the Burton Dassett Hills. By this time purely a religious order (the Knights Templar had long ceased to be a military organization), the men required the church for their devotions. Sadly, these peaceful Templars did not survive long. In 1350, they and the entire Burton Dassett community were killed off by the Black Death.

*This is the same Queen Isabella who supposedly gave birth in 1325 to Laura’s ancestor, Willielmo Knyght de Bradley (William Alfred Knight), her illegitimate love child by Roger De Mortimer (the Earl of March) who had been imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time and was subsequently executed. Apparently, the child was smuggled out of the Tower of London after his birth by the Bishop of Worcester. He was fostered by a family in Worcester and undoubtedly never told of his parentage. Although most mainstream historians dismiss this tale as fanciful nonsense, the Cassiopaeans did seem to give it credence in the transcripts.

Unlike the ruined chapel at Temple-Herdewyke, the medieval All Saints Church is not only well preserved it is still in use today. It stands on the hillside at the edge of the tiny hamlet of Burton Dassett, after which the upland is named. If the Herdewyke Templars had possessed holy relics that they had managed to keep from the clutches of Edward II, then it would have made sense for them to hide these at the time of the Black Death. It was quite possible that, knowing their end was nigh, the Templars had hidden their precious possessions in the hope of preserving them intact. Indeed, many monastic communities are known to have done just this. A number of hoards of gold and silver vessels have been found by archaeologists over the years, believed to have been hidden by monks threatened by the plague. In fact, in the late 1800s a local antiquarian named Jacob Cove-Jones, from the village of Loxley in Warwickshire (the same Loxley village that Robin Hood is reputed to be connected with), claimed that the Templars had actually left clues in the church to reveal the whereabouts of the legendary treasure.

Continued in Part 2​