The Island of Avalon has been associated with the tor at Glastonbury because the monks at the medieval abbey exaggerated the previous association with Joseph of Arimathea to attract pilgrims. The myth that Glastonbury tor is somehow connected or even synonymous with the Island of Avalon is probably down to a man called Henry Blois, better known as Master Blihis, who was an abbot at Glastonbury abbey.
The author has deciphered the meaning behind the riddle known as Melkin's prophecy, upon which the mythical status of Glastonbury is founded. It is due to the fragment of Melkin's prophecy that Glastonbury polemicists, recognizing its antiquity, desperately contrived an association with Joseph of Arimathea's burial site and that of King Arthur.
This was possible due to everyone's ignorance in the middle ages of the location of Avalon. The subtle translocation of the isle of Avalon can be witnessed in the evolving interpolation of the prophecy by Glastonbury chroniclers keen to promote the connection with the uncle of Jesus. The 'Vaus d'Avaron' of French Grail literature is described in the story line in some Grail romances as pertaining to a region of valleys south of Dartmoor and the island of Avalon fits the description of Burgh Island. The genuine historical Avalon had beaches; it was tidal and had ships that visited it...... unlike Glastonbury or its environs.
The monks riddle which he left for posterity, when deciphered, clearly indicates with pinpoint geometrical accuracy, the whereabouts of the resting place of King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea in the Island of Avalon. This is evidently not at Glastonbury.
The strange thing is that the geometric puzzle left by Melkin describes directions that are derived from the Saint Michael line of churches which runs across southern England.
For the skeptic, the fact that a 'bifurcated line' mentioned in Melkin's prophecy (Joseph lies on a bifurcated line), is the Saint Michael line..... causes many to assume there could be no link between the two. Most researchers have assumed the directions are local and relative to the old church at Glastonbury Abbey. This is all part of the interpolation purposely propagated by the Glastonbury establishment's chroniclers, in an attempt to be accounted the resting place of such an illustrious person.
The churches and chapels, built upon an ancient line of earthworks that demarcate the St. Michael line has been put there by design. When interlinked with other St. Michael churches (not on the Michael line), these Michaeline chapels act as markers on a map, leading to the lost island of Avalon. They clearly show that the chapels have be built as a devise to coincide with the precise instructional data provided by the prophecy of Melkin.
This site will show how this huge display of geometrical precision across the British landscape was understood and known to exist as late as late the 1300’s.
The accuracy of the geometry confirms that in antiquity, the presence of the St. Michael line was known about by Melkin in the sixth century..... long before the churches and chapels dedicated to the prince of the heavenly host were built. The array of churches dedicated to the archangel were built upon this ancient line of earthworks to point out to posterity the location of the tomb of Jesus by the ‘illuminati’ of the Templar order with the dual intent...... to mark the spot where they buried their treasure.
This hitherto hidden location is called the Island of Avalon and Melkin visited this island nowadays is known as Burgh Island. It becomes apparent that Melkin was present at the death of Britain’s famous King Arthur and he states who and what he saw in the Tomb.
In the tomb, Melkin found arcane information from the Temple in Jerusalem which had been brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea. This information, with an account of the Holy Family's arrival with Mary Magdalene, was written in a book composed by Melkin. This book gave account of the time from the arrival of these early Christians through a bloodline of 'Grail Keepers'...... up until the time of King Arthur.
The book became known as 'The Grail book', which found its way to France, Evidence points to Melkin who may well have established an early hermitage on Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy.
'The book of the Grail', through the troubadour family of the counts of Pitou and Aquitaine, gave rise to the wide array of Grail stories propagated through the medieval courts of France. A close family connection to Eleanor of Aquitaine in the person of Henry Blois (or as many knew him 'Monseigneur Blois'), became the 'Master Blohis' who was Abbot of Glastonbury. He was the first to expound from the French Grail literature by compiling the 'Perlesvaus', but he also was aware of the English traditions of the prophecy of Melkin which existed at Glastonbury and was aware of other manuscripts written by Melkin that became the source of Welsh Arthurian literature.
Henry of Blois however never knew the location of Avalon, but it was him who left the clue regarding Joseph of Arimathea being 'carefully hidden' at Montacute. This essential confirmational clue, not mentioned in the original prophecy, eventually came into the possession of Father William Good. It confirms Melkin's directions to the Island of Avalon and also endorses the proposition that the Michaeline chapels were constructed upon an older network of prominent earth mounds.
Unfortunately many researchers have denied the existence of alignment in the design of these ancient earthworks which became known as Ley lines. The mention of a Ley line for the majority of researchers has led to the refusal to accept the obvious parallels with the Michaeline structures and the denial of any association with the precision of Melkin's geometry. In fact some professed archaeologists refuse the existence of the ancient alignment of Avebury, Glastonbury tor, Burrow Mump and the Hurlers (to give but a few), simply because it is called a 'Ley line' and they don't understand the reasons behind the alignment.
‘And did those feet’, a book by Michael Goldsworthy, clearly shows that the body of Jesus is in fact buried with Joseph of Arimathea within this newly determined Avalon island in Devon. The Island used to be known as the fabled Island of Ictis by classical Greek and Latin chroniclers. However the Island contains within it an ancient tin vault. This hewn out tin storage deposit, which was used by the 'emporium' tin trading island of Ictis..... became the tomb for Jesus, Joseph and a collection of British nobles from antiquity . It had originally been used to store tin ingots when the Island of Ictis monopolised the trade of tin through the Phoenicians to the ancient world.
The confirmation of the whereabouts of this tomb is given by precise geometrical instructions upon the British landscape. These directions left in the obtuse Latin puzzle by the monk Melkin, (once deciphered), lead us to the grave site. The islands position is verified by the clue given to the Jesuit priest, Father Good, who lived in the sixteenth century. He deposited this vital corroborative clue concerning the sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea in the English college in Rome.
Father Good however, was unaware of the significance of the clue he was given concerning how Joseph of Arimathea was 'Carefully hidden' in Montacute. However, someone else knew of the island's location and how its location was determined by these St. Michael dedicated sites. Since the time that the Templars visited the island with three treasure ships, to bury their treasure some one or some organisation has tried to hide the evidence that was rigourously guarded and passed to posterity by William Good. The reason for this seems to be that should we not have decoded Melkin's instructions..... the island might have been discovered sooner by the geometry which pertains to the Michaeline structures alone i.e both Burgh Island and Montecute both being prominent hill top features like the other St. Michael sites.
The three copies of 'Maihew's Trophea' have all had this information concerning Montacute removed. Were it not for a copy that existed in a private collection..... the chapel that existed atop St. Michael's hill would not have been known to act as a corroborative marker within the array of Michaeline chapels. These act as geometric points, that, when joined up in straight lines, confirm the angle and measurement that points to the Island and the tomb indicated by Melkin as the burial Island of Joseph of Arimathea.
The Templars in the middle ages were aware of the location of this tomb and deposited their treasure in the same sepulchre on Christmas day 1307. They were also aware of the instructional data within Melkin's prophecy. Thus the Templars were responsible for re-defining the line that Melkin had referred to by the re-dedication of church sites.
The line of St. Michael churches built upon an ancient alignment that includes Glastonbury was probably instigated by the Megalithic builders of Avebury. What function this line had is at the moment unanswered, but the fact that St. Michael's hill at Montacute is similar to both the prominent hilltop sites of Glastonbury and Burrow Mump would indicate by its subsequent dedication to St.Michael that it, (before Melkin's geometry was known), could have been part of this alignment from the early Megalith culture of Britain.
However, the Templars removed one item from the old hewn out vault within the island, which, because science has been unable to explain its formation..... has been classed as a fake. This artifact mentioned in the Gospels and throughout Grail literature has now become known as the Turin Shroud.
The Turin Shroud is described perfectly in Melkin's Latin puzzle once the solution is unravelled.
'Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perimpleta': Joseph has with him in the sarcophagus a doubled white swaddling cloth covered with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus that was folded around him.
It must not be forgotten by the pedant that Melkin had purposely constructed an obtuse riddle which needed to be unraveled. It is for this reason the Glastonbury establishment found it easy to convince the gullible that the old church at the abbey and some superfluous line (that was supposedly indicated by a bronze plaque on a pillar), was relevant to the resting place of Joseph.
This fairly precise description of the shroud was given six hundred years before the shroud supposedly first appeared at Lirey in France. This was just fifty years after the Templar's visit to Burgh Island....... so how could it be a fake?!!! This artifact, described to exist in the tomb with Joseph can be derived from Melkin’s description as 'duo fassula.' This was due to misinterpretation encouraged at Glastonbury and so the arbitrary understanding of two jugs, later became synonymous with the Holy Grail.
This misconception occurred mostly by ignorance of the intended meaning of the puzzle. Thus the two vessels which were misunderstood to contain the blood and sweat of Jesus, became synonymous with the object of the Holy Grail. This misleading interpretation has transpired by the subtle twists of the prophecy's interpretation at Glastonbury by polemicists and of course the intended subtlety of Melkin...... designing his prophecy as a riddle to be decoded.
The reader will learn on this site, that the Holy Grail is in fact something inestimably more valuable and these pages set out to explain what the Grail is and how the Grail stories came about.
The body of Jesus, around which the Turin Shroud was once wrapped, remained in the tin vault, steeped in Cedar oil. It is by being submerged in the oil that the image on the Turin Shroud was formed over a period of six hundred years. The image formation was caused by the interaction of Aneorobic detritus and Brownian motion within the oil as the shroud enveloped the body of Jesus.
Judging by Melkin’s description of the shroud and the fact that the whole cloth is covered with a yellow varnish like encrustation, left over from the evaporated oil, the shroud was most probably removed from the body around 5- 600AD by Melkin. The dried out cloth which had managed to transfer the faintest facial imprint to the back side image as it dried….. was then later removed from the Isle of Avalon by the Templars.
The Turin Shroud was essentially formed within what became known as the Grail Arc which is the tin lined coffin of Jesus. This is the box Joseph of Arimathea used to transport the body of Jesus to England that was filled with embalming fluid and from which it is said the ancient British kings were anointed. Both the shroud and the coffin are mentioned in the Grail Stories in numerous subliminal references with many references to the sweet smelling Cedar oil. This Grail ark or coffin brought to England by Joseph was not (for obvious reasons) mentioned specifically in the Grail romances, but is subliminally indicated as the tomb of an unidentified person. Eventually Joseph was laid to rest within the same Sepulchre.
The reason this Island which used to be called Ictis was chosen to house what is the holiest relic of all..... is because it was not widely known about in the ancient world and its location was kept secret from the Romans. It was rumoured to exist through a report by one of the first Greek explorers to Britain named Pytheas.
Devon and Cornwall have a history in the tin industry and it was from this island that tin was traded with Joseph of Arimathea.... who, Cornish tradition has always maintained, was a tin merchant and was accompanied on his trading missions by Jesus.
Diodorus Siculus gives us a clear description of this same island which Pytheas had named Ictis or 'Fish Island' due to the vast quantities of pilchards caught off the Island. Through Pytheas’ account of what he encountered at the tin trading island, Diodorus relates that ‘large quantities of tin’ were taken over to the island in carts across the sand bar at low tide.
The proposition that Joseph of Arimathea owned this island as 'Ictis' came under pressure from Roman hegemony, becomes plausible when we consider he was sometimes known as the Fisher king and could have recieved this name as owner of the island called Fish Island. Also when we consider the discrepancies of the Gospel accounts of a hewn out tomb owned by Joseph in which no one had been previously laid....... the Grail stories may in fact be giving a more precise rendition of accounts of a voyage related by Rabanus. The four Gospel writers are seen to be rationalising a virgin birth with a father called Joseph who disappears from the gopel accounts while at the same time relating that Joseph (of Arimathea) has taken possesion of the body of Jesus. The proposition that after the crucifixion a rumour started, that Jesus was to be buried in a hewed out tomb owned by Joseph might explain each gospel writers conflicting evidence. Nowhere in the Gospels is a singular event given account of with such variance by the four Gospel writers. the main conflicting points are about the discovery of the body. Our proposition is that it was brought back to England to an unused tin storage vault by Joseph of Arimathea (his real father).
These pages uncover an ancient Biblical link to the Devon and Cornish peninsula through a bloodline from the first born of Judah, one of the twelve sons of Israel, called Zarah. It is from Judah’s heritage a line of Kings emanated in the South West of England known as the kings of Sarras which culminated with the famous King Arthur.
This does seem fantastic, but when the reader views the evidence related on this web site, one will find that King Arthur, Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea are waiting to be unearthed on the Island today called Burgh Island. If this is not enough for the conspiracy theorist or the skeptic...... there is also the Templar treasure secreted in the tomb.
'And Did those feet, ' a book which answers Blake’s question posited in his famous anthem 'Jerusalem', traces these events. The book pulls together a wide source of detail, linking the most powerful people in Europe such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, the earliest traceable owner of the ‘Book of the Grail’, written by Melkin.
Furthermore, which seems to stretch credulity even further, a sound position may be maintained that Leonardo Da Vinci visited this island in the last three years of his life. He left clues within four paintings, which show the geographical and geological features of the Island. He also let the world know by his picture puzzle (rebus) in the Windsor Library, that he was showing us a great mystery.
Da Vinci even went as far as to say he would show where it is, in his two paintings of the Yarnwinder. The two Yarnwinder paintings known to have been by Leonardo’s hand, when merged together, show the Island of Avalon at the mouth of the river Avon below Dartmoor in geographical perspective.
Finally if the Grail quester is in any doubt as to whether a tomb exists on this island, we can see compelling evidence in the story of the Perlesvaus.
The Perlesvaux is a compilation of an early oral tradition and is derived from some of the earliest troubadours. It is from these men that the romances emanated. We can still hear the topographical detail attached to the storylines in this Grail literature that show that the Island of Avalon is synonymous with Burgh Island and the Isle of Avalon is not located at Glastonbury.
The implication and ramifications of the unearthing of this tomb will have consequences across the world. In fact this is why this ancient extract known as Melkin's prophecy which is found replicated in John of Glastonbury’s Cronica is thought to be a prophecy. Not only does Melkin leave geometrical datum which leads us to the tomb, but he unequivocally and specifically states that the discovery of the tomb will have worldwide ramifications.
This King Arthur website is not specifically about King Arthur, but includes the role of the fraudulent unearthing at Glastonbury of King Arthur’s remains. This one act has played a significant role in distorting the historical truths related by the Grail literature and our understanding of these events. This faked dis-interment of King Arthur has warped the understanding of how these events originally transpired so that the Grail stories are considered to relate no historical fact. These pages that follow uncover the relationship between the unveiling of Arthur's tomb at Glastonbury and how it has prevented the discovery of the bodies of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea.
It is also a very strange irony that while the world looked on at the Olympic ceremony, the Island of Avalon ( as modern perception has understood) was imitated as Glastonbury tor. At the same time Blake's Anthem entitled 'Jerusalem’ was brought into popular consciousness as it was sung at the opening ceremony and seen by millions across the Globe. The Irony being that even today the question is still asked 'Did the feet of Jesus walk upon England's green and pleasant land'.
The reason the information on this site and the conclusions drawn, concerning the discovery of this tomb, have yet to be uncovered, are twofold. The first is that the proprietors of the hotel on the Island known as Burgh Island have refused any permission to uncover the entrance after many requests from various people. The conspiracy theorist would think back to the disappearance of the pages in Maihew’s Trophea and ponder....... that if someone in the sixteenth century was actively intent upon obscuring the unveiling of the tomb site…….. are there still those today who wish to prevent the tomb’s opening. However, sadly, the answer is probably a lot more mundane.
The second reason and more importantly is that scholars, researchers and archaeologists have all assumed Melkin and his prophecy to be a thirteenth century fraud and are unwilling to retract pronouncements made not only about Melkin, but a whole swathe of literature falsely rationalised upon propaganda initiated at Glastonbury in the Middle ages.
However, the prophecy, which specifically speaks of Joseph of Arimathea finding his rest in the Island of Avalon….. would have to be a very well thought out fraud which shoots in the foot the supposed promulgator who designed it to benefit Glastonbury. Especially since the instructions within it, accurately located an Island so well described in the Grail Stories at which the Fisher king (otherwise known as Joseph of Arimathea) was said to be buried.
It is these Romances that actually tell the story of Joseph of Arimathea’s arrival in Britain and were written by the same man who concerns himself with the same island and personages (Jesus and Joseph) in his British prophecy . One must then have to ask...... if the prophecy were invented for use to convince pilgrims of the presence of the gravesite of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury...... why then does every pertinent instructional detail, geometrically pin point an Island in Devon. Surely even the skeptics or the sedentary academic would see this as a coincidence too far especially when not one of the 104 knights or 144,000 saints have been unearthed to date.
Melkins directions are so clear once the riddle is decoded. The subject of Melkin’s puzzle is the Island of Avalon....... the object is the whereabouts of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb and the consequences of it being found.
There are so few instructional directions within this short prophecy that if it were a thirteenth century invention it would be extraordinary that every one of the clues lend additional information which geometrically locates Burgh Island. Previously, not one commentator has given a valid reason for the essential clues: ‘bifurcated line’,’ 104 miles’, ‘13 degrees,’ and ‘sperula’ for Avebury.
If these numerical and objective clues such as a 'spherical' Avebury stone circle (circular) and 'line' (made up of St. Michael churches) did not match the 104 mile distance and the angle of 'bifurcation' was not 13 degrees...... we might be able to go along with convention and assume the Grail stories were misguided in their description of the location of Avalon. This of course would make little sense, as we have explained the reasons for Glastonbury usurping the name Avalon.
Melkin hints that we look for a line to bifurcate. The most obvious line is the Michael Line in southern England. He also intones, (once the riddle is understood as Melkin intended it), when the line is found…within a circle (sperula), which is Avebury......... one needs to measure 104 Nautical miles at 13 degrees to the (Michael) line and one has located Avalon.
This is where he indicates we will find Joseph and the Holy Grail and is the sole purpose of his riddle.
Many have pondered as to why or how Melkin is able to give distances in nautical miles, but he does refer to them as miles 'milibus'. The fact that he could understand this nautical mile measurement has prevented many researchers accepting the 104 as a precise measurement,(even since the riddle has been decoded) and have maintained that the number must be relevant only in the context of a 13th century fraud. How does this number of 104 or the number13 mentioned in the prophecy help a supposed fraudulent monk. Surely if the prophecy were indeed a fraud, he would have stated 'saints' not milibus. However, Melkin who was real and transferring a message to decode in the future says in a subtle way 13 degrees.
Melkin has set out his code and if the reader is not able to decode this part of the riddle, one is not going to obtain the direction of 13 degrees from the St. Michael Ley line through Montacute to Burgh Island along the Joseph line. Melkin plays on the original use of the word ‘sperulis’, from which we derived sphere, which at the beginning of the prophecy related to the stone circle of Avebury. Melkin then refers back to ‘sperulis’ by using the word “aforementioned” (the normal meaning of 'supradictis') trying to convince the reader that the two words ‘sperulis’ and ‘sperulatis’ have one and the same meaning. However his use of the word for the second time has not the same sense as in circle or sphere, but rather in its composition, being comprised of degrees. Melkin surely meant ‘sperulatis’ as a diminutive form and of the symbol for degrees i.e. 13°……. the symbol being a small circle °. Funnily enough the word supradictis is meant to be split in 'supra ad ictis' which confirms the tomb is 'up high in Ictis'
Many assume the ancients were ignorant of basic mapping and Navigational skills but this is obviously inaccurate and is attested to by the Phoenician voyages to Britain. Even Pytheas in 350 BC knew of the necessary breakdown of 60 nautical miles into 1 degree as an immutable and unchangeable law calibrated by the confines of the circumference of the globe.
This conclusion that the ancients recognised 60 nautical miles as 1 degree is easily drawn if we split the globe into the four quadrants of 90 degrees giving the 360 degrees encompassed in a circular line of Latitude or Longitude. By what other means could Pytheas measure the declination of the sun. Don’t forget there are chroniclers that attest that Melkin was not only a geometer, but an astronomer also, who was interested in Comets.
Island of Avalon, coveting the pagans in death, above all others (places) in the world for their entombment there, it is before the circle(sperula) that predicts prophesy (Avebury) and in the future will be adorned by those that give praise to the highest. The father’s pearl, (Jesus) virtuous through the new wine, the noblest of pagans, sleeps 104 miles from it (Avebury), by whom he received interment by the sea from Joseph named from Arimathea, and has taken his eternal rest there, and he lies on a line that is two forked between that and a meridian, in an angle on a coastal Tor, in a crater, that was already prepared and above is where one prays which one can go at the extremity of the verge, high up in Ictis is the place they abide to the south at thirteen degrees.
Insula auallonis auida funere paganorum, pre ceteris in orbe ad sepulturam eorum omnium sperulis propheciae vaticinantibus decorata, & in futurum ornata erit altissimum laudantibus. Abbadare, potens in Saphat, paganorum nobilissimus, cum centum et quatuor milibus domiicionem ibi accepit. Inter quos ioseph de marmore, ab Armathia nomine, cepit sompnum perpetuum; Et iacet in linea bifurcata iuxta meridianum angulum oratori, cratibus praeparatis, super potentem adorandam virginem, supradictis sperulatis locum habitantibus tredecim. Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perimpleta. Cum reperietur ejus sarcofagum, integrum illibatum in futuris videbitur, & erit apertum toto orbi terrarium. Ex tunc aqua, nec ros coeli insulam nobilissimam habitantibus poterit deficere. Per multum tempus ante diem Judioialem in iosaphat erunt aperta haec, & viventibus declarata.
How the prophecy has been variously translated in the past completely misunderstanding the geometric references
‘The Isle of Avalon, greedy for the death of pagans, more than all others in the world, for their entombment, decorated beyond all others by portentous spheres of prophecy, and in the future, adorned shall it be, by them that praise the most high. Abbadare, mighty in judgement, noblest of pagans, has fallen asleep there with 104,000 others (or 104 knights), among these, Joseph of Arimathea has found perpetual sleep in a marble tomb, and he lies on a two forked line, next to the southern angle of an oratory, where the wattle is prepared above the mighty maiden and in the place of the 13 spheres.
For Joseph has with him in his sarcophagus two white and silver vessels, filled with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus and when his sarcophagus is uncovered, it will be seen whole and undisturbed, and will be opened to the whole world.
Thenceforth those who dwell in that noble isle, will lack neither water nor the dew of heaven. For a long while before the day of judgment (ludioialem) in Josaphat, open shall these things be and declared to the living’.
If you do not wish to commit to reading the whole exposé you will find the breakdown of the instructional part of Melkin’s prophecy enlightening.......... confirming the geometry shown above.
'And Did those feet' a book written by Michael Goldsworthy, is an explanation of the rumours of Jesus in Britain. It explains the stories of Jesus's sojourn to England and brings together the Grail story traditions with the Glastonbury legends of King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea.
In 1191 the bones of King Arthur were unearthed
supposedly at Glastonbury Abbey. It was rumoured that a cross was found with
him which convieniently stated that King Arthur i.e the bones just unearthed,
were found in Avalon confirming to those that needed to be persuaded.... that
Avalon was in fact Glastonbury. The reason the monks at Glastonbury committed such a
fraud was because of the Grail legends that emanated from France
associated King Arthur with Joseph of Arimathea and were becoming more prevalent. Also
because of Melkin’s prophecy, Joseph had always been associated with
Glastonbury because of his Church.
Nobody was too
sure where the island of Avalon was, but everybody knew that King Arthur and
Joseph of Arimathea, were buried in Avalon. Neither William of Malmesbury nor
Geoffrey of Monmouth associated Glastonbury with the Island of Avalon at the
time they wrote. This was a later corruption by monks and the sole purpose of
producing the cross found with Arthur was to establish Glastonbury as Avalon. If Glastonbury could only be established as Avalon by the
unearthing of King Arthur, then it must follow the Joseph of Arimathea was also
buried within the Abbey grounds. To unearth Joseph of Arimathea, however, would
prove difficult as it was known that he was buried with the holy Grail. Since
the monks were not apprised of what the holy Grail consisted of, it was easier
to fabricate the unearthing of King Arthur with a cross attesting to the fact
that where he was unearthed was indeed Glastonbury and therefore it must be the
island of Avalon. The reason Joseph of Arimathea needed to be associated with
Glastonbury is because the monks needed funding to rebuild their Abbey after
the fire.
Prior to the fire of 1184, there existed a prophecy
written by a monk called Melkin about Insula Avallonis or the Isle of Avalon. In this prophecy, once it is decoded, Melkin supplies
very pertinent information in geometric instructions that gives precise
directions to an island in Devon. This island is Burgh island in Devon. Melkin states
that the body of Joseph of Arimathea lies in the southern angle of a bifurcated
line. Once Melkin's code is deciphered, it clearly portrays that Avebury stone Circle is the
point on the St. Michael’s ley line which in his puzzle he refers to as a ‘sperula’
or sphere which confirms the point of bifurcation as the stone circle. This is the point within the Avebury stone circle
complex which, at 13°.... if one scribe's a
line through Montacute to Burgh island (which Melkin calls the island of Avalon),
it is exactly one hundred and Four nautical miles, the exact number that Melkin
gives. It was Father Good a jesuit priest born and raised and who sung in the Choir at Glastonbury who also confirms the Joseph line from Avebury to Avalon passes through Montacute.
The location of Avalon has always been thought
to exist at Glastonbury but with a recent study of some of the oldest text and
the uncovering of the fraud concerning King Arthur carried out by the monks at
Glastonbury, it is evident that Avalon is in Devon . The references that Melkin
gives are part of a geometric riddle.... that once solved, points straight to the
island in Devon which obviously fits Diodorus’s description as Ictis. Diodorus had described an Island to which Pytheas the Greek Explorer had visited that sold tin. We know that this island fits Pytheas' description once all the extraneas misinformation is excluded. This is the Island described by Pytheas as drying out at high tide to which large cart loads of tin were brought to be stored. Strange that Joseph of Arimathea was a tin Merchant and Melkin says he is buried on this Island. it is also a misunderstanding of the Greeks that Pytheas went to look for Amber. He infact asked directions to an Island that sold tin but the Amber he was rumoured to be looking for at that Island was in fact British Glass which is a natural by product of tin and bronze smelting.
This is in fact named in the Grail
stories as the island of Sarra named after Judah’s eldest son Zarah, who broke
the womb first. His name has the same pronunciation as Sarra in French and his
descendants came to the south-west and were the primordial miners of tin on
southern Dartmoor who brought their tin to this island to be sold. This is the
reason that in the Grail stories the island is called Sarras and to which the
holy Grail was brought. It is to this island that after the crucifixion of
Jesus, when his body was taken down from the cross by his uncle Joseph of
Arimathea, it was then conveyed to a box filled with Cedar oil so that it might
preserve his corpse. This box or coffin known as the Grail Ark was then
conveyed with Joseph and several others from Jerusalem to the island of Sarras,
which Joseph knew well, having visited many times previously on his mercantile
trips with Jesus. This island had been known about in the Greek Chronicles
because Pytheas a Greek explorer had visited the island on his expedition. The
island was kept secret over many years since Pytheas’ visit, until Joseph of
Arimathea visited the island with Jesus on one of his trips abroad gathering
metals.
It was here that he chose to convey the Grail and place
Jesus in an old tin vault that had been shut down or made redundant due to the
Roman invasion. For about 1000 years, the island called Burgh island been the
place on the coast where all the tin miners up on southern Dartmoor had brought
their tin to be stored in the vault. This transpired so that visiting traders
could take away tin at any time and the island acted as a trading post. It is
for this reason Diodorous refers to it as an ‘emporium’. It becomes clear now
the reason that Joseph of Arimathea knew the island very well.
The gospels relate that Jesus was
laid to rest in a hewed out tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea and the
rumours still persisted as eyewitnesses had seen the doubled over white shroud
that covered his body. One wonders if the Gospel accounts of the burial of
Jesus are just the echoes of the truth of eyewitness accounts existed in
Jerusalem just after the resurrection. In a book called ‘And did those feet’, a
new theory as to how the Grail stories, the Arthurian legend at Glastonbury and
the gospels interlink and provide evidence of the whereabouts of the body of
Jesus.
Melkin, who actually wrote the
original book of the Grail, which ended up over in France and gave rise to the
many Arthurian Grail romances now interlinks with the same man who provided the
rumours of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury. So now we have a tomb containing
King Arthur, Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus that was last shut when Melkin moved
to France in around 600 sometime after the Saxon invasion. Towever the Templars
once they have been disbanded in the Middle Ages were also privy to this island
location and they knew what was buried within. It was here on Christmas Day in
1307 that they decided after King Philip and the Pope had disbanded their
organisation, to bury the treasure that they had managed to recuperate in three
treasure ship that left La Rochelle on 13Tth October 1307.
While depositing their treasure in
the tomb they removed the shroud of Jesus that had been submerged in the Cedar oil
for 600 years while covering his body. It is here that the image of Jesus on
the Turin Shroud was formed while draped over the body of Jesus in Cedar oil.
The evaporated Cedar oil has left a caramel like substance all over the Turin
Shroud, but the image itself was formed by the detritus left behind by anaerobic
bacteria.
Only 50 years later, one of the Templars that
died with Jack de Molay near Notre Dame in Paris, had a granddaughter that
produced the Turin Shroud. This is not coincidence and answers the many
questions of why there is no provenance for the Shroud of Turin prior to 1354.
The Shroud had existed within the tin vault until the Templars arrive and remove
it. The song or Christmas Carol ‘I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas
Day in the morning’ is really the Echo of the Templars bringing their treasure to
the island of Avalon in Devon. However, this song had always been associated in
Cornish tradition to the visit of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea. It was the
Templars, however, that marked out all the churches dedicated to St Michael
that lie along the St Michael Ley line. Oddly enough, it is the other St.
Michael churches that we used as markers, that confirm that the island of
Avalon is indeed Burgh island in Devon.
It is this line that Melkin refers to, which,
when bifurcated within the Avebury stones and at 13° and a line is scribed for
104 nautical miles it lands on this same island. Unequivocably Melkin understands
the connection between the island of Ictis used by Joseph of Arimathea and
clearly calls it the island of Avalon. Firstly, it is known by the Greeks as Ictis, secondly,
by the island of Sarras by the French Grail writers and thirdly, by the island
of Avalon named as such by Melkin. It is
even referred to as the island of Avaron by some of the Grail writers.
The unofficial anthem written by William Blake
called Jerusalem starts with the line ‘And did those feet’. This is the title
of the book written by Michael Goldsworthy
, which conveys the same story that Jesus visited England while accompanying
his father, Joseph of Arimathea to Britain. The book called ‘And did those feet’
clearly deciphers Melkin’s prophecy, so that it becomes apparent that Melkin knew
where the island of Avalon was and what existed within it. To fully understand
this extraordinary set of events, go to the links provided below and buy the ebook.
This book revolves around an island named the island of
Avalon that used to be known as the island of ictis by the greek and latin
chroniclers… and anybody familiar with the Grail stories would know that it is referred
to as the island of Sarras. These three alternative names all refer to an
island that is located off the coast of Devon in England. Today the island is
known as Burgh island, but it is what is contained within that will interest
you most. If you follow the evidence of what this book has set out to account for the various traditions;
it brings into the public arena, the location of the holy Grail deep within
this Island accompanied with the bodies of Joseph of Arimathea and King Arthur.
Glastonbury tor supposed to be the Island of Avalon from Melkin's Prophecy. This was never Melkin's intended location but Glastonbury Acolytes have used clever etymology to convince us that this is the place.
The island of Avalon has long been considered to exist
at Glastonbury. The basis for this assumption is that long before the fire that
ruined the church that was rumoured to have been built by Joseph of Arimathea,
there was a prophecy known as Melkin’s prophecy. The prophecy of melkin, an
ancient latin text, is what Glastonbury has used as its authority to support
their claim that Joseph of Arimathea was buried within the Glastonbury Abbey
grounds. The prophecy of Melkin however
once decoded gives precise directions to the island of Avalon and this Island
is an Island called Burgh Island in Devon in southern England
A recently published book called ‘And did those feet’
explains in much more detail how this fraud has been perpetrated down through
the centuries, but before we deal with this riddle that has been set for us to
unravel let us deal with the synopsis of how this misunderstanding has
transpired.
Because experts have been unable to decode Melkin's
prophecy, they have assumed that Melkin never existed and his prophecy was a
13th century fraud, but one has to ask why is it that the directions in this
prophecy lead to an island known to have been used by Joseph of Arimathea on
his mercantile trips to Britain with his nephew Jesus to buy tin. The island
used to be known as the island of Ictis by the ancient Greeks and Pytheas, a
Greek explorer, wrote about this island that supplied tin to the ancient world.
This island was never discovered by the Romans but Diodorous an ancient
chronicler, describes exactly the
features of this island from the writings of Pytheas.
Straight after the crucifixion of Jesus, Joseph of
Arimathea regained the body of Jesus from Pontius Pilate and put it in a box
that was filled with cedar oil to preserve his body. This box later became
known as the Grail Ark from Arthurian Grail literature and specifically from
the account ‘Joseph de Arimathie’. Joseph of Arimathea brought Jesus to the
ancient island of Ictis to lay him to rest. He was, as the gospels relate, laid
in the tomb ‘that never man had been laid in before’ which had been hewed out
and he was also wrapped in white doubled over linen sheet Grave cloth. This
grave cloth or duo fassula as Melken refers to it, gradually got imprinted with
an image of Jesus over the period of 600 years.
Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo
fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perimpleta: Joseph has with him in the sarcophagus a
doubled white swaddling cloth covered with the blood and sweat of the prophet
Jesus that was folded around him.
It is hard to get more precise than this description by Melkin
especially since he is the man who gives account of how these events unfolded.
This by itself confirms that the ‘duo fassula’ is not the Grail of popular
conception but now focuses our attention on the other things that the Grail has
had associated with it. In this same
extract from the writings of milk in the person of Abba Dari mentioned in the
prophecy refers to Jesus himself. This will be elucidated later in the
deconstruction of Melkin’s prophecy
The Templars who
built a huge geometric alignment upon the British landscape through dedicated
marker churches all with the name of St
Michael, specifically sited these churches to preserve for posterity where they
had buried their treasure. This was the same place as Jesus had been
transported from the holy land by Joseph of Arimathea, who was later buried
alongside him.
It is this
amazing set of coincidences that Melkin the prophet relates in the prophecy of
Melkin. Melkin gives precise details of the island and the entrance to the cave
in this prophecy and attests to the fact that he was the last to see King
Arthur when he was buried there in the island of Avalon. It is because Jesus
was known to have been buried there that King Arthur after his fight with
Mordred, was taken to the island of Avalon, in the hope of procuring a miracle.
Sadly, King Arthur died at the island and was buried in the same tomb as the
body of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea about 550 years after Jesus had been
brought to the British coastline.
Melkin even goes
so far as to show us that he knows that this island used to be called Ictis by
telling us that the tomb is to be found ‘up high in a Ictis’ or “Supra ad
Ictis”, once decoded from the word ‘Supradictis’. It is Melkin who is
responsible for the British tradition of Joseph of Arimathea coming to Britain
in search of tin and also he is responsible for what became known as the matter
of Britain or as the French refer to it ‘Le Matière de Brétagne’.
http://isleofavallon.blogspot.co.uk #3
http://isleofavallon.blogspot.co.uk #3
Rendered below is probably a more accurate translation (Melkin’s intended meaning), with reference to an abridgment of Ainsworth's English and Latin dictionary, by Robert Ainsworth, Thomas Morell and John Carey and the Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis by Domino Du Cange.
The first
part of the prophecy we shall cover as a whole so the sense is not lost before
we dissect each phrase. This first half of the prophecy is the instructional
part, where pertinent facts are relayed as to the confirmation of the tombs
location and entrance. The second half of the prophecy is assuredly divinely
inspired as it speaks in Time with biblical metaphorical language and will be
elucidated in the following commentary when we disentangle the various layers
of meaning.
Island of
Avalon, coveting the pagans in death, above all others (places) in the world
for their entombment there, it is honoured by the circle of portentous prophesy
(Avebury) and in the future will be adorned by those that give praise to the highest.
The father’s pearl, (Jesus) mighty in judgement (or virtuous through new wine),
the noblest of pagans, sleeps 104 miles from it (Avebury), by whom he recieved interment
by the sea from Joseph named from Arimathea, and has taken his eternal rest
there, and he lies on a line that is two forked between that and a meridian, in
an angle on a coastal Tor, in a crater, that
was already prepared, (with powers from
on high, as from an adorable maiden, up high in Ictis is the tomb and those
dwelling there are at 13 degrees.) above which one can go at the extremity
of the verge, high up in Ictis to the place they abide to the south at thirteen
degrees.
Any
commentator on this passage will find it impossible to transliterate, simply
because Melkin is concealing information sub textually, word clues rendering
the passage as a whole incapable of fluid translation. The puns and double
meanings are carefully thought out, but obtuse by deflection. The only way to
understand the difficulty he must have had, conveying his message in layers of
meaning and grasp what he has achieved, is to evaluate his choice of words.
What follows is some of the hidden sub text in meanings he was trying to
convey. It is almost as if he was appealing through the layers to different
ways of understanding. The task of elucidating becomes less muddled if we take
each word separately or if inseparable from another, using the combination.
Adjectives, adverbs, verbs and nouns seem to
be intermingled without respect to tense, conjugation, case or declention and
one may be lacking other scribal clues such as capitals or punctuation which
are now missing. There is evidence also
within the text that words are split, which leads one to consider that these
splits, may be interchangeable with other root words and thus a cipher could be
disentangled if an original copy was extant.
So that we
might discover the mind-set of Melkin, let us briefly transliterate what he was
trying to convey in his riddle and manifest at the same time how his mind
worked. Melkin formulates his prophecy in a combination of blurred Latin incorporating
Teutonic and low Latin, purposely entangled double entendres, sometimes leaving
little to be comprehended from the text that has survived. If one adds to this
muddle any scribal changes made at Glastonbury, we are left with a collection
of meaningless ‘word strings’, in effect rendering Melkin’s intended riddle as mute
through the ages as it has remained.
The most
powerful thing about this prophecy now we have understood, is the latent truth
that it holds, and its ability to have survived down through the centuries
while muted, to convey its intended message, a message of mystery and
expectation that has entered the psyche of the British people and will be
responsible for changing the outward expression of religion throughout the
world.
Insula
Aualonis avida funere paganorum:
· island
of Avalon,
where both Arthur and Joseph are said to be buried, coveting (guarding
preciously) pagans in death.
· Avide; an adverb or avidus, an adjective-Greedy, Hungry or Covetous. The sense that
Melkin portrays by use of this word is essentially, ‘not relinquishing’, nor
‘releasing’ (until the appointed time); The Island as a custodial guardian.
· Funere;
from funero, funera,
etc, giving funeral, to bury or of a dead body.
· Paganorum;
from paganus, a man of
the country or peasant. ‘pagan,’
in classical Latin "villager, rustic, civilian, but in the medieval
religious sense not Christian-of the old religion. The word Pagan has many
connotations and could mean, not of Britain.
Overall a very difficult sentence to cobble together, possibly rendering
the sense of a pagan island, rather than the bodies of pagans buried
there. The pagan island scenario would
concur in conjunction with Ley Lines, and would indicate that Melkin was aware
of the existence of the Ley Line system and the island's inter-relation with
Avebury , Montacute and the Lyonesse
line. This word string also could give a
sense of pagan island that is guardian over those buried, and the ‘pre ceteris’
refers to their pre-eminence in all the world or alternatively it could be referring
to the island, being covetous of the bodies in front of the rest of the world.
Island of Avalon – hungering after (looking after, happy to be taking care of),
being covetous of the buried occupants that are not from this island of
Britain, before the entire world, (until the world is ready). As the reader will understand shortly, Melkin’s
use of the word ‘sperulatis or sperulis’, twice in this prophecy, is rendered
with two completely different meanings, even though Melkin ostensibly refers
back to its first meaning as being the same as its second use, by employing the
word ‘supradictis’ (aforesaid). So it is
with the word ‘paganorum’ in the sense that it is used here as possibly being a
pagan island (part of the old religion), yet the second use of the word after Abbadare,
has a completely different sense. Remember that Melkin is directing our
thoughts toward an Island in the true sense of the word (unlike Glastonbury)
and this island is at the river Avon. Presumably this was the rivers name when
Melkin was alive but the etymology of Avon is ‘river’, thus the explanation of
so many ‘River Avons’ in Britain. Another ruse
that could have been employed by Melkin using the word paganorum, is in direct
reference to the Pyramids at Glastonbury. These were step pyramids with writing
on each step which most probably were of ancient antiquity but had been
recently covered since the Saxon invasion and through centuries with the names
of Saxons, as an attempt to denigrate a much older temple. Much like the
British, the Saxons were hardly pyramid builders themselves and this could have
been one of many misleading hints supplied by Melkin that Avalon was where the
pagan pyramids were.
pre
ceteris in orbe ad sepulturam eorum omnium:
·
pre ceteris; gives the sense, before others or before the
rest,
·
in orbe ; in the globe, planet or world,
giving the sense of pre-eminence.
·
ad sepulturam ; from sepultura, giving a
burial site or sepulchre.
·
eorum ; of them, or their.
·
omnium ; of all.
The
sentence has generally been translated as: ‘at the burial of them all will be
decorated (from decorata), beyond the others in the world’, which of course
makes difficult reading. The most likely
sentence would be, ‘ their burial site is honoured above all others in the
world’, as one is honoured in receipt of a decoration. This in fact, is
confirming what later directions indicate,
that the sepulchre is on the island and is accounted above all
others (places) in the world or there is no greater tomb (of importance). Melkin refers to the
sepulchre twice in conjunction with the word ‘orbe or orbi terrarum’ (around
the world), thus indicating, what we expect to be a global event, having global
ramifications on the tombs unveiling.
sperulis
prophecie uaticinantibus decorate:
Sperulis: Firstly let us look at the etymology of the
word ‘pearl’. The Arabic language called
it a ‘dar’, a term which was then translated by the Greeks as "Pinna's
stone", thus identifying its origin from the Mediterranean pearl
mollusks. The pearl is also referred to
as "pirula" or "perula" in Latin texts, probably because of
its spherical (sphaerula, pronounced "sperula") or pear-like shape.
Also ‘perla’ is formed from ‘perula’ for ‘sperula’ the diminutive of sphaera. A
more probable origin is that the word is formed from the Latin pirum as
suggested by Diez in allusion to the pear shaped form of the pearl. Du Cange in
volume five says that the extremity of the nose was called ‘pirula nasi’ from
its resemblance to the form of a pearl. But ‘pirus’ which surely was not
unknown by Melkin was used to denote a “boundary stone made in a pyramidal
shape”. Du Cange says also, this seems
to have been the origin of the singular expression ‘pirula nasi’ as being
something at the extremity and probably Melkin’s allusion to Avalon acting as a
marker in our Pyramidal shape. From Du
Cange ‘sperula’ is given as; ‘parva rotunditas volubilis, sicut solet, in
sphæræ modum,’-- round compass, of a small volume, as is usually the manner of
a sphere. The word is used twice, once as ‘sperulis’ as in this instance and
once as ‘sperulatis’ secondarily, both of them having different meanings. The
meaning here though is in direct reference to Avebury stone circle.
· Prophecie; that which is foretold in the future by a
prophet.
· Vaticinantibus;
giving prediction,
soothsaying, prophecy or portent from vaticinari from ‘vates’ meaning a prophet + canere to foretell. However this
could be Melkin’s way of saying what is located in this sepulchre will be
against the Vatican i.e. anti-Vatican.
It should not be forgotten that Jesus knew exactly what his mission
entailed and the suffering (proved by the Shroud) that he was about to endure
and was not about to be dissuaded from it by Peter, and said to him "Get
behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the
things of God, but the things of men." The Roman Church is built upon
Peter and in no way is peter at fault but Jesus knew that the Popes would usurp
his legacy for this world and not the heaven that Jesus spoke of . The Grail
keepers would certainly have precedence before Papal pretensions passing from
Josephes to Brons and could be considered another line of succession or Branch
other than the self-proclaiming imposter of Jesus’ inheritance. The Roman
Pontiff the first Bishop of Christendom deriving his claim by hypothesis from
St. Peter, who only by Roman self-profession was ‘episcopus primus et Pontifex
primordialis’. Melkin knew of what lay in this tomb and therefore was aware of
the inaccuracies peddled by the Roman Church. Melkin understood the Divine plan and of the
true meaning of Jesus’ reference to the Temple being rebuilt upon the third day
(or within three days) and hence the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus three
times being equatable with the three Grades to enlightenement. These three days
are the grades of the Grail but we will come to this in ‘Time’. Are the words
of Jesus ‘And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it,’ similar to the promise
given to David from which the Church and Gentiles inherited. Is Christendom and Islam along with the Jewish faith now to
become like the Davidic line, to be the precursor of a global inheritance set
forth in a Divine Plan by the God of Israel? What is certain is that, without the Roman
church most of the Globe would not be aware of the God of Israel.
· Decorate from ‘decorates’ translating as, set forth
or adorned.
This sentence is generally translated as
‘soothsaying spheres of prophecy or portentous circles of prophecy’. It is
essential to remember that Melkin is actually directing us on this quest from a
starting place that is a stone circle namely Avebury. His description of the circles or spheres
having been ‘set forth or adorned’, might indicate that Melkin is referring
directly to a stone circle. Stone circles were important to the ancients who
were preoccupied with discerning the future. Melkin refers to stone circles as
if they have a connection with man’s ability to predict or as if it is the circles
themselves that have some impact on leading us to the tomb of Joseph through
Ley lines. The irony of disentangling Melkin’s prophecy through our initial
investigation into the ‘Perpetual Choirs’ and scribing circles on the
landscape, gives rise to even more perplexity. Could Melkin’s sense be that, Avebury
adorning the British landscape, from which Ley line's interconnect or thread
through the tomb of Joseph, have some attribute or function in the foretelling of
its discovery. The reader should not be too sceptical here as the two words
following ‘sperulatis’ both impart a sense of future knowledge presently
unknown. We must not dismiss the fact that Melkin has knowledge of the St.
Michael Ley line; so is he imparting to us through this statement that these
stone circles have some effect on, or direct our thoughts for the future
collective benefit. No one today has an idea of the stone circles proper
function, but recognising that Melkin probably understood the use of stone
circles; is he implying some sort of telepathic system ordering the thoughts of
the collective? Melkin knew of the
existence of the St. Michael Ley line, yet we have only recently rediscovered
it. We should not ignore the use of two words which essentially mean ‘looking
into the future’. So are the circles physical attributes on the landscape for channelling
thought from individual communities or interlinking them in some way as their
prevalence and conformity of shape seems to indicate relative functionality?
et
in futurum ornate erit altissimum laudantibus:
·
in futurum; although being an obvious reference to the
future, it is also a reference to ‘Biblical Time’ and is reiterated as a
reference to the same time as ‘ex tunc’ in the penultimate sentence of the
prophecy, which is indicating the thousand years of time from the discovery of
Joseph's tomb, the day of Jehosaphat.
This is a sure indication that Melkin has understood ‘Biblical Time’ i.e.
time, Times and Half of that time (or the Times Halved). We shall explain this
concept in a later chapter as it appears
in Daniel 7:12 , 12:7 and Revelation
12:14
· Ornate;
adorned, arrayed,
crowned with or decreed, in reference to the island of Avalon.
· altissimum
laudantibus, rendering
praise to the most high. The sentence
giving the impression that when Joseph's tomb is discovered, the Island of
Avalon will be arrayed by the mass of new converts, giving praise to God. This sense does concur with the final part of
the prophecy that indicates that Joseph's sepulchre will be opened to the whole
world, giving an impression that the island will become a pilgrimage and a new
religious re-awakening will occur globally on the discovery of Jesus’s body. There will be a new cognitive view of the
world order and an elevated understanding amongst spiritual Jews that the
living and the dead are bound by a Divine plan. Those pilgrims visiting the
Island of Avalon, giving praise to the most high. This could also be a
reference to Britain rather than Avalon specifically as the last sentence of
the prophecy infers.
Abbadare, potens in Saphat, paganorum nobilissimus:
· Abbadare, has given rise to much speculation about the word’s provenance and meaning, but it would seem to be a reference to Jesus, meaning “The father's pearl”, (Abba- father, Dar- pearl from the Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew). As is intonated in the Grail romances, added to Joseph's connection with the importation of the Holy Grail, this reference would seem to indicate the presence also of Jesus's body within the island of Avalon. Joseph leaves Jerusalem, and arrives at Sarras, taking with him the Holy Graal, which is carried inside an ark or box. This refers metaphorically to Jesus, specifically with reference to a pearl being formed by the flesh just as it is grown in an oysters shell. It is formed in our body and its beautiful and precious substance remains long after the flesh that made it, has died. This is a profound reference to the spirit being a precious object born by something organic, yet remaining after the flesh has died. Not a metal, nor a gem but ‘a pearl of great price,’-a spiritual soul created through God’s divine plan as in Mathew 13:46. As the reader will be aware the word ‘Abbadare’ would have been used by Melkin to avoid direct reference to Jesus's body to avoid adverse reaction from fundamentalist sensibilities. The Holy Grail, having a direct connection with Jesus, but in no way a substitute for his body; the references to the Grail in the romances being of a different order involving a spiritual quest, the likes of which cannot be found by searching or by hastening its occurrence in a lifetime. The Holy Grail is a derivative of the Latin ‘gradus’ meaning by degree', 'by stages', applied to a dish from a transliteration by Helinand. This dish was brought to the table in different stages or services during a meal in the Chrétien de Troyes poem. Essentially the pearl of great price is Jesus through whom by the will of his Father spiritual enlightenement is attained, hence ‘the Father’s pearl’
· Potens;
powerful, mighty, of
great virtue.
·
Saphat; by most commentators is translated as ‘judgement’ derived from its
reference to Jehosaphat in the last sentence of the prophecy rendering, ‘Mighty
in judgement’ from Jehosaphat’s meaning as ‘judgement day’ or God’s judgement.
Shaphat in Hebrew translating as judge or judgement . Melkin could possibly be
giving us a double entendre in ‘Sapa’, translating as ’New wine’. ’potens in
saphat’ could then give the sense of “virtuous through new wine”, deriving its
sense from having been made perfect through the Holy Spirit. The most obvious translation is from ‘potens’
meaning also ‘pre-eminent’ or as Du Cange has it, ‘having pre-eminence’
rendering ‘having pre-eminence in the new wine’ which of course would be a
precise description of Jesus as the pre-cursor to the New wine as in Mark 2:22;
‘no one pours new
wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both
the wine and the wineskins will be ruined’.
No, Jesus pours new wine into new wineskins and thus the passage through
the Grades. (Also in Mathew 9:17 & Luke 5:37). Most
attempts at translation have rendered this word string as, ’Abbadare, mighty in
judgement, most noble of the pagans’. One possible sense would be, if we can
assume that Melkin is aware of the Zerah connection and his reference to
‘paganorum’ is the old religion or even Jewish; ‘Jesus preeminent in the new
wine, the noblest of the Jews’. The most poignant transliteration of ‘potentem
in Saphat’ should be understood as ‘he who’s might is in spiritual awakening’
which we shall see in connection with Jehosaphat.
cum centum et quatuor milibus domiicionem ibi
accepit:
·
cum centum et quatuor; translating as ‘with one hundred and
four’.
·
Milibus; confusing
most translators into thinking its meaning is derived from ‘Mille’, a thousand;
but Melkin’s real intention is ‘mille passuum' which gives a thousand paces
which equals one mile or miles even though he is referring to Nautical miles. The
reader will remember the unit of nautical miles is used so that a unit of
measurement correlates to a sixtieth of a degree; this same unit having been
employed by the ancients. The nautical
knot only came into use in 1630 AD, but the ancients had sub divided the globe
into degrees of a circle as was evident by Pytheas’s calculations. Melkin was aware (being a geometer and
astrologer) of this unit and probably named it after the Roman or statutory
unit. The term was not commonly used but the Ancient Roman mile was 1,000
double paces, one-step with each foot, for about 4,860 feet, and there were
many local variants, a modern statute mile measuring about 400 feet longer.
Most translations have used the word ‘Knight’s’
from the Latin word ‘Militus’ with the assumption that it refers to ‘the others’
that are said to be buried in Avalon. Other translators have opted for the word
“saints” assuming a scribal error for 104. Some commentators, while not
replacing the number, have assumed that a mistake has been made and that Melkin
is referring to the 144 thousand saints that fall down, to give praise to God
in Heaven in the Book of Revelation 7:4,14:1 & 14:3. This misrepresentation has been highlighted
by later interpolators as in the case of Capgraves ‘Nova Legenda Angliae’,
which renders the sense of Melkin’s words to ‘milia dormientium accepit’ which
has 104,000 sleeping with him, while some translators have added the word ‘Saints’. In place of the common translation error
rendering 104 thousand, Melkin is telling us that it is 104 nautical miles from
Avebury to the Island of Avalon. This measurement is precisely 104 miles from a
point just right of centre within the Avebury circle, to the ‘Huer’s hut’ on
Burgh Island as seen in figure 25. The Joseph line drawn from Avebury to the resting place of Joseph, confirmed
by Father William Good as it passes directly over St. Michael’s Montacute.
·
domiicionem ibi accepit; conveying the sense ‘took his sleep there or
received his rest there’. This sentence
is usually translated as ‘Abbadare’, powerful in judgement, the most noble of
the pagans took his sleep there with 104,000’. Obviously Melkin deliberately
sets out his sentence to obfuscate, inserting the word ‘cum’ meaning ‘with’, so
that ‘Abbadare’ is appearing to be taking his rest with 104,000 others,
especially when the first words of the next sentence are ‘inter quos’ which
translates as ‘among whom’. The real information
which Melkin is trying to convey here is that Joseph and Jesus are taking their
rest there; 104 miles from the circle of prophecy, which is Avebury as seen in figure
25.
Inter quos ioseph de marmore, ab Armathia
nomine, cepit sompnum perpetuum:
·
Inter quos; The usual translation of the sentence is:
’among these Joseph of Arimathea received eternal slumber in a marble tomb. In the previous word string Melkin used ‘domiicionem ibi accepit’ and here he is using
‘cepit sompnum perpetuum’ immediately afterwards. Aware of Melkin’s cleverness
and the fact that he is confounding normal thought processes, it would appear, as
if he is clearly speaking of two different people. ‘Jesus received his rest
there’ and ‘Joseph named from Arimathea took his perpetual sleep there’. The word ‘Inter’ by most commentators is
translated as ’among’ but Melkin has his derivative from ‘interrare’ "put in
the earth, bury” or interr
·
amentum giving ‘to inter’. ‘Inter quos’ most researchers have as ‘among whom’ but here
Melkin is using a play on words and his meaning is ‘Interred’ or ‘Interred with
whom’ also inferring two people. The
implication of this is; that it now establishes Abbadare as another separate
subject and the translation becomes,’ interred with whom is Joseph, named from
Arimathea taking his eternal slumber by the sea.
·
marmore ‘Marmor’ translates as a marble stone or as ’the sea’;
its derivative being the similarity of small wave motion in a calm water,
giving the expression ‘a marbled sea’ and is also found in Ainsworth’s
dictionary. It was said that King Arthur, when he was fictitiously found, was
‘not in a marble tomb’ to distinguish and confirm the monks find as ‘the other
important body’ to be buried within the
Glastonbury grounds.
·
cepit sompnum
perpetuum: The repetition of ‘dormicionem’ as referring
to Abbadare, then immediately followed by ‘sopnum perpetuum’, referring
directly to Joseph of Arimathea, does clearly indicate that Abbadare and Joseph
are two different entities especially since the mighty in Judgement is
referring to Jesus. This example of Melkin’s direct obfuscation
gives us an idea into the mind-set of the man.
He has set out to misdirect his readers with this pun on ‘inter’ while
sub textually informing us that Jesus has received his rest there. This he has done by not offending Christian
sensibilities during the intervening years until the present, while at the same
time in the same sentence, preparing his readers for the appointed time. It is
strange to contemplate that Joseph has buried Jesus twice in a ‘hewn tomb’ that
is owned by Joseph himself. Once with a ‘fasciola’ as related by the Gospel
accounts and the second time with a ‘doubled fasciola’ which of course fits
with the description of the Shroud of Turin which as we shall see shortly
suddenly appeared on the world stage just after the Templars had visited the
Isle of Avalon. As we have uncovered already, Melkin wrote the book of the
Grail. The original source for Melkin’s book of the Grail was obviously Joseph.
Joseph brought the Grail to Britain and so affirms that he was responsible for
depositing Jesus’ relics in Avalon before being buried there himself.
Et iacet in linea bifurcata iuxta meridianum
angulum oratorii:
·
Et iacet in linea
this is the sentence most frequently quoted in reference to Melkin’s
prophecy, the usual translation being, ‘and he lies on a two forked line next
to the southern corner of the oratory’. Et iacet in linea; renders ‘and he (or
they) lie(s) in a line’. As all
commentators have previously suspected correctly, the line thus referred to is
an indicator to where the tomb is located and the root cause of all
misdirection has been the word ‘oratorii’.
·
Bifurcata; to bifurcate
literally means ‘to divide into two branches or forks’. Melkin becomes
remarkably un-obtuse when he gets to his specific instructions about the
bifurcated line. All translators agree that ‘he lies on a bifurcated line’ but
Melkin obviously felt confident that this information would be hard to unlock. Without
a St. Michael ley line and a point at which the two lines cross inside Avebury,
the information given quite clearly, would be irrelevant. Melkin also could be
assured that Joseph would not be associated with Neolithic stone circles or Ley
lines.
·
Juxta; translates as
nearby, next to, close to, bordering upon or beside.
·
meridianum
angulum; A ‘meridian’ is half of a great circle that
passes through the centre of the earth at the North and South poles; as if half
a vertical plane on the globe, giving constant longitude. It could also be described as an imaginary
line of half of a great circle route from pole to pole. Melkin is clearly
trying to show the reader that the Joseph line is ‘Imaginary’ or conceptual much
like a true meridian line only becomes real when plotted. It is interesting to note that Capgrave,
Leland and Hardyng say that Melkin was an astrologer but it is John Bale that
tells us that Melkin, wrote the book called ‘De Arturii mensa rotunda’ while at
the same time informing us that he was a geometer also. It would seem then that
the mention by Bale of these two topics (the book, then the observation about
geometry) would indicate Bale saw either Grail table geometry or landscape
geometry in the book he was referring to. It seems probable that at some stage this book,
copy or fragment, existed at Glastonbury. The information about Montacute as a
geometrical marker for the Joseph line could only have reached Father Good by
two sources; Henry of Blois as already discussed or out of this possible
geometrical source that Bale refers to.
Melkin
was well aware of what a ‘meridian’ was but was possibly hinting to the
Lyonesse line as a Horizontal Meridian, like a line of latitude. Most probably
though the reference is giving the clue to look for a line that is similar to
those found on a Map. Although lines of longitude (the truest definition of a
Meridian) were not easy to calculate on a map at this stage and were largely
responsible for their distortion, it clearly shows Melkin’s great grasp of
technical issues such as these, through his precise surveying Data. ‘Meridianus’,
in Ainsworth, is described as ‘pertaining to noon or noontide’, referring to
the Sun’s change in longitude at its daily zenith. Ainsworth also has another
translation which gives ‘Southern Meridional’ which would only be an accurate
description if viewed from the northern hemisphere, so it is technically not a
definitive translation. This somewhat oblique definition would be derived from
the declination of the sun to the horizon viewed and defined by observers north
of the equator. However, it is from this
translation that most commentators have derived ‘Southern angle’ from Melkin's
text. It is also worth noting that ‘meridianum
anglum’ could be translated as an ‘English Meridian’; surely a pun not unobserved
by Melkin. It would seem, however, that Melkin
is referring to the angle created at Burgh Island between the Lyonesse line and
the Joseph line that runs from Burgh Island to Avebury as shown in figure 25. Essentially
the word ‘meridianum’ is conveying the sense to us, of an imaginary line and
this was surely Melkin’s intent. It could however be a word that he used to
substitute for another descriptive word, known in his day, which would convey a
sense of a Ley Line. The recent nomenclature of ‘Ley or Ley line’ must have had
an earlier appellation before the knowledge of the system was lost and it is
apparent that Melkin knew of its existence.
Again
this brings us back to the question; was Melkin aware of the functions of the
Ley line system, or did he just construct the riddle from geometric information
given in another text that he sourced; that may have been old Judaic, from
Zerah’s descendents and the Hebraic supplied by Joseph. This presents a confusing set of
circumstances where a Megalithic site is referenced by a Monk who lived
anywhere from the fifth to the eighth century AD, that draws on Kabbalistic
material; who writes a Grail book about the steps or grades to the temple ,thereby
manifesting his understanding of a divine plan. Not only does he have knowledge
of historical fact relating to Jesus and Joseph, four to seven Hundred years
after they were buried in Avalon but also is aware that Avalon exists within a
network of Leys, part of which was built before Zerah’s offspring came to
England and was built by early Megalithic Man. Did Melkin really have an angel
deliver this information as Helinand says, if so, was it Michael the Archangel?
We
arrive back at the same circuitous dilemma of whether Melkin was the actual
surveyor and the reader will only be able to make his own judgement at the
penultimate sentence of the prophecy, where Melkin is giving directions within
the local vicinity of the island. From this it becomes clear that he visited
the Island upon which probably stood a small monastic building (rumoured to
have existed by locals) built before the St. Michael Chapel referred to by
Camden (circa 1610). By 1680 there is no mention of a chapel and by 1752 it was
recorded as a ruin and brings us back to the point that it appears to have been
purposely dismantled. This leads to another puzzle, who did the dissembling of
the St. Michael churches and who tried their hardest to hide Father Good’s
message from Rome by eradicating Maihews reference and is this group, society
or order still actively suppressing through the ages? The most intriguing
puzzle (second only to Melkin and his riddle) is the Megalithic usage of sites
and Ley’s and the surveying of such a construct being conveyed to Melkin. Was
this knowledge through Neolithic Zerah down to Joseph then passed on to Melkin
over a period of two thousand years or even longer? If the Saxons had not
invaded Britain would this information about Ley lines and stone circles be widely
known today.
·
Oratori; from ‘oratorium’
in late Latin meaning a small or private chapel of prayer which would fit the
description of the wattle church or the later wooden clad building in
Glastonbury. The question of whether
Melkin’s prophecy has had scribal changes will seem to be an unanswerable
question. Melkin has most emphatically set us a riddle but did he write the
word ‘oratori’, or was this a later interpolation. The reason we should ask
such a question is because if he wanted to keep our attentions at Glastonbury
why did he write about the Isle of Avalon and how could he be assured in the
seventh century that the Monks would eventually change Glastonbury into
Avalon. Although his manuscripts were
read by several chroniclers at Glastonbury, we do not know if he was a
Glastonbury acolyte and therefore would have wished to concentrate the gaze of
the quester toward the grounds of Glastonbury, but it seems logically highly
unlikely. However when dealing with Melkin logic is the last attribute to use,
to peel back the layers on every level of understanding. We do not know if he set out deliberately to
misdirect enquirers from locating the island of Avalon by confining their
search to Glastonbury, but the convoluted
arguments involved to elucidate such an answer cannot be followed through with
logic, as we take into account such concepts associated with the Grail as
‘Appointed time’. It would seem that
following the word ‘oratori’ with ‘cratibus’, which all commentators have
translated as ‘wattled’, as in the construction of the first church; is too
much of a coincidence, for it not to have been part of Melkin’s original text
however if we start on this investigation we will be none the wiser. Cratibus
fits descriptive clues in the local vicinity of Burgh Island and so does ‘ora
tor’. It is as if Melkin would have us
blindfolded and pointed in the wrong direction and begs the question; just how
difficult should a riddle be, to be solvable? However Melkin’s original text could have read
‘orari’ from Orarius –giving ‘sea shore’ and an addition of the letters ‘t’ and
‘o’ to the middle of the word by a Glastonbury scribe would have rendered the
word ‘oratori’. This is a possibility
having already seen the interpolations and fabrications that Glastonbury perpetrated,
to locate Joseph's burial place within the Abbey grounds. The best solution would be that the Latin word
‘ora’ and ‘tor’ from ‘torus’ were split. ‘Ora’ translates as ‘the border or coast of a
country; particularly the sea coast or maritime district’, while the Latin word
‘oralis’ translates as ‘mouth, entrance or mouth of the River’. The word
‘tor’
from the Latin ‘torus’ meaning ‘a knoll or high mound of earth’, or from Old English torr; a ‘tor’ being ‘a high rock, lofty hill
or tower’, possibly from Celtic, or Old Welsh, meaning a hill or a craggy outcrop of rock on the summit of a hill. If Melkin set out to combine these words
which gives the real sense of where Joseph's body lay i.e. ‘a Tor by the coast’;
then the word string ‘oratorii cratibus preparatis’ has rendered the sense of a
‘hill at the mouth of the river’ or ‘Tor by the sea’ which has been pre-readied
(this could either refer to the tomb which used to be the tin depository or the
island within the ley line network), and which is interwoven (Ley Lines
tangentially passing nodal points) in the Ley Line system. If Melkin’s intention was to give us the sense
of a tower (dedicated to the Virgin Mary) by the sea, this would admit to a
previous building (maybe part of a monastic building) before the other St.
Michael chapel was constructed that
existed prior to 1307. ‘Oratorii cratibus preparatis’ does lead the inquirer to
conclude it relates to the wattled oratory in Glastonbury yet the ‘prepared’ in
that sense has little relevance. As an ‘oratori’
is a religious hymn and an oratorium is a place of prayer, there appears an
obvious association with choir, thus an association with the Perpetual Choirs,
of which, as we have seen Glastonbury is undisputed. The translations that have written ‘chanting
spheres of prophecy’, when ‘vaticinantibus’ has little to do with chanting; is
realistically just a case of the mind associating ‘oratori’ (religious hymn)
with church (wattled) where monks chant; giving rise to an association with
‘Perpetual Choirs’ singing an ‘oratori’ (religious hymn). However it was this association of spheres,
chanting and perpetual choirs that initiated our geometric structure. The association of a geometric design, namely
a sphere, coupled with religious hymns that would be sung in an oratory, has
led many researchers to associate the Glastonbury choir with ‘Perpetual Choirs’
of the Triads. This all combining and
adding credibility as to Joseph’s burial site being within the grounds of the Abbey
and subsequently enforced by geometric information supplied on the bronze
plaque. This plaque as we have covered was purportedly to save for posterity’s
sake, directions to where the Choir of “Yeald Chirche” was once located, before
it succumbed to fire. These directions
were made to seem relevant to the shapes that were inscribed on the floor in
lead that were now lost. This again as we have seen, was a gambit by Monkish
acolytes to establish a proximity to a holy relic that had never existed on the
site but we must not forget it was William of Malmesbury who first mentions the
business of wattle. What is the relationship of this man’s ‘ut ferunt’ in
reference to Joseph on the one hand, then Joseph’s wattled church being
described by him on the other and the
corruptions of association we have seen so much of in the intervening years
between when Melkin wrote and the obvious associations made from Melkin’s
prophecy regarding ‘cratibus’ and Joseph. ‘Oratorii cratibus preparatis’
would seem to be best translated as ‘a tor on the coast with a prepared
crater’
Cratibus preparatis,
·
Cratibus: ‘crates’ from which we derive the
modern word ‘crate’ (originally from a wicker basket for transporting) gives
the Latin form ‘cratibus’, which translates as ‘a bundle of rods wattled
together’ literally, wicker-work or hurdle, wattled or interwoven. ‘Cratibus’
as an adjective, literally means wicker, but ‘cratitius’ translated means
wattle and daubed’. It would translate as ‘Wicker,’ as in woven strands of
straight poles giving ‘hurdle’. This could be a play on words from ‘Crater’, a
cup or bowl, goblet … a platter for meat, with an obvious association to the Grail
stories and the Grail's association with Joseph, both rumoured to be buried in
the Isle of Avalon. ‘Cratis’ gives us a ‘grill’ as in rods or wood interwoven.
The monks of Glastonbury could have been trying to perpetuate an association
with ‘wattle’ just to tie in with Melkin’s prophecy or indeed this was the
construction method and a small scribal change establishing a direct link to
Glastonbury. Melkin on one level could be referring to the wicker like way that
ley lines have been interwoven throughout the countryside, ‘serpentinely’
weaving and tangentially touching the nodal markers on the landscape. Because
of the words proximity to ‘Supradictis’ it would look as if Melkin could on one
plane, be using the word in the sense of Crater which of course is a major
feature on the Island. The author is unable to elaborate further as this gives
direct instruction as to the tunnel entrance.
·
Preparatis from ‘parate’, set purpose, by design, giving
‘pre parate’ predesigned or Paratum ‘a thing made ready’ The literal
interpretation on one level could refer to the power that has been interwoven
and prepared ‘aforetime’ from on high (by God).This could have been Melkin’s understanding
of the old Neolithic networks supernatural power in as much as we are still
ignorant today of its effect; yet at least he knew of the existence of Ley
lines and may have had complete or partial understanding of their function. Melkin
could also be using the term ‘Crater’ to describe a cave or cavern that was pre
prepared that refers to the Ictis Vault. In the Glastonbury scenario the
‘preparatis’ is hard to rationalise but assuredly the cave was pre-readied
because without the cave Ictis’ function of an Emporium would be redundant and
the Island would not be specifically pointed to as the place where the tin was
taken to. Now we know that Melkin’s puzzle works on many planes and if we use
the word ‘potenter’ as meaning ‘effectually or Judiciously’ from the next line
in conjunction with cratibus preparatis and super potentem adorandam uirginem, we could contrive the meaning ‘The Tor
by the sea with a pre-prepared crater over which effectually is the Adorable
Virgin’. There is a long standing tradition on the Island that a monastery once
existed, so when Melkin wrote his riddle, did he know of a previous building
dedicated to the Virgin Mary, situated over the Crater before the dedication of
a chapel to St. Michael after 1307 AD. One
could even get the sense of ’a crate containing a preparation’ from ‘praeparatio’
and from ‘crateris’ a receptacle or
trough with a preparation, referring to the embalming fluid contained within.
This will become clear when we investigate the cedar embalming fluid
surrounding Jesus’ body .There is however on another level a completely
different meaning that can be extricated specifically relevant to the tunnels
entrance. This seems to be the real clue
to the Tombs entrance with specific localised instructions assuming in Melkins
day there was a monastery on Burgh Island which becomes clear in a later
chapter.
super potentem adorandam uirginem
supradictis:
·
super, rendering
above, upward or on high,
·
potentem, translates
as mighty, powerful or being able ,having power or being capable, but it also
has the sense of potential i.e
reaching or attaining
·
adorandam , meaning adorable or venerable. ‘ad’
by itself translating as; on, at, to or
towards is directional. If we look at splitting the word into ad orandam we
could be looking at the word orandam, giving ‘to pray to’ or be pleaded with,
and also means to pray as in this usage ‘ad orandum
vero et communicandum’ which translates
as ‘to communicate truth and to pray’.
Is Melkin sending us toward where
one prays ? ‘Ora’ as we have seen translates as ‘by the sea coast’, but
also has another sense giving ‘extremity, brim or edge’, so with ‘virge’ is
this Melkin’s meaning ‘extremity of the verge’.
·
Virginem derived from
‘Virga’ giving virginalis with an obvious reference to the Virgin Mary. ‘adorandam
virginem’ means “The adorable virgin or maiden”. This sentence essentially is intonating
precise local instructions to the entrance of the vault, giving its relation in
the local vicinity to the crater and where an old church used to be situated. Perhaps on another level altogether and in
reference to Ley lines, Melkin has knowledge or might be suggesting that,
whatever the ‘praeparatis, super potentem’, the ‘pre-pared power from on high’ consists
of; it is either entrapped or emanates from Avebury the A and the V subliminally
indicating Avebury but this is dependant upon Avebury having that appellation
in the 600’s. Diodorus Siculus who leads us to Ictis in the
preceding chapters, bears witness that: “Opposite to the coast of Celtic
Gaul there is an island in the ocean, (Britain) not smaller than Sicily, lying
to the north… tradition says that Latona was born there and for this reason,
the inhabitants venerate Apollo (the Sun God) more than any other god. They
are, in a manor, his priests (Druids), for they daily celebrate him with
continual song (Perpetual Choirs) and pay him abundant honours… In this island,
there is a magnificent grove of Apollo (St Michael Ley line), and a remarkable
temple of the spherical form (Avebury), adorned with many consecrated gifts” (Ley
lines). Latona had to give birth to Apollo
and Artemis the twins of Zeus on an Island not accounted as land and not
attached to the sea floor; Procopius’s ‘Otherworld’ which existed in Britain.
However, it would seem as if Melkin is giving direct
instructions as to where the entrance to the sepulchre is. If we split
‘adorandam’ into ‘ad orandam’ it renders ‘in prayer’ if we use the root ‘oran’
it gives again the coast or brim or extremity or edge as before. ‘Vergere’
gives slope or incline which is a multi-levelled instruction. The English word ‘verge’ has the same
derivative root of virga which gives virgin or verga. If we attempt this word string ‘super potentem adorandam uirginem
supradictis’ as a whole whilst splitting ‘supradictis’ into
‘supra ad ictis’, we get the sense ’upwards one is able at the edge of the
verge up high in Ictis’.
supradictis : Normally
translates as ‘aforementioned’. Melkin is clever here with the word ‘supradictis’
to make it look like he is relating to the ‘sperulatis’, as if ‘supradictis’ is
referring to the ‘aforementioned sperulis’ in the early part of the prophecy. ‘supradictis’
translates as ‘spoken of, said before, mentioned above or aforesaid’, as most
translators have it, and could even be word play on supra-dictis and could be
rendered as “foretold from above”. As the reader will be aware, Melkin is not
only naming the fabled island of Ictis, the very same island the prophecy is
about; but ‘supra-ad-ictis’; informing us that Joseph and Jesus are ‘high up in
Ictis’. ‘Supra’ rendering,above ,aloft or on high. This may be an indicator of Melkin’s
confidence at having entangled the enquirer sufficiently or could even be a
creeping anxiety that the intended purport of his message may never reach posterity
with all its subtlety. However he was cognisant of the fact that Ictis was
Avalon and is responsible for changing the name as well as obscuring both. We
will investigate further in relation to Leonardo Da Vinci, the subliminal
effects and the way that words are used to allude to concealed meanings. The
most striking revelation about this obvious reference to Ictis is; how does Melkin
know it was called Ictis? Had Melkin indeed read the Greek and Roman accounts
of Ictis and deduced himself, that the place is synonymous with Joseph’s burial
place or was the history explained in a manuscript that expressly gave an
account of Joseph’s connection with Ictis. The latter seems most probable as
even in Melkin’s era Ictis’ whereabouts was lost to classical chroniclers. Even if Melkin did witness Arthur’s burial
and saw Jesus’s remains, there would have to be some form of writing that
related the islands historical name six hundred years after Joseph’s burial. It
is this body of writing that would appear to be part of the source for Melkin’s
Book of the Grail. It would also seem that the Templars that built the St.
Michael church design returned the Book of the Grail to the sarcophagus;
otherwise this information would have come to light. Melkin’s Book of the Grail
was deposited in the sepulchre when the Turin Shroud was removed and shortly
thereafter made public. The treasure and the Ark were also deposited at the
same time which we will understand shortly.
However now we get precise
instructions as to the entrance of the old tin vault if we take the meaning of
‘cratibus praeparatis’ having a dual meaning in that it applies to the external
crater dug by the original operators of Ictis so that they could get their cart
to the tunnel entrance leading to the storage vault: ‘cratibus praeparatis,
super potentem adorandam virginem, supradictis’
meaning’ in a prepared crater at reaching the verge toward where one
prays up high in Ictis.
sperulatis
locum habitantibus tredecim:
·
sperulatis: Most translators have rendered this word
string ‘where the aforesaid 13 spheres rest’ but with the word ‘sperulatis’, Melkin has set out to baffle the
reader. If the enquirer is unable to resolve this last clause of the
directional part of the riddle, one is not going to obtain the direction of 13
degrees from the St. Michael Ley line through Montacute to Burgh Island along
the Joseph line. Melkin plays on the original use of the word ‘sperulis’, from
which we derived sphere, which at the beginning of the prophecy related to the
stone circle of Avebury. Melkin then
refers back to ‘sperulis’ by using the word “aforementioned” trying to convince
the reader that the two words ‘sperulis’ and ‘sperulatis’ have one and the same
meaning. However his use of the word for the second time has not the same sense
as in circle or sphere, but rather in its composition, being comprised of
degrees. Melkin surely meant ‘sperulatis’ as a diminutive form and of the
symbol for degrees i.e. 13°; the symbol
being a small circle. By the association with a sphere or circle being
comprised of degrees and the fact we are dealing with geometric instructions,
it is possible Melkin imagined that one would associate the word with its
composition or definition and derive from it the enumerated angle. It might
appear that Melkin has used a play on words assuming that the reader would know
that ‘speraulus’ means ‘to be looked for’.
·
The word locum
is rendered as ‘where’ by most commentators but this same word also translates
as ‘tomb or sepulchre’ in Ainsworth. Locum generally understood by translators as
locus, refers to a place such as the location or place being discussed.
·
The word habitantibus
rendering to ‘dwell’ or ‘abide’, seems very out of place in this sentence and
it would be no surprise if ‘habit’ and ‘antibus’ were split to give the sense
of ‘dwelling opposite’ at 13 degrees or some such contortion. We could arrive
at ‘antiboreus’ which translates as ‘looking towards the north’ or from ‘anticus’
translating as the fore part or southward. It is only because habitantibus is unusual especially
in this section of the directional part of the prophecy that it would seem that
the word needs to be split; so we could have the ‘locum’ as a sepulchre abiding
in the fore part or southward of the 13 degrees, or those that dwell in the
tomb are looking toward the north to the 13 degree angle. The reader can see
how accurate Melkin has been by carrying out a simple trigonometric example by
drawing a line at right angles down from the point at which the Ley lines cross
each side of Glastonbury tor and this gives the precise angle of 12.838568
degrees, which is only 9 ‘seconds’ out and considering the fact that Melkin is
trying to conceal that he is referring to degrees, can be accounted as a
rounded up 13 degrees.
·
Tredecim: translating
as thirteen. Sperulatis may give the translation ‘degree’ by its relationship
with a sphere. A sphere is made up of 360°, so Melkin is giving a visual pun of the small circle that is the degree
symbol because ‘Sperulatis’ is the diminutive form of Sperula. This is a novel
yet apt description that the word conveys as long as the sense is understood, i.e.
a tiny sphere or circle as the symbol used for degrees. However the angle of 13° between the Joseph
and St. Michael Ley Line is so precise that it could have no other meaning, but
the 13 degrees as shown in figure 25. Without Google Earth this investigation
into Melkin’s directions would be difficult in the extreme but it is oddly
quaint that a crop circle nestles comfortably in the opposite angle to that
indicating the 13 degrees just to the right of the Avebury circle as shown in
figure 25.
Figure 25 Showing the 13° formed between the St. Michael Ley line and the Joseph line that ‘Bifurcate’ at Avebury.
Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo
fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perimpleta:
·
Habet enim
secum, literally translates as ‘for he has with him’,
‘secus’ giving ‘nigh to’ or ‘with’. This sentence usually translates as ‘Joseph has with him in the
sarcophagus two vessels, white and silver, filled with the blood and sweat of
the Prophet Jesus’. Melkin in this second-half of the prophecy seems to get
less obtuse but his use of words indicates he is still supplying occult
information. One assumes these days that the ‘duo fassula’ is synonymous with
the Holy Grail, as indicated on the heraldic shield of Glastonbury. But what was rendered as a singular ‘graal’
originally in the Grail stories was corrupted into two beer jug like vessels on
the Glastonbury Arms.
·
Ioseph in
sarcophago: in the sarcophagus or sepulchre or tomb,
Joseph…. has with him.
·
Duo Fassula: two ‘fassula’,
before the Grail stories were written, must have confused the monks when the
singular Grail appeared around 1150AD. At least this might have prevented a
falsified find of Joseph’s remains, being totally unable to produce something
so sacred as the blood and sweat of their Lord.
It is not clear if there is an exact translation of ‘fassula’ and it
seems a direct obfuscation. Commentators have assumed that the Grail is a
receptacle and it would seem that even Helinand is trying to rationalise three
threads; 1) two vessels that he must have heard about. 2) The degrees, steps or
grades that the word Graal suggested with his Latin derivatives. 3) The
processional taking place in the Grail story while sitting at meat. Thus he came
up with the etymology of a platter as a serving dish for meat.
In the Glastonbury case, we are led
to believe that it holds two liquids, blood and sweat. So from the Latin ‘vas’,
a vase, commentators have assumed ‘vassula. This sounds like ‘vascula’ which,
as the reader will know is a vessel and therefore would seem the obvious
deduction. As Melkin has proved to be
accurate up to this point in the information that he is providing us, probably
from a much older text, it would seem that the duality of the Grail as an
object within the sarcophagus is more likely than the singularity of the Grail
in the romances as the sense of Graal. In
the Romances as we have covered, it has been largely misunderstood. As we have discussed, Melkin was the
consolidator of that tradition in the Book of the Grail and, as a religious
rite will have referred to it in the singular.
This will be elucidated later, when we will see that the Graal from
Gradatim are the degrees or stages of spiritual enlightenment in ‘Biblical Time’,
rather than the physical object or receptacles containing the blood and sweat.
A ‘fasciola’ however, is a bandage and a ‘fasceola’ is a swaddling cloth or a
cloth swathe.
·
alba translates as
the word ‘Pearl’ in Latin but also has
its translation as the word ‘white’ by most translators. In fact it directly
refers to a ‘white garment’. This of course would confirm the assumption of the
white grave cloth otherwise known as the Turin Shroud.
·
argentea from ‘argenteus’
meaning ‘of silver’ also translating as ‘clear or bright’ but usually to do
with silver, a mass of bullion, coin or money. It also has another meaning of
plated or ‘overlaid’. ‘Argentatus’ giving silvered, over plated or again ‘overlaid’.
Is this the heart of Melkin’s message that really shows who it is that Joseph
brought to England and the proof?
·
cruore from ‘Cruor’,
translating as blood from a wound or gore. ‘Cruentatus’ giving made bloody or died with blood. The
Glastonbury cruets as vessels or as Father Good referred to them as golden
ampullae, are purely derived from word association from that Latin word for
blood, ‘cruore’ then led to ‘cruet’ and
from blood to vessel. Many researchers have chosen to translate as ‘two cruets’,
leaving out ‘fassula’ as the vessel and converting the blood supposedly
contained in the vessel into the vessel itself, holding the blood. Thus we have
the vessel holding the blood turning into a vessel that sounds like what the
vessel is purported to contain.
·
Sudore, ‘sudor’
giving sweat, labour, travail or pains. Melkin has given us here the answer to
this problem of the ‘duo fassula’ in that ‘fascla’ a swathe or breast cloth and ‘fasciola’ swathing
cloth, is meant as a ‘doubled’ white cloth covered in sweat and blood from
Jesus, (overlaid, from ‘argentea’, as one would overlay an image with
silver i.e. following the outline of the
image) . If Geoffrey
de Charney who
was the first to exhibit the Turin Shroud, had removed it from the tomb it
would explain its sudden appearance in the 1350’s.
Perimpleta; has always
provided the word for ‘full’, in the context of ‘filled with the blood and
sweat’ by nearly every commentator on the prophecy. Perimpleta is not a word in its own right that has meaning
but this is common with Melkin. It
can be made up from ‘per – impleta’, coming from the verb 'impleo' which means
'I fill up/satiate'. The 'per-' on the front is a common latin prefix for
emphasis i.e. 'completely full/satiated'.
'pleta' comes from 'pleo' which simply means 'I fill'. In the form 'pleta' it is acting as an adjective meaning 'filled'. This is obviously Melkin’s misdirectional intention.
'pleta' comes from 'pleo' which simply means 'I fill'. In the form 'pleta' it is acting as an adjective meaning 'filled'. This is obviously Melkin’s misdirectional intention.
However there is no evidence of the word
existing as written here so one can conclude it must be part of the riddle to
be solved. 'peri'
is a Greek word meaning 'around' and is usual as a prefix meaning
"about, enclosing," as in the word ‘perimeter’ -- a "line or outline
around a figure or surface”. ‘Pleta’,
literally giving, ‘I plait’ in English, meaning to fold or as the definition
gives, "to bend cloth back over itself”.
This seems to show that Melkin has a message to convey that Jesus is in
an ‘enclosed fold’ or ‘enclosed in a fold’. It appears to confirm and describe the Turin
Shroud as the article that Melkin is describing; that is the white cloth that
covered Jesus while he was in Joseph’s tomb in Jerusalem. The different accounts
regarding the cloth after the tomb was found empty, can largely be regarded as
stuffing for justification of a first-hand account, also adding credibility to
the gospel account of the resurrection. There is no doubt that Melkin is
letting the world know that a ‘doubled grave cloth, covered with blood (from
wounds) and sweat from the prophet Jesus, who was enclosed in this folded cloth
just as it is shown on the Turin Shroud. The explanation of how the outline was
formed and when the shroud left the sepulcher will be elucidated shortly.
·
The
prophete Jhesu is a poignant
appellation, many researchers linking this expression with an eastern origin,
as the Koran refers to Jesus in this way. Melkin as we shall see is fully aware
that not only did the Prophets predict Jesus’s coming forth but also that he
was the fulfilment on one level of understanding, of what they had predicted
and thus, was one of their Genre and part of the Divine plan. We now have
Melkin’s intended meaning of; ‘Joseph
has with him in the tomb a doubled white folded grave cloth that was laid over
the prophet Jesus and outlined by his sweat and blood’.
Cum reperietur eius sarchofagum integrum
illibatum, in futuris videbitur et erit apertum toto orbi terranum:
·
Cum
reperietur eius sarchofagu; translates as ‘with the discovery of his sarcophagus’
.
·
Integrum; from ‘integrates’ translating as ‘entire or whole’.
This is in reference to the body of Jesus being preserved by cedar oil in the
Grail Ark.
·
Illibatum; giving
‘untouched, pure or undefiled’, from
libatum ‘defiled’ as in ‘virginitas libata’
·
in futuris
videbitur; translating
As ‘in the future, it will be seen’.
·
et erit
apertum toto orbi terranum; gives ‘and will be opened to all, around the
world’.
The translations of this sentence
appear for the most part as; ‘once
his sarcophagus is discovered, it will be seen whole and untouched and then
open to the whole world’ or similarly, ‘with the discovery of his tomb, which will
be whole and undefiled, from thenceforth it will be viewed and open to the
entire world’. As in the beginning part of the prophecy,
where Melkin speaks of the future referring to a period when Joseph's body is
uncovered, as a time when pilgrims would give praise to God at the island; so
is this sentence referring to that same point in the future. This does infer a religious change at the
discovery of the tomb and Melkin twice, in this short prophecy, mentions the ‘whole
world’ or ‘all around the world’, indicating that it will be a change in the
religious system with global ramifications.
‘Open to the whole world’; indicating, not a Christian world, but an
all-inclusive world of Muslims and Jews of the Abrahamic traditions, but also
including all faiths that are understanding the proofs of Divine intervention
by prediction, convinced by that which is revealed, upon the opening of the
tomb.
Melkin starts the sentence with ‘cum’
and with its various forms of transliteration, by inference, is indicating a
point in time i.e. ‘with the unveiling of the sarcophagus’. This is the commencement of a 1000 year
period spoken of in Revelation 26:6 ‘Blessed and holy
are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no
power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign
with him for a thousand years’. Melkin’s
understanding of ‘Time’ is what most qualifies him as a prophet and why such
great importance should be attached to this prophecy because he is speaking in ‘The
Times’ i.e. from the birth of Jesus to the uncovering of the tomb and speaking about
the commencement of a new age, the 1000 years which are to follow . A fuller
explanation of ‘time, times and half of time’ will come shortly.
Ex tunc nec aqua nec ros celi insulam
nobilissimam habitantibus poterit deficere.
Ex tunc; gives, ‘from thenceforth’. This whole
sentence is most commonly translated
as, ‘from then on, those who dwell in that noble island will lack neither water
nor the dew of heaven’. Melkin starts
the sentence ‘ex tunc’ or literally ‘from that time’, indicating again the
expectation of change at the point of time when the tomb is unveiled.What
Melkin understands is that religion in general with its multitudinous dead
practices across the world (starting in Britain) will now accept the God of
Israel as the only truth, in amongst the myriad of other gods by which men
contrive their ‘modus operandi’
nec aqua nec ros celi; this is again confirming God-given
blessings from that time forward. Rain
and dew are metaphorical for spiritual blessings sent from heaven and from
thenceforth, never failing those who are converted in that island. However, Melkin is imparting occult
information here on one level, in that, he is using the word ‘nekros’ from the
Greek, which gives us ‘dead, dead body, corpse’ or ‘nekrosis’ "a becoming dead,
state of death. This is, Melkin’s reference to the ‘spiritually
dead’ and shows that he is fully aware of the ‘degrees’ of spiritual progress
of Man set within the finite parameters of ‘Biblical Time’. This expression ‘Spiritually
dead’ is encapsulated throughout the prophets as those who come out of ‘spiritual
Egypt’ and do not obey the Law engraved within them i.e. the denial of the
testimony of Jesus. Those that do this are accounted ‘spiritually dead’ but
those that accept his testimony are accounted as alive-or living. This is
overcoming the first death spoken of in Revelation. However those that accept
the testimony of Jesus by coming out of Egypt yet afterward with the pressures
of life, and the innate qualities of corruptness that are the lot of the human
condition, fall away into ‘non-compliance with conscience’ or disobedience to
that engraved upon their heart. These
then undergo and experience the likened Fall of Jerusalem. This is referred to
throughout the prophets and of course is followed by the seven years of
compliance (known spiritually as ‘the
captivity’), a period to put away sin and of purification and acknowledgement
that there is a God (The whole point of the divine plan to self-realisation or
Gnosis). After the acknowledgement and
compliance, spiritual peace is found, and this is the overcoming of the second
death also mentioned in Revelation. Failure to comply in the ‘spiritual
captivity’ period, results in the second death i.e. spiritual death. The three periods or degrees of Gnosis; firstly the coming out of Egypt, secondly the
return from the Captivity (in the Spiritual sense) and thirdly the heavenly
state of spiritual peace, are synonymous with the three days that Jesus speaks
of, when he refers to the rebuilding of the Temple. These three days are also synonymous
as, the three periods of time i.e. Time, the Times and Half Time. ‘And when he
cometh, he shall smite the land of Egypt, and deliver such as are
for death to death; and such as are
for captivity to captivity; and such as
are for the sword to the sword’.
Jeremiah 43:10.
What Melkin
is referring to here are those persons that in the seven years of captivity
after the fall of spiritual Jerusalem, who do not acknowledge that there is a
God; from that time forward there will be no more water from heaven. ‘Seven times will
pass by for you, until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the
kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.’ Daniel 4:32. Daniel 4:25.
The evidences for
Melkin’s double meaning here rely on elucidation in a later chapter as a digression
here is not opportune and the explanation involves the issue of ‘Biblical Time’.
It is here however
that it becomes evident that one scribal change has been made for reasons to
accord or marry with the word ‘insula’ the first word of the prophecy and the
Island of Avalon we have been trying to locate. This scribal alteration was most probably
innocently changed before or by John of Glastonbury when transcribing Melkin’s
prophecy. Melkin wrote originally the word ‘insalem’ as a pun because with this
word the purport of his occult meaning is passed to the initiated but also the
mundane sense is conveyed. Melkin’s
original would have read; ‘Ex tunc nec
aqua nec ros celi insalem
nobilissimam habitantibus poterit deficere. If one were to split ’insalem’ as
intended by Melkin to, ‘in salem’, then the sentence reads ‘from that time
there is no water for the dead but those that live in (heavenly) peace, will
not lack drink’. This is the peace of which comes to those who have come out of
Egypt initially and then subsequently purified themselves during the seven year
Captivity after the spiritual fall of Jerusalem. ‘In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim
the remnant that is left of his people. Isaiah 11:11.
insulam nobilissimam; ostensibly translating as ‘noble Island’ in
the one sense as Melkin intended but as we have seen, this originally would have been written as the
non existant Latin word ‘insalem’, which when split gives ‘in peace’ the very
objective of Gnosis and the understanding behind the essence of the Grail.
‘Mental rest’ in the landscape of the mind,
which allegorically has its similitude in the Holy land, is the key to
the understanding of the vast body of knowledge incorporated in the prophets. A
difficult concept to allow but the ‘rest and peace’, that the prophets speak of
is spiritual and not historical. However like so many words in Melkin’s prophecy,
the outward word suggests a mis-spelt meaning, yet when uncovered, the occult
sense is revealed just as in Usher’s version giving Judioialem instead of the modern corrected or
assumed form of ‘Judicialem’ to conform
with Saphat. ‘Judioialem’
was probably a corruption or conscious scribal correction and almost certainly
the original word that Melkin would have written was ‘Judiosalem’. The reason
that this assumption can be posited is because it is a certainty that Melkin
understood the message of the Biblical prophets. This can be assumed by his
understanding of Biblical time which can only be gleaned from the prophets of
Israel.
habitantibus poterit deficere
·
habitantibus from a root
of ‘habitatio’ , ‘habitator’ , ‘habitatus’
or ‘habito’ giving ‘to dwell, live in,
or abide. Melkin’s choice of words is exact and precise to convey the sense of
a spiritual place where one lives at peace, much as today the modern expression
of describing someone as being ‘in a good place’ in reference to their state of
mind or mental wellbeing. This concept of a spiritual location is vital to the
understanding of the prophets, as what was essentially a landscape in
historical time (set in Biblical time) by mental transformation, as Melkin comprehends,
is a mental landscape of peace within which one can potentially live. This
essentially is the Kingdom of Heaven that is referred to by Jesus as an earthly
attainable state; of which he proclaimed to be at hand or attainable. Unfortunately the opposite state being
equally attainable. The subject requires an elucidation that is grounded in the
prophets and the subject analysis is too broad to be dealt with within these
pages excepting the subject of Biblical Time which we will cover only to show
that Melkin was certain that what he prophesied would take place at a point in
that time.
·
Poterit; from a root
describing ‘drink or drinking’ which again has biblical connotations. Drinking is synonymous with acceptance of the
divine plan or God’s word and of what is revealed by the prophets of Israel.
The real sense of spiritual drinking can by association be equated with the
satiation of spiritual thirst as in Jeremiah 49:12
‘This is what the LORD says: "If those who do not deserve to drink the cup; must drink
it, why should you go unpunished? ... You must drink this cup of judgment!’. Or again in Obadiah 4:16 ‘Just as you drank on my holy hill, so all the nations
will drink continually; they will drink and drink and be as if they had never
been!’ Here again in Mark 10:38 ‘Can you drink the cup? But Jesus said to them,
"You don't know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering
I am about to drink from.
·
Deficere from ‘deficio’
meaning, to leave or fail one’ giving the word ‘lack’ as most translators have
it.
Per multum tempus ante diem
Judioialem in iosaphat erunt aperta haec, &
viventibus declarata: Most
translations of this passage differ only slightly; ‘for a long time before the day of
judgement in Josaphat, these things will be openly declared to the living’.
·
Per multum tempus ante; translates as ‘a long time
before’ and relates as we have already seen to the 1000 year period from the time the tomb is
unveiled before the day of Judgement i.e from the time that Joseph’s and Jesus’ tomb is
unveiled. This is the last period of the seven day period of 7,000 years that
constitute the framework of ‘Biblical Time’.
·
diem Judioialem from Usher’s text, rather than the assumed
or corrupted ‘diem Judicialem’ of the later transcriptions. The scribal change and word association has
come from the original which would have been ‘Judiosalem’ through Judioalem to
the assumed ‘diem Judicialem’ which is purely
conforming to the notion of its connection to judgement day. This has been due
to its connection with Jehosaphat which the Abrahamic faiths believe refers to
judgement day. Melkin again can only be understood with a grasp of the Prophets
prophesying in time, as biblical spans of time are often misunderstood being
dependant upon how the prophet is referencing the subject, this determining the
unit time measure expressed.
Melkin here wrote ‘Judiosalem’ which obviously is word
play on Jerusalem as well as being a subliminal joining of Judah and Salem,
rendering exactly what Melkin intented; ‘The day of Judah’s peace’ or ‘peace of
the Jews’ referring to the spiritual peace of those coming out of spiritual
Babylon which takes place on the day of Jehosaphat, as long as the thousand year period is
understood as a day being the seventh day of the one week of Biblical time. Melkin is using the word ‘Salem’ from which Jerusalem is derived from Urušalimum , ‘Foundation of Shalem’; Salem coming from the word shalem,
shalom, shalim or salam meaning peace; the city of Jerusalem which dates back to the
early bronze age, where Abraham
and Melchizedek met. ‘Judah’s peace’ is
the goal of the Divine plan if one accepts that a ‘Jew’ is a spiritual Jew i.e.
a person having come out of Egypt and returned from the Babylonian captivity, (Babylon
the Great in the spiritual sense) and then found peace through adherence to the
Law and acknowledgement of the existence of God. This view of the prophets
being not only historical seems newly contrived but is the essential perception
although not intellectually or theologically comprehended,that unites and is
perceived by the Abrahamic faiths. Not
to complicate matters but just to show how many ways one can interpret Melkin, ‘salum’
also translates as near a coast or to the sea so if we take judiosalum as a
word we get the sense ‘along time before
those days when the Jews near the coast (in the period of Iosahat) are opened
up and declared to the living.
·
in iosaphat: Melkin has steered the reader into assuming
a place, by prefixing ’Josaphat’ with ‘in’, when he is quite aware of Jehosaphat’s
meaning as a period of biblical time (which is the 1000 years of ‘The Times’
halved) and accounted as a degree of spiritual awakening being the third day of
the three time periods, time times, and halftime as these were referred to by
Jesus as days. The reader will remember that ‘saphat’ was rendered as judgement
in the earlier part of the prophecy. ‘Judiosalem’,
became Judioalem and was then changed to ‘Judicialem’ because
of its association with Jehosaphat being commonly associated with the last
Judgement. The rendering of ‘Saphat’ as ‘judgement’ in the previous passage is
incorrect, when ‘potens in Saphat’, should be understood as ‘he who’s might is
in spiritual awakening’ in direct reference to spiritual Jews.
The Valley of Josaphat or Valley of Jehoshaphat is mentioned in only one
passage of the Bible, in Joel 3.2 : "I will gather together all nations,
and will bring them down into the valley of Josaphat: and I will plead with
them there for my people, and for my inheritance Israel, whom they have
scattered among the nations". It is
from this passage that Christians derive Jehosaphat as the ‘last judgement’,
which is exactly what Melkin is alluding to. Due to its attachment to a valley,
theologians have assumed it has a geographical location, but like ‘mountain’ in
biblical texts; it rarely, especially in prophetical literature, has the sense
of geographical location. When the reader of prophetical literature becomes
aware of the concept of a historical location( i.e the Holy land and its tribes)
set in ‘Biblical Time’ that has become a blueprint for a spiritual landscape,
this transliterable approach to the comprehension of the Prophets words becomes
clearer. The prophets speak of the nations and their attributes dualistically
applying to real time historical prophecy but also understandable within an
individual mental landscape. Josaphat
incidentally is the name given to the forth king of Judah. The essence of Jehosaphat’s meaning is
captured with the passage in Matthew. 25, and bears witness that the voice of
Jesus can be heard by everyone that spiritually came out of Egypt i.e. heard
the Law; but then subsequently most of those who were initially blessed with
this miraculous correcting toward gnosis, chose to ignore their conscience, eventually
being sent to captivity in Spiritual Babylon at the destruction of Spiritual
Jerusalem. This does sound
oversimplified and contrived but we will come to this when discussing ‘Biblical
time’ but the point is that Jesus did not only come for the Gentiles but all
the children of Israel. Evidence of the
Divine plan can be witnessed in Mathew 25 showing the relationship of choice
with deed which as we have stated, takes place within the seven year period
which is the defining time of purification through compliance or as it is
Biblically known ‘the troublous times’ :
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and
all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one
from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, ‘Come, ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35
For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me
drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed
me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me’. 37
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, ‘when did we see you hungry,
and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a
stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when
saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?’ 40 And the King
shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’. 41
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 For
I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no
drink; 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye
clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not . 44 Then shall they also answer
him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or
naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them,
saying, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least
of these, ye did it not to me’. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting
punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
erunt aperta haec, & viventibus declarata; usually
translated as ’openly shall these things be declared to the living’ but another
interpretation could be that ‘these things will be openly accepted or made
apparent by those having reached spiritual awareness’. ‘Viventibus’, the living or alive, has the
same connotation as in prophetical literature, as those not spiritually dead.
Throughout the prophets this notion is held that man can be alive, not in the
sense that humans are either dead or alive but spiritually alive, as opposed to
those in whom their conscience no longer councils to do good but instead, acts
conversely as a ‘fearful looking for of judgement’. It is from this
understanding that we might grasp God not being a ‘respector of persons’ but
only of those who are spiritually alive.
Melkin
specifically points to a period in time and this point in time is the
uncovering of Jesus’ body. The reason for this is obvious in the proofs it will
provide for the future not only of the veracity of his prophecy but
substantiating the words of the Prophets of Israel and these confirmations and
the realisation of a Divine plan will cause a paradigm shift in consciousness.
Jesus and the Archangel Michael
mentioned in Revelation and Daniel seem to be both part of the raising
of Human consciousness and are accounted as witnesses to the Divine Plan.
Insula
auallonis auida funere paganorum, pre ceteris in orbe ad sepulturam eorum
omnium sperulis propheciae vaticinantibus decorata, & in futurum ornata
erit altissimum laudantibus. Abbadare, potens in Saphat, paganorum
nobilissimus, cum centum et quatuor milibus domiicionem ibi accepit. Inter quos
ioseph de marmore, ab Armathia nomine, cepit sompnum perpetuum; Et iacet in
linea bifurcata iuxta meridianum angulum oratori, cratibus praeparatis, super
potentem adorandam virginem, supradictis
sperulatis locum habitantibus tredecim. Habet enim secum Ioseph in
sarcophago duo fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore
perimpleta. Cum reperietur ejus sarcofagum, integrum illibatum in futuris
videbitur, & erit apertum toto orbi
terrarium. Ex tunc aqua, nec ros coeli insulam nobilissimam habitantibus poterit
deficere. Per multum tempus ante diem Judioialem in iosaphat erunt aperta haec, & viventibus
declarata.
Hucusque melkinus.
In ancient times around 350 bc a Greek navigator who visited Britain wrote a journal and in it he
described an island where tin was produced and he called it fish island or in Greek
Ichthys, Ichthus and Ikhthus i.e
the island of Ictis. This Island was surrounded by Pilchards at certain times
of the year hence its name. The tin
trade which had existed since the 1000bc
through Phoenician traders was Later commented upon by a Latin chronicler
named Diodorus and his comments on the British
were that.
The inhabitants who dwell near the promontory
of Britain, known as Belerium, mine tin
and when they have melted it into tin ingots, they carry it to a certain
island, which lies off Britain, and is called Ictis. For at the ebbing’s of the
tide, the space between this island and the mainland is left dry and then they can convey the tin in large quantities over to the
island on their wagons.
This is the island of Burgh
Island in S.Devon with its sand causeway that dries out a low tide upon which
the carts of tin mentioned by Pytheas were brought down from southern Dartmoor
through Loddiswell upon an ancient cart track. The only ‘linch pin’ from one of
these wagons found in Devon and Cornwall from pytheas’ era was found on this same
track from Dartmoor to Ictis. They travelled along a tidal road in Aveton Gifford
to reach the Island of Ictis
As many are aware there is a legend in Cornwall that Joseph of Arimathea
Jesus’ uncle was a Tin merchant and that he came to this coast to pick up tin
with Jesus when he was still a boy. No one was quite sure why Ictis was called
an Emporium which means market place, but it is now known that within this
island is an old vault originally used for storing tin by the old miners but
around the time the Romans invaded Britain this came increasingly difficult to
keep secret so Joseph bought this island with the huge tin vault within it. The
body of Jesus is yet to be discovered within the Island. This is why the
gospels relate three pertinent facts, the tomb belonged to Joseph, it was a
hewed out tomb that no other man had lain in before and in it was a white
cloth. This is what the gospels concur upon but they do not let on that the
tomb site is in England.
In fact Strabo another chronicler
states that a Captain ran his boat on the rocks rather than give away the
islands position to the Romans and it just so happens that next to this island
we have the only two maritime wrecks from the ancient tin industry. This is
where the biggest cache of tin ingots was found just a couple of miles from
ictis.
Melkin a prophet and monk who lived in about 450 to 650AD wrote a very strange prophecy in Latin, which up until now has remained an obscure
piece of literature which gives directions to the burial place of Joseph of Arimathea.
Joseph is supposed to have with him what is thought to be the Holy grail with
him where he is buried in the island of Avalon.
For many years Grail hunters have assumed that the Grail and Joseph lie
at Glastonbury but the prophecy was given in the form of a puzzle
and recently this riddle has been unlocked and is now revealed in a book called
‘And Did Those Feet’.
The book ‘And Did
Those Feet’ is named after the poem written by William Blake which as most
Britons know is the anthem of Jerusalem , which speaks of New Jerusalem
existing in Britain and asks the
question ‘did Jesus’ feet walk upon England’s pleasant pastures green. Well now we have the answer because Jesus is
buried within this Island beside Joseph of Arimathea.
The prophet melkin visited the gravesite after king
Arthur was buried there and left these directions for posterity that we might
uncover his grave site and calls the
island the island of Avalon.
Island of Avalon, coveting the pagans in death, above all others
(places) in the world because they have their entombment there and it is
honoured by a circle that portends of a prophesy (and this circle is the stone
circle of Avebury). It then goes on to
say that in the future the island will be adorned by those that give praise to
the highest and ‘Abbadare’ (which translated means The father’s pearl, who is
of course Jesus) mighty in judgement the noblest of those foreigners sleeps 104
nautical miles from Avebury, and by whom he recieved interment by the sea from
Joseph who is named after Arimathea, and he has also taken his eternal rest
there, and they lie on the southern fork of a ‘bifurcated meridional’ line in
an angle on a coastal Tor, in a crater, above which one can go at the
extremity of the verge as it was already prepared high up in Ictis. this tomb is now their dwelling and is located 13 degrees from the st. Michael
ley line.
This is what
melkin tells us and it is laid out word for word so that the prophecy can be
fully understood in the book And did those feet . Click on the link above.
The Templars built an array of churches all dedicated to St Michael
which comprise the St Michael ley line and like St Michael’s mount in Cornwall
this small island had a St Michael church on it but it is father Good a
fifteenth century Jesuit monk who confirms this position who tells us that
Joseph of Arimathea is ‘carefully hidden’ in Montacute and you can see that the
line passes through St.Michaels hill where there once also stood a church
dedicated to him EXACTLY 104 MILES ON A LINE THAT IS BIFURCATED AT THIRTEEN DEGREES AND RUNS THROUGH
MONTECUTE.
Many scholars
and historians that have dealt with the Glastonbury material say the Melkin was
an invention of the twelvth or thirteenth century. This is simply not true and
this position is only arrived at because no one has been able to decipher Melkin’s Prophecy before the current era. Ask
yourself ,why would someone make a puzzle that no one could understand yet all
the details in it are so precise and lead to the very island named in the
prophecy.
Not only did
Melkin write the original of the Grail book which establishes the location of
this Island, but Leonardo Da vinci was aware of where this island was and also
told us that in his paintings of the Madonna and the yarnwinder he would show us
where this island is. He painted two
Yarnwinder paintings which show exactly where the geographical location is . We
can see if we merge the two paintings that we know to be painted by him, he
gives every geographical detail that locates the island of Avalon as the present
day Burgh island in Devon which we can also see this same perspective on google
earth.
This is a complicated story but it is revealed in this new and
enlightening book that gives evidence of how this island became known as the
island of Sarras in the Grail stories and how the Turin shroud is in fact the
real grave cloth of jesus seen by Melkin and that he referred to it as the ‘Duo Fassula’.
In fact you can see Melkin’s latin description matches the shroud
completely if we understand that his riddle of the Duo Fassula is really a
Duplico fasciola or doubled over grave cloth because it says that….
Habet enim
secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete
Jhesu & sudore perimpleta:
Joseph has with him in the sarcophagus a doubled white swaddling cloth
covered with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus that was folded around
him.
The Templars who built the St.Michael churches to mark this grave site
buried their treasure on this island on Christmas day in 1307 after arriving in
three treasure ships. As they unloaded the treasure and before they closed up
the tomb for the last time one of them, (probably Geoffrey de Charney) removed
the Shroud of Jesus from the tomb that is presently on exibit in Turin.
King Arthur’s body was also buried within this island and it is here
that he came to look for a miracle to cure his fatal wounds after the battle
for his kingdom as he knew that Jesus was buried within it. Goeffrey of
Monmouth also recounts that Arthur is buried in the island of Avalon but it is
Melkin who confirms we have the right location by saying the word Supradictis
meaning up high in Ictis
And Did Those feet by Michael Goldsworthy, is a revealing book with all
the maps and evidence that explains how it is that, what was known as the Grail
ark in the Grail romances contains Jesus body and confirms how the image on the
Turin shroud was formulated in cedar oil. The mystery is now uncovered but what
will the world learn from this unveiling of the tomb on this sacred island and
what will be the effect of the discovery of this tomb and its contents on all
the major religions today.
The following
is an extract from a book which decodes an old Prophecy by a monk called
Melkin.
When this Puzzle,
(which is the main cause for Glastonbury’s association with the Holy Grail and
Joseph of Arimathea) is fully understood, it shows that the two vessels that
have been described as containing the blood and sweat of Jesus are in fact a
misunderstood reference to the grave cloth of Jesus better known as the shroud
of Turin.
Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula(duplico
Fasciola) alba & argentea,(covering) cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perim pleta: Joseph
has with him in the sarcophagus a doubled white swaddling cloth covered with
the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus that was folded around him.
The monk
Melkin has deliberately concealed the real meaning of the Grail which is
explained in the Book.
Also the when
the Prophecy or puzzle is fully understood, we can actually determine that
Abbadare is in fact Jesus and his body is preserved in the Grail Ark which is
also in the same Tomb along with Joseph
of Arimathea and both lay still undiscovered in the real Island of Avalon which
Melkin leads us to with pinpoint geometrical Acurracy being less than 100 yards
out over a measure of 104 nautical miles and less than 9 seconds of one degree
in error in the 13 degrees that he gives as a direction from the Bifurcated
line.
The saga of how this transpired is romanticised in the
Grail stories but is clearly elucidated upon in a new book called ‘And did those feet’ by Michael Goldsworthy.
The sign displayed in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey marking the spot where some previously enearthed bones had been miraculously discovered with a fake cross stipulating that the bones were those of King Arthur. To convince the ignorant it was also marked on the cross that the location was Avalon; a fraud carried out by the monks at Glastonbury.
The relationship of Melkin’s prophecy to the French Grail material.
Father
William Good, a Jesuit priest, born at Glastonbury, served mass in the Abbey at
Glastonbury as a boy just before its dissolution. This was before Queen
Elizabeth I changed the religion of the country to Protestantism. He also held
a secret as to the whereabouts of Joseph of Arimathea’s burial place. Father William was educated in Glastonbury,
and later attended Corpus Christi College in 1546 where he became a fellow in
1548, and studied for his Master of Arts in 1552. Throughout all the early days
of his life while he studied and before he came to the priesthood, he carried
around with him the information that was passed on to him by Abbot Richard
Whiting at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.
As was usual
in those days, secret knowledge was handed down to chosen choirboys or likely
candidates for the priesthood, by Bishops and Abbots rather than writing it
down and running the risk of having it discovered by persons who were not
privileged. Just before Richard Whiting
was about to be hanged on Glastonbury Tor at the start of the dissolution, he related
to the young William Good, that Joseph of Arimathea was ‘carefully hidden in
Montacute’, most probably with the added
instruction to say nothing to anybody.
Father Good, while Queen Mary reigned in the interim, obtained the
benefice of Middle Chinnock in Somerset, the prebend of Comba Octava in the
Church of Wells, and was given the head-mastership of a school in Wells.
When
Elizabeth I came to the throne, he travelled to Tourni where in 1562 he was
admitted into the Society of Jesus, thereafter travelling to Ireland to become
a missionary for many years. Afterwards
he travelled to Belgium, where he met Robert
Parsons, who
persuaded him to become a member of the Jesuit order, while the rest of his
days were passed as confessor to the English
College in Rome.
It was during
this time in Rome that he passed on the message to alleviate himself of the
burden he had carried with him since he was a boy. He left to posterity at the
English college in Rome the information conveyed to him by Richard Whiting with
the added addition of his own précis of the last part of Melkin’s prophecy,
indicating how important he felt it was; “The monks,
never knew for certain the place of this saints burial (Joseph’s) or pointed it
out. They said the body was most
“carefully hidden” on a hill near Montacute and that when his body would be
found, the whole world would wend their way there, on account of the number and
wondrous nature of the miracles worked there”.
In Archbishop Usher’s account describing the Arms of Glastonbury, he
quotes from an account given by William Good, and refers to him as “a Jesuit
born at Glastonbury in the reign of Henry VIII”:
"Antiqua arma Glastoniensis Monasterii sunt hujusmodi.
Scutum album, in quo per longum erigitur stipes crucis viridis & nudosas,
& de latere ad latus extenduntur brachia seu rami crucis stipiti
consimilia. Sparguntur guttse sanguinis per oninem aream scuti. Utrinqwe ad
latera stipitis, & sub alis crucis, ponitur ampulla inaurata. Et haec
semper denominabantur insignia Sancti Josephi, qui ibi habitue pie credebatur,
& fortasse sepultus esse.
‘Such
are the ancient Arms of the monastery of Glastonbury. A white shield in which,
for a long time, a green and gnarled stake of a cross sticks out, and from side
to side stretch branches or boughs as if they were the beam of the cross. Drops
of blood are spattered around the whole expanse of the shield. And at the sides
of the stake, under the beam of the cross, is placed a gilded flask. And these
were always referred to as the tokens of St Joseph, who is believed to have
lived piously, and perhaps to have been buried there.’
The Reverend Walter
Skeat make his own remarks on Father Good’s passage; “The knotted cross evidently refers to
the legend of St Joseph's thorny staff (from which a tree had sprouted at
Glastonbury until recently cut down by vandals), the drops of blood denote his
receiving the blood of Christ in the Holy Grail, and the two cruets are the
"duo fassula" mentioned in the book of Melkin, which resulted from
the duplication of the Grail of the original legend”.
We can conclude from this, that Father Good had read Melkin while in the
British Isles and had been privately engaged investigating the whereabouts of
the sepulchre of Joseph. It would seem
that Father
William assumed that within the Heraldry
depicted on the shield, there could have been a clue to where Joseph lay.
It would also appear that he was probably taking
this line of investigation, having previously read the Seint Graal, and its associations with Joseph, where
"a white knight relates to Galahad the mystery of a certain wonderful shield." It is fairly evident that Father Good had tried to locate the burial
place of Joseph having been motivated by the possession of a clue but
unfortunately didn't piece together the relevance of Montacute.
Figure 22 Showing the Folly tower
where there once stood a chapel dedicated to St.Michael on this hilltop
‘marker’ site.
Geoffrey of Monmouth writing in 1130 makes no allusion to the
Graal, or to Lancelot or Gawain, or to the prophecy of Melkin and does not say
one word about Joseph of Arimathea in his popular Historia Regum
Britanniae. Geoffrey wrote many works, all in Latin, but in his History of the Kings of Britain, he writes about
Arthur, Merlin and Vortigern at length, but draws nothing from Melkin’s
genealogy of Arthur, yet includes the previously unknown prophecies of Merlin. Geoffrey claims in his dedication that his book is a translation of an
"ancient book in the British language that told in orderly fashion the
deeds of all the kings of Britain", given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of
Oxford. Much of his material was
invented, but the main body of manuscript text was supplied by the Archdeacon
of Oxford, which mainly came from Welsh sources, most probably from the
writings of Melkin that were embellished upon and subsequently places Arthur in
a Welsh backdrop. Geoffrey's works seem to show acquaintance with the place names of the region and most commentators think Geoffrey
was Welsh and spoke Welsh. He seems to
have come from the French-speaking Welsh border country and was probably
educated in a Benedictine monastery.
There were probably many French speaking Bretons in this region from the
monastic houses that were to influence the likes of Gerald of Wales (Gerald de Barri), who is half Welsh, half Norman and Walter
Map. Maep or Mapes was born on the Marches of Wales and calls
the Welsh his countrymen, and England ‘our mother.’ It is posited that the Bretons and the Welsh
spoke a similar language and it was from this connection that the Grail stories
were easily assimilated with a similar Arthurian tradition that existed in
Wales. William of Malmesbury the
product of intermarriage between Norman and Saxon noticed but a slight
difference in his time between Welsh and Breton: ‘Lingua nonnihil a nostris Brittonibus
Degeneres’ and Giraldus calls the Breton
an old-fashioned Welsh.
: ‘Magis antiquo linguae Britannicae idiomati appropriato’.
This tradition could have existed in Wales
through copies of the works of Melkin that remained in Britain but as we have
covered, it seems that the Book of the Grail went to France caused by the Saxon
invasion and later returned to revitalise and mix with Welsh legend after
having come from a French romanticisation of original, yet overlapping
historical Material. The route of this information having probably travelled to
Mont St. Michel near St. Malo and Avranche which of course would have had links
with the tin traders since ancient times and as we will cover in a later
chapter the probable landing point of Melkin which is why Helinand relates the
account of the Graal and the supposed apparition to the Hermit (in Britain)
taking place in 707 or as Walter map has it as 717AD. It becomes apparent later
that Melkin probably took this book to France in his old age and thus an
account of a British monk experiencing an angelic apparition was known in
France.
Geoffrey’s omission of the Joseph
material, despite his book's popular success, meant that the French tradition
was not as widely known and did not appear until after Geoffrey’s death in
1154. If there was an early tradition that included the Nicodemus and Joseph
stories at Glastonbury it was ignored by William and Geoffrey, but then
proliferated at the advent of the French Grail material as if in response, to
set the record straight and counter the more Welsh and strictly Arthurian
material. That's not to say that the
legends had not persisted about Arthur and his connection with Joseph before
then, this being evidenced by St. Augustin's argument with the Britons, "who
preferred their own traditions before all the churches in the world",
which of course is a referral to the Joseph tradition and possibly the
bloodline ties of Arthur to Joseph.
Helinand, the Cistercian Abbot of Froidemont or in
latin Frigidus Mons on the river Tera near Beauvais wrote a chronicle. The
Abbey was founded in 1134 but found among manuscripts in the library including
accounts of the lives of St. Bernard and St. Thomas of Cantorbery is ‘La
Chronique d’Helinand’ written around 1215AD. Here in the diocese of Beauvais
was a Cistercian monk who died
circa 1220, but he wrote a chronicle of events in history which terminates with
the year 1209 and seems to have heard an account of Melkin having had an
apparition of an Angel and this account seems to relate to the Grail and
matches the date when Melkin possibly visited Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy
around 700AD.
John of Tynemouth, writing later quotes an extract from
Helinand (below) referring to the Graal for the first time by its name at a
date given in his chronicle as 707A.D. As the chronicle was laid out by date
and it was at this point in time where the extract was inserted in the
chronicle, it infers that the Graal was so named at this date. There has been
much discussion about the early date of the insertion of this reference to the
‘Graal’ and due to preconceived ideas of the ‘Graal’ being an invention of the
Grail writers, commentators have looked for reasons to show this date to be
inaccurate and a fabrication of a later date.
The extract from Helinand:
De loseph centurione:
Hoc tempore in britannia cuidam heremitae demonstrata fuit mirabilis quaedam
visio per angelum de loseph decurione nobili, qui corpus domini deposuit de
cruce, et de catino illo vel parapside in quo dominus cenavit cum discipulis
suis; de quo ab eodem heremita descripta est historia que dicitur
gradale. Gradalis autem vel gradale gallice dicitur scutella lata et
aliquantulum profunda, in qua preciose dapes divitibus a solent apponi
gradatim, unus morsellus post alium in diversis ordinibus. Dicitur vulgari
nomine greal, quia grata et acceptabilis est in ea comedenti, tum propter
continens, quia forte argentea est vel de alia preciosa materia, tum propter
contentum ordinem multiplicem dapium preciosarum. Hanc historiam latine
scriptam inuenire non potui sed tantum gallice scripta habetur a quibusdem
proceribus, nec facile, ut aiunt, tota inueniri potest.
‘At this time
a certain marvellous vision was revealed by an angel to a certain hermit in
Britain concerning St. Joseph the decurion who deposed from the cross the body
of our Lord, as well as concerning the paten or dish in which our Lord supped
with his disciples, whereof the history was written out by the said hermit and
is called ‘Of The Graal’ (De Gradali). Now a platter, broad and somewhat deep
is called in French ‘gradalis’ or ‘gradale’, wherein costly meats (with their
sauce) are want to be set before rich folk by degrees (gradatim), one morsel
after another in divers orders, and in the vulgar speech it is called graalz,
for that it is grateful and acceptable to him that eateth therein, as
well. For that which containeth the
victual, for that haply it is of silver and other precious material, as for the
contents thereof, to wit, the manifold courses of costly meats. I have not been
able to find this history written in Latin, but it is in the possession of
certain noble written in French only, nor, as they say, can it easily be found
complete. This however, I have not hitherto been able to obtain from
any person, so as to read it with attention.
As soon as I can do so, I will translate into Latin, such passages as
are more useful and more likely to be true.’
The fact that Helinand could not find a copy of an
early French source indicates contrarily as some commentators have proposed.
The commentators have supposed that the reason that Helinand is unable to
locate a French copy is because of its recent popularity and production. The
opposite is true in that it is not widely copied and those bits that have been
obtained from a copy in the original Latin are held by some un-named noble
family. It is more likely, the reason for the books scarcity is that it had
been in possession of a French noble family from a very early date and from
which troubadours close to that family accessed and romanticised its material
into the French. The fact that Helinand is not finding (but has heard of the
Latin original) shows us that he has come across Grail extracts in French from
which he understands are derived from a Latin source. The fact that it is
purportedly only fragmentary or not easily found complete, adds to the veracity
of this supposition as having been written by an early Grail writer . One
explanation of the French book not being found complete is that troubadours
were given extracts to embellish upon by the noble French Family. Was the sense of the Graal as assumed by
Helinand and elaborated upon as relating to a Dish, originally conveying the
sense of a ‘container’ of the Graal and can this container be the Grail Ark or
box that contained the Grail that Joseph of Arimathea conveyed to Britain.
Let us assume that a French noble family possessed a
manuscript of Melkin’s original compilation of ancient Joseph material written
in Latin and later had it translated into French, to be called or referred to
as the ‘Book of the Graal.’ The reason behind this assumption is, we know
definitively that Melkin has knowledge of Joseph’s whereabouts around six
hundred years after his death. He knows also of the place where Arthur is
buried because it is the same location at which Joseph was buried. Melkin was
said to have written a book about Arthur entitled ‘De Regis Arthurii mensa rotunda’, which means he lived
contemporaneously or soon thereafter but given Melkin’s understanding of
directions to the tomb and his accuracy in describing what will be found within
it, we must conclude he entered it at Arthur’s death. It would also seem
probable that Geoffrey sourced the location of Arthur’s burial as being in
Avalon from Melkin’s work that remained in Britain and Geoffrey’s - 'Arthur's grave is
nowhere seen, whence antiquity of fables still claims that he will return', is based upon Melkin’s knowledge that Joseph’s grave
would be found thus uncovering Arthur. The
probable scenario might be that Melkin, witnessed Arthur’s interment in Avalon
but it is still unfathomable how Melkin was able to give us such accurate
co-ordinates, not only Geometrically but topographically describing the locale,
in a clearly well-constructed puzzle, if he had not visited the site.
The inclusion of the Grail in French, Welsh, Irish and
English variations of the romances, makes it virtually impossible to divine its
substance, provenance, or essential meaning and most elucidations are fraught
with supposition and contradiction so, digressing slightly, let us assume as we
posited earlier, that the book of the Grail was written in Latin from a source
that included Hebrew arcane terminology and material brought by Joseph and his
associates to Britain. It was expanded upon, with information of a bloodline
that existed from Joseph (or possibly Jesus through the Magdalene) down through
Arthur inclusive of his exploits and that of the family from Roman to Saxon
times. This book was originally written as a compilation of this body of
knowledge, giving the origins of the religious nature of the Grail, (i.e. the
gradual steps or degrees of enlightenment) that conveyed and gave meaning to
the substance of the Grail and this book was compiled by Melkin.
Hardyng, Leland, Capgrave and Bale all cite Melkin as
an ancient authority on Arthurian and British history and of the four titles he
is supposed to have written that are referenced by these later chroniclers, let
us assume a crossover of material between these manuscripts and the ‘Book of
the Grail’. Melkin’s Grail book in France not only contained a historical
account of Joseph’s journey to Britain but also occult temple knowledge having
come directly from Jerusalem that explained or gave meaning to the original
purport of the Grail. Let us also assume that this Gnostic material from the
Temple contained an account of the Divine plan, the striving of man for
spiritual enlightenment and its history through the Davidic heritage. Over time
the Grail metamorphosed into an object and this transformation was partly due
to Melkin who had written his riddle which included mention of the ‘duo
fassula’. Now this misrepresentation of the ‘duo fassula’ were said to contain
liquids of blood and sweat and thus the necessity for a receptacle to hold a
liquid or two. This puzzle or prophecy
survived in one of his other four books or was duplicated in other manuscripts
to be reproduced by John of Glastonbury and possibly from other sources.
Melkin’s book ‘Arthurii mensa rotunda’ obviously supplying much of the early
Arthurian material for Welsh manuscripts that would, of necessity be void of
the specific Grail material that was to emanate from Melkin’s Book of the Grail
that had wound up in the hands of a noble family in France.
The Welsh Greal material however,
contains the adventures of Gwalchmei Peredur and Lancelot, and of the Knights
of the Round Table; but these are not found in Malory’s "Morte
d'Arthur". The Peniarth manuscript is dated to Henry VI, the earlier part
of the fifteenth century. This is similar to that of the "Mabinogion of
the Llyvr Coch Hergest", which is of that same date but it is probably
transcribed from an earlier copy and it is not known when it was first
translated into Welsh, some scholars
saying it was written around 1070 or in Henry I’s time, but this
is debatable. Whatever the
date of the Welsh version, the translator had no great mastery of the original
French from the source and the Welsh scribe by his own volition chose not
translate portions, because the French was difficult to translate and the story
was itself erratic and for the most part misunderstood by the French collator.
It can be seen that the Welsh versions have been assimilated from French
sources and sometimes changed or interpolated or polemicized conferring a Welsh
perspective to names places and events as can be witnessed in the early Welsh
versions which gives a differing outlook from those in the French and can be so
examplified. Perceval in the Welsh is called Peredur. Perceval's father, Alain
li Gros, is in the Welsh Earl Evrawg, and his sister Dindrane becomes Danbrann.
King Arthur becomes Emperor Arthur while Queen Guenievre becomes Gwenhwyvar and
so on. This leads to a comparable lack of rigour with place names; Cardoil becomes Caerlleon on Usk, Pannenoisance,
Penvoisins; Tintagel translates into Tindagoyl and Avalon becomes
Avallach. These are examples of
deliberate alterations, and it is probable that those capable of such practice
would have been prepared to usurp Arthur’s Cornish heritage.
This passage in the History of Fulke
Fitz-Warine, originally written around 1260 is the first to mention the Graal
from Welsh sources:
‘And when Kahuz
was awake, he put his hand to his side. There hath he found the knife that had
smitten him through, so telleth us the Graal, The Book of the Holy Vessel.
There the King Arthur recovered his bounty and his valour when he had lost all
his chivalry and his virtue’
Thus it seems that "The Graal, the Book
of the Holy Vessel" to which the Welsh biographer of Fulke refers is from
a French source. It would seem that because he uses the definite article, it
indicates that he thought this book to be the original authority on the subject
either having heard about it from a different source or seeing this in his
written source. Melkin’s works had been in amongst older
books at Glastonbury now lost, burnt or dispersed which John of Glastonbury
describes as “Vetustissimi”. The Vetustissimi were the books of very ancient
scribes, copied before the Norman Conquest, so copies of Melkin’s original
Arthurian material had plenty of time to be transformed to a Welsh arena. In around 1280,
the troubadour Sarrazin also refers to ‘The Graal’ as ‘li Graaus’ with the same
definite article, when he was trying to assert a confirmation of established
fact that King Arthur was at one time ‘Lord of Great Britain’. The references
to ‘The Graal’ or ‘Book of the Graal’ as being the established authority or
source for all the Grail literature even before Chrétien
de Troyes, is further evidenced by Sarrazin’s following statement ‘the Romance that Chrestien telleth so fairly
of Perceval the adventures of the Graal’. The statement tells us that Chrétien had
used a source and had portrayed or conveyed the contents with clarity and it
commends him for doing so.
Let us assume the Grail is an account of a
religious rite or process of which a written explanation came to Britain with
Joseph. Because what he brought was connected with Jesus, what was originally
an account of a spiritual nature became synonymous with the box, Grail ark or
receptacle that Joseph was believed to have brought to Britain. This
gets even more confused if the French Troubadours heard news of the British
account of a ‘Vessel’ buried with Joseph, which at least would have given them something
physical to romanticise rather than what seems to be some kind of unexplainable
processional religious quest an hence the very erratic nature of the early
Grail stories.
If Helinand’s date is nearly correct it would
explain the lack of continuity and provenance in the early French versions. It
would also allow for Melkin’s Arthurian material to be corrupted in Wales, but who could have
been responsible for putting together the misinterpreted ‘duo fassula’ that
became a ‘vessel’ from British sources and combining them with French sources
that were a Processional and which was described as a plate. This was the
turning point of the Grail when it became a physical object that singularly
tried to encapsulate Jesus’s body, the Turin Shroud and an account of occult
meaning and this will become clear shortly.
As we have just seen, the "Book of the
Graal" is to be found as a reference also in the "Chronicle of
Helinand", who was also a troubadour at one time in high favour at the
court of Philip II. Philip Augustus had strong Templar connections, he was on
the third crusade and it has been posited that the Arc of the Covenant was
retrieved in this Crusade and kept by the Templars. If there was knowledge of
the Ark’s whereabouts in Melkin’s ‘Book of the Graal’, coming directly via
Joseph (a Sanhedrin member), there could be some substance in the rumour that
the Templars possessed the Arc. It could equally have been Eleanor of Aquitaine during
the second crusade, who also could have possessed this knowledge as she was one
of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe as well as being
Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France
(1137–1152) and of England (1154–1189) but more importantly she was patron to Chrétien de Troyes. Eleanor of Aquitaine is the only
woman to have been queen of both France and England and as Queen of France, she
participated in the unsuccessful second crusade but may also have been the
personal owner of Melkin’s Book of the Grail. Eleanor had two Daughters by Louis VII, Mary
who in 1164, married Henry, the great Count of Champagne and Alix, who became Countess of Chartres by
marriage with Theobald who had made Eleanor avoid Blois in 1152 because of his
eagerness to have Eleanor as wife, after her divorce from Louis. Henry and
Theobald were brothers whose sister Alix had married Louis VII in 1160, eight
years after Eleanor’s divorce. The family ties that were forged were fantastic,
especially for Queen Eleanor, who, besides her two French daughters, had eight
children as Queen of England. Her second son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, born in
1157, was affianced in 1174 to a daughter of Louis VII and Alix, a child only
six years old, who was sent to England to be brought up as future queen. Eleanor’s son Richard the Lionheart could also
have found opportunity to recoup the Arc on the third Crusade if anyone did in
fact achieve this goal.
The
name of the original author of the Book of the Grail is recorded nowhere but we
know that Melkin had knowledge of Joseph having brought and been buried with a
relic of Jesus. So the probability that Melkin wrote a tract specifically
covering Grail material, that disappeared to France, yet left evidence and
crossover material that existed in the meantime in other works in Britain,
seems to be the only rationalisation.
The concurrence of two existing bodies of information that were to
re-emerge and confirm their united theme at the advent of the gradual release
of French material, through the Troubadour tradition, gives us an answer as to
why British history was emanating from France.
Many
have thought that the originator of the French material is referred to in the
"Elucidation", prefixed to the rhymed version of "Percival le
Gallois" under the name of "Master Blihis" and this pseudonym
seems to refer to Henry de Blois who
in French circles would have been known as Monseigneur Blois but in British circles
as Henry of Blois (1101–1171). He was often
known as Henry of Winchester and Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey from 1126, and
Bishop of Winchester from 1129 to his death.
Henry de Blois was the nephew of King Henry I, and he was one of five sons of Stephen II, Count of Blois, by Adela of Normandy (daughter of William the Conqueror) and the younger brother of King Stephen. Henry’s father died in the Crusade at Razes when Henry was only two years of age. After an exeptional education and at the young age of 23, Henry was appointed Prior of Montacute in Somerset which becomes relevant later in our investigation, where his uncle Henry I, was planning to create a royal abbey and it is for this reason we can be assured that the information which Father Good gave us about Montecute could only have come from Melkin’s book in France.
The poem of Chrétien de Troyes is the earliest surviving literary version that mentions the Grail and Chrétien, as he himself admits, was not inventing, but re-telling, an already popular tradition concerning the matière de Bretagne. The process of romanticising arcane knowledge contained in Melkin’s book had already begun with various degrees of interpretation and misunderstanding which had built layer upon layer of obfuscation from the core relevance of the original purport of the Gradatim as a spiritual pattern or divine plan laid out for mankind. If Henry of Blois is the author of the ‘High history of the Grail’ it would explain the reverence with which he treats the subject even if he had to uncomprehendingly interpret the depth of information revealed by Melkin’s original and certainly he would have been in a position to correlate this evidence with extant material at Glastonbury. It would appear that corruption of Melkin’s text into the French had taken place already. It would seem that it was probably Henry’s understanding of the ‘duo fassula’ as a vessel; understood certainly as a receptacle(s) in Britain, that might have transformed the religious rite, processional or quest of the French material into an eventual reliquary or Chalice.
Hear ye the history of the most holy vessel that is called Graal, wherein the precious blood of the Saviour was received on the day that He was put on rood and crucified in order that He might redeem His people from the pains of hell. Josephus set it in remembrance by annunciation of the voice of an angel, for that the truth might be known by his writing of good knights, and good worshipful men how they were willing to suffer pain and to travail for the setting forward of the Law of Jesus Christ, that He willed to make new by His death and by His crucifixion.
The High Book of the Graal beginneth in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. These three Persons
are one substance, which is God, and of God moveth the High Story of the Graal.
And all they that hear it ought to understand it, and to forget all the
wickednesses that they have in their hearts. For right profitable shall it be
to all them that shall hear it of the heart. For the sake of the worshipful men
and good knights of whose deeds shall remembrance be made, doth Josephus
recount this holy history, for the sake of the lineage of the Good Knight that
was after the crucifixion of Our Lord. Good Knight was he without fail, for he
was chaste and virgin of his body and hardy of heart and with courage, and so
were his conditions without wickedness. Not boastful was he of speech, and it
seemed not by his cheer that he had so great courage; Nonetheless, of one
little word that he delayed to speak came to pass so sore mischances in Greater
Britain, that all the islands and all the lands fell thereby into much sorrow,
albeit thereafter he put them back into gladness by the authority of his good
knighthood. Good knight was he of right, for he was of the lineage of Joseph of
Abarimacie. And this Joseph was his mother's uncle, that had been a soldier of
Pilate's seven years, nor asked he of him any other favour of his service but
only to take down the body of Our Saviour from hanging on the cross. The
delight to him seemed full great when it was granted him, and full little to
Pilate seemed the favour; for right well had Joseph served him, and had he
asked to have gold or land thereof, willingly would he have given it to him.
And for this did Pilate make him a gift of the Saviour's body, for he supposed
that Joseph should have dragged the same shamefully through the city of
Jerusalem when it had been taken down from the cross, and should have left it
without the city in some mean place. But the Good Soldier had no mind thereto,
but rather honoured the body the most he might, rather laid it along in the
Holy Sepulchre and kept safe the lance whereof He was smitten in the side and
the most Holy Vessel wherein they that believed on Him received with awe the
blood that ran down from His wounds when He was set upon the rood. Of this
lineage was the Good Knight for whose sake is this High History treated.
Adela of Blois, wife of Stephen, Count of
Blois, Henry’s father who had fled from the Siege of Antioch in 1098, was so
ashamed of her husband that she would not permit him to stay at home. Henry's father died in 1102 while on crusade. He left, leaving an estate with more than 350
castles and large properties in France including Chartres which as many will know is a shrine
of sacred geometry, which has Arthurian overtones mentioned in Lois
Charpantier’s account of ‘The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral’. Coincidentally
the town of Chartres was under the judicial and tax authority of the Counts of Blois. The current cathedral, mostly constructed between 1193 and 1250 just after
Henry’s Death, is one of at least five that have occupied the site since the
town became a bishopric in the 4th century.
Henry of Blois was educated at a monastery in
Cluny in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France. This was a Benedictine
Cluny Abbey, founded by Duke William I of Aquitaine in AD 910 which adhered to the principles of Cluniac reform,
including a sense of intellectual freedom and humanism, as well as adherence to
a high standard of devotion and discipline. Here Henry
studied in the seven liberal arts; trivium (rhetoric grammar, and logic),
quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy) along with architecture
and he was essentially renowned later in life, with all this schooling, as a
sage. It was, probably while in France during his formative years, that he
heard of these early tales and later while at Glastonbury he combined later
material to comprise the High history of the Grail. It is interesting to quote from Miss Jesse
Laidlaw Weston’s revealing book ‘From Ritual to
Romance’ as this gives a clear
impression of the early Grail writers development.
While the poem of Chrétien de Troyes is our earliest surviving literary version, there is the strongest possible evidence that Chrétien, as he himself admits, was not inventing, but re-telling, an already popular tale. The Grail Quest was a theme which had been treated not once nor twice, but of which numerous, and conflicting, versions were already current, and, when Wauchier de Denain undertook to complete Chrétien's unfinished work, he drew largely upon these already existing forms, regardless of the fact that they not only contradicted the version they were ostensibly completing, but were impossible to harmonize with each other.
It is of importance for our investigation, however, to note that where Wauchier does refer to a definite source, it is to an evidently important and already famous collection of tales, Le Grant Conte, comprising several 'Branches,' the hero of the collection being not Chrétien's hero, Perceval, but Gawain, who, both in pseudo-historic and romantic tradition, is far more closely connected with the Arthurian legend, occupying, as he does, the traditional position of nephew, Sister's Son, to the monarch who is the centre of the cycle; even as Cuchullinn is sister's son to Conchobar, Diarmid to Finn, Tristan to Mark, and Roland to Charlemagne. In fact this relationship was so obviously required by tradition that we find Perceval figuring now as sister's son to Arthur, now to the Grail King, according as the Arthurian, or the Grail, tradition dominates the story. The actual existence of such a group of tales as those referred to by Wauchier derives confirmation from our surviving Gawain poems, as well as from the references in the Elucidation.
On a couple of occasions in the re-telling of these Gawain tales, Wauchier refers to what he thinks is the original author by name and calls him ‘Bleheris’ the first time. On the second occasion he states specifically that this Bleheris was of Welsh birth and origin, ‘né et engenuïs en Galles’. He says this in connection with a tale being told to a certain, Comte de Poitiers, whose favourite story it was, saying ‘he loved it above all others’, which would infer that it was not the only tale the said ‘Bleheris’ had recounted to the Count.
Even though it is posited that Henry was born in Blois Castle in France, this cannot be substantiated but certainly Henry used much Arthurian material for the Elucidation which might have made others think he was Welsh. Henry could possibly be the Link that combined Arthurian Welsh and Glastonbury Joseph material with French Melkin, Joseph and Nicodemus material owned by Eleanor of Aquitaine. The ‘Elucidation’ prefaces its account of the Grail Quest by a solemn statement of the gravity of the subject to be treated as ‘God moveth the High Story of the Graal. And all they that hear it ought to understand it, and to forget all the wickednesses that they have in their hearts’. These stark warnings are said to have come from a certain Master Blihis, concerning whom we hear no more but the warning does seem to derive from a firm believer with an understanding of the Grail’s sanctity in connection with a divine plan. A little further on in the poem we meet with a knight, Blihos or Bliheris, who, made prisoner by Gawain, reveals to Arthur and his court the identity of the maidens wandering in the woods, of the Fisher King and the Grail, and is so good a story-teller that none can weary of listening to his tales. This in a form, is autobiographical by Henry speaking of Blihis as other than himself and is confirmed by the Count of Poitiers’ commendation of Blihis’s storytelling.
Monseigneur is an honorific appellation in the French language and it would seem that it has been mistranslated or wrongly scribed for Monsieur or ‘master’ by later translators from the French. It has occasional English use as well, as it may be a title before the name of a French prelate, a member of a royal family or any dignitary; all of which might be applied to ‘Monseigneur Blois’. Also it is sometimes used as a name for a Frenchman who has a position on the court which would also apply to Henry. It would seem that having studied rhetoric and Grammar, Henry would qualify in some degree as a raconteur of Grail material to William X, Count of Poitiers between (1126 - 1137), Father of Eleanor of Aquitaine just as it was said that Master Blihis had done and not forgetting, Henry would have been abreast of the Glastonbury material since 1126.
William IX, known as the Troubadour, 1071 - 1126 was Duke of
Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou between 1086 and 1126. He was the son
of William VIII of Aquitaine by his third wife Hildegarde of Burgundy. He
inherited the duchy at the age of fifteen. In 1088, at the age of sixteen,
William married his first wife, Ermengarde of Anjou the daughter of Count Fulk.
It is interesting to note that the biographer of Fulke in the History of Fulke
Fitz-Warine the first to mention the Grail in Welsh literature and more
importantly the book of the Holy vessel, is Eleanor of Aquitaine’s
Grandmother’s family name (Fulke). William IX’s greatest legacy in history was
his renown as a poet. He was the first known troubadour or trouvère, a lyric
poet employing the Occitan or Langued’oc tongues. Eleven of his songs survive
and they are attributed to him under his title as Count of Poitou. This seems
to have become a family tradition as the first Romance poets of the Middle Ages
emerged as founders of the troubadour tradition because like his father before
him, William X, Eleanor’s father was a patron of troubadours, music and
literature. He was an educated man and gave his two daughters an excellent
education. Henry of Blois was obviously entirely fluent in French and had
family ties to Eleanor (His cousin Theobald was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine´s daughter, Marie)
who also was a patron to Chrétien de Troyes
and thus makes the Aquitaine’s the most likely noble family to possess Melkin’s
‘Book of the Grail’ and to provide Henry with the French source material. In the fragmentary remains of Thomas's
Tristan we have a passage, in which the poet refers, as source, to a
certain Bréri, who knew "all the feats, and all the tales, of all the
kings, and all the counts who had lived in Britain." With Henry’s privileged education
and fascination with books he would have found available at Glastonbury, in
conjunction with his royal connections; he does appear to be the obvious person
to correlate British and French sources that had been temporarily
separated. Blois became Bleheris which
was mispronounced as Blihis which got Latinised into Bledhericus and far from
the bounds of our enquiry at the moment one can trace Henry as Gawain in his
own writings.
Briefly, Giraldus Cambrensis refers to the
‘famosus ille fabulator’, Bledhericus, who had lived "shortly before our
time" and whose renown he evidently takes for granted and was familiar to his
readers not necessarily for his personage, but rather for the material said to
have been written by him. Now if Gerald of Wales was writing around 1210 this
would be when the High History of the Grail was at its most Popular. Although
Henry employed his own pseudonym in his work, it would seem that other
appellations from other writers; the Bleheris who, according to Wauchier, had told
tales concerning Gawain, and Arthur's court, one of the tales of
which was certainly the Grail adventure; the Master Blihis, who knew the Grail
mystery, and gave solemn counselling about its revelation; the
Blihos-Bliheris, who knew the Grail, and many other tales; the Bréri,
who knew all the legendary tales concerning the princes of
Britain; and the famous story-teller Bledhericus, of whom Gerald of Wales speaks,
are not separate people, or mere inventions of the separate writers. It would seem as if
Henry, may well have deserved the title ‘famosus ille fabulator,’ but he was only
accounted as the originator of the Grail because people thought Monseigneur
Blois, the consolidator of Melkin material, was the writer of the original book
of the Grail. He was not but he understood the sanctity of the Material. It was however the coincidence of his being
privy to knowledge from British and French sources that was really responsible
for his renown as master Blihis but it seems as if we can account Henry in some
way responsible for the Grail’s evolution as an object.
In 1126 at the age of 29, Henry was appointed
Abbot of Glastonbury and would certainly have come into contact with the works
of Melkin which were extant at that date. He joined the Abbey in a state of
decline when the monks lived in penury. Abbot Henry took immediate action,
proving himself as an excellent leader and architect. He renovated and restored
the monastery and it was through his efforts that by 1143, Glastonbury Abbey is
noted in the Doomsday book as “the wealthiest in England”. Henry’s brother, King Stephen with Queen Matilda were two
of the greatest benefactors to the Templars and it is through the Templar
connection of Eleanor and her proximity to the Crusades that threads of Templar
material got embedded in the romances and as we shall see became the main
guardians of the truths behind the Grail. Henry might have obtained some of his
other material from Templar sources across Europe as Henry’s brother gave the
Templars land in London and other tracts of land where the Templars had their
Manors. It would seem therefore that Henry can be accredited for having written
one of the first
compilations of Grail Romances called ‘The High History of the Holy Graal’.
It appears to have been collated sourcing from
Chrétien de Troye’s work and
from sources which Eleanor’s family owned, not only evidenced by the author
portraying in his writing, such good local knowledge of the environs of
Glastonbury, but also becoming clearer because of his family connections and
the likelihood of Henry and Chrétien’s paths crossing.
If our assumptions are correct, the ‘Book of
the Grail’ was written by Melkin which approximately concurs with Helinands’
date. Henry of Blois was also aware of Melkin’s other writings at Glastonbury,
adding to the fact that it is also credited in the Latin version of the ‘High History of the Holy Graal’ to have
been written by a monk at Glastonbury who, incidentally must have been fluent
in some dialects of the French.
Melkin as we know through his prophesy appears
to have associations with Glastonbury and appears to be single handedly
responsible for coalescing the Joseph tradition. Melkin through the
construction of his riddle kept alive a tradition from great antiquity through
conjoining the Quest of the Grail with a search for Joseph and what was with
him in his tomb. It would seem therefore that Henry de Blois was the ‘famous fabulator’ named ‘Master Blihis’ in the prologue called the
Elucidation of Le Conte Del Graal where it says, "Master Blihis is ‘one
who knew all the stories of the Graal’.
Chrétien de Troyes working for Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughters states that he had been given a Grail
book by them, to be romanticised (inferring a more historical or factual
account), so that it could be read out at court. It would appear therefore,
that the French noble family in possession of Melkin’s work which contained the
historical Joseph account including the gospel of Nicodemus (which Chrétien was aware of), was Melkin’s ‘Book of the
Graal’ in the possession of Eleanor. Henry of Blois was uncle to Theobald V, Count of Blois
and Troyes who was married to Alix de France, daughter of Louis VII, King of
France from his first wife Eleanor d’Aquitaine. Theobald’s brother Henry was married to Marie, Eleanor’s
other daughter, so through the Aquitaine’s possible ownership of Melkin’s book
of the Grail, it is not difficult to see how Henry of Blois, appraised of the
fact that Melkin was the originator of these truths, and being acquainted with
the Glastonbury tradition could have been the one responsible in part for the
British re-emergence. This helped through Crusader and Templar influences of
the Joseph and Arthurian histories, couched and propagated as popular
troubadour tales. In addition, the Count of Blois’ court in Troyes became a
renowned literary troubadour centre. Walter Map was among those who found
hospitality there along with Chrétien.
It
would appear that the source in the ‘Conte du Graal’ came originally from
Britain but it seems likely that Henry used other works of Melkin’s at Glastonbury
to draw upon. We should not forget that Melkin was probably the hermit (pious
monk) referred to by Helinand and that Melkin had of course, to have been aware
of arcane Joseph material, to have portrayed the Joseph and Grail material as
the base for his Prophecy. As we shall see further in our investigation, it is
through Melkin’s thorough understanding of the essence of the Grail that he can
link its discovery with the unveiling of the tomb with a specific point in
time. It is partly due to this prediction
of the unveiling that subsequent commentators referred to his extract about
Joseph’s tomb and the ‘duo fassula’, as a prophecy.
Henry was a highly intelligent person,
probably not wishing to be associated with the more romanticised and plainly embellished
Grail material proliferating at the time because he understood the Grail’s
sanctity in that it was originally an expression of God’s work in man. He Knew
that it was a subject (although not fully comprehended by him) that should not
be treated irreverently and so for reasons regarding his ecclesiastical
position, ‘The High History of the Grail’, was written and alluded to himself
by a pseudonym or nickname.
Henry
was brought to England by King Henry I, to be Abbot of Glastonbury. On 4
October 1129, he was given the Bishopric of Winchester but allowed to keep his
beloved Glastonbury Abbey. He was consecrated as bishop on 17 November
1129. He had ambitions to become
Archbishop of Canterbury but was thwarted. However he did not abandon his work
and obligations to Glastonbury. Except for
a few brief months in 1141 when he changed his alliance to Empress Matilda,
when he thought he would be on the winning side, Henry supported and advised
Stephen his brother and is credited as one of the clergy who helped convince
William of Corbeil, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to crown Stephen. Soon after his appointment to the See of
Winchester, Henry came to resent his subservience to Canterbury. Henry was the
patron of great writers one of whom was Archdeacon, Gerald of Wales who later
unwittingly referred to him as Bledhericus and through his family connections,
had links to the Templars and the Crusades and was well acquainted with William
of Malmesbury. One of the finest
buildings Henry had constructed, was the Hospital of St. Cross on the outskirts
of Winchester. A few years after completion, Henry was to assign the
guardianship over to the Knights Templar. In William of Malmsbury’s work, ‘De
Antiquitate Glasttonie Ecclesie’, which he dedicated to Henry, he tells us that
“the monk he knew personally and in fact whom he “served” was shy, learned and
a great writer”. Henry of Blois gave some sixty books to the great library at
Glastonbury and had ancient books copied, such as Pliny’s Natural History, the
book of Enoch, and several other books of Origen, St. Jerome and St. Augustine
which probably would have been lost except for his efforts. Mostly he will be
remembered for sponsoring the Winchester Bible, the largest illustrated Bible
ever produced (which was still
unfinished at his death).
It is in 1155 though, that Master Robert Wace completes his "Roman de
Brut," a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s "History" in French.
Wace dedicated his work to Eleanor of Aquitaine his patron, and is remembered
as being the first writer to introduce the concept of the "Round
Table" to the Arthurian cycle.
Presumably it was Eleanor who had provided him with a source containing
arcane geomatria supplied by Melkin’s book mixed with the information from
British sources found at Glastonbury supplied by Henry of Blois that were to be
included in the Architecture of Chartres then under the jurisdiction of the
Counts of Blois. Of Arthur, Robert Wace says,
"I know not if you have heard tell the
marvellous gestes and errant deeds related so often of King Arthur. They have
been noised about this mighty realm for so great a space that the truth has
turned to fable and an idle song. Such rhymes are neither sheer bare lies, nor
gospel truths. They should not be considered either an idiot's tale, or given
by inspiration. The minstrel has sung his ballad, the storyteller told over his
tale so frequently; little by little he has decked and painted, till by reason
of his embellishment the truth stands hid in the trappings of a tale. Thus to
make a delectable tune to your ear, history goes masking as fable.
Melkin was a geometer, which was not only borne out by his Prophesy, but
also if we take into account information regarding Montacute as a marker. This Information would have been derived from
the Grail book originally and passed on by Henry of Blois the first Abbot to
pass on this clue that seems to have come down through the ages to Father Good.
It was generally understood that Joseph was hidden within some geometric puzzle,
all the clues of which seem to emanate from Melkin, the one man who knew the
whereabouts of Joseph. Henry of Blois, being Abbot of Glastonbury, presumably
would have passed on the information that Father Good was to possess at a later
date regarding Montacute (that he could have only gleaned from Eleanor’s Book
of the Grail) and the clue it gave to Joseph’s burial site.
It also seems a little suspect
that he chose to be appointed at the young age of 23, as
Prior of Montacute. The one person we suspect of having read Melkin’s Grail
book and who most likely discovered that there was a connection between
Montacute and finding Joseph, just happens to be prior there. If we assume that the studious Henry had come
across the Joseph material from a source that Melkin had written i.e. the Book
of the Grail, then one can understand how the detail of Montacute was probably
obtained by Henry and this information acted as a motivation for Henry’s first
post as a mature man recently arrived from his education in France.
Strangely
enough, it was Eleanor who married King Henry II, the same King Henry who was
supposedly told by a sage the exact place to start digging at Glastonbury Abbey
to find King Arthur’s bones there between two pyramids. As we have covered
Henry II was already dead when Arthur was unearthed but the story could have a
grain of truth, if indeed Henry had learnt of Arthur’s burial in Avalon from
Eleanor or her material. If it was widely accepted that Joseph was buried in
Avalon and because of Joseph’s Glastonbury connection to the church there; it
is possible that the King, learning Arthur was also buried in Avalon also from
the French source, may indeed have put this very idea of Avalon being equated
with Glastonbury into the monks heads. It is possible that subsequently after
the kings death they eventually, having lost their patron, decided to carry out
the bogus unearthing of Arthur citing him as a witness.
Although John Leland, in
1534 says that the book he saw of Melkin’s, he dated to 450AD and this passage
from Helinand’s chronicle relates the angels appearance to Melkin in 717, it
seems safe to assume that the 500 year difference until Helinand actually wrote
would allow for an error of a century or two.
One can only deduce that
Helinand is referring to Melkin, as Melkin deals with the same two subjects,
that of Joseph and the Grail in his Prophesy. It will become apparent to the
reader, as we progress, that Melkin’s ‘Book of the Graal’ or ‘Of the Grades or
by Degrees’ had express knowledge of what the Gradatim was, as a series of
‘grades’ toward spiritual enlightenment and this revelation of the Grail was
known and understood by Melkin. He knew that it would be marked by an event in
time, i.e. the unveiling of the tomb at a predestined point in time, but we
will deal with this explanation of ‘Time’ later.
One cannot be certain if Helinand’s extract is the first
passage which refers to the Grail directly at this early date, but the same
date was quoted by Walter Map, an early Grail writer in reference as a source.
If it is genuine, it is the closest we get to the original source of Melkin the
consolidator of material found in the tomb. This is the point at which it
becomes a question of faith for those who believe in Angels or for the
pragmatic to answer ‘from where did
Melkin receive instruction’? If we
consider the Grail as arcane knowledge linked to a Divine Plan then divine intervention
by apparition should not be excluded especially when we consider Melkin’s link
to an apparition by St. Michael that is attributed to St. Aubert at Mont –St-
Michel discussed in a later chapter.
Who imparted the knowledge for the original source if it was
not an angel that indeed gave Melkin his insight? More importantly, how were
they or he able to leave behind such exact geometrical and geographic
instructions with surveying pin point accuracy?
One must remember that if Melkin did live around 450 to 650AD then where
was this source and in what language, before Melkin transcribed all its
information into Latin? This source and the Grail book will be found at the
unveiling of the tomb. The arcane source material will have remained in the
tomb but certainly the Grail book was returned to the tomb by the Templars.
There must be a source book for Melkin to have transcribed from Hebrew to
render Shirei ha Ma'a lot’ but to understand and
relate in the Grail book about the Grades of Enlightenement would indicate some
exterior inspiration.
In Helinand’s chronicle, he derives ‘graal’
from ‘gradalis’ and sets the date for the British hermit's vision of the Grail
at 707 or 717 A.D, but we are told that Melkin was ‘before’ Arthur and Merlin.
This proposition now seems inaccurate if we take this date and the fact that
Melkin knows where Arthur is buried. It
is still not certain how this transition of the ‘Grades’ evolved into an object
except from obvious misinterpretation, but Helinand's ‘gradalis’ did not
resemble a chalice but rather a dish on which meats were served. This semantically
fits with the other descriptions of the Holy Grail as a receptacle, since
Joseph of Arimathea uses the Grail to catch blood and sweat alluded to by
Melkin and implies that it is a vessel that holds liquid. Helinand states that Gradalis
or Gradale means a dish, wide and somewhat
deep by definition, in which rich meats are served to the rich in degrees-
gradatim. One wonders again if this is
not a misunderstanding of the spiritually rich as opposed to the wasteland or
dearth which is cured on attainment of the Grail in the romances. The
singular Chalice is often thought of as the receptacle used at the Last Supper
or is a relic of the Passion in which both blood and sweat were contained. Some
scholars posit that the concept of the Grail as a platter preceded the notion
of the Grail as the "Kiddush Cup" from the Last Supper positing that
primarily it was a Paschal Dish and not the Eucharistic vessel used by the
twelve disciples. The Grail is none of these because Melkin describes it so
accurately, he leaves no doubt as to its composition.
When
Chrétien de Troyes refers to the ‘Graal’ in ‘le Conte du Graal, Chrétien refers
to his object not as “the Grail”, but as “un graal”, “a grail”, implying that
in the source document it was used in context as a common noun and that there
were more than one as implied by Melkin’s book of the Grail about Grades or
Degrees to enlightenment which is the whole essence of what the Grail is; an
objective description of the ‘Divine Plan’ and the romances have in a way achieved
a heightened awareness or preparation in readying the world as a form of
pre-cognition.
It is difficult to ascertain whether Melkin, did survey the
angles and distances that we will be elucidating when we investigate Melkin’s
prophecy, because this art was supposedly lost in the sixth century Dark Ages,
when European mapping techniques were still very crude. Melkin, however, passes on precise and
accurate information given in his riddle so where did he get it from? If it was not Melkin who surveyed the British
landscape by his own skill, which points to where Joseph and Jesus were buried
in the Island of Ictis, then how was it that he could leave us such precise
directions? Was it truly by divine intervention as Helinand posits, or was
there original ancient mapping instructions which indicated and marked Ley
lines from which Melkin compiled his prophecy? If one considers that an entire
body of knowledge may have existed since very early days from the offspring of
Zerah through a line of Kings that ended with Arthur, then Melkin could have
had access to this when he buried King Arthur.
Was he, like Father Good, just the messenger, perpetuating a tradition
and preserving directions to Joseph’s resting place to be found in a future
generation? The hardest question to
answer is; “who did the original surveying and at what stage in history were
the coordinates of these Ley Lines recorded and surveyed as pertaining to what
was hidden in Ictis”? If we assume that the French Templars possessed knowledge
of this Ley line system (which will become apparent), then this geometry was
also contained in the French Book of the Grail. If this assumption is correct
then it might explain where Henry of Blois got the information about Montacute
that was passed on to Father Good down through the ages by the Abbots. The
argument against it being divine intervention leaves only two options, one
being Melkin did survey the lines but how is this then linked to the Geometry
of the pyramid. The other option would be that the Island was surveyed long ago
as part of the pyramid construct but to what purpose and what part does the
island play in relation to the original St.Michael Ley line before the Templars
put their stamp on it and named it as such.
If the extract account of the Grail from Helinand was written
in Latin around 707AD, it indicates that, before the five main romance writers,
Guiot le Provencal, Chrétien de Troyes, Walter Map,
Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Albrecht von Scharfenberg, began their works, there
was a Latin original which would explain how Henry
of Blois might have made the Montacute connection that was passed to Father
Good. But then one has to question whether Henry actually saw the French
original translation of the Grail book or the original Latin from Melkin.
As
regards to when the original was written given the Saxon connection to Arthur,
it would seem soon after Arthur’s demise and possibly even written in France
although Helinand’s source seems to indicate an Apparition as taking place in
Britain. The original Latin version
written by Melkin we should guess at around 650 AD to be followed by a French
translation (the one Helinand is referring to) and this is what Eleanor’s
father and Grandfather were captivated by.
It is with this family that the troubadour tradition concerning the
Grail commenced to evolve into the various forms of romances. Before any of the
early named Grail writers mentioned above came on the scene there was most
probably a more oral court tradition and it would seem these early troubadours
recognised at this early date that the Grail book contained sacred information.
The Grail books appearance was either then ascribed the date by Helinand or
more probably given the date of when his source wrote of the Latin originals
first appearance at court. Because of
the book’s profundity, knowledge and the nature of its material, it was assumed
it could only have been delivered by an angel who duly relayed it to the hermit
better known as Melkin. In a later chapter we will cover the possibility that
Burgh Island’s association as a Tomb in connection with St. Michael preceded
even the Templars and if indeed it is the cause for the naming of Mont-
Saint-Michel as Mons Tomba and its association with an angelic apparition by
St. Michael to a monk.
It was Robert de Boron circa 1170 who relates the story of
the shield that was later to become the Arms of Glastonbury that Father Good
investigated to find a clue to Joseph’s burial site. The shield given to Evalak by Josaphes, Joseph of
Arimathea’s son, had a red cross on it that was also to become the symbol of
the Rosicrucians and the Templars.
Robert tells us that, following Evalak's victory over Tholomer, the red
cross upon it disappeared, then Josaphes, just before his death, asked
Mordrains to bring the shield to him.
Continuing the story he then recounts that Josaphes with his own blood
inscribed another cross on the shield and gave it back to Mordrains, and
afterward it was placed upon the grave of Duke Nasciens, until Galahad would
come and retrieve it. Galahad then possesses a sword which had belonged to King
David, the hilt of which was covered by King Solomon with precious stones and
the story ensues with an adventure with the holy bleeding lance, and Galahad’s
eventual achievement of the Saint Graal, followed by his death at Sarras.
Thomas Malory's Morte
D’Arthur has very much the same story with his own additions, the early French
tradition keeping links with the Holy Land threaded throughout the narrative.
Is Solomon’s sword’s iconic appearance in the original sources hinting at the
inter-relationship of the two twins Pharez and Zerah’s separate bloodlines, as
far back as King David, Solomon’s father, but somehow imputing the transference
of kingship to Britain. The shield obviously being transformed in the tale with
blood marks on it, to a Rosicrucian emblem and an association with the
Templars, who not only were probably at this stage in possession of the Latin
source in France after Eleanor but were now releasing their source material in
response to the new interest shown in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s widely read
history of the kings of Britain.
Evalak’s shield then by close association
with Joseph was adopted as the Arms of Glastonbury. Glastonbury substituted the
knotted wooden cross from the staff planted by Joseph at Glastonbury and then
added the two vessels each side to coincide with the ‘duo fassula’ while the
blood inscribed cross of Evalak also become the Templar emblem.
The subject matter of our
investigation seems so wide, and interrelated from Ictis to Avalon via
Glastonbury and the Grail stories. Evalak king of
Sarras, Knights looking for the Graal in the East, Egypt, Jerusalem, the
Templars’ cross, stories of Jesus in England, Joseph of Arimathea being buried
with the Grail, Arthur, the oil with
which Josaphes was consecrated, being kept in the Grail-ark. This oil with
which a line of Kings are consecrated, while being kept at Sarras, swords and
ships from Solomon, pyramids at Glastonbury, and prophecies in riddle form, but
all of these having a link to Jesus.
Man from the dawn of consciousness, has advanced and gained a
large amount of knowledge from stories recounted by previous generations that
sometimes lived millennia before him and the individual has to learn and judge
the validity of this corpus of knowledge in his short 70 years of life. The relevance of the stories in this enquiry
are for mankind as a whole, as if we are being prepared for a revelation,
occult information couched within the Grail stories, and bardic prophecies
without which, we would not comprehend a coming of heightened consciousness,
and the proof that mankind needs. A proof that aligns with scriptures held as
sacred by the Abrahamic religions i.e. the Prophets. The proof that is
necessary for Mankind to progress in consciousness is the knowledge that there
is some form of divine intervention which directs events. If Man were to have a
more intellectual knowledge of God rather than wholly Faith based, there would
be a shift in the consciousness of Mankind. There is understanding of this
expectation even outside the arena of our investigation in the prophecy of Paracelcus, and the reformation of
the whole world order.
Quod utilius
Deus patefieri sinet, quod autem majoris momenti est, vulgo adhuc latet usque
ad Eliæ Artistæ adventum, quando is venerit.
"God will permit a discovery of
the highest importance to be made, it must be hidden till the advent of the
artist Elias." He also states;
Hoc item verum
est nihil est absconditum quod non sit retegendum; ideo, post me veniet cujus
magnale nundum vivit qui multa revelabit.
"And it is true, there is
nothing concealed which shall not be discovered; for which cause a marvellous
being shall come after me, who as yet lives not, and who shall reveal many
things."
In Malachi
4:5 See, I will send
you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. This passage comes straight after an
admonishment to obey the Law of Moses the very subject the Archangel is
supposed to dispute with the Dragon. Jehosaphat mentioned in Melkin’s prophecy,
is the same day to which Malachi refers; so is St. Michael synonymous with
Elijah? It would
seem that the different religions would need a proof of provenance of some sort
to reunite them, especially those of the Abrahamic tradition, as all have been
derived from one heritage and been guided by one divine plan. Of course, in Jewish, Moslem and Christian
traditions this unifier is Michael the Archangel, attested by Enoch first and
then confirmed later by the Biblical prophets.
The very purpose of prophecy is realisation or gnosis and if St. Michael
is to bring together these three Abrahamic faiths there will be a need to eradicate
religion in all its divisive forms of theological dogma and creed. The very reality of what was foretold by
these prophets needs to actually transpire and then there will be the proof
needed by mankind. The problem is that gnosis of an omnipotent God needs be
re-cognised . The Grail stories with what they reveal, when aligned with the
prophets are just the vehicle to bring about this paradigm shift of
consciousness. After all, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and has been for
2000 years but it is only a heightened consciousness that recognises this fact
until the time comes when this shift in consciousness occurs and this is at the
discovery of the Tomb and what it reveals to mankind.
Chrétien de Troyes poem tells of the
passages through life of a young knight called Percival, but it is written in
an uneasy form and suddenly goes from a story about Percival into the
adventures he has on the way to being a knight.
Percival is the first of the three Grail stories to be published and in
the narrative it describes the vessel of the Holy Grail as a golden dish and
also speaks of a Lance dripping with blood that appears with the Grail conveyed
ceremoniously at times throughout a meal he is having. The Grail romances cover
too many variations to be discussed here, but as we focused on the essential
information provided by Pytheas that led us to the Island of Ictis, so, too,
must we look at the essential core of what the Grail romances have in common,
to understand their meaning. It is evident that the Grail writers were not
really concerned with historical time as they interwove their various versions
from a core body of material.
The essential threads of information that
align themselves even semantically and allegorically seem to consist of Joseph
of Arimathea, the Grail, Knightly pursuits and a quest, but essentially it was
a British matter. Joseph has a
connection to Jesus and most of the Grail heroes have a connection to Joseph
and so it would seem a bloodline or inheritance is inferred. The Grail seems to be an object with direct
connections to Jesus having been brought to Britain by Joseph. The quest appears to be, to find the Grail
but the Grail seems hard to define and thus looking for it makes it all the
more difficult. The Grail although greatly connected to Jesus (who was the one
responsible for a major part of Man’s enlightenment) is also synonymous with
the developmental stages of enlightenment in the individual, referred to as
grades in the Book of the Grail and allegorised as knightly pursuits.
Melkin
having prior knowledge of this process or divine plan would in effect equate
him as having equal standing with Biblical prophets, informing us of future
events in ’Time’ but also having knowledge that his prophecy relates in part to
degrees of Spiritual enlightenment which are set in a finite timespan.Glastonbury is not the Island of Avalon when one takes into account also that Burgh Island used to be Ictis, but this entire story is clearly laid out in the Book And Did Those Feet by Michael Goldsworthy.
Bigbury,
aptly named, after the immense importance of what is buried there, is a small
village situated one and a half miles from Bigbury on Sea, the small seaside
Hamlet that derives its name from that which is buried on the island opposite,
across the sand causeway. For years, the
wagons related by Pytheas would have passed through Bigbury, having come along
the tidal road from Aveton Gifford, conveying their tin ingots down to the
fabled island of Ictis. The small
village just along the road called St Anne's Chapel, named after Jesus's
grandmother, most probably commemorating the arrival with the Magdalene while
Kingston, the next village was named after the arrival of Jesus himself or one
of Joseph’s descendants such as Arthur. Loddiswell (the Lords well) is on the
route that the Tin was carried down to Ictis from Southern Dartmoor . Challaborough opposite the Island would seem
to derive its name from after the Templar visit when the Grail was deemed to be
a Chalice.
Aveton Gifford
situated at the tidal limit of the River Avon, received its name from being
situated on the River Avon, Aune or Aven on the oldest maps, and also from Walter
Giffard, Lord of Longueville, who was appointed a commissioner by William the
Conqueror to compile the Domesday Book. Strangely enough it was a descendant of
his a one Walter Giffard that built the St.Michael church at Brent Tor around
1155, before many of the Templar churches.
Kingsbridge
the largest market town in the South Hams at the Head of the Salcombe Estuary,
most probably derived its name from the northern most limit of the Southern
promontory kingdom described by Pytheas as Belerion which defined the
southernmost limit of the Saxon named county of Wessex at a later date. Bolt
head and Bolt tail received their name from the God Bel from Zerah’s arrival. It is very probable that since early times
Devon and Cornwall survived as a small kingdom since the arrival of Zerah,
financed by the tin trade through to the time of King Arthur. Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s account bestowed on Arthur a Welsh backdrop but as explained earlier,
that tradition is most likely derived from Celtic association rather than from
purely Welsh historical fact. It is more
likely that Arthur defended the South West, not going further than Dorset yet
his fame became national when he defeated the encroaching Saxons.
The earliest writer to
describe the Battle of Mons Badonicus, King Arthur's greatest victory, is in
the ‘De Excidio
et Conquestu Britanniae, written by the monk, Gildas in the mid-6th century. In these writings,
Gildas states that the battle was a major victory for the Britons after a period of continual encroachment by the Saxon invaders. Gildas went onto relate
that this halted the Saxon advancement and brought a short period of
peace. Gildas related that this siege
took place 44 years before the writing of his book. Although not named by Gildas (but nor is
anyone else), it seems that Arthur is accredited with this victory. So this
puts King Arthur in the right location at the right time in history, as the
siege is supposed to have taken place at Badbury hillfort in Dorset.
Figure 59
Showing the tidal road up to Aveton Gifford with the Serpentine river flowing
down to Burgh Island as it is depicted in Leonardo’s ‘Yarnwinder’ painting
Aveton Gifford's
history and connection with the tin trade since the earliest times, is now
completely forgotten due to the secrecy maintained around the island that it
once served as a probable provender of the gatekeeper community that existed on
Folly hill. Domesday much later, records Jewish roots in the area, a certain
‘Judhael holds Loddiswell’ that includes a fishery that pays 30 salmon. The island of Ictis would have been decommissioned,
just prior to Jesus having been buried there, during the gradual southern
advancement after the Roman invasion. It
is incredible that Pliny the Elder referred to this island of Ictis long after
the island had been made redundant and Jesus had found his rest within. The southern British tin trade would have
experienced decreases in demand as the Romans captured the tin deposits in
northern Spain and Portugal after the defeat of the Carthaginians in 206
BC. Due to the overall increase in
demand worldwide at that time, the lull would have been shortlived. The Veneti, cousins of the Devonians made up
a large tribe which inhabited western Gaul and who were in the business of conveying
the tin over to France as Diodorous related for its 30 day journey south to
Marseille. It is probably at this point
in 56 BC after Julius Caesar had destroyed all the ships of the Veniti that Ictis’s
prominence started to dwindle.
The ancestry
of the Dumnonni, the ‘Devon People,’ who in part were derived from Zerah, constituted
the main part of a legendry kingdom with such progeny as Utherpendragon, King
Arthur and Galahad, which evaded as long as possible the Roman encroachment and
kept secret, the contents of the Island of Avalon. After the Roman conquest, came the running
down of stock and eventual closure of Ictis, as it would have acted as a focal
point for pillage and until the time of King Arthur there was a move westwards
of the tin trade into Cornwall with the advancements of mining methods. With the arrival of the Saxons, there was a migration
across the channel of some of the Dumnonian population, into western France to
Amorica, where many of the Celtic race of Dumnonni had close ties to the
Veniti, which eventually became known as Little Britain or Brittany. However, the Devon and Cornwall kingdom that
once existed before the Roman invasion, got squeezed further west into Cornwall
as the Romans occupied Exeter and Plymouth.
Hence, for the first four or five centuries after the Roman invasion,
the illustrious line of Kings descended from Judah and Joseph stayed south
probably moving west of the Tamar toward Tintagel and eventually, after Rome's
demise, re-emerged further north to keep the Saxons at bay. The Location of
Avalon was still known as it is here that Arthur was transported in the hope
that a miracle might be wrought upon his wounded body.
In ancient
times, from the melting of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, there was a
gradual separation of the landmass between France and Britain as rivers poured
across the lowland plain of Lyonesse. Eventually this gave rise to a coastline
that extended out as far as Eddystone rock around 6000 years ago as the English
channel flooded. As all these rivers ran
off the Moors, cutting through the granite, the cassiterite was separated for
the early ‘Tinners’ to gather and this marked the beginning of the Bronze Age in
Britain.
Not only is
this Bronze Age activity, evident throughout Dartmoor, but we can see its early
beginnings less than 8 miles distant from Ictis, on the escarpment between the
Erm and the Avon Rivers, and in the valleys on either side. Here, an early
establishment fanned out, towards Plymouth and northward, centred around the
obvious advantage offered by Ictis as a tin depot, which eventually came to
serve the whole of Dartmoor.
Figure 60 Showing
the remains of three round ’Tinners’ huts in the foreground which have nearly
been submerged by the Avon dam. The picture is taken from the dam wall looking
up the valley toward the river’s source on Dartmoor where a Bronze age burial
Cairn is visible
Evidence of
scars upon the landscape, with deep gullies and large indentations into the
hillsides, contours scoured into the land by the Tinners industry, are a record
of the immense mining activity carried out from the discovery of tin until the
beginning of the Roman era. The longest
stone row anywhere in Britain and the abundance of standing stones and cairns
above Ivybridge and South Brent, all bear witness to a hive of industry by the
late Neolithic and early Bronze Age Tinners. In fact this area gives the
largest density of these stone works anywhere in Britain. The early days of the
Tinners after gravitating from the riverbed's themselves, evolved to the
process of tin streaming, much as one would look for gold, which in turn
evolved into later processes of ‘costeaning and shamelling’, leaving scars of
shallow pits which followed the veins or lodes. This evolution eventually gravitated
westward toward Plymouth, as aboveground sources dwindled and then to mining further
north on the moors at a later date. The
smelting process from the early Tinners was fairly basic and consisted of
heating the black tin and converting it into white tin at source, by simply
lighting a fire in a hole in the ground or rock pool and retrieving the smelted
ore from the ashes in the ground. This
process was obviously very inefficient and over a period of 1,500 years accompanied
by the later evolution of bellows and furnaces, ‘blowing houses’ evolved which
came to be known as ‘Jews houses’.
In an area
called Shipley Bridge, just below the Avon dam there is early evidence of
wooden pegs been used along fault lines within the granite outcrops, which upon
expansion would separate the granite along the lode line exposing the tin ore,
which could then be scraped away from the granite block. There is also another strange feature at
Shipley Bridge the like, of which is not evident elsewhere around the moors;
and that is the abundance of Lebanese Barouk cedars, of the same variety as
those found in Lebanon today from the Chouf Region. It is possible
that these have self-perpetuated since the days of the arrival of Zerah, as it
was not uncommon practice to carry the seeds of useful trees from one's own
homeland, especially as these trees were ideal for construction with the
minimum amount of cuts. It is clear from
archaeological evidence, that these straight poles, were used abundantly in the
settlements surrounding the reservoir, such as ‘Riders Rings’ and those on Hickaton
Hill, where findings showed that conical roofs of the huts were supported by a
central pole and then again by an interior ring of posts a meter inside the
external wall.
Figure 60a
Showing ‘Riders Rings’ a Bronze age hut enclosure with the remains of several
huts and the tin producing Valley in the background.
Archaeological
evidence is prolific, with signs of small communities living and herding on the
edge of southern Dartmoor, until the boom arrived and the tin export bonanza
was born. These Tinners were in the business of supplying the Mediterranean
cultures in exchange for their sophisticated wares and delicacies such as wines,
pottery and jewellery. Diodorous
commenting on the Celtic thirst, related that the Mediterranean traders got a
good price for each amphora of wine, being exchanged for a slave by the
Dumnonian.
Geologically the vertical nature of what used
to be a horizontally formed sedimentary slate found throughout the rock at Burgh
Island, gives a perfect environment in which to construct a storage cave. Just
as a hump back bridge maintains its structure, so too this island will have not
moved and the keystones comprising the vault ceiling will have been locked in
place since the cave was hewed.
Burgh Island,
‘where the Aven's waters with the sea are mixed; Saint Michael firmly on a rock
is fixed’, so aptly described by Camden, is one of the most beautiful sights to
behold as one descends down the old tin route from Bigbury. Today, there stands
a large Art Deco hotel where the chapel dedicated to St. Michael once stood. The island was referred to in 1411 as St.
Michael de la burgh or the island of St. Milburga later and as an iceberg translates
as an island or rock of ice, so a ‘burgh’ meant rock or island, giving the
appellation in this book, ‘St. Michael’s Rock’. Early maps show that the chapel
stood on the top of the island where the ‘Huers hut’ now stands. It is even rumoured that there once stood a
monastery on this island, but this will be covered in a later chapter as it
appears the rumour of this Island caused
much confusion for the early community of Mont-saint-Michel. There are records
of Monks from Buckfastleigh maintaining a Light house on the Island which does
seem a little odd given the Islands remoteness and Lack of prominence within
the bay of Bigbury. The reason for their interest in keeping a light might just
have been a cover, taking over guardianship from a now disbanded monastic
presence. It would appear however that the Norman Benedictines of
Mont-saint-Michel had heard of an Island called ‘St. Michael by the sea’ and
that Island at Burgh Island was worth faking a charter to get ownership, but they occupied St.Michael’s mount in
Cornwall by mistake thinking they were in fact taking ownership of a rumoured
island that was a tomb of great importance.
If we are correct about the directions given
by Melkin in his riddle refering to a place of Prayer ‘ad orandam’ at the
verge, there must have been something that resembled a religious building in
the six or seven hundreds before Melkin
left for Mont-saint-Michel. One must not forget that Melkin was not aware of what
would transpire in the interim concerning any community at Burgh Island. The ’duo
fassula’ has been taken from the vault and possibly an older place of prayer
has been destroyed since the time he wrote, until the replacement St. Michael
church was built. One translation of Melkin’s directions could be rendered, Ora tor
cratibus preparatis super potentem
adorandam uirginem supradictis sperulatis locum habitantibus tredecim:
At a coastal
tor, prepared there above a crater, (the mermaid pool) toward (or after) where
one prays, at the verge high up in Ictis is where they dwell in the Sepulchre
at thirteen degrees. As we have
learned earlier, this could also be seen as ‘at the brim of the verge’.
It seems that
local lore places the original Chapel where the hotel stands now. For any prospector
wishing to find the entrance to the Sepulchre, it is made very clear how to
find it within these pages, because the St. Michael Chapel was surely built on
a different site than the original building that is referred to by Melkin.
Figure 62 Showing the Huer’s hut on the top of Burgh Island. When the first hotel was built, the hut had been a tea room so that walkers could rest there.
The ‘Huer’s hut’ so named, apparently because of the fact that lookouts from this vantage point, used to give a ‘hue and cry’ to the Pilchard fleets situated out in the Bay, to direct them to the shoals. It is very unlikely that there was ever a job or activity that involved a ‘hue and cry’ as the Bigbury Bay is vast and more often than not the wind would be in a contrary direction to carry voices. It's more probable that the name echoes from the past and has its roots from those who ‘hewed’ out the vault. It seems highly unlikely that this is where the St. Michael chapel once stood, but it is quite remarkable that from approximately 100 yards to the right of dead centre in the middle of the Avebury stone circle, is 104 nautical miles to the ‘Huer’s Hut’, the precise number of miles given by Melkin in his riddle, directing us to where Joseph and Jesus lay. The map shown in figure 49 marks the ‘Huer’s hut’ as the site of the old St. Michael tower and this seems to concur with what Camden had remarked as ‘firmly on a rock is fixed’ which does tend to indicate its dominant position. The island also lies in a ‘Southern Angle’ on a line that is precisely 13 degrees from the St. Michael Ley line which it bifurcates inside the Avebury circle, exactly as Melkin had told us.
Figure 63
Shows the protected landfall at Ictis for visiting foreign trading vessels to
beach in safety, on the eastern side of the causeway.
As one
crosses the sand causeway, the Pilchard Inn built in 1336, (around the same
time as the Templar chapel to St. Michael), sits just below the present Art Deco
hotel and is rich in history. It is said to be patrolled by its own friendly
ghost Tom Crocker a master smuggler, who was shot to death by a customs officer
but this seems unlikely with the remains of such illustrious personages taking
their rest close by. Outwardly, the
island in no way reveals its inner contents or its past history, and much has
happened since the two hotels have been built upon the site of the old chapel, possibly
prompting us to think that it could be the site of the entrance to the underground
chamber. The building of the second hotel was completed in 1929 and there had
been no use of any original stonework from the chapel. The original hotel built by George Chirgwin
the musical entertainer, was constructed entirely of wood while Archie
Nettlefold, the builder of the ‘Great White Palace’ had brought all his
building materials across the sand causeway. On 31 May 1942 the hotel was
bombed and lost the top two floors of the of the Art Deco structure. Seven
months later the church in Aveton Gifford from which Leonardo had painted his
Lansdowne perspective, was also destroyed by a Focke-Wulf 190 thinking it was
Loddiswell church.
There had of
course been rumours, since the discovery in 1991 of the tin ingots at the mouth
of the River Erm, that Burgh Island could have been the Island of Ictis, but
tradition and modern research had placed it in St. Michael’s Mount, Marazion.
Figure 64 showing the impracticality of arriving to pick up tin on a rocky foreshore on the tidal causeway of St. Michael’s Mount near Marazion in Cornwall. The picture is taken looking toward Marazion in the fog.
High up on Bolt tail the old iron age encampment on the headland from Inner Hope Cove looks down across Bigbury Bay and would have been a perfect look out and signalling station for alerting the tin Agency of approaching Roman ships trying to interfere with the trade; a local trade that had existed for more than a thousand years before their arrival. The entrance to the Hillfort is oddly aligned to look directly over Ictis as seen in figure 65 and probably worked in conjunction with the hill enclosure of Folly Hill just above Bigbury on Sea as look out stations for approaching vessels.
The Folly Hill
site which is being archeologically excavated shows evidence of a large
community living along the hillside from the present Bigbury Golf course to the other side of what
used to be the cart route down from the tin deposits on the moors. Bronze Age pits
were uncovered underneath the Iron Age surfaces and have been dated by ceramics.
Only a small area along this ridge at Folly hill has been archeologically
surveyed but there is evidence through high resolution magnetic gradiometry and
from surface evidence that a large community lived along the ridge. This was
probably the gate community that controlled Ictis and through which the cart
traffic carrying tin had to pass.
Presently the
archaeological excavation carried out by Dr Eileen Wilkes has dated the site to
around 300BC through to approximately 300 AD and shows evidence of extensive
trade with the continent. Around 800
shards have been found, dated to this era including examples of ‘South West
Decorative Ware’ usually found in Cornwall, local ‘Coarse Ware’, ‘Black
Burnished Ware’ from the Poole area and Exeter ‘Fortress Ware’. Amongst these shards were red ‘Samian Roman
pottery’, Romano British Ware and pieces of pottery from Brittany and Germany.
This does show early evidence of trade but what is most interesting is the find
of some locally made granite clays and these are surely evidence of the earlier
culture that initially set up Ictis as the Agency and are probably commensurate
with the earlier dwellings. Other Iron Age sites are all within sight of each other , one just east
of the mouth of the Erm, were obviously strategically placed as communities
engaged in commerce and the support of Ictis.
Figure 66
Showing a view from the Folly hill community down over Bantham harbour. Also
showing the ‘Long Stone’ to the right.
In the great storm of 1703, apart from destroying the Eddystone lighthouse, it uncovered a Roman camp on the beach at Bantham ham. At the time of the Roman invasion of Britain, Ictis had ceased to exist as the tin agency, but the Romans had obviously eventually made use of the little port of Bantham. With the recent building of the lifeguard hut on Bantham beach, archaeologists have noticed signs of settlement from a very early time through the iron age with the discovery of later artefacts confirming trade with the Mediterranean and Phoenicians.
The translation
of the word Emporium is now more plainly understood as Ictis acts as a trading
post with a safe haven harbour that serves both coastal traffic bringing tin to
market and tin transported by cart on an ancient trackway from the southern
edge of Dartmoor.
In 2003 a component of an Iron-age ‘Linch-pin’
was found south west of the iron-age hill fort of ‘Blackdown Rings’. No other
iron-age finds have been found in the area, which indicates that the cart pin
was lost ‘en route’ down from Shipley Bridge to Ictis. The Pin is of the
Kirkburn type and dated to around 300BC. Where this pin was found is right next
to the oldest road down from the alluvial tin deposits on Southern Dartmoor
which leads to the tidal road in Aveton Gifford, the same track that the wagons
took to get to Ictis. Just as Pytheas
had said, carts brought the tin to the beach. The use of carts is rare in the
hilly terrain of Devon, compared with the rest of the country and for the most
part, pack horses were used. So this really is a singular link to the usage of
carts in a prehistoric period because the tin ingots would have been too cumbersome
for the back of a pack horse. The Devon Archaeological Society goes on to say
in their report:
‘The
Loddiswell find is the only example known so far in Devon of a piece of
equipment which can with reasonable confidence be attributed to the prehistoric
chariot or cart. It therefore provides the earliest evidence in the county for
the use of a wheeled vehicle. Such vehicles seem not to have been common in
many parts of rural Devon even in the 17th and 18th centuries, when
pack horses were preferred’.
The most
amazing evidence which confirms this as the old trackway where the linch pin
was found, is the trackway’s continued use into Roman times where Mr Terence
Hockin has found many Roman artifacts such as coin dated to Claudius and a
small Roman statue. It should not be forgotten that the tinners of old in Pytheas’
day would have only comparatively light trade goods in effect to take back up
to the southern hills of Dartmoor by cart. It seems probable that the transport
facility would have been organised by the Ictis Agency and may well have gone
along the shoreline of the river when the carts were too full to go uphill
Folly Hill from the end of the tidal road. These heavy loads not stored at
Ictis would have been transferred onto boats having come further upstream. The
main route that Pytheas would have witnessed being carted down through Bigbury
having come along the tidal road portrayed by Leonardo.
Figure 66a Showing the view from the spot where the Linch Pin was found leading down to Hatch Bridge and the Aveton Gifford tidal road that leads out to Ictis.
Figure 66b Showing signs of wear from ancient cart tracks running along the shore a few meters further on from the end of the present tidal road
There have been other finds beneath the shifting dunes of Bantham Ham, but it is the remarkable find of some 40 tin ingots by divers of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group that really goes a long way to concur with the story related by Strabo over 2000 years ago that a sea captain deliberately ran his boat on the rocks to keep Ictis secret.
Figure 67
Shows the perfect landfall of Ictis for any foreign trading vessel at all
states of the tide by comparison with the rocky foreshore of St. Michael’s
Mount.
The entrance to the Erme mouth is partly obstructed by West Mary's Rock and East Mary's Rock and the chain of small rocks lurking beneath the water that join them. There is evidence of a small harbour at Oldaport but this with a hazardous entrance was probably not as well used by foreign vessels as Bantham was. East and West Mary's rocks are uncovered only slightly at low tide and on a floodtide the entrance looks navigable and the reef is unseen. This is obviously what fooled the Roman ship following our brave Phoenician captain that we related earlier.
Most of the
ingots found just to the north of West Mary’s Rock, were spread out and worn by
the tidal flow while also being encrusted with marine life and the ingots had
eroded and become oxidised. Most were
plano–convex (bun shaped), all of them different shapes and sizes having been
probably cast in many different locations upon Dartmoor. The shaped ingots
described by Diodorous as ‘astragali’ (some commentators Astralagi Astragalus)
seems obtuse as a reference to shape as most examples found were once bun
shaped before oxidation due to rock moulds caused by eddies at the sides of the
rivers where the cassiterite was collected. The most probable explanation of
the etymology of this term in reference to an ingot is some reference to its
metallic brightness and provenance as it
could have been termed a Gallic star or Astro-Gallus.
It seems Pytheas, if indeed this word is his
was originally commenting on the uniformity of shape, caused by similar rock
pool indentations, but size differs greatly amongst all the existing examples, as the Tinners used different moulds along the
river edges. From the earliest time, a collection of cassiterite would have
been placed in an indent in the rock and a fire lit above it, as tin melts at the low temperature of
about 230°C.
However, the heaviest example found
at the mouth of the Erm was rectangular and flat with a slightly thickened rim,
indicating that it was cast in a fabricated mould of stone and could be of a
more modern date. It could be the case that Ictis was releasing a stockpile of
ancient tin ingots along with more later and larger moulded ones in the Roman
era which is the era Strabo relates. The reason for change of shape could be the
result of stronger vessel design from wood and fastenings. Certainly at this
late period in Ictis’ history the Ingots shape would not have been wholly dependent
upon fitting them within a vessel fabricated from animal skin nor would the tin
have only been collected next to water. After all, just before the invasion,
the ingots would have been sold by weight with no regard to inventory date. The most famous tin ingot found in 1812 just
off the sand at St. Mawes Falmouth (another account makes it Carrick or 1823), weighed 72 kg and is obviously of a
much later date and could as some say be a hoax of 18th century
fabrication to support the Ictis theory in Cornwall. The variation in the Tinners ingot sizes and
shapes indicates that Ictis was in business over a long period of time and would
not have been concerened with how long it kept its stock. Strabo was writing
around 40 BC and this is the precise time that Ictis would have been under a
lot of Roman pressure causing the operators to liquidate their stock. This
could be the reason found for the differing sises and shapes found at the Erm
site. One would assume that it was during this 70 to 80 year period before
Jesus was entombed in Ictis around 36AD, that the Island went through its
decline and closure.
Figure 67a Showing the entrance to the Erm estuary looking west at mid tide in a southerly wind, where the Phonecian captain’s cargo of tin ingots were found just north of West Mary’s rocks just inshore of the breaking reef.
The fact that if indeed these are the very ingots of our brave Phonecian captain at the mouth of the Erm, it would indicate by the vast array of ingots from old ‘Astragali’ to the more recent moulding, that Ictis was running down its long held stock. The fact that these Ingots are found so close to Ictis and there is a story to account for what otherwise would have been nigh on impossible to account for (given that a trader would hardly exit a port full of cargo which he had successfully navigated into it), the tin in this place can only be explained reasonably by two explanations. The fact that the most part of the Ingots were found to the north and west of West Mary’s reef definitely indicates the boat was on its way entering rather than exiting when it hit the rock’s. The location further adds credibility to the find being the product of the same account that Strabo had related considering a boat with Devonian cargo should be exiting a port not entering and Ictis is only a stone’s throw away. The only other alternative explanation is that a local boat was trying to exit with cargo from the tinners based on the Erm for a delivery to Ictis, but he would hardly founder inshore of a reef he was perfectly aware of.
Figure 67b Showing the entrance to the Erm estuary at Low tide where the tin ingots were found from the Phoenician trading ship, just inshore from where the swell is seen, caused by the two rocks.
As one can see in figure 67b with the sand showing, the Phonecian trader must have worked out to lure his Roman pursuer at half or full tide when the estuary appears navigable with a favourable entrance in fair weather. In these conditions there is little to warn any navigator of the reef that lurks beneath.
Just to the east
of the Avon dam above Shipley Bridge where there are several settlements,
recent excavations have found in the hut encampments, tin slag and a pebble of
cassiterite confirming that these were, in fact, the living quarters of the
Bronze Age tinners. By the time Pytheas
wrote of his exploits in the fourth century BC, the small craft which were once
used, were being changed to more solidly built craft from wood, and the reason
for Astragali shaped ingots became redundant. It does logical that the local
traders that worked down stream on the other rivers apart from the Avon brought
their ingots to Ictis by sea in their coracles as Pytheas relates just for
small coastal distances ranging each side of Ictis from the Dart to Plymouth.
The Tinners up on the moors however used the route down through Loddiswell as
Pytheas had witnessed.
One
wonders if it was Joseph who, through his exploits as a tin merchant,
discovered that the people of the kingdom of Belerion were the descendants of
Zerah. How did he first establish that these people were related to Calcol? It
seems sure that Joseph is bringing Jesus’s body to Sarras to where Jacob’s
Prophecy on Judah was to be fulfilled. What was it that established this common
ancestry from Judah when Joseph of Arimathea and Zerah’s offspring on the
Belerion promontory first spoke, or was it known for a long time previously?
Melkin is certainly the derivative for the Grail writers reference to Zerah as
having a descendant king of Sarras but this connection must have been made by
Joseph and it must have been him who purchased the island in which to Lay Jesus’
body.
Professor Rhys thinks, tracing
the etymological roots that the Celts who spoke the language of the Celtic
Epitaphs in the 5th and 6th centuries were "in part the ancestors of the
Welsh and Cornish people," He thinks that they subsequently changed their
language from a Gaelic or "Goidelic" form to a Gallo-British or
"Brythonic" form. Certainly there are no evident signs of a Hebraic
heritage except that witnessed by the population of the South’s preponderance
to adherence to the Law and the evidence of an understanding since Neolithic
times of a ley and circle system, the use and knowledge of which has now become
lost.
Diodorus,
when commenting on British dress says that the British had learned the art of
using alternate colours for their weave so as to bring out a pattern of stripes
and squares ‘the cloth was woven of
divers colours, and making a gaudy show. It was covered with an infinite number
of little squares and lines, as if it had been sprinkled with flowers. They
seem to have been fond of every kind of ornament and they wore collars and
"torques" of gold, necklaces and bracelets, and strings of
brightly-coloured beads, made of glass or of a material like the Egyptian porcelain.’ Archeologists have thought that the glass was brought by traders from Alexandrian factories. But
glass-making is often the by product and manufactured by smelting metal and often the residue from
bronze-furnaces produces a kind of glass, a silicate of soda, coloured blue or
green by the silicate of copper mixing with melted sand particles
and this will have been the reason why beads are recorded long before the art
of glass making. It is possibly the reason that Pytheas initially set out to
look for ‘Amber’ confusing this with British glass, that he might have seen
coming from the Phoenician traders as they passed by Marseilles on their way to
the Eastern Mediterranean.
Why does the Genesis
account of Solomon’s precedence over Zerah’s offspring even occur, if there was
no threat of one of Zerah’s descendants being the inheritor of Jacob’s
blessing? Did the offspring of Zerah
have some object as proof that they were of Judah’s line and will this object
or proof be found in the tomb along with all the other artefacts establishing
the Kings of Sarras? Was Blake being
prophetical and is ‘Jerusalem builded here’ in England, fulfilling the prophecy
of Jacob upon Judah?
Figure 68 Showing the mouth of the river Avon flowing out toward Avalon as seen from Folly hill.
In the Dark
Ages a monk called Melkin left a riddle that purported to expose the burial
site of Joseph of Arimathea. This Location has long been thought to exist
within the Glastonbury grounds but the author has meticulously studied some of
the oldest Latin texts from Glastonbury Abbey and has uncovered not only
deliberate obfuscation of the facts surrounding King Arthur and Joseph of
Arimathea but has solved the monks riddle which spells out with pinpoint
accuracy the whereabouts of the resting place of these illustrious men in the
Island of Avalon. The geometric puzzle describes directions that are derived
from the Ley line system built by Neolithic man and the book describes how this
huge display of geometrical precision across the British landscape was
understood and known to exist as late as late the 1300’s. An array of churches
was built upon this ancient system to point out to posterity the location of
the tomb.
This secret location is called the Island of
Avalon and the same monk visited this island at the death of Britain’s famous
King Arthur. Here he found arcane information from the Temple in Jerusalem that
was brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea. This information with an account
of the first Christians arrival with Mary Magdalene was written in a book called
The Grail that found its way to France and gave rise to the wide array of Grail
stories.
‘And did
those feet’ proves that the body of Jesus is in fact buried with Joseph of
Arimathea and the whereabouts of this island is in Devon. It used to be known
as the ancient Island of Ictis and contains within it an ancient tin vault that
became their tomb which had originally been used to store tin ingots. The
confirmation of the whereabouts of this tomb is given by precise geometry upon
the British landscape left in the complex Latin puzzle by the monk Melkin but
its position is also verified by a Jesuit priest who lived in the sixteenth
century who was unaware of the significance of the clue he was given.
The Templars in the middle ages were aware of
the location of this tomb and deposited their treasure in the same tomb on
Christmas day 1307. However they removed one item from the sepulchre within the
island. This was what has now become known as the Turin Shroud. The Turin Shroud
in the monk’s Latin puzzle has the same description once the Latin puzzle is
deciphered. This artefact due to Melkin’s description, later became known as
the Holy Grail by an inordinate amount of misunderstanding and direct obfuscation,
but the Holy Grail is in fact something inestimably more valuable and this book
sets out and explains what the Grail is and how the Grail stories came about.
The body of Jesus, around which the Turin Shroud was once wrapped, is still
within the tomb, steeped in Cedar oil and this is what formed the image on the
Shroud over a period of six hundred years as it was formed within what became
known as the Grail Arc.
The reason this Island was chosen to house
what is the holiest relic of all, is because it was not widely known in the
ancient world except through a report by one of the first Greek explorers to
Britain. Devon and Cornwall have a history in the tin industry and it was from
this island that tin was traded with Joseph of Arimathea who, Cornish tradition
has always maintained, was a tin merchant and was accompanied on his trading
missions by Jesus. The book uncovers an ancient Biblical link to the Devon and
Cornish peninsula through a bloodline from the first born of Judah one of the
twelve sons of Israel, called Zerah. It is from his heritage a Line of Kings was
born in the South west of England known as the kings of Sarras which culminated
with the famous King Arthur.
King Arthur, Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea are
known to be buried on the Island today called Burgh Island but there is also
with them the Arc of the Covenant and the Templar treasure. The book traces
these events pulling together a wide source of detail linking the most powerful
people in Europe like Eleanor of Aquitaine and kings with these events.
Leonardo Da
Vinci visited this Island in the last three years of his life and left clues
within four paintings, that show the geographical features of the Island and he
let the world know by his picture puzzle (rebus) in the Windsor Library, that
he was showing us a great mystery and went as far as saying he would show where
it is, in his two paintings of the Yarnwinder.
The amazing coincidences that have brought
this knowledge into the modern era can only be viewed as having been determined
by supernatural forces as this whole drama is played out to specific times that
are spoken of by the biblical prophets. The implication and ramifications of
the discovery of this tomb will have ramifications across the world as the book
uncovers the relationship between this tomb’s unveiling and how it was
predicted by the Prophets.
la légende du roi arthur, la littérature arthurienne romans Graal, le Graal à Glastonbury, l'île d'Avalon de l'île de ictis, la formation de l'image sur le Suaire de Turin, Turin images linceul, le Saint-Graal dans avalon, le vaus d'avarone , glostonbury abbaye légendes et les mythes de la tombe de joseph Arimathie, le tombeau de Jésus-Christ.
You can find the whole story of how Glastonbury has misrepresented itself as King Arthur’s burial site and the Glastonbury tor as being synonymous with the Isle of Avalon by Clicking on the following links
http://templartreasure.blogspot.co.uk
la légende du roi arthur, la littérature arthurienne romans Graal, le Graal à Glastonbury, l'île d'Avalon de l'île de ictis, la formation de l'image sur le Suaire de Turin, Turin images linceul, le Saint-Graal dans avalon, le vaus d'avarone , glostonbury abbaye légendes et les mythes de la tombe de joseph Arimathie, le tombeau de Jésus-Christ.
You can find the whole story of how Glastonbury has misrepresented itself as King Arthur’s burial site and the Glastonbury tor as being synonymous with the Isle of Avalon by Clicking on the following links
Great stuff Mike!
ReplyDeleteI am absolutely enthralled!
And happy to recommend your book, you have made Dan Brown look like a complete amateur.
I will really enjoy watch how this story unfolds and hope the Burgh Island hoteliers give you a share of the profit you will generate for them. That hotel is going to be booked solid.
Bru